Edwardian Hotels' VP on Tech's Role Ultra Luxury
I, in principle, believe that check-in and check out are the biggest issues of hospitality. I believe that we should try to replace check-in with welcome and check out with farewell. Check-in needs to be experiential. And at the moment, I believe that check-in is there because some information is missing.
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:On this episode, we chat with Chris Lesinski, who heads up the service operations vertical at Edwardian Hotels. This hotel group owns and operates 3 luxury hotels in London, including the iconic Mayfair. You're wondering how to strike the right balance between technology and automation, especially in the luxury space, you'll want to listen to this one. Great to have you on the podcast, Chris. Would love for you to kick it off with a little intro about your company, your role, and what you've been doing with technology, in short, before we get into the rest of the questions.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and good afternoon, Adrian. And good afternoon to all of the listeners of Hotel Tech Report. Thank you for having me on the podcast. It's great to be here. So about myself and my company, I am a part of Edwardian Hotels London.
Speaker 1:We are a privately owned London based company that owns and operates 3 5 star luxury hotels. That's the Londoner Hotel, which is a part of Preferred Legend Collection. And then we also operate and own the famous Mayfair, which is a part of Radisson Collection, as well as the destination Northern Hotel, which is the Edwardian Manchester, also a part of Radisson collection. And my role is to head service operations for the Edwardian Hotels London. My role reports directly to the board and to the CEO of the business, essentially is responsible for aligning tools, process, as well as the tech element together to provide the ultimate support to the commercial strategy.
Speaker 1:The ultimate goal of what I do in terms of customer experience, in terms of brand standards, is to retain, repeat, and maximize any potential revenue opportunities coming specifically from the room business. I like to think that the commercial teams always have the upper hand on operations as they are the ones who strategically set directions financially and commercially for the organization. And my role is to underpin all of these efforts and bring in strategies, bring in systems, technologies, structures to be able to deliver on all of these expectations. Kind of get it done role in a very, very simple terms. Hope that that explains more or less what this is about.
Speaker 3:Can you tell me just a little bit more about your properties? Who's your target guest? You mentioned that they are high end properties. Do you have food and beverage or spa or other outlets as part of the operations there?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Within the Radisson Hotel group portfolio, we operate the collection of kitchen restaurants. At at Wood in Manchester, we have the renowned Peter Street Kitchen, which recently won the best luxury restaurant in 2024 in the United Kingdom, and it has received a lot of prestigious accolades over the last few years. With regards to the Mayfair, we have just relaunched the famous Mayfair Bar, giving it a new look focusing on travel inspired collection of crafted cocktails and foods from all around the world. The Londoner is the 1st super boutique as we like to call it, which is immense in its size, but very intimate in its feel.
Speaker 1:Here at the Londoner, we actually offer 6 independent food and beverage outlets, including of the rooftop bar, as well as French Mediterranean restaurants. We have a lovely pub, and we have also an incredible afternoon tea led concept within our public areas. Our luxury hotels always focus a lot on creating that ground floor experience to our guests. So not only can they enjoy our beautiful bedrooms, but also enhance their experience by using our spas. Each of the hotels has a beautiful spa.
Speaker 1:Up at Wood in Manchester, we have the spa and gym, which is very much a destination with a beautiful swimming pool. The Mayfair has got a great spa. And at the Londoner, we have the great retreat with the swimming pool, treatment rooms, barbershop, nail salon, hair and makeup, as well as an incredible gym open 24 hours to our guests. So the hotels really offer a great variety of services, facilities, and amenities, and each of them respond well to the market that they are located. Mayfair, being in the heart of one of the most affluent areas of the city, has really been one of the most famous destination hotels over the last decades.
Speaker 1:Mayfair was opened in the thirties by the king himself. We are the only hotel that has been opened by monarchy. And over the years, it has gone through different ownership, and currently, it sits with us. We are very much an owner of the Mayfair here in London. At Woolley Manchester, Manchester has become an incredibly important market to the UK economy and to the UK travel industry overall from being, so to speak, a treasury market.
