Bill LeGrand on Building the $1B Vai Resort's Tech Scratch from Scratch
The security applications, the facial recognition, the license plate recognition, the real time tracking that's available, even the ability to walk everyone through some kind of detector to make sure that we are truly a weapon free environment.
Speaker 2:From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider, a show about the future of hotels and the technology that powers them.
Speaker 3:Today, we're talking with Bill Legrand, the executive director of commercial applications at VIE Resort. Since Bill's remit is to build a guest centric tech stack from scratch, he offers some great advice on shopping for software, getting buy in from cross departmental stakeholders, and thinking through scalability. This is an episode you won't wanna miss. I like to start the conversation by getting to know you a little bit better. If you could please introduce yourself, let us know what you do in your current role, and if you can tell us a bit about your organization as well, that will help set the stage for our conversation.
Speaker 1:Sure. I'm Bill Legrand. I'm, executive director of commercial applications at Vi Resort. Vi is a brand new resort under construction in Glendale, Arizona. We are 1100 rooms, and one of the big features for us is an integrated 11,000 person music amphitheater that actually incorporates 1 of the hotel towers into the amphitheater.
Speaker 1:So the balcony on your room is actually your seat for the show. I've been in hospitality technology. I kinda fell into it in the early nineties, mostly on the technology side and have kinda bounced around between being a technology provider and a hotel consumer.
Speaker 3:When is the property slated to open?
Speaker 1:So as many construction projects go, we've had a few delays. Right now, our planned opening is q 4 2025. We have very vested ownership that really wants to get everything perfect. And so as we go through planning and construction, there's often some changes and, you know, usually an enhancement to further improve the guest experience. And so we're getting there about a year out, so it's getting real.
Speaker 3:That's exciting. Tell me a bit about the typical guest profile that the hotel will attract. Is it a 100% leisure or is there some sort of business or corporate component?
Speaker 1:We consider ourselves fun luxury with the music amphitheater built in. We have the first Mattel Adventure Park being as our anchor tenant, lagoon style pools, white sand beaches, but we also have a convention space. We also have the ability to activate different areas of the resort for different groups as well. So we see a pretty good mix of group business and leisure travelers. However, I think it's also you know, it's a question of getting the right groups into the resort.
Speaker 1:I think it's more again, your high end incentive groups and, you know, large companies that'll really like to bring larger groups here.
Speaker 3:Well, cool. Let's get into the meat and potatoes of the episode here. I'm really interested to learn more about your tech stack, especially given that you have the unique position where you're very thoughtfully building a tech stack from scratch. The property is not open yet. You're not having to migrate from a legacy system to something new.
Speaker 3:So walk me through the vendors you've selected and maybe some reasons why you chose this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's an incredible opportunity. When I joined the company, I just started selecting some applications. As the cornerstone of the whole system, we selected Oracle Hospitality and their Opera Cloud, PMS, and Symphony PLS. They have some great interoperability with their OHIP integration, and so I don't think we could select a better vendor for that to kinda be the core of the system.
Speaker 1:We have selected Salesforce and Happy Cloud as our kind of CRM and personalization platform. Again, very API forward. Happy Cloud does a great job of integrating all of the different selling sources into Salesforce, which allows us to build a 3 60 view of every customer and really understand, you know, what they're consuming and what other things we could be offering to them. We have selected website and booking engine providers as well. We went with eyesight as our web developer for our new website, and Intopia as our booking engine vendor.
Speaker 1:We spent a lot of time looking at this part of the stack. We considered CRS vendors for quite some time, but because we have some very unique requirements here being not only a resort but also a music venue. The selling process is very different. It was very important for us to be able to create a shopping cart that included, you know, all of the different amenities we have. But it was also very important for us to charge the credit card immediately.
Speaker 1:You know, as a music venue, typically music tickets, concert tickets are prepaid, nonrefundable. Gotta charge it right at that moment, and you don't wanna hold on to it if the credit card transaction doesn't go through. A lot of the infrastructure today with traditional central resin PMS, the transaction is passed to the property management system where the credit card transaction occurs. And if that fails, it creates, you know, a customer service issue. With rooms alone, maybe that's not as big of a concern.
