Hi, my name's Brendon Granger. I'm the technology concierge. Today I'm joined by Jordan Hollander from hotel tech report. Hey Jordan! How are you? I'm doing awesome, thanks for having me Brendon. Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure. As we're saying off camera, it's taken us a little while to coordinate a time, but I think it will be well worth it absolutely sending outlay's easy time zone wise once you figure it out. It's actually not too bad. It's a reasonable time here, it's not like 3 A.M on Sunday and
it's still really… which is good. I love what yourself and your brother Adam have done with a hotel tech report. I mean… and I'll get you to in a sec… I love the fact when looking at your site, you said, you created it to help, educate, engage, and advise hoteliers on technology, so that they can take advantage of it and it's very similar to the philosophy behind the Hotel Technology Concierge Series(T4H), where we try and help, educate hoteliers on technology. So,
tell us a little bit about the hotel tech report, Jordan. Yeah, totally. So, I think what we do is not so different from what you're doing for your hotel clients and I think, ultimately what we saw in the market is that there are not enough Hotel technology concierges in the world and that lots of hotels lack this kind of information and a steward to bring them an unbiased opinion about what solutions they should be using in the market. So, as a result of that they, kind of, we're very reactive in what we found in the early days of Hotel tech report, maybe PMS broke or maybe they lost a payment integration or a variety of other reasons, maybe it's just a sales person that a tech company reached out and they were beat reacting to that sales message. So, what we found was that hoteliers were not super proactive and how they were thinking about technology from a holistic perspective and it wasn't their fault. They just didn't have access to the right information tools and resources to start on that Journey because they're super busy handling guest needs and dealing with operations and reporting up to ownership and management groups. So, what we did is, we wanted to make it really easy for them to figure out what are the Solutions in the market for a specific query, what are users saying about those, what are their peers saying. So, obviously
you have hotels, a lot of hoteliers will rely on feedback from their peers, they go to local industry events if they have breakout meetings, lunch sessions with their local GMS for example, but we wanted to help hoteliers really get that information at scale. As software became a really globalized industry and so it's all tech report, the easiest way to describe what we do is we're Trip Advisor for hotel software, Hotel owners and managers and operators, come on our site, they write reviews about the products they use, they have a rigorous verification process to ensure that those reviews and that content is authentic and unbiased and it's not being influenced by vendor interference and then their peers come on our site and are able to see, well, when you close that deal that sales rep reached out to about what is the experience actually like and so everything that we do in our lives, whether we're booking a trip, or looking for a restaurant reservation, we're reading reviews and our mission with Hotel tech report is to bring the power of transparency, trust and Community to help Hotel Tech buyers who are, when you think about it the stakes of a hotel technology decision are way bigger than where you're going to eat lunch, and we spend hours reading about where we're going to eat lunch. So, when you think about potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, Australian over a multi-year period that you're locked in, and the opportunity, cost of other systems, this is a massive decision, this is like halfway to getting married and so you should have all the information, you need to make a great decision around that and that's what we provide. That's fantastic, and it's a great site I've read lots of your reports myself and you're
right, I will visit the site and there are PMS vendors that I'm unaware of that are very highly rated. It's a wonderful thing, and I think you're right, I've heard it said before we spend more time planning our holiday than we do our life and there's a great analogy that we spend more time planning lunch than we do our next property management system. Often... You just come, I see it hotels will just go out and start getting demonstrations from vendors, and then get pricing, and it's the vendors that they know that your site allows them to actually identify vendors that they're potentially aren't aware of, but get some feedback as well, narrow things down, it's a great site. Yeah! Absolutely! Jordan, the pandemic ,we've heard a lot about the pandemic exhilarating technology they say, I think, it was Mackenzie that said we've progressed at least seven years.
