Meet Tony Loeb, Hotel Marketing Expert.

Tony Loeb, Hotel Marketing Expert (1001 Web Promotions, WIHP and Experience) took part in the interview game: “Hotels, a profession, a meeting”. Thanks to him for taking the time to share with us his experience and his vision of the world on our sector.

Hello Tony, could you introduce yourself and quickly tell us about your background?

I have an extremely unusual background.

My name is Tony Loeb, I started working in the hotel industry in 2001 through a totally improbable combination of circumstances.

School wasn't my thing. At 16 I stopped and went to England to learn English. When I came back I had started a music group with friends (who are actually all in the hotel business today). I was the guitarist, we were rockers. I didn't really have a job. For my mother it was out of the question for me to stay home doing nothing so it was “If you are not in school you pay half the rent”.

One rehearsal night I was talking with my friends and the pianist's father told me “but wait Tony, I've just launched a small web agency, I need someone who will sort some papers. ”

At the beginning I just gave him a hand, no contract etc.

In fact, he had just created a web agency that very quickly specialized in the hotel industry and I see the thing I'm saying to myself “It's computer science, I like it, they're friends I've known for a long time and the hotel business seems nice”.

So I told him: “I am ready to work for you for a year for free, but in exchange you train me and then we take stock.”

That's how I got into the hotel business at 17.

The company is launching, there are just a few partners and I am the first employee to work on a work-study program in web design.

Being the first employee, all the people who arrived afterwards, it was me who found myself training them, putting them on a job etc.

Now I am 19 years old and almost 20 people in my department, I became technical director of the company. The box exploded, it was magnificent at the time.

It was called 1001 Web Promotions you may not know. You should have been there between 2000 and 2010.

At that time I was very technical: Website creation, SEO, photos, editorial etc.

In 2008 the agency will evolve for various reasons and become”Wihp”. I will find myself at the heart of the launch of this new project/concept.

The dimension of the agency is becoming completely different.

We are going from a simple web agency to a consulting agency. We do RM, we create distribution advice, advice on optimizing the computer ecosystem. I'm going to do that for a few years.

After that I decided to create my own project with old colleagues: “Experience “where we will separate ourselves from the various tasks. I had no commercial skills at the time, it was not my thing but I had been spending my days with hoteliers for years, chatting with them, advising them etc. and so I say go presto let's go let's go trade. I've been marketing online for 13 years. We did that and it worked out quite well. Very very well priced.

What is the project or mission that has marked you the most or contributed the most in your career?

I won't be able to give you just one.

I had a first experience as a webmaster, a technician behind a screen managing hotel websites and everything that goes with it. You should know that at the time there were no tools like Gmail so we managed the email addresses of hotels. I found myself doing computer troubleshooting for whole weekends but it creates relationships. They are still friends today.

So I had all this part, let's say very.”Geek”. I loved it and I still love it, as soon as I can find myself coding 5 minutes I love it.

Then at Wihp I really discovered the world of hotels.

Before I knew it from a technical point of view. And then I found myself discovering the problems of a hotel. I found myself completely immersed, I became almost a hotelier. It was another extremely interesting part of the journey.

The last part, at Experiment, I discovered the world of online commerce and marketing which is a big hit. There is an adrenaline in the world of marketing, in the world of commerce that is unique. This is where you do the most ground, if you like relationships, if you like to be with people, have a good lunch every day and gain weight, business is perfect.

Today, when I work on my projects I have both the technical aspect that I master, I have the hotel aspect that I master and the business/marketing aspect that I master. It's pretty practical.

We are coming out of two difficult years of covid. It was two years in which hoteliers had quite a few difficulties. What do you think are the biggest challenges for a hotelier today?

What I am about to say is my own responsibility. I don't think the biggest hotel challenge has anything to do with covid. Covid is ancient history. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's really over but the crisis is over.

We talk about covid but in reality when we go back a bit, there has always been a succession of difficult events that have frozen tourism: 2015 the attacks, 2019 the yellow vests...

For me, the challenge is technological. There are a lot of technologies out there and when you look at the marketing of a hotel today, it's completely broken up into a lot of different things. These technologies are not harmonized with each other. It's as if all this has disorganized hotel marketing.

I am telling you a short story about a hotel friend whom I love a lot (he will recognize himself). A month ago we were having lunch together and I asked him how his year was going and he told me that it was extraordinary. I tell him it's great and I ask him if the bookings are still going strong.

He tells me that he hardly does anything with direct bookings anymore..

We finish lunch, we go to his hotel and I realize that he had integrated so many technological solutions that the customer opposite no longer understood and preferred to use OTAs.

The core business of the hotel industry is to welcome. Today we have a lot of solutions that exist and a lot of integration between tools. What is your vision of digital technology in the sector?

My answer is the one I just gave. There are too many tools and too much misuse of tools.

It's not to throw flowers at Experiment, I am no longer part of the project but it is still an extraordinary product. A few months ago, I had the impression that sometimes you were going to install a Porsche in someone's house but the person had just passed the license.

In the end, you look at what he does with it and it's not okay. It even goes a bit further, you find yourself saying that he can do this and that. The person in front tells you that they don't really know and asks if you have any ideas. At the same time, it is a fundamental error to ask the hotelier for an idea on the subject because it is not his job.

It is as if the hotelier came to see an IT developer to tell him that he has a problem with the reception and ask him how he could make the reception more fluid because there is such a receptionist who manages relationships a bit poorly. It's not the same job, it has nothing to do with it.

There is a digital disorganization and I think that there is something that can be done to clean it all up.

If you had any advice to give to a hotelier who would like to start up?

We're going to do something simple.

I will tell him to surround himself with experts. If I take doing revenue management for example, it's a job. Either we have tools that do it for us, or we have people who do it for us.

Do not think that you will be able to learn the job of receptionist, the job of manager, the job of manager, the job of marketer, the job of a cleaning lady because the moment your cleaning lady is not there, you will be the one who will go to clean the rooms. So you need to learn 10 jobs, either you already master them or surround yourself with experts.

Then I will give you a very small detail but which for me is essential: do not save money on photos of your hotel.

I saw hotel projects die just because the guy wanted to save 1500 euros on photos. The photos are the appearance of the product. It's as if you have an iPhone that's not at all aesthetic but someone tells you that inside it's a bomb. Certainly but it is not beautiful so no one is going to buy it.

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