In this week’s episode of Hotel Moment, Alicia Zur-Szpiro, Co-founder and Creative Director of Wanderland London, joins Revinate CMO Karen Stephens to give hoteliers a wake-up call: Kids and teens are the decision makers for family trips.

This means that the start of any loyal brand relationship begins with kids and teens. If hoteliers are intentional about positioning hotel messaging and amenities for this group throughout the guest journey, Alicia says hoteliers can cement families’ guest loyalty and increase their chances of rebooking.

Tune in and find out how Wanderland London is using its pioneering hospitality research to change the way hoteliers approach this overlooked but lucrative segment.

Meet your host

As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen Stephens 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 is also the host of The Hotel Moment Podcast, where she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading Revinate’s 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.

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

Connect with Karen

Transcript

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:00:00: By the age of 16, most people have kind of cemented their brand loyalty. So for hospitality brands, if they can really look in those relationships early on, then they’ve won those customers for life.

Intro – 00:00:18: Welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast presented by Revinate, the podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.

Karen Stephens – 00:00:47: Hello, and welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast. I’m your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And today we have a treat for you. We have Alicia Zur-Szpiro, who’s a creative visionary and the driving force behind Wanderland London, the world’s first consultancy dedicated to kids and teens in hospitality. With a background in game design, toy invention, and publishing, Alicia is passionate about re-imagining the future of family and youth-focused travel experiences. She brings a unique perspective on how hotels can create and engage this often overlooked demographic, with a focus on creating meaningful, immersive experiences that influence not only family travel, but also brand loyalty and engagement. And I think what I love about this one — I’ve been in hospitality for a long time — I rarely think about this segment to the level that we discuss in this podcast. So we often think about business travelers, and of course we wanna know if someone is traveling with family. But how do we make sure that all of the members of that family are having the best experience possible? That’s from pre-arrival all the way through this day. So it’s a great conversation about how to make those small incremental changes to really make a big difference and tap into a massive, massive market. So here you go, I give you Alicia.

Alicia, welcome to the podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you here.

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:02:09: Really excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Karen Stephens – 00:02:12: I am excited because I was telling my producer before we jumped on the call, this is a topic that I just don’t think we talk about enough in hospitality, which is kids. So, so many people have children, they travel with children, and I feel like it’s such an unexplored part of the travel industry. So, I just love to start from the very highest level. What is your company all about and what inspired you to create it?

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:02:38: We’re excited that you’re excited by it because we think there’s a lot to be done, and it’s creative, and it’s fun because it’s all to do with kids. So, my background and our team’s background is really all from the world of kids. We’re game designers, we’re toy inventors, we’ve worked in kids publishing. So, we’ve kind of come through really from the world of kids and teenagers and play and creativity. And about just over a year ago, we started to look at what the hospitality industry was doing for kids and teens, and we realised that there was a huge opportunity for them to do more. To learn and to kind of borrow some tricks of the trade from the kids industries as we call them so trying to create more of an intersection, and an interaction between the hospitality industry, and the kids industries allowing both industries to benefit from each other so that’s why we started Wanderland to sort of bring that spirit to the world of hotels and hospitality.

Karen Stephens – 00:03:46: Right. So Wanderland London is the name of the company. And I had a look at the website, and you just released a report. So I want everybody listening to this to know that all of the cool tips and tricks that we’re going to hear from Alicia today, you can get the data behind this actually at their website. So do you want to just talk a little bit about what went into that report. How many hotels you talked to, and then we can kind of hit some of the higher-level takeaways.

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:04:10: Great. So as I said, we did basically a year of learning about the hospitality industry through the lens of kids, and teens, and families, which propelled us to write this first or this inaugural kids and teens global hospitality report, which is the first of its kind. You know, there’s obviously lots of other industry reports that touch on families. Let’s say, multi-generational travel as a new trend. But this is the first report that really focuses on that younger guest segment. And we felt that it was really helpful for the industry to understand the potential that this segment has both emotionally and commercially for the industry — looking at ways for hotel brands to differentiate themselves, have new stories to tell. We can get into that later. But we ended up finding really interesting data points, which we’ve brought into this report, which shows how influential kids and teenagers are, how valuable they can be for a hotel brand. And so we turned it into this report so that we could kind of share those insights with the industry after this really specific niche phase of learning that we’d done.

