The business of belonging: Building guest loyalty in a new era of personalization

What if your next revenue opportunity is hiding in a conversation your reservations team is already having? Every guest interaction is a chance to win a booking, build a relationship, and create more value long after the reservation is made. In this episode of Hotel Moment, we sit down with Angela Berkey, Vice President of Guest Engagement at CoralTree Hospitality, to talk about how hotels can make every conversation count.

Angela shares why selling a hotel stay is about so much more than selling a room, how to make personalization feel thoughtful rather than intrusive, and why hotels could be missing out on serious revenue by not following up with guests who never complete a booking.

We also get into how reservations, CRM, and marketing can work better together, where AI can make a real difference, and how hotels can find new opportunities to grow revenue through dining, wellness, and other guest experiences.

Because the best guest relationships don’t start when someone walks through the door. They start long before they book.

Meet your host

Karen Stephens

As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen is focused on driving long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. Her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships. Karen has more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution — including managing global accounts in travel and hospitality organizations such as Travelocity and lastminute.com

As the host of The Hotel Moment podcast, she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading our global GTM teams. Her most recent transition was from Chief Revenue Officer, where she led the team in their highest booking quarter to date in Q4 2023.

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Transcript

(00:00:00) Angela Berkey: So reservations and really all of our team members, it’s about connecting with the guest, finding out what’s important to them, the guest feeling seen, and then matching what they’re looking for. And when we can do that, we create a great guest experience all the way around.

(00:00:22) Karen Stephens: Welcome to the Hotel Moment podcast, presented by Revinate. I’m Karen Stephens, Chief Marketing Officer, joining you from sunny San Francisco, California.

(00:00:24) Dylan Cole: And I’m Dylan Cole, Managing Director of Revinate Europe, calling in from Amsterdam.

(00:00:29) Karen Stephens: This is the podcast where we explore how technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience, and more importantly, how the right technology delivers real outcomes for hotel teams and guests alike.

(00:00:39) Dylan Cole: From revenue strategy and guest communication to operations and marketing, we sit down with the people transforming hospitality around the world.

(00:00:48) Karen Stephens: Depending on the conversation, sometimes it’ll just be me behind the mic,

(00:00:51) Dylan Cole: and sometimes it’ll be me bringing a European perspective and stories from across the global hospitality industry.

(00:00:58) Karen Stephens: Whether you’re a hotelier, a tech enthusiast, or just curious about where hospitality is headed,

(00:01:03) Dylan Cole: you’re in the right place. Let’s get into it.

(00:01:07) Karen Stephens: Hello, and welcome to the Hotel Moment podcast. I’m your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And today we’re excited to have Angela Berkey, Vice President of Guest Engagement at CoralTree Hospitality, joining us. Angela has spent much of her career working across reservations, CRM, front office operations, and revenue strategy. She has a particular appreciation for the role reservations teams play in shaping the guest experience, often being the first real connection a guest has with the hotel. Today we talk about how hotels can build stronger relationships with guests, how reservation teams can play a bigger role in that process, and how to use guest data and technology to create a more personalized experience that also makes good business sense. So, without further ado, Angela Berkey, welcome to the podcast.

(00:01:55) Angela Berkey: Hi, Karen. Thanks for having me.

(00:01:57) Karen Stephens: You know what, it’s a pleasure to have you here. So we’ve worked together for a long time when you were first at Auberge and now at CoralTree, and I don’t like to play favorites, but you’re one of my favorites.

(00:02:06) Angela Berkey: Well, I was gonna say I am fangirling a little bit about the podcast today, so.

(00:02:11) Karen Stephens: Yes. All right. Well, you know, Angela, you have worked across a lot of different areas of hospitality. So you’ve been in front office operations to reservations to customer relationship and revenue strategy. So what initially drew you into hospitality and what has kept you passionate about this industry?

