Why We Are Leading With Experiences Now - Jen Barnwell, Curator Hotel and Resort Collection

00:00 Josiah A few days ago, we learned from Victoria Taylor about experience design. And one of the big things that stood out to me from that conversation was how focused she was not only on designing in-person experiences but also the digital experience that supports that. Today we're talking with Jen Barnwell, President at Curator Hotel and Resort Collection, about why and how they did a big reposition and relaunch of their website to lead with experiences. But we start out with Jen talking a little bit about her own career journey and how that made her so interested in this area. 

00:56 Jen So I've been very lucky, maybe in my most recent history to have worked on many, not only independent hotels but redefining them, renaming them, reconcepting them, major renovations and overhauls. to create something that didn't exist before and really tells a story and is thoughtful about, you know, everything you see and the way the service is delivered and the employees that we have at the hotel. And I just found a real connection with the independent hotel space. And again, to be clear, I mean, there's room for everybody. It just kind of depends on what you gravitate to. And I found in the independent hotel space, the hotels and resorts themselves, the interiors, the exteriors, the location, and certainly the hotel teams. I mean, it was just so inspiring and invigorating, and there was so much creativity and uniqueness there. that really made me really motivated and happy to do my job every day. And Curator has become this opportunity to just live completely in that space day in and day out. And I think everyone would agree that there's certainly some set of travelers today that have brushed off more the material things, and they're really focused on experiences, experiential travel, not only where am I going to do or where am I going to go, but what am I going to do once I get there. And today, or at least going back to last week before we launched our new website, very difficult and there's a lot of friction in figuring that out. but unique and memorable experiences matches up so beautifully with the independent hotel and resort space. So we've spent the last number of months collaborating with our member hotels and resorts so that they can put out publicly, which is what we did with our revamped website launch last week, so we can put out publicly all these huge range of experiences that you can have if you stay at any of a curator member hotels.

03:11 Josiah I want to ask a quick follow-up question on this because I feel everybody's talking about experiences. And I mean, as a traveler, it's just it's fun to make experiences part of your trip. But I'm curious for you, was the opportunity here sort of underscored from some of the member hotels? Was it you and your team's kind of personal experience and what you were imagining? Or what was the biggest factors that said that made you say this is not just kind of a meta trend, but something we really want to double down on?

03:41 Jen You know, I think it's a combination of things. I think it is seeing what the media was saying and what the trends are in the market combined with some of our hotels. Honestly, we're already out front with this and they're thinking about this and it's not the old model where you just kind of have a concierge sitting in the lobby and your guests just will go there and magically, you know, see what happens and they can whip up a whole bunch of experiences. People want to dream and be inspired and discover things online well before they travel. I mean, those are the discussions I've been having with my team because on all age ranges on the curator team, like how did the younger set, you know, think about travel? How do I even think about travel at my age with a family? Just trying to always figure out what we can do wherever we might be going. So it's a combination of discussions internally with Curator but what some of the hotels were already doing and then socializing the idea with the hotels and they got really excited about it kind of in general because independent hotels and resorts are already so kind of unique and interesting and they have all these relationships in the community already. They have amazing team members who have all these other interests and skills outside of maybe what they do with the hotel. So just kind of harnessing all this information that's already on-site or in the community so that you can serve up to travelers and dreamers things they can do which hopefully are going to make each of these hotels stand out even more because going it as an independent is always more challenging and difficult and awareness is so important. Getting the word out about your hotel is a business model. We're also thinking putting these experiences out in the forefront is going to be another way to get awareness specifically for our member properties because it's all about amplifying them and getting visitors to their website and getting people that are going to travel to their website and ultimately book.

