173 – Fairmont Hotels & Resorts

Vice President of Brand & Marketing at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, Loay Nour, joins the Suite Spot podcast to discuss the launch of Fairmont’s global campaign – “Make Special Happen”. 

Tune in now to learn more about the brand and the campaign only on the Suite Spot.

Ryan Embree:
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. We have a very special episode for you today. Gonna tell you in a minute why that is so telling. But first, I’m gonna go ahead and introduce a first time guest with me today, Fairmont Hotel and Resorts, vice President of Brand and Marketing, Loay Nour. Thank you so much for joining me here on The Suite Spot.

Loay Nour:
Thank you for having me, Ryan. Looking forward to our conversation.

Ryan Embree:
It’s gonna be a great conversation. We’re gonna talk a lot about some exciting things on Fairmont Hotel and Resorts, things you and your team have been working on over there. But before we do that, since you are a first time guest, I always love to just hear everyone’s hospitality background, unique journeys to where they got there and for you at Fairmont Hotel and Resorts.

Loay Nour:
Absolutely. So my name is Loay Nour, and I’ve been in the hospitality industry for more than 18 years actually now. My background goes specifically in luxury hospitality brand. It’s a passion that started for me, although I haven’t done hospitality school. But I ended up in the hospitality by passion, not by education. My background is actually goes very much into guest experience, brand and marketing, loyalty marketing, partnerships marketing. So I’ve got around like a 360 degree on marketing. And today, myself and my team we’re in charge of the Fairmont brand globally, proudly managing a portfolio of 95 hotels worldwide, and a very strong pipeline of around 28 hotels coming up in the next few years. And today, really looking forward to tell you about the chapter of that. We have just recently launched with a new campaign of Fairmont Presents Make Special happen.

Ryan Embree:
Yeah, it’s a massive global campaign. We’re gonna jump all into it. But before, let’s give our sweet spot audience maybe a little bit of a history lesson. We’ve had some iconic brands on this Sweet Spot podcast. This might be the most iconic. It’s got a rich legacy of timeless hospitality as it’s described. Share with our sweet spot audience, a little bit about the origin story behind this incredible storied luxury brand.

Loay Nour:
It’s actually one of the brands that has a great legacy and history since 1907 with the first property that opened in San Francisco. Fairmont took its name actually from the vision of the foundries, the two first sisters which was the first half of the name. And then the mont was actually because the San Francisco was built on a mountain, and that was the first property that was open for us. Since then, we actually, our hotels has been social epicenters in the different destinations where they operate. And we were able to actually host a lot of key defining history moments like the black and white ball, like the bed in peace with the John Legend and Yoko and Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montreal. So we’ve always been a place where if we always like to say if it happens in a city or it happens in a destination, it happens at a Fairmont. And until today, we actually continue to host those great moments. We became a truly international brand back in 2002 when our first property outside the America opened in Dubai. And since then, our portfolio has accelerated. Today, we’re a proud member of a core group that manages more than 42 brands globally. And we are one of the very well known and very well beloved, luxury brands globally.

Ryan Embree:
It’s incredible growth and we’re gonna talk about that a little bit later in the episode. But I do want to fast forward to today. First of all, interesting and fun fact about the name of Fairmont. I mean, if you ever want some great hospitality trivia, I think that little story right there is a great one to try to stump maybe your hotel friends. But let’s fast forward today in talking about this incredible launch make special happen, global campaign launch worldwide, like you said, you’re catering to travelers all over the world. What inspired this campaign and the Fairmont Hotel’s new global branding?

