Hyatt’s Mark Vondrasek on Loyalty, Well-Being & the Future of Travel

Up today on Moschito Culture, we're thrilled to be joined by Mark Vondrasek, Chief Commercial Officer at Hyatt Hotels Corporation. With over 2 decades of experience in the hospitality industry, Mark leads Hyatt's commercial services team overseeing everything from global sales and marketing to loyalty programs, guest experience, and digital innovation. Mark, so great to see you today.

Great to be with you, Matt. Appreciate you taking the time. Thank you.

So I've always been fascinated with the hotel business because it seems like it's such a hard business to scale at a, at a high quality level. And Hyatt is obviously a massive global corporation in hospitality. Tell me about the, some things about the business itself that maybe our audience wouldn't know in terms of the challenges of operating such a large hospitality business.

Well, you, you know, we, by definition, we exist in, in around the world in several countries and we've gotta take care of guests, not just those that we know today, but those that are new to the business travel world, new to the vacation and leisure side of the business. And you've gotta do that in a culturally relevant way around the world. And you've gotta do it with some consistency in some areas like a loyalty program where people expect certain recognition and treatment regardless of where they travel around the world. So For us, it's, it's the acknowledgement that you've gotta be big, but you've also gotta be very relationship-focused and stay very connected to those that are traveling today and those that will follow.

Yeah. And, and coming out of the pandemic, there was this whole trend called revenge travel where obviously a lot of consumers, you know, who were pent up in terms of not being able to get out, you know, start to really overspend and travel. Where are we today relative to that shift, you know, and what are some of the major trends impacting your industry today heading into 2025?

Well, as you can imagine, Matt, you, our industry, like many, was crippled during COVID I mean, we saw occupancies and revenue drop literally overnight to levels where they never existed before. And I think what our learning was is that when you take something away from people, and I think, you know, the ability to connect with their loved ones, the ability to literally physically be in their presence, When COVID lifted, there was for certain a desire to get back on the road, to go see from a leisure perspective, family, or to, you know, reconnect even from a business standpoint. And that trend has just continued. We have seen both in the leisure and in the business space, business travel space, just continued growth of travel on the other side of COVID And it's been wonderful. I think, you know, when people could get back out, I've always said, I think travel should have been, you know, one of the human truths. I think at the end of the day, people need to be together. And, and they certainly are. The other thing I would say is if there was an emerging learning for us, um, that we have doubled down on as a company, it's in this space of wellbeing. I, I don't know what it was during COVID but when people lost their ability to connect with each other, they reemerged into the travel space wanting to spend a little more time on property, wanting to experience local opportunities while they were with us. It's almost like, you know, you take something away from people and then when it returns, there's an even heightened value for it. And we've seen that in both the mental and physical wellbeing space. And it's led us to partnerships like we're doing with Peloton and Headspace and MasterClass, just a lot of partnerships that are centered on helping people find greater balance in their life from a wellbeing perspective. And get the most out of travel as they're back with us.

Yeah, I was talking to the folks at L'Oréal, for example, yesterday, and they're a beauty brand and they're seeing increasingly connectivity between wellness and beauty. You know, that beauty isn't just skin deep, it's all about wellness. And you're basically saying the same thing, that when somebody comes to a Hyatt Hotel, whether they're there for business or leisure, they connect their experience at Hyatt with wellbeing, with peace of mind. So how are you bringing that to life? You mentioned some of these partnerships. What do they look like and how do they overall impact the guest's feeling of overall wellbeing in connection with your brand?

Yeah, it's a good question. I, I probably would separate out the, the leisure traveler from the group traveler, but I'll start with group.

Okay.

Because it's probably— group is probably the place where you might be most surprised to learn of heightened interest in wellbeing. And what I mean by that is not not just physical well-being, but our customers, our corporate customers have found a heightened interest in infusing wellness and well-being into a traditional corporate meeting. And what do I mean by that, right? It can be simple things like you start a meeting with intention setting. What am I grateful for today? What do I really want to get out of this meeting? You know, very subtle infusion points into a meeting that can leave someone exiting that meeting feeling very different than what the corporate customer meeting looked like—

Right.

