In this episode of The Suite Spot, we discuss how embracing experiential travel helps hotels make lasting connections with their guests. Ryan welcomes President of Sightline Hospitality, Kirk Pederson to the podcast to discuss how to implement experiential travel in meaningful ways. Kirk shares his hospitality experience, complete with examples of interesting guest experiences he's helped implement at partner hotels across the country. Ryan and Kirk discuss how special guest experiences translate to engaging social media content, and how to continue to connect with guests through review responses. They wrap up the conversation by discussing Sightline's commitment to instilling a "Culture of Welcome" across their portfolio. This is an episode you don't want to miss! Episode Transcript Our podcast is produced as an audio resource. Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and human editing and may contain errors. Before republishing quotes, we ask that you reference the audio. Ryan Embree: Welcome to Suite Spot where hoteliers check in and we check out what's trending in hotel marketing. I'm your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. We have a very special guest going to be joining me today, and we are pleased to welcome Kirk Pederson, president of Sightline Hospitality onto the Suite Spot. He's a 30 year veteran in the industry, which has a wealth of knowledge and resume full of hospitality experience in operations, food and beverage development, acquisitions. Kirk's diverse background, both in the public and private sectors resulted in the direct oversight of over 5 billion of independent and branded hotels and resorts. We're very fortunate to have him today on the Suite Spot to share some insights with us. So without further ado, let me welcome you Kirk to the Suite Spot. Kirk Pederson: Thanks, Ryan. Man, you make me sound old. I don't like hearing about all of that experience you know, when people mention it, because now I just feel like I'm getting older. Ryan Embree: No, you bring all that wisdom and experience. We love to see it. You know, especially in an industry where a lot of people's stories start off in operations, you know, we've talked to a lot of hoteliers that start off at the front desk or have their first job at a hotel and they work their way up, so it's super exciting. With that in mind, as we do with all of our new guests, we love to learn kind of your hospitality and hotel background and story. So what was the journey that led you to Sightline Hospitality? Kirk Pederson: As I mentioned it's a long journey, right? Yeah, I'm one of the fortunate ones. I think I knew very early on that I wanted to be in the hotel business. I was staying at the Hyatt Regency in Waikiki when I was 10 years old and really saw the hotel operations from the General Manager's perspective. And, you know, that day I said to my dad, I want that job, like that's I want to do for a living. I want to wear khakis and an Aloha shirt and be the general manager of a five star resort in Hawaii. And you know, I didn't really think much about that. So I found myself getting jobs in high school. You know, I worked in country clubs and restaurants, and really kind of fell in love with the entire hospitality industry. I thought for a while I was going to be a chef, I still love to cook. You know again, followed that dream of being that hotel General Manager, went to hotel school UNLV, and got out of college and decided I wanted to go into a management training program. And so I did that and I was on my way man to being my first general manager job in Key Largo, Florida. I got a call from our HR department and they said, "Hey, there's this job in development and they're looking for somebody who has a finance background and a hotel background." I minored in finance in school as well and always liked that. And I said, "Nope,