I know, the hotel industries progressed. Do you think we've had the same push as far as technology goes, as the pandemic progressed us 10 years, for example? Yeah, great question. So, I think there's, what..., like the first thing that we do when we look at the progress of technology is like
just looking at our own Google analytics data, and so just looking at that as a proxy for like demand for hotel software and so in March of 2020, I think, we had something like, I think, we had less than 40,000 monthly users on Hotel Airport, last month we had 245,000 month users. So, that's more than 500% growth in demand for hotel software using that data point as a proxy, and so like anecdotally when we dig into why that is, I mean, I think, it's pretty clear that wherever you looked in the hotel organization you're looking at teams being scaled back and we're still having kind of Labor shortage challenges. So, what can you really do if..., and remember these guests are paying multiples of what they were paying before the pandemic. So, I guess we're paying more than ever and the teams have less staff to service them. So, what can a hotelier do, you can try to ship things around operationally, you can try and figure out more efficient routes for your housekeepers. There's all these things that you could try to do operationally, but ultimately the real lever that you can pull to become more efficient and actually understand what's the difference between this operational strategy and that operational strategy is "technology", and so, whether that's team collaboration tools to help staff members multitask better, whether that's more automated Revenue Management Systems9RMS) to help with dynamic pricing in real time based on new market data and future demand data all across the organization. It's
about getting more efficient, even when you look at sales organizations, obviously business travel has kind of fallen off and it's still not really where it was before the pandemic, but there's all these other types of group travel that have picked up like family reunions of people who want to reconnect after the pandemic, or small breakout meetings if a company has a headquarters in a city but no one's going into the office and they want to incentivize people to connect with each other, or do team building activities, or brainstorming, they'll often go to hotels for an off-site. So, when you look at legacy sales processes of like, oh! We have JP Morgan come in every single year at this time and it's the same group, well, when that changes you need to be really efficient in the sales software that you use to figure out, how am I going to change my prospecting strategies? How am I going to go after... instead of companies that are visiting San Francisco, how do I go out to the companies in San Francisco? So, technology is really the only tool that hoteliers have, or really anyone in any type of business when you're short staffed to become more efficient and increase productivity. Yeah, fantastic. There are some great points there, Jordan. I think you're right. Staffing shortages are a real issue and unfortunately, I don't see them that going away anytime soon. I think, we need to leverage technology, you're right. The market has changed,
we see it here in Australia, whether rightly or wrongly somebody was suggesting yesterday. Perhaps we kept our borders closed a little bit too long, our International visitors are not back, corporates are not yet traveling in the numbers. I think, I was listening to something yesterday that said it'll be 2026 before we get back to that 1.5 trillion dollar value from business travel, and technology, I think, has got to help us pick up the slack to deliver the service, as you said, rates... certainly here in Australia and US as well, are above what they were in 2019. Although, obviously occupancy is down but things are good, and guest expectations are extremely high as well.
Absolutely! So, what is the number one piece of technology in your mind that perhaps a hotel should be looking at to help? Yeah, I think it really depends on the hotel, the market segment, the region, there's obviously a lot of variables that come into it. I think, it's all about figuring out where your bottlenecks are, so like, for example, if we're talking about a luxury resort in the Maldives, we're probably going to be talking about a different solution than a budget hotel in Northern California, and so one of the tools that I think is really interesting and compelling from the luxury side is a company called "self-book" and the reason that I think self-book is so interesting, I'm not sure if you've heard of them, but basically they've built this graphical user interface overlaid onto some of the legacy booking engine and CRS software and it allows this modern booking experience that feels like you're booking a hotel that feels the same way that you're paying for goods on a Shopify platform and so it increases conversion rate for hotels, it streamlines the payment flows by having mobile wallets, accepted local payment methods, and it really helps hotels capture more demand in their market and Market their services. So, it breaks that competitive advantage as well as increasing the conversion rate on the website and ultimately when you can increase in conversion rate on your website you could spend more on ad dollars because those ad dollars are driving more profitability and so I think that's like one really interesting tool there's a bunch but I think ultimately when we think about technology unfortunately there's a lot of cool stuff out there that we... that I know we'll talk about later in this, but the property management system is the ultimate place that every hotelier has to look. You have to think about, is my property management system
