41 – TMG Culture With Dana Singer
On this special edition of the Suite Spot, we host Travel Media Group’s Vice President and General Manager, Dana Singer. Ryan Embree and Dana share thoughts on what sets the Travel Media Group experience apart for our hotel partners.
Ryan and Dana take a trip down memory lane and reflect on Travel Media Group’s successes and achievements of the last decade. Dana shares her vision for the culture at Travel Media Group and how that culture impacts our hotel partnerships. Dana also gives a sneak peek on what she is most excited about in the new decade and what to expect.
To get more information about working with TMG or to submit a question or topic for future episodes, call or text 407-984-7455.
Episode Transcript
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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. We got a great episode for you today. It is long overdue, we have a special new guest with us today, she is VP and General Manager at Travel Media Group and that’s Dana Singer. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Suite Spot, like I said, it’s long overdue, but we’re super happy that you decided to join us.
Dana Singer: Yeah, thanks Ryan. It’s great to be here, I’ve been looking forward to it for a while now and can’t think of a better way to kick off the new year.
Ryan Embree: Absolutely, new year and new decade as we talked about in the last episode. And we’re going to go right into it and with this being your first time, what we like to do with our new guests is give a little bit of background about your experience at Travel Media Group, the role that you have as Vice President and General Manager of Travel Media Group. Can you just give us a little insight on that?
Dana Singer: Sure. Yeah, I joined Travel Media Group back in December of 2012 and it was at a time when the business was at a really important inflection point in terms of the emerging trends in hotel marketing and what we needed to do to ensure our longterm success. And it was at this time that we realized the need to expand our offerings and to begin to make even greater investments into product development. So after implementing a full restructuring of our sales and service teams to best meet the needs of today’s hoteliers, all across the US. I had the opportunity to move into my current role, where I head up our overall vision and implementation of strategies.
Ryan Embree: And you mentioned that inflection point and especially around that 2012, we were seeing a lot of digital trends really start to emerge. Travel Media Group as a company has really evolved significantly under your leadership. Can you share with us a little bit more about that evolution and the vision for what you see as next?
Dana Singer: It’s always inspiring to look back at our journey and how we got to where we are today and for over 35 years TMG has been dedicated to helping hoteliers attract more guests and this is a really important foundation for us. Today our business is all about providing our partners with a competitive edge through marketing and business insights to help them effectively manage guest feedback. And our commitment to exclusively serving the hotel industry is something that we’re very, very passionate about. Our expertise and understanding the importance of managing the hotel guest experience has resulted in the development and continuous innovation of best in class solutions.
Ryan Embree: That’s one of the things that I have a lot of pride in working Travel Media Group cause I feel like obviously we’ve had that shift of solutions, but that experience has really stayed the same. That core foundation that you talk about helping hoteliers attract more guests. That is at the foundation, that’s a core of Travel Media Group. So for a hotelier who’s listening to this podcast, whether it’s a GM, a DOS, or even someone’s that just started their career in the industry who’s not really familiar with that Travel Media Group experience, what do you think differentiates us from the competition out there?
Dana Singer: I think our position as a trusted hotel marketing company for over 35 years gives us a unique understanding of how hotel reputation, competitive pricing, and guest experience all work together to make a property successful. And at Travel Media Group we excel by finding innovative ways to optimize a hotel’s online presence so that travelers can connect during their booking journey.
Ryan Embree: Absolutely, and I think with that experience there’s almost a parallel of culture at a company, because if you don’t build a strong culture, then that overflows into a hotelier’s or our partner’s experience. So I think you’ve done a fantastic job at Travel Media Group creating this culture. Again, for someone not familiar with it, could you kind of describe that culture here at the company?
Dana Singer: Culture is such a huge piece of a business’s success and I describe our culture as one that it’s really all about continuous improvement. We’re always seeking to understand how our clients feel about their partnership with us and proactively looking for ways to exceed expectations. Ultimately we want to be known as a company that is enthusiastically recommended to friends and colleagues and our team at TMG is made up of hospitality focused professionals in a variety of disciplines and that lends itself to a robust client centric culture. We see ourselves as one team committed to the success of every single client regardless of what role someone may be in and all roads lead back to how we can exceed our client’s expectations, deliver outstanding results, and be viewed as a trusted partner.
