131 – Suite Spot: Spotlight – Caribe Royale Orlando

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

Managing Director at the Caribe Royale Orlando, Amaury Piedra, checks in to the Suite Spot in our latest Spotlight series episodes to give viewers the 4-1-1 on the $140+ million dollar re-imagination of the resort and what guests can expect from the remarkable expansion and transformation. This episode covers some key digital marketing topics like social media for hoteliers and gives insight into the traveler's journey through the Caribe Royale Orlando property experience. 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, as always, Ryan Embree. Thank you for joining us wherever you're listening or watching us on your YouTube. Hopefully you are watching this episode because we are live on site for our Suite Spot: Spotlight series at another amazing, incredible hotel. But before that, I'm gonna bring in our guest Amuary Piedra, Managing Director of the Caribe Royale Orlando. Amaury, thank you so much for being on the Suite Spot. Amaury Piedra: No, thanks for taking the time to be here. Happy to have you here. Ryan Embree: You know, I had the pleasure of walking the grounds and having a tour of this amazing resort. I feel like hopefully in that app that you provide, you got a map in there because there is so much to do. But before we get talking about this hotel, which, which we're certainly gonna do today, tell us a little bit about your hospitality background. One of my favorite questions to ask because in this hospitality world we're in, you can start any which way as a bellman you can be born into the industry. Tell us a little bit about your background. Amaury Piedra: Sure. I grew up in south Florida and I actually got my first hotel job at the age of 15. So I'm not gonna give my age away, but let's just say it was over 40 years ago. And, uh, it was valet parking, and that's where I started in the industry parking cars and I've done a multitude of positions and up to, and I wanted to get to my goal of being a general manager, managing director. And that happened around the time I was 30, but it was fantastic. It's, it's what I've done my whole life. Ryan Embree: You know it's funny, I started as a bellman valet over here on the other, the side of me. I feel like if we wanna get a good gauge of maybe the hoteliers of the future, go to our front desk or go to maybe those frontline and there's gonna be a story there. But I think it's so important and critical that you have that background too, because when you do get in this, this managing, you know, GM, you know, we have front desk managers, now you've got an idea of what the job is and the day ins and day outs and, and that really is gonna serve you in your hospitality career. Amaury Piedra: Well, you know, I always tell our associates when we're doing new hire orientation that you can go as far as you want to go. And I use myself as an example. So it doesn't matter what position you're in now, if you apply yourself, you can go to whatever you wanna get to. You can achieve whatever you want. And, I enjoy speaking with our hourly associates because they're really the ones on the ground, you know, taking care of our guests and whatnot. So yeah, it's a great industry that's provided, you know, great opportunities for myself, my family, and many others. Ryan Embree: Those frontline employees definitely have their ears to the floor. We'll talk about the guest experience here and how you prioritize that at the Caribe Royale, let's get into this property, right? So the reason we're here, this is the Suite Spot: Spotlight series.