Hansji's VP of Operations & Tech on Chain vs. Independent Hotel Tech
If we limit their Wi Fi, if we limit their television or having access to third party apps on the television, then we might be choosing for a customer that doesn't want that choice.
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 talked to Fred Brown, the vice president of operations at the Hans Chi Corporation. In our conversation, you'll see many examples of Fred's growth mindset and learn as you go attitude. You'll also want to hear how he teaches his on property staff to troubleshoot tech issues, how he boosted direct share with an innovative new software vendor, and how he learned from a costly mistake earlier in his career. I like to start these conversations by getting a sense for your background. I understand you have an extensive career in the industry.
Speaker 3:So walk me through how you went from my audit to where you are now.
Speaker 1:So first off, I was supposed to be a cop. This was not my calling, but it's turned out to be something, you know, one wonderful thing about hospitality is you don't need an education or background to move up. It is a self learning guided as you go career that anybody can achieve whatever they wanna do in hospitality. So that's the number one thing that people need to know about this particular career line that it is not specifically for people with this particular thing in their background. Most hotel general managers started out at either food service or front desk and they've moved up to running entire hotel or maybe even a cluster of hotels or even moving over to brand and running brand hotels.
Speaker 1:My journey started, I had a weekend job that I didn't wanna do anymore, and I said I could work in a hotel. And so I just put in an app at a whole bunch of hotels and no one called me. And I went back to one of the hotels. I'm like, hey, do you need me? I need the weekend job.
Speaker 1:And they hired me, and that was in 97. And I've worked for the same hotel company since then and worked my way up to vice president of operations and technology in this company.
Speaker 3:And what were some of the roles that you've held along the way?
Speaker 1:I went from weekend night auditor to general manager in about 6 months. They had a need. I had ambition, and I didn't know what I was doing for several years, but at least I, you know, did better than the person they had in that role prior to that. Then they started renovating hotels and that's where sort of my love was. I didn't really have a huge passion for being a general manager and dealing with the day to day guest side of things.
Speaker 1:I look at myself as a problem solver. Something happens, somebody needs help and I give them a solution for it. So they started renovating hotels and I got moved to San Diego and moved into a dumpy little motel that they sort of tore apart and put back together. I followed all of the trades around and sort of because the hotel was closed while I was there. So I learned electrical, I learned how to install phone systems, everything that the guys on the site were doing.
Speaker 1:I had nothing else to do. So I just sort of picked up from what they did and, you know, eventually we moved our office into a small office building and I installed the phone system because I had paid attention back then. So after that, we started managing hotels. So I've managed on the above property level, IHG, Marriott, Hilton, Descendant, Choice, Windham, Radisson. So I've had a lot of different brands that we've had over the years that I had to learn what the brand requirements were and help the general managers get their job done.
Speaker 1:And my role is basically to help them succeed. From there, then we started building hotels and we built a 20 story Marriott. By the way, my company is Hanji. We are a Anaheim based hotel company. The founder of our company started in 1974.
Speaker 1:In fact, our 50 year anniversary is in August of this year. So we're gearing up for quite a celebration on 50 years in Anaheim. And we are a destination company where we don't have to do the marketing to get people to come to our destination. We have to do the marketing to get people to come to our hotel because there are lots of hotels in Anaheim and everybody is trying to, you know, help that guest have that magical experience while they're here in Anaheim going to Disneyland. We've since changed our focus where we're now an outdoors company.
Speaker 1:So all of our new adventures are properties that are outside of national parks, gateways to the outdoors. We have 2 different brands that we're creating that are in house brands. 1 is a higher end, 1 is a more basic hotel. The higher end will be pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. We have 3 locations.
Speaker 1:One's outside of the north entrance to the Grand Canyon or the North Rim, one the west entrance to Glacier National Park, and one in the north entrance of Yosemite National Park. So that's a lot of fun but my role there with the new builds is to look at the plans, find out what sort of technology we need and how it's going to all come together including cabling, wireless technology, what type of technologies they're gonna use. We have one property that's a 180 acres. So, you know, how do we get our technology across the entire property and and make sure that we're not wasting money by having too much tech out there. And that's also another focus is we want people to disconnect, which sort of goes against what my job is.
Speaker 1:My job is to, you know, give them all the technology they can use. So I have to learn that balance of, you know, what's too much. Televisions are something that we've talked about not having television. So I did a little bit of research, and I found a couple of international resorts that started out with no TVs and their guests beat them to death, so they ended up having to put TVs in. So just thinking that we wanna be a company that has less technology, we need to make sure that meets the needs of our guests.
