The Modern Hotelier #263: Innovative Marketing Strategies for Hotels | with Jody Merl
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David Millili: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier. You're the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Don't forget to follow, like, and subscribe and let us know what you think about this episode in the comments. Steve, who do we have on the program today?
Steve Carran: Yeah, David, excited for this conversation we have on Jody Merl, the Founder and President of Innovative Travel Marketing. Thanks for joining us, Jody. How you doing today?
Jody Merl: I'm doing great. Thank you so much.
David Millili: Alright, Jody, so we're gonna dive in. We're gonna go through a quick lightning round of questions, get to know you better, learn about your career and dive into some industry topics. Sound good?
Jody Merl: Yep.
David Millili: All right, here we go. So, when you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Jody Merl: I wanted to be an actress, a Broadway actress. Then I wanted to be a film producer. Then I decided I loved the hotel business but I wanted to be an actress. 
David Millili: What's something that you wish you were better at?
Jody Merl: Oh, letting go. I'm a dog with a bone.
David Millili: All right. What's a luxury you can't live without?
Jody Merl: I cannot live without a delicious wash and blow, and then a big bottle of dry shampoo to keep it going.
David Millili: Okay. What's a person, dead or alive you'd like to go to lunch with?
Jody Merl: I just saw the Martha Stewart, documentary. She's an incredible woman. She's a survivor. She's a marketer. She's a brilliant publisher. She's just so current with her engagements with Snoop Dogg. I think she'd be fascinating.
David Millili: Okay. If you could have a superpower, what superpower would you want to have?
Jody Merl: I'd wanna know what everyone was thinking. It's just there's always a need behind the need, and my curiosity is so great. I'd want to know what's making other people tick as we're talking. 
David Millili: Okay. What's on your bucket list?
Jody Merl: Having a date all to myself was no one around that's on my bucket list.
Steve Carran: That was great, Jody. Pretty quick with those. So now we're gonna go through your background and kind of what makes you tick a little bit. So where did you grow up?
Jody Merl: Well, I was born in New York. I was born in Tarrytown, New York, but I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Which is something a lot of people don't know, my dad went down and he opened up the first set of movie theaters in North Carolina and so I grew up with that love for movies and I loved talking to him about the productions. And then, uh, my family expanded their business and I stayed in North Carolina and I wound up going to school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which is a great place. And it's just a very unusual background. I learned a great deal about, dealing with being a northerner in a southern environment and also hopefully getting a little bit of that southern grace and charm.
Steve Carran: That's great. That's great.
David Millili: Alright, so you said you went to University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. You got your degree in journalism and advertising, so you were living there, but what made you chose to go to that school and take those degrees?
Jody Merl: Well, I was fascinated with acting, as I had said, and I had gone to Winston-Salem to the School of the Arts. I'm a fairly practical person and when they asked me to get on the floor and act like a dog or a cat, I thought, this may not be for me and I better, I better move my she a little bit. I love writing, I love marketing. I got the marketing bug as a young girl from my father, as I said, launch, a movie like Mary Poppins or, 80 Days around the world, and we would come up with great promotions and we did an antique car show around Raleigh, North Carolina to promote one of the movies we were showing. And marketing was always in my blog. I loved to write. I was an English major as well. And so, words and what they do and how they affect people made a great deal to me, which is something I love. 
Steve Carran: And you talk about marketing one of the most interesting stories that I heard about you is how you helped launch JetBlue in 2000 with a $2 million radio campaign funded entirely on trade. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Jody Merl: Sure. When I started in the corporate barter business and started my company, innovative Travel Marketing, the transition was how do you take a product available seat in this case and find media that would support it, and the barter industry. I'm taking you back for a second to barter, so there's a clear understanding I learned at this time of my life that. There's available inventory, right? Both on the seat side and both in the media. Media companies have a need too. They want high-end advertisers. They want beautiful hotels. They wanted. Wonderful airlines. And so we negotiated with very local radio stations to do the launch. It was targeted in upstate New York primarily. And we traded the seats to our media partners as well as anyone in our whole circle of media companies. And we provided the advertising and we did the campaign and JetBlue set up an account for us and we booked the airline tickets as if we were a regular corporate account, direct bill account, and it was a great success.
