How I Get Media Coverage - Michelle Heston, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts

Michelle: After I finished my MBA, I was a banker. I was a terrible banker, but I'm a really good hotelier! I remember one of my first opportunities to entertain some national top-tier media. She was a young mom, and I could tell she was a bit frazzled. She had traveled up from LA to San Francisco. I could tell this was not going to go well. So I said, I'll tell you what, why don't I take your young son and do a back-of-the-house tour? And why don't we go into the pastry shop and see what's cooking there today? And you can take 15, 20 minutes to kind of recalibrate. And I remember that created like magic for this young journalist.

Josiah: Shows the power of being thoughtful, right? Anticipating what someone might need, being attentive. And it stuck with her! 

Michelle: I think it's really thinking, what can I do? That person may or may not know what they want or know what to ask for, but how can I deliver something that is thoughtful and intentional as opposed to just checking off the boxes?

Josiah: I love that. Now, I'm curious, you must travel a lot for work. Is there a recent hospitality experience that stands out as a guest somewhere? It could be a hotel, could be a restaurant. Anything came to mind recently that stood out?

Michelle: Yeah, I'll give you a great example. I was traveling to our hotel, actually, and I was traveling on business to our hotel, the Fairmont Orchid on the Big Island of Hawaii. That hotel does an amazing job kind of sending welcome amenities. But I travel for a living, right? So I'm always a glass, a bottle of wine, chocolates, strawberries, cookies. I've asked for no more sweets, though, because I cannot resist them in my room. And this particular hotel knew that I loved to bake. Baking is everything to me. And I kind of have a side hustle that I do a lot of baking and cooking. And she took my Instagram handle and put that onto an edible little wafer and put that on a cookie and said, we couldn't resist. I mean, it was funny because she knew I didn't want any more sweets, but she also knew that I love baking. So it was so thoughtful, it really stuck with me.

Josiah: I love that. Fairmont has so many iconic properties and hotels. It's an incredible brand, right? I'm curious, as you think at a very high level, what is part of the Fairmont experience, the hospitality experience that your teams provide, that you think is most special or most stands out to you that's something you're really proud of?

Michelle: I think we really talk about creating authentic moments and experiences in travel. And yes, we have iconic properties in landmark destinations. But lots of hotels and lots of companies carry that same kind of backbone if you will. But I think what we really work toward is creating experiences and opportunities that are really important to the destination. So, for example, at our hotel in Sonoma, the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, most of the concierges there are amazing wine experts. And they can create wine itineraries for our guests, not just because it's on a list, but if you want to do a vertical Pinot Noir tasting, a horizontal tasting, or a garage tasting. They can really dive deep, and they have an amazing wealth of knowledge. So that gives you, that opens doors to experiences that if you were just doing a Google search, you may not ever find.

Josiah: It's funny you mentioned that property. That was actually the property that I first visited after the pandemic restrictions were lifted. And what stood out to me, and people might be listening to this, you know, years from now, but for that kind of weird moment in time, we had obviously a lot of stressors for providing hospitality in that moment. I found the team there did a really nice job of staying compliant with everything that we had to be careful of, but also recognizing that for my wife and I and just all their guests, there was a real sense of just, we just really want to experience hospitality again. And I feel like they rose to the moment and provided something really special and they continue to do in so many different ways now. So I think it really speaks to the culture that the organization's created.

Michelle: Well, and I think that it's really important that not only our employees but the entire destination, particularly around an economy that is based on travel and tourism, that the entire community needs to understand the amazing benefits it is to bring tourists into an economy. the amount of dollars that are spent, the TOT taxes that are put into the community, the employment opportunities. I mean, it's really wealth. I mean, I always say to people, would you rather have a factory in your backyard or a five-star resort? Most people would answer the five-star resort.

Josiah: I want to get into the work that you're doing now with Fairmont, but if we could, I'd love to speak just a little bit about the work you do with Visit California because it sounds like that might be an extension of this philosophy that you're describing. Tell us a little bit about that work. What do you focus there with Visit California?

Michelle: So Visit California is an unbelievable organization. The power, the sophistication, and the people that are working there to really promote tourism in the state of California and develop partnerships. So I've worked with them obviously for many years as I've represented hotels here in the Golden State, but to be able to sit and help make decisions and drive decisions and strategy, I'm quite proud of that.

Josiah: It's amazing. Well, thank you for the work that you're doing. It's good for all of us, right? There are beneficiaries across not just the world of hospitality but in our communities, as you pointed out. That's great. Tell us a little bit about your current work today and your role at Fairmont. And then I'd love to get into some of the details of that. But at a high level, what are you focused on these days?

Michelle: So I oversee most of our holdings in the US, the Caribbean, and Hawaii for Fairmont Hotels. And it's really about, obviously, positioning, marketing strategy, and integrating that marketing, but really about, when it comes down to it, it's creating storytelling. It's storytelling to capture new tourism interest, to capture potential people to come back to our resorts. So how do we integrate that? Because there are so many marketing channels now, and people are bombarded with marketing and advertising. So, how do we stand out and create a narrative that resonates with our potential guests?