Speaker 1:But when we have very limited concert space and very high demand, a very short window in which you sell the concert tickets. It's important for us to get that immediate financial transaction. And then because of the type of venue we are, we have concert ticketing, we have attraction, ticketing, and reservations for cabanas, daybeds, VIP areas. We're looking at mobile ordering. Way finding is also gonna be very important to us.
Speaker 1:We haven't found vendors for those, or we have found them. We haven't selected any yet. Yeah. That's kind of the platform. There are so many more pieces.
Speaker 1:Last count, I was just at the hospitality data conference or the hotel data conference and talking to some peers there. And for an independent hotel bringing up their own you know, or independent resort with so many features to bring up their own tech stack, we're looking in the neighborhood of a 150 to 200 applications. And when I heard that at first, I thought there's no way that's gotta be a joke. But I came back and looked at our list and actually looked at that little column in the spreadsheet that had the number, and it's getting up there. Maybe not all are required to to go live, but they're all kind of in the hopper.
Speaker 1:We're all, you know, considering the value of each application, what it brings to the customer experience, and what it brings us financially as well.
Speaker 3:Can you talk to me a bit about how you envision many of these applications talking to each other? Like, certainly, the booking engine and the PQS need to be communicating. You know, how are you thinking of that with the broader ecosystem?
Speaker 1:Yeah. For all of our integrations, we are trying to avoid any kind of manual connectivity. So APIs are extremely important to us. I don't think there is any vendor that we have selected that does not have a real time API capability. I take that back.
Speaker 1:There are a few financial systems that still like to write files out and transfer them and import them, and that's just impossible to get away from today. But every single one so every system that we have that holds inventory and sells product will be connected back to our Salesforce instance via Happy. So from an itinerary perspective, from just a guest experience perspective from Salesforce and Happy will know every single thing that that guest has booked. Optimally, we will connect in their social media feeds so we can see when they mention us. We will connect in our surveys.
Speaker 1:Any guest questionnaire that goes out will all feed into there. And so from a guest perspective, we'll know exactly what they're doing. We'll based on what they've already selected, we'll be able to look at through the APIs, look at what else is available for them, what is appropriate, and really offer the next best thing that they may want to take advantage of that's also available. You know, we don't wanna present things that may not be available. So that connectivity is super important for us.
Speaker 1:We're also talking about way finding. And there's a huge opportunity in way finding to take that kind of to the next step as well through a lot of these integrations. Getting into VR, you know, is a possibility. And I'm not talking about VR where you strap on the goggles and you walk into walls. But, you know, the ability to give an immersive experience to someone on their phone when they're on property, and give them directions to where they're going, and have as you walk by the pizza slice place, guy pops out and says, we're having a special on pizza today.
Speaker 1:You wanna come in for a slice? That kind of stuff. All of that integration really enables this kind of just amazing immersive experience that we're really after. I don't know if we'll get there, you know, by opening day, but that's kind of our goal. And in order to do that, all the systems need to be talking to each other.
Speaker 3:What is on your wish list? Is there 1 or 2 systems that you are really excited about, maybe implementing in the future?
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what has been a real challenge for us is wristbands. Interestingly enough, trying to implement a solution that works across several of the systems we have. You know, we want kinda that magic band experience, and it's not so easy to put together.
Speaker 3:A wristband where guests could pay and open their door.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Exactly. There's a lot of complexity in that. You know, not everybody talks the same. It's not all RFID.
Speaker 1:It's not all NFC. It's, you know, really trying to do that. You know, we're a water resort too. So and we're cashless. So they're not gonna necessarily have their phone with them to do their Apple Pay.
Speaker 1:They're not gonna, you know, have their credit card in their pocket. Whatever they could. But we need to find some unique ways to take payment to just simplify the whole process for them. Additionally, when you have a hotel tower that's also a music venue, things get interesting when you get close to concerts because the access control changes quite a bit. The guests with stage facing rooms are limited to the number of guests they can have in there.
