Pets Will Define the Future of Hotel Growth

Luis Zamora:

Hello, everyone! Thank you so much for joining. I see a few of you coming in. I think we’re gonna give people a few more minutes to join, but as an overview, thanks so much for joining the Pets Vivo-sponsored Pet Friendly Hotel Operations Playbook and webinar. I am Luis Samora, I’m the co-founder of Pets Vivo, and I am joined by Logan Jonas and Scott Yeoh. I think before we dive in, if Scott and Logan, you want to give a quick little bio and background, for our guests, that would be great, and then give people a few more minutes to join. Logan, you want to start?

Logan Jonas:

Sure. Thanks, Luis. Hi, everyone. My name’s Logan Jonas. I’m a co-founder and CEO of Hunting Data. You know, my original background is I ran portfolios for Hilton Hotels and resorts for the majority of my career in the hospitality industry. everything from vacation properties in Napa to large-scale convention hotels in LA, to, luxury properties in New York, and everything in between, from revenue management and strategy perspective, overseeing sales, marketing, advertising, things like that. During COVID, I ended up transitioning and founding a digital marketing company that focuses more on the financial end of the world, helping on the investor side with public and private companies, including in the hospitality space.

Luis Zamora:

Awesome. Thanks, Logan. Scott?

Scott Yo:

Greetings, everyone. I’m Scott Yeoh, I’m the founder of Sky Consulting Group. My background in hospitality starts in… Luxury and lifestyle properties, I’ve been doing that for many moons now. From there, Went on to manage properties and then portfolios, founded Sky Consulting Group to assist, developers, owners, and operators, at any stage they’re at, you know, from ideation to reopening to, you know, stabilization. Where my focus primarily is, is on hotel design, building layouts, operations, and technology advisement.

Luis Zamora:

