Hostit: Joel Pakalén ja Maija Niemelä

Vieras: Marc Hoes (Applixure)

[Joel] Alright. Tervetuloa takaisin Ihminen vai kone, huomisen hotellissa -podcastin pariin. Tänään meillä on aihe, joka koskettaa jokaista hotellin johtajaa, yrittäjää ja myyntipäällikköä: markkinointi. Mutta ei se perinteinen laitetaan lehteen ilmoitus -markkinointi, vaan se koneisto, jolla asiakkaat oikeasti tuodaan ovesta sisään digitaalisella aikakaudella. Mä olen Joel Pakalén.

[Maija] Ja mä oon Niemelän Maija. Tänään me kysytään vaikeita kysymyksiä. Voiko tekoäly hoitaa markkinoinnin kokonaan? Miksi hotellit häviävät taistelun asiakkaista teknologiafirmoille? Ja ennen kaikkea, mitä pienelläkin tiimillä voi rakentaa markkinointikoneiston, joka pyörii kuin itsestään?

[Joel] Juuri näin. Meidän vieraalla on kokemusta sekä hotellialan disruptoimisesta että puhtaasta softabisneksestä, joten luvassa on tiukkaa asiaa kasvusta ja kannattavuudesta.

[Maija] Kyllä, mutta ennen kuin mennään siihen, muistutellaan, että tässä podcastissa on kyseessä ja taustavoimana hanke Finnish Hotels of Tomorrow 2.0. Metropolian ja Haaga-Helian yhteistyöllä me kehitetään ja innovoidaan tulevaisuuden hotellia. Rahoittajina Uudenmaan liitto ja EAKR.

[Joel] Ja tavoite on selvä: löytää ne käytännön ratkaisut, joilla suomalainen hospitality-ala pärjää kilpailussa. Mennäänpä päivän vieraaseen. Koska vieraamme on suomalaistunut kansainvälinen huippuosaaja, vaihdamme tässä jaksossa lennosta englantiin.

[Maija] So let’s welcome our guest and dive in.

[Joel] Nice. Welcome, Marc.

[Marc] Thank you for having me, first of all. Beautiful introduction. Couldn’t have said it any better myself.

[Joel] Today we are joined by a true full stack marketer. He is Dutch born but has become a regular in the Helsinki tech scene and in Finland. He helped build a brand for the tech-focused hospitality company Bob W, and now he promotes growth at the B2B SaaS firm Applixer.

[Maija] And we have heard that he is a man who believes in authenticity over polished corporate jargon. Warm welcome, Marc.

[Marc] Thank you. To jump in there straight away, [naurahtelua] that’s definitely something that I prefer. Just skip over the quote unquote bullshit and go straight to the real talk. Numbers talk, words don’t usually.

[Joel] Exactly. Marc, it’s great to have you. We’ve been discussing about having you in the podcast for quite some time, and now it really happens. I’ve known you for a few years now as a marketing mastermind, but also as a human first people person with some stand-up comedy in your backbone.

For those who don’t know you, you have a fascinating profile because you moved from the hospitality trenches at Bob W to the world of pure software and SaaS. But before we get serious, we have to break the ice. You are known for advocating true hospitality, but also no-nonsense marketing. What is the one marketing buzzword or cliché in the hotel industry that you would absolutely ban if you could?

[Marc] It’s funny that you introduce me with authenticity, ’cause that’s one word [naurahtaa] that I would totally ban. You see this a lot in hospitality, where people use the words authenticity, like you will await an authentic experience. That doesn’t mean anything. Let the guest decide what it is, but describe in the best way possible what your experience could entail. Let’s say we grab the word luxury. You can’t say you have a luxurious experience, ’cause what luxury means is so different for everyone. But what you can say is that you have top-notch quality materials in the bed, the room, the bar, stuff like that.

That is the same for me in authenticity. You can’t describe it as authentic. That’s up to the guest itself. So those words in general, but authenticity maybe on its own. And if we translate that slightly to a more marketing angle in terms of buzzwords, I would completely remove the word discount. Discount is such a horrible thing to apply in hospitality marketing because [maiskauttaa] it diminishes your brand, especially brand equity over the long term, and that’s what I would remove.

[Maija] I’m so happy to hear that you are already talking about the guest, ’cause that is what it’s all about. That’s where the money comes and that what runs the world [naurahtelua] still. Okay, Marc, could you briefly tell our listeners about your background? How did you come to Finland, for example?

[Marc] This is one of the best import products of Finland, and that’s a Finnish partner. 10 years ago, a little bit over 10 years ago already, I was gonna do an Erasmus half year in Lahti. I was supposed to be here for four or five months and then go back to where I came from, but I met a beautiful blonde woman at the airport, and we have been together very literally ever since. That has really opened up the opportunities in Finland for me as well.

We did live in the Netherlands for a couple of years, but at one point we were looking to start a family as well, which we have started at this point, and Finland was a very natural destination to do that, especially obviously with her family and friends also being here. So that’s a little bit the origin story for coming to Finland.

My background itself is in marketing like you guys described. 10 years ago, I entered the workforce after studying, and I wanted to do something marketing-related. My dad has actually a background in sales and marketing, and he was in his company looking for a marketeer, and I thought, ”Why not? It’s fun. Gonna work with my dad.” I jumped in not really knowing a lot about different aspects, and the more I developed in that position, I really enjoyed what you can do with digital marketing specifically at the time.

What was really cool to see is that we were selling a business product for business professionals, and I was suddenly generating revenue through social media advertising. That was pretty cool because I came from basically never having done this to suddenly doing 2,000 euros in revenue every month, 5,000, 10,000. Suddenly it was like, wow, I have so much power and I’m basically sitting in my bedroom trying to generate this kind of revenue.

