In this episode, hosts David Millili and Steve Carran sit down with Jason Craparo, CEO of Hovr, a technology company revolutionizing guest engagement in the hospitality industry. Jason shares his fascinating journey from dishwasher to successful entrepreneur, including his experiences as a Sonic Drive-In franchisee and his time at Babson College.
The conversation dives deep into how Hovr is transforming the way hotels showcase their amenities and drive direct bookings. Jason explains how their innovative video content solution helps hotels increase conversions by 20-40 times the industry average. He discusses the importance of reducing risk and increasing excitement for potential guests during the booking process.
You'll gain insights into:
- The power of reusing existing hotel content to engage website visitors
- How Hovr's technology speeds up the booking process and increases revenue
- The future of personalized content experiences in hotel marketing
- Advice for entrepreneurs looking to break into the hospitality tech space
Sponsor spot:
This episode is sponsored by Hovr: https://gethovr.com/
Join the conversation on today's episode on The Modern Hotelier LinkedIn page.
The Modern Hotelier is produced, edited, and published by Make More Media: https://makemore.media/
Episode Links
Jason Craparo
David Millili
Steve Carran
Steve on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Automatic Transcription - please excuse any errors
Steve Carran: We're really excited to release this episode with Jason Caparro from Hovr. David, what were some of your favorite takeaways from this episode?
David Millili: Yeah, I mean, Jason, super smart guy. I love how he pivoted from e commerce to hospitality. And I love the fact that he's helping hotels drive more direct bookings by using content that already exists for them.
Steve Carran: Yeah, absolutely. And I love how he said he came up, you know, the problem is they are not utilizing all the existing content that these hotels have. And he saw that and he just came to market and said, okay, here's the problem. After talking with marketers about, you know, this issue, he just came to the industry to solve it. He seems like he's doing great. It's, it seems like a great, great opportunity for these hotels.
David Millili: Steve, who do we have on the program today?
Steve Carran: Yeah, David. Today we have on Jason Kroparo. Jason is the CEO of Hovr. Hovr is a venture backed technology company that's revolutionizing the way people engage with brands and each other on the internet. Hovr's helping marketing teams that are looking to increase engagement from their site visitors and helps these teams by providing engaging experiences at scale on their websites. Welcome to the show, Jason.
Jason Craparo: Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
David Millili: All right. So Jason, we're going to go through a couple of sections. We're gonna do a lightning round, go through your personal background a little bit, your career, and then we're going to dive into some industry topics. Sound good?
Jason Craparo: Sounds great.
David Millili: All right. What was the first job you had?
Jason Craparo: Dishwasher.
David Millili: Do you have a role model?
Jason Craparo: my Uncle Dan, my godfather.
David Millili: Do you have a luxury that you can't live without?
Jason Craparo: I would say, uh, my children.
David Millili: Is there a place you haven't been that you'd most like to go to?
Jason Craparo: Tokyo.
David Millili: If you had your own late night talk show, who would your host, first guest be?
Jason Craparo: Hmm. I would say Tom Cruise.
David Millili: That's a good one. Alright, last one here. If you had a time machine, you can go into the future, back to the past. Which way are you going and what year are you going to?
Jason Craparo: boy, I really like the Revolutionary Period. That's my favorite time period. So I would love to, go back to, uh, just before the Declaration and talk with those guys.
Steve Carran: That's great. So now we're going to learn a little bit more about you and your background first, kind of what makes you tick. So you went to Union Endicott High School in New York. did you grow up in New York?
Jason Craparo: Yeah, I grew up in upstate New York. Yep.
Steve Carran: How did that shape you into who you are today?
Jason Craparo: it was a great place to grow up. you know, we was the actual, Endicott's the headquarters of IBM for so many years. so Watson was there. We had the factory. So a lot of the people that I went to high school with, their parents worked for IBM. it essentially was the town. and the reason why that area was so important.
Existed, but a blue collar town, a lot of great people, formation for sure for, uh, for work ethic. I saw all the people around me, including my mom just working so hard. So, from day one, it was, you got a job when I said, uh, first dishwashing job, that was 14 years old. As soon as I could get a working permit, man, we were out there and I even have a little land, a landscaping lawn business at 12 with my own business card. So It's a good, good place to come from.
David Millili: great. So you originally were going to Coastal Carolina University. You worked your way up as a managing partner at Sonic, and then you ended up at Babson College. Can you tell us how all this happened and transpired?
Jason Craparo: Sure, sure. Um, so I went to Broome Community College in upstate New York first, and I gotinto Coastal Carolina, but coincidentally, in my award package, I couldn't afford the tuition. So, I asked if they would defer my tuition for a year. So I could go down and work for one year in South Carolina.
And then at that point I would have in state tuition. I could afford to go there. my girlfriend's neighbor's friend of a friend, owned Sonic Drive Ins in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He gave me the first job, eight bucks an hour on the grill. and so I was just working my butt off there.