Awesome. Thanks, Scott. But I think both of you missed an important thing. We are all pet lovers. We have all had dogs, cats. I, myself, have two dogs. It’s the reason why I’m here. It’s the reason why I built Pets Vivo with my co-founder. And basically, my background has been on the investments and VC side for the past 7 and 8 years. over the past year and a half, I noticed that there was a gap in the hotel and hospitality market, and that finding a place that truly welcomed me and my two dogs was really difficult. And when I looked into it, it was mainly a strategy and operations, and the hotels didn’t really have the tools necessary to, one, capture this growing pet demand in hotel travel, and then, two. retain that customer by offering an amazing experience and bringing true value to them while they stay at the property. And so that’s the origin story around Petsvivo. And during this presentation today, I hope everyone on the call gets a little bit of nuggets into why this is such an important industry, why this is such an important movement, and why hotels should care about the pet traveler and the pet guest. So, we’ve given individuals a few minutes. I think we’re ready to dive in. So what are we going to be talking about today? The first is establishing the opportunity. Who is the pet traveler? Why this is impacting the market? How AI is kind of rewriting how hotel guests find hotels, and then making sure your positioning and your visibility are up to date so that you are found. Logan’s going to talk about his specialty in revenue, ops, and marketing, the four levers that move hotel revenue. why pet guests move all four in a single booking, and then where pet-friendly hotels are kind of leaving revenue behind. And then lastly, Scott’s going to talk about actual day-to-day operations, aligning your strategy with on-property operations. Making sure you’re doing the little things that generate 5-star reviews, and then also closing the loop after the say, so that you can get value in reviews, in UGC, in all of those good stuff. Okay, so the opportunity. Why should you guys care? Why should hotels care about the pet traveler, and how AI is impacting all hotels, not just the pet traveler segment? So, I think we’re all familiar. Pet travelers no longer a niche market anymore. 71% of U.S. households have a pet. I’m one of them. I have two. So, 95 million homes in the U.S. in total. This is not a small group or a customer segment. It is the majority of U.S. Americans. And these households are traveling. They’re staying at hotels, they’re staying at short-term rentals, 80% of them are saying they’re traveling at least once with their pet annually. And globally, it’s even bigger. So the global pet-friendly hotel market is valued at around $5 billion, north of $5 billion, and it’s growing at 12%. Tell me another customer segment or movement that is this large and growing at this rate, exponentially. Lastly, the pet economy as a whole is valued at around half a trillion. So people like to spend money on their pets. You know, for most people, at least in my generation, these are the new kids, and so they’re spending thousands and thousands of dollars on their pets. It doesn’t make sense that there isn’t a strategy for hotels to tackle this specific group and tap into this massive economic shift. So, who is the pet traveler? Well, for the most part, they’re super high intent, and they’re high loyalty. Around 52% of pet… of travelers with pets base their entire trip around their pet, where they’re staying, what restaurants they’re going to, itineraries completely designed around pet-friendly accommodations and pet-friendly activities. Of that group, 37% say that they cancel or they extend or shorten trips based on pet-friendly accommodations. So, think… Having, you know. pet… your pet stay at boarding facilities, or having sitters, it’s expensive. So making sure that your property has resources for them will only make sure that that pet traveler extends their stay as long as possible. And so, diving a little deeper into this, this customer segment, on average, stays longer. They usually book larger rooms or get upgrades to accommodate their pet. That’s further driving ADR. And on top of that, they’re spending while they’re on the property, either food and beverage, or amenities, because a lot of the time, they can’t leave their pet in their room. So they’re spending a lot of time on property, and making sure that they’re not leaving their pet behind. On top of that, we’ve already talked about how there’s super high loyalty if you deliver an amazing experience. It can be an amazing competitive advantage for you and your brand if you deliver an amazing experience and generate that UGC content from them, those 5-star reviews, and they will for sure come back. Okay, so where are we with the market right now? Well, actually, 75% of hotels accept pets. But what does that mean, really? And do most have an acquisition or a revenue strategy around it? I don’t think so. In the past, a lot of these hotels could get away with saying, you know, we allow pets on their websites, but that would involve some restrictions, either they’d just allow dogs, no cats, or they’d allow one dog, maybe 30 pounds or less. Today. With this cultural shift to treating pets like children, that is no longer enough, and you have to meet the guest where they are. And so, do you allow pets was the baseline. It’s table stakes. Now you have to make sure that your FAQs are up to date, your policies are up to date, and make sure that you are visible to this guest in how they search. They’re no longer searching what pet-friendly hotels are in Austin, Texas. They are now searching with what pet-friendly hotel in Austin, Texas, allows my two dogs that are 75 pounds and has access to nature. It is becoming very specific, very niche, and so AI channels like Gemini, Perplexity, ChatGPT are offering up and scraping the internet your websites, OTA listings, blog content, to figure out what property they should recommend based on these individual specific needs. So being as hyper-specific as possible only increases your visibility and your ability to be discovered. So, like I said. changing away from pet… your positioning of pets allowed to we love your pets, and we welcome them, and we want you to come here. So, a few things that you can change immediately on your website, your FAQs, your social media. Instead of saying, pets allowed. You can say, we welcome all cats, all dogs, regardless of breed and sizes. Instead of saying there’s a pet fee applied at checkout, say, $75 pet fee covers your stay, the treats, the amenities for your full stay. Instead of saying things like, you only offer limited amount of rooms to pets, say, we have pet-friendly rooms with dedicated amenities, so make sure you book early. All of these things are about positioning and shows warm intent to your ultimate customer and to the AI itself. Those small things, those small positioning changes, actually really matter. Oh, and on top of that, make sure that you have real photos of pets at your property, because that’s how you build trust. If you are just saying pets aloud, but you don’t have any content showing that, you’re not really going to build that trust with a customer after they initially get fed your content, and ultimately go to your website to learn more. So… AI, of course, is rewriting the rules for how travelers find hotels. There’s kind of 3 things that hotel operators should kind of be keeping in mind. Back in the day, you know, there used to be suggestions in Google Search, there was 10 links to the properties that, you know, most of the time came up, but now that’s changing. It’s becoming hyper-specific, as I mentioned before. Travelers are searching for their specific needs, and content in general has become so good at becoming niche and towards their perception and their needs, that you have to make sure that your hotel has a specific angle, a specific visibility to attract that customer. And so… what is AI doing when eventually someone asks this question? Well, they’re reading structured data. They’re written, clearly written policy pages on your website, they’re looking for FAQs, they’re looking at directory listings. Vague or missing information is going to be the consequence of you not showing up when someone looks for Your property, essentially. And then last. Trust signals really important. So, think reviews, think third-party directories, think blog content, think social media, think UGC content. All of this is what’s going to convince someone from, oh, they found your property, to, yes, let’s actually book this, this property. So. When our guests are searching for, you know, boutique hotels 30 minutes outside of New York City that are pet-friendly or dog-friendly, make sure that you have content to support that information, and that it’s very visible on your website, your social media channels, etc. Because at the end of the day, visibility is revenue. Driving organic traffic is the new wave. Dependence on OTAs is going to go by the wayside when everything becomes so hyper-specific and specialized. Building your AI footprint now is going to reap huge benefits in the next coming years. So, make sure your website, the thing that you owned, has a dedicated pet policy page. has a dedicated FAQ page just for pets, and is hyper-specific. If you only allow dogs, great, that’s fine, but make sure you say dog-friendly, and that how many types of dogs, if you have breed restrictions or not. The… the clarity is most important. AI engines read this structured data, and then they go validate it on your Google Business listing, on discovery listings like Expedia, etc. The next is making sure that you have channels where you can get earned content, so reviews and UGC. Pet-specific reviews should live outside of your traditional review pages. Put your pet-specific reviews on your pet-specific policy page. This is what’s going to enhance your ability to be discovered in these AI search models. And make sure you’re asking individuals that create UGC content content during their stay, and ask for permission for reposts, ask for permission to create hyper-specific tailored videos just for the pet parent customer. And then lastly, the distributed content. So this is your listing services, your directories, your Google business profile. Make sure all of these fields match up. Policy-wise, content-wise, all of this reinforces the AI’s answer. So all of these three things have to be up to par for you to truly win in this age of AI search. Awesome. Now, Logan is going to be talking about revenue and marketing.

