Before The Booking: How Experiences Drive Travel Decisions

Fran (00:00): Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Conversations on Experiential Hospitality.

With me today is Iva Kutle Škrlec formerly a destination marketing manager and lead at amazing companies, including Hilton, including Google. Spent a lot of her career in the Middle East. Iva, thank you so much for joining us today.

Iva (00:26): Thanks for having me, Fran.

Fran (00:27): So you've been, originally from Croatia, but you've moved to the Middle East. You've worked for some of the global biggest hospitality and tech companies. Can you maybe do a little introduction about yourself, your career and how you got to where you are?

Iva (00:40): Sure. I'm originally a marketeer, started in an agency, spent seven years there, figured I wouldn't stay forever. And then I thought about, so what do I do next if I go client side? What is it that really drives me and that I'm most passionate about? And one thing that was always there for me personally and professionally was travel, right? That's the one industry that I kept coming back to.

It's where I spend my personal time as well researching destinations, hotels, things to do. And so I figured my next job should probably have something to do with hospitality or travel, which is why I joined Valamar, Croatia's leading hospitality company. Spent three years there as a marketing director, which was a great learning and then decided it was time to go to Dubai.

And that was because I saw how the travel industry and the whole destination management sector was incredibly well developed on this side of the world. How the whole destination, the tourism board, the airline, the hospitality, everyone worked together, the whole ecosystem to bring the best experience to the guests and really put the destination on the map.

And so I wanted to learn from that. And so here I am, here I've been for the past 11 years, first with Google, where I've managed Google's leading travel clients in the Middle East, and then for the past three and a half years with Hilton.

Fran (02:15): I mean, what you've mentioned there about the Middle East being part of the world that at the moment really collaborates, all of the actors seem to be collaborating there from airlines to hotels to experience organizers or providers. How does that work and what was your role then in that ecosystem?

Iva (02:36): So if you think about Middle East, those destinations are pretty unique, especially UAE, Saudi Arabia more recently. because they're not your typical traditional tourist destinations, right? 10, 15, 20 years ago, there was very little awareness and people would know to go to Paris or London or New York, but they didn't necessarily understand why they would go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi or Riyadh. So what's very impressive about this part of the world is that those destinations needed to be created from scratch, right? They needed to create reasons and experiences for people to come and stay here and to do that they had to be very, very efficient. They had to make sure everyone works well together.

And they had to tell that story, right? So my role both at Google and Hilton, I would say, was helping these destinations tell that story, right? How do we put those destinations on the map, on the radar for customers when they choose where to go? How do we help them leverage data and insights and turn them into something actionable? How do we help them create content and become more visible?

So it's been a very, very intense and very interesting journey because again, I think the travel revolution and growth that we've seen on this side of the world is truly something that's unprecedented and just the sheer scale of things happening here cannot be replicated anywhere else at the moment. you just don't get the same kind of energy and momentum with more traditional destinations that obviously have a very different problem to solve.

Fran (04:23): Yeah, I mean, when I look at, you know, big travel pairs where we always meet as a community, ITB, WTM, many others, the growth of Middle Eastern destinations, especially as you said, obviously Dubai and the UAE, but then also Qatar. And now over the last years, increasingly Saudi has been absolutely phenomenal. Luxury hotels, incredible experience offerings, as you said, they had to, I would say create, but also just package some incredible things they have from desert safaris, know to historic souks to many other experiences and tell those stories. When we think about hotels specifically, what are the hotels in that region doing really well to attract visitors and what do you think kind of they could still be doing more of?

