Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Exceeding Travelers’ Expectations: A Q&A with Best Western Hotels on Leadership, Customer Loyalty, and Brand Partnerships
For over 75 years, Best Western Hotels has inspired guests to travel through unique experiences and comfortable stays. The company’s success comes from its team’s caring spirit and a deep commitment to providing guests with excellent service.
Best Western Hotels & Resorts has led the hospitality industry with its wide brand of hotels across the United States and 100 countries and territories. The hotel brand has received high praise for its customer loyalty program for guest satisfaction and has garnered several loyalty industry awards like the Tripadvisor® Travelers’ Choice Award and Newsweek’s America’s Best Loyalty Programs of 2023.
Larry Cuculic, the President and CEO of Best Western Hotels, talks about his history with the global hospitality brand and how it has developed key partnerships with like-minded organizations and innovative loyalty rewards incentives to stay ahead of the competition. CEO of Loyalty360, Mark Johnson, sat down with Cuculic to discuss how customer service improves customer loyalty and lasting memories.
Read the full interview on Loyalty360 here: https://loyalty360.org/content-gallery/in-depth-exclusives/exceeding-travelers-expectations-a-q-a-with-best-western-hotels-on-leadership-customer-loyalty-a
Good afternoon and good morning. It's Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360. Hope everyone's happy, safe and well. I wanted to welcome you back to another DeCinemar leaders and customer loyalty series. In their series, we speak with brand leaders about what they are seeing and here in the front lines of customer channel and brand loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Larry Kukulik, who is best Western hotels president and chief executive officer. How are you today, larry?
Speaker 2:I'm doing terrific, mark. Thank you, and thank you for this opportunity.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. First off, we'd like to start these on a personal level. Get to know the individual we're speaking with a little bit more. So we'd love to know a little bit about you. You know about your background, jobs you had in the past and all that you do at best Western currently.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. So I grew up in Indiana, went to West Point Military Academy as an undergraduate, graduated from the Military Academy where I played basketball for Coach K, just so you know and from there started my Army career. I was stationed in Germany originally. The Army saw something in me, sent me to law school at the University of Notre Dame and then had a career in the military as a judge, advocate, general core officer, a military lawyer. I was a prosecutor. I ran a law department. I taught criminal law and trial advocacy at our ABA accredited advanced law program school where I got my LLM. I went to command and general staff college. Oh, I also was a legal advisor for special Black ops in the Army, a station to fill Air Force Base. That was a really terrific job.
Speaker 2:I became a military judge presiding over courts marshals, eventually retired from the Army, believe it or not joined a law firm and started my second career as a lawyer, was a partner in a law firm, eventually went in house, became a general counsel for a publicly held company and about 14 years ago I joined Best Western as its general counsel. It was about a year and a half ago I was offered the position of president and CEO. So, when I look at it, I began my career at a leadership school, the United States Military Academy, became a lawyer. I learned a lot along the way. Mark, I look at my life as kind of a tapestry. You know when you're a prosecutor, a judge, and you recognize how important it is to be a leader and the importance of decisions you make and how they affect people.
Speaker 2:It really I have a very interesting background, but what's important for me at Best Western is as a general counsel here for 13 years before I became the CEO. I was able to work across the breadth of the organization for that entire period of time. So I learned sales, marketing technology, importance of loyalty programs as it relates to our congregations of the product and the hotels and meeting and exceeding guest expectations to loyalty, and so I'm very fortunate I have this. I'll call it diverse background. Quite honestly, mark, I can talk about my background forever. I love it. I am tremendously fortunate that I've had all the experiences I've had to serve in this role.
Speaker 1:Now that's awesome, it's great, and just hearing you speak with the passion and conviction that you have is great to hear. And how they built I think it's very interesting for those who have a very diverse background and obviously have the ability to think critically and strategically and the challenges that kind of exist in today's economy and today's business. It can be quite cumbersome and obviously you have the ability and where we fall, to address them in a pretty impactful way. But aside from the amazing background that you have and playing for Coach K, you know, is there something you enjoy doing outside of working? You know a passion, something, a fun fact about you.