innovating building new features? Does it have an easy user interface when I turn over new staff? Does it have the Integrations that I need? What's the payments infrastructure look like, and so thinking about your property management system as like before I go to level two, I'm like what are all these kind of really cool tools that I could add to make my hotel more efficient? You're going to get bottlenecks if you don't have the right property management system as the core of that tech stack. So, that's always where we recommend starting, and so once a hotel has a really effective property management system, let's say that they're using Muse, for example, they'll know all the different Integrations that are available from views and then we can start picking the ones that are going to drive their business goals. But ultimately for us it's less, we really want to encourage hoteliers to be proactive instead of reactive about their technology and so rather thinking about something that, oh! We heard this hotel that's just down the street. We want them to always... we encourage our audience to always start with what are the business problems, or opportunities that we want to go after this quarter and then fill out, fill in the technology that can meet those. So, if you want to drive more ancillary revenue, you might be
looking at a mobile ordering solution like Samba who I know you work with, or you might be looking at upselling software like Canary, or Okie, and so it really depends on like what are your business goals and for each hotelier within the hotel it's also going to vary. So, it really depends on who is the Persona? What are their specific goals that they're driving towards? And then aligning the technology around those goals. That's a fantastic answer. I love the fact as you said the PMS is still the core and you need to make sure that you've got a strong PMS these days it probably should be cloud-based to give you maximum flexibility. The point about usability is a great one because with the turnover we're seeing, you want your staff to be able to come in and pick that system up as quickly as possible, potentially by watching a couple of videos rather than having to go through a formal training session with your vendor. I hate to say, I worked for PMS vending
years ago and I started in the installation section and I'd spend nine hours a day training people on how to use the PMS, so it's that complex back then. The world has changed a lot, it's like, I always say, it's like you don't need... you don't need a training session for an iPhone and that's where all design should ultimately leave. I was in the Apple store the other day and they were doing a tutorial on how to take pictures which was interesting, but you shouldn't need that. They're probably some tips and tricks to taking better pictures, I think, the cameras on phones have become so complex, now there are so many things you can turn off and on, and delayed timing, and night mode. It can be confusing actually. Totally! So, you're absolutely right, and I think,
the same thing goes for like a PMS, like it needs to be easy enough to pick up and be intuitive for the staff who's turning over we obviously are in an industry where there's a lot of Staff turned over and now more than ever, and so it needs to be easy enough for someone to pick up as an elementary user or an introductory user, but then what that also allows is every other user to skip past level one and start focusing on more advanced Integrations, workflows, maybe it's like figuring out how to credit Saba orders onto the folio, so that no charge is made, or maybe it's taking Apple payments adding it to the folio and deducting it so like what are the things that are going to make a more frictionless guest experience and provide better data to the hotel to make better decisions, and so it allows those Elementary users to get into the funnel and use the software without needing training but then it allows the advanced users to really go to those PMS companies and develop more advanced workflows and automations. Yeah, that's a great point. Jordan, it's being said a lot that the hotel industry lags behind from a technology point of view. I think, it was Max that highlighted, McKinsey said that we rate just above hunting, in our use of technology. So, we're at that bottom of the list. Why do you think it is that we lag behind?