I worked for eight hours a day, clocked out, worked for free. I went home and because I didn't know anybody, I didn't have a car or radio TV. I just read the operations manual. So, uh, within eight months became, a manager, assistant GM, and, uh, at 21 years old, built my first store from the ground up and never went to coastal Carolina.
So just went in right to, uh, ownership of Sonic Drive Ins.
Steve Carran: Do you still ever go back to your store? I gotta ask, like, do you go back and say, hey, that's my Sonic, I helped design that?
Jason Craparo: No, no,no. I haven't been back, but now with, uh, we just, we just brought on a Britain resorts. they have a quote, they have 21 resorts in the Myrtle Beach area. So maybe I will make it back down. but I was just at the Lake home of my franchisee, the guy who provided me that opportunity when I was 20, 21 years old, and he's now in South Carolina still. Um, and so I got to hang out with him and rehash the old days.
Steve Carran: that's great. And how did you end up at Babson?
Jason Craparo: So I was working with, when I left Sonic, I moved out to San Diego and for about six years helped run a national non profit. We employed inner city kids out at stadiums. So we worked with the 49ers, the Raiders, Chargers, Padres, and we, The Modern Hotelier, David Millili, Steve Carran, CRM, CEO, LodgIQ, Dr. Elizabeth And the board chair, Jenny Flores, when I went back to school at night, got my four year degree, because we were preaching during the day to these kids that a four year degree was a proven pathway out of poverty. yet I still had that, just that two year degree at, at a community college level.
So I went back for them at night, got my four year degree. And then I was getting asked to be on boards. the mayor of San Diego appointed me as a commissioner on the Equal Opportunity Commission, ensuring, uh, what Women, minorities, and disabled vets had equal access to contracts. So I was, I was leveling up in the community and I knew that I would never take the job of Dr.
Mark Spencer, the CEO at Juma. Uh, he's just such a great guy, very talented. and so I thought that, There was another level of education that I needed to go get if I wanted to help people in a bigger way. And the board chair, Jenny Flores, lived in San Francisco. She had just got her MBA at Babson. So I was telling her that I was looking at schools.
I took the GMAT and she said, you know, Someone like you, Jason, would really thrive at this college. Number one in the world for 25 straight years for entrepreneurship. I didn't think I could get in, but, they let me in and gave me a 30, 000 scholarship and, yeah, it was, it was, it was a great place to go though, absolutely incredible.
And I ended up, taking home all the hardware there, the Roger Babson award, uh, Sorensen scholar. It was a really great experience.
Steve Carran: that was an award for, was it the number one student in your class?
Jason Craparo: number one all around. A lot of activities, grade point average, just being involved, kind of all around.
Steve Carran: very impressive. So, you know, one other fun thing I found out about you is you're a, you're a pilot currently, but here's where I'm really interested to hear, how did you, you, So, you completed advanced aerobics. How did you get into doing aerobics at an advanced level? And also, how did you get interested in being a pilot?
So, curious about both of those. I'm not one to correct. I will say it's pronounced though, aerobatics. Oh, sorry,
Jason Craparo: Yeah. I used to always just have dreams that I could run and push off. even when I was at Sonic in, in Conway, South Carolina, they had an airport and I would just go. you know, when I had a couple hours, I'd just go to the airport and I'd watch the planes land.
Always had an interest in aviation. When I left there, I went out to San Diego and I found an instructor first for helicopters and, uh, helicopters has a fourth dimension. So, you know, I didn't like the fact that if the, if the engine cut out, we would just. Be a rock coming down and hope to auto gyrate at the end.
So I started with single engine land aircraft, Cessnas, Pipers, things like that. Bubble top canopy, little two seater planes out in Ramona, California. And then, yeah, one year I, entered this program. It was actually a gift for Christmas by my uncle, but I went down to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.
So the foremost author of all the books on aerobatics is this guy named Bill Kirshner. And he had a protege, Catherine Cavagnaro. So she teaches mathematics at the university, beautiful campus. It's modeled after Cambridge. And I just said such a great time. They gave me a little loaner Honda, Honda Accord, the type of thing where it's like the keys under the mat, just bring it back, with a little more gas than you found it.
And she was so, so amazing, such an incredible instructor. So we took the plane up to 10, 000 feet and. Tipped it on its back and spun out of control and did loops and flips and immelmans and all types of stuff. But you got to, you know, anytime you bank an aircraft more than 45 degrees, you need to wear a parachute.
and so it got real when we're in the first pre flight and she's telling me, okay, well, listen, the only door to this airplane is on your side. So if a wing falls off, I'm going to be pointing to you to jump out first.
I was like, all right, this guy, this just got real.
Steve Carran: Oh my goodness. That's a little different than aerobics. I'll give you that.
Jason Craparo: Yeah, yeah, you
Steve Carran: that was awesome. That was great to get a little bit more, it was great to get to know a little bit more about you. Now we're going to move on to your career. So you kind of already talked about it. When you lived in San Diego, you went out there with your brother, you're working at Juma Ventures, and you also were the commissioner for the City of San Diego Equal Opportunity Commission.
