GuestSpan Speaks!

We have had a busy couple of weeks meeting with people and raising funds. I thought it would be appropriate to provide an update on our activities:

Kent Millington: Kent Millington has become a mentor of sorts for our venture and has been an invaluable source of advice and direction as we move the process along. We have had several meetings with him revising and editing our business plan based on his feedback. He helped us become a lot more specific in some of our projections and estimates.

Larry Stevenson: We met with Larry Stevenson last week at his office in Provo, UT. He works for the LDS Church in the Employment Services Department. If you have not checked out this resource we highly recommend it. I was surprised at the level of resources they are connected to for budding entrepreneurs like us. He put us in touch with a number of resources provided by the SBA such as SCORE as well as the Utah Technology Council.

In addition he gave us some great council on using a business plan as more than a large brochure for investors. He used an interesting analogy, he said it would be more powerful if when somebody asked for a copy of your business plan you reached into your bag and handed them the old dog-eared copy you have been referring to over and over again. That shows that you use it often and live by it. A very good bit of advice.

Business Ignitor Event: We attended a recent Business Ignitor Event put on by Grow Utah Ventures and featured a panel discussion on “How to approach Angel Investors.” The panelists were Alan Hall, Brad Walters, and Brad Angus. The discussion was good and provided some good insight into the thinking of the investment community in Utah.

The event also provided a great opportunity to reconnect with past associates as well as make connections to new relationships. Networking and relationship building are really the key to what we as entrepreneurs are doing. Whether it’s relationships with customers, employees, or investors it is those connections that will largely dictate how far we go. I firmly believe that if you can forge key relationships and deliver results there is no limit to what you can accomplish.

Fundraising: We have also been busy on the fundraising front. We have received commitments for $320k in funds so far and are seeking an additional $280k-$500k. These funds will carry us to through the first 12-15 months, through beta and to our first few installs. We are grateful to those who have shown their confidence in us and our ability to execute on our plan to make this leap of faith. Perhaps equally as important as the money is the expertise and experience these gentlemen bring with them. Both have successfully started and operated profitable companies an their advice and council will be invaluable.

In summary, things are moving forward at a breathtaking pace here at GuestSpan. We continue to seek investment as well as talent to help us make this venture a success.

We are believers in understanding a market. In fact, listening to clients, prospects and users is almost our religion. If our efforts don’t solve someone else’s problems, all of our work is a glorified ego trip.

But I digress.

We’re still working on our product rollout. However, I was very intrigued by a sampling of data that came back from our Meeting Planner survey conducted this month.

A couple of our questions described a technology device that we are installing directly into hotel rooms. After providing a bit of brief detail about the device, we asked the meeting planners to indicate their likelihood of either being more loyal to their preferred brand or switching away to a competing brand if this device were installed. The results were very strong:

• 46% said they would be somewhat more likely or much more likely to go with their first choice if this device were available to them.
• 30% said they would be somewhat more likely or much more likely to switch from the first choice to a second or third choice if they had access to this device in that property.

Considering the fact that the average meeting planner (and their staff) in our survey plans 20-50 meetings per year and most of these meeting involve 100-500 attendees (with 35% indicating that they regularly plan meetings for 1,000 attendees or more), the dollars in play in these numbers are GINORMOUS!

So, what is this device that was described to meeting planners? We’ll keep a little bit of mystery around this question. Suffice it to say that we’re pulling out all the stops to create a technology device that will satisfy the needs of hotels, travelers, meeting planners and anyone that spends any time in a hotel.

If the data are even close to reality, the potential of our services will provide significant, occupancy rate movements resulting in multi-millions of dollars of revenues for Avant-garde brands.

And, we believe that hotels are looking for that differentiator that will provide an edge. After all, everyone offers a bed, TV, Internet access and shower. Service levels are declining industry wide. Why not look for something that solves multiple problems.

Later, I’ll weigh in with feedback from business travelers and actual hoteliers. Trust me. It’s all good stuff.

Note: Media members may contact me for launch information at cdalley@guestspan.com (801-253-2459)

Stephen Denny, in a post on Marketing Profs Daily Fix blog writes a very thought provoking piece on whether a brand driven by a company can achieve the same kind of emotion and feeling that will “ignite a spark in our collective imaginations that continues to fire other imaginations long after we’re history” as some of the cultural movements of recent history have done.

Says Denny:

“Can a brand become a movement?

More importantly, can a brand become a movement on purpose?

If you were launching a company and aspired to a unique, relevant and ownable brand, could you plant the seeds of a movement within your messaging architecture and outbound communications? I think in some cases, the answer is ‘yes,’ although clearly not in all. If you sold great ball bearings, you could have a great brand but I think moving towards “movement” status might be impossible. What would you stand for that wouldn’t just be “branding”? You need to have certain prerequisites that define what constitutes a movement – here’s a draft:

• You must be replicable, in spirit if not in form.
• You must have transparency in your mission so that your ‘branding’ is clear and easily adaptable to related works by others. There must be a consistent ‘arc’ to the story – a movement must have internal consistency.
• You must be willing and open to not just release control of your ‘brand’ but to acknowledge that your brand and movement are owned by a collective group of people who may never actually meet.
• Importantly, for a brand to become a movement, there must be something deeply emotional and communal that connects users, providers and influencers to a degree that transcends simple functionality. There must be something to it that is “right.”

It is just this kind of movement that GuestSpan seeks to embody. I believe that certain brands evoke within its customers a kind of zealot like feeling. These would be what Guy Kawasaki refers to as “Thunderlizards.” Every brand needs them to survive. I believe that if you solve a problem that all or a large number of people experience you have the immediate potential to become a “Super Brand” and when users or customers begin to use your product in a new and innovative way or begin to build other products and services off of your idea you are very close to becoming a movement.