I thought if I’ve taught myself all of this through YouTube and through colleagues, what could I do if I go to the highest potential level? My next step was related to how do I get to work at a marketing agency that does marketing for the biggest brands out there? So I went to a company called Omnicom Media Group. Omnicom Media Group basically does marketing for huge brands, and one of the accounts that I was working on was McDonald’s. It was very cool, it was very interesting, but it is a bigger type of company, so corporations and more bureaucracy, and the ADHD-er in me can’t handle that quite well. [laughs]

I thought after a year, you know what? I feel like I could do this much better, a lot faster, and a lot more innovative, so I decided to start my own company with a buddy of mine. We did that for a few years, and eventually throughout the years moving back to Finland, got in touch with Bob W. So I was looking for a new challenge, this new startup, and they had technology-based first hospitality. Thought this sounds quite interesting. Is this the future? Enrolled that, did that for a few years, and eventually over the years, technology really takes the lead in my ambition, so I’ve now really switched to technology-based companies entirely, so SaaS-based companies. That’s a little bit where my expertise lies at the moment.

[Maija] So you’ve been marketing McDonald’s burgers, nights in the hotel, and now selling software to IT teams. Is marketing just marketing, regardless of the product?

[Marc] My personal vision is that you need to be able to zoom out to what you sell, and if you zoom out and you see what the customer journey is, where the bottlenecks lie, and that eventually goes towards a very specific target. That can be revenue, lifetime value, that can be cost of the acquisition. These things shouldn’t naturally quite change across industries. Sure, there are channels where you need to jump into that. For example, with hospitality, it’s OTAs. With B2B SaaS, it’s a whole mix of different channels. The decision-making process can be longer and different, but overall, I think eventually what you’re selling to is the human. It’s always human-centric marketing. That is what I think doesn’t change at all. You are trying to solve something, provide something to a human being, and that’s eventually the same across industries.

[Maija] And how do you sell? Is it the feeling?

[Marc] All the feelings. It’s very authentic. You need to find across multiple channels and multiple steps, something that you provide to someone that they find valuable.

[Joel] Amazing. You have quite a background, and let’s deep dive into this topic of marketing. Traditional hotels, as we are teaching future hospitality professionals at Haaga-Helia, and future employees of traditional hotels. These hotels are often obsessed with capturing demand. We need to capture demand from here and there, basically fighting for visibility nowadays in the digital channels. You talk about demand generation in essence. So for the hotel leaders listening and for the future hotel professionals, how has the game changed? Why isn’t it enough anymore to just have a nice website and wait for bookings to come in?

[Marc] Depending on what you are, so if you’re an independent hotel, a small hotel, or a big chain, the marketing angle is very different. If we just focus on the demand capturing, we have the booking stages, or let’s say the life cycle stages. You have someone who is not looking at all but open to high level content or information. So five things to do if you ever go to Barbados. Okay, great. Worth reading, but something to not really take action on just yet. But you have planted the seed.

The next one is, I’m actively looking for a trip, or I’m going towards that phase. Then there’s the booking stage at all. You know exactly where you’re going, what the requirements most likely are. Then you go to waiting before the trip happens, the trip is happening, and after the trip. If you just focus just on the demand capturing, so something that already exists, which is quite lucrative because that means low effort, potentially high reward, there’s a lot of competition in that space.

If you just focus on that part, you are competing with booking.com, Expedia, hotels.com. Good luck. [laughs] Booking.com was Google’s biggest customer globally. Good luck with a billion dollar ad budget versus the 200 euros you have with your smaller independent hotel. Budgets don’t have to say anything, you can get creative in those things, but that’s why I would personally advocate to go a bit wider across the entire booking cycles.

If you are a small independent hotel, you can maybe tell about the events or things happening nearby your hotel that would be worth visiting. If there’s a cool convention happening nearby and you have special tickets to give to a few people that are in your CRM base, you already have a longer connection, ’cause more people are willing to hear the stories you tell. It’s a lot more interesting and you have a lot more chance to capture demand before it actually is there to begin with, and you can plant that seed so you’re a lot more top of mind.

Content has in the last 10 years really taken the front seat in why people want to be purchasing, so brand, content, those kinds of things. If you’re just looking for a very transactional kind of relationship, I need to go to Turku, I need to just be somewhere near that convention center, that’s fine, but there is so much more demand out there that’s also return business where you could establish this relationship a lot better.

[Joel] When you were at Bob W, you didn’t have a massive history behind, like Hotel KÄMP. You had to build trust from day one, from zero for a contactless hotel or a staffless hotel, if you will. How did you use content to make people trust a brand which was brand new?

[Marc] To begin with, positioning Bob W in the right way is key in this aspect. What we were looking after is that we are not looking for people maybe to come for a whole week and stay in a Bob W. Actually, what Bob W advocates is, go explore the city. We will tell you exactly where you need to be and what you need to do. Now, you can stay for longer periods of time at Bob W. The whole concept is designed that you can stay one day or 100 days or even years. But it is also that it’s life beyond the room itself, and that was the kind of audience that we were looking to target as well.

How do we make sure that we find the right person is also by telling the story that we have great rooms, there’s a lot of design, and we also have technology first. You can do everything yourself. Those pain points of having to check into a hotel and having to wait, and there’s a queue, and the family in front of you is just so slow. You don’t have to do that, so that’s a pain point taken away from Bob W guests.

