Arlington, Virginia-based Interstate Hotels & Resorts recently named Mike Wylie as its new head of eCommerce. For the past decade, Wylie ran his own digital marketing company, Standing Dog Interactive, and prior to that he developed e-commerce strategies for Wyndham International.
HOTELS spoke with Wylie about his plans for Interstate and what lies ahead for the industry.
HOTELS: You started your own company in 2005. What learnings did you take away from Standing Dog Interactive that can be applied to e-commerce?
Mike Wylie: Online marketing supports e-commerce, so if your online marketing strategies are strong, it will generate more e-commerce.
H: At HOTELS we’ve been keeping a close eye on Alipay and WeChat Pay and how U.S. companies and properties are beginning to integrate the two. Looking past the traditional ways we think about e-commerce, what’s next?
MW: I am paying attention to Blockchain’s impact, and I am still wrapping my mind around it. The opportunity to increase privacy, security and reduce costs from third parties looks promising. However, from a consumer standpoint, I am much more interested and excited to the impact of Google Duplex. Your voice assistant is making actual calls for you and booking appointments, restaurant reservations and eventually hotel rooms. Initially, this is positioned to interact with businesses that do not have online booking, but I think for travel, it will be your AI voice assistant talking to a hotel brand’s AI interface to search for and book a room. This will be exceptionally easy for loyalty members booking frequent travel.
H: What initially brought you into the hospitality industry?
MW: In 1996, I was hired by the Synapse group, which was run by a couple of MIT graduates. They were building Hilton’s next generation website and were brilliant but didn’t know how to speak with or manage a client. A friend of mine worked there and asked me to come to talk with them since I had a couple of years of ad agency experience managing clients. This was around the beginning of the Internet going mainstream, and I was fascinated. My fascination combined with my love of travel made this opportunity appealing and satisfying to me. I leapt at the chance and ended up leading strategy for the first fully functional and interactive website for Hilton.
H: Looking ahead: you’ve been with Interstate only three months, but what’s both your short and long-term strategy?
MW: My first step is an e-commerce reinvention, bringing the e-commerce members together to create an official e-commerce division. I am assigning brand champions that are responsible for aligning with the brand e-commerce teams. They will become the brand experts for our respective hotels, and communicate best practices and updates to the company, setting us up for long-term success.
Next I’ll develop a preferred list of vendors and leverage the size of Interstate to negotiate better pricing and services. Then I’ll launch tactical digital marketing guidelines plans with proven revenue results based on brand and property type, size and location and identity. Finally, I want to execute cost effective programs not heavily supported by the brands to generate increased revenue for our hotels and steal market share from competitors.
Keep your eyes on our new lifestyle management division, Intrigue Hotels & Resorts. I’m most excited about spearheading the online marketing and ecommerce for this division. Intrigue will include select independent and soft-branded properties, including urban boutique hotels, upscale restaurants, spa retreats and international properties. This is where my team can be creative and dynamic, with greater control over the websites and online marketing, rather than being limited by a brand website.
H: What’s one prediction you’re willing to make about the future of eCommerce in the coming year?
MW: Circling back to Google Duplex, I think this is such a game changer that it will accelerate the evolution and adoption of machine learning and artificial intelligence. If I have to make a prediction, I predict that by the end of 2019, Siri, Alexa and Google Home will have actual two-way conversations to help us get better answers to our questions and perform complex tasks rather than just being an expensive kitchen timer. They will not be quite as intelligent as something like Jarvis in Iron Man, but we will at least see the promise of this technology beginning to deliver.