Karen Stephens – 00:05:27: Yes. So I think what was interesting and compelling for me is the size of the market itself. So I think it’s safe to say we talk a lot about obviously COVID was a huge turning point for our industry. And off the back of COVID, we saw revenge travel. And even still, which obviously people going out to do that leisure trip. But that is something that has remained something that all families do and take. So can you talk a little bit about what hotels can do? First of all, I’ve been thinking about the size and the impact that children and teens have on that segment. And what are the key things that hotels can do to start to attract that family into their hotel and differentiate themselves?

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:06:05: So we looked at the fact that these kids Industries — toys, games, publishing, even apparel, merchandise — all of the things that touch on kids is a multi-billion dollar industry. And our feeling was there’s no reason that hotels can’t get in on that. For families that are lucky enough to travel and stay at lovely hotels, there’s an opportunity for hotels to bring some of that world inside their spaces and add value, but also add the commercial potential of upselling to guests, creating loyalty with guests, increasing length of stay, and so on. So the potential for hotels to kind of get in on the act is enormous. And at a time when the hospitality industry is struggling, and budgets are tight, and it’s hard to kind of differentiate yourself in a market. This is a really untapped way of doing that. It’s something that very few brands and hotels are talking about. It’s just not a story that people are telling. And yet when you look at these kids industries, there is so much innovation, so much creativity, so many kind of tools that the hospitality industry could utilize to their benefit. So that’s one of the things that we’re here to do, which is hopefully pioneer a bit of a shift in the industry. But where I think that there’s potential is really looking at the teen segment, which is a kind of invisible, narrow guest segment that has huge potential. So when you think about families, which is sort of a catch-all term that the industry uses. They often talk about younger kids or they talk about parents, but there’s this whole kind of age group in the middle, let’s say 11 to 18, where the hospitality industry have struggled to know exactly how to build those relationships. And those are conversations that we’ve had time and time again as we’ve started working in this field where they say, We just don’t really know what to do with teenagers. They’re a really tricky group. So when it comes to kind of practical things that hotels can do and how to make a difference, we really recommend starting with teens because there is such a huge potential to do something, you know, to do anything would really help move the needle.

Karen Stephens – 00:08:27: Right. As you’re saying this, nobody knows what to do with teens. I’m thinking, yeah, well, that’s across the board. So what are some good examples? I mean, what would you recommend? Because I feel like for teenagers, they’re so attached to their devices. You know, I think part of a family vacation might be the parents are trying to engage more with their teenagers and incorporate them more. And oftentimes the kids kind of stay on their devices. So what are some practical tips that you would give hotels to bring them into the experience?

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:08:54: I think teenagers are really interesting because they’re kind of, they’ve got one foot in their childhood and one foot in their adulthood. And at different times, they might play to both of those spaces. But I think that teens for themselves really want to be thought of as adults. They don’t want to be spoken down to. They don’t want to be pandered to. So I think when it comes to what we’re doing for teens, we almost want to think of them as adults. So if something would appeal to an adult, it would probably appeal to a teen. Obviously, we need to modify it to be age appropriate, and kind of certain spaces in a hotel might not be appropriate for a teenager. But I think thinking of teens as adults from a kind of communications point of view is really helpful. And I think that, giving them an option other than their device, other than their screen would be really useful because actually the whole point of going on a family vacation is being present together, spending time together. And I think that even though teens might kind of resist that in some ways, they actually also want that connectedness. They want the togetherness. And I think if hotels can find ways to create those moments, and it doesn’t need to be, we’re not talking about kids. We’re not talking about hours of the day. We’re talking about little pockets or little moments where you can facilitate that presence together as a family. So it might even be a case of having some classic board games or some kind of newly released family games where there’s a moment, let’s say after dinner to come together. It might also be an opportunity for hotels to do something at check-in for a teenager, which typically doesn’t happen. Check-in is kind of the moment where you might hand over a coloring book for a child or a teddy bear for an infant, but then there’s nothing really there for a teenager. So thinking about kind of a little amenity or a gift, which speaks to that age range can also go a really long way, not just with the child, with the teenager, but also with their parents who are kind of witnessing that moment of recognition and relationship. So I think thinking of moments, and actually we’ve designed something called the child journey, which is looking at all the touch points during a stay where you can build that interaction with your guest, with the child or the teenager. So finding one or two key moments during a stay where you might be able to offer something to the teenager that is another kind of option than their device, I think would be really helpful.

