I’m a little hesitant to start a conversation about another new hotel industry made-up buzzword given last year’s “mullet travel” incident, but this one is too good not to share. And like “mullet travel,” this one is a slightly funny take on a real phenomenon.
Last week we started the process of planning content for the 2023 Hotel Data Conference, which celebrates its 15th year this August. (Save the date: August 9-11, in Nashville.) The content planning committee had a fantastic conversation around trends in blended travel. Bleisure travel, of course, is not just a trend but a fixture now, and the conversation turned to other ways the data is showing us shifts in how people are mixing up their travel.
It emerged that of course we’d need some conversation in the programming about these new blends and whether, or to what extent, they matter to hoteliers, not to mention how data can help inform that behavior.
“So we call this ‘bloup,’ then, right?” asked Nick Minerd, STR’s VP of marketing and communications, to the content planning committee.
“A group event, with some extra business-transient travel added on, then some leisure,” he explained.
You could see the brains start to whir. Like any fun, made-up word, we all jumped on trying to work out the definition of it.
We explained it this way: A company gathers its international sales force at a large group event, in a great destination, to rally the troops after a long hiatus. Then Karen in sales, noticing that the group event only runs through Wednesday, decides she’ll tack on a few days and do some client visits in the area on Thursday and Friday morning. With business planned, the company will pay for those extra nights. But it’s such a great resort, and since she didn’t have any time for fun during the conference or her days visiting clients, she wants to bring her partner down for the weekend and extend the trip two more nights, on their own dime.
Bloup, there it is.
Now of course, whether the bloup segment even matters is another story. Maybe no segmentation matters, as long as revenue goals are being met? Maybe it’s simply a matter of being able to divide the folio up correctly?
But I guess you’ll need to plan on attending the 2023 Hotel Data Conference to find out. Registration opens next month.
I’ll close by mentioning one person who would have really gotten a chuckle out of both “mullet travel” and “bloup,” and that was Jerry Daly. I learned this week that Jerry died in early January and I’ve been thinking about him all week.
While I knew Jerry as co-founder of Daly Gray Public Relations — now DG Public Relations — of course many of you in the industry knew him from his years with Promus, Holiday Inn and Harrah’s.
I knew him as one of the first people I met when I started covering the hotel industry 15 years ago.
From the start, Jerry was kind, helpful and real. Of course PR executives always have the journalists in their sights, but Jerry was always different, because he exuded sincerity. He was such a fan of this industry and the stories behind the new brands, the deals and the companies, and he loved to tell those stories.
Journalists need contacts fast when they jump into a new industry, and Jerry built my contacts list right off the bat, no strings attached. He was just a good person to have on your side.
Our industry has lost more wonderful people than I can count in recent years, and I am reminded during those times how important it is to be remembered not for your work but for how you treated people, and whether you lived your life with kindness and generosity. Jerry had all that.
My heartfelt sympathies to Chris and Patrick, who of course hold up their father’s professional and personal legacies, and to Jerry’s family and friends.
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