Hotel Tech Insider

SPEAKER_02:
We did a breakfast script, which basically calculates the real amount of food orderings we need to order each day and with a forecast based on hotel occupancy. And we have our own algorithm calculating those things. We build it at the railroad first, and then we transfer it to our branded hotels. And we are currently in the process of rolling out there.

SPEAKER_01:
From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider, a show about the future of hotels and the technology that powers them.

SPEAKER_00:
Today we're talking with Adrian Schmidt, who is leading digital innovation at HR Group, a Berlin-based hotel company with about 150 branded and independent hotels in its portfolio. Adrian draws on his years of experience in telecom, media, and hospitality to improve the guest experience through digitization. In our conversation, we dive into Adrian's software buying process and best practices, how he's making operations more efficient with automation, and why open APIs make it all possible. Plus, we'll learn how he's approaching AI and why collecting data is only valuable if you're using it to make decisions. I'd like to start the conversation by getting a sense for your background. So if you could share with me how you got your start in the industry, the different roles you've had, different companies you've worked for, and then finally, what you're doing now.

SPEAKER_02:
Initially, I started at the telecommunications sector, basically setting up networks, providing customer support. The technical road twist was already there. But then I switched to media, so more e-commerce-like to agencies and did my work there. And somehow, at some point of my career, I landed in the hotel industry with Falkensteiner. It's an Austrian hotel chain with resource, more in the luxury direction. And I was responsible there for content and websites. So I had the technical parts back again. And from there, I switched to It's in Vienna, a known chain, a small hotel chain. And from there, I switched to Vienna House. And on my road, I always had the roles of head of digital, digital innovation and things like that, doing website e-commerce, always these things with digital, how to make the customer experience, the guest experience better and so on. Yeah. And I continued this journey, my own journey, with the HRG bought Vienna House. And with that acquisition, I got the position as a group director for systems and digital innovation first, and then the VP for digital development and strategy for the whole company. So yeah, all 150 hotels around that. Yeah. And that's my current role, present role.

SPEAKER_00:
Can you tell me some more about your responsibilities and what exactly you're working on at the moment?

SPEAKER_02:
So basically, what I'm doing is that I look at the processes to improve the guest employee journey through digitalization. I try to define and streamline the overall digital strategy, look how the website works, the guest journey works, how non-infrastructure systems like the property management system works, and also how to implement our own products if we start to program or create an own product for our chain. or also how we implement products from partners we bought. And overall, with that, we try to enhance the guest experience, to enhance the loyalty to our hotels, to boost the employee morale, and of course, to improve productivity and profitability through all our processes with providing a modern system landscape. So basically, overseeing that, a part of the systems, processes, what we can automate, what we can digitalize for our guests and for our employees.

SPEAKER_00:
So I'd like to learn a little more about the specific tools you're using. What would you consider to be your most valuable, most critical technology partner today?

SPEAKER_02:
That's a good question and a very difficult question, because I like to think in concepts. So basically, every piece of software which has an OpenAPI, which lets me control the data and the data flow to do something, is a good piece of software in my eyes. And everything which does not comply with that is not a good software I would work with. So every partner who has an OpenAPI approach and lets me basically tailor my system landscape is very welcome. And Of course, there are different systems for different functionalities. So it's very difficult to say that's the one critical partner I need to work with. In hospitality, of course, the property management system is a crucial part of the system landscape. Without the property management system, other systems cannot work because basically it handles all the data, the regulation. So it's a single point of truth. If it's the most important point of software, without that, because there are other softwares with even more functionality. But for handling a hotel, it's necessary. And so it holds a lot of data. And the open API approach is very important for the property management system, because otherwise I can't connect other systems to it. And so I'm basically out of the hospitality system landscape, how you build it. I have two property management systems I like very much currently. And we use both. For our boutique and white-labeled hotels, we use Aleon because it follows very strictly this approach to have open APIs and to be basically a data hub. And for the enterprise things, and when we work together with brands, Opera Cloud from Oracle currently, because they also changed their software from being somehow closed. We had its back with the on-prem versions and the Oxy things with OHIP. to a more open software area following a similar road like Appaleo does. So those two providers I like to work with because they have their own API approach.

