Ep. 34: Top travel trends of 2021, with Sarah Dandashy

TravelHotels

Jan 5

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Happy New Year. 2021—it’s a new year. Thank goodness. Lots to look forward to this year, with the vaccination, and travel feeling like it’s opening up again, albeit slowly. Travelers are more open to planning trips, getting on airplanes, and bringing home memories, not COVID.

There’s lots to look forward to and I thought we’d kick off the year with a guest. Someone who—like me—lives in this world of hospitality and also the world of content creation and social influence: Sarah Dandashy, the incredible woman behind @askaconcierge. Sarah also hosts a podcast, Say Yes To Travel. I actually appeared on Sarah’s show, back in October.

Sarah Dandashy is an award-winning concierge, travel content creator, and hospitality consultant. Going beyond the traditional concierge desk, Sarah created “Ask A Concierge,” a multi-platform social media brand. With over 180,000 followers on social media, Sarah’s content has garnered over half a million views.

Sarah’s worked in hospitality for over 15 years, her hospitality pedigree includes The Peninsula, Four Seasons, Fairmont Hotels, and London West Hollywood. In 2015, she was named "Best Young Concierge" in the world from Les Clefs d'Or International.

As a content creator, Sarah has worked with Marriott, Hilton, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Celebrity Cruises, Tripadvisor, Airbnb, and American Airlines.

Sarah joined me to share her story and to discuss travel trends—including some trends we love and others we’re not so sure about. Sarah will help me figure out which trends will be gone tomorrow, and the ones with staying power.

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I loved chatting with Sarah today. My key takeaways were:

1. While I tend to focus on the smaller independent hotels, Sarah brought a lot to the conversation from the luxury and branded hotel space. These bigger brands are leading the way when it comes to safety—and certainly the idea that hotels monitor temperatures and even administer COVID screenings, could be a major part of recovery in the short term while we wait our turn for the vaccination.

2. I loved what Sarah added to the sustainability conversation: that it's mutually beneficial to the hotel to keep up with the sustainable practices they've put into place because of the pandemic and the need to limit some services.

3. When it comes to social media, Sarah really drove home it's power. The ways in which we might even think about marketing from a social-first perspective—how will this experience resonate with guests, how might this experience and story be shared on social media, right?

For me, a lot of this comes back to being nimble and adaptable. So, as we kick off the year, from a marketing perspective, set your editorial calendar, but remember the important lesson we learned last year: that nothing is evergreen. And the key to remaining relevant, is to adapt to change as it comes.

A great example of this is that we recorded this episode a week ago and since then, a new social media platform has taken center stage—and that's Clubhouse. In fact, Sarah and I are part of a group called “Hospitality Professionals” and we're doing weekly hospitality happy hours on Clubhouse, every Tuesday at 3pm PST. We're not changing our brand strategy, we're just sharing our ideas in more places. Make sense?

I think Clubhouse is an indication of what's ahead for this year—hotels and marketers must be nimble and adapt to change as it comes. Let's ride these waves together, take chances, and lean on what we know, and most of all, remain optimistic that our industry is poised for a major comeback.

As always, keep sharing your stories.