Iva (05:13): Well, I think the bar is definitely higher for hotels in this part of the world. I think if you take any hotel brand, properties in this part of the world tend to be better than their peers in many other countries. And it's simply because they're newer, it's because customer expectations are much higher. And they had to compete at a completely different different scale, right? So a four-star or a three-star hotel here might even be better than a five-star hotel somewhere else, right? So I think what they do very well here is just going above and beyond, making sure products are top-notch. I think a lot of that is rooted in local hospitality. Let's not forget that Arab culture is incredibly hospitable in and off of itself. But then when you add to that, that layer of investment and technology and innovation, you get a product that's better than pretty much anything else that you can imagine. I think where we could, well, I say we, hospitality, where the industry could still do better and where it needs to keep evolving, right, is considering how to connect with the experiences and with the rest of the ecosystem, right? Because as an industry, hospitality is very lean, it's very focused on getting that customer, getting heads in beds, optimizing their revenue. But I think just having that broader awareness and understanding of why customers join and travel and visit in the first place, I think is very important, right? And I think especially with the era of customer facing AI and the way that that's changed customer journey, a lot of the search, a lot of the interest is really experience first, I would say, or type of travel first rather than destination or brand first, right? So I think that research from Expedia and Google both show that around 60 % of all searches don't actually start with a fixed mindset or on where people want to go, but instead people start thinking, okay, where can I take my small kids and experience a great beach vacation or a great cultural trip or where do I go for my girls' city break kind of trip. And so the starting point I think for that customer journey now is really more experiential and more broad. And I think hospitality still needs to learn to kind of adapt and function in that sort of environment because I think historically they've been very focused on just finding the lowest hanging fruit, finding the right customer at the right moment. Whereas now I think that story needs to be told in many different places in a lot more fragmented way. And I think it's a very, very interesting challenge to have.

Fran (08:30): Yeah, I think today for hoteliers, finding the right customer at the right moment, which you mentioned, includes finding them at that point of choosing an experience of the guests searching for an experience. And you've mentioned AI there and Sam Altman recently, you know, talked about how in a year or two from now, guests are going to be searching for through ChatGPT or other tools, they're gonna be searching by saying the things you've just said, like, I wanna go with my kids on a beach vacation somewhere that's warm in December and where my kids can experience X, Y, Z. Where should I go and where should I stay? And that search completely changes the way that hoteliers used to distribute their product because if they want to be front and center, right, they need to... be present there and they need to have visible on their websites, experiences, dates, know, things that are happening. What do you think is the challenge? You said that's something that as an industry we can do better or hoteliers can do better. What do you think is stopping them? Is it the tech or is it the mindset and what can they do to improve on?

Iva (09:35): I think it starts with the mindset. I don't think there's such thing today as a tech problem or a data problem. I don't think there's a shortage of either, if you think about it. There's probably a piece of technology for any sort of business problem or challenge that you'd like to solve. I think it all starts with... priorities with defining clearly, okay, what is it that we're solving for, right? And what's the best way to get there? And then I think the other piece is getting your organization to kind of work with that, right? Because a lot of organizations in travel and hospitality in particular are still somewhat siloed, right? So it could happen that you don't have the right people talking about all of this around the same table. It could be that you don't have the right KPIs that are supporting that change. So I would say it always starts with the mindset. It always starts with the awareness and having the right organizational setup and the right conversations, right? Because it's where leaders spend their time and energy is what signals to the people, okay, this is important, this is where we need to be spending our time and this is what we need to be talking about. So I think that's where it all starts.

Tech is definitely a challenge, but again, it's not that there isn't enough of it. If anything, there are plenty of options there. For a lot of especially well-established hospitality companies, there's probably a robust legacy tech stack that comes with them. And then as they go, they're trying to adjust to the new world and add some of the new functionalities, which again is... can be quite challenging because you want to get it right. I like the mindset that typically comes from OTAs where they tend to be a bit more flexible and open to experimenting and testing and failing and making mistakes, right? And I think that's the only way that you can eventually get it right. There are no kind of fail-safe solutions and you probably won't get it right the first time around. But I think as long as you have that right mindset and a clear vision of what your tech needs to solve for, there are plenty of opportunities and options out there, I think.