Speaker 1:And so we're gonna have to kinda become more of a all inclusive experience when it comes to, you know, security when we're getting close to concerts. And I imagine that's gonna have to adapt quite a bit as people figure out new ways to pack their rooms or who knows. Another area I think that's very and maybe it's not so new, but it's mostly new to me is the security applications. The facial recognition, the license plate recognition, the real time tracking that's available. Even the ability to walk everyone through some kind of detector to make sure that we are truly a weapon free environment.
Speaker 1:We intend to roll everyone's luggage, you know, through x rays or other types of scanners. So part of it is also creating a very safe environment. Our security people are incredible and just what they have planned, you know, monitoring social media before events. There's just a lot to it, a lot more than I ever understood. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then I guess the other thing that's really interesting was the list that I got before going to high-tech from all of the different leaders in the company. Selecting all of these applications takes way more than an IT team. And so every single application that we go through, select, consider, goes through a really detailed, you know, multi department review. Every single discipline has to identify their requirements of it, sign off on it. We do a very in-depth security risk assessment, which is actually an area that we found to be kind of interesting and an area that's probably not getting a whole lot of attention or doesn't get the attention it deserves.
Speaker 1:Our ownership group comes from a heavy civil construction. They done DOT contracts. So they have a very secure stance. Every vendor that we consider, we give, risk assessment, which reviews all of their cyber security, their certifications, PII, PCI compliance. And we found we've been disappointed by a lot of the responses we get in the industry.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting because a lot of vendors will tell us we work with the big brands. I won't name them, but, you know, they work with the h's. They work with the m. They work with all of them. And we find several of them.
Speaker 1:We have some serious concerns about their cybersecurity or about their limits of liability. You know, you look at a lot of the breaches that have occurred, and that's a heck of a lot more than 1 year's worth of fees paid to a vendor. And if you have a vendor that's responsible, has a breach, and takes you down, you know, takes your website down, takes your booking engine down, that could be a whole lot more than the limits that are in place. And I suggest everybody go look at that. I was on the selling side of this for many, many years.
Speaker 1:I get why limits of liability are in place to these vendors, but that's a real risk that people really have to consider.
Speaker 3:I wanna learn a little more about your shopping and comparison process as you've been looking at vendors over the past 2 years or so. Any words of wisdom or any best practices that you have when you're going from maybe you want a vendor that does x y z. How do you go from that initial ask all the way down to signing the contract and getting ready for implementation?
Speaker 1:Generally, we wanna see at least 2 or 3 vendors for any function that we're considering, any application that we're considering when that's possible. You know, we've established a pretty objective comparison process where we identify all of the key requirements, you know, prioritize those, kinda weight them, and then score each of the vendors against that. You know, it's objective it's as objective as the people scoring. So, you know, sometimes it doesn't ensure necessarily the best answer. We've had to go back a few times and make adjustments.
Speaker 1:When you get down to the details, things seem to change. At a high level, you can review products and think everything is just wonderful. And you get down and find out one detail that just blows it out of the water. So, yeah, there's no right way to do it. We've taken that process for some of our more detailed requirements.
Speaker 1:We've gone and actually created business requirements documents where we get into more detail. We try and kinda right size the process for the application. So, certainly, our central resin distribution, we spent many, many months going through that, modeling it. And then once we get through the business requirements and all the demos and the second level of demos and the third level of demos and to the level of detail where we feel good, you know, then we'll get into pricing. And again, that process can take a while.
Speaker 1:But I think we found everyone's pretty reasonable when it comes to negotiating that. Contract terms, like I said, when it comes to security, when it comes to limits of liability, that's another area. And that's actually something we pushed up to the front. That and our risk assessment. Just learning, you know, after going through a few of these and getting to the 3 yard line and finding an issue that's just a show stopper, you know, just wasted a lot of time for us and the vendor.
Speaker 1:So we've really tried to move that up front and really clear with our vendors that those are showstoppers, that we absolutely need to have that level of security. And so that's helped too. We have gone through this so many times. I think the group's used to it. You kinda get a groan when you come up with a new topic and start, you know, trying to do the reviews.
Speaker 1:And like I said, in some cases, we've become more casual about it if it's an area that, you know, we feel like we fully understand and it's not as complex. But some of these, we're still going back and just digging and digging and digging until we're really comfortable with the answers we have.