Ryan Embree: And that’s one thing I was extremely impressed with when I first joined Travel Media Group is the amount of hospitality experience here that lends to us helping hoteliers. It’s such a unique industry, once you’re in that position you really get a lot of insight on how you can help hoteliers. A big, big part and core competency of Travel Media Group is really that commitment to continuous innovation. Can you talk to us why that’s important? Especially in the hotel industry, which we exclusively serve.
Dana Singer: The hotel industry is moving very quickly as it relates to connecting the travelers in a meaningful way in order to secure bookings and guest feedback is growing rapidly and the stakes are just so high in terms of how they feel about their stay and how this influences other travelers. And so at Travel Media Group, our team of product specialists and developers are constantly finding ways to enhance our solutions to help our partners effectively manage guest feedback as well as easy access to associated insights and analytics. So from new product features to updated reporting tools, innovation is a key part of every TMG solution and all of our partners have access to the latest product updates as they’re released and they get exclusive first looks at new products when they launch.
Ryan Embree: That’s one of the most exciting parts about working for and working with Travel Media Group is just the constant innovations. As part of my position, I’m constantly looking at hospitality trends, tech trends, and trying to connect that with our business. But most of the time the exciting part is our product team and customer success team, they’re already on top of this stuff. They know what’s coming down the pike and they’re already helping to educate our hoteliers and our partners on what’s going to have an impact on their business. What gets you excited about working at Travel Media Group?
Dana Singer: I love being a part of a team that is so incredibly enthusiastic about what we do in a business it’s really an impressive legacy but a positive outlook for the future.
Ryan Embree: Absolutely, and we know that our history at Travel Media Group is just as important as working towards the future and we have, you know, a lot of things that we have done as a company in the last decade that you’ve been an integral part of. What accomplishments in the last decade are you most proud of as an organization?
Dana Singer: There’ve been so many milestones for TMG over the past decade, all of which have gotten us to where we are today. We successfully transitioned from a traditional directional media company that helped hoteliers capture last minute travelers to a full service digital marketing company and while the foundation of our digital marketing services was built on a suite of reputation management tools, our next chapter that included social media management and websites really put us in a solid position for the explosive growth that’s occurring with guest feedback everywhere. The OTAs TripAdvisor, Google, Facebook, Twitter and others. Our solutions just make it easy for our partners to get in front of it all. And then finally as we moved into 2019 we launched our OneView platform and this is really a groundbreaking guest feedback management system. OneView is totally where the magic happens in terms of being able to see and address guest feedback real time. OneView syncs reviews, posts, and messages into one place so our partners can respond, interact, and engage online.
Ryan Embree: It really is incredible to look back on a decade – everything you just said – it’s so hard to believe that that just happened in the span of 10 years. This is probably putting you on the spot here, but what are you most excited about going into the 2020s and maybe seeing us going into the next decade look like?
Dana Singer: Yeah, big question. I’m so excited about the partnerships that we have already and I just can’t wait to be a part of their success in 2020 and I love the stories that evolve from our solutions and it just feels so good to see them in action. As we move forward, I mean we’ve got a lot of cool things in the works, but one thing’s for sure we’re going to stay true to our passion of helping hoteliers succeed.
Ryan Embree: Well I am personally excited to see what happens, not just this year but leading into the next decade. So Dana, I definitely want to thank you for coming. For sure, have to have you on another episode and talk about these topics. But again, it’s been long overdue, so thank you so much Dana.
Dana Singer: Well, thank you Ryan. It’s terrific to be here with you today and I’ve been looking forward to it.
Ryan Embree: Awesome. We’ve been around just like Dana said, for 35 years. So maybe you’ve partnered with us once before, you heard today the changes and innovations that we’ve done just in the span of a couple of years. So if you have partnered with us before, come check us out again, reach out to us. We’d love to kind of show you how we’re partnering and helping, get more guests to your hotel, helping with your marketing and advertising, especially going into the 2020s where we know digital marketing is just such a critical and vital part of a hotel’s bottom line. So if you’re interested in reaching out to us, please feel free to, you can always reach us at our phone number at (407) 984-7455. I want to thank everyone for taking the time to listen and we’ll talk to you next time on the Suite Spot. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group, our editor is Anne Sandoval with cover art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree and we hope you enjoyed your stay.