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2017

HOWMARQUETTE

MAINTAINS MOMENTUM

According to Michael Scott,

a good sales-person should,

“Make friends first, make sales sec-

ond…” Everyone’s favorite bad boss from The Office might be a goof, but this one piece of advice rings true. Now – more than any other time of year – is the per-fect time to get out there and start driv-ing business back into your hotel!

Actually… last month was the per-fect time but if you didn’t already jump in, now is your chance! Maintaining a high occupancy into the winter months is a challenge but with the right combi-nation of beating the street, monitoring your online reputation, and maintaining a social media presence, you too can fill your rooms.

Nothing beats an old-fashioned sales call. Mar-quette is fortu-nate enough to have a booming construction trade thanks to the on-going develop-ment within our community. Not one of those proj-ects though would send a single room my way if I didn’t get out there and build relationships.

A sales call doesn’t have to be a big deal. My sales calls usually take about 30 minutes plus travel time. I package a bunch of promotional items – a koozie with two pens, a letter opener, a key-chain, and a corkscrew as well as my busi-

ness card and the negotiated rate card along with a travel mug – and deliver two or three to each construction trailer. Each package is about $15 so along with time spent planning, you’re looking at $40 per sales call.

How many room nights do you need to get to make up for a $40 expense? At My Place MQT, the answer is less than one room night. So if you get ONE SIN-GLE NIGHT from a sales call, you win. On the other hand, one sales call as we were opening led to six rooms at five nights per week for eight months. That’s a total of nearly 1,000 room nights! And that’s before the positive reputation we grew from working with them contributed to another three com-panies booking (at a higher rate) with us for hundreds of room nights so far.

Imagine I of-fered you a chance at 1,000 room nights for about a half-hour of work, but that you might fail eight or nine times before you hit. Would you take that opportunity or would you pass? If you say pass, you probably aren’t

long for this position. If you say you’d go for it, then this is exactly what you should be doing.

The second phase is managing your online reputation. We have a variety of sites out there that let guests review their stays and you should take ownership – both figuratively and actually – of all of them.

My Place Hotel - Marquette, MI

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HIGHEST AVG

HIGHEST AVG

TOP PERFORMERS

1. My Place Hotel - Amarillo, TX GM Anna Watson

2. My Place Hotel - Billings, MTGM Dalton Emig-Wahrman

3. My Place Hotel - Anchorage, AKGM Debbie Harris

4. My Place Hotel - Lubbock, TXGM Dominic Goodman

5. My Place Hotel - Marquette, MIGM Lee Brown

6. My Place Hotel - La Vista, NEGM Candace Dyer

7. My Place Hotel - Boise/Meridian, IDGM Chris Vaughn

8. My Place Hotel - Ketchikan, AKGM Carol Domme

9. My Place Hotel - Cheyenne, WYGM Nate Miller

10. My Place Hotel - Sioux Falls, SDGM Jeff Eliason

My Place Hotel - Aberdeen, SDGM Jen Ohare

My Place Hotel - Aberdeen, SDGM Jen Ohare

Q4 RESULTS

PROPERTYALL STARS

ISSUE : 6PUBLISHED : February 2018

My daily routine involves checking on TripAdvisor, Expedia Partner Central, and Booking.com. If you keep up on it, responding to reviews shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. You can write from the heart or keep a database of responses to personalize for each situ-ation. Staying current allows your tran-sient guests to see what people just like them think about your hotel AND gives them a chance to see how well YOU are going to treat them through your re-sponse.

On a weekly basis (or so), I check and respond to Google reviews. They aren’t quite as “in your face” as the other three sites, but you’ll still see enough traffic that you need to stay regular there too. And I take care of Facebook reviews whenever I happen to be logged in.

In Marquette, we’ve been very suc-cessful thanks to our social media push-es. One particular sale of more than a dozen room nights was thanks to social media. Do the math yourself. How much time and effort would you put in to get-ting a dozen room nights? If you spend five minutes per weekday on social me-dia – literally five minutes – you only need to sell one room in a month to be worth it.