(00:02:30) Angela Berkey: Well, it’s funny because I didn’t really plan on being in hospitality prior to landing in hotels. I was actually a teacher. And when I decided to go to grad school, I needed to pay the bills. And so I started in reservations, which was great because I could go to school all morning and then work the late shift from 2:30 to 11:00 and get my homework done. And so that’s when I was first introduced into hospitality and I fell in love with it. You know, I grew up in — you know, we were going to, if we stayed at a hotel, it was a limited-service off of a freeway. Grew up in the Midwest; we didn’t go to resorts. And so I remember that first job and being able to get spa treatments and learn to golf and learn about fine dining and all of the things, and I just looked around and was like, “Wow, this is really fun. Like, I could do this the rest of my life.” And that’s basically what happened. So here we are.

(00:03:28) Karen Stephens: That is amazing. I didn’t know that you used to be a teacher. So what were you training to teach?

(00:03:32) Angela Berkey: I actually was a full-time kindergarten through eighth grade art teacher. So I have a fine studio arts degree. I couldn’t do it being an artist. So then I went into teaching and then realized, “I don’t know if I want to do this the rest of my life.”

(00:03:47) Karen Stephens: That’s amazing. So fun fact — it’s not about me, but I used to teach French, and same deal. I was a French teacher and needed, unfortunately, like you’ve gotta make a real income at some point. It can be very hard. I was an adjunct professor at a junior college. So same deal, fine arts, and shout-out to all the artists out there. But it’s good to know you can work in hospitality. There is a bridge to doing fun, creative things.

(00:04:10) Angela Berkey: There is.

(00:04:12) Karen Stephens: So Angela, as I mentioned, now you’re at CoralTree Hospitality, so can you just give us the 10,000-foot view? What is CoralTree? What does the portfolio look like — the hotels, etc.?

(00:04:23) Angela Berkey: Yes, and we do get that question quite a bit. So we are a hotel management company that oversees approximately today 45 hotels and resorts and residence products. And by the way, we do have some branded hotels within our collection as well. So we do a little bit of everything. Our philosophy is that the hotel comes first; CoralTree is behind that. So you won’t ever — I don’t want to say you won’t ever, but very rarely do you hear CoralTree and then the hotel name. It’s really all about the hotel or the resort or the residence. And when we say residence collection, we have several different locations where more of a traditional — I always say like Airbnb or Vrbo, but they’re individually owned units and then we help property manage those. So we have a varied collection of products. And that’s what I get really excited about, is that every day is different. It’s not cookie-cutter and we get to be really creative.

(00:05:20) Karen Stephens: Yeah, I think not cookie-cutter is a good way to explain it because, as you said, CoralTree Hospitality is not a consumer-facing brand. It’s something that people in hospitality understand, the industry understands. So that means that every single property or residence has its own personality, for lack of a better word, right? Its own marketing motion. So that’s an interesting challenge.

(00:05:44) Angela Berkey: Yeah, it is. And that’s what I like most about it because we really get to lean into the local area, the personality of the property. Like I said, we get to be really creative and we get to have fun. So it’s really great to work here.

(00:05:58) Karen Stephens: Yeah. So from a CRM perspective, I’m curious, are you able, like with independents? You know, I know you’ve got Pier 66, which is a beautiful, beautiful property in Florida. Are you able to recommend — hey, or do you ever market to those folks and say, “Hey, we’ve got other properties in other areas. When you’re done snowbirding and you want to be somewhere else” — are you able to share that data across the properties?

(00:06:20) Angela Berkey: Well, we definitely get permission first. If it’s the same ownership group, then it’s a little bit easier to do that in those cases. What you’ll see us do is a lot of “We’d like to introduce you to,” and you’ll see that happening a lot with our newer properties that come on board. But we are careful because we do have different owners and we want to make sure that we protect their assets and we have their interests in mind.

(00:06:46) Karen Stephens: Absolutely. I mean, it all comes down to, at the end of the day, who owns the guest data. And from our point of view, the hotel does, right?