—in the past. And that can be physical, it can be mental, it can be, you know, just close your eyes and think of something on the last weekend that you were emotionally grateful for. And that brings people into the corporate meeting space with a clearer perspective. And so we are being very thoughtful about creating and infusing into our corporate customers' meetings a greater sense of wellbeing. And we've done that with a product we call the Wellbeing Collective, where group customers can now book experiences at over 50 of our hotels today that help them on their own personal wellbeing journeys for when they travel with us. On the leisure side, the examples are a little bit different, right? So we have partnered, we've leveraged some partnerships Headspace is a good example, right? Where mindful practices, the importance of sleep. It's interesting coming outta COVID, the number of travelers who struggle more with sleep than they ever have before.

Yeah, we hear that a lot.

So much on their minds and it's keeping them up at night. So we're a partner that brings solutions to what we, you know, what we continue to hear is important for our guests. We've got a platform to our loyalty program, World of Hyatt, that's called Find. And Find has 600 of these unique experiences, Matt, all anchored in wellbeing. They're focused on arts, discovery, rejuvenation, and they're designed with member and guests' wellbeing in mind. I'll just give you a couple quick examples, but—

Please.

Songwriters in the Round is one of my favorites. So Songwriters in the Round, is an experience at the Grand Hyatt Nashville where they tapped one of their own colleagues who was an up-and-coming songwriter and is also a barista in the hotel to lead this unique experience with a handful of guests that teach the secrets behind writing a hit song. And, you know, he just literally will gather interested members and guests and share rooted in the local culture and experience, a great example of sort of an authentic way to experience Nashville told through the lens of one of our colleagues. So there's an authenticity to it. It's not just a traditional partnership. We're tapping into our own colleagues to leverage, you know, when someone's at the Grand Hyatt Nashville and they have a little bit of downtime, this is something they can do. And then what gets played back to us is obviously we want the stay to be amazing, But it's oftentimes these experiences on this platform we call Find that differentiate the stay. And it's what we hear, you know, matters to people as they're just, again, a little more aware of the importance of their own balance in the space of wellbeing.

Yeah, and I know you mentioned your loyalty program. I know it's a big key pillar to your overall brand building and sort of customer relationship strategy. How important is the first-party data that you're able to mine through that loyalty program and how does it drive decisions that you make in the future? Like looking for the next Headspace-type company to partner with as part of your overall offering.

Yeah, it's really important. I mean, you know, we're, we're not the biggest company in this industry, Matt. And so when you don't have scale as an advantage, you, you look for ways to differentiate that are authentic to your, your purpose and your culture. And our purpose here at Hyatt has always been to care for people so that they can be their very best. And one of the ways we do that is to listen to what is on the minds of our most valued travelers, members, and customers, and then build capabilities around what's important to them. I'm not sure we would've run as hard at wellbeing if, If it wasn't through a first-party data and listening mechanism that said, this is really on people's minds. And if you can make the hotel stay somehow accretive to what people are feeling right now, then you've changed the definition of loyalty because you're no longer just bringing a program or a 2.5 or 3-night hotel stay to someone. You're leaning into things that are on their minds and that actually make them better, um, to be their own best selves. And so we do that a lot. I mean, World of Hyatt as a program and, you know, just again, fastest growing loyalty program in this space. It's grown 20% just in the last year, nearly 50 million members now. It has as a cornerstone this ability to listen and connect. It's got, you know, just a couple things I would share, Matt, 'cause I get excited about this, but there's a benefit in the program called Guest of Honor. Mm-hmm. And Guest of Honor was here long before I got here 7 years ago. I always envied it when I was in a competitor's organization. But what Guest of Honor says is, look, so many loyalty programs today bestow benefits on the person that shows them frequency.

Yeah.

So if you're traveling and you show up 100 nights a year, there's a set of benefits very unique to you, Matt Britton. If your significant other or your mom or your dad is traveling, there's no connection to what you can do in loyalty programs to take care of them. Guest of Honor says, look, if you really want to understand the definition of loyalty, and we're the only program to have a benefit like this, isn't it true that if Matt is important to us, then doesn't it mean that those that matter to Matt should also matter to us?

Very cool. I've never heard that before. That's awesome.