Earlier I asked if you would commit eight or nine one-hour blocks to sell 1,000 room nights. Now look on the smaller scale. If you could sell a dozen rooms a few times per year by spending just five minutes each workday, would you do it? If it was me, I certainly would.

So what do you need to do? The process is easy enough.

Five minutes per day is all it takes to manage your social media. Add another 15 minutes to respond to reviews and update the occasional property photo. Finally, plan a weekly sales trip to one of YOUR local opportunities (like construc-tion sites, hospitals, group homes, and more). It won’t be immediate (unless your sales call is a success right out the door) but you will see results. Just give it a real try today.

“Like” community and company pages from businesses in your area.1Post a mix of shares from those pages and new material.2Occasionally as your page, like and comment on other pages.3

My Place Hotel - Marquette, MI, Facebook response

MARQUETTE: CONTINUED

The My Place MQT Team led by GM Lee Brown37OPENHOTELS

TWIN FALLS October 27, 2017IDAHO

LEBANON December 7, 2017TENNESSEE

ANKENY December 28, 2017IOWA

ALTOONA October 19, 2017IOWA

COUNCIL BLUFSS August 17, 2017IOWA

My Place Hotel - Council Bluffs, IA Grand Opening - September 2017Misty Young, AGM; Len Friedenbach, GM; Gary Friedenbach, Owner

In its fourth year since the franchise

system’s launch, My Place grew from 28 open locations in 14 states to 37 locations in 18 states, and now has 50 franchises

sold. With an aggressive goal of selling 1000 franchises by 2024, My Place’s ini-tiatives have been equally as aggressive as the goal in sight. As the new year begins to unfold, My Place and its family of franchisees, staff, and partners take a measured look back at a year that has made the coming leaps and bounds pos-

sible for America’s Newest and Best Extended Stay Hotels.

2018 begins with My Place in position for scalable growth. As they say, timing is everything, and the time for extended-stay has arrived. Lever-aging hospitality’s hottest platform, My Place projects to have 118 franchis-es sold, and 63 locations open by year end.

My Place Hotels of Americamyplacehotels.com

Central to My Place’s po-sition to grow at this rate is the degree of focus the brand has applied to its ecosystem of support to

owners and operators. At the top of this development list is the chain-wide Property Management Systems migration, re-sulting in a new partnership with Sabre Hospitality Solutions. Spearheaded by Sarah Dinger, SVP of Brand Management, the PMS migration was initiated and completed within the same year, and immediately created operational efficiencies by re-ducing the operator’s technology expenditures and check-in time.

Dinger said that following the lengthy process in due diligence, Sabre was selected as the best fit to support My Place’s aggres-sive growth plans, includ-ing its forthcoming loyalty integration.

“Through conversations with GMs and through re-search and development of our own, we found there was an opportunity within our previous system to create operational efficiencies, increase guest security, and enhance guest experiences,” Dinger said. “We set out to do just that, and found Sa-bre has the ability today to support our business on a large-scale. With their technology investment and innovative vision, Sabre is uniquely capable of sup-porting our growth strategy for the long term.”

Integral to My Place’s long-term growth strategy is its forthcom-ing loyalty program, which saw a major development in 2017 with the introduction to My Place’s first-ever Director of Brand Loyalty, Irene Roberts. While new to the My Place team, Roberts is no stranger to the hospitality industry or the for-mer Super 8 Headquarters that My Place resides in. With more

than 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry, spending the majority of that time in the loyalty

world, Roberts enjoyed growing the Super 8 VIP Club to one of the largest loyalty clubs

in the world as well as being an integral part in merging all of the Wyndham brand hotel loyalty programs into Wyn-dham Rewards.

With the PMS migration completed for loyalty integration, Roberts looks forward to further defining the My

Place loyalty rewards program, adding unique touches to aptly differentiate the

program from its industry counterparts. “I am excited to take the foundation the team has built for

loyalty, and bring it to fruition for our guests and franchisees in the near future,” Roberts said.

Another area of focus and growth is within the Revenue Management Department, which added three new staff

members in 2017. In line with My Place’s comprehen-

sive support initiatives, the Revenue Management team can now take a deep dive into each market to provide more infor-mation and guidance to owners and operators. The long-term focus is to help provide market research, trend analysis, and rate recommendations for individual properties, while placing a microscope on active rate management in order to better place each hotel and maximize revenue throughout changes in market conditions.