Yeah, I think it always breaks down, I think, this kind of dovetails from our last question, in hospitality you have multiple users or user personas of a product. So, the example that I'll give is like a revenue management professional is not using the same tools as a marketer, as not using the same tools as someone in Ops and now there's more overlays and Integrations between those but you have multiple users that... and so there's this operational complexity. Even within operations you have, let's say 50 users using a tool, and let’s say its hotel kit, or Alice for team collaboration. You could have 50 users, 100 users at a property using this so it makes it really challenging to test new things because you then have to get 100 users tracked... trained onto this new workflow. Whereas, if you look at e-commerce, for example, maybe you have a marketing manager at a 10 million dollar revenue, denim company they're gonna sign up with a new Google ads optimization tool and they can try that themselves. Whereas, in hotels, many of these
tools rely on multiple stakeholders. So, it makes it really hard to try, test, iterate. So, the decisions, kind of, get slowed down and I think that leads to a less rapid evolution in terms of those technologies, and it obviously makes it harder for the vendors to try some of those new things. So, I think that's one component... that's not really anyone's fault. It's just kind of a characteristic of the business. Yeah! I think, all in terms of complexity,
like you also look at distribution. So, if you look at kind of the big banks, travel agencies, the direct bookings, the OTAs, there's so many just different distribution players that all have different payment methodologies, different transaction flows, different payment terms, and so everything in the booking flow becomes more complex. So, it's like just to be able to provide a new innovation like self-book, you now need all of these integrations to be able to work just to sit at the table and so there's less self-books that are able to come to market and obviously that means that the ones who do come to market are well resourced and they're getting some nice traction which is great, and then the last piece, I think, is like high turnover. So, when you have a hoteliers that are leaving a property one foot out the door heading to the next one, it's harder for them to stick around and try a new initiative and so, I think, like a higher turnover industry traditionally has more trouble investing in technology. We see it in our own business, if we're in the sales process with a prospective client on the software side and we're in it for three months and then the marketer or whoever it is, if it's a stakeholder leaves the company, it kind of puts that decision on ice, now we have to go figure out who's the next stakeholder. I think a lot of these software companies are dealing with something very similar where it's kind of like you're building these relationships over a long term, but you might have a bit of a revolving door in certain properties, or markets, or segments, and so it makes it really hard to deploy that new technology and ultimately the hotels are the ones that get hurt because nobody wants to make that decision and be the one who's responsible for it if there's no real long-term skin in the game for them on the other side. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I've never heard that
last piece mention that turnover has an impact, but it does. I mean, you're right. Some of the sales cycles are a year, or so and I think that turnover is only being heightened as a result of post-pandemic changes I can think of a couple of companies that I've been dealing with that literally on a Friday you are talking to somebody and then the following Friday they're no longer at the company, and you're right, you're starting from scratch again and doing that education piece potentially because what we see they're short, sometimes there's not even a handover. So, you are literally starting from scratch and having a complete brand new conversation with that person about the particular technology and how it could benefit from them which does make it really difficult. Totally, and again, I think, it's really not the fault of those employees. I mean, I think when you look at hotel groups, there's a super high correlation between how employers treat their teams and their people in terms of those hotel brands that have really great relationships with their teams and innovation and their ability to make long-term progress towards more efficiency, better results. It's because those employees feel ownership in the business, they're presumably paid better than at other groups and they feel like a real kind of... they feel this owner mentality that you don't feel if you're kind of getting minimum wage, and like you just came in and you're doing the basics and your owner treats you like crap and it's all about that employee and owner relationship and this isn't unique to hotels, any business that's able to empower its team to compensate them fairly and provide them the bandwidth to take risks and take a long-term view are going to innovate much faster than a company that is risk averse preach their team poorly and underpays them you're just going to find that kind of revolving door. I think, as an industry it's our responsibility to compensate better to treat our
people better and to give them the ability to take strategic risks, obviously within reason that had a long-term focus instead of strictly that kind of short-termism. Yeah! That's a great point. Yeah, I think, as an industry we have to do some work. Unfortunately, you've probably heard entry into hospitality courses, our future management numbers are down as a profession. We're, sort of,
not in favor anymore and I think we need to change that, we need to somehow rekindle the fact that hospitality can be a career and it can be a great one. It gives you so many opportunities to travel if you wish to do that, so... Absolutely! Good point. Jordan, we talked about obviously lots of different systems in hotels and interfaces have always been an issue. I think, we're making some progress. What are your thoughts? I mean, are we getting better at interfacing between systems? Yeah. I think, undeniably we're getting better, I mean, I think you look at legacy players like