Speaker 3:You also mentioned including a cross functional group in the initial exploration. Do you include people from other departments in the demo process as well?
Speaker 1:Yeah. With most of these, typically, one of the departments is kind of the sponsor of the application. We typically try and involve any department that would touch that application anywhere along the path, or even if they don't touch it, but it impacts them in some way. So we bring in when we have them on board. Remember, we've been doing this for 2 years with a very skeleton staff, I guess, or very thin staff.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, we generally bring in our hotel operations team, you know, which is our VP of hotel ops, housekeeping, security. So we try and involve all that again depending on the topic. We have a f and d team, both operations and culinary that each have their own requirements as well. We have an entertainment team, which is, you know, because of our entertainment focus, the entertainment team is responsible for concerts, for on property events, and for some of the there's a crossover between them and the f and b in some cases. It's the entertainment venues also have f and b.
Speaker 1:Boy, we bring engineering hugely involved. They are a huge resource to us, mostly because they're very experienced, have, you know, real strong background. And so they're able to really step in in a lot of different areas, not just engineering. Our HR team as well have a lot of great hotel operations background, and certainly staffing is key for a lot of what we're doing. We are currently at 50 employees, and we will be growing to somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000, you know, in a year.
Speaker 1:Staffing is definitely at the forefront. What kind of training is required for each of the applications is very important. How it fits into our PCI compliance, just along with checking out everyone else that we hire, we also have to take care of our own house too. So it was challenging prior to having all of the disciplines on board. We had to make some decisions that we hoped were the right ones and that, you know, the people that came into those roles would be able to work with what we decided.
Speaker 1:Most cases, we've delayed decisions, you know, wherever we can till we get the right people in, the right teams. And we don't select systems for, you know, individuals, but their preferences are very important and the staff and the experience that they have with a lot of these products.
Speaker 3:I'm also curious how are you thinking about potentially adjusting your tech stack or making any changes necessary once you do have guests on-site or once you have the full scale of the staff on board as well. I imagine it's very different going through a test environment where you have maybe 50 employees or just some test reservations and no real guests. But I can imagine it'll be a very different experience when you do have a full house and a concert happening and all these other moving parts.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Absolutely. And that's been a big concern of ours is how does all this scale? With the 50 employees, we don't even have our property management system turned up yet. So scalability is a big concern in everything we review.
Speaker 1:Again, Oracle has got some of the largest properties in the world on their system, and so we we feel pretty comfortable in the scalability. But trust but verify is kind of our motto as well. And so we were talking about our concert venue and how different an environment that's gonna be from a point of sales perspective than the resort. You know, people sitting around their cabanas ordering drinks versus 5,000 people all hitting the merge, the bar, the whatever. We've gotta be able to just turn and burn, you know.
Speaker 1:So again, we've gotten back with our current vendors and, you know, and raised those concerns as we don't necessarily think of it in on the first place. But we intend to because we have so much runway also, we intend to do really heavy testing before we launch. We will bring up our PMS a good 9 months to a year before we open. We will simulate you know, we're gonna try and simulate testing. You know, again, with OHIP and with all these open APIs, we should be able to just pound these systems with transactions, you know, in a test environment, make sure they're functioning the way we want, and adjust where we need to.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that we will have problems, that we will have bottlenecks, and we will have to adjust. But right now, we've set up the infrastructure so that it's oversized. It's definitely we were not gonna take the risk of undersizing. Requirements increase every year, so we've been really aggressive with bandwidth, with all of our technology choices. I think that we have done and will continue to do the best we can to anticipate, you know, what we need to open.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, certainly, as we get closer, we're just praying for not too many of those surprises along the way, and, you know, we'll work through them.
Speaker 3:Shifting gears slightly, I'm curious to hear from your experience on this project and before you were working with Vi Resort. What would you consider 1 or 2 skills or characteristics that a hotelier should have in order to be successful in today's dynamic environment?
Speaker 1:I think what's really critical for hoteliers these days is really tech savvy and flexibility. I mean, being able to understand what the tech can bring. Not that it's just another expense, you know, for some shiny new object that these things really do enhance the guest experience. And it's either understanding that themselves are bringing in the right team to support the property when it comes to the technology. And probably the other key is really a guest centric environment that you really have to consider that every single thing that you bring into the environment, whether it be an application, a piece of hardware, some fancy, you know, palm reader, all has to really support the guest experience.