With Kory Burdick, Director of Revenue Management, at the helm, the addition of Revenue Management’s acumen has

resulted in many successes for spe-cial event rate management. The department assists in identifying events, understanding market con-

ditions in relation to them, and actively monitoring and man-

aging brand rate dy-namics. For instance, while the 2017 Solar Eclipse brought thou-

sands upon thousands of tourists to many parts of the country including My Place markets, the department’s guidance was used to capitalize on this rare event. Additionally, sporting events, concerts, college graduations, and many oth-er special events were identified and tracked under the scope of Revenue Management.

“It has been great to assist the properties during this past year,” Burdick said. “We witnessed many improvements and celebrated the individual successes with the prop-erties managing their rates and oc-cupancy in 2017. In 2018, we hope to see continued success with emphasis on rate management as well as an-other emphasis on the mix of extended-stay with transient business for each season.”

The My Place marketing ros-ter has also grown with the ad-

dition of in-house social

media support and a brand-new Director of Marketing position, filled by Nicole Spaeth. In command of the brand’s marketing platforms and partnerships, Spaeth leans on more than 20 years of experience working for global brands in marketing, sales, opera-tions, and franchise relations.

My Place’s partnership with Digital Alchemy’s CRM solutions has re-sulted in more than 5,700 room nights booked through email campaigns

in 2017, while its partnership with digital listing powerhouse, Yext, has organized more than 2,600 listings including Facebook and Google. Such listings have helped guests with driving di-

rections more than 125,000 times, call a My Place Hotel nearly 38,000 times, and accounted for more than 2,900,000 Facebook Page impressions since its im-

plementation in February of 2017. Spaeth will continue to develop My Place’s marketing partnerships with Digital

Alchemy, Yext, and hebsdigital among others, while seek-ing opportunities to further amplify the My Place story in all mediums of marketing.

“The My Place story and the people of My Place were real-ly what compelled me and many others to take this journey with America’s Newest and Best,” Spaeth said. “Growing brand awareness starts with a strong story that allows individuals to relate, and I look forward to working closely with our PR and Design teams to further create brand awareness and to

strengthen brand identity and culture.”

The My Place Team taking in the views in Marquette, MI

The 2017 My Place Hotels of America Convention held Sep-tember 11th through 13th was a historic success for the brand, its owners, operators, and partners. Convening nearly 200 at-tendees from all corners of the country at San Antonio’s beau-tiful Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort, the event delivered on its promise to engage participants throughout platform updates and development news, while updating the My Place story with its most exciting chapters yet.

While its pipeline continues to ramp up, My Place’s progres-sions in prototype and project management took center stage as the organizational force powering the brand’s next phase of growth. Central to My Place’s “Hotel in a Box” approach to franchise development is a highly-organized support system, which now includes the Progress Portal, a project manage-ment dashboard designed by Michele Shilhanek, Director of Hotel Opening Support.

In addition to support enhancements, Corey Haaland, My Place Director of Construction and Prototype Management,

also unveiled the brand’s G2 lobby design. With efficiency in mind and guest experience at

heart, the next generation lobby opens up the common space for better visibility, con-nectivity, and interactions among guests and operators while updating all furnishings and finishes. Ryan Rivett, My

Place President and CEO, said the new lobby’s cost remains

c o n s i s -tent with the first gen-eration, a success reflecting My Place’s core principle of measuring every refresh or recommendation from an owner and operator perspective.

“Our well-defined prototype plan, and FF&E specifications manual coupled with My Place intelligence and infrastructure resources have proven to be successful in achieving cost con-

sistency for all My Place franchisees,” Rivett said. “So much so, in-fact, that as we gather cost reporting from each new franchise location that comes online, we maintained less than 10% range in construction and FF&E costs.”