Josiah: How do you do that? It seems really hard just on an individual hotel level. I think about all the components of a, especially the large hotels and resorts that you have. There are so many people, functions, so many things to tell. How do you do this on a, the level that you are, where you're overseeing so many properties?

Michelle: Well, I have to really tap into the expertise of our teams. You know, what are the chefs hearing? What are the new trends? What is the concierge being asked? What are the spa? What are the new experiences in health and wellness? So it's really tapping into the amazing resources that we have at the hotel. So, the old aphorism of management wandering around. When I go to guest hotels, I go and talk to anybody who will have me, and I just walk around. What's new? What's hot? What's our competitive set doing? If we had no budget limitations, what would you like to do? And hearing that expertise is really amazing. We have a woman who I think I put up on a pedestal in the travel industry, and she's our cultural advisor, again, at one of our Hawaiian hotels. And she has a wealth of knowledge on Hawaiian culture and religion and protocols, but she's also a really empathic listener and hotelier. So I always try to grab time with her because I really want to make sure that, particularly for our Hawaiian hotels, we create an authentic experience. So I don't want you to just go out and canoe and have somebody do a quick Hawaiian chant, but understand the importance of what that means to that culture and dive into that a little bit.

Josiah: It's amazing because I feel that's always a challenge of how do you get those stories right. So it's a lot of spending time with people, it sounds like.

Michelle: Well, and if you don't do it right, shame on you because it's a missed opportunity. But it's also not fair to that particular destination or that culture.

Josiah: So coming up with or identifying these stories that are happening, the opportunities for storytelling as one piece of it, the other piece of it is packaging and distributing these stories. Obviously, our media landscape is changing so much right now. What are you thinking about for your various teams and properties, staying up to date and staying relevant in this media landscape that's so quickly evolving?

Michelle: Well, I think that if you're not spending, especially for someone in a marketing or marcom role, if you're not spending at least 10 hours a week seeing what's hot, who's hot, who's talking about what, and really kind of deep diving, you're doing yourself, your own career, and your employer an injustice. So, you know, I have lots of friends who are journalists and influencers and destination experts. Who are you looking, paying attention to? Who are you following? Who do you think's hot? Who's new and up and coming? And not just for a demographic that supports our hotels but an aspirational audience as well. Luckily, I have daughters who are younger, so I always tap into their knowledge as well.

Josiah: That's interesting. I'm curious. What is hot? What do you see? Where do you see an opportunity here in 2024 with regard to the media landscape?

Michelle: Well, if I had it all figured out, I'd probably be a multimillionaire. So, I don't by any means claim that I have it all figured out. I do think it's really going back to people. Yes, people are still going big and traveling, and there's still pent-up demand. So that is still a reality in the market. But I think people are looking for authentic experiences, right? So they're going to go and they're going to do a trip to Southeast Asia, but they don't want to just go to the beach that's on Instagram. They want to go a little bit further. Maybe they want to do a cooking class or a docent-led museum tour, or they want to do a completely immersive yoga camp. They really want to do something that is kind of off the beaten path. Sometimes I call that, in particular audiences, something that gives them cocktail fodder, cocktail party fodder, that they can go and say, oh, well, I met four monks when I was in Thailand, and I spent, you know, a weekend at the monastery.

Josiah: From a media perspective, what is most effective for communicating these different offerings and helping people get excited about it? Is it video? Is it some other format?

Michelle: Every format, right? So video, of course, is hot. Video is going to stay hot. So, creating content that is engaging is just a full-time job in itself. And really making sure that it's pertinent and relevant to whatever storytelling we're doing. And then the other thing I think that's really important is making sure it's a partnership. I don't care if it's an influencer that's a micro-influencer or it's a national publication. It's what are you looking for. Here's what I need to talk about. Where can we find common ground?

Josiah: To illustrate that, can you give me an example? Because I love that kind of focus on partnerships. Is there a recent story or initiative that you were working with others on and what did that look like?

Michelle: So here's a great story, and I was really proud to work on this. I also work very closely with San Francisco Travel, which is the destination management for the city of San Francisco. We were talking about the revival of the city of San Francisco, as well as the anniversary of the cable car. And so we were in a room, and we were talking, and I said, why don't we do a cable car crawl and not a crawl for tourists, but for locals and people of the greater Bay Area? And let's bring in iconic businesses like Scoma is down at on the Embarcadero, and let's bring in some other partners. And then let's pitch it to local journalists and local influencers. And let me tell you, in my years of doing this, I put out a kind of save-the-date teaser. I filled that in literally five minutes. I felt like a rock star. I was like, it's done. We sold it. It's over. We can only put 35 people in a cable car. But I think what was important is that we had a really engaged group, media partners, local partners that were committed to the storytelling and the message. And it was something that everybody wanted to talk about. Like, we're proud of our cable cars. Nobody else has that. That's what differentiates us. That's what makes us hip and cool. So, how do we wrap ourselves around that and let that be the centerpiece of our storytelling?