Speaker 1:It has moved right into the top, taking its well deserved home when it comes to culture. Not to forget about football. As we know, we have the 2 very famous Manchester City and Manchester United. Well, Man United are not playing the best football at the moment anyway. But nevertheless, Manchester is very much a football led city with a lot of culture, a lot of entertainment coming to the city.
Speaker 1:They've just opened one of the largest indoor venues, the o two, which I think has got the capacity of 24,000 for concerts. And so all of the hotels being centrally located give an incredible base for leisure, business, conference guests alike, as well as our patrons, as well as our diners who just come and enjoy our concerts.
Speaker 3:What would you consider to be your most critical technology partner? Which piece of software would you say is at the core?
Speaker 1:I think that each of our verticals, each of our disciplines would probably consider different type of technology. So if we were to look at the commercial side of the business, which I am not directly responsible for, then probably my commercial director would say partnerships as well as distribution channels, as well as distribution platforms, as well as revenue management systems. We work with IDeas, RMS. We have a great relationship with TravelClick. And, of course, we have very close relationship with Radisson Hotel Group who use their own homemade system called Amber.
Speaker 1:When it comes to operations as such, the key partners have always been for us property management system provider. We work with Oracle, and we work on Opera Cloud. And that has always been at the core of everything we do. Having said that, in the last 5 or 6 years, we have grown appetite to expand beyond that. And currently, our key partners are the likes of Salesforce who provide us with CRM solutions.
Speaker 1:We work with a company called Enghouse who provides us with digital contact center solution. So our contact center, our reservations, our customer experience runs on a digital contact center solution, which is great. We, of course, work with other partners, the likes of Mara, who help us with review responses using AI. We work with Shiji, who are a review pro provider, effectively feedback loop, allowing us to send and receive guest satisfaction surveys as well as allowing us to collate online reputation. We have, of course, great relationship with the likes of Microsoft, and we do need collaborative tools, very much Teams, SharePoint, allowing us to really enable remote working, enable collaborative working.
Speaker 1:And then then I think there are many, many, many more that we work with. There is an appetite for chatbot, of course, online check-in, the digital sphere. We work with a company called Houdini, who is our hotel app provider. And there are a million other systems, but probably in the name of keeping it to some sort of reasonable time frame, it's best to focus on the few that I've mentioned. But definitely the ones that create, in my humble opinion, the greatest opportunity is the connectivity between CRM, contact center, PMS.
Speaker 1:That is where the magic happens, really.
Speaker 3:Can you walk me through your guest journey and how technology plays a role in pre arrival, check-in, in stay, post checkout? Curious to learn how technology is there during each step.
Speaker 1:So I think the most important element is to distinguish that specific market segments would have different journeys. Let's say, if we are speaking about corporate markets, corporate travel management companies very frequently cannot share the initial information about the guests, nor can you get an email, nor can you get a phone number. So with regards to the corporate market, we very much rely on meeting those guests on arrival and knowing that they are likely to return. That would be the time when we start advertising the likes of our online check-in and our hotel apps, which allow you to digitize the key, view the bill, send an invoice essentially as a corporate booker. Once you have made the reservation, you can check-in online, get yourself into the room, digitize the key, enter the hotel without seeing the desk because you are here with us every week, and the best we can do is we've been expecting you.
Speaker 1:Anything we can do for you differently on this occasion. With regards to direct business, because that's, of course, what we really want to focus on, I think it's important that we recognize guests who decide to book with us directly through either membership scheme loyalty or by simply calling us or visiting our websites. Here, the technology plays a huge part in the customer journey with the growing costs of doing business, with the growing difficulties in acquiring workforce and our teams, it became quite clear that we need to aid that process with automations. So when the booking is made through either our direct website or through one of our affiliates, we then know that we can capture your email address. When the email address is captured, we would then send you a personalized email, although that's already taken by the CRM.
Speaker 1:So CRM is extracting the data from the PMS. CRM captures the data based on specific logic and flow that I don't entirely fully understand. I have a great team who do it for me. And then the flow would decide what email to send to whom. We can then open the case and essentially create a back and forth dialogue between us and the guest, allowing to personalize the interaction.