Steve Carran: It's very cool. Very cool. 
David Millili: So you've been friends with Ian Streger for some time and he's still a client of yours. How did that relationship start, and then how did it grow over the years?
Jody Merl: Ian's a very interesting man and he likes to find people who can give him fabulous information, and we connected even before I started my company. Innovative travel marketing, and he had a big idea for the launch of the Paramount, and he said, I want you to help me do that. And it was a really huge idea. I wanna create the most fabulous television campaign there is, and I wanna make it sexy and I wanna run it on the top shows.  So we were on sexy programming and we launched his $99 Cheap Chic campaign, that was a blast. And the launch for the Paramount Hotel. He just trusted me. He knew I had a good sensibility about. His vision and I understood his clients very well working in the luxury lifestyle and independent market. As long as I had a sense of where the business should come from.
I was always very thoughtful. I was always very forward and honest and, uh, we always went through the hard times, the good times, the bad times. We went through Lehman Brothers together when. He opened Gramercy Park So I think loyalty means a lot to me, and it means a lot to Ian and I think his team of people trusted me because first, I'm a Hotelier. I understand the business. We make sure there are heads and bads at good rates, and we do that by really developing strong marketing campaigns and having the wherewithal for us. Also, I'm very well-funded and we're able to also survive the highs and the lows. So I think we've been together through a lot. It's over 30, it's going on 33 years now, and we're working non-public, west Hollywood. So I think it's a trust. He is that kind of guy and he never let me down.
Steve Carran: That's awesome. What a great story. So now we're gonna go through your career, how you got to start innovative travel marketing. So you started your career in Hollywood. You wanted to be an actress, and moved out to Hollywood and you were working in film production and PR. What did that experience teach you about storytelling that translated later into hospitality?
Jody Merl: a friend of my mother's. This is all true. Said, can you type? And in those days, you know, you had to really type. And I said, sure. And she said, come into my PR firm, you're going to work with me. And it was Hansen and Schwan public relations. And with my journalism background, I learned how to do the short, you know, the short stories, the confabs, the articles that go into AP Variety Hollywood Reporter. 
And so I always learned how to understand the clientele, where to find the business, how to do the marketing, and somebody there met me and said, Hey, I want you to come and be the director's assistant on Zana Jo. I said, sure, sure, why not? I loved it. And you could tell that. The directors, the people in the group, everybody was staying in character. But it's not so much the character, it's what we learned. It's learning how to deal with people and learning how to never say no. Learning how to work seven days a week, really tough when I wanted to be a producer, which at that time when Barry Diller was running Chairman of paramount, Michael Eisner was the president of Paramount and I'm, we working at that time for Lawrence Gordon, who produced Anou in 48 hours and many other great movies. And Larry was living at Lage and I was always there, many of the many of the actors were there as well. And I got to know the owner, Seran Ashkenazi, and he said, I want you, I know, you know all of the producers and the, you know, the agents and you know they're secretaries.
I want you to come into my hotel and I want you to develop sales. In a way that reaches people in a different passion. I said, well, if we're gonna do it my way, then it's the Hollywood way, and if we need to get the top corporate managers into our hotel, we're gonna pick 'em up in a limousine. We're gonna get 'em to the hotel.