SPEAKER_00:
So going back to the PMS conversation, I'm curious to hear what the decision process was when you chose Appaleo and Opera Cloud. Were those systems that you put in place or has the group been using those for a while?

SPEAKER_02:
Regarding Opera Cloud? Of course, our brand partners work with it, so Wyndham, Accor, and so on. And they chose it. But I'm happy with this choice because when you have such a big environment, so many hotels, it's very difficult to find a solid software provider and partner. And of course, Oracle is one. And to choose a system, which is so open, they have it with their OHIP that made this choice and I can work with it. And they also share allow me, allow us, allow HRG to use those interfaces. That's very important because as a hotel operator, we can build something on top of this OHIP now and do our own improvements like automations for real-time notifications, what happens in the hotel, or to make custom reports, which are currently not in the system available because they're just simply not there, or own calculations or data syncs to non-hospitality industry softwares we use. And yeah, for Apaleo, the same thing applies. Apaleo is, of course, smaller, but we chose it for our white label and boutique hotels because it has these open APIs. It's very easy to use. You can also build something on top of it. And somehow, it's our testing environment. Our biggest hotel in the group here, the Rainbow, uses it. We have a complete digital guest journey available there because it was so easy to build it on top of Apaleo. And what I learned there can, of course, take and then transfer it to a more complex brand environment.

SPEAKER_00:
So you mentioned you work with branded and independent hotels. You mentioned there were about 150 hotels in the group. What is the split like of branded versus independent? Is it mostly branded or mostly independent?

SPEAKER_02:
It's mostly branded. We just have a few white-labeled hotels or with our own brands. The biggest part of our portfolio is our branded hotels, basically Wynton and Aqua.

SPEAKER_00:
And do the brands dictate much of the technology that those branded hotels need to use? Or do you still have some freedom to choose which vendors that you use to run the properties?

SPEAKER_02:
We have some freedom. Of course, they have their requirements, what to use and how to use it and their security standards. Good, to be honest. What I learned in the last month is that they also want to be more efficient, want to digitalize their guest journey because it's directly connected to the brand. So of course, they don't want to choose bad software. They also want to use good software. And therefore, it's a close partnership. And we talk about such things, what we can do. And especially Aku and Wintelmir, they allow to a certain degree to build your things on top of those open interfaces. So basically, you can do things on your own. but you get your baseline, what you need to work with from the brands, but you can really talk to them. And it's not like they say, you're not allowed to use this and this will never change. Yeah, that's not the case.

SPEAKER_00:
Have you ever tested software in the independent hotels and then found that the software worked well and rolled it out to the branded properties?

SPEAKER_02:
Yes, of course. Sometimes we start programming new products, reports, automations here on top of Apollo. We look how it works, roll it out in our white-labeled hotels and everything is fine there. And of course, we try to transfer it to the branded hotels and all those properties because For example, when you roll out an automation, you can directly see the operational impact. If the automation you build on top of such APIs saves you five hours per week, just a number, and you multiply this by 100 hotels, and every automation saves this amount of time, then it's worthy to do that, of course.

SPEAKER_00:
Do you have an example of an automation like that that you've launched that was very successful?

SPEAKER_02:
Yes, we did a breakfast script, which basically calculates the real amount of food orderings we need to order each day and with a forecast based on hotel occupancy. And we have our own algorithm calculating those things. We build it at the railroad first and then we transfer it to our branded hotels. And we are currently in the process of rolling out there because we see it's working in a positive way in this white label environment. And there are a few other optimizations as well. which follow this concept, testing it first, white label it, and then rolling it out, like invoice handling, for example, that invoices are sent out automatically, that we can look at four years and see if there is still a value which has to be cleared. And then we send out another automatic reminder to the guest or something like this, completely automated through an external tool, which basically can read the property management system through the interfaces and then do something with it with another external tool. So we built up a data orchestration layer, say this way, which basically can read from other systems and write to other systems or do action based on the data which it's read for.

SPEAKER_00:
So when you're thinking about piecing together these different elements of your tech stack, do you typically approach each system with this sort of test and learn mindset? Maybe you try it for a couple months, try it for a year. And then at what point do you assess whether that tool is valuable or if maybe switching to another tool would make sense?