Fran (12:09): Yeah, you're right. I used to work in the airport world and in the airport world there are certain things also from an innovation perspective where you cannot fail. Like security and safety, for example. It's not like, let's fail fast and learn from it. However, that doesn't mean innovation can't happen. And I think it's the same with luxury hotels. You don't have to sacrifice the existing guest journey of like a beautiful, smooth check-in, the room being perfect, immaculate, clean, wonderful. in order to experiment. You could fail at one little point of a journey of a guest perhaps booking a limo and the tech doing something that you're kind of experimenting with and the guest can still have an amazing journey and you can learn a lot from it. So I think that that experimenting mindset is something that's needed perhaps a bit more, but I do understand hoteliers who worry about failing at certain things that they just simply cannot fail at as a luxury hotelier in a destination.

And then another thing you've mentioned there is around silos in hotels as well. I think that the trouble with destination experiences is that it doesn't have a very clear owner in today's hotel chains because it sits a little bit in marketing, a little bit in operations, a little bit in where should it sit and how do you get people to collaborate on something as important as destination experiences within hotels.

Iva (13:30): That's a great question. I don't think there's necessarily a single organizational setup that works for every hospitality or every any organization of any type out there. I think like anything else, organizations are living and breathing creatures and they change and that's another area of experimentation for companies. But I think it needs to start with again, identifying key strategic priorities and then having an understanding that this isn't one team's job and that if we've identified something as important, then everyone in the company needs to have awareness of that and they need to understand how they contribute to these priorities, right? And that it's not just some guy's job. So that's one thing I think communication.

And as I said, where leadership spend their time and their focus is incredibly important. I think when you listen to companies like Google, you will have no doubt that AI is front and center of everything they do, right? And anyone who works there, whether in sales, marketing, or development, will have a clear understanding that that's kind of where they need to invest their time and effort. So I think it starts with the vision, it starts with communication, it starts also with KPIs because again as long as you have people working on competing priorities or their own kind of little backyards of things, it's very difficult to get that sort of synergy.

Fran (15:11): Yeah, I think you're right there. If you set the right goals and you set the right metrics or KPIs, your organization usually aligns itself to that. And one of the things that informs goals a lot is guest expectations. Because if guests are the ones who are demanding or expecting a certain service that they're not receiving, then that influences those goals a lot. What we see a lot is that guest expectations technologically are that if I'm in a hotel, I want to be able, whether a luxury hotel or less of a luxury, but I expect the same level of service that I'm used to having in other parts of my life. So for example, if I can order a delivery service from any restaurant in the neighborhood on my phone, then I wonder why I have to call room service to order that same meal, why I can't do it in the app on the hotel that I'm in.

Same with transfers, same with certain tours, tickets, excursions, whatever it is. Do you think that's enough of an impetus to drive that digitization of experiences in hospitality?

Iva (16:19): I think technology first and foremost needs to be there to remove friction and make things easier for customers rather than sort of serve its own purpose. I think the other complexity of travel as an industry is that there isn't a single customer or guest profile there.

I spend about, well, probably more than 100 nights a year at hotels, right? And every stay is different for me, depending on whether it's a family vacation or a work trip or a quick solo weekend. And each of those trips was booked and experienced differently for me, right? And so it's tough for hoteliers to always know what it is that you're expecting and that there might be instances when you want a very personalized and in-person human experience, but then there may be times where you really don't want to talk to anyone and you want the whole process to be handled by technology, right? So I think that's some of the complexity that does come with this industry.

But like I said, think if the company is clear about barriers to customer satisfaction, if they're clear around what it is that's getting people frustrated, and if they're clear about opportunities to enhance that experience, and then they work with technology in a smart way that actually removes some of that friction rather than adding frustration by having too much of everything or by making customers download an unnecessary app in some instances, which is my pet peeve. Don't make me download anything that I'm not going to use more than once. So I think as long as, again, you know what you're solving for and you find a seamless way to integrate that, I think that's ultimately what delivers. a great experience. And again, some of this is also cultural. We've seen that certain markets prefer digital experiences and kind of being able to solve everything online. It's generational to an extent. And again, there are cultures and maybe generations or guests who prefer to have that in-person conversation. And again, hotels need to be able to cater to both.

