The Digital Disconnect

Foreign Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Avi Arya from Internet Moguls and For the past 10 years we worked with over 1100 companies all over the planet. And as we get into 2018, there's something that is worrying me and I decided to call it the digital disconnect. The more I work with companies I realize from the ownership to the CEO, the general manager in case of hospitality, the rooms division manager, the F and B manager, they mostly work like a well oiled machine. Everybody is from hospitality, everybody understands service and they work towards the best future for the company. But enter digital and social media and everything has changed. We all go for conferences, we all are subject to information and we know that somebody, some concept, some phenomena is helping our competitors make a lot of money. We are interested in this new revenue stream that comes from digital. I like to call it digital revenues, but we don't know how to because the expectations from the owner side to the CEO to the general manager and everybody in the department is completely different. If we were to use an analogy and ask everybody what their organization stands for and what are they looking for from social media, what if your organization was a car, what color would it be? If you were to ask everybody separately, somebody would say it's red, somebody would say it's green, somebody would say it's a Ferrari, the other would say it's a Peugeot. It's a different game. Everywhere there is the disconnect. And this disconnect stems from the fact that there is lack of education in this new media. When hotels were being built, when this whole hospitality industry was born, there were seminars, courses, lectures. We all learned how to hire the best people. We all learned the art of culinary perfection, gastronomy, room service, housekeeping. We've mastered the art of all of these sciences and arts within our hospitality segment, within our companies. But enter social media, enter digital. We want the lowest paid person in the organization or an outsourced body to handle it is not working for most of the companies. When I observed this many years ago, I thought I had to do something about it. So we started doing these workshops for companies like yours all over the planet. And this was met by a lot of success, a lot of happiness. Because now the entire leadership team, the entire team understands the possibilities of digital, the opportunities that exist. How much do they cost? How to hire an agency, what kind of agency will work for you? What should be the background of the owners or the founders or what kind of team should an agency put together for you? Should you do it in house or do it with an agency? What kind of people should you hire in house? What should be their KRAs and KPIs? How should you measure them? And eventually how to align all of this with your goal, your company goal, your company mission? How, how should you look on social media? What is the true essence of the company? How will that come out? Leveraging social media? How will you actually get real business? Can you get more room nights? Can you get more F and B packages? Can you have more people staying with you on the weekends? Can you have more people coming from different parts of the world when there is a valley or a low season? All these questions are answered in these workshops that I have been doing across the world. Ladies and gentlemen, I got worried and therefore I coined it the digital disconnect. And five years back when I wrote an article, a lot of people didn't take very kindly to it. They thought I was putting general managers down, they thought I was putting hoteliers down. And when I had to tell everybody that I'm a hotelier myself, I'm a hotelier who 15 years back realized that there was no agency, no marketing company that was understanding my pain and my plight. And therefore I gave birth to Internet Vogels. Today we have 220 moguls all over the world helping businesses like yours to take their digital marketing to the next level. So I understand it, I get it. I understand how much it pains to work hard and have a bad quarter. I understand how a 5, 10% difference in revenue can change your balance sheet profits and change everything. Your mindset, your happiness, everything. And that extra revenue stream comes from understanding digital. Unfortunately, most of us have not invested time to learn this new art and craft which is ruling the world. It's not difficult. Two things are needed, empathy and common sense. When I say empathy means I find people who care about other people understanding how digital works. And all hoteliers, all hospitality, all service companies have people who are creating beautiful experiences for their guests coming in next Thursday, next day. So you obviously have empathy and a lot of common sense to understand a bit of data, how it works. And then I am there to share with you all the opportunities that exist. As the algorithms change, as the opportunities change, as price points change, as demographics change, as stats change, as the six circles of digital marketing change, I am there guiding you throughout, step by step, guiding you and your teams to ensure that you stay right on track. Ladies and gentlemen, let's make sure that in the next few years we remove this digital disconnect and all of us align to find those extra revenues that we have within our organizations. If this message appeals to you, send me a message. Send me an email wherever you're watching this, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, wherever you send me an inbox message, I will reply to you personally. I'll get back to you and then set a time to meet and talk. Allow me to come and talk to your team, talk to you, talk to your leaders, and inject this powerful medicine called social media that can help revolutionize your business. Thank you very much for watching. I look forward to talking to you. Sam.