(00:06:52) Angela Berkey: Yep, exactly.

(00:06:53) Karen Stephens: And then they could share from there. So that’s fantastic. So this year you were promoted into the Vice President role. So now you’re doing the Vice President of Guest Engagement at CoralTree. So after leading — you know, you’ve led the reservation teams for a long time in CRM — how has your perspective on guest experience evolved as you’ve kind of moved up the ladder here?

(00:07:14) Angela Berkey: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that initially with reservations and revenue CRM, it was very much about the function and about how do you get that reservation or that booking or make the most of this one thing. With guest engagement and the more holistic view, it’s how is everything connected and what is that guest experience all the way through? And so for me, it’s been challenging in a good way, and because I get to piece all of those things together and really build the relationship with the guests and hopefully have guests for life with our brand.

(00:07:51) Karen Stephens: Absolutely. So I know that you’ve led reservation teams for a long time. So how do you train somebody to really sell that guest experience without making it sound like a sales pitch? Because there’s so much that a hotel offers, how do you train that?

(00:08:05) Angela Berkey: To me, it’s all about building relationships. The sale comes second to anything that we do. So really, at the end of the day, it’s how are you going to connect with this guest? People buy from people they like. We always say that. So how are you going to build a relationship in a very quick amount of time that gets them interested in the experience of staying with us? We know that all hotels have beds and bathrooms, and that’s not the heart. The heart is: What can they do? What can they experience? So reservations and really all of our team members, it’s about connecting with the guest, finding out what’s important to them, the guest feeling seen, and then matching what they’re looking for. And when we can do that, we create a great guest experience all the way around.

(00:08:48) Karen Stephens: Yeah. So I think at the heart of that is really, if we talk about kind of the definition of that, is really personalization. So it’s personalization, I think, from being able to do it in real time when someone is actually on a phone call. And then there’s a technology aspect of that. So can you talk a little bit about how that finesse works — personalizing so that you make sure that you match the guest to the correct experience, the correct hotel, without it being creepy? Because you can go creepy, too, if you’re not careful, you know? So

(00:09:18) Angela Berkey: For sure. Really, it’s about using the technology behind the relationship. And we don’t want to let the guests know that we know. We want it to be that soft understanding and just doing the things, because we know that the guest is — they’re going to like it and it’s what they’re looking for. So we don’t want to say, “Oh, you’ve stayed with us three times, and all three times we’ve noticed that you like feather pillows in your room.” We just want to do it quietly behind the scenes. And so it’s really using the technology to remove that friction on the back end and then just fulfilling that without the guest even knowing. That’s really the goal. Because you’re right; it could really be creepy. All of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, Angela always likes Diet Coke and she always needs a straw,” and then you tell me that you know this about me. Like, that’s just really weird. So we don’t want to go there.

(00:10:11) Karen Stephens: No, absolutely not. And I think the best brands get the behind-the-scenes really right. So do you have a good example of maybe something that happened on a reservations call that ended up manifesting kind of seamlessly for a guest in a room or during the stay experience afterwards?

(00:10:28) Angela Berkey: I wouldn’t say necessarily on a reservation call, but we had a great example from earlier this year where we had a VIP speaker at a conference that was going to be on stage, and our team had learned that he liked his room at a certain temperature. And so, unbeknownst to anybody, as we were VIPing the room, the team went in, set the temperature down to 64 degrees, left — you know, everything was perfect. And everybody was holding their breath. And sure enough, he got on stage and talked about how we just knew that and we just delivered on it. And we didn’t tell him that we did it; we just did it. And it’s just such a great example of — it doesn’t have to be giant fruit baskets or customized pictures in rooms. It can be something just as subtle as a temperature in a room that makes somebody feel seen.