Speaker 1:So, you know, if we limit their Wi Fi, if we limit their television or having access to third party apps on the television, then we might be choosing for a customer that doesn't want that choice. So we need to walk that fine line of what's not too much and how do we keep our customer happy as well.
Speaker 3:So you've obviously worked with many different brands, many different types of hotels, urban, rural. What would you say is the common denominator for technology? What piece of technology is the most important no matter where your hotel is located or what brand it is or how big it is?
Speaker 1:Guest Internet, without a doubt. In fact, a lot of our properties are in the middle of nowhere. There's no high speed Internet access. I think the best that I have on 2 of the locations that I'm working on now is Starlink business, which is it does okay. The issue is it's a metered connection, so I pay for data.
Speaker 1:So I have to, you know, try to figure out what limitations do I put on what the customer can use. If I have a 60 room lodge that's, you know, on Starlink metered data, do I limit their connection to Netflix on their own device? Do I have to watch out for those high data use applications that the customer is using? So if I do, then I have an unhappy customer. If I don't, then I could have, you know, a data bill that goes into 3, $4,000 a month where a typical hotel is $1200.
Speaker 1:I have a 20 story Marriott in downtown Phoenix. My data there, I think is $900 a month. So that is one of the issues that I have with data. One of the positives is networking has gotten so less complicated and available from so many different vendors now for the hardware. It's easy to do this yourself.
Speaker 1:I'm sort of a do it myself guy. We actually have our own construction company as well. So we build our own hotels. So I will typically. Purchase the entire infrastructure for whatever networking that I need, give it to my construction guys and give them installation instructions on how I want it set up.
Speaker 1:And I forgo that 3rd party and all the costs associated with having that 3rd party purchase my hardware as well as having the installation done by them. I'm also not doing it by the maintenance guys, which, you know, doesn't necessarily get the same results that I would need. You know? So it helps a lot by having our own construction company and me having the knowledge of doing this myself rather than having that third party. So I'm always looking to save a nickel as I do my job.
Speaker 3:Curious to hear, thinking of vendors that you use, what would you consider to be your most critical technology partner for a system that you do outsource and use that third party system?
Speaker 1:The property management system for me, I mean, it that's always the hub of everything that you do because you're gonna make sure if there's any third party applications that you want to have on your property that that's supported by that property management system. So I spent probably 3 years going to every property management system that I could think of doing demos for and selecting. We ended up going with Maestro in the end. And in fact, I just signed a contract a couple days ago to convert a couple of opera properties over to Maestro. So any property that we have going forward, that's not branded and has a specific requirement will be on the Maestro platform.
Speaker 1:One of the things that made me make that choice was Maestro is that I won't say they're a smaller company. Obviously, they're a smaller company than Oracle, but they pretty much the person who answers that phone or answers the little chat message that's in their PMS window is the person who handles whatever your issue is all the way through. Probably 9 times out of 10, if it's a credit card issue, if it's a connectivity issue, they are trained well enough to be able to handle anything. When we call Opera support, you never know where you're gonna go, what it's gonna cost, how long it's gonna take. And there's always finger pointing that it's somebody else before you actually get the problem resolved.
Speaker 1:And most of the time that finger pointing ends up pointing right back at them, that the issue is with opera and they need to support and fix the issue. So we have one property on my store right now. We're very, very impressed with it. It was sort of a beta property. I have one property in the pipeline that's coming up in November and then 2 that are kinda switched before December from opera.
Speaker 1:So definitely my partner of choice in this time. As far as hardware, the hardware partners I use, I am not trained in networking. I haven't taken any formal education. So it was a learn as you go sort of like my job has been for more than half of my working. But I like right now for all of our networking, I use TP Link.
Speaker 1:It's very easy for me to configure. It's very easy for me to have all of our systems on one platform. You know, brand dictates that sometimes. So in our Marriott, I have Aruba and Ruckus equipment, but for projects that I do myself, I've moved over to something that it's not a consumer product, but it has a consumer mind. Like, my Aruba controller, I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to set that up or anything, where in the TP Link, I can do that myself.
Speaker 1:And since I am someone who wants to be able to keep things in house to where I don't wanna have a third party management company that I have to pay to do these things. I'd much rather teach a property person to manage this device or that system and not add that additional cost to the property's operating costs on a monthly basis. So I like something that is user friendly. And also basically, you know, you put a signal out there, people connect to it. As long as it connects, then, you know, the job is done.