What we did really well is that we made sure that we also clarified if you want to speak to a human, they’re just a minute away. That’s all digital. It’s all via WhatsApp or a phone call. You don’t have to do all that slow physical part. Some people really enjoy that, but there’s a lot of people, myself included, I don’t wanna be anywhere near that. Get me away from the front desk as far as possible ’cause it feels like it slows me down. I wanna hit the city. I wanna see what there is out there, and with my family, explore that part.

As long as you know who you’re targeting, that is not a burden or anything else. If anything, it’s just a plus and a bonus. So the content that we created was very much about what the apartment was about, so we have design aspects. We have the location nearby all these cool places, bars, restaurants. There was obviously the technology-based aspect that you can explore all these things in the app and book early check-in, late check-outs with a click of a button. If you clarify that to yourself and then explore that in your content, your audience is also way more willing to hear that kind of stuff.

[Joel] So you essentially moved from spreading the word of Bob W from a traditional marketing point of view to more relationship building, human-focused, guest-focused approach when building the storyline and connecting with your audience.

[Marc] If you talk about it from the life cycle perspective, we definitely had a different approach to the average hotel. I think also to bear in mind with these things is that 75% of guests never come back. This is an e-commerce statistic the other day as well. 75% of buyers on an e-com website never come back. So you need to also make sure that you don’t focus your efforts specifically on everyone.

You’re trying to establish a relationship for the long term with that 25% of the guests that could come back. Doesn’t mean that 75% is not interesting. They can still advocate and promote with more business. They can generate reviews. But that 25% is where, in the long term, you need to make sure that your USPs are quite clear. You tell that through the content, through the events, and eventually tailoring to the reason to book in eventually ’cause you can’t just talk about content and events. You need to also have a clear call to action.

If we now go into very nitty-gritty kind of stuff, if you can also segment the people that are coming back, are they business bookers? Are they coming for their family? Are they coming for different reasons? You can establish a lot better personal connection, and you can send way more personalized content to them to come back. ”Hey, there’s a family event coming up, four days full chaos, fun in Tallinn.” That’s a great reason to book right now, and we have a special offer. That is the type of content that people want to see and then come back to as well.

[Joel] How well does this segmentation work? I’m assuming there’s tools involved. Just on a broader scale, for our listeners who are maybe thinking about the same things but not sure how to approach it, how would you approach it now if you need to start planning this segmentation strategy?

[Marc] In a very short, simple answer, just ask your guest, and that can be based on their behavior as well. If they are clearly booking a family room and they’ve checked in three kids, segmentation number one is this is a family. Doesn’t mean that the father, the mother, the kids can’t come back themselves later on. But the person who booked at least falls into potentially two segments, a solo traveler or a family traveler.

This is kind of interesting already, but the more you ask from them, let’s say you do have a physical front desk. You can maybe ask some clarifying questions like, ”Is there any kind of stuff that you would love to hear more about that we can tell you?” And maybe just have a checklist. Would you ever come back to Helsinki for business? Are you with a family? That’s nice to hear. We have some other offerings that could be interesting for you as well. This jumps into a sales angle straight away.

You can use that kind of information so easily. That’s where segmentation just starts. Make sure that you ask the question to begin with, and also just check based on what they’ve booked or checked on the website multiple times. At one point you can just flag that as a tag or segment. Depends a bit on which CRM or tool you use.

[Joel] CRM being customer relationship management.

[Marc] Sorry, jargon jumping in. Basically it doesn’t even have to be a certain tool, it’s something that you can just very easily navigate who is in which segment. Wouldn’t advise it, but you can even use a spreadsheet for that. Just be careful with GDPR with that information leaking.

[Joel] Exactly. So in essence, I would say showing interest towards your guests, trying to understand their preferences and start building from that.

[Marc] Maybe also to quickly jump in, if you have a little bit of information doesn’t mean that you are also maybe missing information. So if you’re a family traveler, be careful that only family information is the only thing relevant to them. It just needs to make sure that that is a piece of information, but allow them to expand their own segmentation as well.

[Maija] Many of our listeners run small hotels or private hotels. You know that marketing is done in really small teams. High output, small team, how do we do that?

[Marc] This is my personal view on the situation. However, I really believe in the fact that you need to make sure that you have strategic clarity, you know what you need to do, and you get help around you. A small team of freelancers is my preferred solution to get the results that you want.

A big issue I see with smaller teams, or even bigger hotels, is that they try to do a lot of things themselves, and Canva is suddenly their best friend. And if you look at their Instagram page, it’s one template that looks more techy, then it’s more sporty, then it’s this. You’re really hurting your own brand by doing a lot of these things yourself. Because they try to do things themselves, they get bogged down in the day-to-day and they lose that strategic focus of why they are doing the thing that they are doing to begin with.

I would highly recommend, ’cause if we translate to your salary, let’s say you earn 3,000 euros in a month, and you spend two weeks on trying to get a video live or trying to design a template, that cost you 1,500 euros just to make that video. Makes no sense, but you can find extremely affordable freelancers across the globe. I love Upwork. That’s a channel where you can find these. I have a video editor in Vietnam. He helps us create videos for a fraction of the price as it would cost a local freelancer.

This really makes a big difference. You could 10X your output and actually also generate quality, because if you start designing things yourself, it’s just not the same quality as someone who’s done that for years. They can do it in 30 minutes, have a great post live. And then you can just focus on, once that post is live, I need to make sure that this person is tagged and this goes there. Then suddenly you have a lot more visibility or a lot more actions that are generating to that end goal. Let other people do what they’re good at so you can keep that strategic focus.

The benefit for small teams versus big teams is that you can move fast. A big hotel chain needs approval from this person and the regional director. Three weeks is gone already. But a small team can get this live in a day. ”Hey, there’s this new event, or this artist is coming to town.” Boom, post live by the end of the day. Moving fast is also a huge difference.

