Steve Lowy, CEO of Umi Digital in London has lived around the world and owns multiple businesses in the hospitality industry – in real estate and Academic offerings including Academic Program creation, Internship Sourcing & Management, Educational Tours and Academic Programming. After successfully growing these services through digital marketing, he launched a marketing agency focused on growing hospitality businesses.
In this episode of the Global Marketing Show, I talk to him about how he leverages his experience in global digital marketing to help other hospitality organizations. It’s exciting to hear as he says on his LinkedIn profile - “I love empowering the underdogs to fight above their weight especially as the hospitality space gets cluttered with big brands.”
His advice on the show is insightful for hospitality organizations looking to increase patronage with local and international guests.
With a passion for eating and international travel, Steve studied hospitality in university in England and then lived in Australia, the S. Pacific, and the USA. At age 24, he managed a 500 bed backpackers hostel and got great experience so he could buy and run his own hotels.
As soon as he started running his own in London, Brighton, and Moscow, he learned the importance of the digital brand for both attracting visitor and allowing online booking. As others in the industry saw his success, he realized that he spent a lot of time educating others in hospitality about how to use digital media. Instead of consulting for free, he saw the opportunity to monetize the education and provide services to support smaller properties and organizations with growing through digital marketing.
During the conversation – I had to ask why he founded a hotel in Moscow in 2009 – he hadn’t lived there or had experience. Steve explained that it was an opportunity – some friends asked him to help them open the hotel. He saw a great opportunity as at that time, there were not many western style hotels close to the Red Square in Moscow. Mostly there were communist style hotels or a few western ones for about $1,000 a night.
Language was challenging since at the time there were not the tools to support their efforts and their buyers were not Russians, but international travelers. In addition, they had to capture the cultural differences of staying at a hotel – like having food accessible.
He does see a shift in the industry with how language is used as organizations shift more to video and visuals. Less written content is being used and depending on your buyer – it may make sense to have translated subtitles or additional translated content. We talked about how important it is to understand the buyer’s journey to determine where and how translation should be used.
Some challenges that organizations face now are the following:
- Drop offs in reservation stage if the third-party booking partner does not translate the reservation platform. The buyer may find the site, read all material, decide to book in their native language, but when they click through to book, it’s in another language. This causes them to move on and not book.
- Untranslated search terms that buyers may use. For example, if Steve optimizes his site for “London” and visitors search “Londres”, the buyers won’t find him. The flow from search, through the website to booking and confirmation must be consistent.
- Not understanding your buyer’s needs – if your ideal customer profile is a business traveler that needs to be close to their meeting site, less content and thus translation will be needed. Yet, if you run a luxury resort, the customer will expect more interaction in their native language. It’s not transactional, it’s capturing the dream of the perfect vacation.
- Determining your price point – consumers desiring a cheap stay will be more forgiving of no translation. Higher priced hospitality providers must provide in language support. They are expecting full service.
To give you an understanding of the importance of translation Booking.com (or Priceline.com in some countries) had 500-1000 translators working on their content. They know that good quality translation offers higher accessibility which results in a better quality score which circles back to more bookings.
Steve discusses how the last couple years have been extremely rough on the hospitality industry with customer expectations increasing, inflation, difficulty in hiring and retaining and wage increases. And that marketing and training are the first budgets to be cut. Yet it’s the marketing that will increase sales. Rather than looking at marketing and translation as a cost, try looking at the ROI (return on the investment) that you can get from attracting new customers.
In London, traditionally he’s translated content into English for the US, French, Spanish and German. Now they are expanding into Chinese – which means for his buyer’s journey they will need translation for: SEO, website, booking, menus, on site information, and staff to speak the language(s). This is a global marketing expansion area for him.
His final recommendations – as he learned in sports – it’s not the big one time gains, it’s the marginal gains that make a difference. Don’t be scared and look for those marginal gains.
Links:
Connect with Wendy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendypease/
Connect with Steve - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevelowy/
Music: Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
ATTENTION: Below is a machine generated transcription of the podcast. Yes, at Rapport International, we talk a lot about how machine translation is not good quality. Here you see an example of what a machine can do in your own your language. This transcription is provided as a gist and to give time indicators to find a topic of interest.
[00:00:34] Wendy: Welcome to the Global Marketing Show! Today's tidbit from Rapport International is gonna educate you a little bit, it's a little history about language.
[00:00:46] So many linguists believe that language originated around 100 BC, so many years ago which makes sense because humans need to communicate. Early languages evolved, changed, branched out and went extinct. Yet one of the oldest languages still spoken today, originated around the 10th century BC and it's spoken by over 9 million people in the world today. Can you guess what that language? Certainly let me know if you got it right, but the language, if you didn't know is Hebrew. It's the official language of Israel.
