How To Combine Vacation Homes With a Resort Experience With Nicholas Falcone, CEO of NDM Hospitality
Nicholas Falcone is the CEO of NDM Hospitality, which he founded in 2011 with a vision to become a multi-faceted hospitality, real estate, and technology conglomerate. He is an innovator and recognized leader in Florida’s tourism and hospitality industry by creating new ways to manage real estate and take vacations. Nicholas is also the CEO of Rentyl Resorts, where he blends the comforts of home with the experience of a resort, as well as Spire Loyalty, the first multi-industry loyalty program.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Nicholas Falcone‘s motivation for starting NDM Hospitality
How NDM has grown and diversified its portfolio
What is a branded vacation home resort?
Nicholas discusses his company’s roots as a McDonald’s franchisee
How the loyalty and rewards program works
Why business increased for NDM during the pandemic
The best strategies for marketing branded vacation homes
Nicholas‘s hesitation to fully incorporate AI into marketing
What you’ll learn in this episode:
For more than a decade, companies like Airbnb and Vrbo have provided travelers with the opportunity to stay in homes or condominiums, which are bigger and often more family-friendly than hotel rooms. Although they certainly have benefits, guests tend to miss the service and amenities hotels and resorts provide. So can resort luxuries also be found in rental condos or homes?
As a tourism and hospitality industry leader, Nicholas Falcone‘s company has filled a gap in the market and solved a problem for both travelers and those who list properties on Airbnb and Vrbo. When guests stay at his NDM Hospitality branded resorts, they enjoy spacious accommodations with access to amenities, including concierges, spas, golf courses, and restaurants. What’s more, Nicholas says developers and investors find short-term rentals tend to generate more revenue than long-term ones.
On this episode of From Persona to Personal, Roger Hurni talks with Nicholas Falcone, CEO of NDM Hospitality, about how he's combined the luxuries and indulgences of resorts with the benefits of vacation homes offered by Airbnb and Vrbo. Nicholas shares where he got the idea, NDM's roots in the restaurant industry, effective marketing strategies, and how he uses technology to enhance and simplify the consumer experience.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
This episode’s sponsor:
Today’s episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. At Off Madison Ave, we create meaningful moments of brand trust and influence how people interact and engage with brands.
There is a science behind tapping into your audiences’ desires and motivation. After all, if you’re not changing your audiences’ behaviors, you can’t truly unlock all of your brand’s potential.
The proven models and methods of Behavior Design is the strategic foundation for your brands’ success.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:02
This is From Persona to Personal podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. Off Madison Ave creates meaningful moments of brand trust and influences how people interact and engage with brands. The science behind their approach taps into your audience's motivations and desires. After all, if you're not changing your audience's behaviors, you can't truly unlock all of your brand's potential. Now, let's get started with the show.
Roger Hurni 0:40
Hello, everyone, I am Roger Hurni, the host of From Persona to Personal where I get to use my expertise in consumer behavior modification to engage with top business leaders propelling their brands forward. Before I get to today's guest, this episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. At Off Madison Ave, we use behavioral science to create meaningful moments of brand trust, which influences how people interact and engage with brands. Our behavioral approach taps into your audience's motivation and prompts them to shift behavior. And if you're not shifting your audience's behaviors, you can't truly unlock all of your brand's potential. These proven behavior models and methods are the strategic foundation for your brand success visit offmadisonave.com to learn more. Now, without further ado, today's guest is Nicholas Falcone. He is an innovator and a recognized leader in Florida's tourism and hospitality industry. In fact, actually one of his top leaders and I think he's being really modest there. Nicholas is also the CEO of NDM hospitality. The company has operations in industries of food and beverage, hospitality and lodging, technology, and real estate. Quite a conglomerate, conglomerate. There we go. I'm going to butcher that. Nicholas, welcome to the show.
Nicholas Falcone 2:01
Roger, thank you so much for having me. All right.