SPEAKER_02:
To a certain degree, you have to because Everything which works in theory does not necessarily have to work in practice. So of course, we follow a strict think first and then we buy approach. But of course, you need to test it in practice as well. As a software provider, when we implement a software provider, we always have certain steps before it comes to the contract. In my department, basically, we have an own sub department which just evaluates software. We have a matrix and all our requirements are listed in there. Then we do our research. We check, of course, all alternatives. And then we just look how the software looks on the data sheet compared to others. And if it looks good, then we can go to the next step. Then we go into the talks. And of course, we have a pilot. We check if everything is fine, if it works with our existing system landscape. And if this is the case, then we implement it, of course. And then it's this test phase where we have to look if it works in practice.

SPEAKER_00:
Who else is involved in those decisions? Is there a team of people involved in that sort of exploration process?

SPEAKER_02:
It's always, let's say, a decision of multiple departments because I can't decide, for example, a revenue department, which RMS they should use. They are the experts for that. But if they want me to basically do a research, to search for software, they can use more modern software, then my team takes the case and does it basically. And then, of course, we have feedback rounds and we talk about if this is the right direction we want to go. So it's always a teamwork because nobody knows everything about the whole hotel operation and everything which is connected to it.

SPEAKER_00:
Well, I'm curious to learn about other systems that you're using on site and at HRG. So beyond Apollo and Opera Cloud, what else are you using for revenue management, distribution, accounting, any other really standout systems you'd like to share?

SPEAKER_02:
Yes. For the guest journey, I'm currently using our guest journeys are very popular, so that I just take this case. for the guest journey thing. So doing a digital check-in, check-out, to save registration cards and so on. To basically encode your key card so that the guests can come in and self-service. Like you have it on, basically when you fly, then you strive for that in our white-label hotels. And currently we aim for a contract with Canary. We are very far in the negotiations already and we want to roll it out throughout hotels. So basically 100 hotels already planned. And yes, those are two important system providers. Then we use basically a current test in our hotels is with FlexKeeping housekeeping tool, which has a lot of automation built in. Therefore, we decided for it and using it in our level. And if everything is working good there and then seems like it's working good, then we check if we can roll it out to other properties. Then, of course, we have some channel managers like SiteMinder, which is a very good piece of software. And that's a bit difficult because we have so many brands and then we have the wide labor environment. And of course, there are a lot of differences because all those brands have their lists, which providers are allowed. For example, I can't use Stripe and Aqua, but I can use Canary at Accor. And Vintermos also says okay to the Canary. So then it's a piece of software I can use for our white labels, our own brands. We have strive and use because we can quickly set up a digital guest room with it. So we have to always look what's possible. And then we have basically a basket of softwares. It's up to providers that we are allowed to use. And then we take the best ones for the best case for it. out of this basket and then we implement it. So it's a bit of a difficult question for me to answer with specific software parts.

SPEAKER_00:
I would love to hear more about the digital check-in experience. Can you walk me through what exactly a guest would do from maybe the moment they make their reservation? Can they do the entire check-in process online? Do they receive a key card or are you using a mobile key vendor? How does the check-in process work?

SPEAKER_02:
I take our Revo property as an example because Derip is live and we have very good numbers regarding our digital check-in, check-out adoption. Over 90% of our guests use this digital guest room. And that's a big number. I never expected it to be that high, but it works. And since it's a property with around 600 rooms, it has quite an impact. And what the guests can expect with this digital guest room is when he or she checks in, Then basically you make your booking. You receive the guest messaging through email. The system does it automatically. You receive a link where you can provide your details to basically create your registration card and send it to the hotel directly. And basically then the process for the first step is done. When you arrive at the hotel, then you can go to a tablet and to a keycard encoder, basically fill in a registration number you got. and then it automatically guides you to how to encode your key card so you can enter the room. And when you check out, everything with payment and so on and how to check out is done in the email then. You just have to drop the key card. And it's a very simple process and it works. Of course, we could digitalize it even further with going with mobile keys. But currently, our approach is to wait until the digital keys are available in the Google Wallet and the Apple Wallet and not aiming for the Bluetooth path because you need an extra app. And I don't want our guests to install an extra app just to open their room.