[00:01:24] So I started out with a tidbit about education today, because we've got somebody who has a business in education. He's got a business in exchange programs, he's had his hand in running hotels and he runs a digital marketing agency, and all of this touches on international. Steve Lowy, says he is worked in hotels for many years and he founded Ummi Digital to support the hotel and travel sector. He's worked with all sorts of companies from game reserves in the Congo, which is where I wanna go, to luxury hotels in London. So Steve, welcome to The Global Marketing Show!
[00:02:05] Steve: Thank you very much and thank you for the invite.
[00:02:07] Wendy: Yeah, I'm very excited to hear your story because of course it touches on so many things international. So why don't you talk me through a little bit about where you got started and then what led you into all these different paths that you are in now?
[00:02:23] Steve: Sure. Yeah. So I studied hospitality and tourism at university, did a hospitality and tourism management, and had a real passion actually for food, which I still do. Mainly cooking, but sort of dreamt of, of opening a restaurant one day. After university, I worked a bit and then I went traveling around the world for a year.
[00:02:41] So I went through Southeast Asia lived and worked in Australia for six months. Went through the South Pacific across America. And got a bug for hospitality more broadly and obviously travel. Cause that was really what I was doing most of the time. And ended up running a backpackers hostel in London which had over 500 beds and a very international market.
[00:03:00] So that at the age of 24 was my first management role in, in accommodation. And then from there I set up my own budget hotel chain where we ended up opening in London, Brighton, and Moscow. So when you talk about language, that's a whole different. Ballgame. And as we grew that hotel brand, I'd learned a lot from doing the hostel.
[00:03:22] It was an Australian brand and they were very for a youth travel product. They were very heavy branded. It was very clever. And the importance of brand, even if it was a small brand and the importance of marketing. Particularly digital was really an era, sort of 2004 to 2007 where things really changed.
[00:03:41] I think people's travel trends changed how they booked flights and accommodation, where they were doing more stuff online rather than through a travel agent in person and sort of myself, seo. And paid, paid, you know, AdWords paid search at that time. Cause I felt it was a really cost effective way of get getting more business and not paying commission to travel agents basically.
[00:04:05] And the hotel brand, which was called Ummi Hotels. It was really centered around one, giving young people opportunities to work in the hotel. Attracting a younger crowd at that sort of budget. Level, but also a great focus on on direct business people. Book and direct through your own website, which you will see today.
[00:04:23] All the big hotel brands. Shout about book direct book, direct book direct. In reality, it was much easier to do then. Than it is now because there's, there's more people now who are skilled in online marketing than there were you know, 2007 to 2010. But when we launched in Moscow, I realized I couldn't just do the marketing myself with an intern from the coffee shop at the hotel in London.
[00:04:44] And we created digital out of that with. Initially to be the, the marketing department for Ummi Hotels, but increasingly I was being probably too generous with giving people advice in a pub or a cocktail party or a conference. And we decided that we could monetize that. And then, you know we kept a lot of the core brand beliefs as we did within digital, within hotels, which was giving young people opportu.
[00:05:10] So our CEO of Umi Digital now is a former intern who worked as an intern six years ago. He's running the company. You know, I'm, I'm sort of chairman of that and also basically driving direct business and, you know, giving that opportunity. So that's, that's how I got, and I guess with the hostel, we had 500 units to sell a day, you know, 500 beds and.
[00:05:35] I really just loved digital marketing. I loved all the data that you could get, even though it was quite minuscule at the time. You know, Google Analytics hadn't really launched in the UK yet. It was a very different world with regards to digital marketing and I sort of seemed to get it, you know, seemed to understand it, and, and and just have always really enjoyed it.
[00:05:55] Wendy: That's fantastic. Yeah. And a 500 bed hostel is heat backpackers. Hostel is huge. So that's a lot of the beds to fill. Luckily you had a good location for that.
[00:06:07] Steve: Yeah, we were in, we were in Paddington pretty central London, so that was good. But yeah, it was, it was tough. And I learned a lot about youth travel and.
[00:06:15] Even then young people travel and booked and you know, now doing the educational piece, although young people book and travel completely differently to when I did, or even the generation after me you know, I packed around the world with it, learning planet guides. When I left the uk, Google wasn't even launched in the UK properly.
[00:06:33] Yeah. Everyone used Yahoo. And when I came back a year later, I was using Yahoo and everyone was like, what's that? And I'm like, oh. You know and, and, and I guess that was my realization point of how things were changing and how things were gonna change even quicker going forwards. So yeah, it was interesting.
[00:06:51] Wendy: Yeah, that's fascinating cuz I remember using the book, it wasn't The Lonely Planet, but it was a different one. And you'd show up and then you'd look through the list to see what was there to find your hostile. Now it's completely different.
[00:07:03] Steve: It is. And I think from a marketing perspective, . One of the challenges things I still like to do, you know, I am one of those people who search.