(00:11:19) Karen Stephens: It makes such a huge difference. And I think that being able to coordinate across the teams, I think the other thing that’s cool is that your staff that works in hospitality, you’re in hospitality because you truly want to deliver a great guest experience. That’s why you get in the business. It’s kind of like what you said about when you came into hospitality as you were going through school: You start to really develop a love for it. So I think it’s really cool when you can train teams to really love delivering that.

(00:11:48) Angela Berkey: Yeah, for sure. And what I like to internally with our teams when we’re talking about it, when we’re celebrating, like, you know, a great guest review or a letter that was written to a GM, like, that’s where I think really the inspiration comes from. And then it just kind of organically grows among our team, and we feel proud about it and confident. And so then we start doing more of it. And that’s really the goal, is to just have this organic hospitality mentality grow within our team members.

(00:12:14) Karen Stephens: Very cool. So another thing that I’d love to talk about with you now, say you’re in the revenue side of the house. Let’s talk about revenue. Yeah. So there’s an increasing focus about revenue beyond the rooms. We’ve seen a lot of that when we talk about TrevPAR. So it’s way beyond the room booking itself, particularly through wellness, dining, and other ancillary experiences. So how can hotels identify opportunities to generate additional revenue throughout the guest journey without, again, making the guests feel like you’re getting pitched or you’re getting sold to? So how do you do that?

(00:12:48) Angela Berkey: Oh, well, I think first and foremost, it’s during that conversation, that first conversation, and that will usually be with our reservation teams. And really, it’s just, how are we going to enhance that guest stay? It’s not necessarily like, “How am I going to get the upsell? How am I going to get the extra revenue?” If we really get to know our guests and understand what it is that they’re looking for — what do they want to experience, what kind of trip do they want? — then we are suggesting recommendations. An example would be, “Oh, your arrival time is around 6:00. Let’s go ahead and just set up some dinner reservations at our restaurants so that you don’t have to worry about it when you get here.” It’s where we’re fulfilling something that they’re going to need anyway. And it’s thoughtful because we’re helping them think ahead. Likewise with like a spa. I’m a big spa-goer. I love, love spas. I could live all day in them. And if I were to get to a hotel and I can’t get a spa treatment because it’s already booked, then that becomes a disappointing thing. It’s a rapport break between the hotel or the spa and that guest. And so the more we can help the guest pre-plan or help fulfill whatever it is they’re looking for, then the happier they’re going to be and the revenue is really going to follow in that. So it doesn’t have to be a hard sell. I think from a technical standpoint, there’s things like preference forms that we can send out in advance to help understand what our guest is looking for and then do some suggestions or recommendations. Or if we have transactional history and we know that Angela always goes to the spa, then we can pre-plan or help recommend a time slot so that we know that that stay is going to be fulfilled in the way that they want it. So really, it’s not about us; it’s always about the guest. It’s always what they’re looking for and then we’re just helping fulfill that.

(00:14:39) Karen Stephens: Absolutely. I love that. You know, it’s like make the guest experience great and the revenue will follow. Make the suggestion, it’ll follow. So, Angela, reservations, sales, CRM, and marketing are often managed as separate functions, although I think that that’s changing more and more when we talk about commercial strategy. But how can hotels bring these together to create a more connected booking and guest engagement strategy?

(00:15:03) Angela Berkey: That’s a great question. We understand that there are different roles in different departments, different lanes, but our guests don’t see that, right? They see one hotel; they see one experience. And so it is very critical that we are coming together as one unified commercial team. And really operations — that’s kind of my role now, is to bring some of those disciplines together. But it’s really about honing in on what is this entire guest experience. From the first time they receive a piece of information or an email introducing, or they find us on the website, what is that discovery, to then what is all of the communication they’re going to receive? How do we lean into their preferences? How do we market only to what they are interested in so that it’s relevant? And then even after the guest stays, what does that communication look like and how do we continue to build that relationship with the guest? It’s not just a one-and-done. To me, it’s a continual conversation. It’s building personal relationships, and we’ve got to do that between all of our departments to make sure that that guest feels, “Oh, I’m calling this one hotel. I want this one experience. I’m going to get one experience.”

