Celebrations are underway at TMG headquarters, and we gather round to recognize the milestone of reaching 1 million social media ad spend across all of our hotel partners!

This achievement would not have been possible without the continued support and trust of our partners, and their unwavering commitment to creating compelling stories and digital content for travelers, as well as fostering genuine connections with hotel guests.

In this special celebratory Suite Spot episode, Travel Media Group’s Chief Technology Officer, Jason Lee, and Product Manager – Social Media, Brian Ross, both join the podcast to discuss the incredible accomplishment and what it means for TMG and our wonderful hotel partners.

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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. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. We are here back, we’ve been on the road, we’ve been visiting and hosting people on the Suite Spot virtually, but we are back here at the Suite Spot Podcast studio with a very familiar guest, Jason Lee, Chief Technology Officer, who we’re gonna have on in a second. Then we’re gonna be visiting with Brian Ross, our product manager, social media, to celebrate this incredible milestone. Jason, welcome back to the Suite Spot. Thanks. Yeah, glad to finally be back. Yeah, we’re excited to have you, celebrating a milestone today. A million dollars in ad spend for our hotel partners. Again, you know, with Travel Media Group, we work exclusively with hotels. Let’s first, you know, off the bat, huge accomplishment milestone. What does this mean to hear you kind of hearing this being there since the very beginning of this solution all those years back?

Jason Lee:

Yeah. It’s exciting. Obviously it is when you think about it in the increments that we boost posts at, it’s a lot of posts. Yeah. It’s a lot of posts for a lot of hotels. A lot of weeks of content. So just extremely proud of what it has produced for our hotels. But also for our amazing social media team that creates such engaging content and makes boost able and ad worthy content.

Ryan Embree:

Well, and that’s the important part because, you know, obviously a million dollars is a big number. But you don’t need necessarily a million dollars to run an effective ad campaign, and that’s what you were kind of talking about. With the small increments. Talk to us a little bit about that, because I do feel like sometimes hoteliers, rightly so, are intimidated with something like social media ad spend. They don’t really know where, you know, ’cause you can boost a post for as low as $5 all the way up to, thousands of dollars. And they’re still going to spend your money in one way or another. So kind of talk through that process because effectiveness is really the key to the game there.

Jason Lee:

No, absolutely. And I think it gets into how you create content. What is the cadence of that content? How often do I do it? But then it also gets into what am I trying to do? So you can create content and not boost it or put ads any kinda ad spend behind it at all. And you’re going to have that content on your page. You’re gonna reach out, your community is gonna see it if if they have that, you know, alerts or whatever set up for you. But what boosting does is it allows you to reach this audience that is not inside of your sphere. So it allows them to be able to see these posts, but even more importantly, it allows them to engage with these posts. So if they engage with them, now you kind of have them in the algorithm. Now, now you’ve got ’em a little bit. Right. There’s future state with these, uh, guests. But, but we’re talking about $5 increments. So for this very small amount of money, you’re talking about 10 to 30 x on reach and engagement. And, and that is incredible. Uh, and especially because it’s sort of like builds on itself because the more that a post is interacted with, the more feeds it’s inside of, you know, somebody shares this post. So now you’re like, obviously any content that is engagement worthy, the algorithm is gonna put out in front of people.

Ryan Embree:

Yeah. It’s that social media ripple effect. And, you know, we say it all the time for hotels. I mean, who’s not thinking or typing in their social media search bar, uh, about travel Yeah. Or thinking about travel or, or, and, and we’re at a really, really cool spot in our industry where we could be that social media post could be the thing that inspires someone to take action to say, I want to take this trip, or I’ve been thinking about this, and now all of a sudden you’re all in that all important algorithm that you’re talking about. And that’s really where social media ad spend comes into play. Because before it used to have to be either someone shares this information with you or a follower of yours interacts with that social media ad spend, um, really targets an audience that might not be following your account.

Jason Lee:

Absolutely. But is looking for travel in your area. Right. So, or is following content like your content. Right. And I think that’s what’s so cool, but you add to this, right? And so we, we’ve talked about short form video, uh, on this podcast before, but you add boost to short form video and now you’re in this whole other thing where it’s not about engagement as much as it is about time viewed. So if I watch an entire video of yours about your property or an about an event coming up or about your restaurant, right now I’m in this algorithm. Yeah. So now the next time I put content out, it’s pretty good bet it’s gonna be in my reels feed. So that’s, and that’s, and that’s very powerful, especially for a $5 boost. You could get out to three, 400 people. Right. And you get from that three or 400 people, let’s say you get 15, 20 people that fully engage with it. but you do that three, three or four times a week. Yeah. This is this, these are compounded numbers that really make a difference.

Ryan Embree:

Well, we always say it and have said it is had a parallel to the online billboard, right? Yeah. About seeing that sign on the, uh, the side of the highway. But you don’t know the intent of every single one of those people every single time someone drives by that billboard. Uh, whether you’re targeting the right person or not. Uh, when, when you’re doing social media ad spend, you have a, you can be a little bit more prescriptive there. Yep. And I think the conversations that I’ve been hearing, you know, at the hospitality show and, and these other events and talking to industry leaders even through the podcast is everyone has this interest right now in how hotels are being found.

Ryan Embree:

Right. Obviously the LLMs is what our, everyone is talking. Right. Right. But there’s a natural transition, especially in the younger generation of them going directly to Instagram and TikTok to figure out where to travel Yeah. And that to, you know, talk about that and what you’ve kind of seen or even heard from hoteliers and, and where that’s sitting in the booking journey right now.

Jason Lee:

Yeah. You know, I think social media, social media is really amazing. And I, and I do feel like where social media content sits in the minds of a lot of marketers is inspiration to travel. Like, it’s sort of like that’s where I draw to Yeah. You go, well, let’s say inspiration to travel. That’s the thing that gets me to want to travel. But we’re seeing more and more and more where inspiration travel is absolutely there. But pre-booking research is there. Post-booking is also there. So now I’ve booked my room and now I’m going to your Facebook page or your Instagram page to see what’s going on at your property. So, so now I’m in this kind of secondary thing, or I’m sharing that, I’m sharing that information, but then in post stay, so in stay, I, I shouldn’t, I I I got ahead of my skis there in stay. I think it’s also important because this is more information about what’s going on at your property, if there’s a valuable enough information that’s happening, and I’m not talking about every, every, uh, post is a pitch mm-hmm <affirmative>. Right. It’s every post is something that’s valuable to a traveler in a various state of their journey to you. And that is, I think that’s a really important distinction. There’s a time and place for pitch. And, and, but in, in, in the content that we create, we’re trying to engage travelers, but we’re also, we’re trying to engage them in those, in all of those phases. But in stay I think is also important. But if I engage with you in Stay it’s pretty good chance I’m going to start getting your content in post stay so I start to remember you. Yeah. So this is like, you can really hit every phase of the traveler’s journey. And I know that acquisition is on everybody’s mind, but this is more than that. This is, this is where you can develop a relationship and that, and I definitely feel like with Gen Z and the generations after that, this is where relationships are gonna be.

Ryan Embree:

Yeah. And where loyalty is built. Absolutely. Which is brand loyalty is built, which is what we’re looking for. You know, as marketers, obviously we want to inspire, but you know, we don’t want this to be transactional between guests and hotel. We hopefully this is the beginning of a relationship. And one of the places we’re trying to connect with a traveler in a world where we’ve removed a lot of friction in the guest experience where they don’t even need to speak to an employee anymore at your hotel. So this could be your mainstream of connection between you and the traveler could be soc