[00:07:13] You're told, you're invited, you're going to a restaurant, you search the menu in advance. Mm-hmm. take, you take away that excitement. And I think that has actually put more pressure on the hospitality, businesses, hotels, restaurants, and so forth, because you don't have, if you're a luxury hotel, there was huge amounts of excitement and mystique.
[00:07:32] You'd see it a little advert. Now you turn up, you. You've seen a video, you've seen the drone footage you have to surprise in different ways. And so I think. When I started out, it was easier to surprise, and I think as long as they're good surprises, I think we all like surprises. We like the sense of adventure because humans do.
[00:07:50] And I think that's changed the dynamic in the relationship between the customer journey and the customer experience when they arrive at that destination, whether it be a local restaurant or, or or a hotel abroad.
[00:08:04] Wendy: Okay, so let's go back to. You opened a hotel in Moscow, why Moscow? And what did you run into with the language issues there?
[00:08:17] Steve: Yes. So it was a very modern story. In 2009 I got a message on Facebook from a friend from school who hadn't seen in probably eight or nine years And he said, look, I'm Vivian Moscow. Me and a couple of partners are opening up a smaller hotel. We love what you're doing with Ummi Hotels. We've been featured on CNN and a few we've got some really good pr.
[00:08:44] And would you be interesting? You're helping us and you know, this is pretty whom we did still, where I realize you can't just help everyone, someone's got a charge. I actually flew over to Moscow for 24 hours, 48 hours. In the middle of their winter. I've been very British. We're not very good at dressing for the cold.
[00:09:01] I turned up with no oversight. No, I didn't check the, the temperature, and Yeah, I just found it pretty, pretty amazing, hoping that one day I could be on a podcast and say that I'd opened a hotel in Moscow which I .
[00:09:13] Wendy: Your dream must been true.
[00:09:15] Steve: Your dream has come true. It was a very small hotel 10 bedrooms about 10 minute walk from red square.
[00:09:20] So amazing location and in Moscow, I dunno if you've been or, or heard much about it. Obviously we're hearing a lot of bad stuff at the moment, which is also not as surprising as one thinks. There was very little budget accommodation in central Moscow, particularly the sort of the tourist areas. And so, you know, the Hyatt, there we went, it was like a thousand dollars a night.
[00:09:41] You know the rates were very high. There just wasn't that much westernized stock. There was a lot of old communist hotels and, and so forth. So I just thought it was really interesting. So we created pretty much a sort of soft brand. Partnership agreement similar to how Best Western do it with a lot of their hotels.
[00:09:57] And we created the hotel and so we did the website, I did all the training. We set up all the internal technology. And what was interesting from a a language perspective is one, I'm dyslexic. So learning languages is really hard unless you immerse yourself. So when I worked in restaurants when I was younger, I picked up all lots of bad words and lots of different languages from just being there, not from reading in the book.
[00:10:22] I can't learn off off that. And, and interestingly, the target market wasn't as Russian as one would've thought. But it was certainly a challenge, particularly at that time where you didn't have automatic Google translate. And. All the other tools that you have now to make user experience online better.
[00:10:42] And so we had to really be clever with how we did that and also what we found at the time. And a lot of the business transactions we did there. And some of it included working with Russian travel agents, sending people to the uk. Was I often had to do it via translator, and that's something that, you know, being from the English speaking world, and I'm sure you've had it, Wendy, that you often don't even think about language where you go anywhere because.
[00:11:10] Everyone assumes everyone speaks English. But in in Russia, that certainly wasn't the case. And depending on the transaction or the deal we were looking to do, some people felt very uncomfortable doing it in English. And so therefore you had to do it through a translator in Russian and therefore you had to have that trust.
[00:11:26] So and we say things very differently. I always tell the story of the hotel didn't actually have its own catering facilities, but we had a cafe next door. And it was this great cafe. And I went there one morning after we'd done the deal and I was preparing for a day of training the staff on technology and marketing and various other things.
[00:11:44] And I said, oh, good morning to the waitress. And she said, it's not a good morning. I went, okay, so it's snowing, it's cold, so, right. Okay. And that immediately from a culture perspective is why some of those people have challenges with Google translators, when you translate, you have to translate in the local culture and dialect as well as the actual words.
[00:12:07] And that is something that I learned a lot from, from working with, with people in Russia, is a very different culture and, and way of doing hospital.
[00:12:15] Wendy: That's a fantastic story cuz that's you know, that's very similar to the American. How are you, you know, or how are you doing today? Or you know, it's, people say it, but they don't really want an answer right there.
[00:12:28] You said Good morning,
[00:12:34] Yeah. Yeah. I go.
[00:12:38] Steve: I, so I start having my coffee felt feeling like I've been told off. So yeah. .