How You know, how did these roles really prepare you for the current day when you're a CEO of your own company?
Jason Craparo: know, I never get that question, but, but I, actually think about it a lot. I think about the unique, the unique set of skills that I've been able to put in my toolkit. So at Sonic, I worked all the time. I mean, I was there solving my own problems. We had a big emphasis on no one's coming to save you, like figure it out, get it done.
And so operationally, I learned there how a business should run. How that specific business, how through, hard work and sacrifice, you can, you know, cut costs and increase profits, things like that. Things like that. with Juma, you know. We were employing inner city kids and we were their first job. So we really got to set the tone for what great coaching and mentorship from a leadership and like an onboarding experience could be.
And I still keep in touch with so many of my youngsters. and it's great to see them flourish. We've literally changed the trajectory of their lives. I also did some of the fundraising there. So as a startup, we're constantly fundraising. And so, at Juma, I was raising money. And there wasn't a financial ROI.
There was a social ROI. I could tell you that if you invested a hundred thousand dollars in these children's lives, that, that we could get them to break the cycle of poverty in their own lives, and get them into the workforce and, and good work habits and saving habits and things like that. So, being able to, you know, get investment for a social ROI.
Now I'm, I'm raising money for a company that we really believe in. And we think it's the Ferrari in the industry. And. You know, and not to say that it's easier or harder, but it's a different cell, but getting those reps where you're talking to so many different foundations and individuals, high net worth folks.
so there's some overlap there. And then Babson really showed me how the world works. I, I understood how a business works. you know, even at the undergraduate, I learned how, you know, debits and credits and things should work at a business, but Babson really opened my eyes to the interplay between all of the different, industries, government, finance, economics, those types of things.
David Millili: That's great. So then you went on, you found it, Contrap and is it Hio?
Jason Craparo: CONTAP. Yep. Connecting with a tap.
David Millili: Got it. Yeah. Is this where the kind of the entrepreneurial bug bit you and you kind of decided this I was going to kind of not work for a company do my own thing?
Jason Craparo: I think so. I don't think I ever really worked for another company. Uh, again, this is where, you know, we had an idea and Babson shows you, you can't get any other degree. You can't get a science degree. You can't get liberal. It's just business. It's also the number one private business school in the world.
But when it comes to entrepreneurship, it's Babson, then Harvard, then Stanford, then MIT. And 100 percent of the professors have to have either started or ran a business. It can't be based in theory. It is based on practice. So the only thing they teach you to do is how to ideate, how to look for problems and opportunities, how to use design thinking, for example, just to, to work with customers, talk to them.
What problems are you having? We think you have this problem. Do you have this problem? And we were going to solve it this way. Do you want to solve that way? And that's still today what we do. So at Contap, we had, if we relaunched it today, it would still be the most progressive app that I've ever seen in terms of networking and relationship building.
So both of those companies were centered around a mobile app that You could download and then you could connect with one another at events or just in, you know, in your daily passing. If you met someone, you could easily swap contact information, documents, social media platforms. And we did pre scripted follow up emails, just like getting out of an Uber where you could say, you know, Steve was known for a good conversation.
You could give someone compliments on some of the soft skills. As well. And you could build a profile. Oh, you know, 13 people think that Jason's, a great conversationalist or upbeat and positive, things like that. And then everybody you met went to your CRM as well. But when the pandemic hit, we had just received a verbal offer for that company, HYO.
it was at a time when. After the pandemic, we, we had contracts with the number one largest networking company in the world, the number two, the number three, to roll out our app at all of these events and the pandemic hit and no one needed the in person app that was used for networking because there were no events.
so we pivoted. Yeah.
Steve Carran: Have you thought about bringing it back?
Jason Craparo: When I go to events and they ask me to download their event app, and it's, it's in 2024, not as, I mean, could not even hold a candle to what we had in 2021, 2020. sometimes I do, but you know, we're just laser focused on, on solving problems for, for our hotel guests now and our travel and hospitality groups.
Steve Carran: Totally
Jason Craparo: but I do, I do. And even my employers would be like, you know, oh, this, you know, hi yo, which was, hi yo was short for hit it off. So two people meet, you hit it off. And then it's like, where do we take the relationship? You know, maybe I'll, maybe I'll share Instagram, LinkedIn, and my phone number, or maybe I'll just give you my email and Twitter, X, you know, whatever it was.
Steve Carran: Very cool. So in 2022, you founded Hovr. How did this idea come to be? And was there a final straw that, you know, you ran or something that you ran into that was a final straw where you're like, that's it. Like, I need to start my own company to solve this problem.
Jason Craparo: it wasn't that, you know, I need to start my own company to solve it. It was, we were talking to marketers about coming out of HIO, we had a little bit of cash left, and we're like, we're no longer in events, and I had this idea for, being on the web, that, Browsing the internet is something you always do in isolation.
