ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Jacki Brown has spent 20 years in marketing, from consumer brands like Shark Vaccum and Ninja Blender to the B2B hospitality tech world. Today she runs Jacki Brown Marketing, a fractional consultancy helping hospitality tech companies build the marketing foundations they need to actually grow.
In this episode, Jacki and Rachel dig into why so many hotel tech companies are getting their messaging wrong and what it takes to fix it. Jacki shares how she approaches positioning from both sides of the table, having marketed to hotels and now helping tech vendors understand how to reach them. They get into why narrowing your target audience is the hardest thing for founders to do and why it's non-negotiable, the number one thing Jacki does before touching any marketing strategy (hint: it involves the sales team), and how hotel tech messaging has swung from feature dumps to vague value statements and where it needs to go next. They also talk about why data fragmentation is still the biggest pain point she hears from hotels heading into 2026, the difference between selling to a management company versus an independent property, and what genuinely great hospitality looks like when everything else goes wrong.
Resources mentioned: Jacki Brown Marketing at jackibrownmarketing.com and her free training deck Introduction to Hospitality for Tech Leaders at jackibrownmarketing.com/resources/introduction-to-hospitality-for-tech-leaders