[Maija] You already mentioned video. What do I need to do that if I’m a general manager in a small hotel? Is iPhone and ring light enough? Do I need to have a team?

[Marc] It can be that easy. Now, obviously depending on how you position yourself. If you are a more high-end hotel, there’s a minimum quality requirement. If you’re a very small hostel, the bar is a lot lower, but it again, depends a bit on your branding. You can make it as complex and expensive as you want yourself, but just make sure that you start at least somewhere.

In our company, I just record all of our video content with my iPhone, literally the one that’s in my pocket right now, and the iPhone is fantastic. You can do a lot in that regard. But I do also think it helps that you have a little bit of a framework where your content is coming from. Just creating content for the sake of content, that makes no sense.

A formula that I’ve used for the last years is that you start with writing an article. It doesn’t matter about the length, but you start creating something about an article that someone wants to hear about. From there you have information that you can multipurpose across different channels. You have an article, now you translate this to a script, and you can actually create the video that comes with it. Let’s say the article is about five things that you need to see in Helsinki in February. In the video you could stand in front of your hotel, have a microphone, a little bit good audio quality, and explain, ”These things are coming up in February and I’m gonna tell you exactly where they are. Number one is check our hotel.” The second one is check out this restaurant ’cause they have an event. You stand in front of the restaurant, maybe quickly check with the store manager, and suddenly you have a video.

From that video, you can make short-form videos, get it on TikTok, Instagram stories, all the other stuff. You can even make a podcast episode about it. So you can do a lot of this stuff, and this all started from just an article.

[Maija] Amazing. But is video the thing in 2026?

[Marc] Yes. It has and always will be, I think. But I wouldn’t necessarily focus on just video on its own because it really depends on where your audience is and how they prefer to consume your content. Audio on its own is also fantastic, but it just really depends. There’s no right and wrong answer in the type of content.

I would argue that you have a huge potential if you do embrace video because we live in a three-second world now. If you see a wall of text, people are like, ”Whatever.” You can explain a lot more with video ’cause it’s a more lazy form of content. Reading, you have to actually read, and video can just happen in front of your eyes and you can still consume the information. Video is definitely highly recommended. I would not say that there’s a marketeer in the world that says don’t use video.

[Joel] That kinda sounds like building your content ecosystem. So you have different elements which interconnect and support one another, and then builds the foundation of the brand. We have a lot of students listening, I hope. If they want to impress a future employer, should they be showing a portfolio of polished PDFs to explain their experience, or is a reel enough, like a TikTok feed or a 10-second video?

[Marc] If I would translate to the hiring I’ve done in the past, I prefer people to think about the goal that they’re heading to. A TikTok on its own, great, that’s polished. That means you’re a video editor. But what were you looking to achieve, and what results did it generate? It’s more mindset thinking that I’m looking for personally in a person, and obviously motivation, than beyond a portfolio of visual aspects.

If your goal is to be a visual designer, it starts with a portfolio, no doubts. With a non-visual role where you don’t have very clear always deliverables, it’s like the same in sales. You can’t say, ”I have a portfolio of clients.” What I love in a hiring process is to do a test case or a home assignment. I would try to say, ”This is coming up in March. What kind of marketing plan would you put into place? Keep it low budget, but what would you do?”

That would really fit how they would then, if they join our small hotel, what they would be actually doing day to day. It gives so much more insight. If they understand where they’re going, maybe the plan itself is not fantastic or there’s some things missing, but the mindset is there. That’s something you can build on. You can’t teach the mindset. That needs to come from someone within. How to get there, what channels, how to work, those are all things you can learn.

[Maija] I was telling earlier that I actually hired people who called me. The company was working in hospitality. And these days, calling is unheard of. Somebody called, and I was talking with her, and I hired her on the phone.

[Marc] Also makes someone stand out. If calling is involved and they had the guts to call you up, big difference. Stands out fantastically.

[Joel] Now, jumping to the main theme of our podcast: human versus machine. The authenticity trap. AI promises to do everything now. It might be a bubble, it might be true. But they claim they can write the copy, edit the video, answer guest queries. They can be your digital twin, in essence. And we are already noticing that the amount of AI-created crap online is overtaking the amount of human-created. Be honest. Could AI eventually automate the entire marketing department of a hotel?

[Marc] My personal view is, especially where we stand now with AI, is that AI is a tool to get somewhere. It’s not an end goal on its own, and I think that’s where a lot of mistakes are currently happening. Just AI something because hey, great. That’s not how this works. As long as you have the end goal in mind and you know that you struggle with writing copy, for example, for emails. ”I have this kind of topic, these are the events that are coming up. Can you help me write the email series?” And then you can see and kind of judge and then send those emails out.

I would lie if I say I don’t use AI because it’s just easy to really come up with ideas fast. But if you start with a prompt, ”write me something about…” that’s where it’s wrong already. You need to provide the input, and the AI can help create something out of that. That is a fantastic way to apply AI. But the moment the AI is the leader, and you’re kind of the passenger in the process, where we are now with AI, I don’t believe in that.

You need to really look at what you’re doing from day to day. If I look at wasting time editing videos, can AI edit that video? Does it still cost me time? Might as well get someone who’s a specialist and a freelancer. But if AI can do it, yeah, why not? There’s no enemy in the AI. It’s gonna develop as we move forward, but where we are now, no, I don’t see it that way.

[Joel] It sounds like we could even see a scenario where AI and freelancers, and then the hotelier is the foundation of using the tools, using still the people to create something which helps the hotelier do the marketing actions. But when we move towards the more sophisticated AIs, do we risk losing the sense of humanity or hospitality if we just imagine that the AI actually develops into a format that it actually can perform at a level you would now expect it to perform? Can we still keep the hospitality feel in it, in the messaging, in the marketing sense?

