Episode #47 - Brandon Berkson, Hotels Above Par
Hanna (02:28)
Hi, Brandon, welcome to the show.
Michael (02:30)
So great to see you.
Brandon (02:32)
Hello, Hanna. Hello, Michael. Thank you so much for having me today. As you know, I'm a big fan of the podcast and all the work that you guys do. So once again, thanks for having me.
Hanna (02:41)
We are a fan of you, So excited to have you on our show.
Michael (02:44)
So let's start at the beginning, Brandon, you began your career as a travel PR professional pivoting, dramatically to media. What was the inspiration for launching Hotels Above Par?
Brandon (02:57)
So, you know, Hotels Above Par has been something I've been thinking about for a long time. And there were two main sources of inspiration. One, you know, I was working in travel PR as you noted and I was furloughed just like so many during the pandemic, I was absolutely devastated.
Hotels are my, everything. I want to support hotels during a time that they needed love most. I wanted to then have them feel relevant and talked about. And then in addition to that, you know, that one desire to really help hotels during that time is I also wanted to create something that was geared towards millennial and gen X readers who have an overabundance of content competing for their attention.
So what do I mean by that? You know, all of our articles are around 300 words, they fit in their entirety as an Instagram caption before going on our website and newsletter. And the reason for this is, you know, we have hyperlinks and boisterous ads and all these distractions that really come to light and really take us away from a long article.
We're not reading these super, super long articles, unfortunately anymore, at least, you know, within these two age groups. So I really wanted to adhere to that and make a guide and a publication that is geared towards the millennial and gen X populations.
Hanna (04:22)
How did you come up with the clever name?
Brandon (04:25)
I think that when I look back at it and when I first started, I thought I just wanted to do hotels.
So I just said Hotels Above Par, but then I, it became evident that people wanted more content, whether that's destination guides, restaurants, you know, bars, we celebrate all facets of the travel industry. So I think if I named it today, it would be Travel Above Par. Um, but you know, it was hotels back then cause I thought I was just, uh, starting with doing hotels and going to continue with that.
And then Above Par, the content that we feature, the hotels that we feature, and you can guarantee that they're going to exceed expectations. They are above the norm. They are fantastic properties that deserve and above our label.
Hanna (05:13)
Oh, wow. Love that.
Michael (05:14)
And that's quite an endorsement.
Hanna (05:16)
You mentioned you have passion and love for hotels. So what do you like the most about hotels?
Brandon (05:23)
Yes, since I was a kid, I've always loved hotels so much. In fact, when I was younger, I was telling a friend about this the other day, my, you know, all the other kids wanted to play sports and I wanted to play hotel. So I would force my brother to play hotel with me. Like, thank God he was such a good sport. He did not want to play hotel. Um, but it's always, you know, really, really fascinated me the whole as everything there, you know?
So from the start at check-in and how this is really your first impression of a certain destination, that experience, in addition to that, people watching in the lobby, you know, what's so cool about a hotel is it's a gathering spot for so many people around the world and to be at the hub of all of this and just people watch for hours. People coming in and coming out is something that I really enjoy.
Another thing is I'm a huge fan of design. So I always love learning about how many facets of the design, how certain facets of hotel design pay homage to that destination in a creative way. So an example of this is one of my favorite hotels, Riggs, Washington, DC, which in an effort to pay tribute to its former life as a bank for presidents, the owners and the creative director, really re-imagined the check-in space to look like a teller counter. And I thought that was so creative and it's just aspects like that. It's those little things that really help you connect to a heart of a destination through your hotel.
Michael (06:47)
So, what new skills did you have to learn to transition from being a media relations expert to actually owning a media company?
Brandon (06:56)
Yeah, absolutely. So, um, with that, I believe, like I said earlier, you know, that my experience in PR, my experience working at a hotel really brought me where I am today. So, you know, on the media relationship sides of things, I was fostering relationships with these different journalists from all different realms and I was working in PR and then eventually those relationship skills were then transferred where I was on the other side and with Hotels Above Par, these, I reached out to these journalists to come write for me. And because of those media relationship skills that I have within my career, I was able to bring some of my favorite writers on.