Logan Jonas:

Thanks, Louise. Oh, slide. Thanks. So, a recurring theme that runs through all properties, from the smallest to the biggest, is that maximizing revenue is a direct reflection of how well the commercial strategy to generate revenue is aligned with the property’s operational capabilities to ensure a positive guest experience. The best properties out there function like a well-oiled machine, right? All team members are aligned with the commercial strategy, and that strategy is aligned with operational capabilities. Everything from analyzing the market and generating demand through your marketing activities, to converting that demand through effective pricing to drive your occupancy on low-demand nights. Drive your ADR on high-demand nights. Optimizing your channel mix. Creating those value-added packages to drive more revenue to other areas of the hotel, like room upsells, or your food and beverage operation, or your spa. Setting up those SOPs and creating incentive programs so that your on-property team operates smoothly and helps drive that revenue effectively, right? Even more during the guest stay itself. And then incorporating the guest into that process. actively soliciting the feedback along the way, and then using that data to implement initiatives to further improve the quality of their stay. At the end of the cycle, you sit there with your team and you analyze the results, and the goal is to ask. What have we learned? And what can we refine? What can we improve in our strategy, tactics, and operations to further maximize revenue and ultimately profitability? Slide. So this process starts with generating demand, which is something Luis touched on a lot. Because without demand, there ultimately will be no revenue. But the best properties go beyond just generating that demand. They both convert it and protect it. And they do this through these four levers below. Converting demand to secure occupancy is paramount. Fixed costs at properties are high. Unsold rooms are perishable inventory. During your off-peak periods, operators are going to rely on increased marketing spends, promotional discounts, value-added packages, right, and increased business from a lot of lower-value channels, like OTAs. And all of those come at a higher cost, and or lower ADR. As we shift into peak periods, the focus becomes driving ADR. Right? This is where your revenue management strategies really become vital. When high occupancy is forecasted, you’re going to be focused on your booking pace, monitoring internal versus external compression, and how you adjust your strategy by utilizing dynamic pricing, length of stay restrictions, and fewer discounted promotions to drive that ADR even higher. Once we’ve pulled through those two levers, we start moving into the optimization of channel mix, which is really a functioning trying to balance that occupancy and ADR equation. Right? During your low-demand periods, you’re trying to maintain your best available rates. So you’re going to become more reliant on using lower-tier channels, like high commission OTAs, lower value group business, a cheap tour that’s coming through your area, or even relying on opaque to try and secure that occupancy with a heads-in-beds philosophy. But this naturally all contributes to lowering your overall ADR. And then during high-demand periods, you’ll end up shifting to try and yield out these lower-rated channels to sell more of your best available rate at that highest flow-through ADR you can capture, right? Letting you get that significantly higher overall ADR, while still maintaining your relative position within the marketplace. And then that fourth lever, capturing your ancillary revenue, is another big one. In my experience, it frequently separates the good hotels from the great ones. The ability of your team, from a strategic perspective, and then your on-property team, to secure room upsells, increase food and beverage, spa, or other revenue, collect fees without negatively impacting the guest experience. And limiting concessions by running a smooth operation all overwhelmingly drive revenue and ultimately profitability to the bottom line. At the end of the day, the goal is to maximize that profitability while capturing as much ancillary revenue as possible, while giving the guests the most positive experience they can have. Slide, please. So, as we move to talk about, really, pets, which is the focus of this webinar. A huge thing to note is that the majority of the industry is already accepting pets. And as Luis said, there’s breed restrictions, or there’s size restrictions, or there’s different types, but the core of it is straightforward. If you’re not currently accepting pets, you are missing out on a significant source of demand, and a huge source of revenue. Right? Guests traveling with pets do it with intent. They seek out those properties that accept their pets, as Luis already talked about. They’re reading your reviews, they’re utilizing special booking information sites, calling your property to ask questions. And from a revenue perspective, it’s straightforward. Guests traveling with pets stay longer, which helps your shoulder night occupancy. They book upgraded room types, or room types, to accommodate their pets and give more space, which drives your ADR. They tend to spend more time on property, which leads to more ancillary revenue capture, like F&B. They also are very used to accepting paying fees for their four-legged companions, right? Which drives straight to your bottom line. And then on top of all of that, they demonstrate increased loyalty and reviews. They have a higher likelihood of leaving reviews, they provide greater word-of-mouth advertising, and they demonstrate higher loyalty and return stays. Right? The operators that struggle with pet travelers tend to encounter similar problems. They, for some type of good reason, started accepting pets. But then there’s ultimately a disconnect in that alignment that we started talking about at the beginning of this section. And as a result, they aren’t collectively affecting the revenue, and they aren’t able to execute that smooth operation. Ultimately, it leads to a negative guest experience, or it leads to a negative experience from the property team. And that ends up leading them to the conclusion that pets aren’t necessarily the best for them. But there’s a flip side to this. The operators that do it well really understand the value of these pet guests. Right? I’ve never experienced a hotel that did this well, that then said later on, you know what, we’re gonna stop, even though it’s incredibly successful. The takeaway here isn’t should you accept pets? You should. It’s how do you align your strategy to maximize revenue with the way your on-property team is going to operate to ensure the guest experience? Slide, please. As we talk about the ways to capture this pet revenue across the demand cycle. It comes down to a couple of components. First is increasing demand. Right? And that’s, as Luis talked about, are you listing your hotel correctly on platforms like Pets Vivo? Is your information filled out for all the AI-related search engines that are out there? All of those things. But then, beyond that, as we move into actual individual business segments. You know, if you’re taking corporate or local negotiated business, do you have a pet option as part of their annualized rate? Do you highlight or promote your pet-friendly status if there is in their booking system, if it’s a major travel, you know, related segment from a major company, like, say, Microsoft, or a major oil and gas company that has significant amounts of travel and lots of employees? Are you reaching out to the travel agents who send business to your hotel to highlight and promote your pet-friendly status in their system? Do you make pet fees commissionable? Right? On the group side, have you trained your sales team to promote that same pet-friendly status? Are you targeting pet-friendly group business, like vets or agricultural groups? Right? On the social media side, are you posting content? Are you running influencer campaigns? And then on advertising marketing, what are you doing there? Are you looking at sponsored or premium listings? Do you have a resident animal? Which some luxury-type hotels or lifestyle-type hotels have started having to encourage that, and helps boost that content and make your hotel more welcoming to the pet community. As we shift into converting demand, this is really where revenue management strategy comes into play, right? What are you doing in terms of package creation? Do you have value adds, like something like a room-to-room package, where you’re upselling a larger room to give space to play that includes a pet bed inside? Are you offering something like a shoulder night package, like Dog Days of Summer or Furry Friends, where you might have a slightly reduced pet fee if they stay for enough nights? Or during a very low occupancy period, you might actually build the pet fee into the rate, so you still get to promote your high rate online and across all the OTA channels. But then you handle the pet fee on the back end to encourage more occupancy. Right? Are you doing things like to capture other revenue, like, say, a paw spa package, where you’ve linked up through a platform like Petsvivo with third-party groomers that might be in the area to, you know, sort of send that revenue through, and maybe the hotel’s getting a commission off of it? Are you creating other revenue-related opportunities? Say, an in-room dining pet menu, with things like chicken and rice, or salmon and sweet potato? Or are you selling pup cups through the cafe on property? You know, are pets allowed to eat in the restaurant, but only outside on the terrace, so they don’t, you know, interrupt any other guests. All of these are opportunities. You could sell something like a walks with wine package, right? A picnic basket, so that when they go for a walk with their dog, they have some wine and cheese and crackers to go with them. Now, these are all ways that you can convert existing demand and upsell to capture more occupancy, make your property more approachable and more enticing, and it helps you drive ADR as well. And then finally, we get into the protection of demand, right? Making that stay memorable, which is something that we’ll get… that Scott will dive a lot more into on his end when he goes into the operational side. But are you doing things like offering on-property amenities? Are there welcome boxes? Are there dog treats at the front desk? Etc? Are you offering experience enhancers? Like, do you have local walking routes available to the customer or to the guest? Is there a brochure of pet-related services in the area? You know, are you harnessing the power? of those positive experiences, by collecting feedback and guest surveys that you can leverage later on, by encouraging your guests to tag the hotel on social media, post pictures, right, of them with their pets in the property, things like that. And then, are you trying to create loyalty? from this segment. Are you offering some type of specialized promotion or package to incur repeat guests? Kind of like how major brands offer the equivalent of Hilton Honor Points or Marriott Envoy points, every property, from the large chains to the individual independents, have different ways and strategies that they can implement to take advantage and help bring that loyalty back home. Next slide, please. So where do hotels really leave revenue on the table? And in my experience, the hotels are often struggling to maximize performance because they haven’t adequately aligned their commercial strategy with their on-property operations. So here are some straightforward examples. The hotel tries to drive a heads-in-beds philosophy, but they fail to adequately prepare the on-property team with an accurate forecast. As a result, they’re short-staffed, which leads to increased concessions that have to be given out to guests, and lots of more service recoveries, or it negatively impacts guest satisfaction and loyalty. The hotel, instead of a heads-in-beds philosophy, focuses on driving ADR and sacrifices occupancy and potential ancillary and other revenue capture, which leads to, ultimately, down the road, cost control measures being implemented for the on-property team. Which makes it harder to take care of the guests, ensure that experience, and build that loyalty. Or, the revenue side of the equation executes a good strategy focused on bringing in high-value guests, but then they fail to secure loyalty because they haven’t adequately informed the on-property team that VIPs are coming in. Or no supportive strategies have been developed to execute to ensure that the VIPs enjoy their stays. There are numerous examples of this from every different segment, from what your sales and marketing team could be doing, to what your revenue leaders could be doing, to what your, you know, your food and beverage coordinators could be doing if you’re doing group-related business. And they all work out to the same thing. Right? The alignment is crucial. You can’t optimize revenue and maximize profitability if the operation is inconsistent. And you can’t have a smooth operation without a good commercial strategy. And Scott is an expert in these areas, and we can turn this over to him at this point. Thank you.