oracles advancements or cordeck. I think, protel and SMT and building their App Store interface, and... that we power all the reviews and protel's App Store as an example. I think that you see the Legacy companies that are really taking incentive in this like we even hear from competitors of some of those companies commending them on the moves they're making just because it's better for the industry. Then you also have third-party integration tools happy as being kind of the gold standard in integrations, where it's basically like if a vendor doesn't have a dedicated build onto a PMS API, happy has a universal API that the vendor could build to and get specific data points from those vendors in a secure way. So, I think both like internally at the companies and externally and then the kind of newer like next-gen companies like amuse and just API from APIs have been a focus from day one, and making sure that their App Store ecosystem is healthy and that people can develop new solutions on top of theirs. I think, some of those newer players have started with that mentality and not at the cross ship Legacy technology that they have to evolve from, but that's all natural course of evolution and technology, and I think some of the leading players like Oracle have done a great job of really putting that into focus, shining a light on the integrations program and really kind of stepping things up to the next level in the last, even like 12 to 18 months. That's a great point. Yeah, I think, it's always going to be a bit of
challenge but you're right, people like Muse have done a great job in encouraging the industry. I suppose, setting the gold standard really. Particularly, if you're a muse customer and you want to try something, it's quick and easy to actually try a new product without any costs involved, or time. Right. That's often an issue we see with some of the systems. Yeah, I think,
the one area where we still lag a bit is the user interface around Integrations. So, like the example for a kind of like broader software the gold standard would be zapier. So, zapier allows you to basically, without being a developer, you can connect tools and set up dedicated workloads and I think, our industry has a ways to go in terms of building out those templates, or those menu items if you will, to say, okay, when a guest checks in on Muse, I want this to happen in Oaky, that then triggers this promotion on a sweet pad tablet, and so it's like, I think there's still not the graphical user interfaces and templates built out which makes those Integrations more rigid, and by making it more rigid, it means that there's a less ability of the hotel leaders to be creative and the kinds of things that they're testing, and so I think in this next five years, it seems like the wiring and the infrastructure is there now. I'd love to see companies in their partnerships starting to get more creative around visualizing, and giving options to hoteliers around what different workflows they want to see between those tools. Yeah, okay. That is a great
point. Yeah, it's something a tool like zapier for the hotel industry would be fantastic. Jordan, voice assistants! They were popular at high tech, I think in 2017, 2018, probably a year or so after they came out on the market. I have got my thoughts and I've got an article coming out actually next week, but I just wanted to get your thoughts. Do you think guests are ready for them? Are guests expecting voice assistance in the room? And, is there any benefit, and ROI? So, I think, when you go to like the Vegas properties here in the US, you're starting to see them more my personal opinion. I mean, it's clear that voice is taking a larger and larger share of search. I'm not... like personally I'm a little bit biased. I'm not like a big Siri guy. I haven't really adopted voice myself in a major way. So, personally when I go to a hotel and I was,
as I try to think about that exact question before I try to think about like... so to be totally honest, I unplugged the device when I get to the hotel for privacy reasons. Yeah! And, I'm not one of those people who’s like a freak about privacy and I need all my data... I actually don't care if as long as I'm getting enough value out of something, I am totally happy to give up my privacy. I have nothing really to hide and... So what when it comes to like Google, for example, they're providing me Google Docs, Gmail. I don't mind them having access to all my data. Those are such valuable tools to me, and I think when it comes to voice, the account regulation just isn't there yet, like I would almost rather text or use like a web app to order a hamburger at the hotel then like talk to Alexa, or Siri, or whoever... whoever's a voice assistant. So,
for me personally it's just that calculation of okay, well, if there is a company listening to my conversation. I know it's highly improbable. In the hotel, am I getting enough value from this for it to make sense and the answer is probably not yet, but I could see a world in the future where it does get more efficient and it's more integrated into all the different IOT systems, but then there's also the component of, kind of, like picking up all the commands within a hotel. If you're using Siri you learn all the commands that you really need in a day and then you use it over and over and over again. When you get to the hotel like you don't invest... maybe you have like a little card that tells you what you should be saying to the device, but most of the time what I've done is like, it's like playing music but it's like not my music, it's kind of maybe... it's like maybe it's accent radio or something, and so yeah, the cost benefit analysis just hasn't penciled out and I think a lot of consumers probably feel the same way in terms of like not wanting to be listened to but again millions and millions of consumers maybe even billions at this point have smart speakers in their homes. So, I think it'll become more