Roger Hurni 2:03
What did I get wrong? Anything? You're perfect? That's okay. All right. So you have a variety of businesses and it, you're clearly wanting to build some kind of conglomerate? Can you tell me a little bit more about that and why you started NDM? And what does growth even look like, to this point for you?
Nicholas Falcone 2:30
Yeah. So I think, you know, to talk about our Genesis and what got us to start what we're doing, it goes back to our family roots, you know, very blessed to have great mentors and my parents. And, you know, both personally and professionally, my father is a amazing entrepreneur in the real estate space, he actually got his start in hospitality. And so we were able to really learn a lot from him growing up, about how his roots in hospitality educated him on just general business practices that allowed him to be successful in real estate and finance and different things that he's doing today on a much larger scale. So growing up hearing that we were always attracted to hospitality felt really intrigued to want to take a similar path where we can get those same type of learnings that can propel us in our business career. And then again, as we matured, and I started thinking more about our career path, we also started to say, how can we complement our family business, you know, who is a very large developer, and we throw a term around in our family called controlling the content of real estate or, you know, again, controlling the content. And what that means to us is that if we're programming real estate with incredible entertainment, hospitality, and other features that enhance the real estate, and enhances the value in turn of that property. So we felt that by having the ability to be able to, again, control that content and programming that would be complementary to what our family does, and also allow us to create our own path, which we're really big on my dad, again, is a great mentor. We said, Listen, I'm very successful, you can always come and work with me, but highly recommend you guys create your own identity, your own path, and we really took that to heart. So that's what we've done. That's kind of what led us to starting NDM hospitality. Second part of your question was, you know, the growth and what we've experienced to date. So we actually started our career in food and beverage, were the founding franchisees for a company called Burger Fi in South Florida. And we did that back in 2012. So from 2012 to today, a little over 11 years going on 12 years in business, we have really diversified and we have seven Burger Fi's. We just became the founding franchisees for Anthony's Coalfire Pizza. We have other restaurant holdings we have we started a business called rental resorts about six years ago, where we got into the vacation home business in a very unique way we put a unique spin on how we do vacation home. And just in the last three years we went from five resorts locally in Orlando to now we're up to 92 worldwide with over 13,000 accommodations We started a multifamily management business, a retail management business and an entertainment group that provides entertainment, programming to all these various things that we do. So yeah, we've we've seen tremendous growth. We've also started some ancillary supporting businesses such as our technology arm, and our marketing agency. So everything you know, has done in the grand scheme of being able to be turnkey solution for programming, real estate development, and increasing the value of real estate, not just for our family business, but now we're doing that for developers all over the world.
Roger Hurni 5:32
Well, that's a ton. So now my question is, what do you do on Sundays?
Nicholas Falcone 5:37
I work a lot. So typically see me work in pretty much every day. But when I'm not working, I am very blessed to have an incredible wife named Jacqueline, and for young kids all six and younger. So I have my hands full with that and making sure that I'm putting a lot of time into our family and being a great influence to them as well, I think is my my biggest priority.
Roger Hurni 5:59
I don't doubt you sleep. But we'll we'll leave that question for another time. There's, there's, at of all the entrepreneurs that I've spoken with, I will tell you the you are clearly the most diversified. And I could go into a lot of those different areas, I'm going to try to maybe pick and choose and let you help guide me in this conversation. I actually wanted to start with the vacation homes, because I saw in my research. You talked about branded Vacation Home Resorts, and I'm kind of curious, what, what, what do you mean by that? And what's the implication for your visitors?