Speaker 2:Fun fact you can never take the competitive driver spirit out of an athlete. It's this drive to win, this drive to always do your best. You know I can go back to like a Michael Jordan story where they talk about Michael Jordan not that I'm Michael Jordan on a basketball court trust me, I'm not but you know he had that competitive drive that made him really who he was and you can never take that out of an athlete. That's kind of my fun fact. I was telling Katie recently about how I swim.
Speaker 2:Every day I don't go home until I swim. It lets me think about what happened that day, because my, you know, your face is down in the pool and you're just knocking out laps makes you think about what happened that day and makes you think about how you prepare for tomorrow. And sometimes I'm swimming and I don't even realize that there's somebody in the lane next to me and I'm in my mind competing, even though they don't know I am. You know what I mean by that. I gotta go faster, they're going faster, I gotta. And so the fun fact is I'll always compete, no matter what I do. I think and I don't even realize I'm doing it, mark, when it happens to me that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I was an athlete in college not at that same level and my wife swam from the University of Kentucky and I had two daughters, freshmen, that are coming up. One's going to play soccer at the University of Akron and one's going to be a swimmer bowling green Awesome you know soccer.
Speaker 2:I am amazed. I love watching that sport. I got a coach my son as he came up through soccer in high school. He played basketball as well. I think athletics are tremendously important for kids. It gets them on a team. It makes them appreciate being good teammates. One of the things I really learned from coach was shared responsibility of being a teammate. I don't know if kids realize it, but that is something that resonates with me to this day of shared responsibility and how teammates count on one another. It's something that just happens, but it's something that I think is tremendously important in the culture of a company today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I agree wholeheartedly. I think, also for girls, it gives them an identity, something that you passion about and focus. It really does a lot. I think it's an outlet, but it's also a good identifier, which I think is good.
Speaker 2:I think swimming is a great life skill, by the way, I applaud you for being a swimmer.
Speaker 1:I don't like the cold water, so I lift weights every day and I ride the bike. No one wants to see me in the water, so that's good to know that you enjoy it. When you look at Best Western, can you give us a short history of the brand a very unique brand, unique how the structure of the organization works. Can you give us a brief history? That would be great to have.
Speaker 2:Best Western was founded I think it was 1946, mark as a referral network of hoteliers. It's remarkable how we've grown since then. We are primarily a membership association, but keep in mind, we're also a global company. When we were founded, it was this referral network where one hotelier would say to a guest so where are you going next? That's how it worked and then we realized the importance of the family of hotels that existed and it grew from there. Today, we've evolved tremendously.
Speaker 2:When I joined in 2009, we were one brand. Today we're 19,. Right, we took Best Western. We evolved into Best Western, best Western Plus and Premier. Since then, we've evolved to have soft brands. We have a franchise organization called Sure Stay. We bought World Hotels in 2019, which is upscale and luxury hotels. So we have evolved from that referral network into 19 brands that really we recognize the importance of having a hotel that meets the needs of any guest as well as any developer. That's because we want to have loyal guests. Coming back to loyalty, we recognize guests have different needs for different types of travel and we want to be able to build that loyalty and have them recognize that, wherever they go, we have a hotel that meets their needs and we'll recognize them accordingly through our rewards program.
Speaker 1:Excellent. You talked a little bit about the World Hotel acquisition, which allowed for an opportunity for significant enhancements, additions to the portfolio, more upscale, luxury, boutique type brands, and what did this acquisition mean to Best Western? What?
Speaker 2:means to us is it pushes us into the luxury segment and the upscale segment, which rounds out our portfolio, and it gives travelers options across all chain scale segments, which is tremendously important, especially as you're trying to make sure that you're not just focused on leisure travel, but business travel as well. Business travel is tremendously important and so you know travel managers want to know that you have hotels that can meet the needs of All of the travelers that they manage. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:A travel manager doesn't want to go to one brand for one and have to go to another brand for another, which really kind of made us recognize the importance of the extended stay segment right now, and so we're in the process of launching a brand new brand called at home, which is the extended stay guests. So it's the guests that stays seven, fourteen, twenty days and needs a Comfortable place to stay that's well maintained, where that you know, whatever that, wherever that extended-state business occurs at. So yeah, so, so we were growing at home, we're growing world hotels, we're growing our boutique brand through luck, through a brand called a, because we also know there's some kind of experiential travelers who want to stay at a hotel that provides them that Opportunity to have that local flair or flavor.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's so. When you look at your loyalty program award-winning the best restaurant rewards program, you know how does the program work from a high level, how do members engage with it and what are some of the benefits of the program.
