13 – Dreamforce Special Edition

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

In this special edition of Suite Spot, we discuss a hospitality keynote presented at the 2018 Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco. The keynote, "The Future of Travel and Hospitality," was a fireside chat with Marriott International CEO Arne Sorenson. In this podcast episode, host Ryan Embree is joined by Anne Sandoval, Travel Media Group’s Marketing Director who attended the keynote. We discuss the key takeaways from Arne's insights on Marriott’s relationship with technology. Resources Watch the full Dreamforce keynote, The Future of Travel & Hospitality: https://youtu.be/EgDD5hBrkNU Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Ryan Embree: Hello and welcome everyone. This is episode 13 and today we are going to have another special edition of Suite Spot. We do this from time to time being leaders and experts in the hospitality field. We travel across the nation to conferences, trade shows that have to pertain with the hospitality industry. And today we are going to be talking about an annual conference of Dreamforce which is hosted by Salesforce in San Francisco. Now, Salesforce isn't necessarily a hospitality-only vertical. Uh, they work across verticals, but there were some really great insights when it came to the hospitality industry. Just to give you a little background on this conference, this year's conference drew over 170,000 attendees. So it's a very popular conference, people traveling from all over the world to experience this week. And today we'll be talking about the hospitality keynote by Marriott International CEO Arne Sorenson. The title of this keynote was the Future of Travel and Hospitality and obviously being in the digital marketing space, we have to be at the forefront of knowing the new technology and future of travel. Ryan Embree: So we're always interested in talking about that. I have the pleasure to be joined today by our director of marketing, Anne Sandoval, and she had the opportunity to attend this keynote and she is here with me today to share some insights with us. So first and foremost, let me go ahead and welcome you to the Suite Spot, Anne. Anne Sandoval: Hey Ryan, it's great to be here. Ryan Embree: So this was a, obviously very popular conference that you attended and you know, as I mentioned, it's not all about the hospitality vertical, but this particular keynote was. It's super interesting, especially when you get to hear firsthand from executives of such a large worldwide global brand like Marriott. And I wondered to first start out, this was kind of something fun that they did. Uh, Arme had mentioned that he traveled anywhere from 200 to 225 nights of the year and they first started off the uh speech by giving his three travel tips. I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on those tips. Anne Sandoval: Yeah, it was really interesting to hear from someone who spends just so much time in hotels and across time zones and all of his tips really had one thing in common, which I know is a theme that's familiar to the Suite Spot, which is to go local. So his first tip was to get on local time and exercise to help keep your routine. Second, to eat the local food and go sightseeing and third was don't let yourself live as if you're still at home. And I think these are really great takeaways for travelers, but I think it's also helpful for hoteliers to know these tips. Ryan Embree: Yeah. You know, it's it – at the end of the day, we're all travelers, right? And when we talk to hoteliers, it's almost putting themselves in the shoes of your guest and I think that was such an interesting perspective that he took and to get ins...