It's a lonely thing to browse the internet. And to the extent possible, what if we could expose the front end of the web traffic to make every site its own self contained social community, piggybacking on our the ability to build relationships and stuff. So we, we filed a couple of patents on that.
Which we may bring back for some interesting stuff in the future. But, on that, we also at the time, Clubhouse drop in audio was really strong. you had passive audio in terms of audiobooks and podcasts and Clubhouse was exploding. So, we filed a patent and got it granted on allowing anyone to go live on their own website and people to drop in.
And so if you're BMW North America, you could be talking about, maybe your quarterly earnings,or you could be talking about a new feature that was coming out, a new product, your new hybrid electric and how it's going to revolutionize the industry and your actual fans on the website could just drop in live.
And so we went to marketers, True Babs and Fashion, and this is just how Hovr really became Hovr, is we went to them and they're like, this is cool. This is cool. But, um, but live scares us. You know, live audio really scares us. And how are you going to moderate the chat? And we were like, you know, well, we've got, we've got all these things in place for profanity blockers and images and uploads.
You know, you can't say crude things. And they're like, we don't want anyone to talk about Toyota and BMW, you know, and, or we don't, we don't want anything live, anything exposed. We don't want this. and so we, while we were there, we were just having so many conversations with marketers. We said, well, what do you want?
What are your problems? Since, since we're here, what are your problems? And they said, well, we do have a lot of content. We already, we already paid for it. We spent the time, money, effort. We've got influencer content, and it just sits in repositories or resource sections on the website where nobody ever goes, or we paid for it once and it's on YouTube and no one's watching it now.
So we said, okay, so you want to reuse existing content? They said, yeah, that'd be great. So initially we went to market, Hovr was for e commerce. And so we went out and we, you know, you go to the north face, you're looking at a tent and you say, well, boy, you know, can I put this thing together? Can I do it myself on the mountain when it's windy?
How does this work? How quickly can it happen? we started to get some traction. We still have some e commerce customers, but we met the CEO of Wondrian. Mike Fuller, they own, uh, Atelier Rail, Atelier Hotels, Atelier Tours, one of our bigger customers. And he was looking at it from an investment standpoint, and they're investors in Hovr, and he said, Jason, this could be a multi billion dollar business if you never left travel.
And to my surprise at the time, I said, travel? You know, no, no, no, this is for e commerce. And he said, just, just show what you have. To some travel sites. Think about all the content. Think about, you want to know the room type, the amenities, do they have a pool, a rooftop lounge? Can I rent a cabana? What's the pool scene like?
And we thought, well, boy, so we did. We took the biggest swing ever, a massive risk, and bought a keynote at the Digital Travel Connect event last April in, and that's when we really launched for travel and hospitality. And to my great surprise, when I got off stage after the 20 minute keynote and we started looking out, people were lined up and they wanted to talk to us and they said, you know, I really like this.
Let's talk more. So it was at that point we just decided. and the travel and hospitality space has adopted us. I mean, with open arms, just, oh my gosh, come on in here. We have some more ideas. Can you do this? We'd love that. So, from that point on, we were. I've really focused on, on travel and hospitality and building products and features just for this specific industry.
And it has been, um, a game changer. I will also say the people in travel and hospitality, and maybe it's just because like me being a restaurant owner and working dishwasher, I was a bellman, you know, at the Binghamton Regency in upstate New York. When I was going to Broome Community College, people are nicer.
We would go to conferences in e commerce and they'd go, you have 30 seconds. Go. why do you exist? And we're like, okay, you know, uh, and then we talk and, and hear people are like, Hey, I, I, can you tell me about it and how can you help me? And, and, you know, okay, well, does it do that? So they're just much more open to the solutions, open to embracing technology.
And I have just found the people to be incredible in travel and hospitality.
David Millili: That's great. So can you maybe take us through so those who are listening or watching, maybe just some use cases, maybe maybe talk about a client or talk about actually, because most hotels at the end of day want the solution, I'm assuming your solution, to drive more direct bookings through the website.
So maybe just walk us through kind of a use case, kind of like what would be the guest experience on a website and what they would see and how that would would work and help the hotel.
Jason Craparo: Sure, sure. So, uh, so just to back in, like, to use the e commerce people, like, why do you exist? when you go to a travel site and you're considering, maybe you're dreaming, but maybe you're also in, in the, point in your customer decision making journey where you, you're considering this area.
When you land on the site and you're considering booking a hotel, for example, or a resort, you have questions. What's the pool scene going to be like? Uh, is the dolphin excursion going to happen? do they have a kid's club? Like, many questions. So, oftentimes, that journey breaks, and you leave the website, you go to Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube for sure, and you try to figure out what it's actually going to be like, because Hotels put up some images, maybe some videos, but you've really got to navigate around.