Scott Yo:

Thank you, Logan. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I do have 3 dogs, so I am experienced. Next slide, please. So, operations is where pet revenue is lost and won. I think anyone who has a pet themselves will know, that there’s plenty of revenue that is generated around pets. And so, how do we capitalize on that and make sure that every pet and every guest has the most excellent stay possible by just doing some few things that seem intuitive, but often People overcomplicate things. You know, execution beats flashy. Making sure that every guest, every pet understands the same clear policies, that the amenities are always welcome and ready at any point. Your team is trained. Every time, and guests don’t encounter any surprises. Surprises break trust. Which leads into frictionless is the goal. So… Guests should never have to wonder or worry about what is allowed and what’s not allowed. Policies being stated upfront and clear, gives Your guests’ confidence to know where and when they need to be, how they need to behave, how their pets should behave, and what the amenities and expectations are that they can expect from the property. from there, we get to personal touches, A personal touch goes a long way, as far as guest days go, to create a memorable experience that’s worth the review. A welcome card with the pet’s name, personalized treats. Remembering a dog’s name on the return stay. These are all outsized impacts that cost nearly nothing. Next slide, please. A pet-ready team eliminates 90% of the friction. So, making sure you’re… Staff and team are… well-trained to be confident to answer any questions that come up. How do you accomplish that? Well. A reference, a one-page reference that is posted where the… staff knows. What are the fees? What are the walking areas? What are some common area rules? How and when to escalate And what the contacts may be, I’m sorry, give me one moment, please. I’m sorry about that. So, yeah.