and more natural for people, but I don't know if it's that much better than a web app, or a messaging system then it's really just a matter of preference. Yes, that's a really great point. I think, your point about convenience is a good one. I'm a Google avid user. There's Google just piped up actually… and I've actually signed up for a lot of the beta stuff and I have location services on, and every month Google gives me a report of how many kilometers I've flown, and driven, had in restaurants and I find it convenient. Even the other day, my daughter's learning to drive in here, in Australia. You have to clock up 120 hours, and it needs to be kept in a logbook and we were actually driving from Melbourne to Sydney and she forgot to write down what time he left a particular location, we're just looking Google history and it tells me you were here at 7:05 p.m. It's crazy and it's so accurate, but I think you're right, I was and I am, I'm a self-confessed geek. I won't say the word but I've got five of those devices here,
I've got lights connected, I've got lots of things connected, I love it. Yeah! But still it can be very frustrating technology and I think you need to learn how to use the technology, and guests when they get to a hotel, they don't have the time or the inclination. If you get to a hotel, and it's late and you want a burger or something you could easily pick up the phone, or you could just... as you said use a web-based app scanner code and have it delivered to you quickly and easily. So, it's that... where is the benefit from the guest point of view. I think
somebody even said to them, they might be right as we move to more of a bring your own device. Maybe in the future, it is your device and your voice assistant that you're happy with. Be it Siri, or Google or Bixby, for example, somehow that integrates with the hotel to give you a better experience. Yeah, absolutely! Going on than robots, we talk about robots and I suppose we
talk about AI because I know there's robots that are physical in nature like Rosie from maybot that are actually helping clean rooms by vacuuming function areas and then we've got robots that are actually doing keystrokes actually completing night audits behind the scenes as well. Where do you think they fit in? I suppose we can treat them as two separate things, the software-based robots as in that Ai and then potentially the physical robots. Where do you think they play a part and how long before you think we see them become relatively mainstream? Yeah! I mean, I think a lot of us watch the Tesla kind of consumer robot demo last week and it's clear that robots, I mean in that capacity are still pretty far off, and I think the hotel industry will be further off in consumer robots again just because we use them in our homes day to day and if they could provide that kind of convenience and value it's going to add so much more value at home than it would in a hotel environment. So, I think that kind of like futuristic robot concept to take time. To your point about keystrokes, I think robotic process automation is a huge value add. There's so many manual reports, exports, transfers of data between systems that can all
be automated, and are being automated, and so I think that's happening in a huge way. We’re seeing like... you probably saw actable. So, it's the combination of Alice, Transcendence, hotel effectiveness, and profit sort, and so they're basically taking the data from the input systems like a labor management system and correlating it with the data in a PML from profit sword and so now you can actually see how changes in labor are affecting your costs of labor on your PML in semi-real time and this is still early days but like that's something that a management company would have had a team of analyst trying to do in the past and those analysts would have spent most of their hours on data entry and standardization and cleaning and now that part's done and now they can get creative with that data and same things that we saw in the hedge fund world all does we have algorithmic trading so I think we're going to start seeing more kind of transfers of data and then also using machine learning and AI to understand that data better and recognize patterns that the human eye might not have recognized, and we may not even know why or have a hypothesis about what caused a certain change in the PML but the computers and artificial intelligence can tell us that. So, I think that's a huge area for improvement that the technology
is already there ready to go and now it's just applying it to this market. I think when it comes to kind of... I would say like dumb versions of the Tesla robot, so like the Robotics are really taking hold in repetitive highly labor-intensive environments. So, factories those kinds of factory
line environments, industrial settings where it's a really challenging work environment, really repetitive process and really taxing on the human body and so I think when you look at hotels one of the hardest jobs obviously is housekeeping but housekeeping requires so much nuance with different room types and different... every room is different, every room is in a different condition, every turn requires a different level of service, and so I think, it's still a ways off before we have a housekeeping robot that could really make a dent in that role. I think, like in general hospitality, I think that somewhere like a multi-location franchise business like McDonald's or Chipotle, those types of environments will be the first hospitality businesses to see more of that robotics coming into it because it's really like a factory line in the back of those restaurants, and so I think hotel restaurants are obviously mostly geared towards more of bespoke experiences and so it'll take a little longer but maybe dishwashing robots, obviously during the pandemic. We saw UV light robots that would kind of sanitize rooms. Not so sure how necessary that is, or was, but it's every hoteliers can make that decision for themselves, but I think those kinds of environments and specific use cases are where we'll see it in terms of like physical hardware robots. Yep! Behind the scenes, as you said dangerous, dirty and repetitive tasks. Yeah! Definitely. Jordan, what would be your three top technologies for 2023? Yeah, so I think, Self-book as I mentioned before is the company that is just we tried to invest in them and they close their initial round before we got in so I'm still a little bummed about that, but what they've done is just like building over the Legacy infrastructure and creating modern experiences without requiring hotels to rip out anything has been super impressive. I think,