And so it's hard to get all of your questions answered that single session direct booking. So you leave. And then if you do end up booking that resort, maybe it's at an OTA. or maybe you've, you've just gone and you've booked a different place. And so we really try to stress that single session direct booking.
So the way that it would manifest is if I'm on a site and I'm looking at different room types, we have a 12 patents now that have been granted and issued 12, 12 new inventions where you just drag and drop. element you can highlight text on a page, or you can actually configure elements and drop them on the page.
And when they're Hovred over or tapped on mobile, about 70% of our traffic comes from mobile. You get a video delivered to you. So our slogan for a while has been content in context. So if you're mentioning a certain panoramic view. Show the view. If you're mentioning grabbing a cup of coffee and going out on the patio for sunrise, show that moment.
these are the moments that matter to people and we're trying to get them excited. So, you know, if you're using two paragraphs on your page to explain how wonderful it is, One single piece of content can do wonders. and so we just allow you, whereas normally to deploy a type of video like this would take a team of three to 20 people, 30 to 45 days.
We've condensed that down to one human in 45 seconds.
Steve Carran: That is awesome. Well, that was great to know more about your background and hear an introduction to Hovr. Now we're going to move more into the industry thoughts. So, you know, like you said earlier, Hovr is all about driving more conversions on hotel websites. is there, you know, kind of a similar question.
Have you seen improve, what improvements are you seeing with hotels that you're working with on conversions? And has there been one hotel that has just, you know, it's just really increased their bookings that have has been a best practice?
Jason Craparo: The really cool thing is it always works every time from day one, from, I mean, you plug it in. We, listen, when we were building it, we hoped it worked. We hypothesized it would work. When people started to embrace us, you know, Zanterra, we run most of the national park services in the United States with them, Italia Rail, most of the, the rail line in Italy.
Every time you plug it in and we have an activity feed, you plug it in and you go live and people just start watching videos and those videos convert. So our clients see 20 to 40 times the industry average click through rate. So if you're on a page and you watch a video, you click, what's interesting is we have dual CTAs as well.
So two different calls to action. If you go to a travel site, you will always see check availability or book now. Book now. Book now. Book now. And it's true. Some people are ready to book. But what we have found in our data is Over 50 percent of the time when someone clicks a button, it's to that secondary CTA.
It's to the learn more. It's to the view room types, explore amenities. So that leads us to believe that there are people that want to book now, but the vast majority of people are still gathering information and evaluating all of their alternatives. So they want to find out they're giving you this golden opportunity.
I'm here and I want you to educate me and I'm open to being inspired to action. So We're pleasantly surprised that it's working just from a couple customer standpoints. Zanterra, we went live with them last July. They, they wanted to go live for their Christmas in July sale. they noted that it was the most successful sale that they they'd ever had in July and attributed it to Hovr, which was spectacular.
And then they had another big, sale in December and it was the biggest sale that they'd ever had. The most successful one attributed it to Hovr as well, which is, which is really great because you're not going to drag your three kids out to a national park with flights and then the rental car and the travel on.
Only to get there and have it not match up with your expectations. So people are craving to know exactly what this place is going to look like. What are we going to do when the kids are there in their downtime or, what trails are we going to go to? How is it going to be? And so, it's just been critical to educate and inspire these people on what your experience is going to be like.
And simultaneously, what we're doing is we're increasing confidence and we're decreasing risk. the reason why Unfortunately, travel and hospitality simultaneously has the highest cart abandonment rate in all of online shopping and the lowest conversion rate of all of online shopping is because of indecisiveness.
If I'm unsure of what this experience is going to be like, I don't do it. Let me think about it in our daily lives. If me, I have three little ones, I have a five, a six and an eight year old. If I am doing a flight across country to Banff, and we have to make a connection from Philadelphia with three kids, if there's two flights, one has a 30 minute connection, and one has an hour and a half connection, risk has been introduced in the first one, I don't know, maybe we can get there, but maybe potty breaks and everything.
And, you know, all the stuff we got to lug. So I'm going to go with the option that has the least risk to me and in our, in our, um, So, we find that that's what happens too. If you can de risk that for people. The London House in Chicago, Don Barnett is doing an incredible job there as well. They have so many items about the hotel, so many elements that are unique.
The second ranked rooftop in all of the country, which is pretty great. I actually think it's number one, but you know, the rankings say number two. 12 to 3 every single day. And it's like an English tea setup. Incredible. Great restaurants, great accommodations, beautiful view. When you walk out their doors, you are on the Magnificent Mile.
You're on the Chicago River and their slogan is, it starts here. And it certainly does. So what we try to do when someone comes to us is, we're looking to drive an emotional reaction on a website. That's what Hovr does. We try to drive an emotional reaction. And in particular, people would say, well, what emotion?
There's only one emotion we're after. It is excitement. And so we want to get people excited, but excitement is defined by anticipating an experience that is both novel and unique. So if you want someone to be excited, you've got to show them things that are novel and unique. And so that's what Don's doing.
