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Azul Case Study

Azul Hospitality is a hotel management company based in San Diego. They manage a portfolio of 39 hotels, mostly Marriott properties, across the United States and first started using Jostle in 2019 as a tool for their sales team to stay in touch.

With so many properties spread across America, Azul quickly realized the power of a platform that brought their whole organization together. Soon their general managers moved into Jostle. Then their corporate managers joined. Fast forward to today, the majority of their organization uses Jostle to stay connected and be a part of the Azul community.

The Challenge

With properties spread across the country, Azul faced the challenge of maintaining consistent communication and cultivating a sense of community among employees at various levels. As the company grew, the need for a platform to unify its geographically dispersed workforce became increasingly evident.

The Strategy

Encourage employee engagement

When Corporate Sales & Marketing Coordinator Madeline Crow joined the company, the Jostle platform was only used by the general managers, sales team, and corporate staff.

To make it more of a community, she and her team decided to create a survey to gather feedback from everyone involved on what they liked and disliked about Jostle and what features they would like to see improved.

Feedback showed that employees wanted to see more engagement from the executives, such as the Regional Vice Presidents (RVPs) and Vice Presidents posting content.

To address this, Crow created a calendar where each executive was assigned a month or a few weeks to post an article on a topic they felt was relevant to the hospitality industry or of interest to the team. For example, she recently wrote about the importance of taking breaks during the workday, as it was a relevant topic during the busy budget season.

Crow also appointed "Jostle champions" at each property, who were responsible for posting updates about new hires or other team changes on behalf of their property.

Contests, such as encouraging staff to upload profile pictures and bios for a chance to win prizes, created a sense of ownership on the platform. These efforts significantly increased engagement and participation.

Spread the news

Before using Jostle, updates were shared via the company newsletter. The problem was that it didn’t feel very interactive. You were either the writer or the reader, and there was no real way of engaging with the content. Azul wanted a way of sharing information that brought people together and built a sense of community.

Now, they use News to share articles and important updates with their employees. Whenever an employee writes a story (like Crow’s on the importance of taking breaks), it’s shared with people through the news feed.

News is also where the company welcomes new employees, announces new properties, and hosts competitions.

By publishing articles through News, employees can like and comment on everything. This gives them an opportunity to visit Jostle regularly, get to know each other better, and strengthen their sense of community within the organization.

Visit the library

Jostle’s Library feature provides a centralized, intuitive space where everything employees need is easy to find.

This feature has been particularly impactful for Azul’s geographically dispersed workforce. With properties spread across the U.S., it was essential to implement a system that supported effortless document management and retrieval.

The Library ensures that all employees have access to important documents, like budget templates, without wasting time searching for them in their company's cloud based platform, Egnyte. It’s just right there for them to retrieve.

Results

Since using Jostle, Azul has seen their organization grow into a community. Over recent months, employee engagement jumped from a 28-day average of 45% to 75%.

Thanks to the activities and challenges Crow runs through the Jostle platform, employees feel more connected to their colleagues across properties.

By providing tools that enabled creativity and community-building, Jostle became more than a communication platform for Azul—it became a vital part of the company’s culture. Employee engagement increased dramatically, and the organization experienced a stronger sense of cohesion and collaboration.