Loay Nour:
We have actually started a very extensive brand positioning exercise couple of months ago where with, when you have a great brand with a great legacy like Fairmont, you want to make sure that you evolve it carefully. So you want to maintain all the legacy of the brand, but also you want to make sure that you are relevant. So we did a lot of focus groups with many of our partners, guests, and even colleagues internally, to really deep dive a little bit about the brand, who we are, what we stand for, and what makes us unique and differentiate us in a very crowded competitive landscape. And this is when we came with our positioning of Make Special Happen, which basically our belief and understanding that luxury today is not a one size fits all. It’s actually driven from the belief that every interaction with every guest represent an opportunity to surprise. And that’s because what’s special to you, Ryan, might be not necessarily special to me. We need to really understand the individual needs of our guests, and that’s where this has became part of our DNA. And we started by integrating that which is what our, all our partners and colleagues have told us. We started integrating that into our service culture, into our DNA into our heritage. And then we started slowly to actually evolve that. We partnered with an agency based in New York called Kingdom Partners who actually were a great partner to work with, and they saw through what we’re trying to do as a brand and what ambition we had and how do we bring that to life through a campaign. So they gave it a little bit of that. Okay, you’ve always been social epicenters, you’ve always been committed to really celebrating moments in people’s lives since 1907. So they give it that sort of like really cinematic view where you look at it today, when you see like the poster behind me, for example, you see that Fairmont Present make special happen. It’s like a movie type of like really style. You see a lot of the guests who represent a lot of, some of our guest personas actually that comes into our hotels, whether it’s the Langman or the Celebration is, or the couple or the family, how they all come together with our colleagues to make special happen. And then it ended up with also featuring one of our colleagues, Tom Wolf, who’s a great representation and a great brand ambassador, America’s first concert. He still works in Fairmont, San Francisco. And he’s made a great appearance for us in the campaign because he is a great storyteller and a great representation of what Fairmont is all about. So it really started with the foundational work that given to us by our partners, colleagues and guests. It started to be part of our positioning infused into our service culture and who we are, and then turned into a campaign of what our promise to the world.

Ryan Embree:
It’s incredible. And if you haven’t seen, I encourage all of my listeners and audience to go check out that video that includes some of those characters we’re gonna talk about in a minute. Just so beautifully artfully done. There are congratulations on the campaign, but I think your story there, Loay, it’s so interesting to hear that background because you think about a historic timeless legacy of Fairmont Hotel and resorts and think maybe this campaign isn’t needed because of that history, but it actually has that you have to evolve it and, and for you to have the careful consideration of not evolving it to a place where it’s unrecognizable to those travelers that you’ve been catering to for so long, but rather marrying the past with the future of this, of this incredible brand. It’s so smart. And I think a lot of hotels, a lot of travelers don’t understand the time and effort that it takes because even those small changes to such a brand where people have had those moments at at Fairmont Hotels, they’ve been married there, they’ve celebrated anniversaries, birthdays, if you change something too much there, you’re gonna hear about it, right? Those are impacting memories and experiences. So it’s so cool to hear that background. ’cause I think a lot of, a lot of that is missed sometimes with these campaigns. So thank you for sharing and you know, it is a globally recognized brand. So when you and your team went about launching this, right when you first started talking about it, how did you make sure you’re not just trying to target one type of traveler, right? You’re trying to get this in the eyes and ears of every luxury traveler across the world. How do you go about doing that and making sure that it’s making that impact?

Loay Nour:
Great question. I think we really started by understanding and acknowledging as a team that this is beyond an advertising campaign. We have the brand video, as you mentioned for the campaign. And we have some of the still imagery that actually we used in across our own channels, but also some of our paid media channels. We focus on our key markets like the North America, Canada, Asia, middle East, and Europe, to make sure that we really target the key travel and lifestyle publications and online platform. We’re very much also present across the key social media channels that we have globally. But we really recognize that this is needs to go beyond an advertising campaign. And that’s why we launched the series of or a collection of special happen which are experiential, sort of like really platform. If you go to our website and to our campaign page Fairmont.com/Specialhappen, you’ll see that we introduce series of that collection, that special happens after dark special happens around the table. Special happens in the wild because we wanted the people to really be able to book those different experiences. We wanted them to be able to experience what we’re talking about. And we also wanted to live up to our promise special is not necessarily gonna happen only within our hotels. It could be happening anywhere as long as it’s really create our special experience for you. And as long as we are able to turn your moments with us into special memories that will last with you for a lifetime, then we did the job, right? So it was crucial for us that we reach with you, with who we are and what we’re trying to do and our brand promise, but also invite you to be able to come and experience what we mean by we make special happen. So you actually can use that as a Yeah. Now I actually, I get it. Now I understand what what you mean and what you do. And to your point in, in many of our key markets, we really are very much, we have high brand penetration and brand awareness and brand love as well. So it was really, we had to live up to the fact that the people has been, the initial feedback that we’ve been getting is saying, yes, this is exactly what Fairmont is all about. Yes, we are actually we that resonate with me. And I remember I had, and it’s interesting, when you look at our different channels, you start to see how now it’s actually the conversations start to happen in, in the other side because now the guests are telling us about their special moments that they are actually had with us, and they tell us what made, what makes our hotels special, which is a great asset for us.