They have a Peloton room with a Peloton. inside the room. You can actually work out. You don't have to go down to the gym. You know, they're showcasing the rooftop. They're showcasing things to do also in the community, events that are coming up. So that's what we try to do. We just try to use a content touch where a human touch was once necessary.
We just try to get people really excited to book with you.
Steve Carran: I love that. And, you know, one thing I want to hit on here is kind of the guest booking journey, right? You said, like, a guest will, potential guest will visit a website, and then they'll leave, go to another website, go check out another hotel, but then come back and kind of to compare notes and then go To another website, but then come back.
You know, the average guest comes to the website multiple times before booking, but what you're doing is really increasing the transparency of the hotels. Besides direct booking conversions, are you seeing your product help speed up the booking process? Also, are you seeing an increase of revenue for these hotels since they're able to showcase all their amenities in video format?
Jason Craparo: Yeah, absolutely. So the stat out there is 38 websites on average. a someone that's booking or looking to book, you will visit 38 websites before you book. And that could be everything. It doesn't, it's not just the hotel website or the flights, but it's flights, it's hotels. What are we going to do? how are we going to get from the airport to, to there?
what activities are going on? Stubhub, lots of different ones, even DMOs, visit Chicago, what's happening. So when you finally end up ready to book that neighborhood, ready to book that area. We find certainly our click through rates do lead to revenue. And we've got a feature in Hovr that allows you to put in your Google, your GA4 tag, and your ID, and then you can match up on the back end the 100 percent attributed revenue.
So, uh, That's great from an ROI standpoint, and we always say, most of our clients pay between 299 and 499 depending on how much site traffic they have per month. So, it's kind of a, we hear the word no brainer by our clients all the time. They're like, well, you know, if on January 1st at 8am you contribute to one sale, One, one night stay.
pays for itself all month long. So it certainly does, uh, increase revenue, but more, more so you're, you're getting people that are confident in their booking. They know what to actually experience, know what to, um, anticipate when they get there. When they hit the ground, they're hitting the ground running.
And we, we also have a product coming out in Q3 that, uh, hopefully is gonna drive total RevPAR as well. So it gets the most out of your, your experience when you're staying. Right now, we're in the pre purchase engagement, pre purchase assistance for conversion, for conversion. but we really want to help people also make the most out of that experience once they are on site at the hotel, resort, whatever that maybe.
Steve Carran: Are you, seeing, more positive reviews from these guests of these hotels since, you know, like you said, they, they understand what they're going to get before they, they get there, so they're not going to be disappointed with the amenities or anything like that,
Jason Craparo: You know, we have not looked at that. So that is something, um, Something that we should look at, you know, when somebody went live, their past reviews on different OTAs and, and, you know, where, wherever they may be. And then after the fact, were they more satisfied because they knew what to expect going in? that's an interesting hypothesis. We'll check that out, Steve. Appreciate that.
David Millili: So obviously what you're doing at Hovr is changing the guest experience. Are there other ways that you think the guest experience will change over the next couple of years?
Jason Craparo: I think what we're seeing and what we're responding toright now, one of the features we're also launching at, at Hitech is called Pathways. I had the opportunity last September to be, give the chairman's address and kind of MC the beginning of the digital travel summit event in Hilton Head.
And in doing that, I had to call people ahead of time and, and I was going to introduce them, bring them up on stage. And so as I was talking with them, getting to know them, they were someone searches, let's say Chicago, over 50% of the time when they actually book it's to a destination other than their original search term, other than their original search term. That's a 5 0 not 1 5 over 50% of the time, if I search Miami, I'm going to San Diego. If I search Hilton Head, I may end up in Austin, Texas.
And so what that tells us, and we're hypothesizing is The site visitor is open to discovery. They're open to being influenced. They may have a finite amount of money to spend on the vacation, but they may want just a beach vacation. They may want to go, and maximize that experience. And so if you're prepared, As a hotel brand, and you have content on your site ready to convert, you can actually inspire and lure people to go to your neighborhood, to go to your hotel, rather than Miami.
And that happened to us. I just did a keynote in April where I I talked about for spring break, my family was dead set on a beach vacation. now, we were not dead set on Miami, but Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, we were looking at Hilton Head, Myrtle Beach, which we've been, and lo and behold, we end up booking a vacation to the mountains of Virginia.
so I ended up rewriting the entire keynote on the plane out there to talk about this issue. How in the heck does that happen? We had envisioned ourself on a sandy beach, toes in the sand, relaxing with the kids. And then we're, at the Omni Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. Like how does that happen?
And it happens because we were open to, Hey, we're not stuck to Miami. Now, if you're someone that always goes to the same beach town every year for 30 years. Okay. Like, do you, but there are a massive subset of other, people out there that are saying, show us a better time and we will actually go. And so we believe that, the opportunity on site to engage and inspire people to kind of change their plans.