05:55 Josiah That's where we all win, right? And it's interesting to think about this on a personal level as a traveler. I was actually talking to my wife last night. We're going to do a trip up the California coast and we want to explore mushrooms on the California coast. And so we were saying, wouldn't it be nice to find a mushroom hunter or guide that could take us on this journey? But honestly, we don't know where to start. It sounds fun, but we don't know where to begin. So I think many of our listeners probably resonate with that personal level. But I wonder if you could speak to the challenges that the hotels are facing Because you said there's quite a few, you said some of them have a concierge, maybe there's a lot of knowledge or they know cool things in the area. In your perspective, looking over more than 100 hotels, were there any themes in the challenges that you heard from hoteliers that maybe had or didn't have these experiences, but wanted to lean into this?

06:43 Jen Yeah, I think the starting point is for better and really for worse. The hotel technology is really fragmented still today. I mean, even if you're part of a big brand, you have kind of all these, you know, an array of systems still in your hotel. So part of it is, it is super important to remove as much friction as you can, but there isn't a one-stop solution for everything technology-wise you need, especially an independent hotel today. there's a few friction points that we're trying to we'll get better and better at but leading out with this right now we're kind of at a point where we are now and again we'll get better but in terms of challenges for the independent hotels Some of it is resources because everyone is busy at a hotel. But I think the viewpoint is this is a way to, again, get awareness and attention. It can lead to more direct bookings if you have these offerings out front and they're interesting and unique and memorable, like all those key adjectives. And the decision point is a couple of things. It's either can we handle all this internally? Do we have the resources to exit? Like we will ideate and brainstorm, come up with all these great things. And we have the resources internally to do this ourselves and execute on it. Some hotels take that route. Some hotels say it's best for me to partner up with tour operators and third parties. And that's perfectly fine too. The point is to put multiple experiences together that are pretty unique and interesting and somehow related to your hotel or your location or your team members even like tied to them so it makes sense and it's like authentic and interesting and memorable to who's ultimately going to come stay with you.

08:39 Josiah You mentioned a few times putting the experiences out front, and that phrasing really stands out to me because it speaks to the opportunity and the challenge I think many of these hoteliers are facing where they have a really cool differentiated offering. But if you think about how travel is typically researched and planned and booked, it almost feels that dates and prices become kind of I mean, many studies will show you that pricing historically has been a leading factor. You also have kind of this overall consumer demand trend line happening where they do want experiences, but they have this almost like muscle memory to look for price. So by intentionally redesigning your digital experience, your shopping experience, it's sort of like taking a design thinking approach to here's the future that we want. Here's the future that we want to provide our guests. but also our partner hotels. And we're going to make this part of the dreaming planning process by leading with experiences. As you mentioned, that helps with direct bookings, but it also becomes really important for differentiating, right? And it's like, here's why I'm going to pay a price premium to stay at this hotel, right?

09:39 Jen Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, it's hard and it's a constant battle to make sure that we're not viewed as a commodity. Because listen, the reality is, like I said earlier, being in the independent space is more difficult. I mean, there's no doubt independent hotels have to utilize more channels for business to come in. They're heavy OTA users, you know, for better or worse. It's just the reality. And when you go on those kinds of sites, it's just like a long, long list. Everything's commoditized. You have like a million filters that supposedly kind of personalize it that you can utilize. But we want to be the antithesis of that. So when you come to our website, it's very visually pleasing. We have great property pages that feature all the attributes of each of our properties, but there's a whole section that's prominent that you can just scroll through, look at a map, filter as well, experiences, because we're viewing ourselves as, you know, top of funnel. Again, dreamers that want to come and think about, they don't even know what they want to do next. But they can come to our website with a huge group of hotels already in place. I think we've got something like 65 experiences live today. And to be live there needs to be a booking path related to it. So it is an experience that's real, tangible. executable that you can book and then maybe you look at the experience first and get inspired. I want to do this glam experience in West Hollywood where you know I get totally done up head to toe. I feel like I'm an A-lister. They find this amazing outfit for me and then I'm off on the town. But it's going to be paired up with the hotel. They can be separated. That's the way we built it. But the reality is, if you like the experience, you're going to stay at the hotel too. And there's such a wide array of experiences. So we don't know. I mean, it's a little bit of an experiment. We're going to see, do people come to our website and focus on experiences and play around there? Or most of the people still just focus on the properties first? How many of the experiences are even getting booked? So it's an experiment. We're going to see everything's highly trackable in these days, thank goodness, but we're going to see what happens. We're kind of betting on the idea that people want to dream and be inspired and look for things and they'll come and look and maybe they'll leave and they'll come back again and ultimately book and we'll see how it goes over the next number of months.

