125 – 2023 Year in Review with Travel Media Group President, Dana Singer

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

In this year-in-review episode, podcast host Ryan Embree has a meaningful conversation with Travel Media Group President, Dana Singer, to go over some of the most significant innovations and milestones that took place in 2023 for TMG and what exciting developments hoteliers can look forward to from TMG in the new year. With hotels and hotel management companies trying to grow their digital marketing efforts and reach more travelers, you will find out how Travel Media Group plans to help them achieve their hotel digital marketing strategy resolutions. Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree, as always, one of my favorite episodes of the year. It's an annual tradition. Dana Singer, President of Travel Media Group joins me today. Morning, good morning Dana. And, we're wrapping up another year and I love this episode 'cause it takes the time to reflect on everything that we've accomplished as a company, Travel Media Group, but also the industry. You know, as we get into another year, we've sat here in years past before and, you know, maybe that that outlook hasn't been as bright as it looks in 2024. And maybe finding those bright spots have been a little bit harder to do. But before we get into talking about Travel Media Group, which we're certainly gonna talk a lot about today, this is the year in review episode. I wanna talk a little bit more about the hotel industry as a whole and how it compares to those last couple years that I just talked about. Dana Singer: Sure, yeah. You know, the industry continues to demonstrate resilience, travel demand remains strong. however, it's not without its headwinds and, and challenges. And this year at Travel Media Group, we conducted several industry surveys of our database, over 40,000 hotels. And we found that staffing is still a significant challenge. It's important to mention that the industry forecasts are positive and it's exciting to see the number of new entrants into the market, and that really speaks to the evolving needs and expectations of travelers. Ryan Embree: Yeah, so certainly a brighter outlook than, like I said, maybe years past that we've seen. But, you know, some of the challenges that we've seen in this industry, we talked about it on this podcast just a few episodes ago with Chip Rogers when he came on, you know, still seeing those challenges when it comes to staffing and for hotel owners and management companies to find that time. But they're getting it much more effective and efficient at combating these staffing challenges. This hasn't been something that's happened in the last six months, is actually something that's happened over the last couple years. So that's why actually we're at Travel Media Group seeing a lot more demand for things like crafting social media for a hotel or management portfolio, responding to reviews, giving back time to their employees, taking task off their plate so that they can be more efficient. So there's also this kind of evolution and trend towards outsourcing some of that stuff that's a lot more welcome. So in that same vein, I wanna talk about Travel Media Group and, you know, some of the latest innovations and developments. We've had Jason Lee on here, chief Technology Officer. I feel like he's on here almost every other episode talking about some sort of new development or launch. Let's talk about some of those developments in 2023 and the impact that it's had on our hotel partners. Dana Singer: Sure. You know, if I look back, I would say,