[00:12:44] Wendy: Yeah. So talk to me more, a little bit about Digital and where you're using Google Translate and where you're using professional translators now.
[00:12:53] Steve: Yeah, so I think over the years and I think this is a, a global problem, a lot of people have lost the ability to, Write good content, create, you know, I think photography and video and everything else has become a lot easier for people and people have got a lot better because of iPhones and other devices.
[00:13:15] Visual content has actually got way better than when we launched digital back in 2010. You know, some, I remember some of the early days that, you know, hotels used to always, if it was a hotel with a small bedroom, all you got is photos of a. With a shiny tap. Yeah. You, you, the, the internet was easier to trick people in some ways.
[00:13:36] And I think people probably read more as well as people used to write more. And so I think now there's a great importance put on video and interactive and photography and social media with regards to the visual part of, of. So I think when I started out we used to work with translators, particularly Ummi hotels.
[00:14:00] Our target markets, apart from Americans were, were France, Spain and Germany. And we would get core content as part of that journey for a customer from finding us to wanting to book. Making sure that inmates had fr So it wasn't a pure Google Translate translation, it was an actual translation of how an Italian or a Spaniard or a Frenchman would, would, would search for something.
[00:14:29] So, you know, hotel doesn't. Always translate to a hotel. You know, it's different in different countries, particularly when you look at hostels. It means very different things in different, different countries too. So it was very important. But one of the things we did when we created IMI Hotels was really trying to understand the customer journey and who our customer was.
[00:14:50] So the way that. In 2008, once we were, I think on our fourth iteration of our website then, and I didn't have an agency of my own, so we were spending quite a lot of money on web design then, because in 2007 they launched the iPhone Steve Jobs launched the iPhone, and so immediately people's ways of searching and reading changed.
[00:15:12] And so I think from 2007 onwards, people's attention span has dipped and the. where you are today is that translation has to be relevant to what they're looking for immediately, and if it is about booking a room when they get to book a room. It needs to have a similar flow and experience to what the content was.
[00:15:35] Within the hotel sector, the tech stack is not always integrated. And what that means is if you go to a lot of hotel websites, you'll be redirected outta the website to a booking software. Mm-hmm. . So it's a, sometimes a completely different experience. Even today where it doesn't feel like you're booking on that website, you are on a phone.
[00:15:57] We had technical issues earlier. You even that you'll lose interest. You'll, you'll go onto booking.com, you'll go Expedia, you'll know it's safe through the app. So from a translation perspective, it's really important to think about how if you are putting translations onto their website and someone has searched, uh, la.
[00:16:19] Rather than London is, once they've gotten to that page, the landing page is translated and it's, it's true translation rather than Google translate over overlay that when they get to the booking experience, if that is what you are trying to get them to do. That, that there is a flow of that, that that booking and content pattern.
[00:16:37] What is also interesting within hotels is that in the UK alone, there's probably about a hundred to 120 booking engines on offer to hotels. Wow. So that's one country. You know, you times that regionally or globally. And it means that it's, you know, if you're an independent hotel, you have great choice.
[00:16:59] Some will go for the cheapest, some will be more marketing focused and, and feel about the ones that integrate better. Some say they've got artificial intelligence, some have payment gateways, and so it's hard for that hotelier, but it's also really hard for a consumer because often you don't have a consistent feel when you're looking around.
[00:17:17] What I also think is that sometimes and there's nothing wrong with it there's plenty of industries that are the same. Actually using a online travel agent, booking.com or Expedia as your main source of traffic. If you feel you don't have the skills or the the budgets to invest in your own translations and so forth, is that paying 15 to 20% commission through an online travel agent may be a better.
[00:17:41] Solution from a, from a business perspective, I don't believe that because I think you can get better ROI doing stuff yourself. But almost going back to the original question, translation should be part of a bigger marketing concept and making sure that the technology and that customer journey flows through.
[00:17:58] If you have a mid range hotel I know in in America particularly with a big brand, you've got so many different ranges. You've got. Upscale, upper upscale side scale. You know, there's every scale of type of hotels, but let's say, you know, the average three, three star hotel, your market will be potentially groups, potentially young couples, potentially young families, potentially tourists from abroad potentially business people.
[00:18:28] You've got a really wide mix at that price point. Most people just want. Therefore, whether it's translation or technology or however that flow is, you wanna make it as easy for someone to book. Mm-hmm. , if you've got a luxury resort on a beach in the Caribbean, there's a lot of dreaming and because of the high transaction value, People may actually want to email or phone or live chat and talk about a lot.
[00:18:57] It's not just a pure transactional relationship with that customer. Mm-hmm. . So you may need to look from a translation perspective at a lot more elaborate content. So again, I guess. Mexican resorts, although you get, they get a lot of customers from probably the UK as well as the us. There's also great affinity from the Spanish speaking markets.