12:09 Josiah I appreciate you talking with me and kind of sharing this at launch early on. I find it so exciting to talk about things as they're being built, right? Versus this, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, we built this. Hospitality and traveling are constantly changing. And I think you are trying new things. And I think that's the sign of leadership and hospitality is we're going to make bold bets. We're going to try things. We're going to see what worked. But I do want to ask about it, you mentioned more than 65 experiences and just scrolling down to the list, I'll link in the show notes to people can do this for themselves, but there's such a diversity of experiences. How did you think about what to offer? Because it feels like you have something for everybody.

12:43 Jen Yeah, I think it was really collaborative, as I said previously, which is true. Checking in with the hotel, some of them already had some experiences they were thinking about. Some of them even had some experiences live on their website already, which made it really easy in some sense. But you know, you have to dig in and really see what the experience is all about. I mean, listen, we're not the type of company that has all these checklists and rules and regulations. We like to say, because it's true, we're all inclusive. We love all independent hotels and resorts. All are welcome. But the guidelines were, it's not going to be your old standard hotel package that's been around for a million years. A room and breakfast, or a room and champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries. All those things that have been around for a million years and no one buys them anyway. We want something that is going to be exciting in terms of either, oh my gosh, I've done that, I'd love to do it again, or I've never even done that before. I never even thought this was possible. It didn't even cross my mind. So high level, the goals were to have a very kind of wide range of experiences, something on one end of the spectrum and something on the very end and a lot in the middle. because we do have hotels all over the US, so you can be in throughout the whole state of California, you can be in Southern Florida, you can be in Wyoming skiing, but then also in Park City in the summer. So we relied heavily on collaborating with the hotels to tell us what they can execute on, what they think their guests would be interested in. And it's hard because it's a little bit intangible and a little bit difficult to describe, but it's just like you hear something and you're like, does that sound cool or not cool? Is that good enough? Like, does that kind of pass the bar of something that an amazing boutique hotel or resort would offer? Yes or no? Like, I don't want something that's like the everyday ho-hum. Anybody can execute it.

14:42 Josiah But I think that's where cool things are created, right? You have to have kind of like a feeling around it, like you just kind of instinctually know, but it's still an experiment, as you mentioned. And I think while we could talk about high level trends, I find it more interesting to talk about how do you almost sort of build the plane while you're flying it, so to speak. And as we're talking, you just launched this, you're looking at early data. And that's the question I would have for you is you're looking at this experiment unfold. What are the data points that you're looking at to guide where this program goes from here?

15:12 Jen So it's very early, I'm told. So we're doing all the tracking, we have the data, and we've been talking about it. I mean, it's really only been live for about a week and a half now. But we start off with kind of the regular KPIs. It's like, we need to drive so many more visitors to the website, first and foremost. And then what are they doing when they get there? Some of it is clearly going to be highly dependent on our strategies. So we launched the website and it's all supported by a significant digital marketing campaign. So we have a few components to that. One of the really fun components is we create all these digital marketing ads that are animated, that are tied to experiences. So we've done, I mean, they're great. I hope one pops up on your screen. Hopefully, you'll have to let me know. I've gotten some texts from other people where they popped up. But we've done line drawing animations of the Hollywood Glam experience, of the falconry, of the VW camper surfing on, you know, on the Malibu coast. and others included in heliskiing. And we're trying to do these really interesting, catchy, unique ads that people will click on. And for the most part, it's going to take you directly to that experience. So some of it is tied up in, well, what are you linking to in your ads? and then in terms of our ad buys they're all very upper funnel and they're just going to lead you to our landing page and then once people on our website kind of what are they doing and tooling around so I don't have a lot of data to share yet but what we're most focused on is what hotel pages are getting the most views and is there some kind of trend or connection there that we can help get other hotels included in that top 10, top 20 list. And then what experiences are people spending the most time on? And we're starting to see that, of course, some of it are tied to that, some of it are not. And then at the end of the day, we can track every booking that we generate. So We're a referral website today, meaning we're not a booking engine. We don't have a booking code or anything like that, but we want to amplify the hotels and experiences in our collection. So we're trying to drive tons of visitors to us. They see a lot of interesting stuff that they connect with, and they ultimately go to the hotel website and book room nights. or go to the experience websites and book those experiences. And we'll be collecting all that data kind of nonstop every week, every couple of weeks and analyzing it and changing our strategies here and there, but ultimately driving incremental revenue to the hotels. That's the whole point.

