Pro-invest Group Director of Digital on Hiring Tech Talent
I'm really concerned by a lot of hotel groups. Do you mandate 2 factor authentication? Do you have geodensing for your PMS? 90% of the PMS don't have that capability. So if the hacker knew how to get into a PMS and they knew the product, we would have 90% data breaches everywhere.
Speaker 2:From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider. A show about the future of hotels and the technology that powers them. Today on the show, we have Howard Fung, the group director of digital at ProInvest Group. In this episode, we go deep into what makes a great tech stack, how to build your hotels culture for the future and for growth, and how to select the right partners and optimize them for the future. It doesn't matter whether you're in a technology role or not.
Speaker 2:You will learn from Howard, and you will improve your business after this episode. I'm really excited that we're about to dive in.
Speaker 3:Howard, thank you so much for coming on the show. We're excited to have an Aussie hotel here. I think you might be our first.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great. Really excited to be here.
Speaker 3:Can you start by telling us a little bit about your background in the hotel industry? You've obviously led technology at some pretty major hotel groups. Talk us through your journey and quick 32nd background.
Speaker 1:Sure. So I've got about 2 decades of experience Pacificland Hotel Technology. My very first gig was at one of the largest telco providers. So after a few years there, I pivoted into my very first hotel role, which it was the Acura's head office running the service desk across the group. At the time, there was 99 hotels.
Speaker 1:I believe they are 300 plus now. So that journey kind of set me kind of the the benchmark around what my career transpired to be. Then I pivoted into my region and Accor. I looked up New Zealand for a sport perspective. And then then I got my very first management role at 25, which is a really young Sofitel, an IT manager for a large, the Wentworth, which is a flagship luxury hotel.
Speaker 1:And that's where I get to really bring technology and drive a strategy that was really specific to a product. So at that time, I led, full PMS transformation, Wi Fi, all the way to guest experience. One of the very first hotels to be a first off in a lot of technology at that time, like paper paperless housekeeping and so on. And then I got my very first kind of quite a big gig where in terms of working for Fraser Property at the time, which is Fraser Hospitality. I went from 60 hotels over a 100 plus for a lot of acquisition and had a lot of influence.
Speaker 1:I led kind of a team that selected the PMS, our cloud PMS for the group. So we chose Infer at the time. We have the vision to deliver full sustainability. So we achieved 80% paperless across the group of that platform. So we did paperless check-in all the way to paperless housekeeping to paperless ops.
Speaker 1:So it was great then all the accolades started winning a few awards. EBT came and knocked on my door and said, hey. We need to take that big shift in transformation. So I was first down the job was to shift the entire on prem stack onto hosted so that we shifted 55 hotels, took the pause into cloud. So really it enabled that group to scale very quickly.
Speaker 1:After that, I was asked to kind of reengineer the booking engine. It was a bespoke booking engine, so I brought an IREC and you CDP at the time because I needed to recognize guests quite in real time for a single sign on, for matching, diamond matching, and for loyalty codes. And so the booking engine now infused one of the very first booking engines of the world that's bespoke, and and it actually matches your data in real time with payments, tokenization paired to your account. So that was very and then kiosk then kiosk came where it was really successful. I was one of the very first Hoda groups to really drive kiosk adoption.
Speaker 1:We did a lot of integration with loyalty, with customer recognition to room selection. The pilot, I'll give you some context. The pilot started off with 20% utilization. After at the end of a year, we started achieving average 90% adoption for kiosk. So that's really great.
Speaker 1:And then I met Proinvest and then knocked on my door, and then I eventually decided to take on a role where they wanted me to rebuild the team, rebuild the tech stack from scratch. And it was a very interesting challenge. So I took it on board. Now I'm here. I've shifted from 8 PMS down to we're free at the moment.
Speaker 1:Like, ideally, 2. We've shifted the entire landscape into cloud from cloud HR system to ERP to PMS. So we're run pretty light And enable us during that period, we grew 300% in growth in terms of hotels as a result of having a very agile tech stack.
Speaker 3:So it sounds like the first thing a hotel company does when they know they need to step on the gas from a digital transformation perspective is that they call you or someone like you. My question is, what are your deal breakers? Like, if a hotel company called you, obviously, you're very happy with where you are and you're kicking ass right now and growing the business. But as a digital transformation expert, a hotel company calls you and you're kind of vetting them as an expert, what are the things that you look at where you're like, absolutely not. I will not work at that place.