Luis Zamora:

Scott?

Scott Yo:

Sorry about that. So, yeah, make sure your desk and your staff are trained. Booking confirmation. So, in addition to your standard confirmation that your guests receive automatically, coming up with a separate booking confirmation that is designed for your pets. in that… confirmation, You cover what are the fees. What are any additional costs that may be involved in their stay? I’ll link to the pet policy on the website. A list of all the amenities that they can expect. Contact information, if they may have any questions. Before their arrival, making sure that guests feel confident. that… They know what to expect when they arrive onto the property. They’re ready to enjoy themselves and to… really support the best trip that they can possibly have by having the information up front, and that That confidence of… everything is in place, and I can really just not have to think about my pet and the hotel, and just focus on my trip. In addition, the post stay is the housekeeping protocol. How does housekeeping treat a pet in the room? Obviously, we have the pet door indicator, letting everyone know that there’s a pet in the room. Refreshing the water bowls daily. But that’s while they’re here. checked out… A lid roller, making sure that all fur is removed from the room. Floor sanitizers to make sure that, you know, any… Lingering pet remains are gone. Air fresheners, reset the bowls. And if any damage is found, immediately report it, so that that can be tracked. And all this really is there to just create the most memorable stay. A well-trained team, Removes the fraction of a guest stay. That guest, they can then focus on what’s really important to them, and what’s not important, how smooth the guest booking was. Was how smooth their stay was, and what they accomplished during their stay, and not what hurdles they had to jump through to figure out how to stay with their pet. Next slide, please. So the room setup, you know, what are the essentials, and what really enhances a guest stay? So, every guest expects the same out of every property they go to. They’ll expect to see, you know, dog waste bags. Treats, a door indicator, somewhere that they can relieve their pets, and water bowls. But this is what’s expected. So, how do you go beyond what is expected and turn something into a memorable stay that really people want to turn around and talk about. And so, how we can accomplish that is… you know, make things personal to the pet. You know, we all know, you know, when someone checks in, you use their name, but how often do we use the pet’s name? Well, we should be already capturing that. after the pet confirmation email, you gain that information. So, now that we have that information, how do we use it? Well, we put a personalized welcome card in the room. Your property can also provide branded bowls, bandanas, t-shirts, treats, whatever it might be, that sets your property aside from just getting your standard milk bone. Use the pet’s name at check-in. Well, let’s go one bit further. How many times do you see, pets arriving every day? Why can’t the entire front of house staff know the pet’s name at check-in? You know, it’s easy to relay the name of 2 or 3 animals that are checking in in a day, rather than everybody who’s checking in a day. So, there’s no reason why your doorman can’t recognize that, you know, hey, look, it’s Rocky coming to check in, because we only have one dog checking in that day. You know, it’s… it’s a small ask, but it’s a really big return, and guests remember that. Also, compiling what are the local resources, so that while I’m there, I don’t have to think about, well, how do I find what the best park is? What vet do I need? Are there any 24-hour clinics that I should look up in advance, just in case? have that ready, have that resource guide, so that when they receive it, that’s something that they don’t have to worry about. Your guests can really focus on what they’re really there for. And, you know, remembering a pet on the returns day. I think that’s easy. But… Anybody who has pets will know that, The dog will remember. you know, dogs know where they are treated well. Anybody who’s gone retail shopping with a dog and, you know, someone gives their dog a treat, you know that your dog will always remember that space for the rest of their lives. And, you know, whenever possible, they will make sure that you go shopping there. So, just as easily as, you know, their dog will remember their stay, you know, I think we can all make it a point to make sure that we remember their animal, your guest pet, during their return stay. And again, this does not cost a lot. It’s not a lot of… wear and tear on the staff. I think it’s really easy ways to just… Multiply a guest experience, to create an amazing story that, you know, people will talk about on return stays. Next slide, please.

Luis Zamora:

Before we go to the next slide, Scott, do you want to briefly talk about that one time someone left their dog at your hotel?

Scott Yo:

So, yeah, having luxury and lifestyle properties. We see a… A multitude of different types of guests, and… Some just require a little more work than others. And, we had this couple staying with us who had a rather large amount of luggage and, you know, lots of… They, they, they needed lots of assistance while they were with us, and they also traveled with their pet. And, I think it was during checkout, at post-checkout, they were sitting at our concierge desk. And they had their dog in the bag, and the bag was on the floor by their feet. And they were running to their car service afterwards, and forgot their dog. You know, we made sure we got all the luggage in the car, and, you know, the car was on the way to the airport. And, sometime later, someone heard some barking in the lobby. And we knew we only had one dog on property, and the owners had just left, so we realized, oh my gosh, they left their dog behind. And so they didn’t realize it, you know, they were just in such a rush to get to the airport. And so, because we knew who they were, we managed to, you know, reach out to them and said, hey, listen, you know, I think you might have left something important behind. And so, they… you know, they were like, well, we got a flight to catch, how’s this all gonna work out? And we said, you know, don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of things. And so the car service we used, they happened to have a car in the area, and we said, you know, listen. We just need to transport this one dog to the airport, you know, you’ll meet the… you’ll meet the owners, you know, at the arrivals gate, at the arrivals terminal. And so, you know, we threw the dog in the car service. The car jetted off to the airport, just, you know. I’d say, like, 20 minutes behind, the guests, and so, we’re able to, get the dog to its people, and it turned out a really great experience for everyone. Number one, the guests got their dog, and we got to prove, as a property, how we handle, you know, service recovery situations, and how to handle things in an emergency. The staff had a great time because we got to play with the dog while we’re waiting for a car to pick him up, and that’s always a fun thing for the staff. Even the driver, the driver actually got to, you know, they… we put the dog in the front seat, and the driver happened to like dogs, so he opened the bag up and got to pet the dog on the ride, and… you know, the guests got their dog, made their flight, and made it home safely, and, you know, I still think to this day, they’re probably still talking about, you know, how we got their dog to the airport without them.

Luis Zamora:

I’m sure they’re a lifetime customer, you know what I mean? That’s exactly what you’re talking about. Sometimes you gotta go off-script a little bit, but made an impact and made a story.

Scott Yo:

Exactly.

Luis Zamora:

Okay.

Scott Yo:

Yeah, and, you know, post-checkout, what do you do, and… how to… we take everything that we’ve created during the guest day and compound that. You know, how do we make something that These memorable experiences that the guests had on property, and create a return loop where they actually look to return, and also share their experience publicly. to… to let other guests know that this is what they can expect when they stay at your property. You know, resetting the room. And this is… if you have pet-specific rooms where you, you, have designated rooms just for pets, you know. Again, the lint roller, floor sanitizer, air freshener, refresh the bowls, and doing this every time, and not just when it gets a state, really, it’s so that it becomes muscle memory for housekeeping. You know, housekeeping… Really just understands that when they go into these specific rooms, if they’re designated for pets, that they can always do these things, Without having to think about it, you know, it just becomes second nature. And again, if you have dogs, you know, you can never remove fur from every inch of your place. And so, always going in with that attitude of, let me just try and try again, just to make sure that, you know, the complete room is completely reset, no matter who the following guest may be, whether it be another pet or not. Just how we like to ask for feedback, for guests, asking specifically for review. When it comes to how their pets experienced the property, and what their experience was… was like As a pet owner on property. I think having that call to action of, like, well, you stayed with your pet, and we’d like the feedback on how specific stay went, I think… Proven that More people are, are, are likely to respond, especially positively, when you make it specific to their experience. So their experience was traveling with a pet, and so asking for their experience of traveling with their pet. Log all the feedback you get, you know, whether it’s positive or negative, and continuously act on it. So that, you know, Is it, was there some shortcoming, and was that shortcoming, a product, Poor training? Was it, a bad product you may have used? Was it, specific to that specific guest? Understanding that, you know. All that data could be acted on, and so you need to capture that data and just constantly following up on it to underst… to really optimize every stay, especially when it’s as easy as every stay for a pet guest. You know, depending on how large your property may be, you know, if you have a thousand-room property, it may be more difficult to optimize for every guest in the 1,000-room property versus the, you know, 5% that may be staying with a pet. So, understanding that you have the data and, you know, reacting and, Creating new policies and procedures and trainings based on that data. And then… again, personalization. You know, if you have a guest with their pet returning. It’s… you have so many different opportunities to just create another memorable stay each time. You know, just because it’s the same dog, it’s not as… It’s not just remembering that same dog, it’s also remembering, okay, what are this dog’s preferences? You know, I’ve had properties where, you know, repeat guests where they stay 3 times a week for years and years on end. You start to know everything about that person, you know, what they do for work, what their likes and dislikes are, how they like their room set up, so… translating that same approach to hospitality with pets. You know, and again, you’re not doing this for, you know, the… dozens of dozens of different check-ins you have in a day, if you know you have a return pet guest, it’s just, okay, let me take all that feedback that we’ve gotten from that guest in past days, and really start personalizing that pet stay. You know, and I think that me as an individual, especially with, you know, I’ve got 3 dogs, I, as a pet owner, I approach things. If you work harder to… make my pet’s day more memorable than mine. That’s more valuable to me. And I think, any pet owner could… You know, would recognize that, you know. It’s easy to accommodate a person, because people will forgive a lot of different things. But when you see a property, accommodating a pet, then Then we can definitely see that the property’s trying hard to win your… that stay. Next slide, please. And now we go back to Luis. Who’s on mute?