[Marc] We’re now heading to tricky waters ’cause then the question is, how do you describe hospitality? What is that for you? But let’s say we generalize it a little bit, and hospitality is that you enter a certain business, a restaurant or a hotel. You are received in a positive manner that adds more to just bringing food, and eventually you go home, and you had a great feeling. If we generalize it like that, yeah, definitely AI can play into that.

How do you not lose the humanity is as long as someone feels that they’re maybe being heard or that they feel like, ”Oh, this place has really thought this out.” Obviously, an AI can do that, but artificial intelligence is still just artificial. It doesn’t mean that everything’s perfect. It’s a matter of two perspectives meeting each other and hopefully agreeing that for the recipient it is a positive experience. As long as the customer feels like, ”This was great. This is everything that I wanted in this stay,” it doesn’t really matter how that setup works.

Artificial intelligence needs also physical bodies like robots to maybe bring services. I saw that you guys have a robot running around the building cleaning up behind everyone. I do think that humans always look for other humans. Sure, I don’t like the check-in desk because it slows me down. But the answer is not that I don’t want to be around people. I think people love people. People can be very annoying, but people still look for other people, and that’s something that you can never take away, I believe.

[Joel] You mentioned you use AI in your day-to-day business. What about the risks of using AI in marketing especially?

[Marc] The biggest risk on its own is that you let the AI lead, like I just mentioned. If you say, ”This is my customer, these are their problems, this is our solution,” fire out an email without checking it, that’s when you’re on the back foot ’cause you don’t really know what they sent. AI also makes mistakes. AI can’t ever be perfect ’cause they will never fully understand the picture or the angle that you maybe wanna come from or where your recipient is coming from.

As long as you are the leader of that. In the future, let’s say 50 years from now where artificial intelligence and robots are actually employees. Unless you fully trust that person like you do with a human, and they have full ownership, and the results are speaking in a very positive manner, that’s where you need to be careful that AI doesn’t lead. I don’t think we’re remotely close to that point yet, but obviously that will happen in the future.

[Joel] I also agree that AI is more here to amplify our creativity rather than replace the human factor. I think hotels which get the balance right, they use AI, but up to a limit. Those who claim they can replace marketing or sales or HR with AI at this stage, they’re just full of it. But those who use AI smartly have an advantage over the ones who are not using it at all.

[Marc] As long as you have strategic clarity on where you’re heading, what’s the goal, why are you applying AI? If you’re just applying AI for the sake of AI, the project alone is so distracting that you’re heading towards a rabbit hole that doesn’t make any sense. Let’s say AI can help write copy, but you actually never really write copy for whatever reason. Doesn’t really apply to you. It doesn’t help you in any manner. Sure, you can now write whatever you want to write, but you’re not using it to begin with.

As long as you know what you’re doing, and it optimizes what your output wants to be, fantastic. But that’s also where people come in. AI can be much cheaper, not always, depending on the software and the amount of API calls you do. AI on its own is not an answer. It’s very much a tool.

[Maija] A lot of hallucination in AI.

[Marc] It has developed a lot over the last year alone. If you look at this video content tools, a couple years ago, there’s this example of Will Smith eating spaghetti and it just looks absolutely horrible. But now, it looks super realistic already. Sure, there are some flaws you can definitely register or see where it’s not perfect, but it has jumped fast a lot. You can definitely use that to your advantage, but again, you need to lead. If it starts hallucinating, you need to make sure that that’s not part of your content strategy or that it doesn’t get used to begin with or at least rectify it.

[Joel] This is exactly what we’re researching in Finnish Hotel of Tomorrow project, what we’re doing here in Haaga-Helia with Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, trying to understand where the balance is, how can we use technology when it comes to AI, robotics or automation. Trying to find it in a testing environment, test these concepts in real life. And then of course tell about it so people can learn.

[Maija] And also learning about everything and making mistakes as well. Making mistakes is a quite good way to learn. Have you ever done any mistakes in marketing?

[Marc] All the time. Marketing is about 90% making mistakes. Or let’s say we look about campaigns, you constantly try to optimize what you’re currently doing. You have campaigns running, then you start changing the text a bit or the image a bit, and with the help of AI, make it a video. Turns out that the video performs 90% worse, but changing the copy a bit with also maybe the help of AI, it was suddenly 25% better. These are things that you do, but 90% of those tests are a fail for whatever reason. But as long as you learn fast, then you fail fast, you can also exclude what you don’t need to do in the future.

[Maija] Let’s talk a little about SaaS lessons for hotels. And how can Applikser help in that? [laughs]

[Marc] I would say working at Applikser and jumping to SaaS, is really looking at this from a data-driven perspective. I think what I’ve seen a bit throughout the hospitality scene is that people are very much fixed on the kind of occupancy rates or rev par in the short term. It’s never about how do we establish a base for a year or year ahead? How do we build continuously on top of that? What is our cost of acquisition? What is the lifetime value? What is the cost of getting someone back?

Strategic focus towards these numbers, because if you can build on top of that and optimize those numbers, eventually this is what hotel owners or hotel investors are looking to. But if you are very much focused on the short term, ”I got two rooms that I need to fill in the next two weeks,” sure, you can emphasize all your effort on that, but you get the same problem after that and after that, and you start firefighting for filling the last rooms. You need a bit more strategic focus. You need to be a little more forward looking ahead and reviewing these kinds of numbers, and I think that’s what SaaS does really well.