Then I also had a knowledge of social media. And I think that made breaking through the noise on Instagram, a more familiar process, which I really appreciate. I was working with Instagram for hotels, a lot, um, restaurants. So I felt ahead of the game in the social media realm because of this prior experience.
And then editorial knowledge, you know, I've always loved magazines. I've always loved publications. I'm an Apple News addict. Then, when you're doing a pitching process, as you know, PR you're always looking at different sites and what they're featuring and, uh, being familiar with our editorial calendar. And so I brought that knowledge of editorial, It might've not, it might've been on the PR side of things, but I felt I had a really good grasp of it, you know, from the editorial side of things such as the journalists and the editors and all of that, um, to really help develop a content calendar for us and a strategy and what I wanted the publication to look like.
I knew I had a certain aesthetic envisioned and a lot of that inspiration came from some of my favorite publications too. So, you know, I'm someone who I consider myself a creative person, and I love different examples of creativity throughout the media space. So really bringing that, all of that to where we're at now, to Hotels Above Par, I 100% believe that my media relations skills really brought me to where I am today.
Michael (09:09)
Fantastic. So let's drill into a little bit more detail. So you are the founder of Hotels Above Par. What are your day-to-day responsibilities?
Brandon (09:19)
Yeah, so there's quite a lot, you know, I am really fortunate to have secured investing monies where we can reach out to other journalists. So, you know, I will, I will have journalists pitch us all the time. And I'll decide, you know, do I think that this is the fit for our publication and you know, a lot of them help really galvanize some ideas for future content that we want to have. So that's really exciting to have them contribute to, uh, you know, our editorial process.
And in addition to that, and responding to pitches from publicists, uh, I'm writing 50% of the articles editing other articles, community management, as you know, social media takes a lot of time to really maintain, uh, and upkeep the certain interactions that are going on, whether that's responding to comments or DMS or, um, the stories that we're posting and I'm always readjusting the social media strategy.
So, you know, those are the main components of what I would say my day-to-day responsibilities are. And then obviously little fire drills that come here and there that don't fall within this list that I just said, but you know, every day is a little bit different than the last.
Hanna (10:24)
It seems like you are wearing a lot of hats and you're doing really well.
Michael (10:28)
A jack of many trades.
Brandon (10:29)
Thank you so much.
Hanna (10:30)
How does it differ from other travel and hotel focused media? So what sets it apart?
Brandon (10:38)
Yeah, absolutely. So with Hotels Above Par, I truly believe that there's nothing like it in the media sphere. And so we are prioritizing social media, right? People's new source of new news. We are also, you know, writing these articles that are of short nature, 300 words that help capture our attention in a world where there's such an overabundance of content competing for it.
So those two factors alone brought us to where Hotels Above Par is today. You know, these 300 word articles, these aesthetically pleasing images. We're not those 2000 word articles, which are amazing. And I absolutely love from other publications, but we're really geared towards the distracted reader to the distracted millennial, the distracted gen X, who has, you know, these boisterous ads and hyperlinks competing for their attention when they're reading long articles.
So I feel Hotels Above Par, our format separates ourselves. Another thing I would say. Is that we stray away from anything that's overly commercial. We stray away from anything that is a mega resort. Like we feature boutique oriented, unique hotels, plus cool destinations, restaurants, and bars. They have to be unique to their core for us to feature them. And I want to say, when I say boutique oriented, is a lot of boutique hotels, you know, they're independent, but when we say boutique oriented, there are wonderful and extremely, extremely innovative conglomerates.
For example, Montage, that come out with cheap oriented brands under them. Their brand, Pendry, is something that we would absolutely feature while they do have a couple locations while they are expanding. While a lot of the rooms are above 84, a, which is the room count. That anything under that is considered a boutique hotel. Many of them are, you know, in the hundreds, they still feel boutique. When you go inside, they still feel unique and special, and they don't feel like an overly commercialized, expansive colossal resort where you have no connection to the destination upon your stay there.