Yesterday, Drew McLellan of McLellan Marketing Group told the story of FreshBooks, a web-based time tracking and invoice tool, that went “miles beyond the ordinary” to listen to clients. In brief, company leaders struck out in an RV, driving from city to city, hosting barbecues and rubbing shoulders with clients.

Drew says:

This is a company that gets customer engagement. They didn’t sit back and passively wait for a customer to shoot them an e-mail or take an online survey. They got up and went to their customers. Literally. They didn’t do a hard sell, they let their brand’s personality dictate how they interacted.

No wonder 99% of their customers said they’d recommend them to a peer.

This worked because:

• It was fresh and different
• The company was making the effort — not asking the customers to do the work
• It had talk value — people told this story over and over
• It was true to Freshbook’s brand personality

The RV/road tour isn’t the right answer for everyone. But aggressively listening is.

In the hotel industry, everyone talks about listening to the clients (guests), but in my experience, this effort has been little more than a comment card left on a desk. Some bargain chains have begun to email me after a stay to solicit feedback, but I don’t remember the last time a member of guest management went out of his way to personally listen to me.

To find out more about listening to guests all the time, keep our blog bookmarked or subscribe to our RSS feed. We’ll tell you more about the types of real-time actionable feedback available through our systems.

Recently, Tammy Farley, a Principal of The Rainmaker Group describes their work with casinos, showing them how to change their way of thinking. The first step was to understand what the guests wanted:

Farley and Barfield are both strong believers in personal client service. After taking over the product ‘we pulled our customers together and asked them to tell us what their critical issues were.’ They told us, and we tackled the top ten items. Eight months later we delivered the changes,’ said Farley.

Before changes could be made, hotel ownership thought processes had to be adjusted or the entire plan would have been doomed from the start:

Revenue Management is a Way of Doing Business
In both markets, a shift in thinking was required. ‘Revenue Management is not just a software system, it is a way of doing business,’ said Farley. ‘It requires a cultural change at most companies, we made that education part of our training plan.’ Rainmaker provides best practices consulting to help clients become organizationally ready for the new information profit optimization software delivers.

After the information was gathered, distilled and acted upon, the following recommendations formed the foundation for future management decisions, both strategic and tactical:

Profit Optimization Boot Camp Helps Shift Corporate Cultures
Farley outlined three ways a company can ready its culture to leverage profit optimization software:

1. Shift your focus from occupancy and rate to profitability.

As an example, for Las Vegas casino hotels, think profitability instead of separate food and beverage, show, and spa spends. Farley noted industry champions of this approach include Gary Loveman, chairman, CEO and president of Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc., who brilliantly told Wall Street analysts their metrics do not fit the casino gaming industry. ‘He said to look at gaming profit per room and gaming win per room instead of Average Daily Rate and occupancy,’ said Farley. ‘Harrah’s annual report talks about lifts in those metrics.’

2. Move from silos to integrated departments. Consider letting the revenue management team report through sales and marketing instead of operations. This creates clear communication between the casino sales and marketing department, revenue managers and hotel operations.

3. Recognize the day in the life of a Revenue Manager has changed from crunching numbers to strategic thinking.

‘Companies that develop a focused revenue management philosophy and appoint an experienced executive to manage the process realize the greatest return from a profit optimization system,’ said Farley.

The take-home message is that hotels have to start thinking differently about the guest, the ability to monetize the guest and how the guest experience ultimately influences profitability. High occupancy/Low margin is customary, but “business as usual” is a strategy that appeals to the stale.

What does all this mean to GuestSpan? We’re in the business of showing you how to increase guest experience, monetizing their activities in the community and positioning hotel brands ahead of competitors.

Keep an eye on our blog and product developments. Next year, you’ll be able to say, “I knew GuestSpan back when…”

A friend of mine recently relayed an experience he had while traveling to a new city on business. He’d been there for an entrepreneurial conference that went most of the day, but by 7 pm that night he found himself sitting in his hotel room with nothing to do. He was visiting a city that was well known for it’s great steaks so he decided he would go down to the front desk and find out where to go for steak. When he asked the young lady at the front desk all he received was a shrug of the shoulders and an “I don’t really know.”

My friend was undeterred. He asked, “You live here don’t you?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“So where’s there a good steakhouse?”

“Yeah, I just don’t know, sorry” And with that she went back to her work and my friend? He ended up at some cheap diner across the street because it was convenient to the hotel.

If that experience sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. More and more travelers are reporting dissatisfaction with hotel staff, service, amenities and a number of other areas. In fact, in many economy and business class hotels its almost as if the guest has become a nuisance.

Now to be fair, some of these problems are not the fault of hotels. Hoteliers live in a difficult world-they can only charge so much for their rooms and are finding it increasingly difficult to find competent and friendly staffers to put in front of their guests. Add that to increasing competition from boutique hotels and other lodging options and it all piles up into one big bad experience all the way around.

Enter GuestSpan. GuestSpan is a company that believes technology can be used to make the hotel experience positive for both guest and hotel. By giving guests quick access to a number of amenities in the hotel as well as the surrounding communities and opening a new revenue channel for hotels GuestSpan will help both meet their respective needs.

This blog is going to be dedicated to our journey through the start up phase and into the industry. Over the coming months we will post updates on our progress along with thoughts and information relative to what we’re doing. We invite you to take the journey with us and leave your feedback as we venture to improve the hotel experience for all of us.