Why Marketing Matters Today - Fernando Vives, NH Hotel Group

Josiah:
Why does marketing matter in hospitality today? To answer that question, we're learning from Fernando Vives, Chief Commercial Officer at NH Hotels about the role of marketing in providing hospitality and the type of marketing he thinks too many are overlooking right now. 

Josiah: 
What is the role or what is the importance of marketing today in this environment and hospitality?

Fernando:
Whenever we are trying to divide the impact of the different disciplines, I always see four concentric circles. One is operations. This is the core business, so this is the best marketing, revenue management, and social media you can do is to have the best operations team so that you can deliver your operational promise. This is the best [inaudible 00:01:06] program in the world that customers, they come to our hotels, they're receiving this incredible experience, and once they go back to their homes, if they need to travel again, they think, "Is there an NH hotel in that destination?" And if they see it, they book it. That's from the operation perspective.
Now, we always say that marketing creates the demand. The component of marketing is securing that this demand is being created so that sales afterwards can capture this demand and revenue management can optimize the demand. And then as these are four concentric circles, they form a quadrant, which is the quadrant of excellence.
So marketing will always be a huge component from the commercial perspective on how we can keep on creating those value propositions so that in the end we can continue generating this demand creation on every aspect. This is from the PR perspective. And then of course we can spend hours talking about this. It's not the same strategy you follow for a luxury hotel as we would do for any of our Anantara hotels and resorts and spas. Tivoli, which is on the five-star perspective, is the luxury brand in each collection, which is [inaudible 00:02:20] scale, and then we continue with the rest of the brands. There are different strategies that we can put in place, but the reality is that being able to have all the components so that in the end funnel, the initial funnel from the perception perspective can be bigger so that we can capture more and more guests. It's crucial.
The issue with marketing is that lately, it has become performance marketing. We have forgotten a little bit about the basics of marketing. The basics of marketing are first we need a product and service. We need the value proposition. So we need to continue working on that customer experience, this guest experience, the value proposition for all the different brands. And then again, we need to see how from the upper funnel perspective, not on the mid-funnel, which is what we are capturing, and then buying keywords and buying traffic, how you get traffic for free because your brand is so powerful that consumers want to build your brand. And if I would need to summarize that, I think we need to go back a little bit to basics from the marketing perspective, and then we'll continue with this performance marketing and see how we can do or to improve the conversion, the traffic, and then how it can improve the conversion.

Josiah:
It's great to hear that from you because I think being responsible for all aspects of the commercial strategy, you might think that you would just focus on the performance piece, but what I'm hearing from you is you understand it all plays a part, including non-marketing functions of operations. This factors into the brand and how it's perceived. So I find it really interesting. I think it's also interesting, of course there's the guest marketing, but even on an individual level and almost from a company level, you spend a lot of time, whether it's conferences or on LinkedIn, talking about what the future can look like. And I think that also becomes the brand and there's stakeholders beyond guests that are important as well. And so I imagine this becomes a way to attract the interests of investors or potential team members. I mean, you're taking the time to share with us, but is that fair to say that you also think about this kind of on a personal level as well? How do I share things out there that are enhancing the brand of NH?

Fernando:
Absolutely. It's not only about NH. I mean, if you look at my LinkedIn profile, you will see that I may be posting on a daily basis most often. Sometimes it's about hotels, sometimes it is things that I'm looking at that I believe they might be funny, but in the end, funny or interesting, and not only from the hotel perspective, but from the leadership perspective as well. I think we all have, and one of the things actually, as I hang out with you, I need to go to university because I'm engaged for the last 15 years, we created the first revenue management, big data, and business development master's degree in Spain already 14 years ago. And we have trained over 500 people in the last 14, 15 years. So today we are giving the diplomas to the people who finished last year. And I think we have been fortunate to be able to be in an industry that we love.
I think we are fortunate to love what we do. And the purpose that I have in my life, it's not only to take care of my two kids, and my wife, for my day-by-day job, but as well how you can give back to the world the things that I have been able to learn. And that's not only from the hotel perspective, from the commercial perspective, revenue management, sales, distribution, which is my area of expertise marketing, but as well from the leadership, being able to be anxious to continue learning, to adapt to what is happening in the market. And it could be in any form. It could be about technology. Now I think we are in the moment. I think you had the internet. Well, after the Industrial Revolution, I think you had the internet, then you had the iPhone, and then it's today.
So I think this is the third step where we're going to really see a big change. I didn't see it with the Metaverse. I really challenged those who were saying that the Metaverse was going to change the industry. I'll give you an example. I took my two kids to Venice last year. They were seven and five, so they were six and four. And before going to Venice, I showed them all these YouTube videos about Venice. So I remember the face of my daughter, Alejandra, on top of the Rialto Bridge, seeing the canal, the boats, the gondola, the beauty of Venice and saying, "Daddy, this looks much better than what we saw on TV"
So listen, Metaverse is never going to change this because people will always want to smell, to see it with their own eyes. But today, generative AI, is how we are seeing technology evolving, and how we can be supported again by machines. I think we are at a stage where we are going to really see many changes going on in the industry. From my perspective with the capacity that I may have, not to influence, but also to share my thoughts with the world, I think LinkedIn is a fantastic tool. If I'm able to use this tool for that and share my passion, I'm more than happy to spend some minutes on a daily basis.