Speaker 1:So I don't really see any value in the system that I have in my Marriott property that is any better than the hotel I'm sitting in right now that, you know, has a system that I put in. And it's more about the cost associated with you have to have a 3rd party vendor purchase it. They always put a least a 10% markup on the hardware that they purchase. They do the installs. So the installs probably twice as much as I could do it myself.
Speaker 1:So I've sort of moved to, you know, how can I do this and then how can I do this internally rather than finding a vendor for?
Speaker 3:I would love to dig into switching from Opera to Maestro. Talk to me about how you're organizing that migration process. Do you have any tips to offer based on how things have gone so far?
Speaker 1:So the 2 properties that I'm migrating, I just signed a contract a couple days ago. In fact, before this call, I started filling out a document for our credit card. Maestro has their own payment processing. I'm not really sure what the connection is, but I think a company that owns Maestro also owns a company called MesoPay, and they have an integrated solution that actually the Maestro techs solve any credit card issues. They deal with your charge backs or, you know, if you wanted to say, hey, you know, I'm not qualifying at the right rate on the credit cards that get charged.
Speaker 1:What's wrong in my system? What are we doing wrong? Is my staff not tapping the card like they're supposed to? And so the tech at Maestro is able to answer those kind of questions, which I've never had before. It's always calling, you know, Shift 4 or of Elavon or somebody else to who, again, the finger pointing comes in.
Speaker 1:So my goal is to have as few vendors as possible. And on anything I do, how can I get this to where I don't have 95 different vendors for this hotel? I only have 35 and it makes it easier for everybody in the property and above property accounting as well. I can get an invoice that has 4 different items on it that it would typically be 4 different vendors. It helps accounting to only have that 1 invoice versus 4 on the monthly basis.
Speaker 1:But the reason for my change, currently, I have Opera 5. It's an on premise system. It is not Opera Cloud. However, they host it. Years ago, I felt I don't know, maybe 6, 7 years ago, I felt who's better than Oracle to host my platform.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm sure they could do a lot better than me. If my server died here, I'm in deep trouble where then it's their fault. I don't know if that was a correct assumption because it has been a nightmare ever since I changed over to Opera hosting that environment, it has gotten better. And another thing, you know, I'm not a salesman for Maestro, but with Maestro on the brand that we're creating, I have a separate server for all of my properties that go on there. If they need to do a reset, it only affects the hotels that I have on that server.
Speaker 1:For these other 2 Anaheim properties that I'm moving over, they are on their own server as well. So if there's an update to be done to the hotel across the street that has nothing to do with me currently with opera, my system goes down while that update happens. With Maestro, the only thing that happens is when it has to do with my system. So opera does a global update on their software, which affects everyone, at least everyone on that server where on Maestro, that update is only affecting my property. So I may not be on the most recent version.
Speaker 1:Like I would be on opera, but I do get to choose whether I wanna do that. And when I wanna do that upgrade rather than at the mercy of Oracle. Opera is a fine product. I actually really like Opera. My issue is more with Oracle and their support, and it's just really tough.
Speaker 1:And I've never spoke to a hotelier that had any different comment than I did. So, you know, when they were micros, they were a little better than they are now, but it's just kinda tough. And I I guess as a brand that has, you know, thousands of hotels out there on opera, it might be a little bit better on the brand side, but it's not necessarily on the property side when it comes to support or anything like that.
Speaker 3:Another thing that you mentioned earlier is the importance of connectivity between the different systems and platforms that you use. Talk to me a little bit about what that matrix of connections looks like. What systems are you using, and how do they all plug into each other?
Speaker 1:That's probably the most complicated part of my job is trying to figure out what to use. And then in any software arena, there are 5, 6 different vendors. Unfortunately, they all do something a little bit different. So this one will do item 1, 2, 3, and 5, and that one will do 2, 3, 4, and 7. And just to say, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I really want that, but this vendor only has this, but this vendor has this. So it used to be a software vendor did one thing, and they did it well. And now everybody's trying to be the full suite of what hotel's needs are, but then there's 1 or 2 things that they don't cover that the other software vendor does. So it's a real challenge to find someone. It's like, okay.
