In this episode of the Hotel Moment podcast, your host of two years, Revinate CMO Karen Stephens, is making her formal introduction to all our listeners. Karen walks through a bit of her journey in the hospitality sector, highlighting the technological innovation she’s witnessed at Revinate and across the industry. You’ll also hear first-hand insight from Karen and previous podcast guests about key trends that hoteliers are tackling head-on. 

Listen for an honest conversation from our host on why KPIs like Total RevPAR and NOI really matter and why prioritizing the voice channel and technology adoption can put your hotel ahead of the competition. 

Meet your host

As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen Stephens is focused on driving long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. Her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships.

Karen is also the host of The Hotel Moment Podcast, where she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading Revinate’s global GTM teams. Her most recent transition was from Chief Revenue Officer, where she led the team in their highest booking quarter to date in Q4 2023.

Karen has more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution — including managing global accounts in travel and hospitality organizations such as Travelocity and lastminute.com

Connect with Karen

Transcript

Intro – 00:00:04: Welcome to the Hotel Moment podcast presented by Revinate, the podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.

Karen Stephens 00:00:36: Hello, and welcome to the Hotel Moment podcast. I am your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And today I have a bit of a different format for you. Today, I’m gonna spend the time on the podcast introducing myself as your host, and give you a little bit of background about the podcast itself. So first of all, I wanted to thank all of our listeners. We have quite a few of you these days, but it wasn’t always the case. So The Hotel Moment podcast started around the time of COVID and it was actually a company named Go Moment that launched the podcast. So just in terms of background, I think for those of you listening that were in the industry when COVID hit, we will all remember that that was a time of great uncertainty when all the hotels were shut down. We weren’t sure when things were gonna open back up. And really the spirit of this podcast was just to create a community where hoteliers could come together and share stories and insights about how they were coping with the pandemic. At the time, the host was a woman named Jenn Suski, who was a salesperson on the Go Moment team who has since moved on. She did a great job kind of in the early days bootstrapping this podcast and getting it on the airwaves. Then in 2021, Revinate acquired Go Moment. So Go Moment has, the product is called Ivy, which is a messaging app. And so Revinate acquired that to bring it into our portfolio of activation channels for our Customer Data Platform. So that was exciting times for us. At the time, I was Chief Revenue Officer. So I integrated the sales team and the CS team as we brought on that platform. And about six months into the new company, which included also another company called NAVIS, which I’ll talk about here in a moment. But about six months into that mission, the VP of Brand who we also brought over from Go Moment, a woman named Sanjana Chappalli. She came to me and she said, Karen, I want you to host the podcast. And I got to tell you, I was not keen to do this. So I wasn’t sure why she wanted me to do it. But what had happened was I held a company all hands. And my team that has worked with me for a while knows that I tend to enjoy — I’m very animated when I speak. And when I talk about things, I get people fired up. So she really felt like this was something that we could use more broadly within the industry. So I pushed back vehemently. She made me do it anyway, and sidebar, she’s also making me do this episode, even though I don’t want to. But I’m doing it anyway. Anyway, shout out to Sanj. We started doing the podcast here and there, fitting it in. Obviously, Chief Revenue Officer is a big job. I had a lot going on running a sales team. So we were fitting in the broadcast when we could. But even having said that, right out of the gate, we had some phenomenal guests that joined us from the CRO of Sojern, my good friend, Noreen Henry, to Tom Luersen, who runs CoralTree Hospitality. So right from the jump, we had some really good guests on the program. And another gentleman who you’ll hear from today, we’re going to talk a little bit about budget season from Charlestowne Hotels. So we always had that momentum with great guests coming on. But we were like, how can we do more? And how can we even increase the profile a little bit more of the podcast? Well, after five years as Chief Revenue Officer in April of this year, 2024, I moved over into the Chief Marketing Officer role, which has been a fantastic transition for me. So just to back up a little bit about who I am, where I come from. I’ve been with Revinate for 11 years — started with reputation management, which is what Revinate was known for. Very disruptive