Karen Stephens – 00:11:28: I love that. Obviously on this program, we talk a lot about the guest journey from inspiration to booking all down the line. So I really love kind of segmenting that a level deeper where you’re thinking about who are the guests that are in that family, the components of that family and getting creative throughout. So along those lines, if we look at the family, the planning aspect of that, is there a chance for hotels to engage better with children and teens during the planning process? So I’m thinking about before they’re even in the hotel, are there things that hotels can do to differentiate themselves if the kids are also planning to get them in the hotel?

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:12:04: Yeah, you’re absolutely speaking our language because we think a lot about that. There’s such a long period of time between planning or booking or kind of conceptualizing the holiday and actually walking through the door. That could be weeks, that could be months. And that’s such a valuable time period for a hotel to start to engage with the family. And typically the communications is, again, focused on the adult. You know, would you like to book a treatment? Would you like to book a meal? And I think if we can start to shift the focus onto the child or onto the teenager where we’re starting to build that relationship, children are so good at getting excited in a way that probably most adults don’t do so much anymore. You know, we’re a little bit more cynical or jaded. And yet with our younger children, with our teenagers, they’re still excited about what the world has to offer. So that’s a really great segment to start that conversation, start that relationship. So perhaps the hotel would want to even send a little survey or quiz or questionnaire that’s directed at the child, not at the parent. Obviously, the parent might need to be the conduit for that conversation because they’re the ones with the email or the digital presence or the booking information. But if the hotel can start to build that relationship with the child or the teenager, you’re already half of the way towards that really loyal kind of bonded relationship, which is so valuable when you think about the lifetime value of a holiday, of a family and trying to get guests to return, which they’re all the more likely to do if they’ve got kids. Because when you know that a holiday works for you and your children, you’re just going to go back time and time again, year after year. Whereas adults on their own are more likely to be a bit adventurous because there’s kind of lower stakes. Whereas if you’ve kind of delighted the family and the kids, you’ve locked in that family for life. So, yes, I think definitely that time before booking, before arrival is such a valuable time. And then also after the stay is also a really interesting time to kind of continue that relationship and kind of foster those memories with the hope of rebooking and continued engagement.

Karen Stephens – 00:14:18: Bells are going off all over the place for me because, you know, we have a platform. Obviously, we have an email marketing platform as part of our offering. And we have pre-arrival emails, and those emails have the ability to figure out, Are you in a family? What are the ages of the people in your family? And then I love the idea of being able to choose amenities for the kids so that they’re excited before they get there. And we say often, you know, the hotel stay starts the minute that thing is booked. You have the opportunity to surprise and delight along the way. And the other thing that you said that really resonates is if it’s a family, and it was a wonderful vacation, they are going to go back because nobody’s trying to start from scratch again when they know it’s been successful. So that’s really good. And do you make a distinction between, say, an urban city hotel? And obviously, there’s a lot of holidays that are more focused on kind of outdoor experiences. But how do you differentiate yourself if you’re in the middle of a city? You’re in the central London. And it’s time to have a vacation. So what can those hotels do?

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:15:19: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a really interesting point, because I think when you go out of a city, when you go to kind of a resort or let’s say a countryside hotel, thinking about the UK, there’s already quite a lot on offer for kids and teens just by virtue of the fact that the facilities, and the space, and the resources that are there. And I think the opportunity for urban destinations and cities is huge. First of all, we know, again, this is in our report, that teenagers and kids gravitate towards urban destinations. So kind of contrary to what we might believe, kids and teenagers are really drawn to going to an urban environment over a resort. And I think that when hotels are in a city, they say, Well, there’s so much on offer in the city that almost we don’t really need to touch it. The kind of London speaks for itself, and New York speaks for itself. And actually, there’s a real missed opportunity to build that relationship with the hotel, with the property, with the brand. We’re spending so much time in the hotel, even if we’re out and about during the day, our breakfast, potentially our dinner, waking up in the morning, going to sleep at night. Those are all moments that are happening inside a hotel. And I don’t think that city hotels are capitalizing on that opportunity to build and nurture those relationships. So I actually think the opportunity for city hotels is even more exciting, and even more creatively challenging because we know how much we can do in London. But what can we do inside the hotel that really builds the memory of the holiday?