Nicholas Falcone 6:34
Yeah. So I think to break down what I mean, what is the concept? What have we built? It's important to talk about where did the industry start where, you know, how did vacation homes come to be? So, you know, at first, it really started kind of more small scale Mom and Pop, you know, people that maybe had an extra bedroom and a House wanted to monetize, or maybe add a second home third home and you wanted to monetize. So that's really where it got its start, you know, as as the industry continued to grow, you had really two players that became more of the professional way of managing homes, and distributing homes, which was number one, the distribution channels like Airbnb and Vrbo. That's what they asked us, you know, their channels that you can go and find home product they don't manage. They're really just an awareness driver and booking channel. On the other side, you have now professional management companies that maybe instead of the individual owner mentioned the home, you have companies that we'll take, you know, a multitude of foams and mentioned under one umbrella, what we felt was the gap in the market and where the markets been heading is more of a, again, branded offering in the space where I think it solves a lot of problems both for the guests, and for people that are looking to develop and invest in this type of product. So starting with the consumers, the guests, you know, there's a lot of stigmas around vacation homes today, you know, you see pictures online, maybe you don't get what you thought you're gonna get from the pictures, or, you know, you see reviews, and they all look good. But then the host isn't necessarily hosting to the level that the reviews look like. Or you're used to staying in a hotel where you're really catered to a 24/7, service, and amenities. And you don't really have to play travel agent because everything's there at your fingertips. Whereas you come to an Airbnb and you realize, Wait, I just rented a home, if I want to actually have some fun, I gotta go do a lot of planning and a lot of work to schedule all that stuff. So with all those things in mind, we said we can enhance the guest experience, we could really take the best of the Hotel Resort World, and combine it with the best of Airbnb and Vrbo. And so you come to one of our rental resorts properties as a guest, you're gonna get that spacious home, you're going to get everyone under one roof and during the togetherness you typically get with a vacation home. But you don't have to play travel agent, we're going to have concierge right there at the resort 24/7 Guest service, restaurants, spas, golf courses, all kinds of amazing experiences and amenities, that you don't have to even leave the property if you don't want to. And if you do, our concierge is there to cater to your needs. So it really enhances the guests experience. We provide an entirely different level of security and trust that what you're gonna get is what you expect to get just like a brand. If I said Ritz Carlton, you know, you're getting a high end product with high end service. You know, if you said, Where can I get a consistent experience in 100 locations around the world for vacation home, there isn't really an option today. So we said we can fill that gap, we can be the player that you want that consistent experience where you're gonna get a quality level that you could trust you come to rental resorts. On the flip side, developers and investors have been trying to figure out how do I get into this market? One of the things that people have seen is that short term vacation rental drives significantly more revenue than a long term rental home and long term rental homes have been one of the biggest real estate development plays in the last 10 years. 12 years. You know, so a lot of institutional capital and developers have invested in building and renting these long term rental homes built to rent real estate is a term that's been coined for that Well, short term built to rent real estate, again, outperforms the long term significantly. But there really hasn't been that professional offering that can tell developers, here's the playbook. Here's how you develop the community. Here's how you maximize the rentals, the legal structure, the way you build them, the way you sell this product, and how you really maximize everything, you know, pre opening, as well as after. So that's what we do we provide that turnkey playbook to developers. So that if you have no clue how to do this, we can come in and show you how to do it. And we've done it with, you know, three $4 billion of our own development to do proof of concept. So you can have confidence that we've, we've made the mistakes, and we've worked out the kinks.
Roger Hurni 10:38
So some of them you you own the property, and the whole, the whole kit and caboodle for lack of a better term. And in others, you you come in as a management company and show them how it's done. So they can run it more efficiently. And then you take your cut, right?
Nicholas Falcone 10:51
Yeah, so we have been that word, a developer with my dad's company and the worthy hospitality, we did say that, you know, prior to us going out to third party developers, we want to do the proof of concept. So we did five resorts in Orlando, some of them with CO branding, like Margaritaville, and Jack Nicklaus bears den, others with our own brands. And what we found was that everything performed significantly greater than the typical vacation rental market. And we really created something that we could replicate all over the place. So after we worked out the kinks, made sure that it was really perfected. About two years ago, we started expanding with third party developers. And your expansion, as I stated earlier, has been very, very successful. So now we are offering that turnkey playbook to developers both what to do once the doors open operationally, being the management company as well as the brand, but then also providing that brand playbook and the ability to perform the development needs of the property if the developer is not capable of doing some of those components.
