Interview: La Quinta Chief Marketing Officer Julie Cary

While free breakfast and free Internet still rank at the top of must-have amenities for corporate travel buyers, La Quinta Inns & Suites chief marketing officer Julie Cary said that among midprice tiers—where such perks now are nearly universally standard—hotels need to explore other areas in order to stand out.

"We're not talking about free breakfast or free Internet anymore," Cary said of the company's pitch to business travelers. "Our new mobile site is the most differentiating, as is the technology: new TVs in all the corporate hotels, the latest in high-def with 37 high-def channels, and plug-and-play technology so you can bring in your own media."

Cary recently spoke with BTN lodging editor Michael B. Baker about La Quinta's mobile strategy, its continued expansion outside of the United States and its corporate requests-for-proposal volumes.

What drove your focus on mobile?

Mobile's happening, and it's growing. It's still small overall, about 14 percent of the mix of our traffic, but it's up like 115 percent. One thing we do in our very different app is make it easy to get the sale no matter what the customer wanted. If they want to call the property, we made that easy. If they wanted to call the 1-800 number, we made that easy. If they want to book it, we made that easy. We didn't worry about only getting the booking on the mobile site. It was about all the ways you could get the customer.

What are some of the features that involved?

We have a new feature that is patented—no one else can have it—that can hold your room up to four hours with just your telephone number. There's no credit card information to put in. We know how time-consuming that is on the mobile phone. Most consumers on their phones are same-day reservations. There's a lot of frustration when there are too many steps, too much information and too much pain, so we simplified the number of steps and made it easy. That has been very well-received. Our mobile traffic is going crazy, and [same-day reservations with phone numbers are] about 30 percent of our mobile bookings right now.

What about on the social media side?

We were the first to incorporate TripAdvisor in our mobile site as well as on our website. The other industry first is incorporating Yelp. In our mobile site and app, you can get a hotel, see what's around there, then get all that Yelp has access to with its reviews and ratings: restaurants, shopping, FedEx offices, the sorts of things that business travelers want. It's a way to incorporate a lot of good content at the local level for the business traveler.

Have you seen a growth in corporate RFPs?

Our sales business is up significantly. We've changed how we go to market and how we approach clients, and we have a new approach for RFPs, so we'll see where that takes us. We're going to be more focused about how we do it. You spend all this effort, and you get nothing out of it, so could you be spending that effort somewhere else?

What's happening with new hotel development?

We're at 823 hotels now. Our pipeline is about 166 hotels, primarily in the United States. We went through the downturn, and it's a slow build back, but it is starting to happen. We're seeing more signings, and the pipeline is stronger. We've filled in a little more in the Northeast and the Midwest, and we always can do more. When we were looking at growth and pipeline numbers [from hospitality research firm Smith Travel Research], we are the fastest growing chains in the last 10 years and the last five years.

How about outside of the United States?

We have six hotels open in Mexico now, and we've got a pipeline of another five this year. We just signed three deals for Colombia: Medellín, Bogotá , and Cartagena. We're starting to have a little more focus on Canada, because we have only one hotel there. Its an interesting country, because where the metro areas are, there's not a lot of available land, so it's a lot of conversions, and our standards are pretty high.

Your parent company, Blackstone, recently agreed to buy the Motel 6 brand from Accor. Will Motel 6 be operated separately from La Quinta?

They will be, but it's very good for Motel 6. They'll be pleased. It'll be a good opportunity for the brand. It's a great brand; it just needs some readjustment.