Yeah. And if we're really trying to show you loyalty, then, you know, for me, if my parents are traveling and celebrating a 60th wedding anniversary, which happened a few years ago, They don't travel a lot. They have no status with anybody. But Guest of Honor for all of our members opens up the ability for them to say, "Hey, my folks are gonna be in one of your properties. It's really important to me to extend my relationship with you to them episodically, this one trip, and it would really matter and make a wonderful experience for my folks." Most programs are focused on getting thinner, taking some benefits away. Again, we're not the biggest. So how do you gain market share? How do you grow the way we do? It's with benefits like Guest of Honor that redefine what loyalty really means. And that's resonating with our members quite a bit.

Yeah, it's a really innovative idea. Another innovative idea I saw in preparing for today's talk is this program that Hyatt has called Work from Hyatt. Where you can actually have an office for the day. And it's basically, you know, we've, one other thing we've seen post-pandemic is, as people can work from anywhere and, you know, we're talking right now on a Zoom-like interface and obviously people for many different reasons would have needs to have an office space. And I really think it's innovative that you, that Hyde decided to go down that path where you can rent an office for the day from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. What went behind that decision and what type of behavior and activity are you seeing from your customers with this offering?

I'm so glad you brought it up. So Work from Hyatt was born out of the COVID period. So what I was noticing during COVID is, you know, our competitors, not criticizing, but they were amping up the points for travel, 5 times the points, 10 times the points. And the truth is we brought a set of our most loyal members together via Zoom. That's all you could do. And one of 'em said, in that forum, she said, listen, my resistance to travel now is one based in fear. And I don't know if I'm safe in a hotel. I don't know if I'm safe from a COVID perspective to be able to travel. So incenting me with additional points is actually missing what the reason why I'm reluctant to travel right now. But if you could curate a safe experience for me on property, one that allowed me to move my pet there, one that allowed, you know, that I could literally work from one of your hotels in a beautiful location. You guys take care of my dry cleaning. You take care of some of my household needs. Build that programming around me. And you've actually gotten me out of my house, but you've done it in an environment that feels a lot like I'm at home.

Right.

And it means a lot more to me than 3 times the points. And so we started with a handful of properties and we built this product and it was, it literally was, it got to 4 times its pro forma of what we thought it could be within 60 days. And we have just continued sort of that long tail learning of, you know, don't miss the fact that where people work and making work from Hyatt resonate for them can be a real unlock in this space. So it's just an example of something that was born outta necessity in COVID that we did that was very different in the industry. Mm-hmm. But we've continued to look for— now it's more rent, you know, office space for a day, or I really just need a physical place. It's not rooted in fear of travel any longer, but it's had a longer tail of when you do that and when my program brings me that benefit, you're connecting to a need in my life that, that just makes me appreciate that you're thinking about me more holistically than the number of nights I show up in your hotel.

Yeah. I mean, I, last week I took a red-eye and I landed in Cleveland on a speaking engagement at noon, and nothing would've been better than to have a place to shower and work and kind of get refreshed before the speaking engagement. I wish I knew last week that, that this initiative and offering existed, but it's good to know now for sure.

For sure.

So obviously generations change over time, and right now the millennials, which the first generation You know, grew up with the internet in the household, are between the age of 28 and 43. So that's your core family traveler that every year that goes on increasingly becomes millennials. And obviously with millennials comes differentiated expectations related to the experience within like a Hyatt brand because, you know, they, they're way more digitally savvy. How is Hyatt kind of evolving the, the customer experience around digital more so as millennials become a larger percentage of your family and business traveler?

Yeah, that's a good question. I'd say two ways. One is, I'll come back to digital in a second, but one is through, we've been very thoughtful around how we've grown. You know, the most recent announcement of having acquired the Standard and Bunkhouse brands that were announced recently and just closed yesterday, Those are two brands that meet a, a younger demographic and speak to very creative and innovative on-property experiences that start to reach below where the traditional hospitality demographic exists today. And so one of the things we're looking at as we grow is how do we, through brand acquisitions, continue to strengthen a portfolio that speaks to what is a changing demographic and will continue to be it.

Yeah.