That's what happened to us. We got ahold of. The Omni Homesteads activity. It was over Easter break and we actually celebrated Easter there. They had Easter egg hunts for the kids, tons of activities. The entire weekend was spectacular and they really did a good job, but they got us to go there because we were excited about this other experience and we spent way more money than the beach vacation would have had, Sadly, 12 hours in the car with the three kids. So we, you know, it was longer than we expected. It cost more, but we did it because we anticipated a better experience. That was both novel and unique for sure.
so, uh, just to answer your question on that, what we're seeing and what we're responding to in that vein is we're rolling out a feature called pathways, which actually allows you to pick your journey for content consumption.
So as you're watching one video, we can say, do you want to see what the room's like? Okay. Yeah, I'm only midway through this video, but maybe I do. And then Pathways allows some branching logic. Do you want to check out the breakfast experience or would you like to discover the nightlife? And so, uh, also potentially using, um, a third party like TransUnion to understand the different profiles, channel entries.
Did you come from a Facebook ad and now you're here? We're going to treat that in the future. We're going to treat that individual differently in terms of the content they consume or are offered. a lot of different touch points to say, is this interesting to you? If we know that in your profile, you have children, we're going to prioritize the pool and the amenities.
and not so much, you know, the candlelight dinner and not so much the spa treatments. So, based on, Actions, inactions, no knowns and channel entry. We're going to try to triangulate what we should offer different people to speed up their journey for them. Give them only what's relevant to them. And if we can do that, hopefully it's more germane to them, their actual experience, their intentions And that's, that's kind of how we're responding to that over 50 percent stat.
And the feature is completely 100 percent fully immersive on mobile. So it's a mobile experience where it looks very much like TikTok. Imagine a hotel being able to have their own TikTok channel right on their own site and they get people really fired up and excited. And then they dive into booking.
David Millili: All right. So earlier you said that hoteliers are friendly compared to e commerce people, so they must be real a holes. Well, because we've been doing, Steve and I have been in this a long time. And yeah, hoteliers are hoteliers hospitality, but it is, it's a tough industry to sell into.
There's a lot of noise. So what advice would you give someone who's either starting out Their business and going into hosp you know, selling into hotels, hospitality, or somebody like yourself who went from one vertical and kind of pivoted. Is there advice you would give to somebody starting out? Or making that pivot?
Jason Craparo: yeah, I can only speak for my own experience, but. We obsess over, over solving these problems for our customers. We have internal conversations. Every single minute of every day about getting better, booking more. if you do not come to market with something that is like 10 times better than the current solution, so revolutionary, it may be hard.
If it, if it's a me too product and you saw that, Hey, you know, so and so over here has a, has a pretty good product. Maybe we could do a knockoff or one piece of the puzzle. I could see it being tough. Because the buyers that we talk to, they, they have a lot going on. They're really busy. That's why our admin and everything that we've patented is so easy to use.
We know that they could have up to 100 different MarTech solutions. That's a hundred logins, a hundred dashboards, a hundred emails coming in daily of, Hey, this thing works and updates and things like that. And. Not to mention the products that that are being thrown at them that they have to see is this truly new and different?
Is this really going to help me? Is it just a buzzword? So I would say number one is it actually has to be New and different and novel and unique and we we find when we sit down with people They literally will tell us, verbatim, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I've never seen anything like this.
so we know that we came to market with the most superior product that you could ever see on the market. We do know that for sure. So that's really important. And then once we, we got a couple of people excited early on, and then those people have taken us by the hand to other people. So, we didn't necessarily identify them, but somehow through, you know, speaking engagements and whatnot, they, we, we became friends with them and partners, and they've really helped us, pull in other people.
Nick Horgan's one of those that actually introduced me to them. To you, Steve, and then David for, for the game piece in Charlotte at Hitech. And, um, you know, he's never asked for anything. He just said, Hey, what you're doing is really cool. I want to jump on a call with you and I have some intros for you.
And people like that have just popped up. Miles Partnership, uh, one of their, their great account execs, Catherine Poetter there, same thing. Hey, I want to introduce you to, to this person and that person. So I find that. In no way are these people asking to be rewarded, but when you can get some people fired up for you, then they have gone on to make introductions.
And, you know, here we are today on this podcast, literally because Nick made the introduction to you, Steve. So, big props to him if he, if he's listening.
Steve Carran: Awesome. Yeah. Shout out, Nick. Shout out, Nick. well, that was great. So, we've been asking you questions this whole time. So, now we're going to let you turn, we're going to turn the tables a little bit and we're going to let you ask us a question.
Jason Craparo: interesting. Um, what, well, well, what questions do you normally get?
Steve Carran: We get asked, who's your favorite guest? We've got asked that. Um, yeah. That one, that one we get often.
Jason Craparo: Oh, well, well, up here. How about what's what's the in the United States alone? What's your favorite resort that you visited, either with family or for work?
Steve Carran: favorite place we've stayed in the United States.
Jason Craparo: Resort, not hotel resort?