[00:19:20] So if they have, let's say this beautiful luxury resort has a beautiful website, but they also have a wonderful like what on magazine? Or downloadable magazine and it's only available in English, then you're not interacting and you're not dreaming with that Spanish speaker. They may speak English, but they probably feel more comfortable speaking in their or reading in their first, you know, first language.
[00:19:42] So I think it's as a lot of the translation piece goes back to what your product is and, and understanding the customer and making sure that all matche. .
[00:19:51] Wendy: Yeah, that's really fascinating to think about that way, you know, in that specific industry of how you have to segment out, and it goes back to knowing your buyer and your buyer'ss journey and what you're gonna need in there.
[00:20:02] So e explain to me a little bit more about, you know, I have a small boutique hotel and I translate my website. The buyer goes through it. So you've done a good quality translation. You know the IRI is gonna be there, you've optimized for search. Now they click through to the booking site. How can they control the translations to make sure it's similar and consistent all the way through?
[00:20:31] So
[00:20:31] Steve: that's very much dealing with that booking software company. It's often third party. I mean, there's some huge global companies, but there's also a lot of small original ones. And it's kind of amazing. You know, we've, with you, we digital, I've seen hotels that spent a fortune, all sorts of marketing, and then you get to book and you can't book, you know, and so there's no point.
[00:20:53] Don't do, do big adverts on the size of their trucks. So you just like the truck, they do it so you buy something, right? Hotels are way better. I mean, they've been lagging behind, but the whole understanding, the ability to track ROI through AdWords, through other sort of paid search, through even, you know organic search and whether they're coming through an Italian.
[00:21:19] whether people are buying different languages, you can see and I think most hotels are a lot sharper on that, but I. And what's happened over probably the last three or four years, if you forget Covid, was that I think because they've got sharper, they've challenged the technology providers more. This doesn't work for me.
[00:21:37] I remember we built our own booking engine in 2010 for the Ummi Hotel piece. And we had a built in booking engine we had, which you can't do anymore, but it was very, I could have an average rate, average purchase price per keyword. Which you can sort of do, but with GDPR regulations and changes in data, it's quite difficult now.
[00:21:54] We had the opportunity to have a shopping basket. You had a lot of additional things that you could purchase. It worked pretty well. Discount coupons and, and all sorts. I'm not a technology person, but if I was, I probably would've scaled that up to something much. Cause I just didn't feel for what we did.
[00:22:09] There was actually anything out there. Now there's great choice, but it's about the hotelier and the market. It's also in bigger hotels. Sometimes marketing and sales and, and management don't talk as well as they should. But actually it's very much that whole user journey, which starts when someone searches hotel in Boston.
[00:22:32] Two when they've left and receive a questionnaire afterwards and in between. And I think having that whole understand that journey and hotels are much better at it now is what's really important. And that includes translation and technology and conversions and and everything else. And you know, people who spend money on translations in Italian and they hope they're gonna get Italian business, there has to be more than just a translation on the.
[00:22:57] You know, are you doing pr? Are you doing paid search? Do a talent even travel here? And I, I think because there's so much more data now and there's so much more data shared, I think that the hotel industry has realized that they've gotta invest in themselves and invest in their understanding and their knowledge to make sure that what they do spend gets a better.
[00:23:23] Mm.
[00:23:24] Wendy: Yeah, I think that's a, a wonderful point to make, that it has to be all stages along the buyer's journey. And I know there's a lot, a lot of tourism organizations in the United States that put it all out in English, and I just, I know they're missing the international visitors, even though a lot are coming to, to certain cities around the states.
[00:23:45] Yeah. And what about the Google Translate plugin or machine translation? Where do you use that at all?
[00:23:52] Steve: Yeah, we have it on, on, on certain sides, and I think where it's more transactional I think, I think that works fine. Again, it, it depends, you know Google's one say it's got a lot better , you know and, but It's not perfect and it, again, I think sometimes it depends on your price point.
[00:24:09] I think if people at a lower price point are probably more forgiving than people at a higher price point, if you're paying a hundred dollars a night, I won't use any brands, but a hundred dollars at a night at a hotel on the motorway in the States compared to, you know, maybe somewhere in Santa Monica, you know, on the seafront.
[00:24:30] And that's a thousand dollars a night. If you are, you know, a high net, high net worth or a luxury traveler and you've clicked on a button that says Italian and it's Spanish, you may be like, mm, you know, that's not very professional. And it's again, going back to that customer journey. And so it's where it, it's best.
[00:24:49] I mean, obviously a lot of hotels, particularly independent ones, cannot afford to translate into. Every language and every
[00:24:57] Wendy: language.
[00:24:57] Steve: Yeah. To do it live. booking.com or Priceline, as it's known in the States, about eight years ago, had, I think it was something like between 500 and a thousand translators around the world, translating all of their pages live.
