HSMAI HOTEL STRATEGY CONFERENCE ONLINE VIDEO
AGENDA
The 2019 conference is centred around the customer journey. Speakers and sessions will address new developments in marketers’ efforts – online and offline – to connect with, track, and influence consumers throughout all phases of their travel.
At the end of the day, you’ll walk away with specific, practical recommendations to sharpen your action plan and thought-provoking, challenging ideas to guide your strategies – all aimed at increasing revenue, driving direct bookings, and taking the agony out of marketing in a digital world.
DAY 1 - CONFERENCE TOPICS
9:00am to 5:30pm
Our MC will take you through the agenda for the 2 days. Don’t miss out!
Speaker: Limin Cheng, HSMAI Singapore Vice President and HSMAI Revenue Advisory Board
In conversation with a Superlative Geek – In this session with the former Chief Advisor to the CEO of Grab, we discuss the impact of data and how it drives business growth and create actionable insights. With a lifelong interest in exploring the use of big data, Dr He’s experience in the military and commercial sectors makes him an astute strategist in using data to its fullest potential.
Facilitated by Limin Cheng, HSMAI Singapore Vice President and HSMAI Revenue Advisory Board.
Speaker: Dr He Ruimin is CEO of Entend.ai
The status, trends, skills and needs around hiring and retaining good people in the commercial area of sales, marketing & revenue management
Speaker: Ben George, Senior Vice President & Commercial Director Asia Pacific, Hilton
Consumers today encounter many friction points during their path-to-purchase journey for travel products. In this session, we will share some of the top friction points encountered by consumers in travel and learn what marketers can do to ease the frictions.
Speaker: Cecilia Lv, Client Solutions Manager, APAC Travel, Facebook
The Presentation slides are not available for distribution, however, Facebook have kindly supplied the full reports on Frictionless Travel for the Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand markets.
Taking your first steps towards a Zero Friction Future can be easy if you know where to start. The following resources from Facebook can help you get started.
Zero Friction Solutions Guide
Learn how to reduce friction at every stage of your consumer journey with Facebook’s family of apps and Facebook Marketing Partner (FMP) solutions.
- Singapore Market Report
- Thailand Market Report
- Indonesia – available to people in Indonesia at this link:
https://www.facebook.com/business/m/zero-friction-future (Only available when you are using an Indonesian IP Address)
Details coming soon
This session will be a deep dive into 3 of Asia’s fastest growing segments: Key Take-aways: Online behaviour of each segment Travel interests and habits Where they are going? How long do they stay? Demographics and more How and where to target these travellers in your marketing plans.
In this session on the Indonesia market, we will explore leading travel market trends in the country, find out what makes Indonesian travellers unique, their typical path to purchase, and how hoteliers can be present across the consumer journey.
Speaker: Christopher Siantar, Strategy & Insights Associate – APAC Travel, Google
The Muslim Travel Market is one of the largest and fastest growing segments within the travel industry. Muslim Travellers are projected to spend US$220 Billion by 2020. The needs and expectations of the segment are distinct. This session will walk through the essentials of this important market, and cover how Hoteliers can best serve this traveller group.
Speaker: Fazal Bahardeen, Founder & CEO, Crescent Rating
“According to travel commerce platform Travelport’s 2018 Global Digital Traveller League Table, India already tops the list of the countries with the most digitally-advanced travellers. The study shows that 69 per cent of us are using voice search to research with tools such as Apple Siri, Google Home, or Amazon Alexa; 85 per cent have used a digital wallet/payment app while travelling; over half use payment apps; almost two-thirds prefer to check into a hotel via an app rather than at a reception desk; and 84 per cent travellers are open to offering their biometrics to reduce waiting in security lines.
A new breed of conscious travellers is looking for ways to minimise its carbon footprint, and this trend promises to become even bigger in 2019. According to a survey conducted by Booking.com among its Indian users, 97 per cent travellers said they would be willing to spend time on activities that offset the environmental impact of their stay, and almost half (46 per cent) said they would be willing to clear plastic or litter from their destination, while on holiday. The study also found that 70 per cent would choose not to travel to a destination if it negatively impacts the locals.”
Speaker: Aditi Sud, Vice President Product Initiatives from RateGain
In this session Rohit Roopchand will talk about how to optimise your restaurant strategy using a number of different ways:
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- Revenue Optimisation Strategies in F&B
- Marketing Restaurants and Bars – tips and tricks
- Designing successful F&B products
- Tools and analytics
- Benchmarking performance
Facilitator: Puneet Mahindroo, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Rev-Mantra Pte. Ltd.