Karen Stephens – 00:16:58: I love that because I do think about, if we just stay on London for a moment, there are so many things to do and see in London. And if a family is going there on a holiday, it could be a bit overwhelming just with the amount of things. But to be able to tie that experience back into the hotel. So, as you say, maybe there’s something for the kids at breakfast or dinner that lets them know, yep, you’re still in London or here’s a phone booth or whatever it might be. Do you also think that there’s an opportunity for hotels on their website to try and guide people? If I’m on a family vacation, maybe that’s a more curated set of suggestions. Is that something that your team also does?

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:17:34: Absolutely. Again, you hit on something that we kind of — we’re pulling our hair out here. Because when you go onto the vast majority of hotel websites, you can barely find a mention of family, child, teenager, kids. You have to go digging around, often in the FAQs, often in the offers section. That will be where kind of families live. Hotel websites talk more about pets, dogs, than they do about kids. Even the largest international booking platforms, loyalty schemes, you can’t search by family. You can’t search for interconnected rooms. It’s so, so difficult as a family to find your presence online. So I think, again, there’s a huge opportunity for hotel brands that want to kind of corner that market, and own that space to make it clear from the outset that we not only are kind of willing to have your kids, but we’re eager to have your kids. And we mustn’t forget that when we think about particularly teenagers, they’re about to become travelers in their own right. They’re about to become decision makers. They are socially connected. They’re active online across social media channels. They’re such a valuable asset to a brand or to a hotel if they can kind of win over that relationship or that segment. And it can start from the website, and it can start from kind of communications, and emails, and social media channels, because that’s really where teens are living their lives. And they have huge influence over their parents. And as I said, they’re about to become travelers independently, so let’s get them now while we can.

Karen Stephens – 00:19:17: Right. And I think what we’re talking about here is effectively brand loyalty. So this is brand loyalty that teens can build. And when I just think about different generations, like my generation, we are not the selfie generation. We are not tagging everything in sight. We’re just living our lives, doing our thing. But I know that teenagers, I mean, absolutely, they’re all over all the social channels. And if they’re having a wonderful experience, believe me, they’re going to talk about it. So can you talk about brand loyalty in the lens of teenagers? And the other thing I just wanted to say was when I think about my own experience growing up, I remember the first time that I traveled to Washington, D.C.. I remember the feeling of having a backpack on my back and just getting blown away by the buildings and all of that. So I just invite our audience to remember your first trip and the impact.

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:20:05: That’s a really interesting point because we also know from the data that by the age of 16, most people have kind of connected with the brands that they’re going to love for the rest of their lives. So actually, when you think about those short years of childhood, again, if you can win over a child or a teenager before the age of 16, you’ve probably locked their loyalty in, you know, for their life and kind of the generations to come. So I think there’s a kind of a huge piece of thinking to be done about loyalty and also differentiation. Just kind of going back to the London example, London has a huge amount to offer, but it also there’s enormous competition in one of these massive cities. London has a huge density of incredible hotels. So what is going to make one family choose one hotel over the other? If there’s an angle to be won about how they welcome your family and your kids, that’s going to be the reason that they come and stay. You know, every lovely London hotel has a beautiful afternoon tea, but can they offer something that’s really relevant to their teens and their kids? And then also when it comes to loyalty, one of the things that we’re working on at the moment is the concept of a kids and teens led loyalty scheme, which again, does not exist in the industry. All loyalty is driven by adults, primarily on the corporate side. But why not use this other kind of half or three-quarters of the family to drive loyalty? And it would have to look quite different. It probably wouldn’t necessarily be digital, but there are kind of analog ways to capture that loyalty that kids and teens can offer, again, to help these children grow up inside a brand and think about them for their ongoing business travel and business lives. So I think there’s a real opportunity also for major brands or even smaller groups to think about how kids and teens can drive and propel loyalty.

Karen Stephens – 00:22:07: That is so fascinating to me. Again, it’s blowing my mind that we don’t really even think of this segment. And the number that I saw on your website was an $850 billion segment. Is that right?

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:22:18: Yeah.