(00:16:18) Karen Stephens: I think that is a very on-point thing to say in terms of, you know, when you think about customer relationship management, the true definition of it, it’s not just like, “Oh, hey, I’m triggering a birthday email.” It is a continuous conversation across the guest journey and beyond. And not always pitching, right? Sometimes it’s just inspiration about what you might be thinking about, or to inspire. So I think that’s really important.

(00:16:41) Angela Berkey: Yeah, and we’ve been talking about that a lot lately. It’s how do you romance the guest throughout that whole process. And it’s not just, “Oh, we’re going to, like you said, trigger a birthday or an anniversary campaign.” Sometimes it might be, “Let me help you with what you’re going to pack. Let me tell you, what’s that local insider knowledge that you’re looking for that maybe doesn’t show up on a Tripadvisor review?” That’s really what we’re trying to lean into is, again, that full relationship with that guest.

(00:17:10) Karen Stephens: That’s fantastic. So I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you a little bit about AI because we all got to talk about AI. Okay, so AI is becoming increasingly integrated into hospitality operations. So when do you think it’ll genuinely help hotel teams and where do you think it’s not really quite delivering yet?

(00:17:28) Angela Berkey: Man, AI is the conversation we are all having right now. And really, the way we’re looking at it, the way CoralTree is looking at it, is that how are we using technology to remove the friction, either for our guests or for our team members? And we all have things that we do every day that are, “Oh, I’ve got to do this report,” or “I’ve got to fill out this housekeeping board,” or whatever it is. Those are the things that we want to use AI for. We want to automate the transactional pieces of the business. What we don’t want to do is remove that true heartfelt hospitality. And so I think we’re a long way away. We’re all worried about, “Oh, is AI going to replace my job?” No, we want it to make your job easier. And will we have robots at the front desk? No. Our front desk experience might look different in the future. Maybe it’s more of a lobby host welcoming you into the hotel, which is a much different — maybe there aren’t traditional front desks anymore. You know, the vision of what we could do with AI can change the face, but what it’ll allow us to do is have that deeper connection with the guest and really help them be seen. So really, that’s how we’re thinking of AI: How can it do the transactions? How can we keep that heartfelt hospitality with our team members? That’s why we got in this business. That’s why we’re going to stay. So let’s lean into that.

(00:18:54) Karen Stephens: That’s right. That’s why we got in the business, why we’re going to stay. And also I believe why guests love to stay in a hotel instead of, you know, an empty shell, right? So I think it is that human interaction and the expertise and the guidance that you can get from folks. You touched on a little bit talking about local experiences, but it all comes together for that hotel stay.

(00:19:16) Angela Berkey: Yeah, for sure.

(00:19:17) Karen Stephens: So, looking ahead, what’s one industry change you are particularly excited about, and what is one trend you’re more skeptical of? So we talked a little bit about AI, but what can you see coming that you’re like, “Yeah, this is going to be a game-changer for our industry”?

(00:19:31) Angela Berkey: Yeah, I mean to me it is AI. This is going to change everything that we do. And to me, in a better way. I think what it also — and we’ve been talking a lot about this within CoralTree as well — is that just in general, everybody becomes more tech-forward because we’re here. I think what it’ll do is allow us to open up more community building just even on our property. So this is what I get more excited about: Now let’s talk about — I think they call it like an analog movement, and it’s like, okay, well, how can we bring our guests together? Maybe as like a ritual in the afternoon where our guests are getting together and talking about the day on the slopes, or maybe it’s they’re putting together a puzzle and every week we do a new puzzle and we’re bringing people together to connect. And I think that’s what I’m most excited about is that there will be this natural passion to just have human moments, and whether that’s with our teams or with each other. And that’s going to be bred really by tech. So it makes me so happy to think about that.