SPEAKER_00:
Stepping back a little bit in the process, how do guests make bookings on your website? Are you using a third party booking engine? Is the booking engine powered through Appaleo or Opera? Tell me a bit about your website.

SPEAKER_02:
It's third-party. And here you also have to differentiate between the brand environment and the white-leather environment because they have their own distribution. So Aqua has their own booking engine, their own website, Wintem has it as well. And we build our own also basically on top of the existing booking engines they have. What we did is to set up an OTA-like website where you can make bookings and you can search for hotels, look at our hotels, you can retrieve information from them. It does not matter which brand or if it's a white label. And when you basically found your hotel and you press on book now, then we reverse engineer the booking engines from our partners and we take the details you entered before forward to their booking engine and insert it immediately. Because for us, revenue-wise, it does not make a difference if they book on the brand side or on our side. So we have the advantage that we do not need to basically maintain our own booking engine. So we use their booking engine and forward our guest details to their booking engines. And our system recognizes which brand and where to forward and things like that and which details to push to their booking engine. It routes basically the guests to the correct booking engine through our website. But everything that's about the guest journey, finding hotel, retrieving information is available on our side. And of course, we can track data and guest behavior on our side. And so as HRG, we do not lose the connection to our guests, even not digitally. Physically, they are in our hotels, Anyway, basically when we want to see how they behave in a digital environment, of course, we need to somehow connect them with us. Therefore, we set up this hrg-test.com website as an OTA-like structure.

SPEAKER_00:
So post-stay, after a guest checks out, two questions. What are you doing to keep in touch with guests after they have departed? And are you using any sort of reputation management system to gather guest reviews or understand what guests are saying about your properties?

SPEAKER_02:
Sure. On brand level, it's their choice. They're using Dahlia, TrustYou. Yeah, it depends on the brand. But we additionally use TrustYou on top of it and through those open APIs, aggregate all the streams from the partner softwares, aggregate them again and trust you to have a complete overview throughout all hotels on corporate level. So we just trust you again to review basically on our side, the already collected guest service.

SPEAKER_00:
And are you using some communication or CRM to communicate with guests after they stay?

SPEAKER_02:
It's not a secret. Recently, it was also mentioned on LinkedIn and so on, we recently signed a contract with SendLine, boosting as a CRM provider, boosting basically the data insights on our side, so that we know how to get better in touch with our guests. And on the sales side, we have another system for basically the marketing side, e-commerce side, that we're using HubSpot. And we wrote our own interface to get PMS and booking engine data into HubSpot to see what our guests want, how they book, how we can create a better guest experience with using those data, which we haven't seen before.

SPEAKER_00:
Well, we've talked a lot about your existing tech stack. I'm curious if there are any specific vendors or even just a type of software that's on your wish list or something that you're considering implementing in the future.

SPEAKER_02:
To bring up one buzzword everyone talks about is using AI. Of course, there are a lot of new tech possibilities out there which you could use in hospitality, which are powered by AI or the OpenAI API. And of course, we're looking into that. There are a lot of use cases like automatically answering reviews or things like automatically do data analytics on your databases. currently chatbots for better guest experience and guest service, because a lot of guests have questions and sometimes we are not that quick to answer them as we want to be. And I could also help. And of course, we are looking into that. And we have some pilots running currently evaluating Dalek shift. But like I said before, every piece of software needs to go through our process. And it's very difficult regarding AI to find a solution that works every time because it's a very new tech and we are in the process to evaluate what we really want to have an advantage of it, how we can pull the most out of it. So basically, we are in the process of implementing some of those new tools into our tech stack, but carefully.

SPEAKER_00:
Well, shifting gears slightly. I would love for you to share one or two high-priority business objectives that you're focused on and how technology is helping you get there.