in the industry when we came on the scene. The company started in 2009, and I think I was employee 55 in 2013. So came on in a sales capacity, worked with some of the biggest brands in hospitality for reputation. And then as we started to transition into more of a guest data company, we launched inGuest in 2015, which is now called Revinate Marketing, which is an industry-leading email marketing CRM. So I helped roll that out globally as a sales leader. And then I moved into the VP of Customer Success and eventually into CRO. So I’ve been with Revinate for quite a while over the evolution of our product set. As Chief Revenue Officer, I also oversaw the acquisition or integrated the sales, CS, and marketing teams of NAVIS. So in addition to acquiring Go Moment in 2021, we acquired NAVIS, which is really the jewel of hospitality technology in terms of the service, the people, and also the customer base that they brought into Revinate. So we are very proud of everything that came with that acquisition. And as I mentioned, probably the highlight of that in hospitality is that customer base. So the most beautiful brands in North America, if you can name it, they’re part of our portfolio. Independents as well, because NAVIS focused on the voice channel. And again, as Revinate has evolved from reputation only to email marketing CRM to now a full guest data platform. So what this means is everything integrated on the back end in terms of all of the data inputs down into single view of guest and then the activation channels of voice, email, and messaging, the acquisitions of NAVIS and also Go Moment were integral to that strategy. So it’s been exciting as a Chief Revenue Officer to bring all that on board. Even more exciting for me, though, I have to say of all the roles that I’ve had in my career, Chief Marketing Officer has been by far most aligned with who I am as a person. It’s creative. It’s fun. And the podcast is just another natural extension of that role. So, you might have noticed the look and feel. Everything’s gotten a little different about Hotel Moment since I came over in this capacity in April. So the team remains the same. Obviously, there’s a lot of people that make this happen from the VP and brand that I mentioned. We have a young woman named Brenna Turpin who makes sure that we have the right guests and the right scripts and all of that. We have designers. So there’s a whole team behind this thing, but hopefully you’ve enjoyed the new branding — the new look and feel. And starting in July of this year, we actually moved to a weekly cadence. So you’re going to be hearing from us more and more. And as I mentioned, as we’ve evolved, our guests just keep on coming. The hits keep on coming. So in July already, we’ve had Joe Pettigrew, who is the Chief Commercial Officer of EOS. We’ve had Carlo Del Mistro, who is the Chief Digital Officer of Ennismore. We also had JC Thompson, that came out. Anybody who’s worked in hospitality and training on the reservation sales side of the business and call centers, you know JC Thompson. He is the founder and CEO of Pursuance. So it’s really just been a fantastic ride. And I think the other thing that has evolved as we’ve done this podcast more and more are the topics. So we’ve always wanted to talk about technology and how that impacts guest experience. Last year, we talked a lot about sustainability. We talked a lot about AI. But this year, the focus, it’s been really interesting to see a couple of really cool trends that my guests are hitting on every time that we talk. So the first one is Total RevPAR. So more and more the focus, we can see it’s not just on the room rate and understanding whatever you can figure out about your guests coming from PMS data and other sources. But it’s also about the ancillary. So what are they doing in terms of F&B? What are they doing in terms of spa, golf? How do you get all of that data into a single profile so that you really understand the total lifetime value of the guest? So that is one thing that’s a huge topic. And then the other big topic is my favorite, which is net operating income. So NOI, NOI, NOI. And we’ve had a number of guests that have talked about this. So we had several recordings from our NAVIGATE conference that occurred in Miami this year. And two of those guests that were on the program, one was Kathleen Cullen, who is a vice president of PTG, which is a consulting arm. So she talked a lot about the importance of driving direct bookings, taking marketing spend out of OTA channels and repurposing that so that you can drive your own direct bookings and what an impact that makes financially. And then another woman that we also spoke with at NAVIGATE is Jennifer Hill from Kalibri Labs. So Jennifer, Kathleen, and then, of course, one of my favorite people in the industry, Caryl Helsel, who is from Dragonfly Strategists. I was lucky enough to have those three ladies on a panel with me at NAVIGATE where we talked about commercial strategy. And the core of commercial strategy is net operating income. So I’m going to play clip now from the podcast with Jennifer Hill, who we also talked to at NAVIGATE to talk a little bit more about net operating income.