And so, because if you just solve this digitally, but you don't look at the actual brands and products and experiences that you deliver, it's not enough. It's not enough to just speak to someone in the channel or in the forum that, um, that they most appreciate. But so I think whether it's The Standard and Bunkhouse, whether it's our acquisition a few years ago of the Apple Leisure Group that opened up a whole new segment of all-inclusive travel. That young demographic is increasingly interested in all-inclusive travel. They like to know what they're gonna pay ahead of time. They love to travel and have all of their meals and beverages included. And, you know, we, with one stroke of the pen, with picking up Apple Leisure Group, we're the largest in the luxury all-inclusive space from a resort perspective around the world also. Mm-hmm. Digitally, we're spending a lot of time on the, on the importance of personalization. So what offers I show you, Matt Britton versus Mark Vondrasek versus someone who we're seeing for the first time who's 20 years old, are very different in our channels. We're using AI and we're using intelligence as to what, what we learn and what to put in front of guests that is far less homogenous than it's ever been in our space. And when you do that well, you create a learning circle that makes you much more intelligent regardless of the demographic or this segment.

Right.

But for the, you're talking about much more focused digitally. If you can't speak to 'em through their iPhone, you really, you can't speak to 'em, period. And you've gotta figure out through partnerships, you gotta find them where they are and you gotta, you, you have to be able to present offers, experiences in a very crisp. And, and for that segment, Matt, there's not a lot of long attention to, you know, they don't wanna study for hours what the opportunity is.

Right.

They digest in sound bites. They digest in a much crisper, shorter period of time. So your app has to evolve. We just announced World of Hyatt's newest app just was launched and it's gotten much more personalized in this very vein that we're talking about. What content we present, easy ways for people to learn about a property or an experience that are not hard, that can be done in very crisp sound bites. It's a little bit of the learning of TikTok or whatever you want. People want content— Right.

Snackable, short form.

They want a snackable, digestible, and they want to decide, is it for me? I'll stay here. If it's not, I want the ability to move on to what's next and I'll decide on my own terms. So, we're leveraging a lot of what what's macro to what and how people want to travel.

Yeah, and I also think the experience in room, like the kind of future hotel room is something that fascinates me. I was at the Wynn Hotel a couple months ago in Las Vegas and they had this, you know, it was kind of, it might've been Alexa, I don't know what powered it, but essentially you could do everything in that hotel via voice. You could order room service, turn the lights off, close the shades, all without picking up the phone, even touching a knob or a dial. And in this new age of AI, which I wanna get into as well, and you know, again, the burgeoning millennial and then Gen Z demographic, I don't know if they're gonna wanna pick up the phone anymore to order room service because to your point, they have such a low attention span. So what's your feeling on the hotel room of the future and, and how do some of these technologies, I guess, play a role in, in increasing the overall guest experience?

I think you're gonna see hotel rooms also need to be far less homogenous than they are today. And you're gonna have to map the guest to the experience that they want. You know, there are people, there are younger travelers who don't ever wanna stop at the front desk. They want mobile check-in. The less people they have to talk to, the better.

That's me. That's how I am. I don't wanna talk to anyone. Right.

But you have to be careful because in this industry, you're serving not just that demographic, you're still serving, you know, you're still serving people in their, 50s and 60s who quite frankly, when they're on a trip and they're gonna be there for more than a night, they get a lot of value at the front desk and asking some questions. And so, and that translates into in-room as well. So I think what you're gonna see is some segmentation in-room that really tries to map to what the guest wants. And for some of them, that will be much more technology and ability to run their entire experience through their phone. Mm-hmm. And for others, it'll feel like if that doesn't work for you, we still value the importance of relationships. And if you want to call downstairs and talk to somebody about what restaurant to go to because the human interaction matters, you can't close that off. And when you try to get one size fits all, you're going to upset a lot of folks. So, I expect more segmentation and more thoughtful mapping to the guest rooms. Yeah, makes sense. Over time to be the output here.

Yeah. And like you said earlier, you have a big portfolio of brands, so maybe some brands are more digital-forward than others just based upon the demographic that they serve.

Yeah, no question. No question.

So let's shift gears a little bit, uh, as we wrap up here to you and your career. So you've now been at Hyatt Hotel Corporation for 7 years, and prior to that, you spent 15 years at Starwood. So you're very much a hospitality veteran. What attract— what originally attracted you to this industry and what have you learned over time in terms of the skill sets needed to have staying power in your industry?