SPEAKER_02:
So one of the highest priorities is our automation thing. As I said before, we have a data orchestration layer. It's called NotMation. It's basically you can connect systems to it or even write your own interfaces to connect it to NotMation. And then you can connect a second or third system to it and then you can do actions in that system based on data you pushed in this data orchestration layer. So basically, it's an automation platform like Microsoft Power Automate, like SAP here, and so on. Just with automation, we have the possibility to host it directly on our servers, and it's open source, which is very important for me to build. When I build something on top of a software, it has to be open source. And this data orchestration layer or automation platform enables us to automate operational tasks. And this boosts efficiency a lot. So one of our highest priorities is to roll this automation platform out throughout the whole group and to find use cases and to automate every manual task, which should be automated because it has a certain pattern behind it. And it's boring work and repetitive. And this is the perfect case where you can boost efficiency. What's very important here is that we don't want to basically replace the human touch to hospitality because that's the most important thing. What we want to do with the newfound efficiency is basically empowering the analog experience you have in the hotel with the digital side. Never replace the analog experience. And if we are more efficient. If we can focus on being a better host instead of focus on administrative tasks, then this is the way to go. And therefore, this automation thing is the highest priority we have.

SPEAKER_00:
How has your team been receptive to the shift toward automation? Are people happy that some of these boring tasks are being taken off their plates and automated?

SPEAKER_02:
That's at least what I've heard about it. Because in hospitality, we have a staff shortage. We do not find enough qualified staff for the tasks we have. And therefore, it's basically a relief for the existing staff. If we can automate the boring tasks that they have to do otherwise. So yes, that's accepted. Of course, with having AI and such things, being capable of doing a lot of more stuff, which is even more complex. I can imagine some employees being afraid at what point an AI or a system takes over their job. But currently, at least at HRG, we are in a position where we have not enough stuff. So there is no problem here with that. And the systems are just helps you. They support you in your daily work.

SPEAKER_00:
So another question drawing on maybe your experience throughout the different hospitality companies you've worked at. What do you feel are one or two skills that are most essential for hoteliers to be successful in today's environment?

SPEAKER_02:
To adapt to rising trends, basically. Nobody saw AI coming. Nobody saw the impact. And I think we do not understand how this will evolve further. And the thing is that you as a hotelier has to be so tech-savvy and digital-savvy that you understand what's happening. Basically, you don't need to understand how to use such a tool, how to basically work with it as a GM, for example. But you need to understand what's the impact of such digital innovations and trends on your business. And I think that being very dynamic, flexible, and adaptive with your business is very important. It's one of the most important skills. For me, it's a meta skill, but still the most important one. Like I always say, to never stop learning is one of the most important things. And this counts for every industry.

SPEAKER_00:
And what are some ways that you continue learning? Do you attend conferences or are there maybe specific websites or people on LinkedIn that you watch to always stay up to date on what's happening?

SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, of course. There are so many courses out there you can take. Google is offering a lot. Microsoft is offering a lot, even for free. You can go through it. And there are platforms like Udemy with a lot of content. There are so many out there that if you want to learn, you can do it. For example, that's one thing I expect in my department, that everyone registered or using our corporate account on some learning platforms to be up to date.

SPEAKER_00:
Well, I like to end with a question that's always kind of fun. What is one thing that you believe about technology in the hotel space that other hoteliers might disagree with?

SPEAKER_02:
A thing I often see is when it comes to working with data. is that a lot of people and also colleagues have a focus on collecting data as much as possible just to have it somewhere. And I'm more on the side to just collect data I really need and I really work with. But then I really use them as a base to try to make decisions and often have discussions about, oh no, we have to track that as well. We need to see that and just for the sake of having it, things like that. And I often disagree on this point because I say what you don't need for your work, you don't need to track, you don't need to see. You have to focus on the most important things and do them. And this thing, do something, is also very important. A lot of my colleagues just try to overthink ideas and not trying it in practice. Like I said before, theory is important and you should make your homework before doing something, of course. But then sometimes the step, just try it in practice, is necessary. And making the step there should be sooner than later to see how things you thought about work out in the real world. And the fear of making something wrong with trying out things, sometimes big that the spend too much time thinking about it. So you need to come going to the doing and onto the doing side. So focus more on less data, but data you actually work with. And also, to be honest, regulations say, do you have to do it this way? And more drawing data insights from your work in the real world, then transfer it maybe to a new developer.

SPEAKER_00:
Well, great. Thank you so much for your time.

SPEAKER_01:
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. 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.