Speaker 1:As a result, by the time the guest comes into the hotel, we do have that full information. I, in principle, believe that check-in and checkout are the biggest issues of hospitality. I believe that we should try to replace check-in with welcome and check out with farewell. Check-in needs to be experiential. And at the moment, I believe that check-in is there because some information is missing.
Speaker 1:Check out is there because some information needs to be confirmed. But if we were to eliminate the concept of having to collect information, we would have so much more capacity to fully personalize your arrival experience. And rather than focusing on confirming your room type, confirming your full address, confirming your phone number, confirming your payment, We would rather focus on confirming what would you like to do at the hotel. Can I show you around? Can I maybe give you a tour of our incredible art collection we have?
Speaker 1:May I show you the spa? And I think that this is quite critical for hospitality moving forward. We have to be able to personalize. I mean, everyone is speaking about being bespoke. I think it's quite a big word to use bespoke, bespoke, bespoke.
Speaker 1:I think that we are aiming to be as as possible. So now that once you have received that email, we have collated all the information. Effectively welcome you to the hotel. When it comes to in house, customer journey using the technology, the element of getting to know you your guests, the element of gathering preferences coming from housekeeping team, food and beverage team, spa team, reception team, it needs to come to one single point of truth. It can't be distributed amongst different systems because it's very difficult then to keep control as to what type of information is kept well.
Speaker 1:Then, of course, PMS and CRM play quite a critical role here as we have 2 ended communication between the 2, and they can pass on information from one system to the other, which helps greatly. Essentially, very frequently, a lobby from desk team member needs to record information in Opera, but we would like this information to go into CRM without someone having to copying and pasting the information. And then that, of course, can be used for greater personalization. We know exactly what the guest likes, what they dislike, what time they arrive to the hotel, that they do not like to be disturbed from 4 PM to 6 PM. And as I said, I mean, we run large volume properties.
Speaker 1:Bayfest, 404 bedrooms, Manchester, 260 bedrooms, and London has 350 bedrooms. So, you know, if you have a boutique property with 50 bedrooms and 70 staff members up the reception, probably you would have enough time to do all the data entry and record everything manually. But I think that if you are running fast paced environments and you are looking for much greater efficiency and profitability of your business, that element of automating the process is quite quite critical. And then, of course, lastly, when it comes to departure process, we do record final information. We make sure that our invoicing details are correct.
Speaker 1:And then lastly, you would get a feedback form from us. We will keep in touch with you. We would ask you if you'd like to receive any offers from us, if you'd like to become a member of our loyalty programs. And as a result, we would like to lock you in as our guest so that next time you come back, you come back to me direct rather than through Booking dot com. And I think that's quite important to provide quite a holistic customer journey, but it's important that it needs to be divided by the focus that your specific hotel has.
Speaker 1:So we very frequently work with luxury programs, American Express, which we're very proud of, Virtuoso. We are providing service to guests on behalf of these incredible partners. So their customer journey has to be slightly different that we have to follow the specific expectations of these programs that we are a proud member of, which looks slightly different to how we deal with online travel agents guests where with Booking dotcom, you have the ability to correspond with guests via the extranet. And it's very important to provide satisfaction to these guests because they create our only reputation. You know, our Google scores, our Booking dot com scores come from our guests who still decide to book via Booking dot com, and we absolutely need to honor that.
Speaker 1:But we try to convert them to direct anyway, but it's important that we create journeys per specific focus point, in my opinion, commercially.
Speaker 3:I wanna double click into something you said about check-in and checkout versus welcome and farewell. I think sometimes there's a misconception about technology replacing the front desk agent, or technology means that you don't need a reservations department anymore because guests can just book online. Can you elaborate a bit more on how your reception teams are very much still present? They're using technology, but it sounds like they don't need to collect very many of those administrative details, and they can instead focus on building a relationship with guests. How does technology enable that sort of interaction?