[00:25:13] Mm-hmm. without translation to make sure that it all translated properly in all the content and you know, If not the biggest, they're one of the biggest, you know, accommodation platforms for purchasing in the world. Mm-hmm. . And, you know, that helped them a lot because, you know, they were fighting with Expedia to be number one.
[00:25:36] They did a lot of paid search aggressively against each other. And the better quality score you get the lower. You know, the low, the lower the cost of that click and translation is part of that. And therefore they invested in content when it was still important for it to be more written than it was visual.
[00:25:53] And it seemed at that time, seemed to really work for them. And that translation piece became more important than just that Google Translate plug. Yeah.
[00:26:03] Wendy: Yes. It's interesting cuz I think the the lower price hotels can't afford to translate in every language. But if you go back to know who your visitors are and you see that you have a lot of French and Spanish visitors will take those two languages, build out a landing page, which is a, you know, a few hundred dollars, and then make sure your booking site is translated.
[00:26:27] You're gonna beat the com competition. Who just has the plugin?
[00:26:31] Steve: Yes, exactly. And I think that's, that's, you know, we've done hotel marketing 1 0 1 here. Yeah. But, but it's, it makes a lot of sense. But you know, a lot of, particularly in Europe's been really tough before that. A lot of costs increased. It's really tough running hotels today.
[00:26:52] It was tough when I did it, but I feel it's tougher now. Customer expectations are higher. You know, inflation is kicked in with electricity and gas and wages and everything else. It's hard to recruit. It's hard to retain. There was been a bit of a messy place and therefore often when there's a crisis, and this has been a long crisis for a lot of people marketing is one of the first things people cut.
[00:27:15] Which is madness and training, which is also madness, which is why the hospitality sector is struggling globally post pandemic, because some didn't market and a lot didn't retain and recruit and train staff. So It's probably no surprise, but it, it's kind of sad because it's, you know, I've been to the states a lot this year and, you know, a lot of hotels can't run up full capacity.
[00:27:37] You know, they pretty much ask you to clean your own room, which from a sustainability point of view is probably right. Right. But it's not what they wanna offer. They can't offer anything else. And so sometimes I think all those crises means that, you know, a small hotel goes, oh, I've got too many things to worry about, rather than translate to my website.
[00:27:52] Maybe they can't afford a marketing manager. Again, a small independent hotel here, maybe 40 or 50 rooms in the States is probably a hundred to 120. So A lot of it depends on scale and whether people or the owners really believe in investing in marketing and whether they see that they can get a return from it.
[00:28:08] And probably a lot have been burnt over the years by spending a lot of money on things and not really thinking it through, and therefore think, oh, I'll just give it to an ota. They'll sell it for me. I don't retain the guest and I have to pay commission, but I don't have a multi manager who I dunno how to manage or they won't waste my money, which I don't think ever really is a waste.
[00:28:29] That's a perception that some people
[00:28:30] have.
[00:28:31] Wendy: Right? Right. But, and I think it goes back to understanding marketing and understanding how to manage someone and set goals and requirements around it. Yeah. I wrote a book on global marketing and one of the examples I used in there was TripAdvisor, and this is back to the Google Translate, that they have a team.
[00:28:53] Professionals that do the human translation for all the original content that they put out. They keep, they use translation memory, and they set up the format. So it's always the same when somebody goes in to look at a listing, but then the customer reviews, they use Google Translate because that's just.
[00:29:13] There's so many reviews that are coming in all the time, and you can get the gist, is it good or is it bad as we know what people are looking for. So I thought they, I thought they had done a good job of, of being strategic about where they use.
[00:29:28] Steve: Yeah, that probably came about from what booking.com did.
[00:29:32] Cause they really, yeah, booking.com really grew. Exponentially from 2007 to 2000, say 11 and 12. And they're still very big. But there was this whole thing. It was very, and I've been fortunate enough to meet a few of the very senior staff there, really smart marketing. Ah they match it with, you know, that you can, you can rent an apartment, you can do hosts, you can do luxury hotels.
[00:29:58] Everything was on booking.com, but a lot of people didn't really know the brand. A lot of affiliate schemes that they used and they did a TV advert. And I remember I was obviously running hotels then, but they included hostels, they included Ys, they included everything. And it was like booking.com, booking dot anywhere.
[00:30:15] And that was a, a big thing because that was like, right, okay. And this was every country around the world. Major, major country around the world and translate it. So if you're gonna do spend all that money on a TV ad and people go to your website or you're app, it needs to be a good user. Its gonna have that translation, particularly if you're doing a Spanish advert, right?