The annual convention was not the only opportunity for My Place to con-nect with its cross-country supporters and participants though. My Place’s team of storytellers has trav-elled to 17 grand opening and groundbreaking events since 2017 to capture the relationships and moments that are now ingrained in the My Place story. While all events continue to simultaneously create and promote the story, few are as indic-ative of My Place’s growth as its first-ever groundbreaking tour led by Rivett and Terry Kline, EVP of Franchise Development.

BORDERS2017BEYOND

MY PLACE HOTELS OF AMERICA

CONVENTION

My Place’s team of storytellers has travelled to 17 Grand Opening and Groundbreaking events since 2017 to capture the relationships and moments that are now ingrained in the My Place story.

Property of The Year My Place Hotel

Amarillo, TX

The tour covered three time zones to celebrate four ground-breakings in four days from Las Vegas to Nashville, and ended with the exciting news of Matt Eller’s plan to build 40 My Place Hotels in 10 years.

In addition to My Place’s cross-country events, the brand has also deepened its presence at premier industry conferences, where My Place leadership has emerged as the industry’s newest thought leaders. Offering a highly sought-after per-spective on the space, Rivett recently joined heads from Hilton and Woodspring to discuss developments in extended-stay as a panel at the 2017 Lodging Conference. While Rivett was tapped as a top hospitality

innovator by LODGING Magazine in 2016, 2017 marked Rivett’s first year leading My Place Hotels of America as President and CEO. As hospitality headlines continue to center around the extended-stay space, Rivett’s recognition as an industry innovator and thought leader pos-es an abundance of opportunities for My Place to increase its share of voice throughout, what’s expected to be, an era of consolidation.

Such events and coverage have propelled the My Place story, maintaining the brand’s position as Amer-ica’s Newest and Best Extended Stay Hotel chain and demonstrating its determination for all-new, ex-tended-stay hotels offering a mid-scale experience with flexible rate tiers. With a year of record-break-ing demand, industry-leading performance, and re-cent news of acquisitions, extended-stay continues to enjoy the spotlight as hospitality’s hottest plat-form. In the article, “A Look Back at What the Hospitality Industry Taught Itself in 2017,” Skift Hospitality Editor Deanna Ting poses that while consolidations are likely to continue, the movement also creates opportunities for others.

“I suspect the big will get bigger, but that’s also creating opportunities for smaller players who are more niche, more fo-cused, and have great stories to tell. Hotels in the middle with-out a particularly strong brand identity might find themselves on the menu for the next merger.”

While the industry looks ahead to an era of consolidation, what’s also certain, is that My Place will continue making strides as the outstanding player in the extended-stay space.

Central to My Place’s asserted pre-eminence as America’s Newest

and Best Extended-Stay Hotels is an unwavering focus on quality. While the Quality Assurance Department, led by Director Scott Rau, possesses a meticulous record of ensuring the

cleanliness and condition of the ho-tels are kept to the highest standards,

there have been other as-pects of a hotel operation that are paramount to a

well-balanced strategy for success. To that end, Rau has man-aged a QA Program revamp to focus on reputation, response, and resources.

While 2017 saw My Place Amarillo’s ascent to number one out of 73 hotels on Tri-pAdvisor, and the brand main-tained its exceptional TripAd-visor average ranking of 4.5 out of 5, My Place has largely maintained its position on review sites through training and educational resources. Seeking growth and consis-tency throughout all online review sites, Quality Assurance

Reprinted with permission of Hotel Business®, copyright ICD Publications 2017

By Stefani C. O’ConnorExecutive News Editor

ABERDEEN, SD—My Place Hotels of America LLC has named Presi-dent/COO Ryan Rivett as president/CEO, succeeding his grandfather and company founder Ron Rivett in the chief executive role.

Out of the gate, the new CEO told Hotel Business, “There’s a lot of stra-tegic talk, both about franchise de-velopment and growth of the chain, as well as about brand-management growth and structuring the company to stay ahead.”

Toward this, Rivett indicated the company is working on “some new things that will come up in late 2017 and 2018 with respect to diversified

products within the My Place parent company as well…potentially a sec-ond brand.”

The CEO would not go into detail other than to say it would be “di-versified from the current My Place extended-stay concept.”