Fran (18:42): Yeah, I love that. So removing friction and providing choice to customers so that they can choose whether they'd like a little bit more tech focused interaction or perhaps a little bit more human depending on their preferences, I think is the ultimate service that a hotelier can give. Fantastic. Where do you see the future? If you think about the guest experience and you're staying in, as you said, over 100 nights a year in a hotel.

Fast forward a couple of years and perhaps the last set of questions for me is A, where do you see yourself? I'm sure your colleagues perhaps are also interested to know your former colleagues where you're heading next. So if you can share something about that, but also talk me through what you see the guest journey of the future in a hotel being perhaps with a little bit of a focus on destination marketing.

Iva (19:34): I see myself always being in a role that changes travel for the better with the help of tech, data, and human influence. Wherever that role is, whichever side, whichever company, I'm always very much motivated by, okay, how do we make this better? What's not working? How do we make it work?

Does it make sense? Those are the questions that I always ask myself and that kind of stays with me. In terms of where travel's headed, it's a complex industry that has a number of touch points. Even before... the guest reaches the destination, right? Even at the decision-making stage, we know that travel as an industry has always been very, very kind of high engagement, multiple touch points, decision-making process. And then there are all these touch points at the destination, at the hotel, post-stay, that can make your experience better or worse.

And I think for providers in the industry to be able to map that journey out and understand sort of what are the experiences that are making or breaking that journey and how do we make it more integrated, more connected, more seamless and how do we use tech and data that we have just to sort of make travel better.

I think people fundamentally travel always for the same reasons. probably half a dozen main reasons why people travel and how they, depending on how they want to feel. And so for marketers to be able to decipher that is very important. But again, that journey in how we arrive at those experiences is definitely changing. I think the role of social media is huge, right? Because now people look at reels and they think, they don't start with the destination or a place they think. Like myself, I want to go on a husky safari and that's something I can do in Finland. So that's my next destination, right? Or I want to go volunteer in an elephant shelter or so I think a lot of that decision making nowadays is also driven by social media and so the ability of travel brands to kind of stay ahead of what people go through and when they book and experience travel and making that journey simpler rather than more complicated given how many options were given. I think that's ultimately the winning combination.

Fran (22:23): Absolutely. And what you just said there with the husky travel, that was kind of how I used to travel with. I want to go and see gorillas in the wild. And then you go down from there, where can I do that? Or you can do that in Rwanda and Congo. OK, well, I'm going to do it in Rwanda. Where can I stay for that? How do I get there? But it all started from that higher experience or the emotion almost that I wanted to feel, which was being out there in the wild with the gorillas or in your case, being out there with the huskies in the snow.

Iva (22:51): Yeah, you're right. Mean, so it starts with that emotion. It starts with the experience that you want to have. But then at the end of the day, the winning team is the one that's able to convince you pretty quickly that they can deliver that experience in a seamless way and where you're offered an answer and a solution to your problem in a quick and clear way, right? Because going to see gorillas is not something you see every day or a husky safari, right? So you want to be convinced immediately that these guys know what they're doing and they're the right provider for that sort of experience. And so that's again, where tech and marketers. have a huge role to play, right? So that when the customer needs that information, it's offered to them in an easy and simple way. And when they go through the actual experience, it kind of matches what they were promised.

Fran (23:54): I could go on and on, especially now I'd love to know more about that Husky experience, but perhaps one day in the future when you will have come back from that trip, you can tell us more. For now, I wanted to thank you for being on our podcast. Really appreciate it. Thank you for sharing all of the insights. I'm going to be keeping a close watch on where you're headed next and what the career brings because I think your mission is of making travel better is a fantastic mission, career mission to have. So thank you again and hope to see you again soon.

Iva (24:29): Thanks for having me. Speak soon.

Fran (24:31): Thanks everyone for being with us for another episode of Conversations on Experiential Hospitality. Give us a like and follow and see you all soon.