[00:30:36] Sorry,
[00:30:37] Wendy: my throat. Yeah, no. And it goes back to, you know, what you said at the beginning is, is if you speak English, you just assume everybody's going to. But something like 7% of the global population is a native English speaker, and 90% of the people who are bilingual would rather have content in their native language.
[00:30:58] And if you're talking about something about booking it, booking. Particularly traveler hospitality for pleasure. You've gotta get that emotional side in there.
[00:31:10] Steve: Yeah, no, and I think what we're hotels website. As an advantage over an aggregator, like a TripAdvisor or booking Uhhuh change things regularly.
[00:31:21] You can, you can put personality to it. You can, particularly that luxury space. You can, you can make it sing, you can make it, make people dream. Yeah. And I think where people do, you know, some of the luxury hotels we've worked with. You know, the game reserve during the national park, they've had some really bad PR cause they've, there's a of political issues in the Congo.
[00:31:41] But you see a photo of a gorilla in their jungle, you know, it's, it's amazing. Look, you're, there's, there's Caribbean called the Sandpiper in Barbados and they have some amazing drone footage. Or the, the barman called Harold, who does cocktails on the beach. And you just look at, you feel warm. You know, that's that dreaming stage that makes you want to dream.
[00:32:09] And that's, you know, one side of it. But when I travel to the universities in the states often, it's a very transactional thing. I look at price and location and that's it. I just want it to be quick and easy. I, I use one of the larger brands in the states. Obviously we don't wanna do plugs cause that's, that's unless you want plugs,
[00:32:28] Wendy: but it's up to you if you like.
[00:32:30] You wanna plug them? Plug them. .
[00:32:33] Steve: Okt. That's
[00:32:36] Wendy: a good point. Program. And f And so for
[00:32:40] Steve: S Travel, I do it through the Apple, the website. I can type in the name of the university and. It's there, it's just easy. And they recognize the loyalty of it as well. You can change into local currencies. It's all, it's all simple.
[00:32:57] It's easy, you know, and it's that whole, again, going back to that booking journey for that transactional stay. I want it quick. I want an easy, I on a Pressive button. They've got my credit card details. I've got, I don't need to faff around with anything. You know, I turn up in Atlanta at 1130 at night.
[00:33:15] The key was ready for me. I bed and s when you, you or you, Thanksgiving or whatever, it may, maybe it's whole difference, but you, the, you the cocktail when you want to be told when breakfast is or where it is and all of, all of the facilities. Cause you're there for a week or two weeks. But if you're staying somewhere for a night, At a price point, people just want simplicity.
[00:33:43] Yeah. And that's why the journey has to include the personal interaction in the hotel. And why I always felt was important that the receptionist knew what we were doing in marketing. So it was all, and also if you're gonna advertise a lot to Italian and do you have Italian and Spanish speakers on the desk?
[00:34:01] Yes. And that's what we always had. London's a great city for that. There's a lot of language spoken here. Yes. And so, We, we, we would often have a team on the front desk. There was like seven languages spoken or eight languages spoken, so we were always able to communicate. One of the things we veered away from, partly because we would have to change our service so much, was the Chinese market and a lot of hotels in London.
[00:34:25] Back in the late two thousands did a big push for Chinese travelers a lot book through travel agents. So it was less about your website, but internally in the hotel you needed, you need Chinese staff, but you also needed Chinese. Menus and information in the rooms, potentially Chinese channels on the tv, all of that sort of stuff.
[00:34:46] And so, again, without sounding like a broken record, it's that whole customer journey piece is does it all fit together? And it's, it's all the way through. And then, you know trying to personalize it as much as possible.
[00:34:59] Wendy: Right. And I think that's what's so important too, when you're picking who you're gonna do your translation with.
[00:35:04] Can they work with you on your strategy? Because the menu that you translate to give out in the restaurant, or, you know, QR code is the same menu. You can put up on your website so you don't have to translate it twice. So work strategically to leverage that translation. We are running outta time, Steve, and so I wanted to ask you your favorite foreign word, cuz I always like to do that.
[00:35:33] Steve: Well, it's, it's my wife is Swedish and there's a, a phrase, puss and cram, which means hug and kiss. So yes. So her grandmother is 96 and doesn't speak huge amounts of English, and I don't speak huge amounts of Swedish. But we get by and whenever I say goodbye, it's Hido and then Putin crown.
[00:35:55] And then you give a and a kiss.
[00:36:00] it's not pronounced. There's a much better way of pronouncing it. My pronunciation is, Very bad.
[00:36:05] Wendy: Yes, . That's great. All right. Any final recommendations for people in the hospitality doing international, and then where can people reach you if they're interested in working with you or learning more?
[00:36:17] Steve: Sure.
[00:36:17] Yeah. Well, I, I would just say is don't be scared of. Doing and trying stuff. I used to play quite a bit of sport, never quite that high level, but I had some pretty competitive coaches. And even today everyone talks about marginal gains. You don't have to transform everything. One goes. So a 1% improvement on direct business can actually pay for a lot of your marketing, and then you can certainly increment that.