Roger Hurni 11:48
Got it. This conversation has now just quickly turned into business learnings into my personal interests, because I traveled all over the world. And now I'm like, I'm already trying to like try one of your properties. You're not buying the house in the neighborhood. It's not that kind of Airbnb situation, you're going in and developing an entire community of individual homes. Right?
Nicholas Falcone 12:13
You're spot on. Yeah. So you can come to community go, Yeah, that could be a 400 home community, you could say at any of them, you're gonna get a consistent experience, consistent service, access to the amenities, the whole resort component. So yeah, everything is we actually will not take we've had lots of people that come to us say, will you manage my individual home? The answer is no. If we don't have the ability to turn it into a resort experience with controlling the amenities, the services, as well as all the homes, then that's not in our in our playbook. We don't we don't even touch it.
Roger Hurni 12:44
That is a unique business model, I can see where you could carve out the positioning and create a very unique visitor experience, where there's an incredible value proposition. It's combined, I can completely see that with my with my background and travel. I remember this from interviews about Ray Kroc that he wasn't in the hamburger business, he was in the real estate business, you're in the real estate business. This is just one of those things. So I'm here vacationing, now I gotta eat somewhere. So now you decided, like, let's make sure that it had places to eat and that while you ended up doing the franchise, this
Nicholas Falcone 13:21
So we actually we started in the franchises prior. So we actually started there, based on again, that influence from our family, my dad got his started McDonald's you mentioned Ray Kroc, before my dad ever entered real estate, he was a McDonald's franchisee back in the 70s, and 80s. So again, we saw that influence and how he took that learning and propelled it into his business today. And we were just really excited to kind of follow a similar path. So we started with the burger fi franchise, learned a lot and then really transitioned into rental by with what you're saying. Yeah, I mean, you know, people go on vacation, they want to eat, they want to have fun. So we said, Okay, we have to make sure that all of those things are really perfected at our resorts. And, you know, to really tie it all together, we actually created through our technology company and multi purpose multi industry loyalty program. So in essence, you know, typical loyalty program, you book a stay with the hotel, you can't use those points until you go book a new stay maybe six months down the road. With us, we actually have the ability to have it where you could book a stay get points, use it at local restaurants, at our restaurants, at shopping venues. Even you could put your points towards a downpayment on a house or first month's rent on an apartment. So we're, you know, we're actually evolving the loyalty program as we speak, but we're doing some really unique stuff with tying all these, you know, different assets together so that guests can really have an even better experience.
Roger Hurni 14:45
Yeah, that is actually a fantastic way to sort of take that loyalty reward program and throw it on steroids and it acts a little bit more. Maybe this is poor analogy here, like an American Express Platinum Card. With other things you can sort of do with their points. I know a gym that I had belonged to, they tried to set up deals with all the local shops where it's like, if you belong to the village, then you get 10% off or 50% off this restaurant or that store, whatever. You've obviously perfected that rewards loyalty program. How do people manage the rewards? Like through an app or website? How does that work?
Nicholas Falcone 15:25
Yeah, so right now we have a website, we're developing the app, we're also developing some of the features I just mentioned, where you know, it's evolving every single day. But right now, yeah, if you're the business owner, you have full flexibility on how you manage your campaigns. You know, it could be a, you know, you're awarding points for transactions, it could be items, it could be all kinds of different rewards and tears that change point multipliers and stuff like that. So business has full capability to be able to control that, as a consumer, it's really clean, we actually have it, when you sign up for a loyalty program, you actually register the credit cards that are in your wallet, if you any of them that you would like. So you can take a Visa, MasterCard, or an Amex that you use every single day, register it with our program. And then any business that's associated with their program, you can go use that registered card, and you automatically get the points into your into your spire loyalty account, which is what it's called. And then when you want to go utilize those points, or redeem it for an item, you literally go back into the website, and eventually the app, when it's completed, you select what you want to redeem for go swipe that card again. And within five days, you get a reimbursement for the full value of the item or whatnot back to your card. So it's very seamless, it also allows double points. So now not only do you get the points for transacting through spiral loyalty, but if you already have points set up with your visa, your AmEx, you're getting those points too, so you get a double benefit.