Speaker 1:Which one do I choose? How do I get what I want and stay with that one vendor? Just recently, on these 2 Opera properties, which I get to redo again in a couple months, I went through a phase where I started just, you know, doing all sorts of integrations with third party vendors that has their guest ticketing maintenance to do preventative maintenance, housekeeping checklists, assigned housekeeping rooms, and so far that has gone fantastic. We switched over from Alice. I think it was a cost issue.
Speaker 1:I kinda wish I had looked at Maestro's product, which was much cheaper than the product that I chose, but I had already signed contracts. So when their contract's up, I think their product is called XMS. I'm not positive, but I may look at that next time. I think the company behind that is a company called Fetch. I believe that's their name.
Speaker 1:So I use a product for email marketing from Amadeus, which is they call it GMS years ago. When they bought the company, it was called Zdirect. So it does all my transactional emails. I mean, that's another great thing. I have a person in house that manages all of this and she has multiple systems that she has to figure out.
Speaker 1:How do I do this? Well, when I have one property management system at all of my hotels, then I can have one person focus on one software and be a master at that software rather than having 3 or 4 different softwares that do the same thing that she knows a little bit about and doesn't really have the ability to learn everything there is because there's just not enough time in the day to manage 3 different softwares that do exactly the same thing, and they all do it differently. The newest software that I've found that that I really like some of the features of it that I hadn't used in the past is a software called self book, and it is a overlay of the booking engine which has a lot of features that are very helpful for my revenue management. So if you go to a website that has self book on it, when you click on book now, it doesn't immediately move over. I use SynXis for these 2 Anaheim properties.
Speaker 1:It doesn't move over to SynXis. It actually pulls the data from SynXis and shows you a window on the side of the screen that it says enter your dates or whatever, which I could probably have, you know, a widget that does that as well from Synaxis. But then when you click on your dates, it does a couple things that is really helpful for us. It will say, are you a member? If you're a member, you can get this rate and all they have to do is put in their email address.
Speaker 1:They become a member. It shows you what the rate is. So it'll show my lowest rate, but then this rate is gonna be a little bit lower than that. But the positivity of doing it this way is once they put in their email address, they get a member rate that the public cannot get. Therefore, the third parties can't say, wait a minute.
Speaker 1:We found a cheaper rate, you know, here because you have to be a member to get that rate, but they see that rate. So it's very helpful. And why would you not click on it? I could see if it says click here to see a lower rate. Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, that's gonna be baloney and I'm not really gonna get anything better than what I see now, but it's actually gonna show you that rate that's $10 cheaper than what you're seeing, which doesn't necessarily meet the same line as the 3rd party rate. So it's helping us convert more reservations on our website. Me personally, I don't know that I've ever booked on Expedia. I don't know that I've ever looked for a hotel that wasn't a brand hotel, meaning I'm a Marriott team member. I'm a Hilton team member, so I'll usually get team member rates.
Speaker 1:But say I go to I don't have a Wyndham anymore. Say I go to a Wyndham and that's the hotel I need to stay at because of where I'm going, I will always check Expedia or, you know, other providers to see what their rate is. I typically will call the hotel and try to book with the hotel directly rather than using the online thing. Sometimes I get people that say it's cheaper to book online because they don't want to have the cost of of the reservationist, But usually, you can get them to give you a better rate on the phone than you can on a website. But for that person that is trying to fish for the best rates and they see that rate, they have a 5 night stay here in Anaheim by Disneyland and the rate is $10 cheaper plus the tax that goes with that.
Speaker 1:They're gonna save $65 booking with me versus booking the 3rd party that they're not gonna have that discount and I'm not violating any contracts with my 3rd party. So that's one thing that it does. It also has integration with the firm. So, like, that guest can put that stay over time. They also have a guest loyalty program that I don't think we've initiated yet, but we are in the process of starting the guest loyalty through them as well.
Speaker 1:So I'm really excited to see where that's gonna go. It's a fairly new product for us, but I'm really happy with the initial results of it.
Speaker 3:What sort of results have you seen since implementing Salesbook? Like, have you seen your share of direct reservations increase? Have you seen conversion increase on your website?
Speaker 1:We've seen that the member rate is going through the roof. That is the majority of our bookings now, which means that those people that were looking at that 3rd party are making that plunge and booking direct and they could have went the other way. I don't have any statistics on what the actual numbers are, but I do know that it's working. We've only had it implemented for maybe 2 months now, 3 tops. So I haven't really seen any reports on it.
