News Briefs

Hospitality Ventures Management Group (HVMG), an Atlanta-based, private hotel investment, ownership and management company, today announced that it has strengthened its Revenue Excellence team with two new promotions. Melissa Arana has been named vice president of revenue strategy, and Denise Hanas has been named corporate director of marketing strategy.

“Melissa and Denise’s new roles are integral in our overall Revenue Excellence commercial strategy,” said Cory Chambers, chief commercial officer and senior vice president, business intelligence, HVMG. “Their leadership and subject matter expertise in revenue strategy and marketing are second to none. Under their guidance, we expect to find and grow new and existing revenue streams as we work toward improved bottom lines throughout our nationwide portfolio of third-party operated hotels.”

Melissa Arana, Vice President of Revenue Strategy

In this newly created role, Arana will oversee the revenue strategy team for the entire company. She joined HVMG in 2011 as an assistant general manager at the Doubletree DFW Airport North. During her tenure, she progressively has taken on bigger and more challenging roles within the company, including regional director of revenue management and corporate director of revenue strategy. Prior to joining HVMG, Arana worked several property level positions at multiple Hilton family hotels. Arana earned her bachelor’s degree in general finance from Texas A&M International University.

“Melissa’s knack for driving results and building strong relationships are hallmarks of her success,” Chambers added. “For those that know and work closely with Melissa, she exemplifies excellence in all that she does.”

Denise Hanas, Corporate Director of Marketing Strategy:

Having joined HVMG’s RevX team in 2020 as a consultant, Hanas has led the company’s marketing efforts through the most challenging time in the industry’s history. In her newly created role, she will expand on her most recent consulting position with the company by overseeing the company’s hotel marketing strategy. Prior to starting her consultancy, Argent Strategic Marketing, Inc., Hanas spent nearly two decades with Marriott International in various marketing and eCommerce roles. She received her Bachelor of Science in mass communications from Boston University.

“Expect more comprehensive engagement in all things marketing as HVMG continues to grow,” Chambers noted. “On a personal note, Denise and I have been working together for 20 years. I can vouch for her hotel marketing expertise and phenomenal, results-oriented approach – she is excellent!”

Up and coming QSR  Salad and Go  is expanding in Texas with three new locations opening in February in the Houston markets of Katy, Richmond and League City.

The Katy store located opened February 1, the Richmond location at  is set to open February 17, and the League City store plans to open its doors on February 22. These new locations will mark the start of rapid brand expansion across the Greater Houston area.

These suburbs were strategically selected as ideal markets for Salad and Go as some of the fastest growing communities in the region. Conveniently located in some of Houston's most popular suburbs, the new locations will provide fresh, high-quality meals with quick and easy convenience at an affordable price.

As Salad and Go continues growing its national presence with a strong focus on Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and Nevada, the brand's expansive growth has it on a positive trajectory to provide fresh and affordable food to communities in more than 125 locations by the end of 2023. Houston is the next step in the brand's expansion across Texas with plans to open additional stores in the market throughout the new year.

Salad and Go's chef-curated menu provides guests with food for any time of the day by offering a variety of delicious and healthy items including salads, wraps, breakfast burritos and soup as well as beverages including hand-crafted lemonades, teas and cold brew coffees.

Salad and Go ensures each meal contains fresh, quality ingredients while keeping prices low by vertically integrating operations and distribution, and sourcing ingredients directly from high-quality local farmers and suppliers whenever possible. The brand's mission to make fresh, nutritious food convenient and affordable for ALL extends beyond its stores and is demonstrated in the work the brand does to donate 4,000 meals every week to those in need, as well as in partnerships with nonprofits to support and fundraise for various worthy causes.

Focus Brands says dual branding is the future of QSR, and the parent company of Auntie Anne’s®, Carvel, Cinnabon, Jamba, McAlister’s Deli, Moe’s Southwest Grill, and Schlotzsky’s, is leading the charge. Today, the Focus Brands portfolio boasts 175-plus open dual branded units with at least 65 more in various stages of development across the country. 