(00:20:34) Karen Stephens: I love that as well. And as you’re saying this, I’m thinking of some of the beautiful properties you have, like Everline in Tahoe and Anci, because it is such a diverse portfolio.

(00:20:43) Angela Berkey: It is. You know, you might spend one day at the pool down in Florida or you might be on the slopes skiing and now you’re having après-hour and everybody’s coming together by the fire and telling stories. I mean, there’s just going to be so much opportunity to have all these great experiences moving forward.

(00:20:59) Karen Stephens: Across — yeah. And you hit on this a little bit when we were talking about CoralTree itself. But because of that diverse collection of lifestyle hotels and resorts, each with its own kind of identity and personality, how do you really create that consistent guest experience across — how do you manifest that into the kind of experience that you’re talking about?

(00:21:20) Angela Berkey: Yeah, well, I would love to just manifest it, for sure. What we find is that we intentionally lay out guidelines of a process or touchpoints that we want to do, and that really comes clear with our guest journey touchpoints that we do. And so we provide every property with either our standards and/or our guest journey touchpoints, and that’s the framework. But within that framework, each property needs to lean into their own brand, their own local. You know, like we were talking about, each hotel is different. So we don’t want the same experience to happen in California than we do in Stowe, Vermont. We want those to be very different experiences. But we want the consistency of service to be delivered. We want the consistency of, okay, a guest is going to experience a unique touchpoint at each stage. But what the teams do with that can be creative; it can be what they want to do. And so that also engages our team members to really own it. And that’s really what we’re looking for, whereas at CoralTree, we don’t mandate anything. We really want to inspire and influence. And so this allows our team members on the ground to do what they do best and for us to guide and then step out of the way and celebrate the wins.

(00:22:33) Karen Stephens: You know, I think that just going back to the top of our conversation, knowing that you have a background in art and you’re a creative person and you’re a teacher, I’m like, that for me, what you just said about each team member being able to be creative within kind of the broader outline, I’m like, there you go. That’s — that’s how that fit into your career, right?

(00:22:52) Angela Berkey: Yeah. Paint that blank canvas. We support you.

(00:22:56) Karen Stephens: That’s fantastic. So final question for you, Angela. As someone who has built a career across different areas of hospitality and now leads a broad guest engagement function, what advice could you give to hospitality professionals looking to grow their strategic leadership roles?

(00:23:12) Angela Berkey: Yeah, this is a really great question. I think that, first of all, always say yes to opportunities. That’s where I learned the most. I didn’t plan on getting into revenue management at a certain point in my career, but I did it. I didn’t plan on going into operations, but I did it. And so, like, every step of the way. And by the way, I didn’t just figure that out. I had a really smart mentor that told me, like, “What’s the worst that can happen? Like, go learn.” So I think being able to take risks and try new things and say, “Oh, I’m just going to figure it out” has really been beneficial. I think what that does then is staying as curious as possible and understanding. Like, for me, I like to figure out, how do all the pieces fit together and how can we use those to make the business better? At some point in all of our careers, I think you start thinking about, “This is my function today, and I’m going to make my function the best that it can be.” But when you start shifting that and reframing that thought to, “Okay, how can I use this function to make the business better — the overall business?” that’s the shift that I kind of had to make in my career. And that helped to start connecting all the dots. And that was, if I were to give any advice to anybody, it’s always say yes. And then: How does this one function fit into the rest of the business? That’s how we’re going to make our teams, our hotels, our companies better and also be really fulfilled, because you see a greater, bigger picture than just staying in your one lane. So don’t stay in your lane; like, go have some fun.

(00:24:45) Karen Stephens: I love that. Angela, thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you. Thank you for being my guest.

(00:24:50) Angela Berkey: Thank you, Karen. I really appreciate being here today.

(00:24:57) Karen Stephens: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to Revinate.com/HotelMomentPodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.

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