21 – Marketing Ideas with Regional DOS Pat Kobela

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

On this special edition of Suite Spot, we host our first remote guest Pat Kobela, Regional Director of Sales at Chartwell Hotels. Ryan Embree interviews Pat as she shares some insights and best practices from her years of experience in the hotel industry. Ryan and Pat trade thoughts on what makes a successful sales and marketing strategy in 2019 and Pat gives advice on what has made her so successful in her role at Chartwell Hotels. This episode covers everything from renovations to social media and serves as a great marketing guide for hoteliers. To get more information about becoming a special guest on the Suite Spot or to submit a question for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. 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. Thank you everyone for listening to the Suite Spot. Today we have a very special episode on the Suite Spot. We're actually going to be joined by a special guest Pat Kobela who is the regional director of sales at Chartwell Hotels and she is one of our very first guests that's not with us in studio. So we're super excited to be doing this with her and want to thank you, Pat for joining us today. Pat Kobela: Thank you Ryan. I'm excited about this also. Ryan Embree: Great. So, um, just for a little bit of background. Let's start by letting our listeners to know kind of what your experiences in the hotel industry. Pat Kobela: Okay, sure. So, um, I have been in various facets of the overall tourism industry for the past probably 30 years. Even during college I was a flight attendant for a private company, then went on to travel agency work and went into hotels. Both, some back of the house operations, front line sales, front office management, that kind of stuff. And (I) really expanded there with my connections and ended up doing some tourism publishing, advertising, again also in the tourism end of the industry, and then ultimately owning my own business for advertising, AD agency type of work and, ultimately becoming a consultant in, um, for hotels and the tourism industry. So, and now I'm currently with Chartwell Hotels and the regional director is a fairly new position, um, for the nine hotels. So that's growing and we're expanding from there. Ryan Embree: That's awesome Pat. And I'm sure a lot of that experience has served you well in the position, you know at every facet and kind of a corner of the travel industry, you know, from your early stages of starting as a travel agent to, you know, the advertising and marketing side. And with that, you've brought a lot of fresh perspective and ideas that you've shared actually with myself and our director of marketing without kind of giving away, uh, you know, all your secrets. You know, I would know we've talked about some unique and creative ideas you've worked with even with the CVBs (Convention and Visitors Bureau). Um, could you share some of those ideas? Pat Kobela: Sure. So, um, I have always been a really big proponent of CVBs, or DMOs (Destination Marketing Organizations), TPAs (Tourism Promotion Agencies) sometimes they're called just different variations of CVB in different areas because they really are the force behind bringing awareness to a local region. And what's all in that region, and how they want to bring that to the general public, and maybe even some specific market segments. And they're very key. And that, and, and unfortunately, there are many communities that don't even understand what a CVB does unless maybe you're in a metropolitan area where they're constantly bringing in, you know, huge conferences, and big events, and tournaments and such. But, you know,