The difference with SaaS is that a hotel, if they had a room empty yesterday, you can’t resell that room. So that’s gone forever. Lost revenue forever. I can understand that, but I do worry that a lot of especially small hotels, they just look at, ”My hotel is filled.” What was the pricing? Is there something that you could have done three months ahead? Is there something about 25% of the customers that we’ve ever had, how to get them back? This is a way more data-driven approach I feel that would really benefit the smaller hospitality scene than this kind of firefighting constantly, which I see a lot.

[Maija] Of course. That happens, and there’s so much data at the moment. How to focus on those things that are the most important in our business?

[Marc] Defining those to begin with is definitely something that you need to establish with the team around you. Let’s say you’re the only marketeer in a hotel with 400 rooms or 1,000 rooms. Check with the commercial department, check with the owner of the hotel, the general manager, what are the most important things that we look at? Your manager also reports to someone who also reports to someone who wants to see certain expectations. As long as you all have the same direction, like these are the most important things, we’re gonna work towards this, and we’re gonna optimize this.

You need to break that down. That’s really where it starts. And you don’t have to do in the first year 20,000 metrics. Simplicity is key. The less you do, the better. Let’s say your goal is just 80% occupancy rates throughout the entire year. Great. That’s the only thing we focus on. You set that target, and you go for it. Then we know how to hopefully develop a plan to get there. But if you run around and everyone’s kind of looking at different things, that doesn’t help either. You need to have strategic clarity and focus, but also be aligned with the rest of the team as well.

[Maija] And you think that that’s the biggest lesson about software world in hospital industry?

[Marc] The beauty about SaaS is that everything’s digital, so you can measure everything. In hospitality, a lot of it also takes place offline. Would be a hypocrite to say that that’s not a big difference, but there are these touch points, and I’ve seen just from people that we’ve spoken to over the years as well that you could be doing so much more instead of looking at how many people check my booking.com page.

There’s so much more that you need to focus on. If you want return customers, how many return customers do you have? How many people do you think have a chance of coming back? What are their segments? And then create a bit of a plan about that. It doesn’t have to be complete chaos or rocket science, but you need a plan. You need a method to the madness. If you don’t have that plan, it’s very difficult to develop then as well.

[Maija] And long-term plan.

[Marc] Long-term, ideally. I understand that the short-term needs to pay for the long-term, if you’re struggling a bit, but ideally, yes. You can plan things quite far in advance.

[Maija] The world is changing around us so fast that we might need to adjust.

[Marc] Exactly. Always don’t stick to your ways necessarily. What we did at Bob W at the time as well, was that we didn’t see OTAs really as the enemy, which I think that the majority of the industry really are against somehow. Necessary evil. But why not use something that’s extremely lucrative to your benefit? You just focus that all your first customers, 99% of them are first time bookers, they come through OTAs. Great. They come in, you get hopefully good ratings, good listings for future potential.

But once they come through the door, you have 100% opportunity to get them back through direct channels. Why fight for that first one where you’re really struggling with budgets that booking.com has to get them back? That 25% is a lot more interesting, and there’s where you wanna build the relationship. So you could say, let’s just focus on that 25%. We build an email marketing list with all these interesting topics, contents, and offers. Not discounts, offers. [laughs] You can even do this in a closed environment, that you really create a community that no one can actually see these videos unless you’re in your special loyalty program. These are things that you can definitely develop, and 25% across a couple of years, that’s thousands of people that could be coming back to you.

[Joel] Wow. I need to touch upon a few of the topics you mentioned. Retention, maybe loyalty, partnerships. What is an OTA? Are you asking me ’cause…

[Marc] For the listeners, because OTA…

[Joel] Oh, sorry. Okay. Online travel agents?

[Marc] OTA, so online travel agent. Back in the day, you went to a travel agent. They still exist across Helsinki, I see them. You would go to a travel agency, they would book your trip for you. Nowadays, obviously everything’s online. You can book hotels through, I would argue it’s even just a marketplace, that all these hotels are compromised in an overview, that you can select filters, and through booking.com, choose something that fits your budget, your style, and the requirements that you settle.

There’s mainly three OTAs. There’s the booking.com group, Booking Holdings. And then you have the Expedia Group, which is hotels.com and the whole shenanigans that come with it. And basically, in my opinion, the third one is Airbnb. Those are the three main booking platform groups that you can book hotels through. If you think most likely to your listeners as well, your parents or you yourself, you book hotels, it’s always through these channels. You’re not gonna go through Google Maps, find every hotel that you’re doing a future trip to Tokyo. You go to those channels.

If you go there frequently, you don’t want to always check booking.com. You might do that directly through the website because they have better offerings, they have things that you want to book extra that you can’t do on those channels. If you diversify your strategy a bit compared to using those channels alone, then I think that could be an opportunity.

[Joel] I think why people use OTAs, online travel agent sites, is they’re kinda like the streamlined booking experience because they’ve been tweaking and enhancing the whole experience so that it’s so easy. So one of these top tips for our listeners, again, make your direct website booking experience as streamlined or at least easy to book as well.

You go to their website, and there’s a phone number or a contact us form. Come on. But you can book it via booking.com or Expedia. So you need to have the balance intact. Also, I want to highlight that you mentioned these channels as partners or partnerships, and I think that is kind of the key. Hotels see OTAs and all these channels which take commission as the enemies or the devils, but my belief is that you should use these channels in a way that it’s both marketing and sales and maybe even building a customer base, building your brand. Not just being on these channels, but actually making stuff happen in the channels. Make most of it.

[Marc] The reason why obviously hotels have a bit of a love-hate relationship is because the commissions that they pay is quite excessive. Depending on how big you are and the deals you’ve negotiated, it’s gonna be up to 30, maybe even 40% of the revenue that comes through. That’s huge amounts, ’cause you need to run a hotel, but what is the alternative? Not being there.