Speaker 1:And they keep coming out with new things that, you know, my revenue manager, we have a VP of revenue management in our corporate office and, you know, him and I sort of fight on software because I'm the one who doesn't wanna buy anything and he wants to buy everything. So anything that comes back with self book, I'm like, yeah, let's do it. In fact, they're actually very cheap as well. They don't have a high cost to have this on our system. It's not a huge expense and the returns are fantastic.
Speaker 1:Actually, I have a call today with Lassie to go over our our results over the last month or maybe quarter. And lastly, it's one of those that I sort of scratch my head. Am I getting any value out of this? Because the customer's already on my website. They don't bring anybody there.
Speaker 1:What what the perceived value is is that that customer has these perks that they don't have at the competitor hotel. So that's gonna be one of my hugest, especially in Anaheim, cancellations are at an all time high compared to what they were 20 years ago. I mean, cancellations could be at 40% that, you know, every day, you know, we book a 100 rows, we get 40 cancels and it's really tough and people book far out and as they get closer, they either find a better deal or they find that my rate has gone lower and they cancel their rate and rebook or rebook somewhere else. So anything that we can do to fight cancellations is always our goal to reduce that number. So lastly has the ability to help with that.
Speaker 1:But when I first instituted Lassie, I did a AB testing and it was about double digits on my conversion with Lassie versus without Lassie. So I was also on a per reservation commission at the time, and they've now changed their model to a flat fee, which which helps a little better for me. And, you know, every month I'm like, am I really getting a value here? And I usually go with, yeah. It's fine.
Speaker 1:So but it's a neat software. But the only issue, I think it looks a little hokey. Most people don't like a website that has little boxes jumping around it and things like, like a click here, little present box and things. It reminds you of a site that has a lot of ads on it that you don't wanna see. Like if you go to a news site or something, you're gonna have all these ads pop up that you really have no interest in.
Speaker 1:That's one of my downfalls with LaSie and maybe something that, you know, if I make that call today, just say, you know, hey, what can we do to make a cleaner look? So in fact, the new brand that we're creating is called Teravii and in that brand we have Teravii Nature Lodges and then we also have a product called Boundary by Teravii. We have one boundary that's opening in Durango in the end of this year. Durango is a gateway to the outdoors, so it's a beautiful little town in Colorado. And from there, if you're in Durango, you're either a hippie to be in Durango and, you know, enjoy the vibe there, or you're going into the mountains.
Speaker 1:You're gonna go fishing, hiking, camping, something like that, and you're gonna stop over in that cute little town. So that is the mission of Boundary to find that person who's on their way to the outdoors. And then Terravii Nature Lodge is a property that has a wellness mindset. The one that we have that's gonna be in outside of the Northumber of the Grand Canyon, it is right next to a bridge that crosses the Colorado River that's called Navajo Bridge and in that area, they released the California Condor, which was almost extinct 20, 30 years ago, and they started populating that area with these condors, which actually populated about 25 miles away. And the condors left where they let him go and went down to Navajo bridge.
Speaker 1:But anyways, there's a organization called the Paragon Fund that oversees the release of these condors and make sure that they're thriving and helping with getting more condors so that they don't go extinct and so we have a partnership with Peregrine Fund to help promote the knowledge of the California condors that sit there in Northern Arizona. So we try to do things that are saving the planet, making sure that we have an impact on the I'm not a spokesman. I'm an operations person. So, you know, forgive me for not having my brand direction very well, but we are looking to make an impact, have guests have a little bit of more understanding of the land that they're in. I'm a certified leave no trace trainer so I'm going to be developing leave no trace for our hotel guests as they come in.
Speaker 1:At the very least give them a pamphlet or a link to know that leave don't trace doesn't mean pick up your trash. It means a lot more than that. You know, don't trample over areas that don't have paths. Make sure you stay on the path. Don't interact with wildlife too closely and things like that.
Speaker 1:Develop a product for our guests and then maybe, you know, once or twice a week, have a hour seminar on what this means to the outdoors. And if we could get everybody to practice as what our kids and our grandchildren are gonna see when they go out to the outdoors.
Speaker 3:Speaking of guest preferences, you also mentioned the question of whether or not to include TVs in the new nature oriented properties you're developing. How do you understand what your guests are looking for? Do you use the system for reputation management or soliciting reviews or guest sentiment? How do you know what your guests are thinking?
Speaker 1:We have not yet. I've looked at the systems that are out there for guest reviews. I think Revenate is one of them. Yeah. And we've chose not to, and it's not that the product isn't good or it does.