Roger Hurni 16:49
Nice, nice, I want to I want to pivot to something else. Because I think with your unique business model, I think I know the answer to this, with the terms of the pandemic, any kind of QSR, a lot of restaurants, hey, quick pivot, we're going to do take out, you know, or delivery through third party, whatever. So I don't wanna really go down that road, because I'm sure that is probably similar to a lot of other stories. But where I think you're unique is when everything was shutting down, I kind of imagine that you are filling up, because I can be in a home, and I don't have to see or interface with anybody really, is that what happened?
Nicholas Falcone 17:24
I couldn't have said any better. You know, everything shut down. A lot of the hotels in our markets took a long, long time to come back, you know, people didn't want to be in elevator bays, stuck with other individuals or in common areas. But you know, people wanted to get out, you know, they were they were feeling, you know, like I have to get out of this place I'm at I've been stuck in my house for however long. So the vacation demand was still there, it's just, you know, people were scared. So the ability to rent a home, you know, and take advantage of our services, you can get room service to the house spa services to the house never have to really see people necessarily, you know, but if you want it to you can go to the common areas and really have the best of both worlds. I think that flexibility, just created a tremendous attraction to our product, along with also the fact that there were a lot of people who started working remotely through the pandemic, and people wanted to go to unique places and, you know, work for three months here and three months there. So the ability for people to come get a home versus a hotel room and do these remote working experiences was also another thing that really attributed to our success coming out of the pandemic.
Roger Hurni 18:28
It was there any lessons learned that like, wow, this happened during there. So let's now carry this forward into how we operate or market ourselves or anything like that.
Nicholas Falcone 18:38
No, I think I think one of the biggest things that was very unique from a learning perspective was obviously all the trends changed, you know, throughout COVID, you know, of where where bookings were coming from the booking window, how far out people were booking, you know, just all the trends that we would normally base our decisions off of, we're changing. So for people that were very reliant on the trends and the consistency of them, it got them out of their box, it got them to really think creatively on how do we shift demand, how do we market differently? How do we really adapt to these ever changing and quick changing, you know, things that are happening within the market? So, you know, again, when we first come out of COVID, you know, we went from in Orlando being a extremely international market to international got shut down, you know, so we had our business coming from, and the learnings that we were able to get on how to reposition our marketing and how to be nimble. It was tremendous for our business success. So we're still able to now utilize that today, we still are seeing volatility more than pre COVID. But it's stabilized a bit. But when that volatility occurs, our ability to adapt has been tenfold greater than what it was before.
Roger Hurni 19:46
Nice. I kind of think you're the best kept secret in the hospitality and travel business. Because I had to do some research on you. And please don't take that the wrong the wrong way. A. So I'm kind of curious what's what's the best marketing strategies for your branded vacation homes that you that you see value? And how are you? How are you communicating this experience to people who've never heard of you before?