Speaker 1:So first and foremost, whether the tech can replace a receptionist or not is quite debatable. It really depends on the type of business you are running. A self-service apartment where the entire customer journey is fully digital could argue and say that, actually, I do not need a person to interact with the customer journey because everything is automated. Everything is self-service. And, yeah, I really don't need people to get involved.
Speaker 1:I probably need someone to recharge my robot to go and clean. Probably that's the most. I strongly believe in 5 star luxury hospitality. The tech element still, so to speak, needs to play more of an invisible role. The majority of the tech we use is team facing.
Speaker 1:It is to support the team member, but we still want the team member, our partner, the travel agent, the Amex, the Virtuoso to be the hero. We still need the face, and we still believe that a luxury hospitality customer expects someone there, expects that someone to know, anticipate, almost like reading a weather forecast. It would be great if you knew what I needed before I even said what I needed without you being too inquisitive. It's good to be inquisitive, but don't be nosy. So it needs to be quite settled and balanced.
Speaker 1:The reality is that many of operational roles have changed. I mean, I remember few years ago where guest relation managers were responsible for delivering balloons and creating VIP lists and going out there to buy a box of chocolates or getting it from our pastry kitchen at the moment. Our guest relations team spend the vast majority of their time in the digital sphere responding to guest inquiries, dealing with customer relationship management, dealing with extranet messages. There is so much more that consumer behavior has changed in terms of acceptance of online and also very much depends on the geography. I mean, here in the UK, everything has become self-service.
Speaker 1:You can go to the most expensive supermarket out there, and you're still scanning your own cheese and wine. Right? And 5, 6 years ago, it would have been unthinkable if I go to Waitrose that I need to do it myself. And I also know that in other geographies, let's say, if I go to Austria to a 5 star hotel, there is no such thing as online check-in. You know?
Speaker 1:Obviously, they have it because they are branded and chain hotels, but the acceptance level of demographic is slightly different. So to answer that, yes, our team members still have admin duties to carry out. We still would like to receive as much information about our guests. Not every channel that we work with allows to seamlessly pass all of this information. Some of this information still needs to be gathered upon arrival.
Speaker 1:But I suppose that my team and I live by the rule that if we are to bring a process, if it is not automated, we are not bringing the process. So we absolutely it's almost like a mantra. We try to stay away from any new manual processes, whatever that is. Acquiring country of residence, acquiring passport details. It absolutely needs to be on some sort of automation level.
Speaker 1:And ideally with a high doses of API and connectivity between different systems.
Speaker 3:Going back to your tech stack, I'm curious if you have anything on your wish list for a system or a piece of software that you're interested in implementing?
Speaker 1:Well, definitely more automation coming into CRM. So we already use Salesforce and their Einstein technology to help us categorize incoming email traffic, turning it from email to case, from case into specific category, into specific priorities. So new reservation is highest priority followed by charge query. So all of it is done by Einstein effectively allowing the agents or our team members to stop filtering through cases, but actually focusing on responding to them. The next element that I would love to get is that semiautonomous, generative response that somehow feeds knowledge articles, the likes of life rates, the likes of life availability to go back to the agent and say, hi.
Speaker 1:Adrian just sent an email asking for a room request at at William Manchester from 14th to 16th December. Here is the response I prepared for you. And by the way, I have taken the members only raise because it seems that Adrian is a member. That would really help. I think that this type of airline simplicity of connecting your pre arrival journey with your online app, with the check-in process.
Speaker 1:Hospitality is trying its best. I think that we see we are much more dynamic. Airlines have that, I guess, fortune of having the arrival time at 2 hours before the flight. Airlines have that fortune of being in the position to expect some legal data, like passport details. You know?
Speaker 1:We have the policy data. We have the legal data. We have the personal data. So I guess that even greater focus on in terms of purely operations, on preempting all of these details. In terms of contact center, so voice, because we still get 1st share of booking coming from phone, which is quite interesting.
Speaker 1:Here, definitely quality management systems need to come into place. Every call is scored. Every call integrates to CRM where I can see the full voice persona of every guest. The moment you call in, your CRM profile comes out. I see your call history with an AI led summary of what you talked to me about last time.