Josiah: Well, you touched on something that's interesting, and that is being part of the conversation that is already happening, right? I think it's extremely hard to try to force a conversation that people don't want to have. And what I'm sensing from you is an attentiveness to what are the themes or topics that are either interesting or people are already talking about, right? How do you enter that conversation?

Michelle: Well, and I think it's very apparent. I'm not speaking out of school here. In the city of San Francisco, we've come up with some hurdles, and it's been a tough time. We've been America's favorite city forever, and we have hit some stumbling blocks, and we will get past that. But how do we authentically, honestly tell the story of where we're at and what we're doing? And how do we create some positive energy around that?

Josiah: Interesting. You mentioned influencers a few times. I feel like we've been talking about them collectively in hotel marketing and PR for at least a decade. And I'm curious, as you kind of look at those sort of partnerships, is it sort of overplayed? Is there still a lot of potential in working with people, with audiences, quote unquote influencers, for lack of a better term?

Michelle: I can say on the hotel side, we've become a little more sophisticated at understanding the channel, understanding the benefits of the channel, and understanding that the influencer has to speak to our audience. Just because they have a quarter of a million followers, it may not be an audience that is going to purchase a luxury hotel stay. Maybe it's an aspirational audience, so it's really digging in. And is it just that influencers posting themselves, you know, scantily clad all over a destination? Well, that's great. And I'm delighted for them. But that doesn't really help me. So it's really moving into how we can both benefit from this.

Josiah: What does help you?

Michelle: I always like to say that people want to be they want to have insight and access to something that they may not have. Right. They like to look at attractive people doing beautiful things and in beautiful places, but it has to resonate with you. So like for me, if it's 19-year-old girl at, you know, a rager, well, that's not really going to speak to my audience. But if it's a young professional who is maybe planning a proposal or an anniversary or a milestone birthday, now that speaks to me and how that is a similar audience that we can extrapolate and engage that further.

Josiah: I love that. You've spoken about kind of thinking about kind of working with the city of San Francisco, and looking forward to what's possible in the future. I know something that's really also very important to you is attracting the next generation of people into hospitality, right? To be part of creating what the future of hospitality is. What's on your mind these days as it relates to kind of developing and attracting that next generation of hoteliers?

Michelle: I think it's an interesting time in our career. When I started, nobody said, oh, you know, life balance and take time for you. It was like, if you need to work seven days a week, you work seven days a week. And that is not the way it is. And I applaud that generation and those choices because I think it's much healthier and more sustainable in this career. But I do think that if you're looking for a nine-to-five Monday through Friday job, This may not be the right field for you because these are people we're dealing with, right? So it's not a bank. They want to make a dinner reservation at 7 p.m. or they may be on deadline and it's 10 o'clock at night. So you have to be open to that. And I think over the years, I've developed relationships with these people. They really have become some of my dearest friends. So it's like you texting me as opposed to somebody out of the blue. Oh, no problem. Here, here's what I recommend here. So it's more of a mindset.

Josiah: As you look to the rest of this year and beyond, what are you most excited by?

Michelle: Oh, my gosh. I have so much. I just got off a call with my entire team. So it's great timing. And we're all just excited. There's a lot of momentum, you can almost feel it. We all were laughing like after the holidays, it kind of quieted down mostly because media is on break. And then I felt like January 8th, the floodgates opened. We went from zero to 100, like within seconds. And there's just this amazing energy. And we've got a couple of campaigns that we're going to continue at Fairmont called Beyond Limits. And it's providing these experiences. They're bucket list items you never knew were on your bucket list. So for example, last year we did an underwater ballet in the ocean at one of our Hawaiian properties. We did a symphony in a cenote in Mexico. So we've opened this up. We start with a media fam and we launch it that way. And then these are regular ongoing activations that guests can book. Because to do a one and done doesn't do anything. But to be able to create it, promote it through our media partnerships, and then open this up to something. I mean, how many people have gone to a symphony in a cenote? I did a vertical dance with this amazing troupe called Bandaloop out of Oakland, California. A vertical dance where we're dancers, maybe they're gymnasts, rappelled off the rooftop of the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles to music down below and did a whole choreographed dance. I mean, it was stunning. So to be able to take part in an experience like that, that can only be found in our hotels.

Josiah: That is amazing. And if you talk about wanting to create cocktail party fodder, that sounds like it fits the bill there. And if you want people to talk, you have to create something worth talking about. You have to be interesting. You have to do interesting things.

Michelle: You have to do really interesting things. And the market is crowded and everybody's got something cool and there's a lot of competition. But we, really, this team that was putting together some of these opportunities is creating something that you didn't even know could exist.