Nicholas Falcone 20:14
I think, you know, with digital advertising, you know, especially you can get very efficient. You know, we're a smaller company. So you compare us to some of the bigger brands that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each quarter, you know, we obviously don't have those budgets. So when it comes to getting our name out there and whatnot, we have to be very creative with how we're efficient with our dollars. So I think, you know, you've talked about digital advertising, it's typically the most efficient way of marketing in today's world. We're very pinpoint on our geographic and our targeting strategies, we're not trying to really be a blanket approach to everyone in the world, we know who our lookalike audiences are, and who's attracted to our product, and we're very, you know, very pinpoint on who we're targeting, and how we're targeting them. So some of the things that we found, you know, social media, obviously, is a really great awareness driver, you know, in different social channels attributed to different type of clientele. So if I'm doing more of a b2b, marketing approach to developers, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on some of those channels, maybe Twitter, whereas if I'm doing more of a consumer approach, maybe I'm using more of the Instagram or Tiktok, or you know, those type of channels. So I think social media is always very efficient. It's great awareness driver. You know, lately, there's been new things through Google, such as performance, Max, that is really seeing way to promote, you know, but you know, a lot of the traditional things influencers has been something that we've had a lot of success with, you know, we've done some traditional advertising in the past, I wouldn't say that, that's the most efficient, but it's very good when we're trying to be hyper targeted for something very specific, maybe an event, or a very specific type of advertising and, you know, geographic location. So I mean, we're doing a lot of everything, we have an in house team that does video, photo content, and a lot of custom content, I think that's really, really key is a be testing and making sure that we are engaging properly with our consumers and talking to them the way that they would want to see, you know, the the content, maybe seeing themselves a little bit in it, being able to relate to it. So I think those are some of the best practices we've seen, along with your CRM approach has been really big, we're very big on data capture, and how do we get first party data to ensure that we can talk directly with our customers. So that's also been a big key to our success is building up our databases. So we have that direct contact capability?
Roger Hurni 22:34
Yeah, these you're really clearly very efficient with your money. And I've told lots of companies that I've worked with in the past, you don't have to spend a ton of money to have a ton of impact. And you can do things smarter than everybody else. You don't have to outspend everybody else. You also have an entire army of guests that you can leverage to be your best brand advocates. You know, and you said, you're like building out an app, you know, what I've seen is, because I've worked with some of those app intelligence companies, that can be this amazing, proactive tool that creates this incredible efficiency to have one to one communications at scale. So I think what you're doing now is is the future. And I think people are realizing finally, I hope people will realize, finally that. Look, the great gigantic media spend is good for certain kinds of brands, in certain situations. I'm not saying that should go away. But when you're an entrepreneur, when you have everything that you have going on, it seems like your approach is is really smart. And I don't know, if you have you seen any holes there? I mean, I guess my question is, so I'm sort of wrapping up your comment, because I agree with you. I'm kind of curious with all of that going on, like what is it? What's the biggest challenge you're facing now? Because everything seems to be firing on all cylinders?
Nicholas Falcone 24:06
I would say the challenge is, you know, especially when it comes to advertising, the technology is always changing. He has to be really, you have to be adapting with it right and stay up with the latest trends. You know, Google, for example, Google Analytics has changed the GA for you have a whole nother way of looking at analytics algorithms on these different channels, whether it be social media, or search engines, or whatever it might be, they're always changing. You know, how you're maximizing your SEO approach, for example. So, you know, I think that staying up with the latest trends is very key. That's always the challenge that we're really trying to stay on top of. And then also specifically for the travel industry. I would say that's one of the more complex industries to do advertising for because there's so many ways that people can book you know, and in our industry, we call it segmentation. You know, people can go and book directly through your website, they can call us they can book through an all On my travel agency, a wholesaler, a traditional offline travel agent, etc, etc. So when there's so many different ways for people to book or to gain awareness of our product, it's really a balancing act of how do you, again, maximize the efficiencies between all those different outlets? So I think, you know, it's always a constant debate slash, you know, it's called studying of what is a return on adspend? And these various segments, how do we make sure that we're moving the dollars around and position them where they are going to be the most efficient. And to your point, I'm a big believer in that. You don't have to have the biggest budget, you have to be smart about how you're utilizing that budget. And, you know, so So that's kind of our calling part in when we talk to most marketing agencies, it drives me nuts, because they'll be like, Yeah, our impressions are better than market average and our clicks. And I always say, impressions and clicks, they don't pay the bills. They don't I don't see those in my bank account. So we're very big on how does those activities translate to revenue and profitability. And that's where I think we were very good and where we take a very different approach than most businesses. Yeah, if
Roger Hurni 26:07
you're doing good performance management, it has to tie back into an ROI. And if it doesn't, that's an activity. Honestly, you need to eliminate most people don't, don't get that I also don't even like, I appreciate Google and the cohorts and the audience look alikes. But you know, in my work, I look at individual behaviors, because that tells me more with how you can eventually get to that one to one lifetime relationship building. And, and that becomes your most efficient and most effective dollars. And now with that I wanted to cover one other thing, because we're almost out of time. But I'm starting to see I've done a little while one of my companies does an AI for mobile apps. And so I've been involved in AI for six, seven years now. But now I'm starting to see because of large language models, like chat GPT. travel planning through AI is is starting to become a thing with how you can use inquiry, the AI to help those travel plans. Are you doing anything in that area?