Steve Carran: Favorite resort.
David Millili: I've been to a lot. I mean, we did a lot of, I'm lucky I moved from the East Coast to Phoenix. And so we did a lot of, we first got out here about six years ago, we did a lot of staycations, we were used to doing the New Jersey to New York thing to kind of we used to like train our kids how to travel. We thought that was important that even if we didn't have a purpose to go to New York that when they were little, they got used to, you know, being in the car going to hotels.
So there's the, uh, Mountain Shadow, resort out here, which, and the funniest thing is you would say, Oh, well, was it the service or this? It was that we went there for Thanksgiving and there was nobody there. And we had a cabana. I was watching football, you know, for me, it was like my first. You know, Thanksgiving in Phoenix and, you know, we had great big adjoining rooms and they had a great, you know, Thanksgiving dinner.
So you didn't really, you felt, you know, you felt like you still had, you know, the food, but without the company, whereas I'm used to Thanksgiving being around family. So that was, interesting, but probably, yeah, probably, probably one of the funnest one we've had.
Steve Carran: I would say mine is probably the Peaks Resort in Telluride, Colorado. I don't know if you, you've ever been to Telluride, but it is absolutely beautiful. And this resort sits on a golf course surrounded by mountains. And I also enjoy aviation like you. I don't fly or anything like that, but I love Top Gun. but the That qualifies. Uh, and, uh, this hotel, you're, you're kind of sitting out on this balcony overlooking the golf course, the mountains. It's absolutely beautiful. But In the distance there is an airport and this airport's almost on the mountains and it has an extremely short runway so planes are coming in and landing and then taking off as well.
But it was just the the guest experience was absolutely incredible. The staff there was awesome but also the views and just the hotel in general and Telluride is an amazing amazing city if you ever get a chance. Go! It's incredible. So, so I'd say that's ours, but good question. Good question. well, this has been great.
So now I'm going to loop in Jon, our producer. He's been listening for the whole episode. He's going to ask you our final question before we log off here.
Jon Bumhoffer: So you mentioned that you kind of started out selling to e commerce like as your focus. I'm curious, shifting to travel and hospitality, you mentioned that hospitality was much nicer. Maybe that was a surprise, but what other surprises or um, just good things that you you've enjoyed about working with travel and hospitality and in this industry?
Jason Craparo: one is there's a lot more content as well. So, people come to us and they've already had photo shoots, video shoots, they have content, influencer content, some people actually have flown in to our website. You know, celebrities or influencers and they have professional grade content ready to go. we did build a feature that, that allows you to get some more content from the camera rolls of your guests if they upload it through a QR code, but that's one.
So they have more content day one. They. Have a lot more opportunity for influence. So if you're on e commerce and you're looking to buy a product, right, it's, it's, it's a lower consideration item, a 40 item. You get it home. If it works great. If not, you know what the heck you throw it away. But, I like the fact in travel and hospitality that you really got to get it right.
You have to, there's so much about committing for a week's stay. My family and I for my 40th are headed out to San Diego. Uh, we're going to do San Diego and then, um, up to, to Disneyland, hopefully. And I want to know what that experience is going to be like. So I, with e commerce, we were really going to support the, the owner of the business.
and to the, to the extent possible, the site visitor, like getting them to buy the product and feel more, more comfortable. But I really think that we're helping that guest feel more confident and understand. I really think that not only are we helping with click through rates and revenue for our clients, but I truly help.
We're doing, I truly believe that we're doing a good service by that end site visitor. So that, that's another one. And in e commerce, if you've got one client, Like, uh, for example, we're on CBS deals right now. If you, if you, on Saturday mornings, you go, you go to, you're watching CBS morning show and they say, Hey, here's the 10 gadgets of the week.
People run to the website. So, no offense to them, but that's a, that's a bigger deal for us, but it's one URL. Thousands of SKUs and you get paid once a month with travel and hospitality. What's nice is a lot of our clients have multiple URLs. And so, um, you know, if you, if you actually, uh, get to show value to a client and they come on board with you, you don't just get one deal.
You might get 25 or you get one and you get 16. And so, those are very high leverage activities for us where you don't just get one and you spend a lot of time getting the North face and you get paid once. you also get the opportunity to help people in different areas. So. I would say those, those are three solid things that I love about this industry.
David Millili: Well, thank you. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is the part, Jason, where you get to let people know how to find out more about Hovr and connect with yourself. So, plug away.
Jason Craparo: so you can check out more of our work at getHovr. com. That's GETHOVR.com. And, uh, we'd love to do a demo, showcase the product. you can also find us there. We've got a lot of links out to existing, uh, clients who can see us. Uh, you may have seen videos, as well on a lot of the different partner sites that we have.
And, uh, you can just search my name on LinkedIn as well. Love to connect with anyone. And if I can support you in any way, I'm happy to do so.
David Millili: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thank you.
Jason Craparo: Thanks guys, really appreciate your time.