Ryan Embree:
It’s so brilliant because you and your team are tapping into a feeling, right? It’s not, it goes beyond the four rooms, the four walls and a bed, which is the old adage for a hotel room. It’s a feeling, it’s sentiment that towards you, that you feel towards an experience. And those are the type of memories that can last a lifetime. And it’s really cool. I think the smartest part about this campaign, and one of the ones I I found the most fascinating and was trying to figure out which character I was, were some of these special characters within the campaign. And I wanted to take a moment to kind of talk through some of them if you had the time because I think it’s so smart. It does a really simple yet effective job of sharing that when you come to, when a property, a resort, you’re not coming for the same reason. You could come as one character, you could come as multiple, and those create those experiences. So I figured what we could do is maybe talk through some of them and you can share the stories behind them. Let’s start with the celebration.

Loay Nour:
Yeah, so she is really representing the central character. We call her Melody because she’s the ultimate connector. She is the one who’s really decided that she’s gonna really showcase the colorful world that we have at Fairmont Hotels. And she’s the one who’s writing the invitation to everyone. And then she’s the one who’s collaborating with our porter who’s on a mission to make special happen. So he is gonna go around to actually Parker, we call him again, he’s gonna go around and he’s gonna deliver them to the guests. You see that the guests are coming from different parts of their experiences, like the links man. He’s the golfer who likes to really show the excellence, whether he’s on the golf course or anywhere else. He’s just came back from a sort of like really a golf round into the hotel, received the invitation, immediately recognized, what is this about? and gets excited by shaking the invitation. And then he’s ready to go there. And then you see the wellness enthusiast that he’s really charming. He’s like, you can tell that he’s endlessly fun the way he really socialized during the event and the way that he’s really going around. And as he goes on that he is not just as someone who’s spending his time in the gym or worrying about himself, but he likes to have fun. My favorite is actually the family, the muse and hair makers that the way that she gets excited about receiving the invitation and that fact that the celebration actually starts in the room before they even get the family dances together as they get the invitation because they know what’s happening and all the way going into the legends in the Ledger, the couple that he actually, they love to really enjoy every time. But what we love about it is that how everyone comes together. And for me, my favorite part is always seeing that rush moment when, our colleagues start to run around preparing. And I love the fact that Tom fold up the liver and eliminate the sign. But he comes with that sort of approach, like, you know what it is the time again, I’ve done this for many years, I’ve been doing this. The team, once they see the sign is eliminated. They know what is this about? He lit it up and then everyone is running around to make special happen. And the best thing is when you see her, you see the celebration, it’s raising her glass to Parker at the end who was leading the team saying yes, again, we made special happen. These are type of moments that actually happens within our hotels every day. I can tell you, even when we were filming, a lot of these moments were happening behind the scenes where our colleagues were running around to actually make special happen, which is the filming itself.