Speaker 3:What are the kind of red flags that you see in those organizations? Whereas the opposite obviously was true for ProInvest and EBT where you saw the potential there?
Speaker 1:There's a few things that I look for in a group. Generally, owner operator is kind of what I like to work with. The reason being is that you can make a decision on the day around tech strategy. If you're a hotel management company, you still need to socialize your roadmap with owners, which it's a process. So it takes 2 years sometimes just to get that roadmap signed off.
Speaker 1:Owner operator is one of the best set up. You see a lot of groups that have that mix. They can scale quick with technology. You've got large auto management rights. They're still trying to select a cloud PMS.
Speaker 1:There's a few groups that work with. They're they're still confused where they wanna be, and their play, their priorities, the CRS piece. Right. That's where they make their money. And I get it for an operator.
Speaker 1:We're all about end to end tech stack. We look at the whole ecosystem and ultimately delivering a bottom line that makes sense for the investors. Another area that I see is probably a key red flag is around the maturity, understanding of technology. I wouldn't work for a CEO that just didn't prioritize technology, and they need to really fundamentally understand in order to scale, to drive efficiency, there's certain level of foundational knowledge that look for in executives. Like, basically, there's quite a few questions I ask them quickly in terms of technology.
Speaker 1:How do you see it assisting with the growth, you know, of the company? So some CEOs that I've spoken to in the past, they just think technology is just a reactive element of the business. They have to have it, and it's quite a reactive mindset. CEOs that kind of resonate with me is how I wanna grow. I wanna grow 300% in a short amount of time.
Speaker 1:I have the funding. I have the backing of the investors. Those are the types of things I like to see. Also, autonomy around structuring your team. One thing you don't want, a red flag is we need to stick.
Speaker 1:It's too risky, Howard. You know, we don't wanna go with a different structure. It might cost too much money. If you're too focused on costs, that's a significant red flag. You know, we should be focusing on the upside.
Speaker 1:We should be focusing on the growth of growth opportunities. One other thing is I look at their track record around their brand. So you might see it's not that hard to Google a brand and see where they're at in their journey. And if they're not investing their PR, their brand equity, that's a red flag to me. They're effectively a dying, but they're the codec, and there's a codec moment.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 3:You mentioned that you guys started from 8 PMSs across the portfolio down to 3 or 2 and then hopefully one soon. Was that something that you looked at during the interview process and were like, this has to change before I can work on the rest?
Speaker 1:100%. During the interview process, it was an open book discussion, so they weren't hiding anything. If they were restrictive around what was going on in the business, wouldn't have jumped on. So they were very transparent. They were frustrated at the current leadership around the PMS situation.
Speaker 1:They needed direction. They need a very clear roadmap on how to get there and the costs. So they wanted a plan. And that's what I love about the leadership here is they know what they want, and they just want someone that puts in a plan that makes sense and then execute.
Speaker 3:How did you think about whittling down 8 to 3 to 2 to 1 on the PMS side? And were all 8 of those contenders, or you kind of, like, knew immediately, like, 4 were out and they weren't working, but, like, 4 were contenders and had a right to come in and pitch you for that business?
Speaker 1:It's a good question. Initially, I wanted to take away the bias on particularly myself working for certain PMS. So I hired a leader in terms of property management systems space, and I got them to go out and interview every single PMS provider. And we had a matrix. We had we knew what we wanted, and we wanted to see how hungry each PMS vendor was.
Speaker 1:And it's quite interesting. During that process, we saw some PMS vendors. They were too busy growing with another hotel group. They weren't interested in developing any features. They said their r and d's, it stopped.
Speaker 1:They're not gonna put a cent into the platform. The others were we saw is we shouldn't need to tell a PMS vendor how to develop their product. We wanted to see vision, road map, capability. Most importantly is AI as part of their strategy. That's a key, Ryan.
Speaker 1:And so we saw a lot of PMS vendors that didn't have AI in their strategy, which was highly concerning. And that kinda dropped l 8 down to, like, 2 on that regard. It was quite an easy process. We took about 6 months, then we looked at the commercial side. We looked for the most cost effective.
Speaker 1:Generally, when you work with a partner, initial approach, a lot of vendors take us, let's rip them off. You know, let's let's charge them a lot of money. So we saw partners that were really hungry to work with us, so they gave us significant discount that was equivalent to a global brand. So we saw, like, okay, this partnership's gonna work. And then in return, we will also will be, like, a representative for their product across the region.