Nicholas Falcone 27:12
We're exploring it. And I'd love to, I'd love to have fun with you and pick your brain potentially on it a bit being that you have a lot of experience in the space. But what we've seen is that, first and foremost, I think AI is the future, I definitely think everything's trending in that way. I do feel from what we've seen. It's a little early when it comes to robust travel planning, I think basic things. And basic increase, it's it works. But I think when you start to get into more of the complex conversations, I think it can really frustrate a lot of travel consumers where you know, the eye starts not realize what you're asking her how to answer the questions. So we've been a little bit hesitant to travel into that space immediately. But we are embarking upon a journey where our vision is that. And so the traditional booking bar experience where you put in your dates and where you want to go, we really want to have it where we have a digital avatar brand ambassador, where you press a button and the person comes on screen, you could talk to the person like you would a normal individual, and talk about where you want to go when you want to go. But more importantly, talk about what you want to do while you're on vacation so that the app model could really provide you with the best options based on again, not just dates, and where but what you want to do and potentially even make it to where it can auto populate an itinerary planner for that individual as they're doing their booking experience. So that's something that we're working towards. And if you know some good AI product that could get us in there sooner rather than later, I'd be very open to listen to that.
Roger Hurni 28:43
We can have that conversation. But one of the things unsolicited advice here, the problem that I see is, one people think it's always a pre trip experience and planning. And it's not that you have three big, you have three big areas to leverage planning and travel. And that is pre trip on the trip for end on trip planning and in shifts in plan because there's opportunities that pop up. And then there's the post trip experience where you talk about it to everybody else and how you leverage those conversations. And a lot of people fail to do the second and third a lot. And only thing of pre trip. The thing the the opportunity here for companies like yourself is most people, I would say nearly everybody don't understand prompt engineering. And if you don't know how to query properly, you're not going to get the results. I don't need the AI to tell me book these dates. That's very utilitarian. That means the AI to give me an opportunity to have unique experiences that are customized to me, personally, right to my behaviors. And it hasn't been figured out by most companies but until people understand how to query or how Well, companies like yourself can teach them how to do that. It's not going to take off into the actual transactional piece yet. Because that is honestly table stakes. That's easy part. Yeah,
Nicholas Falcone 30:13
I definitely agree. And on that point on the point two and three, we actually are doing a lot of that already, where we have various AI that we've either deployed or working on for onsite communication and automation of that. And as well, as we're actually talking about, with some of our partners internal of having, you know, let's call it digital avatars that we could put into our social media ads and promoting and talking to people after the trip on how you know how when doing surveys, so we have a lot of that we have going as well, which is pretty exciting.
Roger Hurni 30:46
That's great. I know, a lot of people have been using, I've told people that all AI is machine learning, but on all machine learning is AI. And so if all of that machine learning has been taxonomy based to date, it's moving to being ontology based. And that's where that's the, that's the real opportunity for for travelers. I'm interested in this, here are these other things that seemed like they had nothing to do with me, but yet, there's a correlation. And when AI can get that out, now you're gonna have these incredibly unique experiences. And that's, that's where I see the future of travel going. And I'm honestly kind of excited for it. We're almost out of time. I have one last question you, you've been wonderful with your time. I think what you don't do, says more about you than what you do do some time. So I'm kind of curious as to what's the worst advice you've ever gotten said he said, no way of doing that.
Nicholas Falcone 31:43
The worst advice I've ever gotten? Oh, man, that's a tough one.