Speaker 1:Voice coach telling or whispering in my ear, you're speaking too fast, you're speaking too slow, you forgot about this, or take it one step forward. The guest is becoming less confident. You might want to lower the offer. Because I know that these systems slowly start existing, especially with more advanced contact centers, and that would really help to bring greater holistic element to the journeys. Think that with AI think it's important that we bring an element of governance to AI.
Speaker 1:There needs to be some sort of inward facing governance of AI. Sooner or later, our guests will be looking for reassurance of ethicality of it, of what happens to their data. So at the moment, we don't feed any personal data at all through any AI system. If there is anything that we use in terms of AI, it is built by our partners. We do not use public GPTs of any sort at this stage because it's important for us to handle the information that we have with respect to our guests.
Speaker 1:So sooner or later, I think that we are going to start thinking of some sort of inward facing governance unit that actively asks us questions if that's the way or if that's not the way.
Speaker 3:That's interesting that you do receive so many phone inquiries. What share of your bookings would you say are made over the phone?
Speaker 1:I would say that the 3rd highest direct booking channel is phone. Website, followed by app, followed by phone, which is quite interesting. And that comes to about 5 to 6% of all of our reservations, which is quite vast given that the majority of the show comes from direct and online travel agents. I suppose that within that luxury market and within dealing with, let's say, luxury goods, very frequently, our guests would do a 3 60 research online, but would still pick up a phone to make the booking. I mean, I have found out everything about my iPhone 16 Pro online, but I still went to the shop to get it.
Speaker 1:I could have ordered online, but I still went to Apple Store in Regent Street and picked it up. And I think that at the moment, very frequently, given the incredible opportunity of choice given to the consumers, all you need to do is book yourself twice or 3 times with booking.com or Expedia. They will make you a genius member, and you have access to members only rates. Oh, and if you download their app, they'll give you additional 15% off, and I still have to pay 15% commission of it. So very frequently, you will see that the price match element is becoming more and more evident within hospitality industry.
Speaker 1:I'll be happy to price match you. Of course, we very much respect our relationship with online travel agents. I mean, Booking dotcom, we're a great partner. And as I said, and we do share an incredible relationship. But I think that more and more do our customers call to see if they can get a better deal from us or if they cannot get a better deal.
Speaker 1:And very frequently, people are still looking for that one stop shop. So I want to make a reservation, but also I want you to tell me how do I get the and can I book a spa treatment, and can I book a transfer? And, of course, we already see online platforms that give you that option to build the entire experience. But very frequently within the luxury market, people would like to have it done by a person. Ideally, a head concierge, you know, or someone of that provenance.
Speaker 1:It still matters more in my view for a concierge to give you a restaurant recommendation than for me to go on Google and do best restaurants near me. So the concierge will tell you, oh, I know Tom at the house desk. I will make sure, and I'll tell Tom to look after you. You know?
Speaker 3:How does technology help your teams deliver personalization? If the housekeeper wanted to leave an amenity in the room or deliver an amenity to the room or spa wanted to surprise and delight with the treatment that the guest had the previous stay. How is that information made available to the broader staff at your properties?
Speaker 1:Oh, they all have the license to access CRM. So we have enabled CRM to all of our staff members who are guest facing. I mean, it's not the cheapest system on the planet, but I think it's important for all the team members to have access to it. And the information needs to flow, and it always requires that single point of truth. And that's not only on the operational level, but I think it's important that that information is then made on commercial level, marketing level.
Speaker 1:You know, we still create a lot of b to c campaigns, b to b tech campaigns, and a lot of it comes from the very grassroots information that comes from our teams on the floors. And I think that, you know, using tech, we measure what type of amenities we send. Our housekeeping department decided to send a box of chocolates to your room. All they need to do is click the button on the CRM. Next time you stay, the CRM will bring that out showing the last time we send you a box of chocolates.
Speaker 1:Maybe this time you wanna send something else, you know, so that we don't overkill. We don't repeat ourselves too much. In terms of other ways of using tech to help our teams, I mean, again, this element of get to know you, bringing those preferences in, finding out more, reporting this information is quite crucial. All of our surveys, the moment you leave us the survey, the feedback from the survey goes back to the PMS. It goes back to the CRM.
