As hoteliers try to recover from the damage done by the coronavirus, now is the time for hotel science experiments, according to Jason Friedman, founder and managing director of Bangkok-based J.M. Friedman & Co., which specializes in small luxury hotel conceptualization, development, positioning, marketing and operations. The formula is simple, he said: About three parts data mixed with one part gut instinct.
The brash native New Yorker who first became a biologist and forest ecologist, then tramped across Nepal, mapped routes in Borneo, scuba-dived in the Indonesian archipelago, rafted down the Mekong, mastered elephant polo and later gained a master’s degree in hospitality management from Cornell University, is a bit of a self-proclaimed hospitality scientist. At this unprecedented moment, he doesn’t hesitate to suggest hoteliers take this rare opportunity to think beyond simple, incremental changes to their businesses and go bold.
“If you sit back and say, ‘We’re doomed,’ and you don’t do anything or continue to operate the way you always have, you might not perform so well,” Friedman told HOTELS in mid-November. “When you try new ways of doing business, there’s always hope and a possibility.”
Friedman, who founded his company in 2016, said it has been particularly interesting for him to be pushed by COVID into thinking about new ways to sell and distribute hotel rooms.
“Maybe not even new ways, but things that you wanted to do for a long time but couldn’t because you’re just always in the operation and putting out fires,” he said. “I’m a scientist by training, so I love the ability now to start totally dissecting our businesses and rebuilding them.”
For example, as director of product and development for acclaimed designer Bill Bensley’s Shinta Mani Group of Hotels in Cambodia, as well as the Bensley Collection, he is working with a team to completely reevaluate and re-strategize how they execute on sales and marketing.
“Normally, you might change your sales and marketing strategies and techniques incrementally, a little bit here and there,” Friedman said. “But we decided to throw everything out into the trash and brought in a team of tech geeks, many of whom aren’t even in the hotel business, and we’re totally revamping how we do sales and marketing.”
While not wanting to divulge too much, Friedman said the revamp involves using artificial intelligence to build new algorithms that target guests in a whole new way. He refers to it as micro-target marketing.
At the Shinta Mani Wild, a US$2,000-a-night tented camp, the Western business has dried up due to the pandemic. But their new approach is driving business from the small local market.
“That hotel is more successful than we ever budgeted for, pre-COVID,” Friedman added. “It’s full 10 to 12 days every single month, and we’re filling it with Cambodian families for three nights at a pop.”
The same strategy is being implemented for another client, the Rosewood Luang Prabang in Laos.
“For a long time, I was mister traditional. I was the best friend of every travel agent. I love travel agents. They’re so unbelievably important to what we do,” Friedman continued. “But they’re never going to provide the volume that we need. So, having this period to take a very different approach to how we target guests, sell our products and do our messaging has been a real eye opener for us. It works.”
The physical products are being tweaked for the local Khmer palate, but Friedman said guests come for the experience designed by the hotel team. “The guest isn’t going to have an amazing experience if they have what’s comfortable for them. We have to be able to get the guests out of their comfort zone. That’s why we never let the guests choose; we decide for them.”
Friedman truly believes, based on his vast adventure experiences, guests trust the hotel teams to plan the best itineraries. “They do,” he exclaimed. “We’ve been doing this model for a long time and it works.”