Hanna (12:44)
Yeah, we love boutique hotels just like yourself.
Michael (12:48)
So Brandon, you, you mentioned the 300 word counts for the write ups and we think it's a brilliant form of storytelling. So what inspired the format and how'd you come up with the 300 word limit?
Brandon (13:02)
Yeah. So, you know, we're in a time where there is an overabundance of content competing for our attention. You know, like I said, from these hyperlinks to boisterous ads, uh, while I love long articles, a lot of people in the millennial and gen x Realm aren't reading the full thing because of all these distractions. And one, a lot of us are getting our news from social media. So with that, I wanted to bring these expert written articles into the entirety of the caption on Instagram.
And when we say 300 words, it's around 300 words, but captions on Instagram have to be between 2,200 characters, which is normally like 300 to like 325. So as long as it can be. You know, as a whole into the Instagram caption, then that's something that will suffice for our content. It just, it, that 300 word count is more in correlation to the Instagram caption limit that the platform has for their community.
Hanna (13:59)
Such a great idea. You work with a lot of great freelance writers who contribute to your site. What is the criteria for choosing them? I know they are all nice people first of all. Are they nationwide or global as well?
Brandon (14:16)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, while we focus on international and hotels, destination restaurants, You know, all these cool establishments around the world.
We need people who are around the world to cover those. And, you know, I think the biggest criteria is we want people who understand the brand and share our love for boutique hotels. You know, we want people who treasure the uniqueness of hospitality from hotels to bars. We want people to know that we are interested in providing our readers with a experience with a hotel, with a restaurant, whatever insight that relates to it, to that, that connects them to the heart of a destination and is not lost in an overly commercial environment.
Michael (14:59)
Earlier, you mentioned that one of your responsibilities is creating and organizing your editorial calendar. So how do you do that and how do you curate the content with so many contributing writers?
Brandon (15:12)
I think we're a bit different than other publications in that one, we don't have print, but also we are very cognizant and I know a lot of other publications are now too because of the pandemic. But, you know, because of the pandemic, we are aware that the travel scape, the media scape too, is constantly changing because of the turbulence of restrictions and, um, pace increases and just the whole nature of the pandemic itself.
So, we plan our content about a month before it will go live. So if something, our November content calendar will be decided by October 5th. So it just, gives us a month, an amount of time that's just about 30 days to prepare. And we also when I have different writers, you know, contribute to Hotels Above Par, they're always knowing to pitch angles that are relevant to when the article will go live with after that month of the content calendar. So for example, you know, when it comes to December Christmas articles, Hanukkah articles, you know, post Thanksgiving, travel articles, detox and refresh yourself this new year articles.
So, um, there, I think relative being redolent to the time and timeline of what's going on as well as to, you know, the brands and the restaurants that we feature in the hotels and destinations, I think as long as they keep that in mind and all of that, I think that our editorial calendar solidifies it.
Hanna (16:56)
So your recently expanded your coverage to bars and restaurants. So what was the inspiration behind this move?
Brandon (17:04)
So, you know, we want to celebrate all different facets of the hospitality industry. And with that, you know, comes restaurants, bars, and, you know, attraction. So it only felt natural for us to foray into that. I would say that a lot of our readers were requesting that we start, provide some restaurant recommendations, bar recommendations, attraction, uh, recommendations. So that really has delve into, uh, more of an expansive capacity for our travel.
Hanna (17:30)
There are so many restaurants and bars in the city and around the globe. So how do you choose the restaurants and bars to cover?
Brandon (17:39)
So the restaurants and bars that we cover, you know, whether it's myself or someone on our team, or one of our freelance writers, they have to have been to that restaurant and they have to have tasted the food. And we really emphasize two main facets of restaurants when we cover them, what is the design?
You know, we're very design oriented. So having that in mind of a restaurant with a beautiful blueprint is key on the same floor as that is. We want the food to be extremely tasty, extremely well-prepared whether it's a Michelin star restaurant, or it's a special, unique dish that's redolent to the destination where the restaurant is located. These two facets, design and gastronomy are what brings us to really cover a restaurant in a bar.