[00:36:40] So I'd say focus on marginal gains rather than a hundred percent improve. And if people wanna work with us the website's, Ummi Digital uk or you can find me on LinkedIn, Steve Lowy and I'd be more than happy to connect.
[00:36:55] Wendy: Okay, so Ummi Digital is spelled u m I. So the website's ummi Digital.
[00:37:00] Dot com
[00:37:02] Steve: uk Co uk co uk
[00:37:05] Wendy: co uk and then Steven Lowie, l o w y, on LinkedIn
[00:37:13] Steve: and, and Steve Lowie cuz otherwise Steven Lowie is the former CEO of Westfield Shopping Centers. So, He probably doesn't wanna talk to you about hotel
[00:37:23] Wendy: marketing. Okay. So look for Steve Lowie and type in u Umi u m i. Yeah. And thank you so much.
[00:37:31] I really appreciate talking to you. And yeah, Steve, I'll I'll catch up with you later. I can see that my next call is, oh, oops. He just went away, .
[00:37:41] Steve: Alright, well have a great Thanksgiving and. Good luck with TK Max and we'll be in touch .
[00:37:48] Wendy: Okay? Yeah. If I can help in any way, please let me know. Do you know anybody else that might be good to interview on the for the podcast?
[00:37:58] Steve: I'll have a
[00:38:02] particularly interesting for you as one guy, so I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll see if he's in.
[00:38:09] Wendy: Okay. Or any clients that are doing translation well and have a hotel property, that would be a really interesting one to follow up on This one. Tourism site. Yeah,
[00:38:21] Steve: I'll around. Okay. I know a lot of people who do it badly, but you don't need to that, I'm sorry, what?
[00:38:28] I know a lot of people who do it badly but that maybe that's not the right, the right audience, not our clients, but yeah, a lot of big brand to do translation. Really badly, but Well, if you
[00:38:38] Wendy: know anybody, we'll get 'em in and I can give them suggestions. . Yeah. Who do you use for your translation or your, for your client's translation?
[00:38:48] Steve: We often push that a lot to the client and encourage them to, the reason being is when you are the middle person, excuse the phrase, lost in translation but. If it does go slightly siff, it's always our fault not. And so over the years, I can't remember the name of the, we used a quite large one for a while and then we asked them to translate a legal document, and then I happened to have a speaker of that, can't remember it, and we paid a fortune for it.
[00:39:21] And so obviously we were like, right, okay, this needs to be. We can introduce people, but like it's sometimes not for us to be involved in London. A lot of the a lot of the marketing teams will use people within the teams to translate cause of the number. I mean, we had 40 nationalities in our hotel working there, so, Ah, so that will often be the way.
[00:39:43] And again, I don't know if someone's good at writing in Portuguese. You just have to hope they're, but yeah, I think
[00:39:49] Wendy: go back and and listen to podcast episode number four. Randy Rod, you're talking about if you have your employees do the translation . Yeah,
[00:40:00] Steve: I think, I think the big thing, Wendy, is that hotels are on very tight margins and It.
[00:40:05] Yeah. Even for translation company, it's showing the benefit of it. Yeah. It's not, a lot of people say, well, Google translates fine. My hotel's full. So they don't see the long term benefit of it's, I think it's important, but you know, I think it's a, of people have been burning in hotels, including myself. I, you know, I had some dogs of people we work with, with technology and, and marketing and various other things.
[00:40:34] Yeah, so well, I'll keep you posted and yeah, I was gonna get to the other side of London for a dinner, but
[00:40:41] Wendy: ah, for dinner, I'm just thinking about lunch.
[00:40:47] really, really good. You really did a nice job of explaining it and clearer and you know, thinking about that whole buyer's journey. And I sit on the multicultural board at the Greater Boston Convention and Visitor Bureau. So as I was listening to you, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna send this over to to their marketing person so they can use it and get it out to, to their members.
[00:41:10] Steve: Thank you very much. And I hope the accent was.
[00:41:14] Wendy: I understood you enough. . Okay. Sellings would've been really weird. ,
[00:41:21] Steve: that's your but anyway, luck. Dunno. If soccer cup,
[00:41:29] Wendy: what time is the game?
[00:41:31] Steve: Seven 7:00 PM UK time,
[00:41:33] Wendy: so Oh, perfect. Midday. Okay. Yeah.
[00:41:36] Steve: Lunchtime when you're with your Fooda.
[00:41:39] Wendy: Yes, . It's perfect. Yeah, that's wonderful.
[00:41:43] And please let me know if you get to Boston. It would be great to meet you. Yeah, care. Okay. Bye. Bye.
[00:41:52]