Ron Rivett remains chairman of the franchise company, which fo-cuses on economy extended-stay ho-tels. “It’s fantastic to have Ron here almost on a daily basis. He’s able to provide a lot of character and color to the things us young people are be-ginning to experience. He says very commonly: ‘There isn’t anything that you’re telling me here that I haven’t already done,’” said the new CEO.

Rivett said his elevation to the post isn’t really changing his day-to-day.

What will change, however, is the focus on structuring the executive level of the company “and making room for us to scale the company up, as we’re doing right now.”

Rivett said one shift is moving members of its core management team into different positions and elevating some positions. “We are making room for new people to come in as well as making room for my time to shift and be a little less task-oriented and more strategic-partnership focused,” he said Fran-chise relations and development also are on his agenda. Rivett expects to fill his former COO role by the first of next year and make some shifts in EVP roles as well.

While things may be in flux in the C-suite, Rivett was quick to point out the company’s culture is on a firm foundation and is one he expects to build on.

“I’m out on the road interacting

with franchisees more, as well as in-teracting with some of the strategic partners that we have that are doing development and management, or raising money for certain ventures that we’re working on,” he said.

Stylewise, Rivett said the focus will be on creativity. “That’s really the style I’m looking to incorporate: making sure we don’t stagnate the product that we have and we’ve been successful with. We continue to evolve the product as well as the operating platform. My role as CEO is to be able to see those things as they’re coming and to go out and really address opportunities face-to-face as opposed to having to main-tain a task-management focus on what’s going on here in the office,” said Rivett.

It was less than four years ago that Ron Rivett, one of the pioneering hoteliers who gave the industry Su-per 8, saw the opportunity to launch My Place, creating the concept and lending his support either as a capi-tal participant or an endorser on the note to get the new-construction brand up and running.

Starting with five hotels that formed the core of what the hospital-ity entrepreneur predicted would be a major franchise brand, the value-oriented chain at press time has 32 hotels open [both Rivetts have interests in just under half of those], 12 under construction, and 23 under development, spreading out from its concentration in the Midwest, with distribution both east and west of the Mississippi River.

“The My Place corporate team is go-ing to attend four groundbreakings in four days, spanning from Las Vegas to Nashville and a couple of places in between. There’s lots going on,” said Ryan Rivett, anticipating opening the one hundredth hotel in 2018.

Within the My Place model, there is free high-speed internet access (WiFi and wired), guest laundry and

Ryan Rivett named CEO, My Place eyes second brand

As Seen InMay 21, 2017

My Place Hotels Founder and Chairman Ron Rivett with grandson, Ryan Rivett, now president/CEO of the economy extended-stay chain.

I suspect the big will get bigger, but that’s also creating opportunities for smaller players who are more

niche, more focused, and have great stories to tell.DEANNA TING

will now support My Place owners and operators with the addition of a holistic evaluation of the proper-ty’s reputation within its community, a measure of volume and quality of responses to reviews, as well as staff development and resource utilization.

Quality Assurance and Training departments will continue to add resources to My Place’s exist-ing foundation of education, but 2018 will also see the launch of the brand’s most important resource component yet, My Place University.

Recognizing that hotel operations is among

the most im-portant components in sus-taining success, My Place has taken the initiative to for-malize its manager training program into a platform for recruiting, training and pair-ing career-seekers with hotel management opportunities across the country. In 2018

My Place University will accept motivated applicants throughout the U.S. into its inten-sive 12-week training programs.

Rivett said My Place University’s mission is to support its franchisees and growth plans, and in so doing My Place University will educate tomorrow’s General Managers and provide knowledgeable support to its

growing network of hotels. “Having observed hospitality pro-

fessionals all my life, I’ve come to be-lieve the industry belongs to the hard-working, the energetic, and the

courageously kind,” Rivett said. “I’ve also enjoyed meeting many of those individuals along the My Place journey—and no matter their brand affiliation or experience—I’ve simply wanted them to know they have massive potential. My Place University’s 12-week training program will further our commit-ment to preparing those individuals, educating the next gen-eration of hospitality professionals, and supporting our franchise network.”

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit. WILL DURANT

Please send all inquiries topr@myplacehotels.com