134 – TMG Hospitality Trailblazers: Bonnie Campagnuolo

Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast

Global Brand Head at Embassy Suites by Hilton, Bonnie Campagnuolo, is recognized as a TMG Hospitality Trailblazer as Embassy Suites celebrates its 40th anniversary! This episode gives viewers an inside look at what has made the brand successful over the last 40 years and what is on the horizon for Embassy Suites. Ryan and Bonnie go in depth to highlight key initiatives and characteristics of Embassy Suites that contribute to the brand’s hospitality dominance. 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 Embee. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Emre, here with another edition of the TMG Hospitality Trailblazers series. As we get geared up for a busy travel summer, we are here with another hospitality trailblazer, another Hilton brand leader. I am very excited to introduce our guest for today, Bonnie Campagnuolo brand leader of Embassy Suites by Hilton. Bonnie, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Bonnie Campagnuolo : It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Ryan Embree: We got several things to celebrate today. I don't wanna give too much away, but before we start talking about your incredible Embassy Suites by Hilton Brand, I wanna talk about your background and journey that led you into hospitality. As we know, it's always unique to kind of see these paths, which get us to where we are. Where did you start? Was it behind the front desk? Did you just kind of fall in it? Tell us a little bit about your journey to Embassy Suites by Hilton. Bonnie Campagnuolo : So I never worked in a hotel. I started in ad agencies in Orlando, Florida and had a number of travel and tourism clients across the years and across different agencies. I moved to the client side, marketing teams first at Walt Disney World, and then with a vacation ownership company also here in Orlando. And then moved up to DC for a job with Hilton, uh, almost 14 years ago. And I was director of Resorts marketing for the Hilton Hotels and Resorts brand, which was an amazing, amazing ride. From there, I worked on all of our full service brands in marketing and then went over to the brand side and, uh, did what we called, uh, customer experience and innovation for full service brands. And then I have been in this role since July of 2020, and it's, it's a great job. I love my job. Ryan Embree: Yeah. Well, it's interesting that, you know, we get a lot of, a lot of people that I interview on these hospitality trailblazers and they come up originally from operations. So I'm wondering kind of, you know, what do you think mindset, maybe lessons learned that were a little bit different being in hospitality a little bit later in your career? Bonnie Campagnuolo : So I think understanding how we get messages out to guests, how we establish who we are is part of what Embassy Suites needs right now. And I, I don't kid myself about knowing how every little thing happens in a hotel, and I'd surround myself with people who do, and I'm not shy about asking our hotel leaders, if we were to think about doing something like this, how does that affect you? If we were to make a change like this in a guest room, how does that affect what the housekeeper's life is like? Or did we just create something that's really cool, but a pain in the neck to clean because it, you know, creates a little ledge or something that we're not never gonna get, right? So I really, we have tons of folks who know more than me and I love all of them, and we make sure that we have those conversations. And I'd also say my experience on the customer experience and innovation team really taught me how to a...