Karen Stephens
Chief Marketing Officer
Karen Stephens drives long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. With more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution, her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships. She is also the host of The Hotel Moment Podcast, where she interviews top players in the hospitality industry.
Featured articles
Guest segmentation in 2025: Moving beyond broad-brush marketing with AI
This article was written by Henri Roelings and Karen Stephens. Anna is planning a business trip to Tokyo. Eager to get the best recs for the city, she whips out her smartphone and finds a hotel touting everything she wants. She books her stay within minutes. Her dream stay wishlist was made possible by AI — and behind that magic is guest segmentation. Large Language Models (LLMs) and other AI tools can now segment data [...]
Loyalty for the blended traveler: 10 practical moves for hotels in 2025
This article was written by Henri Roelings and Karen Stephens and originally published on Hospitality Net. The post-pandemic "revenge travel" surge has cooled, but demand hasn't disappeared. It has simply shifted. Today's guests are more deliberate. They still spend and explore, but many now travel to recharge, extend a business trip into leisure, or set up a temporary remote office. Bleisure and workations are no longer fringe. Flexible work and the growing preference for experiences [...]
OTAs aren’t stealing your guests. You’re giving them away.
A hotel general manager is scanning her monthly report, once again feeling growing frustration about the rising number of OTA guest bookings her properties are experiencing — and the fees that came with them. Direct bookings were down last month and OTA commissions were higher than ever, leaving her feeling like the OTAs are winning. Then the thought enters her mind: “They’re stealing our guests.” After all, she knows that for every OTA guest booking, [...]
Do’s & Don’ts for turning guest data into direct bookings
You probably have a great view, sitting atop mountains of guest data. But is a good view all you really have? Most hotels really are sitting on mountains of guest data, but only a handful are using what they have to drive meaningful results. We've spoken with too many hoteliers who say the same thing: “We have the data, but we don’t really do anything with it.” That needs to change, and here’s why: Activating [...]
Voice channel strategy for hotels: Expert tips from hoteliers
The voice channel doesn’t always get the spotlight in today’s digital-first hospitality world, but it should. When you develop a comprehensive voice channel strategy for your hospitality call center or reservations department, your voice channel becomes so much more than just a way to take bookings. With well-trained agents, access to real-time data, personalized call scripts, and strong collaboration between reservations, revenue, and marketing departments, your voice channel becomes a powerful tool for driving revenue, [...]
Hospitality industry data reveals how hoteliers are winning
In hospitality, we’re used to curveballs. But 2025 has already delivered a few we didn’t see coming. Last week, I had the opportunity to co-host the webinar “Navigating hospitality’s new normal” with Jennifer Hill, VP of Commercial Strategy at Kalibri Labs, where we dove into the latest hospitality industry data and discussed what’s shifting in hospitality and, more importantly, what’s working for hoteliers right now. Federal policy shockwaves: what you need to know We began [...]