Hanna (18:27)
And thank you so much for your wonderful write-up of our client POPULAR at Ian Schrager's PUBLIC Hotel.
Brandon (18:35)
I was just going to say that, uh, you know, it's such an amazing hotel and the restaurant is so phenomenal. It only made sense to want to write about it.
Michael (18:44)
Well, we see a lot of new hotels that are poised to open as well as a lot of existing hotels reopening. Uh, there's a lot of activity in the hotel space. So in the coming year, what types of topics and hotels are you going to be covering?
Brandon (19:00)
So, yeah, definitely. We are going to keep on covering boutique hotels, unique properties.
There are so many that I want to get to, for example, the new Six Senses at Negev in Israel. Definitely want to cover that one, that one's on my bucket list, but yeah. And then, uh, we're also going to continue writing more destination guides. We're really beefing up that content. So expect to see more of those. There's so many cities that can be explored and with, you know, hopefully us starting to veer out of the pandemic, we're going to be scoring more destinations and people are going to really gain that consumer confidence that they had before the pandemic to travel overseas.
So with that, with this, you know, resurgence and people going to Europe and to Asia, where we are going to cover more hotels and destinations, the restaurants, the bars that make those places so unique and really help to be a useful resource for our readers.
Hanna (19:55)
For hoteliers, restaurateurs and bar owners, what is the best way to pitch a story to you? Any tips for our listeners?
Brandon (20:04)
I always love learning about new hotels, restaurants, and bars. I look at every pitch that I get in, I’ve been on the PR side of things. So I really, really, really find that pitching process fascinating. I'm just kind of, I'm kind of a nerd in that aspect, but I would say as long as you know what our brand's about and you're pitching something that's unique, boutique oriented, special to its core.
Then that's definitely something that we look for. And because Instagram is one of our key platforms, we really look for images that are high resolution only. So, you know, if you are pitching Hotels Above Par definitely include a link to high res images as that's a big facet to the, uh, editorial, uh, publication that we really try to set out.
Hanna (20:50)
Tell us about your new travel agency, HAP Concierge. How did it come about?
Brandon (20:57)
So HAP Concierge or what we say, uh, is HAP Concierge. What is really driven from our interest in kind of reimagining the whole travel agent realm. So I think that among the millennial and gen X population, there is a big belief that oh, well, my grandparent uses a travel agent or the frumpiness of what you see in the nineties with that kind of travel agency side of things. We wanted to make travel agencies a cool resource and an alerting resource for people who are booking the trip within the millennial, gen X and, you know, baby boomer range has a lot of people want to travel to the trendiest places, the most unique places.
So with that, the main source, the main messaging behind it was your hip new travel agent. Second. In addition to that, um, you know, with Hotels Above Par, we feature boutique oriented places, unique experiences. We really want you to get to the heart of a destination, like I said, stray away from mega resorts.
So when you book with HAP Concierge, you are booking, you are ensuring that you are going to have a boutique-oriented trip. We're only going to put you at places that really connect you to the heart of the destination and give you that special, special sense of place when you are traveling somewhere.
I also want to point out that I, we have some great options when it comes to deciding whether you want to plan your trip with us. We also have a membership option where you can get unlimited trips for as much as you want for $399. And basically each time that you plan a trip, it's extremely discounted at a $199 trip planning fee after that initial, uh, payment. And then also we have a one-time trip planning service, which, you know, if you're feeling non-committal and you don't know if you're going to travel for a whole year, we have that option too, and you'll have full access to customized itineraries bar, lead travel savant, John Dealer, he's absolutely amazing and such an expert within the travel agency realm.
And then, you know, you got insider access to villas restaurants, uh, cool experiences, 24/7 support. And then in addition to that, um, we have agreements with these different boutique hotels, where you can book to receive a lot of VIP perks and privileges when you stay there due to our fortified relationships with them.
Hanna (23:25)
Wow. Just expect two more memberships from us this week.
Brandon (23:29)
Uh, perfect. Anytime I, we would love to have you in the HAP concierge family.