Luis Zamora:

Thank you so much, Scott. So, everyone, clearly you’ve learned a lot during this segment, and clearly there is a massive opportunity around pets, around pet travelers, so I want to leave you with some more information. So, on average, we’re looking at industry pet fees around $50 to $75. Now, for the luxury segment, these are going to be a little bit higher, and if you have some amenities, you can think about even raising that. even more. Some other important information. On average, pet-friendly properties have a $17 to $18 increase in ADR listings. And since 2023, there has been a 260% increase in pet-friendly bookings on TripAdvisor. So, this is a massive market we’re talking about. But where do you start? What’s the next steps? The first is to do a visibility audit. So, think… go into Gemini, go into ChatGPT, go into Perplexity, search your property, search dog-friendly, pet-friendly. search for your area’s competitors, see if you are being visible and you are showing up. You can also dive a little bit deeper and see why you’re not showing up. The next thing, comb through your policies. Make sure your fees, your breeds, your weight restrictions, if there’s any, listing your amenities, your FAQs, all very plainly and in specific sections, so that you are crawlable to these AIs and crawlable on search. Lastly, make sure you’re aligning your operations. It’s great that you’re publishing and making yourself visible to this customer segment, but like Scott said, if you are falling short on the operations and experience side, this is going to be a revenue hole for you, and it’s not going to be a revenue driver. And lastly, if you guys need any help with this whatsoever, Petsvivo is your technology solution. Scott is a great, amazing consultant that can help on the operations and experience side, and Logan has a breadth of knowledge when talking about revenue strategy and fees and all of that. So, I want to make sure I have enough… we have enough time for questions. They’ve been pouring in, but I’m gonna start with… a question from Rick. So… We collect fees mostly for potential damage and cleaning, but if guests… pet guests tend to be loyal and high spending, how should hotels think about balancing those fees with long-term retention? I think this is a great question for Logan.

Logan Jonas:

Thanks, Louise. It’s a good question, Rick. So, there are a couple different ways to tackle this. One is to think in terms of what you can do with those pet fees, right? A portion of the pet fee obviously goes towards covering cleaning costs or staffing needs. But the remainder of the pet fee, you can take portions of it, essentially, and think of it as this is your marketing piggy bank to generate loyalty. So you can do it in terms of things like, instead of that guest coming back and booking to you through Expedia or some other OTA, with incredibly high commission rates. How can you get them to book directly? And then if they book directly, what can you do with that pet fee, combined with the commission savings you’re getting, to enhance that guest’s experience? Would you offer them a discount, potentially, right? Since you’re saving so much on the commission, maybe you offer a portion of that back. and you’re still profiting more than if you had booked the OTA room, do you use it to enhance the amenities you’re providing to the guest? Say, an extra pup cup? You invite the parents or the pet guests and their dog or cat or whatever to the terrace for something special from the restaurant, which, right, then drives more food and beverage revenue, because you’re coding a portion of the revenue over there. You enhance their room experience by upgrading them on their next day. You know, all of these types of things are options that you can come up with, it’s just a question of which strategic moves you want your property to have and deploy. And then, it’s very important as part of this. which is something Scott touched on, to collect all that information from the guest, which Pets Vivo helps you do through their platform and the intake forms they do for the registration of the pet, so that you have the mechanism to then reach back out to that guest after they’ve stayed with you, to remind them of how great their stay was, and then entice them back with some type of promotional opportunity, or loyalty program, or something of that sort. The more you do that, especially if you can get them to stay more than twice, you dramatically begin to increase the likelihood of loyalty and retention long-term, so that they keep coming back, like that family that always goes on vacation to the same destination.

Luis Zamora:

Awesome. Thanks, Logan. I’m gonna kind of try and speed through these, but there’s some overlap. So, Tobias asked, obviously AI search is growing, we’ve seen that, we have a ton of agencies contacting us. Is this the next level of SEO? What do we do? Where do we start? I’m happy to take this one, Tobias. So, I think for, your property, there might be specific needs. And jumping into an agency might not be the right strategy for you. I think the first thing is making sure that you have a strong foundation, that your website is fully optimized, structured for SEO and crawlability. After that, then try and figure out who your customer segment is that you’re trying to target with this visibility. If it’s pets, making sure that you have a specific pet that is crawlable, that is searchable. Make sure that your social channels and your other third-party platforms are very clearly presenting the image and the brand that you want to present yourself. After that, if you’re still not seeing significant traction, then, you know, Pets Vivo has a visibility package that specifically works to enhance your property’s visibility amongst pet parents. And that might be a good option for you, but there’s so many options out there. The first thing to do is make sure you have that strong foundation. The next question is… we rely a lot on OTAs, Booking.com, Expedia, Priceline, for bookings, and there’s a lot of commission, that we’re giving out. How can we move to more direct? What strategies are working? Logan, do you want to take this, and then I can maybe talk… Add on to it?

Logan Jonas:

Sure. So, right off the bat, right, we’re sitting on a Petsvivo webinar, so the first thing I’ll say is, if you’re looking to move off of a Booking.com or off of any of the other OTAs that rely heavily on commissions. One of the opportunities here for you in related to pet-related guests is working with Petsvivo, right? Because down the line, they do help you bring in some more of that business, and then converting that business to BookDirect. Right? Which then gives you a lot of flexibility, because you’re not paying such a high commission. You can entice those customers long-term to stay off the OTAs by doing some of the loyalty-related, you know, building-related activities or promotions I mentioned with the last question. Outside of that, there’s a lot of other options. It comes down to what Luis was talking about on the AI-related side, on making sure that your property is visible in the right channels, that you’re, you know, showing that you’re pet-friendly, that you’re… and then what you’re doing on the social media side, on the advertising and marketing side, all of that can help translate in direct… in terms of direct revenue. And then you want everything to be data-driven decision-making, of course. If you’re going to have a marketing spend, you want to make sure that you’re generating results from that spend to justify the cost, because the business is coming in at a lower rate or lower cost than it would be to pay the OTA commissions.

