78 – Attracting the New Bleisure Traveler

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

In this episode of the Suite Spot, host Ryan Embree is joined by Travel Media Group's Content Manager, Marissa Kinzel, to discuss the cross-section of business and leisure in the travel industry. They define what "bleisure" travelers are, and share ideas about how hotels can market their properties to attract this type of traveler post-COVID. Marissa shares tips for posting to social media and deals hotels can offer that will catch a bleisure traveler's attention. Ryan shares specific ideas for using LinkedIn to showcase business spaces and how to talk about your amenities to appeal to both the business and leisure parts of a travelers' trip. To get more information about becoming a special guest on the Suite Spot or to submit a question or topic for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455. 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. Ryan Embree: Hello everyone, and welcome. You are listening to the The Suite Spot a hospitality marketing podcast. Thank you for listening today. We have another amazing episode for you today. This one is centered all around a new traveler that we might not have known existed a couple years ago, but it is a trending topic in the industry. It's becoming more prevalent and hotels are actually filling their properties with these types of travelers. And it's actually a combination of two types of travelers that we've come to know and love. That's our business traveler and our leisure traveler. So before we get started, with me today, I'm going to introduce our guest with me. That is the Content Manager at Travel Media Group, Marissa Kinzel, Marissa, thank you so much for joining the Suite Spot. Marissa Kinzel: Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. I'm happy to be back. Ryan Embree: Yes. And very excited to get your insight and wealth of knowledge on this particular subject. We have spent over a year now talking about everything in the hotel industry that is being represented as a quote-unquote, "new normal," what hoteliers can do to adapt and change their hotel marketing strategies. And we've got this new traveler, this bleisure traveler, business, leisure combined. So what we're going to do today, Marissa, is we're going to go back and forth. We're going to do some brainstorming for listeners today and maybe share some ideas on how these hotels can attract this new bleisure traveler. What's important to them? Why are they traveling? And if we can put a strategy and target them appropriately, that's going to lead us to some more bookings and more business on that path to recovery. Let's go ahead and get started. One of the main ways that we know travelers are now getting their information is through social media messaging, communication, trying to figure out as much information before actually booking. Ryan Embree: Once they've booked, they're even going to places like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, to get that comfort level and confidence up before their actual trip. So when we're talking about bleisure travel, one of the things that we want to keep in mind is: this is a dual-purpose trip. So promoting amenities like the pool, you know, if you have a beach or another onsite amenity, fitness center, that might be attractive to the leisure side of their trip, but they're also going to be interested in things like Wi-Fi, business centers, meeting spaces. This is the place that they're going to use for the business side of their trip and how they're going to be working from your hotel. Marissa Kinzel: I agree completely. I think that trying to advertise both things that are attractive in a leisure sense and things that are attractive in...