I'm gonna fly my top people from New York first class to come to the hotel. And it was a matter of learning how to get people excited about your product; trust you bring them in and tell the story of the hotel. At that time, Lage was truly the first luxury boutique hotel. It was five star, five diamonds, seven years in a row. And then, uh, Mr. Ashkenazi had the vision of creating other boutique hotels, lore, Laval, Ladon, and then we opened Bella and Mondrian and I was there for the Olympics in LA. Opening up Montreal Hotel, cleaning the stainless-steel doors, making sure they were perfect. And then I came to New York and opened up a sales office for LA Hotel. So that's how I got in the hotel business. And then very fortunate from there to move into the leading hotels of the world, because remember, that's a not-for-profit organization, but it was the greatest learning experience of my life. I met the most incredible people besides the owners and of these gorgeous hotels. At the time it was only 200 hotels of course, it's larger now. They only were dealing with travel agents, and they brought me in to expand their corporate rate program. So I was the first person to ever take corporate travel managers to Switzerland and Australia because nobody did it, they just thought, oh, travel agents do that. I said, no, corporate travel managers do that. They have billions of dollars of money to put into your hotel and you better treat them well. And so that was an amazing time for me. I got to meet a great many people and they are still friends of mine to this day. And it's, it's really the trust that was built because we did promotions. I'll never forget. We, of course, Shulie did the most amazing leading hotels of the world. General managers meeting at the Ritz Carlton and Buckhead, and at the same time, back then it was called GBTA. We had GBTA going and we had 200 of the top Vice presidents, corporate travel managers and purchasers come in for a gorgeous white glove dinner at the hotel. And we wowed the crowd. And from there it just made sense for me to take my contacts and fell. I was on my way to the Red and Madrid true story and a friend of mine who used to work at in marketing. He said, Jody, you need to come and work for our company and really help media companies use travel. 
And I got into the world of corporate barter and ultimately met so many amazing media companies who are still partners of ours today. And there's a need media companies have available inventory, they have the available spaces I'd mentioned with JetBlue, but there is also a need for us to act almost as a sales tool for them, and we would bring them these beautiful advertisers, beautiful hotels, and I thought, this is a terrific business. And so I started my business in 1992 with a desk and a telephone and Ann Schrader launching Paramount Hotel, and I got married the same year. It was an amazing experience.
David Millili: So what do you think? Is the biggest gap that really innovative travel marketing and that you filled for the hotels and, what was that gap that, what was that missing piece that you really fulfilled?
Jody Merl: It was helping hotels understand that even though they're underfunded, which most hotels are underfunded in general, it's incredible to me. The gap was helping them understand, I can support your tactical needs with advertising that they may not have hard dollars for. And in addition, help direct new business to your hotels. So many of these independent hotels are understaffed, they're underfunded, and using your own available, you're a bank. A hotels are a bank. Let's say they're running 75% occupancy, 25% of their inventory is sitting unused. And I am a conduit to help them use that. 
I understood. All the different facets of launching a hotel that perhaps a director of sales and marketing might not have understood. So we filled that gap there. We have a lot of hotel expertise. My expertise, I sit down and put my hotel hat on and really go through the paces with anybody who I do business with, and I make sure that they're looking at seasonality. They're looking at high season, low season rate. And so I filled a gap of not only providing media, but knowledge for many independent hotels that just were not staffed properly and perhaps didn't understand how they could cut through and be competitive with the big boys. And there's a way to do it.
Steve Carran: That's great. Well said. Well said, that was a great background about how you got to where you are. Now we're gonna dive into industry thoughts, kind of a thought leadership up section of the podcast. So you know, hotels do quite a few different types of marketing campaigns. What separates those successful campaigns apart from those that may fall flat? 
Jody Merl: It's being funded properly, spending enough money. Making sure that the campaign is consistent and thoughtful and well thought out through the year, so that they're not reactive to something that can happen like is happening at this time. So to do a campaign and launch it well. You've got to have enough money. Most people launch a hotel, they pray that it's gonna do well. I'm gonna throw it on Expedia, and that is not a strategy. Hope is not a strategy. Building a $50 million hotel and giving it a $50,000 budget is not a strategy. So a strategy is making sure you're funded well because you can only open once and you can't take back, any bad press and it takes a long time to rebuild. And once you rebuild if they are consistent and do a campaign for the year and not worry about, oh, I did an amazing a DR in 22, 23, now I have to beat it next year and the year after, it's not realistic. Falling flat is dumping. Business on the OTAs and not being integrated. You see, because people think, oh, I have one customer. Well, you don't have one customer. Think about the facets of where money comes from. And so you must think through your market segments and the clientele you're going after, and it's gonna fall flat when it's not well funded, when it is not touching people at the right time, in the right moment and in an integrated fashion. And also reaching all of the different multi-generational segments of the market that can bring money to your hotel. So it's not Instagram and TikTok. You have to be able to reach people that have money that are gonna spend at the right time and the right place. And in most cases, you've gotta have enough money to do it well. 