Luis Zamora:

Amazing answer, Logan. I was gonna double down on the data. data is everything. You need data to make smart, structured decisions. So, Logan, you perfectly answered that. The next question for Maggie is around how does pricing work? Our pricing is very flexible and fits the needs of your property. Happy to explore this more after the call. And then Sonya asked, do you have… does Petsvivo have any staff training programs to keep it more consistent across teams? The answer is yes. We do have some staff training manuals and SOPs. What we do offer, though, is we can make them specific to your property. Because, again, the SOPs for a boutique property in the middle of the woods with cabins is going to be very different than your downtown high-rise luxury apartment that attracts a very different guest. So. Yes, we have OSAPs, yes, we can distribute them amongst your team, would love to talk to you more and share more about that. The next question from Elaine is, we have a few hotels in Canada. Amazing. We love our Canadians. My co-founder’s Canadian. Do you, offer services in Canada? Yes, we do. Would love to talk to you after this, to learn more about your property’s specific needs. The next question is from Chris. Chris says, we are lifetime Titanium Elite members and have stayed on average 75 nights per year with our two dogs. Wow, that’s crazy! Well done, Chris. I mean, they’re… I’m sure they’re loving traveling. We have been trying to push the hotel industry to really adopt a clear strategy to make their properties more pet-friendly. with dedicated policies, no surprises, early check-ins. How can we, as… move the pet into… how can we, as the pet industry, leverage all of our tools and resources to get them to recognize our group buying power? Amazing question. Scott, do you want to kind of take a first stab at this, since you actually manage the on-property operations? And then I can kind of take it high level?

Scott Yo:

Sure. Yeah, I think a lot of owners and operators are realizing that, just in the past, you know, decade alone, the pet… people traveling with pets has really ramped up. And, you know, now there’s airlines dedicated to pet travel. Italia Air is, you know, doing these big things across Italy, as far as allowing pets and no longer having pets in steerage. So I think it is recognized that it is a fast-growing segment, and I think operators are just starting to realize that Like we mentioned earlier, it’s not just, here’s some doggy bags and some treats, and there you go. It’s how do we… how does each property differentiate itself in its market? And, you know, providing superior amenities and experiences to pet owners is really becoming probably the next frontier in hospitality travel. Which… and I think Pets Vivo is a great platform to kind of help steer people in understanding, like, there’s more than one way to appeal to pet owners and, to really enhance their stays.

Luis Zamora:

Yeah, great answer, Scott. Just piggybacking off what Scott said, that’s the whole focus of the Petsvivo platform and mission, Chris, is one, educating the industry, because it is relatively new and novel over the past 5 years. We saw a real boom during COVID. I know you’ve been traveling for the 6 years, but COVID really accelerated this push, and so operators that are looking into this, looking into strategies around this, treating pets as any other ancillary revenue source, like spa, like food and beverage, like events, like partnerships with third-party providers. That’s what we’re trying to do, is Educate operators and owners to… basically treat this like all those other streams of income. And as a result of that, once they start realizing that this opportunity is on par with those, then they’ll start becoming more conscious about the experience, more conscious about their policies, more conscious to the pet parent guest itself. And so there’s gonna be, you know, a few years of ramp-up in education, but you’re already starting to see brands do this, be more awake, and more visible on this. You know, I was just talking to a brand that has a doggy club, doggy member club, where you can sign up, and you basically don’t have to pay pet fees for any of your stays for the next year. So, there’s gonna be strategies, there’s gonna be brands that are a little bit ahead of the game, and the ultimate decision as the consumer is to put your money with the brands that are catering towards you, you know? The conversation with a property that doesn’t accept pets is maybe… that’s 5, 10 years down the road, until it really blows up, but already start to have those conversations and put your money where you want to support brands that are already doing the right thing. So, that would be my recommendation, and we’d love to talk further with you, and your two pups, and obviously you guys are amazing pet travelers, and I’d love to hear about your experience. So, I’ll reach out after the call. Okay, any other questions coming in? We have 2 minutes left, so we probably have time for one more question. Okay, coming in. Question from Pamela. The pet industry can help propel the movement by viewing hotels as a new distribution channel. and provide products and services that are relevant to guests. 100%, Pamela. I think this is not talked about enough, but hotels have an amazing, amazing funnel for pet brands themselves. So, there has to be some alignment with pet brands and hotels to get their products in front of the customers at these hotels. And so you’re starting to see, you know, for example, Equinox has an amazing partnership with Kiehl’s. We can have that same opportunity with hotel groups that want to align with pet brands and pet providers, that share a similar customer, that share a similar mission, and this is becoming more popular and something that Pets Vivo is trying to do. So, as the pet guest traveler continues to increase, I think there’s going to be a massive, massive wave of pet brands trying to get in front of these customers at the hotel level. So, amazing question, Pamela. Chris, I hope you got, some information from that question as well. Okay. I think that’s it, everyone. Well, thanks so much for joining. Everyone, you are going to get a follow-up email with a recording of this, access to our playbook, which gives you a more in-depth guide on how to enhance your visibility, enhance your revenue streams, and really make sure you’re delivering an amazing guest and operations and experience. But if you have any more questions, feel free to reach out to myself. to Logan, to Scott, or the Petsvivo team in general, to see if there’s any ways that we can work together and enhance your property’s goals and mission. So, thank you so much, everyone, for joining, and I look forward to talking to each and every one of you.