Let’s say all those big groups don’t exist. How does one book a trip then? Then suddenly Google is a person’s best friend. But then you have a hate relationship with Google ’cause you’re not listing on the top. So you actually have at least a tool to get you revenue, and I think that’s extremely powerful. Use it to your advantage. If you want to be more lucrative and you want to generate more net profits, you’re gonna have to use that to your advantage. If people then come through, and then we talk about retention and getting people back directly, I don’t necessarily get the necessary evil part.

Sure, the commissions suck, it’s really expensive or it can be, but there is not really an alternative, and hotels don’t usually do a lot of marketing themselves to begin with. You can hate on a system that is maybe a bit pricey, but the alternative is that maybe your business wouldn’t exist anymore to begin with. You need to really think about this from a wider perspective, and also then use that system to your advantage.

[Joel] We’re gonna have a sequel on this. I think there’s so much to discuss about retention. Like does a hotel have a retention strategy or a plan or anything?

[Marc] I think normally not. There’s definitely opportunity for this. If we really simplify what it means, and that means a marketing newsletter. Everyone who comes through, ”Hey, when they check in, would you like to receive offers in the future? We can send them. We’ll use the email in your system.” ”Yeah, sure. Why not?” And then you build up a base every month. Not thousands of people to begin with, but just a simple hundreds of people there, and that cumulatively grows, of course. That is just the simplest version of it.

Now we can jump into segmentation. We can complicate things a bit, but that’s just where it starts. I very rarely, if I check into a hotel, I don’t really get any newsletters to begin with. I preferably don’t like them [laughs] because the quality is sometimes lacked there. But that’s just how simple this can go.

[Maija] But why don’t we make news videos or podcasts? ’Cause I’m getting a lot of newsletters from different companies. Who is the first one to make, you know, in few minutes this is the thing, a podcast or video?

[Marc] It could be super interesting. The question is then how do you reach the people to view the content? And surprisingly, email is still a very personal direct approach. But if you follow a podcast on Spotify, you get notified that there’s a new episode. There’s multiple channels. I would argue that you need to own your own audience as well. The moment you use an external channel, and that can be social media, that can be Spotify, you don’t necessarily own the channel. You depend a bit on that channel, let’s say for whatever reason Instagram goes bankrupt and it doesn’t exist anymore, and you had 2 million followers there. It kinda sucks right now. Having that base in an email marketing list or in a CRM gives you a lot more control over the relationship, and that’s also something to keep in mind when using channels.

[Joel] Before starting to wrap things up, loyalty programs. Are they something a small or medium-sized hotelier should aim for? Or is it more talk than action?

[Marc] Oh, I would argue, definitely do. Why not give some extra value to people come back? Makes people feel special. It could also trigger that, ”You know what, if I book one more night, actually I get all these benefits for that next trip.” It’s just an argument to book more. But it needs to be clear. Confusion just decreases the chance of a booking.

If you go to a website, you can see if I book this many nights, this is then the next benefit I can get. Great. That’s just clear. It can be super simple like that. Doesn’t have to be diamond premium tier with 3 million points, and I can buy nothing with it. If you get to that kind of weird aspect of loyalty programs, then it’s pointless. If you have a very clear goal, majority of my customers stay two nights, I wanna get them to three nights. Build the program around getting it to three nights. What would that entail? Talk to your customers. And what is then a good personal experience to them to get an extra booking in? I think definitely loyalty programs is definitely something to consider. And please keep it simple. No one needs complexity.

[Joel] Traditionally in a restaurant you get this stamp coupon thing. One stamp for having lunch, and then maybe the 10th lunch is free or half priced. That’s simple.

[Marc] Hotels.com literally had this, every 10 nights you get something on us. Great. That’s how simple it can be.

[Joel] It is strange. I worked at Expedia Group. Hotels.com had these 10 nights and the next night is free. On Expedia’s side you had points, and then on eBookers you had different points. But now they have a unified loyalty program. Nonetheless, we’ve covered a lot of ground today. From demand generation to the dangers of over-automating and relying on AI in its current state.

Marc, if we boil this down to one actionable advice, imagine a hotel manager is listening, and they are planning their budget for next year marketing-wise. They have money to invest in one thing to drive growth. They don’t have too much money. Should they spend it on a new fancy website, paid ads, or a content creator, videographer, freelancer?

[Marc] The answer’s boring. It depends. [laughs] But this boils down to, do you understand the big picture for yourself? Do you realize how much people are coming to your website, how many people are dropping off on your website, and how many bookings are eventually resulted of that. If you can see what you’re missing. So let’s say no one’s coming to your website to begin with. Starting with some ads is a pretty good starting point. If you want more long-term traffic that you build a digital community with, social media, excellent, but then you need video, so we’re talking about the videographer.

I would argue that the website always needs work. It’s not something you set and forget. It’s an evolution, like is your content strategy. The average hotel website is not fantastic, and there’s just friction generally there, and that just needs constant developments. That can be quite affordable. You can work with parts of the world where it costs a fraction than it maybe costs with a local partner. Make sure that if you’ve identified your bottleneck, try to find a solution in your budget as well. It’s very easy to do.

We also have a web developer from Poland, fantastic guy, works day and night for a fraction of the budget if I work with a local agency. I really would urge that smaller hotels really define what are we trying to do and how are we trying to do that? And then if I don’t know how to do that, I figure that out. Everything’s possible. Maybe through AI, maybe through a freelancer, maybe doing it yourself, which I would argue against the most times, but that is the most important.