David Millili: Yeah, so to build off that really, how should hotels be aligning that, you know, the campaign strategies that you're talking about with their business goals? What's the best way for them to do that?
Jody Merl: I have to think them through, they have to plan early in the year, and the operators and the salespeople all have to work together as a team. You can't have a goal if you're not cohesive and many times. Finance, operations, sales. Are in different silos and they need to come together and they have to look at profit and they have to look at going after the right customer that has the money to spend. So I think those goals together and thinking like the owner, what's the owner wanna do? I mean so many people have so many layers with asset managers and management companies. And then you've got the sales staff, they need to get together and combine and say, we're going to be the best there is in this market. We are going to stay ahead of the crowd. We're gonna beat the competition because we're going to be out there consistently. I think the goal of not how much money I'm gonna be making on my management fee, but where am I gonna be next year and look at things on a long-term basis. For long-term revenue and profit, you've gotta be in it to win it, you have to be consistent, and I think there's too much reaction, too much short-term dumping in the marketplace, and you have to have enough backing and finances to get where you wanna be and don't rest on your laurels. You've gotta be out there all the time. It's not like, okay, I did an email. It's great. We got great opens. You know, I got seven to one return on this digital campaign. But who really came? Who really booked? Do you know who it is? You have to think about the business and have the staff also in-house to achieve your goals. Love your staff, support sales support, marketing support, group support, incentive support, all your travel partners. It's not just one thing; it's an integrated effort to really be out there in the long run. And I think hotels today are under such financial stress. They may not be spending the time to think about where do I wanna be next year and the year after, so that you have that precious repeat guest coming who's going to continue to come, bring their friends, bring their family, and make an impact on the bottom line of your business that's where the money comes from.
Steve Carran: Absolutely. Well said. And I wanna dive a little deeper on that because like one thing that we've talked a lot about is budget. But a lot of hotels right now do feel constrained by their marketing budgets. Is there something they're overlooking or maybe an alternate solution there?
Jody Merl: Yes. Well, they're obviously overlooking the money they have under their mattresses if they're not considering taking a percentage of their budget and using it to expand their marketing exposure. so maybe if that's something they don't know how to do, perhaps take a percentage of the rooms, the value of the rooms that they're putting on the OTAs. And if they took that percentage of business, even 5% of the business, they may be putting on the OTAs and put it toward advertising that would support their sales effort and think about how it would support public relations and, and give legs and give a halo effect to that. So let's say, you know, let's say a hotel's losing $25 million a year, which is pretty easy for a 300-room hotel, a $400 rate. They don't run 75% occupancy. They're losing 25% of their revenue, and that's money in the bank if they took a percentage of it to buy media. There are ways that you can utilize your inventory to support your end game of marketing, to find people directly, which is. A lot of money. If you're not paying the OTAs and you're getting profit right there, you know, 10% in the bank, 15% in the bank every day for a direct customer. And you have to think about creating a good foundation for the future and using your inventory wisely to support the highs and the lows and make sure that you're maximizing your rate and maximizing the right customers coming into your hotel, finding them. Following the money, use what you've got. You're a bank. Everybody's got money to spend that they haven't found, and there's certainly partnerships available and there's ways to get added value if you're working with the right partners. There are ways to squeeze your budget and expand your budget. You just work with the right team and be creative and let your partners come in and bring incremental promotions to the hotel that will help them succeed.