Speaker 3:So when you joined Proinvest, how would you characterize the state of digital transformation at the company? And where are you guys today? And where do you see the company in 5 years?
Speaker 1:When I first joined ProInvest, it was in a, I would say, a startup phase. They grew so so quickly. They went from 3 hotels at the time to 8 at the time. They didn't have a tech stack. They were budgeting their IT costs based on one counting code, yellow code, you'd say, and you had no visibility.
Speaker 1:So it was one of those big bang moments that they realized we can't operate, we can't scale in this current state. We didn't have a vision around technology. We had a reactive leadership that just responded to the requirements. They weren't looking ahead on what they needed, so everyone was frustrated. Everything was manual.
Speaker 1:It was the most basic things I would say, and technology wasn't right. And, effectively, it was a house on fire, I would say. Everything was burning down because you couldn't see your data, and it wasn't accurate. So I looked for certain qualities for startup mindset, agile, flexible, hardworking, and we needed to bring in innovation. I could have brought in someone that had a lot of experience that worked for a large hotel group, but they didn't quite understand how to decouple, you know, a small start up.
Speaker 1:So I look for hunger and attitude and really intelligent problem solving skills. So those are the people I brought together, and we were at the whiteboard trying to solve every single problem. Like, we had better discrepancy issues with standards issues. So in this current state now, we have a unified PMS, one standard one data strategy, and we're on the roadmap to consolidate into eventually one PMS. Today, we can any executive can get a report, a daily revenue report, fully automated, fully mapped, ingested with the right market segmentation, very strategic, And we ingest that into our data warehouse and powering which, some of the elements of generate AI to help match the data traditionally would require 2 to 3 people trying to figure out overnight, how should I code this data?
Speaker 1:We need to map that. It's learning quite quickly. And so we're getting near real time analytics pretty quick. As soon as the data is available, we're ingesting it into our platform and using our core. We've we've had some data scientists to help us add value to that data.
Speaker 1:So give an example. We now can as soon as the revenue data is ready, we're ingesting payroll data, we're ingesting revenue data, we're ingesting pause data. So we can now drill down by mail periods based on a particular role on how much it would cost you to run that per check. We use the predictive element of Power BI to to have a look at, okay, you've rostered 5 FTEs or 5 full time roles, free casuals, but we're predicting you're only gonna make $10. We need you to scale down by free FTEs to be profitable.
Speaker 1:Right? So those are types of automation. So we've stabilized, we've centralized, and now we're kinda seeing the fruits of their automation elements today.
Speaker 3:I'd love to go through from pre stay to instay to post day, like the tech stack at ProInvest, and where it was when you guys started and where we are today. And then maybe we'll go into the areas of interest for the future where you feel like, you know, obviously, there's always more work and optimization to be done. So let's start with presale. How are you guys acquiring guests? What are the big focuses from a technology perspective, whether it's CRM, revenue management system?
Speaker 3:How do you bring guests in the door?
Speaker 1:There's a few. Prior to starting, there wasn't a strategy. It was just bang out email marketing, try to get them to book. So that was the strategy. Now in this current state, we've got AI powered recommendation engines.
Speaker 1:So particularly luxury brands came in. We effectively the marketing aspect needs a bit of work. So we're in the process of trying to bring in Revinate to really feed the different personalization element of it. But what we do is we have a unified hotel website, and we've invested quite heavily on digital marketing agency that's optimizing the search engine optimization, keywords, particular brand pages, promotional opportunities. So that's our bread and butter for customer acquisition.
Speaker 1:We are investing, we're identifying them quite early in the journey, and we're trying to market to them where possible for those indirect means. So we've brought in this agency that really helps us elevate identifying them early, and we use a variety of tools where we're experimenting constantly. You know, the great thing about being early stages, we tried Hotel Network. You know, we've tried many different tools to help to bring that marketing. I would say it's a devolving process.
Speaker 1:I don't think we've got it right yet, but we'll eventually get to a point where when we have a centralized CDP unified across the entire group, that's when we start seeing the real fruits of upselling. So let's say that we've transferred with they've booked with we've got a
Speaker 3:pre
Speaker 1:arrival email, just just the general PRM. Some of the groups, we use guest folio for the upsell element, but some use naught 1 with a variety of tools.