Jennifer Hill – 00:09:44: So the most important thing around commercial strategy and working together in that team, revenue, sales, marketing, just to keep it simple, is to really understand the full picture of market demand and the dynamics so you can understand what is out there before you decide what to go and get, where you allocate resources. Whether that’s time or talent or your actual marketing spend to those opportunities. And that starts with a very proactive, strategic conversation with those key disciplines, and commercial areas. So no one is being consolidated in terms of role or responsibility. There should still be equal voices. And those people will still practice and execute in their areas of expertise and experience. But we’re going to make those decisions together. We’re going to decide how we’re going to deploy our budget, how we’re going to deploy our time. And then the people who are the experts in those areas go off and do their thing. And the biggest challenge is getting everybody on board for understanding what metrics are going to be used to measure that success. Because I think we’ve had that tension in those silos with revenue, sales, marketing in the past because we have different goals.

Karen Stephens – 00:10:56: Great. So speaking of net operating income, another guest that I had on the program in July is a gentleman named Joe Pettigrew, who is the Chief Commercial Officer at EOS Hospitality. So EOS is one of the fastest growing management companies in the United States. Joe comes from a really robust background. He came over to EOS from Starwood Capital, which is obviously another asset ownership company that owns a ton of hotels. I think what’s interesting about EOS and what Joe shared with me that what attracted him to it is they own and they manage their hotels. So they really focus on the whole portfolio and the whole playbook across their portfolio. I also want to give a shout-out to Brittain Hotels, which is part of EOS. So EOS, they have a relationship and Britain is one of the brands within that portfolio. But Patrick Norton and team do a tremendous job. And if I can give any plugs to any podcast to go back and listen to out of, Hotel Moment, I would say, please have a listen to Patrick Norton, who was in November of last year. But going back to Joe Pettigrew and talking about net operating income, if you think about how owners think about net operating income and what it takes to move that needle, I think that this is some really good insight. So I’m going to have Joe take it away, and then we can talk a little bit about budget season. We’re in the middle of summer as I’m recording this, but as we all know, this goes quickly and all of a sudden the kids will be back in school and boom, it’s… It’s budget season for hotels. So I think as an industry, if you’re involved in budget at all, if you’re not thinking about net operating income, you should be. Because if your owners are signing off on the budget, knowing how to speak their language and understanding how to calculate that is going to be tantamount to you getting whatever you need in the budget to make your business run, whether that’s a technology purchase, whether that’s a marketing strategy, whatever it might be, if you apply the lens of net operating income and you understand, the commercial strategy playbook, you’re going to be in a great position. So I’m going to hand it over to Joe, and then we’ll talk a little bit about budget season.

Joe Pettigrew – 00:12:59: For most of us who are working in the hotel, so that is basically anyone besides the folks who work on the brand side. But if you’re working in the hotel or as part of the management company or you’re working as part of the ownership group, really the only thing that ever matters in measuring the success of the hotel that you’re working in is the NOI. Nothing else matters. Loyalty percentage doesn’t matter. Direct booking percentage don’t matter. How many followers you have on Instagram doesn’t matter. How many emails, open rate, none of that stuff actually matters. The only thing that matters is the NOI. Now, in order to improve that NOI, all of those KPIs that I just kind of whittled on all will have some impact in driving that NOI. But the magnitude of what each one of those things make the biggest impact will be different for every hotel in different locations, depending on which brand you have and what kind of facilities you have. And so you can’t approach any one of these with a very simple mindset of like, I mean, both direct booking percentage, you’re only like 20% on 40%. That comparison is not fair when the only thing that really matters is we need to just maximize on the NOI.

Karen Stephens – 00:14:13: All right. So as I mentioned, budget season is a big deal here at Revinate. So obviously, we’re a technology vendor. I’m not going to lie. Our job is to sell our customers the best technology in the world. And so we have a big focus on making sure that our prospects and customers are fully prepared to understand the value of Revinate and sell the value of Revinate. I mentioned before in the intro, the company that we acquired in 2021, which is called NAVIS. So NAVIS is now a part of Revinate, but the reservation sales is the platform that we brought over on the SaaS side of the business. Reservation sales is call center software. And I’ve said on the podcast before, I think a lot of times people think, Oh, you know, voice channel, isn’t that going away? And the answer is No, it is not going away. And if you think about the best brands, when I say the most beautiful brands in North America and independent hotels are customers of Revinate on this platform, that is not hyperbole. That is absolutely the case. I preserve my customers’ right to be my customers. I’m not going to list them for you, but I mean, trust me, they are there, and they’re beautiful. And many of them run on Revinate because they need to maintain a Forbes five-star rating. They need to understand how to turn their reservation staff into salespeople that know how to convert a booking. And the way that you convert that booking is by having all of the data at your fingertips in order to know what that guest prefers? How to approach and how to make sure that the guest gets the absolute best experience, not only making that reservation, but also when they get on property. So it’s a very orchestrated motion and reservation sales is there as a platform to help call center managers and reservation teams optimize, optimize across the board. And when I tell you that that drives a ton of revenue and ultimately net operating income to the positive, again, not hyperbolic. It’s one of the best kept secrets in hospitality in my view. And I think the biggest competitor to res sales, actually, if I really think about it, is hotels not knowing that they need it. So we see this a lot. When we have a brand that purchases the platform, we expand throughout that brand, and all of their hotels eventually take it because it drives so much revenue. I mean, the average stay value on a voice booking is two to four times what happens on an online booking. So being able to understand how to leverage that is incredibly important. And being able to understand and have the tools in front of you to make sure that all of your agents are firing at the highest level of conversion is hugely important. I also want to say that as a compliment to reservation sales, the other part of NAVIS that came along with the acquisition is our robust call center team. So I mentioned Forbes Five-Star. We are the service that picks up when our hotel customers log off for the afternoon, and their reservation teams go home. Those calls roll into RezForce. Of course, if you’re dialing in as a customer from the outside, you would never know that you’re not speaking to the hotel themselves because that’s how good our agents are. And we get secret-shopped by Forbes all the time, and we always pass with flying colors. So you can trust that piece of business with us. My next guest I wanted to highlight is JC Thompson. So JC Thompson is the founder and CEO of Pursuance. And we have a lot of mutual customers. If you listen to the full episode, you’ll hear me say that a couple of times. So we have a lot of mutual customers. And JC has really come up in the industry to help companies understand how to train and inspire agents to be the best they can be to drive conversion. So let’s hear about this from JC.