the user interface design and conversion has been something that's been lacking in the hotel industry for a long time. So, it's really cool to see that they've been picking up some amazing hotel groups really quickly because of the value that they're providing and I think their roadmap looks really interesting coming forward, I can't talk too much about. I mentioned actable. So, that's the team at ASG where, for disclosure, I'm an advisor. So, I am a little bit biased but I think what they're doing, the reason that I said yes to those guys. I think, what they're doing
is really interesting and to the point earlier about Zapier for hotels and having those workflows and hoteliers can actually see and build those different connections between their tools and how they work. I think, what ASG is doing with actable is really interesting because they're connecting the inputs and outputs software and I think that's been the problem with a lot of data that we have in the hotel industry, is it's a vendor that's providing analytics and thousands of dashboards and then it's like okay, well what do we do with that? And, like if we don't... but now it's to the point where like someone at a hotel could say, well, what if we have our housekeepers skip every other floor and then let's just watch what happens to our housekeeping line on our PNL over the next three months and set up a test so I think really giving hoteliers the tools to like, make those strategic decisions or changes in their operations, and then track it into their actual business outcomes is really interesting. We're starting to do some work with stripe who's
like the Global Payments provider like the 100 billion dollar company from Ireland but what they're doing is a lot of our clients who are the hotel software companies like the channel managers and PMS's are built on stripe and stripe is providing them the ability. So, historically the way it would work is like a PMS would have to integrate with 14 different payments processors and each region would have two or three that the hoteliers could choose and then there would be a lack of coverage. So, it's like maybe a PMS wants to sell into Australia but now they don't have those Integrations yet. So, they're kind of like bottlenecks and can't serve that market and then Australia is missing out on this great new system. So, stripe basically does all the blocking and tackling for these tech companies, when it comes to payments. So, chargeback risk modeling,
alternative payment methods, global compliance and now it's like all these companies are able to just start building their software and deploying it globally, which is really cool and so we're seeing a lot more companies get on the wagon with that. The other cool thing is that stripe allows these companies to monetize their payments, so instead of paying a payments processor three percent and monetize their payments by the way, in a way that doesn't impact the hoteliers, there's no additional cost to them and the software companies are getting more resources. So, instead of payments processor getting three percent now vendor can choose a split with stripe based on negotiations. On the back end the hotelier still pays the same three percent are usually actually even lower but now the vendor is getting one percent of that and they're able to invest that back into R&D which ultimately builds more features for the hotelier without the hotelier paying for. So, it's like a win-win and that's something that we're seeing a lot of companies in the PMS and channel management space get into. I think, there's a company called Hierology out of
Chicago that does a full stack applicant tracking system and purpose-built hiring software for the hotel industry plus for multi-location. So, they do car dealerships and a couple other verticals as well but for restaurants and hotels. I think hotels have historically thought of HR, as this administrative function, it's like we're gonna put a sign on our glass window in the front of our hotel that says "we're hiring", I'm like, then we're going to have someone who signs up on all the hiring documents and make sure there's not sexual harassment, or all those other important things but then it's like there's no actual hiring strategy and I think we all know that like talent is the most important determinant of business success, and so I think a tool like pyrology can help hotels be more proactive about their hiring strategy. So, those are a few. There's a lot of cool stuff going on the market. Going back to your question about has the industry advanced? I mean, we're seeing tons of capital come into this market like never before, that's really why it's takes some of these advisor positions with private equity and Venture Capital firms trying to help them see the opportunity within the hospitality industry and bring more resources in so these companies can grow the ones that you and I both work with and we're seeing a ton of that we're seeing a lot of consolidation. So, smaller companies getting bolted into bigger companies
that can help them grow faster and deploy some really cool niche tools into a broader set of hotels. So, there's a lot of kind of musical chairs going into this but the pile is growing, hoteliers are getting smarter and there's just so much cool stuff going on in the industry right now. Wow! You're right. There is some really cool stuff there and I think, yeah, it's just going to benefit the industry. It's great. It's great to hear. Jordan, a personal question. If you could have anything printed on a t-shirt, what would that be? I mean, judging based on my t-shirt right now, I think, I probably wouldn't print anything. I'm like a plain shirt guy.
