Dragonfly Strategists in Midst of Renaissance
It has been a wonderfully busy summer for Caryl Helsel, Alise Deeb, and the rest of the team of Dragonfly Strategists.
For Helsel, the CEO of Dragonfly Strategists, and Deeb, the Chief Revenue Officer, it is the kind of busy that is heavily welcomed after 2020 cut travel down significantly and uncertainties brought on by variants made 2021 a bouncy road.
While there was “so much upheaval,” the hotel industry had already begun to see major changes and was the beginning of a renaissance by 2019, as powerful new digital tools emerged to streamline and assist with the personal experience as well as revenue management.
“(After the pandemic) there was a greater gap between knowledge and systems,” said Deeb. “The calls were almost off the hook because we had the resources versus, unfortunately, hotels could not find them anymore.
“Technology and our spaces have changed quite a bit, and there are a lot of new players. It is hard to have one person at a property have all that knowledge.”
Enter Dragonfly Strategists, a group of seasoned and experienced hospitality people who act as a “universal remote” for hotels, especially the boutique, independent hotel, and small to medium-sized brand genre. The company, formed by Helsel in 2016, took empathic risks in 2020 and parts of 2021 to provide complimentary services to hotels and is finding itself getting paid back well for the selfless approach made by just four of them during the height of the pandemic.
During the pandemic, the crew of Dragonfly Strategists decided to “grow our knowledge and relationships with so many technology offerings that from our perspective…we continued to grow. We took the time to learn more,” Deeb said.
“Our industry has had so many upheavals and ownership changes,” said Helsel, a thirty-five-year veteran in various iterations of hotel and technology management. “More and more hotels are switching from one brand to another, and there is a lot of money out there to acquire hotels.”
Thus, the company has now become the full-service organization they envisioned back in 2016. From commercial strategy, IT, and hospitality operations, along with significant technology upgrades that provide critical data not only concerning distribution but who is purchasing what services, Dragonfly Strategists has been working with a number of new clients as well as existing ones to take advantage of the robust technological innovations in hotel hospitality.
Deeb, another multi-decade veteran, says Dragonfly Strategist’s secret is how the group responds professionally and personally.
“We have access to escalate issues for smaller hotel groups and independents because of our relationships – typically these hotels cannot do this on their own”
“We’re not a consulting company with a lot of consultants,” Deeb said. “We focus on thoughtful onboarding and best practices that are agile and scalable. We look at all the tools available and see what is more efficient for each client.” Overall, we are not consultants – we are trusted advisors. There is a difference.
The hotel landscape includes a growing number of smaller hotel companies, independent and boutique hotels, but while that independence can make them more flexible for guests, there are a number of holes to fill to be successful.
“Independent hotels don’t have a team or have a corporate office to help them,” Helsel said.
“A lot of our clients don’t want to hire a whole team to do five transitions when they don’t need to, so they come to us because we have the scale, the bandwidth, and the processes down pat. We’re gaining a reputation of knowing how to select, install and support these systems. We also then know how to make them successful with solid and successful commercial strategies.”
The company added the final component to their efforts this year by injecting a full operations practice to its commercial and IT practices. The company especially wants to help hotels focus on guests first.
“We map (the) technology to guest experience to see where technology can improve the guest and club members’ journey, improve the team members and employees’ journey to where they can be more efficient and where they can relieve some of the tasks that take your people on the front line away from looking down at a computer to looking up at the guests and interacting with them more effectively,” Helsel said.
Deeb says Dragonfly Strategist’s secret is how the group responds professionally and personally.
“We are trusted advisors in every aspect of a hotel,” Deeb said. “We focus on thoughtful onboarding and best practices that are agile and scalable. We look at all the tools available and see what is more efficient for each client. We create a structure, we have deeply experienced employees, and we have reputation for loyalty to employees and an amazing culture with our team (which transfers to their clients).
“We look at each hotel holistically versus a silo,” Helsel said. “We have built a solid reputation and a really great culture.”
As several members headed into the Hotel Data Conference and as sponsors of the conference the second week of August in Nashville, it is clear Dragonfly Strategists plans to continue learning, training, and ushering hotels into the most modern operations plan possible.