Steve Carran: What type of promotions do you, would you say, uh, or recommend for maybe a hotel? That doesn't know where to start?
Jody Merl: Sure. I always look at the basics first. As I said, I go right to how are you doing? On your individual room nights, how are you doing on your, on your group room nights? How are you doing with low season? High season? So, promotions and added value would be, okay, I'm in there. I have my travel trade person. I'm in certain programs. But then in addition to that, you would go into those vertical industry publications and work with them and you can do direct. Digital marketing, you could do sweepstakes. You could do a variety of added value where you'll get extra content from them. You just have to know and work with people who understand that business so that you can get different industries coming into the hotels, media companies love beautiful boutique hotels. They are always asking for partners. And that does take staff and many hotel might not have staff. So then you've got your public relation partner and hopefully you have your media partners ask everything you can of all of your partners, they should be working for you very hard to make sure you're getting those kinds of promotions. We do radio promotions, we do television promotions where when we were doing a campaign for the Knickerbocker. Bloomberg Radio. I mean, it's fabulous and you know, but we had it, we had Bloomberg Radio live in the hotel. The general managers interviewed of course, everybody was listening. It was a big wow. These are different promotions that are available if you're talking to the right company, who knows how to do them.
David Millili: So we've covered a lot of, I guess, the disconnects between the marketing aspects and the finance as aspects. So I guess for those who are listening, what advice would you give to somebody who's looking to start a company in hospitality and in marketing and branding, given your experience?
Jody Merl: Make sure they have good funding. Have staff, pay your staff well so that you're getting the best people because this business is about trust and loyalty. So I advise that they do get a team together and that they're funded properly. I do advise that they're touching on all the different avenues to find people to come and fill those hotel rooms.
So you wanna open up with a bang. And going in the hospitality business, you've gotta stay ahead of the competition. So whatever you're doing, make sure you have a plan in place that keeps you ahead of the competition because your name will be remembered maybe let's see you walking down the street on a telephone kiosk. Maybe they're gonna see you, you know, on a cable spot or streaming somewhere. Be out in different touchpoint in different places for you to be able to succeed and drive the segments and the key feeder markets that you want into the hotel to be successful. 
Steve Carran: So we've been asking you questions this whole time. This is where we turn the tables and let you ask David and I a question.
Jody Merl: What would you recommend today and what do you see as the biggest problem out there for new hotels opening?
Steve Carran: David, do you wanna go first or should I?
David Millili: Sure. I'll jump in. Hopefully I'll steal your answer like I usually do. I think the biggest thing, you know, a lot people have said this, but you. You can teach somebody how to check someone in. You can teach somebody how to open a door the right way, greet guest, but you can't really teach that personality of that person. And I think if you want to be in hospitality and you're especially in the boutique hotels, you need to have a team, as you talked about hiring good people, paying them well, that really wants to be there. And you know, I'll let Steve talk more about this, but it's really just hotels adopting technology.
Steve Carran: I agree with you David. I'm gonna go on finding their own individuality, um, and really leaning into where they're located. One example of this that I really enjoyed was I was in Lincoln, Nebraska and I stayed at the graduate hotel. One thing I loved about that property is everything tied into Lincoln, everything tied into the university. It made me feel like I was almost getting educated on Lincoln and the University of Nebraska while I was staying at that property. They also had a restaurant connected to the hotel and they had like very Midwestern food and drinks there as well. So everything almost tied back into the community where I felt like, Hey, I'm staying in this city and learning about it as I stay there.
So I felt like I had this very, a much more connected stay to Lincoln than if I would've stayed at just a standard property. So I think leaning into, you know, also those companies that are maybe a coffee brand a liquor brand, a local beer or something like that, those local food and beverages as well, that kind of can tie you into the community.