Speaker 2:Sure. So our loyalty program Recognizes, I think, that we have points that never expire. Our loyalty program leverages the fact that we're in Over a hundred countries and territories again, across all segments and interesting.
Speaker 2:When we bought world hotels we really reignited their loyalty program so that the world hotels loyalty program is Integrated, or I'll call it cross brands with best Western rewards, right. So so one can redeem across those brands, which we think is tremendously important. We've got over 53 million members right now, okay, and we're focused on Making sure that they recognize they can redeem those points for free night stays, for gift cards, charitable donations right which I think is also important. So you can donate your points to best Western for better world. But then we also launched pay with points program About a year and a half ago and I think that's something that is Important for our loyalty program members.
Speaker 2:Not just the points never expire, but you don't have to have I'll call it X amount of points to get a free night redemption. You can stay at a best Western hotel and Use those points to reduce the rate for that stay. So it's like they you know you can use them as soon as you earn, really, which I think is it's almost the counter to they never expire. It's almost like that shouldn't even be something they were about. Mark that they never fire. I want them to use them. I Want them to use them well.
Speaker 1:I think that's unique perspective as well too. There's a lot of people who have loyalty programs, especially in kind of this. You know, challenging economy don't necessarily want people to use and there's a big discussion right now in our membership Group and best Westerns, a member of loyalty 360, about, you know, doing more with less potentially right, looking at Ways to maybe change some of the program but not truly understanding the benefit of having them engage the program, having them use that. You know to use your words, make it easy for them to redeem early and redeem often to drive emotional engagement Through the program.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like your term. I may actually steal emotional engagement. I've used a less sophisticated term called sticky guests, right, yeah, sticky guests are good right.
Speaker 1:So as long as it's sweeter from candy, it's a good that you can have an emotional connection to that as well, I guess yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:I want them to. It's. It's interesting. I talked to people often. I was. I was a Poolside the other day and one of the other swimmers said to me so what do you do? Right?
Speaker 2:Look at me like they see me all the time but they don't know me. Yeah, they said so, what do you do? And I said I'm the CEO of best Western. This is really man. I can remember Taking a road trip with my parents. Let's just say I'm not gonna tell you how old I am, but decades ago and we stated best Westerns, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, all of a sudden, your term emotional connection. They immediately connected the dots to me with an experience they had with their parents. Right, probably probably riding in I don't know if you remember these, the old station wagons where the backseat was backwards. Remember, yeah, how, yeah, how spooky is that mark, and they didn't have seatbelts back then. But anyway, there was that emotional connection and that's what I think is important. It's not necessarily about it is about the points, don't get me wrong, but but it is about your term, the emotional connection. Because you know when, when I also talk about, like we're developing the Aiden brand for the experiential traveler yeah, that's true, but I think about it like, okay, we're gonna make that connection they're gonna remember a best Western hotel and then, 10 years from now, when they have kids and they're making the road trip to go visit the kids grandparents of, oh yeah, I remember best Western. The points are cool, I get it, but but it's about they hit the rich history of best Western and I want to continue that rich history.
Speaker 1:Okay, excellent, and I know you kind of launched a gift to travel program May 20th, 1 22nd to September 4th. Get additional rewards and they can get and give to others again Towards a free stay or a gift card. You know how did you go about developing that program and how does that fit in with your overall Customers with these strategies?
Speaker 2:sure. Well, we heard from our rewards members, right, the request to hey, can I, can I share my points, right, by way of example, with a friend or with a family member who I know is gonna travel, maybe an example that they're getting married and they're gonna go on a Honeymoon and it may be a road trip honey moon. Right, can I gift points? And the absolute answer is, of course you can. We want them to be able to give the stay, we want them to be able to give the gift card. It goes to what you talked about Making sure that people appreciate the value of best Western and how we want our, our loyalty program members To know that we care about them and we want to give them the option. I Don't again, I don't want to have to say points never expire. I want to say use your points Absolutely, gift your points. I don't want breakage.