Michael (23:34)
We can’t wait. So what major cities in countries do you foresee your writers covering as “it” travel spots this coming season?
Brandon (23:43)
Recently, we started doing beefing up our concept for Canada now that the land borders are back open. So, you know, this North American content was something that we really harnessed on, Caribbean too. Um, but you can expect to see a lot more content from overseas destinations. I'm dying, dying, dying, dying to do a 1, 2, 3 destination guide on Singapore. So if you're not familiar, our 1, 2, 3 format is one place to stay, two places to eat and three places visit within a certain locale, other than some other destinations that I definitely want to cover, uh, Tokyo, I absolutely want to do a 1, 2, 3 destination guide to Rotterdam as it's a really up and coming city for architecture. The Netherlands is so cool. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of amazing places to be seen outside of Amsterdam, which is one of my favorite cities as well. I'd also like to, uh, foray into doing some, uh, Africa 1,2,3’s. I would love to do a Cape Town one and Laos in Nigeria. They have a very up and coming creative scene. There's a lot of cool brands coming out of there. I would love to do a 1, 2, 3 on that destination as well.
Hanna (24:53)
What kind of innovation do you see happening in the hotel industry?
Brandon (24:58)
So Salesforce, you know, they came out with a statistic earlier this year, that more than ever these millennials and gen X's who are looking to travel, they want to support boutique brands and locally owned places or places that really feel, you know, authentic, especially after the pandemic when we saw such a decimation of the travel industry.
I believe that we're going to be seeing more conglomerates starting boutique-oriented brands that really have the sense and feel as an independent hotel. An example that I talked about was Montage and how they have Pendry. Pendry is one of my favorite hotel brands. And I can tell you when I'm staying at a Pendry, it feels like a boutique hotel. It feels that unique. It feels that special. I feel like I am truly connected to the heart of the destination through the start to the service, to the offerings they have with the restaurant, we're going to be seeing more of these larger conglomerates, expanding their boutique brands and taking them to the next level of authenticity.
Hanna (26:00)
As you know, we call our podcast Hospitality Forward because we strongly believe that our industry is going to come back even stronger than ever. So in your opinion, Brandon, what organization or hotel have you seen really innovating as of late, specifically moving the hospitality and travel industry forward?
Brandon (26:24)
So something that I really see having a resurgence because it was such a big trend before the pandemic is sustainable travel. People want to combat climate change and help the environment when they're traveling overseas or even for a road trip. So I really believe that groups like Relais and Chateaux are archetypes of how to pave the way in sustainable travel.
For example, if you are a Relais and Chateaux member, one of their hotels or restaurants, you're becoming a leader in the sustainable travel efforts within the hospitality realm. You have to adhere to a bevy of requirements that ensure your property is environmentally sustainable and helping stop the production of climate change.
So, you know, an example of this is Eleven Madison Park. There's one restaurant that they have, and they opened as a vegan restaurant with the intention of combating climate change by emitting meat consumption. So that's just one of the examples that I like to share on how Relais and Chateaux is really, really building this presence and this sense of marshaling how to be a sustainable travel conglomerate.
Michael (27:37)
They're doing great work and it's sent a necessary shockwaves around the world, the culinary world, especially. On a lighter note, Brandon, uh, if you have to choose one cocktail, uh, at a hotel bar to share with your best buddy, what and where would it be and why?
Brandon (27:56)
So I am going to have to go with Sea Containers, London, specifically their bar there by the name of Lyaness. Um, they have this cocktail called Mommy Taylor and it's 14 Johnny Walker, uh, it is Johnny Walker Black, vegan honey, fresh date and galangal ginger soda. So it's really good. I love anything with ginger, to be honest. Uh, and the bar is always receiving awards and accolades for its incredible design and cocktail pairings.
Michael (28:27)
And with whom would you share it?
Brandon (28:29)
I'm going to have to go with my mom. My mom's like the best person I know. It's going to be my mom. Mom, we're going to London if you're listening to this and we're going to have this cocktail.