Panelists:
- Rohit Roopchand, CEO, The Dandy Partnership
- Sarissa Rodriguez-Schwartz, Founder & Managing Director, SJS Group
- Shane Kelly, Managing Director, Your Revel Systems Reseller in Asia
An HSMAI signature program, Flash Points is an interactive session that live-polls our expert communities about emerging and up-to-the-minute issues facing the industry. Today, you’ll help us answer some of the biggest questions on the minds of hotel marketing professionals, including: All you need is a phone, tablet, or laptop — plus professional insights and opinions you’re willing to share. You’ll walk away from this immersive experience with a real-time pulse-check that helps you benchmark yourself and your company against other hotel marketing leaders.
Facilitators:
Limin Cheng, HSMAI Singapore Vice President and HSMAI Revenue Advisory Board
Director of Marketing, Planning and Operations, Minor Hotels
Bringing the commercial disciplines together. How do we achieve the maximum results & ultimately revenues by keeping all the teams together on decision making & holding them accountable? One hotelier shares his view on setting goals, managing and motivating the Commercial team across Sales, Digital Marketing, Distribution, CRM, Loyalty & Revenue Management.
Key Take-aways:
- How did we get here? The Evolution of the roles of the sales team (focussing on corporate, travel agents & meetings), the evolution of the digital marketing role (new skillsets and channels), the evolution of CRM, Loyalty & Alliances and how the role is fast changing (from bringing back the guest to turning the comp set hotel loyalist to yours) and the changes to the role of revenue management (from pricing to strategic management)
- What part each department/function has in developing tactics when the numbers are down (or up?) Who does what?
- How to set team goals and incentives that bring everybody together to target the same objectives.
Speaker: Merwin Ezekial Dawson, General Manager – Revenue Management & Global Distribution, The Leela Palaces, Hotels & Resorts
Join us for this session from a prolific staycationer and a guest who has stayed in many of your properties. Learn who this segment is, why they are travelling and get some frank and honest feedback about brand standards and delivery of a great experience for Staycationers in Singapore.
Target audience:
Hoteliers: Sales, marketing, general managers, front desk, in fact everyone in the hotel
Key Takeaways:
1) Customer experience on property is the highest priority
2) Technology can help you with data and identifying customer needs but you still need to deliver on the human side on property
3) Staycationers are a growing market segment in many cities and they can be your biggest advocates and influencers (as all their friends and colleagues know they are expert travellers)
Speaker: Dr Detlev Remy, Associate Professor at Singapore Institute of Technology
Details coming soon
Marina Bay Sands started the process of introducing revenue optimization practices to help assist in maximizing the SGD 100 million annual revenues generated by the Sands Expo and Convention Centre. Hear more about the change management process and what the team did to increase collaboration with the Sales, Banquet, AV and MICE operations teams.
Key Take-Away: Change management process for meeting & conference space from the experts at Marina Bay Sands.
Speakers:
- Ruoying Hong, Associate Director Revenue Management, Marina Bay Sands
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- Vanessa Khor, Manager, Function Space Optimization, Marina Bay Sands
- Vanessa Khor, Manager, Function Space Optimization, Marina Bay Sands
For the hospitality industry, the guest experience is more important than anything else. However when it comes to payments, hotels are still following the traditional model with limited payment options and inconsistent experience across channels and geographies, resulting in repetitive and impersonal payment experience. More and more, we are seeing an increase in a new group of travellers that are constantly connected and digitally savvy. They demand a personalized and frictionless experience and hotels that fail to meet these expectations mean a loss of revenue and even customer loyalty. Learn how a payments platform can offer your customers the best experiences and provide you the data and insights for your next business strategy.
Speaker: Mark Rademaker, VP Travel Partnerships, Asia Pacific, Adyen
Aside from price, whether it is new technologies, new standards or new business practices imposed by the major players in our industry, the recipes to attract traffic have evolved enormously. Let’s look into the recent trends in digital marketing and find out what these new practices are with their respective impacts and how your hotel can adapt to drive higher conversion.
Key Take-aways:
• Traffic + Visibility = Conversion
• Research on the modern traveller’s consumer journey and share about Digital Media Strategy and what works
Speaker: Kim Ong, VP Strategic Sales & Account Management APAC, D-EDGE Hospitality Solutions
Our MC will wrap up Day 1, followed by Networking drinks.