Drive-Thru Convenience

The Focus Brands portfolio brands have signed agreements to open more than 50 dual and tri-brand locations in the coming year, many of which include drive-thrus for added convenience as interest in dual branded franchise opportunities continues to surge.

Flexible Store Formats

Focus Brands is among the brands introducing new store formats, including Krystal, Jack-in-the-Box and Panera Bread, which opened its Panera To Go, solely offering Rapid Pick-Up and Delivery shelves where guests and delivery drivers can easily pick up orders.  

Focus Brands has long pioneered the concept of dual branding, predominately in malls and non-traditional locations with Auntie Anne’s and Cinnabon. Now, the company’s portfolio brands have found new opportunities with streetside dual branded units, which is paving the way for immense franchise growth. 

“Dual branding is the future of our brands, especially on the specialty side of the business,” said Brian Krause, Chief Development Officer at Focus Brands. “There will always be a place in malls, but there is an immense amount of growth opportunity in streetside venues, and, by dual branding, there is more opportunity for enhanced revenue.”

The company invested heavily in consumer research to identify how to create combinations of its iconic brands to resonate with consumers and meet them where they want to be met.

Focus Brands has identified four dual-brand concepts:

• Auntie Anne’s/Cinnabon
• Auntie Anne’s/Cinnabon/Carvel
• Auntie Anne’s/Jamba
• Cinnabon/Carvel – Cinnabon Swirl. 

While key consumer benefits vary by dual-brand combination, one consistent benefit has been convenience. Having these brands together in one location makes them far more accessible than they are individually. This convenience also creates opportunity for franchisees, as co-branding leads to an expansive menu that drives enhanced unit-level volume. 

 

Medallia, Inc., the global leader in customer and employee experience, today announced that Holiday Inn Club Vacations, a leading vacation ownership company, successfully leveraged Medallia to improve “Guest Love” scores for the brand’s customer support call center to their highest levels ever.

Holiday Inn Club Vacations (HICV) is a resort, real estate and travel company with a mission to be the most loved brand in family travel by delivering memorable vacation experiences. With a focus on creating an exceptional customer experience, the company uses “Guest Love” scores (the internal name for top-box experience scores) to understand how it can make customers happier.

As a best practice, HICV collaborates with Medallia on survey design to adjust their surveys on an ongoing capacity, ensuring they are capturing the deepest level of insights available. This often includes using Medallia A/B survey testing to quantify and evaluate the validity and reliability of questions, flow of the survey, and the impacts of different wording.

Based on the response data, HICV then uses Medallia’s AI-powered Text Analytics to analyze customer experience data, pinpoint key issues, and understand real-time guest sentiment across customer journeys. This helps identify the key areas for optimization to deliver the greatest impact to the customer experience. These findings, combined with internal root-cause analysis, enables HICV to design and implement new processes, policies, and training, ultimately contributing to gains in Guest Love scores.

Putting all of this into action is a regular practice at HICV. In one recent example, after reviewing 18 months of survey data for a support call center (24,700 surveys from Q1 2021 – Q2 2022), HICV identified a decline in service experience. Accounting for seasonality, the underperformance YoY and degradation in scores alerted the CX team that there may be an underlying issue, and that an intervention was necessary. By completing a deep-dive into Medallia scores, topics and themes, the company was able to identify the contributory factors. As a result, customer segmentation analysis was conducted, modifications to soft skills training was implemented, and top-performer modelling was developed. Within just three months of launching these initiatives and monitoring them in Medallia, HICV saw the key customer satisfaction rating increase from 78.4% in March 2022 to over 84% in June 2022, exceeding the company’s 2022 goal of 80%.

Medallia’s Agent Connect has helped HICV identify what behaviors separate top-performing agents and what customer behavior styles agents need to be skilled in handling. The team has incorporated these learnings into training modules that focus on soft skills, new hires, and onboarding. Agent Connect also provides coaching and training for agents in the contact center, making it easier to learn and improve.