Speaker 3:Which booking engine do you guys use? Is that unified across all the properties also?
Speaker 1:No. We use variety. So independents, we use, the Sabre CRS solution. That's great. It's a great solution.
Speaker 1:That's been around for a long time in terms of I didn't feel the need to change that profile. I put delivered what we need. It's quite easy to plug and play and scale that particular platform. But the others is we use the edge for their core brand, and then IHG's got its own proprietary booking engine, so we don't have a choice. So, effectively, we just hand off the booking straight to IHG once we've converted the customer from a digital perspective.
Speaker 3:What is your guys' meetings and events tech stack look like today?
Speaker 1:So we use Delphi FTC, similarly because of our relationship with IHG. It does the job. But if we looked objectively around the product itself on what other players are doing, there are far more innovative solutions out there that I've used. And we previously, I used Ivy, which is a great it was a startup at the time. It was if you look at into quite an end to end tech stack, and then you I'm liking what like, meeting temple.
Speaker 1:We try to put meeting temple in, but they didn't have Oracle at the time. It wasn't ready to do integration, so that was a no go for us. But they're doing some pretty interesting stuff around the digital space and how they're booking into an elements. Delphi FTC, it operates on a Salesforce, so you need a in house developer that has Salesforce skills to really enhance the product. It's quite expensive to aggregate theirs out of that into your Power BI.
Speaker 1:So there is a true enterprise system, but I think this space will get disrupted over the next few years with General AI. Like, whoever has a General AI CRM will win a lot of customers.
Speaker 3:Could you talk about the role of the data warehouse? What are the data sources it's ingesting? And what does it allow you to do that you couldn't do without it?
Speaker 1:I think the first purpose of a data warehouse for us is, you know, we needed a data map to a consistent standard. We look at ROI revenue based on market segmentation, and we're working with IAG, Aqua and Independent Brands. It was quite difficult to really get someone manually to map some spreadsheets and some macro to, you know, to to make sense of the data. So, you know, when I first started, 1 third of the office were somehow doing some form of mapping data, like 1 third, if you live with the head office, they're just sitting in the Onyxel spreadsheets trying to clean the data before they could use it. So what InTouch does is it it's got our standard.
Speaker 1:It's ingesting data whatever form from whatever hotel. So we're taking pause data. We're taking payments data. We're taking every single data point in there so we can really drill down to really to the transaction level. You know?
Speaker 1:This credit card surcharge on this particular booking, we can drill down quite rich. Right? And then we brought in demand data, we brought in STR data to see where we're calling ranking. We're bringing in a lot of budget forecast that are into the platform. And the beauty of this platform is we can now see on a particular head of a particular month on a particular market segment, how we're performing over the last few years.
Speaker 1:So that's the beauty of this platform. For me, the fruits of it is pulling that data out into a a generative platform. The jury's still out around what platform handles that data the best. I'm using Microsoft, but I've seen some great tools out there that has some IP logic in there that's moving quite quick, so we can pivot quite quickly. That's the beauty of having it that your data centralized.
Speaker 1:You can pivot the data stream quite quickly. And that's the purpose. It's to clean our data. It's to make sure it's consistent, reliable. And the ETL element, you know, they're doing it generally, you need a quite a proprietary tool like Matillion to pull it and cost more than a probably 4 PMS's just to deploy it.
Speaker 1:InTouch has got its own scripts, its own proprietary code that can ingest out of Oracle, you know, or out of certain platforms. And that gives us the probably the most cost effective data warehouse tool out there on the market today. So that's the main endpoint of that platform is to fire data in a standard that we want so we can do some crazy stuff with it.
Speaker 3:So a guest gets the property. Can we talk through the guest experience tech stack of, like, what goes into powering that at your properties, and how much leeway did you have with the brands where they're like, oh, you have to use this solution versus, like, what could you actually bring on yourself, and how's that going?
Speaker 1:So I'll look into the brand where we're kind of innovating quite heavily. We operate for a franchise model, so there's certain flexibility you can operate and put a tech stack. So, like, for Kimpton, we're all about that customer gets experience. So we don't wanna put too much technology in front of your face, but it's all about understanding personalizing. So we're we're focused quite heavily on what they like, what have beverage they like.
Speaker 1:So we leverage QR code ordering at the rooftop balm, for example. We use that for tap and order. But equally, it's not in your face. It's only there when the queue's long. So we try to balance that technology.