Speaker 1:And if your score for the survey was under 7, the profile will automatically move to a specific VIP code, which is previous complaint. So, basically, next time you make a reservation, I can see that something was not right. So I can go to the PMS, click on the link. It would take me to the survey so I can read exactly what happened. So that we're trying to bring that continuity element and try to pass on the most critical information until it becomes useful, and we can use it.
Speaker 3:What would you say is the top business objective that you and your team focus on, and how does technology help you get there?
Speaker 1:Quality, efficiency, personalization. And as a result of the 3, driving profitability to the business. We have to provide quality service. We have to be able to assess, rediscover, reinvent what the quality is, and it's an ever evolving process. We can't just say that, 2025, we've got the customer journey.
Speaker 1:It's quality. It's not going to change. All of it needs to come with efficiency in mind. Of course, I would love to go back to my CFO and say, listen. I need another 30 staff members at the reception.
Speaker 1:You know? It ain't gonna happen. So we need to find ways. Happen. So we need to find ways to make our processes tools more efficient.
Speaker 1:And very frequently, we love to say in hospitality that as we are a hotel business, we put our guest at the center of everything we do. But very frequently, what you see is that it's the process that is at the center of everything we do, and then we're trying to build customer journey around it. An archetype of a hotel SOP, I always say, is hotel SOPs out there because someone made a mistake in the past, and we're just trying to cover for it by bringing a process in. I think it's very important that, of course, we have our regular SOPs, but I think it's important that when we build processes, they are built around the customer journey element and not the other way around. So we need to put all of our efforts to be nimble, to be elastic enough, to adjust everything that puts the guest at the center, but also brings an element of efficiency.
Speaker 1:Of course, it would be great for general manager to sit in front of their desk and send 45 emails a day to all direct bookers. But it is quite impossible because GM is a very busy role and they have other functions to fulfill. So we need to bring tech to help them out, essentially creating that element of efficiency. I think that as a result of that comes the element of personalization. I work for an operational department.
Speaker 1:And if we personalize both to our guests and our teams alike, we are much more likely to create loyalty membership. To me, they are 2 different things. Membership is quite transactional. Loyalty is how do you make me feel? And I think that especially with b to c market, it revolves around some level of emotional connection, sense of belonging, sense of value, sense of self expression, sense of safety, sense of being able to be myself and at ease if I am at your hotel.
Speaker 1:And I think that the moment we are able to create a positive emotional connection with our guests, that's when we start turning membership into loyalty. So the concept here is every time I travel to London, I want to stay in a 5 star hotel. You want to tell me to every time I travel to London, I only stay at the Londoner. Very rarely do you see consumers saying that I go on holiday to a hotel. We are just a background.
Speaker 1:We are a background to your experience, but I want you to say, every time I come to London, I go to the Londoner. And the question becomes, why? Because I am always recognized, because I am always well looked after, because Tom at the concierge knows my preferences inside out, and I don't have to ask 15 times. Because I have met the general manager and he was so nice. Or because Patricia at the reception always looks after my kids, you know, and all of it becomes with an emotional connection.
Speaker 1:And I think that's critical. And if we can do all these 3, then then I think that the commercial gain is a is a very pleasant side effect, you know, if I am more efficient than I am impacting my profitability. Direct bookers, guests who carry greater level of loyalty are more likely to spend more. Their length of stay becomes higher. Their average spend becomes higher.
Speaker 1:They are much happier to book higher room categories. And more importantly, when things go wrong, because things do go wrong in hotels, they are much more forgiving. In fact, we know that if you handle issues the right way, your guests are much more likely to become your regular guests as opposed to those who just had an average stay. You never quite recognized you could have done something better. So I think that these are the key elements that I that I truly have at the very, very heart of what I do.
Speaker 3:Well, that's a great note to end on. Thank you so much, Chris. Really great chatting with you.
Speaker 2:That's all for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Hotel Tech Insider produced by hoteltechreport.com. Our goal with 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 2:Do you 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.