Karen Stephens – 00:22:19: So that’s what we’re talking about, the opportunity on the table. And then I think the other thing that’s exciting is you’re not talking about ripping up your hotel and putting a kid’s club in it. You’re talking about making changes to your website, changes to your offering, and then the loyalty program. We’re obviously not talking about points. We’re talking about being able to reward amenities or another way to surprise and delight. And then the last thing you mentioned that I think is really compelling, by 16, let’s repeat that again, but 16, please repeat that stat that you already know what brands you’re loyal to.

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:22:51: Exactly. By the age of 16, most people have kind of cemented their brand loyalty. So for hospitality brands, if they can really lock-in those relationships early on, then they’ve won those customers for life.

Karen Stephens – 00:23:05: That’s incredible. I mean, if you’re out there listening and you work for a hotel, the first thing you should do is figure out how to go download this report and start thinking about how you make changes. So where do I start? I’m a marketer at a hotel. I go to your website, I download. What is the best way for me to start making those incremental changes? What’s square one, in your point of view?

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:23:26: Okay, Square one is email me.

Karen Stephens – 00:23:28: Okay, fantastic. Yeah, and we’re going to have all of that in the show notes because I should say that your company, you’re based in London, but you also have services in the United States. And can you just give us the overview of how they get ahold of you?

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:23:38: Yeah, so anyone’s always welcome to email me at [email protected]. So we’re just so kind of exhilarated to be in this industry. We’re kind of always happy to have a chat. Let’s pick up the phone and kind of arrange a call. But I think there’s an opportunity here across a hotel team to be creative. When we’re having these conversations, and we’re talking to our clients, we’re talking to such a wide range of stakeholders in a hotel. It could be head of guest experience. It could be head of rooms. It could be someone that works on the marketing or PR side. It’s often the general manager or an assistant manager. So there are so many players within a hotel that could actually take this on, as their baby. What’s really interesting is in all of our research, we have not found one hotel that has a position that relates to families. So when it comes to all of the different job titles and positions that exist in the world of hospitality, there is nothing that really takes ownership of the family space. Unless, of course, we’re talking about a kids club where there’s lots of team leaders. But I think there’s a real opportunity for someone in a hotel to champion this. And say, looking at both the guest experience and the marketing communications and PR side, what can we do to create a story and tell that story? And as you said, this isn’t a multi-million dollar project for a hotel. We’re not stripping out the lobby. We’re not bringing in a Michelin star chef. We’re not building a kids club or a swimming pool. We’re talking about really small little moments. And the other thing that we talk a lot about with this idea of moments is, a holiday can live and die in the space of five minutes. And if you can win five minutes for the parents, for the kids to have a good time, to come together, to play a game, to have a conversation, then that is the stuff that we remember from our childhood and even in our kind of adult years. So it doesn’t need to feel like a daunting task. We’re not saying, let’s turn this into a week-long circus or fairground experience. We’re saying, let’s just find, five minutes once or twice a day where we’re helping the family connect, where we’re communicating and building the relationship directly with the kids and the teenagers. And that’s the stuff that helps them make the memories that they go away with and remember your hotel for.

Karen Stephens – 00:26:09: Absolutely incredible. So Alicia, it has been a real pleasure. My guest has been Alicia from Wanderland London. We’ll have all of her details in the show notes. And thank you so much. We appreciate the conversation.

Alicia Zur Szpiro – 00:26:19: It was great. Thanks so much.

Outro – 00:26:26: 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.comhotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.

About Revinate

Revinate is a direct booking platform that leads the hospitality industry in driving direct revenue and increased profitability.

Our products and our people combine to give hoteliers the superpowers they need to crush their goals. With Revinate, hoteliers shift share away from OTAs and drive tangible results across an individual property or a portfolio. Our industry-leading, AI-powered, customer data platform collects, unifies and, synthesizes data giving hoteliers a foundational advantage.

Hoteliers gain critical intelligence – guest lifetime spend, stay preferences, ancillary revenue, and more. With our Rich Guest Profiles database, hoteliers don’t need to guess who their most profitable guests are, or how to drive conversions across email, voice, messaging, and digital channels.

Revinate’s direct booking platform and omnichannel communication technology powers 900+ million Rich Guest Profiles across 12,500+ hotels to drive over $17 billion in direct revenue.

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