“The insights we receive from Medallia have given us a much better understanding of what matters most to our owners, members, and guests. We are able to take action on this information immediately and that is what enables us to give our guests exactly what they want,” said Nicole Myers, Vice President of Customer Experience. “Medallia allows us to capture and categorize feedback through different channels: surveys, online reviews, and social media interactions across the customer journey. We are excited to see that the actions taken based on our guests’ feedback are resulting in an exponential growth in satisfaction across the board.”

“Leading organizations know how critical understanding their customers and guests' experience is to the success of the business,” said Gabe Benavides, EVP, Global Sales and Marketing at Medallia. “In an industry built almost entirely on customer experience and loyalty, Holiday Inn Club Vacations has set themselves apart by their commitment to listening to their guests and continuing to take action to improve the customer experience.”

OTA Insight, a provider of cloud-based hospitality business intelligence, announced the launch of Rate Insight+, a solution that gives hoteliers a complete view of their competitive landscape by combining hotel and short-term rental data in a single platform. The new short-term rental data will be available as an upgrade to the core Rate Insight product.

Rate Insight+ offers hoteliers a comprehensive view of competitive short-term rental and hotel pricing in their specific market, providing crucial data to enable better pricing decisions based on demand, occupancy, and rates in their market. With the addition of short-term rental data, Rate Insight+ also saves time and effort by providing a single source of truth - hoteliers now have both the hotel and short-term rental data they need, in one simple and easy-to-use tool.

As the short-term rental industry continues to rapidly grow, professionalize, and increase market share, hoteliers face a host of new challenges.  Short-term rentals are now a mainstream competitor to hotels: 46% of those who paid for lodging in 2021 stayed in a short-term rental at least once. Potential guests compare factors including price, value, and experience offered by both short-term rentals and hotels when booking rooms. But until now, hoteliers have not had a solution to truly understand this new short-term rental competitor, leading to a major blindspot across their competitive landscape.

"With the majority of booking sites offering both hotel and short-term rental accommodation, market convergence is accelerating, and traveler habits are changing," said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of OTA Insight. "Our Data Science team has surfaced some powerful insights to help hoteliers understand the impact of short-term rental properties in their market on their commercial strategy. We're excited to introduce Rate Insight+, the first solution of its kind in the industry. Rate Insight+ enables hoteliers to take a comprehensive approach to analyze their market, understand the impact of short-term rental supply, and gain a competitive advantage."

For over ten years, tens of thousands of hoteliers have relied on OTA Insight to provide real-time, high-quality market data to capture demand at the optimal price. The winner of Hotel Tech Report's Rate Shopping and Marketing Intelligence category for three consecutive years, OTA Insight is a proven innovator. The new Rate Insight+ will help hoteliers gain a much richer view of their markets, enabling them to price with confidence in the face of an ever-changing competitive landscape.

HotelKey, a cloud-based hospitality platform, added its Central Reservation System (CRS) to an already existing portfolio of HotelKey products in use at Extended Stay America (ESA). ESA has worked with HotelKey for its Property Management System (PMS) since 2018, and for the HotelKey Call Center Module (Find & Reserve) since 2020. HotelKey’s next-generation cloud-based CRS product includes direct connectivity to leading OTAs and GDS systems, an easy-to-use Call Center module, integration with Channel Managers, and seamless integration with the HotelKey PMS.

HotelKey Co-Founder and President, Aditya Thyagarajan, said, “We are excited to further expand our relationship with Extend Stay America. ESA has an unwavering commitment to innovation and adoption of next gen solutions. The new agreement is not only further validation of that commitment, but also brings HotelKey one step closer to our vision - helping enterprises across the hotel industry implement full-stack solutions that support owners and franchisees and hotel managers to effectively manage their properties from anywhere.”

John Laplante, Chief Information Officer at Extended Stay America, said, “We are pleased to continue working with HotelKey, with the addition of its CRS product.” He concluded, “HotelKey has helped enable innovation of our tech platforms and further provides strategic value to our business.”

The addition of the HotelKey CRS brings ESA even deeper, more comprehensive operational benefits from a suite of integrated software solutions that are helping more than 4,000 hotels worldwide to  streamline operations and costs. HotelKey and ESA will work closely together to implement the CRS system across its portfolio of hotels with the goal of converting all hotels by the end of 2023.