17:50 Josiah It is. And it's good to have that North Star metric, but I feel like you share really good insight around this being something that you have to look at holistically. And I started my career in digital marketing and I still find it fascinating where there's such a trackability and you have to kind of look at every aspect of it, right? And there's benefits to leaning into experience or just creating something cool in that you can capture attention. That's step one. You're never going to have someone experience your property if you can't get on their radar to begin with. And then you're looking at every step. Are we more effective at this stage? Getting them to our site, engaging, you know, booking. Is the average booking higher because we have this experience? And then, you know, feedback from the guests that are going through these experiences. So it's an end to end. But I also hear from you. Here's a North Star metric. We're not going to get lost with these dozens of data points. At the end of the day, did we deliver on our business need? But it's really important for operators and brands to be thinking about this holistically.

18:40 Jen Yeah, and the other part that I had failed to mention was our the social strategy. So we have completely relaunched our social accounts. And we're just going through it today. And our Instagram account was just so fun and has all this amazing content and videos. And we're doing digital marketing things on our social accounts, too. And that's going to be really telling as well, like, we Where does the business ultimately get driven from? Is it the ads we placed? Is it the keyword buys? Or is it the social media activity? And we'll get something from all of that, but it'll be interesting to see where we get the most from, to see who the clientele that connects and loves these independent hotels and resorts, where they start off with their travel journey, the dreaming and the inspiration. to end up booking one of our members.

19:36 Josiah I love it. I feel like we have stuff for a great episode here, Jen. But before we go, is there anything else on your mind as you think about experiences? Any questions I should have asked but didn't that you want to make sure we cover?

19:46 Jen I just would encourage everyone that all your listeners to, if you haven't yet, try to stay in an independent hotel and resort. I was just at a conference for the last few days. It was in Austin. It was an amazing experience because I met a whole lot of people. It was a different kind of conference that I typically go to that I otherwise wouldn't have met. And I was standing outside the hotel heading to the conference and a woman saw my tag and she said, oh, are you going? Can I hop in your lift with you? And I was like, of course you can. with this wonderful conversation in the Lyft. She's an attorney from Cleveland. And she's like, geez, you know, I've only ever stayed at Marriott. I don't even know how to think about or find an independent hotel to stay at. And I was like, it frustrates me a little bit. But my gosh, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there like you, you're just focused on business travel, and you know, getting your points. And I gave her all my information. I was like, please visit my website and tell me what you think. And if you're ever in one of the cities we're in, you've got to stay with us and give us a try. Because in Austin, it was the first time she had ever seen an independent and she was like, wow, there's this whole other world I didn't know existed. And I was like, yes, Preaching to the choir. I love that and keep it going. So that's what I would say. And it goes to experiential travel. Try new things. Seek out non-branded hotels. There's a whole lot of them out there that'll really make you happy.

21:07 Josiah Yeah. And it's true if you work in the hospitality industry or if you don't, it's important as an operator, as a brand, to be experiencing yourself. You can't inspire others if you're not inspired yourself. So it's your job to do the work.

21:18 Jen Well said. Well said.

21:20 Josiah I love it. Jen, thanks for joining. This was a lot of fun, and I'm excited to watch you and your team as you build this out.

21:26 Jen Thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate it.