If we jump into the website part specifically, a good website is the bare minimum. It’s your best sales representative. That website needs to be top-notch. It needs to say what you stand for, and then eventually the bookings come through. These things get quite technical quite fast, and that sucks for someone who is not technical. But then surround yourself with someone who can advise you with that. Don’t try to figure out things that you’re not expert in. You know you need a website. Find someone in your budget that can create that for you.

[Maija] We have a lot of student interns, for example, who need to practice their skills. Like Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences.

[Marc] Well, actually, this would be fantastic. Because this is a good learning obviously for your students, but on the other side, I think hotels would really like to understand from the future buyers ’cause your students are all the future. How do they perceive this? And maybe it’s like, ”Why do you guys even have a website? Everyone does it now through TikTok.” That’s great understanding. That’s something we should definitely explore then.

[Maija] That’s why we try to work with business as much as possible. One more question about marketing. What is the one single most important skill they should master today to be relevant in marketing in 2030?

[Marc] That’s a good one. I would argue a goal-driven mindset. Like I said, if you don’t know where you’re heading, you don’t know how to get there. Let’s say we translate to your students, they wanna work at a top-notch hotel in five years when they’re done studying. What does it require to get there? Now that you’re a student, doors open for you a lot faster than when you’re an employee. So maybe understand, if I wanna work for Kamp Hotel, there’s a requirement that you’ve worked in a restaurant, you’ve maybe have some pricing understanding. Write that down. Make sure in the next couple of years you challenge yourself to figuring that out or have some experience in that kind of area.

Keeping the goal in mind makes it very clear, this is the journey I need to get there. If you have a bit of a random journey like marketeers, surprisingly, a lot happens, they just get stuck in the day-to-day. But as long as you know where you’re heading, it’s very clear on how to get there, and you just focus on that. Keeping the goal in mind. That’s the most important skill because if we talk about AI, and 10 years from now it’s something else. Internet is not a skill. You need to understand how it works, but making sure you understand this is where I need to go, and AI is a step in that. Just defining the goal itself, the journey itself.

[Maija] Goal setting.

[Marc] Goal setting, yeah. Maybe that’s a simpler way of putting it.

[Joel] Brilliant insights. I think this was again a masterclass. Thanks for opening up the black box in marketing. People get marketing wrong most of the time, but I think we scratched the surface. We will have a sequel. I believe many of our listeners got a lot out of it. Very actionable, tangible advice to move forward. Try something new to kind of like, if you need more awareness, try whatever is not happening now in essence. But most importantly, first the goal setting. And then experiment away. Make sure you know where, ’cause otherwise the experiments get lost along the way.

[Maija] Okay, amazing. We have this traditional final question. Are you ready? In your opinion, what is the ideal ratio between human and machine when it comes to delivering successful guest experience in the hotel of tomorrow?

[Marc] Sounds boring. It depends. I think where we’re heading is very much fifty-fifty. If I really have to pick a side, it’s fifty-one human, forty-nine machine, ’cause I really believe that people still love people, even though everyone is people. [nauraa] But people love people. And I think the human element should never go away. I genuinely believe machines and AI, they’re there to help. They are a tool to a goal, but it’s never the winner.

[Joel] We actually ask this question to every guest, and it’s fascinating to see how the answer varies. In the previous episode, we also had this fifty-fifty split, but it was again, more depends on the situation. In a service mindset, more hundred percent humans, but in more a process automated task performing more machines.

[Marc] I think in the long term, the average hotel is not this high super end where margins are huge. So machines need to jump in to make things cost-effective. What I also believe is that in the future there will be a hundred percent human experience and that would be advertised in that way. You only talk with people with us. Machines don’t work here. I can definitely believe in twenty, thirty, fifty years that a human first experience.

[Joel] Likewise. Have you seen Blade Runner, the movie?

[Marc] [nauraa] This is so funny. Someone asked me this literally yesterday, and I had to explain to them, all my friends have always watched it, and this is a movie that I’ve never watched.

[Joel] Okay. Well, let’s schedule a movie night.

[Marc] That’s the sequel. That’s gonna be what it’s all about.

[Maija] Thank you, Marc for joining us. We are so grateful.

[Joel] Huge thanks, dude. To our listeners, don’t forget to subscribe, comment, like.

[Marc] Very important algorithm actually boosts us.

[Joel] See you in the next episode.

[Marc] Thank you very much, guys.

[Maija] Thank you.

[Joel] Bye-bye.

[Maija] Tämä podcast pohtii ajatuksia ja luo keskustelua siitä, missä suhteessa meitä palvelee ihminen ja kone tulevaisuuden hotellissa. Miten teknologiset ratkaisut voivat mullistaa hospitality-alaa ja kuinka pitkälle ne kykenevät asiakaspalvelussa? Onko henkilökohtainen palvelu ihmiseltä ihmiselle tulevaisuuden luksusta? Me pyrimme löytämään käytännönläheisiä ideoita, inspiroivia esimerkkejä sekä strategista näkemystä tulevaisuuden haasteisiin ja mahdollisuuksiin.

[Joel] Podcastin taustavoimana on hanke Finnish Hotel of Tomorrow FHoT 2.0, joka on Metropolian ja Haaga-Helian yhteinen hanke, joka kehittää ja innovoi tulevaisuuden hotellia. Uusilla ja testatuilla palvelukonsepteilla sekä kiinteistöteknologisilla ratkaisuilla tuetaan majoitus- ja rakennusalan liiketoimintaa. Hankkeen rahoitus: Uudenmaan liitto ja Euroopan unionin osarahoittama Euroopan aluekehitysrahasto EAKR. [kevyttä loppumusiikkia]