Speaker 1:The issue is the labor it takes to do the upkeep of that and making sure that you're reaching out to guests? I mean, that seems like it's going to be a several hour a day process for each property. And when you look at that labor that that costs, you know, how do you substantiate that? So the bigger side is on my side on how to manage it, And I haven't come up with a good reason to make that the systems are, I believe it was Revenate is the last one that I looked at. I really liked it.
Speaker 1:I wanted to, you know, move forward with it, but I didn't know who's gonna do it. Who's gonna be taking the workload on to get this done? So another of the TerraV models is to have less employees but pay them much more. So we wanna make sure that everybody does everything. So everybody will be cross trained and the guy who checked you in in the morning may be serving your breakfast tomorrow.
Speaker 1:He may be cleaning your room this afternoon. We want that experience. I'm a cruiser. I love cruising and part of cruising is the interaction with the staff on a cruise ship that you see them so much and you go to the bar and you know who you're dealing with and you know them by name and in most of our hotels and our branded hotels, that is not typically the case. You don't really get a connection with the employees in the hotels except for a resort.
Speaker 1:A resort is different. I'm going to Cancun in 2 weeks. I can't wait and one of the things I can't wait to is meet a lot of interesting people, really know what hospitality is, and they know how to treat customers, and I go to Vegas every once in a while and I just think what an awful place when it comes to hospitality. It is not a hospitality. To go into a 6000 room hotel and, you know, when you ask where the elevator is in this lobby of this hotel that has a casino in it, they're like, yeah go down there to the left and you've passed 9 hallways before you get to the left.
Speaker 1:Where the heck is it that I'm going? And you just don't get that level of service. I've never had great service in any Vegas hotel ever, but I really like the service aspect of hospitality and we are trying to elevate that in our Tera brand. And so when we have less employees, we have less people to do these tasks. So we wanna do a lot of our tasks in our office.
Speaker 1:When you talk about technology for that, having connection to the users, the individual users' PCs for fixing things. Like I use TeamViewer, you know, I probably have 60 computers on my TeamViewer account where if anybody has an issue, I can connect to their computer and fix it or give them direction on what they need to do. All of our servers are connected. So if I need to reboot a server, I don't have to call somebody at the front desk who doesn't even know where the server is to then try to spend a half an hour just to get them to to a reset and then give a password for it. So connectivity to the computers in the hotel and especially in the server devices is another key platform that we must have.
Speaker 1:But having that additional labor is the challenge I have with that sort of a product.
Speaker 3:So we've talked a lot about technology that you use or have used, but I'm curious to know what's on your wish list. If you could implement something today, what would that be, or maybe what are you considering implementing in the next year or 2?
Speaker 1:So one thing that's on our wish list. So our TeraVie brand, we wanna own the guest's journey from the booking point. So we wanna make sure that we have the ability to if I could get anything I want, I want a connection to the 3rd party tour operators that I can book a tour. And the problem is these are different all different companies. They're all very small, usually.
Speaker 1:For instance, a kayaking company in Marble Canyon, Arizona, which is it's not even a town. It's just a postal area. There are several fishing guides that live in that area, and there are several kayaking operators. But it's 2 guys, Tony and John, and they take people out every day, and they have a notebook that they write down. Okay.
Speaker 1:On 5th June, we're taking 3 people out. Here's their name and phone number. Well, there's no integration software wise to know what their calendar is so that I can help them and help fill up their calendar as well as give my guests a instant confirmation. So right now, we're going to start that process out with a 24 hour confirmation. So you can book this Jeep tour or this kayaking adventure down the Colorado River, and we'll get back to you in 24 hours to confirm that it is booked and there's space available.
Speaker 1:So having an integration software, there's a software called Fair Harbor that's owned by, oh, I don't know, a big, like Agoda or something like that. Fair Harbor is owned by one of these companies. But the company has to be on Fair Harbor for that to make that work. And we are willing to develop our own software, but if it's software connecting to a notepad, that's not gonna work. So our initial idea was to develop software for that individual who does have that notebook to say, we will give you your whole platform for your booking process.
Speaker 1:I mean, nothing to do with us. You just you have the ability to store all your reservations, sort of like a property management system, and then you will also integrate with us to give us availability so that we can have real time booking. So, yeah, that would be one that we would really like to figure out how we can integrate with these smaller third party operators.
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 1: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.