Jody Merl: That's fabulous. And then finding the staff that makes you feel so comfortable and the service. It's very hard to teach service. It's hard. It's gotta be in yours DNA of your staff and training is so important and hopefully they see you and obviously those people saw you in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm sure they offered you a fantastic cocktail 
Steve Carran: It was great. It was great. I was driving back from Wisconsin and I was on the road for like 12 hours, so a cocktail was much needed, but, well, this has been an awesome conversation. Jody, our producer Jon has been listening this whole time, so we're gonna kick it over to him for one more question before we get you outta here.
Jon Bumhoffer: So since you started your company, you've seen a lot happen in the advertising marketing space from, you know, TV, radio to imprint to the internet and the.com boom and all that into now social media and influencers and stuff like that. So what are you seeing nowadays with the evolution of marketing that are new things that you're, you are seeing that you're really excited about that you think have a lot of potential to help hotels?
Jody Merl: I think because there is so much information being thrown at people all the time. Some of the best things is cutting through and using tactical, digital marketing, but very laser focused in certain zip codes so that you can actually find people in a different way, and reach a higher wealth audience that'll make a difference to your hotel because you're getting inundated with a lot of digital and a lot of technology, and I think if you notice some of the biggest companies are going back to traditional advertising. You see the big print campaigns coming out because they know they have to be integrated. So you need the print, you need the digital, you need social media. But more and more you wanna be in places where people trust you. They trust the message. It's authentic. And so I find for hotels to also cut through and support. You wanna support, you wanna support your big markets. Do it very tactically and very thoughtfully cutting through and do very targeted digital marketing follow a certain customer level. And I think that there are capabilities that digital companies could be advising the hotels as well. Or you wanna work with a strategic partner to help you break through some of the clutter that's out there and rise above the noise.
Jon Bumhoffer: That's a great answer. I saw the other day that somebody said that analog is coming back, which to me, you know, like print, you know, and, and that kind of feel. It's so unique now. No one does it, it almost feels like higher touch, you know, just higher quality when you get a very beautiful print ad or something like that. So I wonder if that's a trend we'll start to see? 
Jody Merl: It really is. We are getting asked more to do direct mail. And I advise people to put a budget in for Federal Express, 'cause if you really wanna make an impact on bringing in a big meeting planner, you better send them a lot of stuff and send it by a FedEx and get their attention. You know, the old snail mail may be one way, but there's different ways to reach customers and also buyers. You don't wanna forget the buyers and the purchasers. So you do need to cut through. You need an integrated campaign. It's not just one way. It really isn't. So yes, when you get something beautiful in the mail, you get a letter, someone writes you a personal thank you note. I mean, that's what's done when you walk into a great hotel. They welcome you. They write you a personal thank you note. They see you, they're happy you're there. And when you wanna bring people into your hotel, you want them to know that you're thinking about them, you're seeing them and hearing them, and you're gonna reach them in different ways. So media, the pendulum swings constantly, but you have to break through the clutter.
David Millili: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is where Jody, you get to let people find out more about innovative travel marketing. How can they get in touch with you?
Jody Merl: Well, we have a website. It's innovativetravelmarketing.com. And they have my phone numbers there. We're out in the public, just give us a call. We actually have staff; we have offices and people come to work. It's wonderful. So you can reach us and we're happy to visit you. We'd love to have a conversation. We actually see people, we go on meetings and it makes the big difference when you're face to face, but this is also a great opportunity, so they just have to call the office. We are here and for more than 20 years, my key people have been with me and we'll get those phone calls. Hey, is Debbie there? Is Michelle there? Who's there? Yeah, everybody is still here. So we have long-term relationships and people should be able to find us. And we're also associated with hotel, sales marketing association, et cetera. So we're out there in the marketplace and we welcome business from anyone in questions, from anyone. We're always actually very happy to help and have a conversation.
David Millili: That's great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged Podcast. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thanks for joining us, Jody.
Jody Merl: Thank you. It's a pleasure, Steve. It's a pleasure, David. Thanks so much.
Steve Carran: Thank you.