Roger Hurni 31:48
I get that response a lot.
Nicholas Falcone 31:50
Yeah, so let's see here.
Roger Hurni 31:54
Hopefully, it wasn't your dad saying build your own company in one day?
Nicholas Falcone 31:59
No, no, I wouldn't say that. You know, I think the let me think for one second, I would say, worst advice. You know, one thing I can look at is, you know, as we were growing our business, one of the things that I had a lot of influences, you know, really kind of pushing, you know, with my brothers and I are my partners, as owners and our business is, you know, with our extreme growth, the need for more and more people, you know, and I am a big believer, number one, that in any business, especially in hospitality, that people are key, if you don't have the right people, and if they're not set up for success, and I don't think we're going anywhere, but, you know, I would say that, I think there's a misperception that, you know, there's a problem, or there's an inefficiency, throw more people at it. And that's something that, you know, a lot of individuals that we would work with, would recommend that or provide that as a, as something that they thought was a, you know, something that we should be doing as we grew. And looking back, I'm a big again, I think that, you know, countering that piece of advice is, you know, you know, think about doing in a very measured way, if you're going to bring someone on know exactly what they're doing, how you're going to train them, how you're going to hold them accountable, how you're going to guide them, and also how you're going to really help them get to the next level within their career. So a little bit more of a measured approach to people and growth would be something that we've we've learned at various stages in our career and something that I would say some of the influences we had, were not necessarily pushing us in the right direction on that one, to go build up an army, but let's not necessarily have it where it's organized the way we need it. So that's something I would recommend to people to to avoid. And when you're talking about growth, might feel like you need the army, but make sure that the army is set up for success.
Roger Hurni 33:54
I'm laughing because when I started my first company, you know, companies would I work for the largest agency on the planet, and I work for brands that worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. And when I started my company, I would tell these brands that were smaller and cap hair and like, you know, when you work with a really large agency, you're not going to get the army. You're going to work with 12 people you don't need the army you need the Dirty Dozen. And and like those are the people who really come through for you. And do your Yeah, to your point. When we were growing up, I think it was like specialize this and do this, but cross utilization seems to be the thing these days, if I were coming up and I were in my early 20s. Again, I would learn to do as many possible jobs in the context of an industry as possible so that if I were in hospitality, I know what the f&b manager does. I know what the concierge manager does. I know what the GM does, right? People think like, here's my swim lane. I'm gonna stay in it. I think that's a very short career.
Nicholas Falcone 34:59
I Due to due to analytics, I think it leads to negativity on the business side in efficiencies to your point, but I think it really hurts the individuals Well, I think it puts them in a box. So we're really big on making sure that through that cross training, cross functionality that number one, we could impact the company effectively. But just as important as making sure that we're putting that individual on a path that they can grow. And I think if you diversify that and provide more options for growth, it creates a win win. You know, I'm big on that belief of, you know, if I'm, if I'm bringing someone on, it's a handshake that, hey, you're coming to us, because you believe we're gonna help your career grow, and vice versa, I believe you're gonna help my company grow. And so the more we can infuse that type of culture through everything that we're doing, I think the more we're going to be successful. So that's a big way that we approach everything in our business.
Roger Hurni 35:51
That's the perfect note to end on. I'm good, I have nothing else to say. I appreciate you being on the show. I had been speaking with Nicholas Falcone. He's the CEO of NDM hospitality. Nicholas, where can people learn more about you and NDM hospitality?
Nicholas Falcone 36:08
Yeah, so we have websites: ndmhospitality.com. rentylresorts.com as well, that’s another one Rentyl is spelled r-e-n-t-y-l resorts.com. And then you can also find me on LinkedIn under Nicholas Falcone. And I'd love to connect with you all and continue conversations.
Roger Hurni 36:26
Right, thank you so much. I am Roger Hurni. This is From Persona to Personal and we will catch you next time. All right.
Outro 36:35
Thanks for listening to From Persona to Personal, the podcast that takes a closer look into how organizations personalize their marketing. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