Speaker 1:No, I think that that's very interesting as well too, because you talked about people remember experiences. They remember that first time that they may have stayed at the hotel. And you know, I'm in my late 40s and I can also remember my parents were in Cleveland, my grandparents were in Denver taking that station wearing the back seat no seat belts stopping in Kansas, right, it was always best western. So, and that's what people remember, right, and that leads to kind of an emotional piggy bank that individuals can have with the brand. So if they're ever foibles, if they're ever service level issues that you have, you can fall back on those as a way to kind of address or assuage the situations. Yep, absolutely right. So when you look at the drivers of engagement in the travel industry, it can differ by segment, potentially right, the segment of travelers, what they find of value. You know how do you use kind of listening to customers on the data points. You have insights to drive developments and new opportunities for members that may have different, you know interests or different engagement paradigms.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you're referring to guests, I think it is tremendously important that we have the hotels that meet what they're looking for, the needs that they're looking for From being roadside in a tertiary market to a business traveler who needs to travel for business, and we have a best western plus or a best western premier. They're going to stay for a longer period of time. We've got to have that at home product. It's important. You know, ultimately, mark, we sell rooms and it has to be a room that meets the needs of the traveler and allows them to say, yeah, that's a great hotel, I want to stay there and it meets my needs and the needs of my family and it's where I need to be. So you have to have the hotels where you recognize people are traveling, and that's what's key to development and it's also key to loyalty. Again, you want them to be able to say, as a hotel I want to stay at, I can use points, I can discount, I can get a free night. Wow, best western. You've got 45, 43 to 4500 hotels around the globe. You know people talk to me.
Speaker 2:I was in Paris, I stayed at a best western. I was in Milan, I stayed at a best. Worse, I was in London, I was in Edinburgh, scotland. You know we're all over. That's the other thing that I think is key. Kind of to your point you want to go to Japan, you can stay at a best western. We're going to Bangkok, australia. Wherever you want to go, we're there and when you're staying at our hotels you earn points and you can use those across the globe. Where it's an integrated network that it serves our best western rewards members as well as our hotels rewards members.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a long answer to your question. I apologize. Katie does a better job usually training me in these interviews, but you know it's, it's. I want people to recognize. If you're going to go to Rome, use your points and say the best Western Excellent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, it's good to know they have such an incentive network and obviously the acquisitions and the growth of the brand have helped with that as well. For sure, yeah. So when you look at partnership, partnerships are another area of interest for marketers these days. You know we have our working group that talks about partnerships, how to make them advantageous. Many people are looking at that partnership network, especially in the travel arena, and saying maybe some of these don't work, maybe we need to be more focused. You know you have partnerships with AARP and CA Atlantic. You know how do you approach partnerships with the best Western to provide value.
Speaker 2:The key is you use the word partnership, mark, and I agree with you. We don't look at them as a channel, right, these CAA, aaa, aarp? They are not distribution channels, they're partnerships. We look at them as how we can make them successful by being our partner and how they add value to their members. Right, aarp wants to be able to say to AARP members we've got a great relationship, slash, partnership with best Western, you know, consider them as not just a hotel chain, consider them as someone that recognizes the value of you being an AARP member or a CAA or a AAA member, and they'll treat you as kind of a guest that we recognize the value of and will treat you accordingly and will recognize you and as really a travel respect to travel partner.
Speaker 1:Okay, great. When you look at your role as President and CEO of Best Western Hotels, you know what's the biggest challenge you face in your role. It keeps you up at night.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting question. What keeps me up at night? We have hotels in every time zone around the world, right? So when I'm sleeping, a guest is walking in the front desk of one of our hotels, somewhere, and what keeps me up at night is wanting to make sure they're greeted with a smile, no matter the time zone, and they're recognized as a guest that we want to meet, exceed their expectations. So I really, in this role, I don't have a nighttime Somewhere. A guest is walking into one of our hotels, mark, right?