That's fine. I think... I like to keep it simple. Yeah, black t-shirts are just one of those key items that you can just pull out, and put on, and look good all the time. If I wasn't doing an interview then I'd... I actually have a whole bunch of these same shirts
and my daughter's like, oh my God! Like why don't you have something... Steve jobs, he's like full on a pair of jeans, and I've got like four of these shirts that are identical with a collar, and I just like them. They just, they're good. As we wrap up, any final thoughts or advice regarding technology that you'd love to give hoteliers. Yeah, I think it really all comes back to being proactive about how you think about technology, don't let a sales pitch persuade you. You should try something, don't do it because someone in the hotel next door is doing it, like those are all reasons why you might want to explore something and you get educated and we always encourage hoteliers, it's like constantly be getting demos, I mean, from Netflix CEO Reid Hastings would tell his employees to go out and constantly interview at other companies so they can know their worth and I think if you kind of like grab that into hotels it's obviously a very extreme kind of like way to think about employment but if you grab that into hotels, like if every hotelier should be trying new products every month and getting demos and building relationships with the software companies and that's how they're going to get educated on what's out there but when they think about decisions it shouldn't be based on those relationships, it shouldn't be based on any of that other stuff I mentioned. It should be based on what's their goal right now and then framing
everything around how do they meet that goal and maybe technology isn't the right solution to meet that goal in a specific case. I would argue that nine times out of ten technology is probably the solution but starting with the framework going towards a business goal, and operational goal solving a pain Point, fixing a gap, filling a gap, and then figuring out how technology... if technology is the right solution of how it plays into that. So, just really being about being proactive and not reactive in their strategies. Yeah, some great points. Yeah, technology, I would agree nine times out of 10 but it can't solve all problems. You're quite right and I
think your point about being proactive is an ideal one following things like hotel tech report is a good way for people to keep up to date with what's going on, obviously looking at guest complaints, looking at bottlenecks within their operation, and how they can streamline those. Totally. And, I interviewed Max Stuckiff a while ago, and he said we need a person within a hotel that he called it a technologist. They're not necessarily a geek but they're a person that can actually look at the operation and look at technology and work out how that technology can actually benefit the operation and I think that's a role that I see is lacking in hotels at the moment and even more. So, because, I think, as we started the shortage in labor at the moment means that everybody's got their sleeves rolled up and they are in the thick of it, and what I'm seeing is that a hoteliers from general manager write down a so busy obviously looking after the guests making sure that everything's perfect that they're not... to be honest, they don't have the chance to be proactive at this point in time. Totally, and I think it's the same with any management like you look at most public company CEOs and their whole job coming on is to make their job go away. So,
we should be able to be pulled out of the equation and the business should run efficiently without them and I think GM still just because of what a lot of these manual processes of the past are still forced to be super tactical and I think what we're going to see over time is an iteration of or evolution of what Max was saying in terms of I don't know if it's necessarily a digital role but I think as GMs can be less focused on day-to-day revenue management strategy because the tools are there less focused on, ad strategy and marketing budget because the tools are there less focused on sales because there's more visibility into that operation then they can start kind of disrupting themselves and start thinking about getting more proactive and thinking about the future instead of thinking about today and yesterday and how to handle those things. So, I think, it's really just kind of specialization optimization and automation and then that will free up the GM to almost look like a... in a tech company, a product manager, and the hotel is their product. Yeah, that's a great analogy. I love that. Jordan, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me Brendon, glad we can make this happen. Excellent! Thanks Jordan.
2022-10-19