Ryan Embree:
It so cool and beautifully story told on that video, again, encourage you to check it out and try to figure out which character you are because we’ve all been that character once or twice. And you know, some of those are just capitalizing on travel trends that we’re seeing, you know, the wellness enthusiast is, it’s so powerful right now in the travel industry. So again, so smart to have all these characters. One of my favorite parts of the global campaign, and to tie it altogether with America’s first concierge, Tom Wolf, I think is also a fitting note to your past, right? And your rich, rich history over there at Fairmont. The timing of the campaign couldn’t be more perfect. I’m sure this was strategically planned to do it right before the busy summer travel season. Loay, what do luxury travelers have to look forward to this summer when visiting a Fairmont hotel and resort property?

Loay Nour:
I think wherever they’re gonna go around the world, they’re gonna find an experience that is actually really designed around what they want. We have a really great footprint worldwide and we have a diversified portfolio, these personas that we talked about. And the different type of guests comes from the fact that our Fairmont hotels worldwide, the 95 hotels that we have, there are 36 resorts. There are 19 golf resorts that we have. We have more. We have around 18 hotels with the portfolio that are more than a hundred years old within the portfolio. So it’s actually, whether you are looking for a wellbeing experience, you’re looking for a golf retreat, or you’re looking for a dining experience, or you’re traveling as a couple or a family time, you will be able to find those experiences within our hotels. But moreover, this time or this summer, what’s unique with the launch is actually those, special happen experiences that we talked about earlier that we’ll be able to bring them to you and you will be able to experience them, not only within our hotels, but also beyond our hotels in the destination. Because a lot of them is actually combining an experience in the hotel and in the destination together. So it’s actually, basically you expect that special is there for you, but it’s gonna need to be defined by you because it’s actually what you’re looking for and what you really want to do this summer.

Ryan Embree:
You know, I think one of the things too Loay, and correct me if I’m wrong, this type of also global campaign gets the staff and the team really fired up on the other side to make those special moments for the guests as well. So, you know, it has mutual benefits to not only to your guests and luxury travelers that are traveling all around the world to your locations, but also your staff and your team to say, Hey, let’s make this happen together. Let’s make this special happen together this summer. So very, very exciting. As we wrap up on the heels of this global launch campaign, you mentioned some of the exciting developments for Fairmont Hotel and Resorts. What do you see for the future and vision of this brand Loay?

Loay Nour:
I think that we’re gonna continue to grow. We’re gonna continue to go to new exciting destinations this year. It started already busy for us in terms of really the openings since the beginning of the year. We have opened our second property in India in Mumbai. We have opened in LA NDA and Spain Great Gulf Resorts. We have opened in Prague, our first property, great city center location and flagship of the city and the brand. We also just about to open in Tokyo in July. So we continue to enter great destination for us as a brand. We are also gonna continue our commitment to really improving our guest experience and the delivering on our brand promise as we grow. But you also gonna be able to see a lot of the new programs that’s gonna come, whether on dining or wellness or through some of the key experiences that we have with the likes of our Fairmont Gold or the hotel within a hotel concept. So there is a great momentum on the brand. There is a great growth for the brand. This campaign is really gonna continue to position who we are. The personas that we talked about are, we call them just the first chapter as we go on. You might see more and more of those personas. And I would say keep an eye, make sure that you follow us on all our social channels because you’re gonna get to know more about where the brand is going and what we’re doing.

Ryan Embree:
Well, we’re so excited to see and watch and sounds like plenty of new opportunities with some new developments in the pipeline to continue to make special happen for years and years to come. So, Loay, I wanna thank you for joining me here on the Sweet Spot. Congratulations again to you and your team. Very excited to continue to watch this campaign and see how this brand, this iconic brand, evolves into the future.

Loay Nour:
Ryan, thank you very much for giving me and us as a brand the opportunity to talk to the Suite Spot listeners, we’re really happy that we got the opportunity to share our story on the brand and tell you a little bit about it. We invite you to find out more about it, go to fairmont.com/make special happen. You’ll see the video Ryan and I have been chatting about. You’ll see the experiences we’ve been talking about and keep stay tuned to learn more about Fairmont.

Ryan Embree:
Awesome. Well thank you so much Loay. Thank you for listening to The Suite Spot and we’ll talk to you next time. To join our loyalty program, be sure to subscribe and give us a five star rating on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.