You know, I, I was in financial services for a long time and then right after 9/11, I had an opportunity to join Starwood Hotels and they were, they were looking to bring in non-traditional hospitality, you know, leaders who didn't grow up in hospitality to try to run, you know, parts of their commercial organization. So I spent 15 years there. When Marriott bought Starwood, I was very, very fortunate to have gotten to know Mark Hoplamazian here, who's our CEO. Chicago is home for me. And so the last 7 years here to be able to come to Hyatt for this part of my career has been nothing short of a dream for me. But what both Hyatt and Starwood had in common, you know, smaller companies have to be more creative. They're not the biggest. They don't walk in and say, well, you know, there's 10,000 of hotels around the world. So you're gonna wanna do business with us. They have to have a different brand perspective, a sharper loyalty program, a point of difference culturally and with purpose. And I just find for me being in an organization where you gotta, you gotta scrap a little bit different differently has been, it energizes me. I don't think you'd ever find me at a company that is the, the biggest in it, in its segment. And no knock against that, but And I recruit people who have the same hunger. You know, I mean, the wolf at the top of the hill is a lot less hungry than the one climbing it. And I think here that drives us a little bit. We've got to compete differently and we have to have a point of view against Marriott or Hilton's loyalty program. And that's what I love about benefits like Guest of Honor and choice and flexibility because they don't do that. And so—

Right.

I get energized by having to compete in a different way. I've been very fortunate to find myself in, in companies that allow me to do that.

And fast forward to today as Chief Commercial Officer of Hyatt Hotels, how are you spending your time on a day-to-day basis? And what are the key initiatives that require your attention to make sure that you're driving that differentiation and continued growth for the company?

I'd say a couple things. One, we're ingesting a lot of M&A. So we, we've, we've acquired a lot in the last few years. It, and you know, when you bring in brands You gotta make sure that you maintain what's creative and unique about them, but there is some integration required from a technology standpoint. So, you know, my team spends, and I spend a lot of time both on integration of what we've acquired, and also I'm a big part of the M&A team that looks at new opportunities and partnerships for us. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we, we picked up a year or so ago, bring, will bring us 1,000 new hotels by the end of the year in the luxury boutique space. Right. We just partnered with Under Canvas, which is an outdoor camping luxury—

I stayed there this summer. It's so cool. It's a very cool concept.

So cool, right? And our members right away were like, that's intuitive. I go to Moab. I like Yellowstone. Well, you guys have nothing there. Now I can reach that through your loyalty program. So I'd say a lot on the integration side. And then quite a bit of time right now on AI. You know, we are, like a lot of companies, studying what AI will mean to this industry. And what I would say is that's a balance for us between some obvious things around efficiencies that AI just helps you to be smarter with, whether it's translation of languages or the ability for someone who's reaching our contact center to have automated responses to very simple things like—

Yeah.

What time does the pool open? But more importantly, where strategically AI can help us grow as a company. And I think for us, Matt, we're, we're leveraging AI capabilities in areas where we already feel we have a point of difference. So you're gonna see us lean into AI for loyalty. You'll see us lean into AI for group business because those are strengths of ours. And I actually think the watch out for companies in the AI space is in a world where you could do 100 things from an AI standpoint, you don't wanna find yourself a mile wide and an inch deep. You want to really look at what are the 2 or 3 areas that I want to study and leverage AI capabilities in a thoughtful way. And for us, we're going to do that behind a couple areas that we really feel are strengths today. So I spend a lot of my time today in coming up the learning curve there and, and understanding through partners and our own capabilities what we can do there as well.

Yeah, I mean, speaking of AI, I think in your industry, personalization is such a big opportunity because you have all this data. On your customer in terms of if they travel with a family, if they travel on business, what brands, you know, they're attracted to in your portfolio. And instead of a one-to-many email newsletter, for example, we are not far away from you being able to have custom outreach at scale to your customers based upon what you know about them and just make that outreach way more impactful and frankly beneficial to them.