JC Thompson – 00:18:00: Something’s been lost there that we have to get back to. I think if you and I had this conversation seven years ago, I think we would maybe have been talking about, is the voice element, is someone calling a hotel or a destination going to go away altogether? Well, I think that’s been proven that’s not true. There are a high percentage of people that are willing to make those purchase decisions without talking to anybody. But I think that a lot of people want that. They want to reaffirm, am I making the right choice? Is this a good use of my money? And I don’t think that necessarily correlates with age. For a while, we’re like, oh, well, anyone under 30, they’re just going to book it online. Well, that’s proving to be untrue.

Karen Stephens – 00:18:37: All right. So I have one last clip for you because it is budget season, which is so near and dear to all of our hearts. And that is Johnathan Capps, who is the Chief Revenue Officer of Charlestowne Hotels. So Charlestowne, also a customer of Revinate, who we’re very excited to have on the full platform. And here you can hear Jonathan talk about his approach to budget season, which is near and dear to all of us. So. I will leave you with that and then come back with some closing thoughts.

Jonathan Cadds – 00:19:04: You know, we’ve had some cool stuff open up to the technology in the space. But I would say that with the concern of as we talk about budgeting. In the sense that if there’s another buzzword in the industry or across all companies globally is labor, right? That uptick in labor has been so dramatic and so quick, I worry that it pushes the tech adoption down. Now, my asterisk on that will be, it might push any new initiative down. A lot of times the new initiatives are in a sense of, I think tech-related these days, they feel more of that in the space, is that I think two things. I think in a lot of times in tech space, it’s hard to quantify the value in a one-year picture. So doing it in the process of a budgeting process is not exactly the big sell, right? Because you need to show a two to three-year impact. So I think the thing for me is to not get that cut is it may take a little extra work. It may take doing a one-year budget and a three-year pro forma and saying, Well, here’s how that looks to impact year two and year three. Because I don’t think a lot of times you’re going to put in a new system or adopt a new tech and you’re three months in and it’s going to knock out an FTE all of a sudden. The robots delivering towels aren’t just taking up a houseman position in the first three months. I mean, probably still holding a position because someone needs to load it and do other things. So I think there’s just some time it takes for those things. And I think the sell to leadership, to ownership, is that this is a long-term impact. It puts us on an equal footing or puts us a leg up. It provides value to the guests. It’s not always a labor replacement or something to that effect or an expense savings. It might support a value. So I think for someone to put their sales hat on and say, What is the piece that it’s bringing all across the board, right? And does it not only impact a savings piece, but also a guest-facing piece?

Karen Stephens – 00:21:06: Right. So some great thoughts there from Jonathan. I’ll just say that, please keep an eye on Revinate. We’re trying some really exciting stuff this year. As I mentioned, I’m very excited to be in this role as Chief Marketing Officer. I have a stellar team, and we are ready to push the envelope. So please keep your eyes peeled so you can see how we’re approaching budget season and making sure, again, that our customers and prospects are fully prepared and equipped to tackle this season with as much help and assistance as we can provide. And we’re going to have a little fun. So I’ll leave it there and you’ll just have to trust me on that. Watch this space. Also want to say, since I have the floor and I don’t normally get a plug, Revinate products and services, if you haven’t checked us out lately, I would encourage you to do this. So we are not your father’s reputation company anymore. We are a full guest data platform and we are always happy to give you a tour of what we have. So all of the episodes that I talked about today, so you can see the full versions of all of these for Jennifer Hill, for Joe Pettigrew, for JC Thompson, and for Jonathan Capps are linked in the comment section. And then last but not least, if you’d like to be a guest on the podcast, we’d love to hear from you. So just drop me a line, [email protected], K-A-R-E-N @revinate.com. And yeah, we’ll see what we can do. And we will see you soon on an upcoming episode of the Hotel Moment podcast. Thank you.

Outro 00:22:36: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to revinate.com/hotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.

About Revinate

Revinate empowers hoteliers to directly connect with their guests.

Our Guest Data Platform and communication solutions unlock revenue for hoteliers and put them in control of the full guest experience — initial research, booking, check-in, throughout the stay, and even after check out — all via the communication channels that guests prefer, whether it's voice, text, email, or web.

More than 12,000 hotels globally bank on Revinate to drive direct revenue and deliver delightful guest experiences.

Ask us how we do it. Visit our website to get a demo.

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