The chief marketing officer of the Turtle Bay resort in Oahu, Hawaii has claimed that AI has had such a transformative effect on his marketing operations it has seen the business sweep away its competitors.
Speaking on a panel at the Salesforce Connections marketing summit in Chicago, Robert Marusi told a room full of journalists (including one jet-lagged B&T staffer) that AI has given the Turtle Bay resort a chance to steal a march on its competitors with better marketing and through hiring more staff.
Describing his use of Salesforce’s AI tools to create personalised itineraries for guests, Marusi explained the benefits his company has received.
“A funny thing happened along the way, as well. We’re actually hiring people now because of what AI has done to our top line. That’s because of the conversions generated, the site visits that are generating the conversions and the 50 per cent better engagement that we’re getting from the concierge talking to guests. We’re driving the top line at 40 per cent levels which, in a pretty significant resort, is giving us the ability to hire more people,” he said.
He added that “most” of the new hires were “consumer-facing” and covered roles including guest activities, concierge and assisting them around the resort simply because the AI tools were “driving” greater occupancy and interest in the activities that the resort provides, such as golfing, horse riding or surfing.
“To piggyback on that, we’re now recruiting and retaining the employee of the future. The younger employees who want to play with our guest console and almost create a gamification — like, ‘Hey I’m gonna get the highest propensity and I’m going to post it to the rest of my teammates’ — it’s become this incredible hiring and retaining tool that I thought it would,” he explained.
Marusi was joined on stage by three other CMOs — Ariel Kelman, Salesforce’s global CMO, Scott Morris, CMO of Sprout Social and Greg Howell, president and co-owner of Flexo Concepts. However, he was by far the most bullish of the three about the effect AI has had on his business — and its competitors.
“As an early adopter, I’ve absolutely swept away our competitors to the point where they don’t know what I’m doing. It’s magical in that regard,” said Marusi.
“[First mover advantage] is gonna last a while, because here’s what’s happening along the way, you have a C-suite that is thinking ‘Whoa, don’t ruffle it, I’ve got five, six years left in the game, don’t bring all that to me, I’m not going to get educated on it.’ And then you have the early adopters. Technology is on a rocketship and our leadership is plateauing a bit unless you take into account these people who want to get ahead and learn it.”
Marusi’s claim is bold but, to his chagrin, the rest of the industry will start to catch up — or at least start operating in the same way soon.
“There are large brands that have pretty much just adopted what we’re doing and bringing it into their loyalty program, personalisation and deliverables. It’s going to be a bit of time to come [before they catch up] but [AI] is something that’s not really a decision any more, it’s going to become table stakes. When that intersection happens, I don’t know,” he said.
In fact, Marusi said that he would be exporting his learnings from Turtle Bay to other resorts owned by its parent company BRE Hotels & Resorts in Hawaii and California.
However, Marusi explained that Turtle Bay’s adoption of AI was not as simple as giving its staff a new computer system to get used to. Instead, it required a more systematic and cultural shift.
“You have to change the mindset, transform the people who are going to be part of it, create this groundswell and get to adoption. That’s a runway that really have to put the resources into and get it entrenched in your culture. And if you don’t, then you take the chance of it failing and failing pretty quickly,” he said.
Securing buy-in from the rest of Turtle Bay and BRE’s leadership was also important. “It’s not cheap,” said Marusi, adding that he had to demonstrate ROI on every separate part of Salesforce’s Cloud suite of tools but that he was able to demonstrate that quickly.
“I took one module, one cloud environment at a time and did an ROI on it, put it in, I had success in great run rate and great adoption. Then I went to my next one, built the ROI model, put it in, had the success and it gave me the track to keep going. It gave me the trust from my ownership to say, ‘He’s onto something, it’s working, let’s keep it going,” he said.
“That was big. Each of our hotels are mid-market businesses. It’s not an enterprise business. My little mid-market business is, all of a sudden, becoming an enterprise business. They’re actually paying attention to me now,” he added.