You gotta do it in a smart way. You gotta do it on their terms. Somebody wants a pre-arrival message. And I'll tell you, my biggest learning here is that the little things continue to matter. If I'm off a plane that's way delayed and I'm arriving at a hotel and you know I'm late and you can text me before I arrive, you want a Cobb salad in your room?

Exactly.

It's not about, you know, putting hot chocolate in the bathtub and thinking that somehow that's what people want. Very simple things. That you understand and deliver on their behalf are what makes a difference. And I, it doesn't sound sexy, but when you can get that right, and AI will help us to get smarter about it, it just, it resonates for someone to say, you understood who I was on this trip. I'm a business traveler 60 nights a year, but on the 61st, when I'm bringing my kids to a concert that I'm away from all week, every week, you made that special 'cause you understood that. Mm-hmm. And there were M&Ms in the room or something that mattered for my kids. That is where AI can really help you unlock loyalty. And we're gonna, we're, we are laser focused in that space.

Yeah. Scaling the unscalable, so to speak, which is something I'm sure you're really focused on. Absolutely. So wrapping up here, and you know, you take a lot of pride in, in the business you're building, which is awesome to see. When you look back at your career, both in the hospitality space and even before, when you mentioned you were in the financial services space, What are some of the decisions that you made right in your career journey along the way that put you in a position that you are today?

It's a great question. You know, I'd say this to any, to any young leader who, who might be listening. I, I, the one, one thing that I learned that I still share today that I think is teachable. My father was a very successful businessman. My mother could have done anything she wanted in the business world, but at the time she prioritized being home and, and, and raising us. But I don't ever remember my folks talking to me about what I was going to be. They, they never talked to me about what I was gonna do and what I was gonna be. They spent their entire time with us as, and my brother and sister growing up focused on who we were going to be. Were we gonna be good people? Were we gonna be responsive? When somebody picks up the phone, are you gonna be a partner? Are you gonna be somebody that can be trusted? And I tell leaders today, and it served me well, I never worried about my next job. Mm-hmm. I never would've mapped out that I was gonna move from Fidelity Investments running mutual fund trading desks to hospitality. I just worked on— I always felt, Matt, through that guidance that those things would sort themselves out. But today, too many people worry about the exact next move. If I'm a supervisor, when am I gonna be a manager? And in what department? I say focus a lot more on who you're gonna be. Be a trusted partner, be smart, be always discovering, wanting to learn. When you get that right, the what you're going to do will take care of itself. And for me in my career now, sitting at Hyatt in my hometown that I didn't start out at, it's been, it's just sort of been a journey for me that I'm thrilled with. But I would never have mapped out as a 25-year-old, 30-year-old starting out in business, never would have thought this would have been my path. So, if there's one teachable thing I've learned, it's— Yeah. Focus a little more on who you are and a little less on what you're going to do. And that advice I was fortunate enough to get at a pretty young age from my folks.

That's fantastic advice. Wrapping up here, is there a quote or mantra that you like to guide your professional career by that comes to mind?

I love the quote that everyone's dealing with something you know nothing about. You know, I lead a lot of people.

Yeah.

And I see a lot of challenges. And what it's taught me is you have to be consistent in how you lead, but you also have to understand that A lot of who you see in the office, people carry stuff that's much bigger than that. It helps me to be empathetic, not perfectly by any means, but I've always appreciated that perspective from a leadership standpoint. And it's never been more true on the other side of COVID People carried, still today, a lot of anxiousness and a lot of mental health challenges that have come out of that period. And just for themselves and for their families,. And when you appreciate that and you connect to it, it just, I think it helps you lead better.

Yeah. Couldn't agree more. It's, you know, we're dealing with people in a business setting, even though they have titles and you look at them from a business front. Ultimately, there's a person behind that with experiences just like you and I. So it's great advice. And I, yeah. So thanks so much for that. And thanks so much for joining us today, Mark. It's, it's been great hearing about your journey and the great work you're doing at Hyatt and look forward to big things, continue big things from you in the future. So thank you.

Really appreciate it. Best of luck and continued success to you, Matt. Thanks.

Thanks so much. On behalf of Susie and Adweek team, thanks again to Mark Vondrasek, the Chief Commercial Officer of Hyatt Hotels, for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Till next time, see you soon, everyone.

Take care.