Speaker: Limin Cheng, HSMAI Singapore Vice President and HSMAI Revenue Advisory Board
Our MC will wrap up Day 1, followed by Networking drinks.
Speaker: Limin Cheng, HSMAI Singapore Vice President and HSMAI Revenue Advisory Board
DAY 2 - VENDOR LED WORKSHOPS
9:00am to 1:00pm
Our MC will take you through the agenda for Day 2.
Speaker: Joey Kang, Senior Director, Enterprise Business Development, APAC at The Rainmaker Group and HSMAI Singapore President
Learn the fundamental skills of working with datasets as a hotel marketer. In this session, we will walk you through the key data segments and techniques hoteliers can use to make smarter business decisions and apply actual intelligence to marketing programs. Deepen machine learning skills and gain best practices for data cleaning, modelling, clustering and more, including hotel systems, combinations and recipes for success when you slice, dice and segment. Walk away with a data science tool kit and game plan to implement at your hotel.
Speaker: Michael Bennett, Senior Vice President Global Marketing, Cendyn
A session from the experts in email marketing for hotels. This is a “how-to” session on how to improve your ROI. Do you know how you perform compared to your Comp Set? Find out in this interactive session.
Speaker: Suneet Nigale, Regional Sales Director – Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and South Asia, Revinate
Many hoteliers have looked into how consumers make bookings and what their customer journey looks like. Cvent have conducted extensive research in the Meeting Planning industry and have some fantastic data to share with you around the customer journey for Meeting Planners. You will learn:
- Who is your customer? Do you know your customer?
- How do Meeting Planners decide on a venue?
- What are their pain points during the journey?
- How can hotels do better?
- What makes them come back? What makes them not come back?
- What are the 3 P’s for influencing the planner?
Speaker: Konrad Pant, Regional Sales Manager, Hospitality cloud at Cvent
In today’s world of heavy digitalization and consumers with impulsive travel behaviours, immediate access to the online content of your hotel sites is of the utmost importance. Over 70% of consumers will more likely buy from content presented in their native language than in a foreign language. Given this, how can you create a buying phenomenon for your business?
Mere translation of websites is not enough. Localization and transcreation are needed to effectively convey content into the consumer’s native language.
SuccessGlo cultural and language expert Shirley Yeng will show through case studies on Indonesia and China how applying translation, localization and transcreation skills can dramatically influence the buying decisions of inbound and outbound travellers from these regions. She will also share key content areas you should work on to achieve the highest ROIs, including multicultural brand management, and various localization approaches to adapt to these countries’ locales.
Speaker: Shirley Yeng, Chief Strategy Officer, SuccessGlo
DAY 2 - HSMAI MINI-MASTERS WORKSHOPS
2:00pm to 5:20pm
Lunch in the Orchid Ballroom Breakout area.
The Revenue Game! Get a team together and compete against each other. Set your prices, spend money on Marketing and OTA ranking, set your deal price. Who will win?
This is a hands-on simulation game, bring your tablet, or mobile to take part (one per team). Using a simulator, you’ll learn to balance your price, inventory, and digital marketing spend to get the best result for your property. Multiple rounds of this game will provide you with real-life experience of competing against other hotels to win the most business at the best price and balanced marketing costs.
The simulator used in this session was developed for the HSMAI Revenue & Digital Workshops around Asia Pacific. It was developed by Dr Christopher K. Anderson from Cornell University and Level60.
Facilitator: Fabian Bartnick, Founder, Infinito and HSMAI Revenue Advisory Board Member 
Simulator provided by: Level 60
In the breakout area
Is WeChat a social platform or something else? How should you use WeChat to attract and serve Chinese outbound travellers better?
This workshop is designed to answer these questions and draw a clear picture of WeChat and how it can be used to support marketers in the hospitality industry – especially hotels. We will cover all the basics of WeChat, its key features, latest developments, WeChat Tech and its integration with other systems. We will discuss the Chinese outbound travel trends and effective strategies of WeChat marketing. There will also be a short hands-on session to experience WeChat onsite and see some best practices. At the end of the session, you will have a high-level all-around WeChat marketing knowledge and know how to kick start.
* Please download WeChat App and register the app in advance of the session.
Brought to you by HSMAI Academy and WeChat4Travel.com (http://wechat4travel.com/)
Speaker: Jiang ting, Founder, bridge86 & WeChat for Travel