Speaker 1:You see a lot of guests walking around and kinda wondering why they'll see a piece of tech. It's kinda cool. They don't understand how or why to use it, and it's kinda lost. And it may have been a huge expense that is just lost on the guest.
Speaker 3:Have you selected a vendor for reputation management or collecting feedback from guests? How will you know how guests feel about all the tech you have in place?
Speaker 1:No. We have not selected that yet. It is certainly top of mind and very high priority for us. Both we're looking at guest experience on property, being able to survey them, not necessarily by sending formal surveys, but just check-in. We're looking at AI, econcierge, chat, whether, you know, omnichannel chat so that we can communicate with the guest through whatever channel they prefer.
Speaker 1:We are reputation managements, reviewing online profiles, reviewing comments, What I sometimes call the creepy stuff that our marketing guys say no. That's profiling. But that is super important to us. We've gone through a couple of rounds of review, and I think we probably have a couple more rounds ahead of us. There are a lot of vendors in the space.
Speaker 1:A lot of them partially crossover with each other, so it makes it kind of challenging for us. You know, you've got vendors that are CRM, reputation management survey, or some combination of those 3. There's a couple others I'm thinking of too. So finding the right mix. You know, with Oracle, we started with one for it to choke, and we've had to adjust that position because we found, you know, Oracle was a great and has been a great selection for us.
Speaker 1:But like I mentioned earlier, for our booking engine, for our website, we had very specific requirements and needed to find specialized vendors who could support that. So it's an interesting mix.
Speaker 3:Well, I have one last question, which is always a good one. Curious if there's anything that you believe about hotel technology or technology in general that you think your peers or competitors might disagree with?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Even my coworkers here. And it's not gonna be a big surprise, you know. AI is huge these days. There are many, many forms.
Speaker 1:And also, I mean, analytics. I I mean, those 2 things kinda merged into 1 as far as a lot of people, you know, people don't necessarily differentiate. There's been debate here. You know, we debate it all the time. Does luxury does it have a place in luxury in luxury resorts and in our environment?
Speaker 1:There are some really amazing things out there right now. The conversational voice AI that's available is really improved. You know, it's not that robotic voice that keeps asking you to repeat yourself over and over again. I mean, sometimes it is. There are certainly some of those out there, but I think the use of AI and increased use of analytics, I think, is I don't think anyone argues analytics, I guess.
Speaker 1:That's really the application of it maybe maybe getting into prescriptive analytics, you know, is another trying to anticipate what they want or send them in the path that you want them to go. You know, it's another questionable thing in the luxury market. But I think people want to be met where they are. I think that a lot of people prefer voice AI over actually talking to someone. They prefer sending a text message over walking up to the front desk, prefer remote check-in.
Speaker 1:So I started with AI, but it's really I think it's really redefining and and understanding what is acceptable in the luxury market and why we should embrace some of this technology. It doesn't mean that we're not servicing the customer. It's actually giving us more ability to more personally interact with the customer and not worry about all of the details behind the scenes. That's what the AI takes care of.
Speaker 3:Well, that was an awesome conversation. I really enjoyed learning about your pre opening experience. I wish you all the best in the next year as you get close to the actual opening.
Speaker 1:This is an incredible opportunity, and I appreciate it every every single day. That's
Speaker 3:all for today's episode. Thanks for listening
Speaker 2:to Hotel Tech Insider produced by hoteltechreport.com. Our goal of this podcast is to show you how the best in the business are leveraging technology to grow their properties and outperform the concept by using innovative digital tools and strategies. I encourage all of our listeners to go try at least one of these strategies or tools that you learned from today's episode. Successful digital transformation is all about consistent small experiments over a long period of time. So don't wait until tomorrow to try something new.
Speaker 3:Do you
Speaker 2:know a hotelier who would be great to feature on this show, or do you think that your story would bring a lot of value to our audience? Reach out to me directly on LinkedIn by searching for Jordan Hollander. For more episodes like this, follow Hotel Tech Insider on all major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.