Speaker 1:And it's that competitive side, that locus of control. I'm sure that it's probably very high with you.
Speaker 2:I wish I could be at every one of our 4,300 hotels greeting every guest. But what's key is that our team, no matter where they're located, whatever time zone they're in, no matter what hotel they're in, recognizing the importance of greeting everyone with a smile and providing them a clean, comfortable stay. That's something Right and building that loyalty that you talk about so much, that we recognize as tremendously important work.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. When you look at loyalty, are there brands that you admire, that you are loyal to, that have either unique programs or you're just innately or intrinsically loyal to. And what do you like about the brand?
Speaker 2:Any brand I mean. Of course, we're loyal to certain. We're all loyal to certain brands, right? We all have. I like using an Apple phone, right? I like using my iPhone. I'm loyal to that product because I'm comfortable with it and it meets and exceeds my expectations.
Speaker 1:That's a good one to be loyal to right. The simplicity, ease of use. One button is, Steve Jobs professed when he developed the iPhone and the tablets. It was one button, it's all needed.
Speaker 2:It does. It exceeds my expectations on a daily basis and I've become so used to using it that that's the phone I use. It's something that you just I don't want to. I'm tied to it because I appreciate the value it brings and the ease it brings to me. So if you can do that, if you can replicate that loyalty, I think that's why so many people have them and that's what I want our guests to recognize is that we can be what you expect us to be when you walk in a front door of a best Western hotel Excellent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you guys do a great job and it's always good to have a model, a role model, like Apple, so I think that's very aspirational. But how you guys run your program is quite interesting and obviously metataurious, for sure.
Speaker 2:And we want to be innovative. We want to make sure that we have a product for every type of stage, just like they want to have a product that meets everyone's expectations. Right. But innovation is important as well, and evolution is important, and when you look at, you know it was just 13 years ago. We were one brand. Today, look how we've evolved. And I want the team to think differently. I want them to think about how we can be more efficient and more effective and serve our guests better, because also keep in mind I know you know this Mark the needs of today's guests are different than they were five or ten years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, definitely different. And the last question kind of wrap this up you know what can loyalty 360 do to help you and your team and your customer loyalty journey?
Speaker 2:You can help us tell our story of how we have evolved. Most of the time when I talk to people, they don't realize how we've changed and how we'll continue to change and evolve and how important we think brand loyalty is and we're going to build it by exceeding their expectations and making sure that they know that we care about them. If you can help us educate your I think, loyal listeners and readers right, you build loyalty, just like we tried to right Mark.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir.
Speaker 2:So I want to leverage your loyal base and hopefully you can speak to ours and make sure they recognize how important they are to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love to do that as well. I think you have a great story and obviously I would love to have you maybe even keynote a conference coming up. I think you know we have kind of the vanguard of the industry from the Alta's, sephora's, others, but being able to tell your story I think it would be quite compelling. It could help even magnify that voice out to the people who are passionate about this industry.
Speaker 2:I think it's a great industry when you think about I mean, I came from a manufacturing industry. Right was general council of a company to manufacture a product. What I love about our industry is I'll ask you a question what's our industry's job? What do we do? I said we have rooms. I understand we have inventory, but what's our job? Our job is to make people happy when they travel. You know our vision statement is to inspire travel through unique experiences and I believe that to be true. Everyone of our hotels are unique. Every team at our 4500 hotels are unique. If they can inspire people to travel, I want them to inspire people to travel as loyal, best Western guests.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Right, that's what it's all about and that's what I love about our industry is that it's almost. I want people to be excited about travel and excited to travel and be inspired by travel and stay at best Westerns.
Speaker 1:Well, I definitely think travel has that emotive appeal and how you guys kind of reach out, engage your audience and the diversity of the brand portfolio is very impactful and I think you guys do a great job of driving customer loyalty and in deeper emotional loyalty. So it's always great to hear from you and your brand.
Speaker 2:Thanks for absolutely.
Speaker 1:Thank you for taking the time to listen. Make sure everyone else join us back for another edition of our leaders and customer loyalty series soon and have a wonderful day. Thank you, thanks, thank you.