Speaker 1:We have tablet, ordering solution, post to calling down the phone, just nice simple menu click in straight ins. It's just we try to make it free clicks, and then you can get your burger.
Speaker 3:And is that something you guys built in house, that tablet solution?
Speaker 1:No. We chose a local partner, Australian partner called Tapendium to do that. So we looked at many solutions out there, like global brands, but everyone's trying to make a buck and try to answer other capability. We just wanted it to do a very simple thing. Alright?
Speaker 1:We don't wanna replace the phones. A lot of people try to replace the phones, but the technology does play up quite consistently in the room. So we just wanna make sure if they're unhappy about something, they can just pick up a phone and call reception. So the bit of a tablet, a nice tablet size is we work with a celebrity chef, Luke Mannigan, and it's very appetizing. There's famous burgers and certain steaks.
Speaker 1:We've seen, like, 20 to 30% revenue uplift just by kinda showcasing his products I mean, their products. So it's all about right fit. Then we at the Holly Express, you know, the clientele, they don't wanna spend a lot of money. So it's a simple QR code in every room. We don't provide actually room service, so so once they order, they have to walk down and grab the meal.
Speaker 1:The benefit of that is the system will give them a text, your food is ready or your item's ready, and they'll come and get it. So we've had to simply just innovate in that area because we're staffing was a big issue in Australia. It was for ex we have one of the highest minimum wage in the world. So it's crazy how much we pay just for entry level role. So naturally, we to ensure we maximize returns, we had to provide a cost effective way to deliver a similar service.
Speaker 1:So QR code was was a natural organic evolution. And then we started doubling into web checking, tell them to select the room, allow them to prepay the room. The issue with that technology with web check-in is traditionally, we have a Shirley has a high concentrate of OTAs, which comes with a virtual credit card. That's a big issue because, like, your virtual credit, you only can charge on checkout. So we only can capture certain elements.
Speaker 1:So web check-in, it's great. It's a value add. You can just collect your key or when Apple Wallet comes, you can go straight to your room. So it covers about 20% of our market segment. Generally, corporate guests, return guests, loyalty guests, they love the solution.
Speaker 1:But there's no ROI. Like, the amount of money we spend on that solution, there isn't a payback, but we focus on more of the guest experience piece.
Speaker 3:Obviously, 2 things that are really top of mind for hoteliers are sustainability and cybersecurity. I love to talk through your beliefs on both, like, where are we from a sustainability perspective. Obviously, there's some camps who say that we kind of, like, overshot on sustainability, and now, like, the ESG initiative is just like there's a lot of fluff there and that some of the things aren't as economical as we thought they would be. But then, obviously, you have, like, you know, Maliha announcing that they're getting a couple of their Thai and Vietnamese hotels to, like, 10 to 30% solar power. So where do you see sustainability?
Speaker 3:Where are you guys at from a renewable energy sustainability initiative at Proinvest?
Speaker 1:It's a great question. Very relevant for Proinvest. Proinvest brand is actually built around ESG. So we have a one countless experience brand that's logo. And the company's vision is that we partner with financiers, investors that wants to achieve a certain ESG rating.
Speaker 1:In Australia, we work with Neighbours, which is effectively measures your water wastage and your energy consumption. Across every new build that we've done, we're achieving 4 and a half to 5, which is near 5 is, like, kinda like near the maximum, right, of the rating. So our particular portfolio, Holly Express, we're achieving, clearly a lot of them are fives in the portfolio. As a result, we hold one of the biggest green financing loans with Ariel Bank, which is a very large bank overseas. And so there are actually financial benefits to be sustainable.
Speaker 1:We see it as a founders correspond we see as a responsibility to be in a responsible investor. So we kind of drive that in the market. Every single conference we're in, we're talking about ESG. So we're a leader in this space. And it's not just energy and waste.
Speaker 1:It's just like we there's an s in ESG that a lot of people don't focus on, the social elements. So we launched, like, a sponsorship program for people that that's doing it tough. So we're sponsoring universities. We're sponsoring certain courses to help hoteliers or help people get into hotels. So some across universities, one of our businesses that we partner with.
Speaker 1:And the funny thing is what we would do is we actually recycle all the cans. You know, you get 5¢ back or 10¢ back per can. And we actually put that entire recycle process and the money we get back into the sponsorship program. So those are the type of things that we we also launched quite an extensive graduate program. We're committed for 2 years to groom an individual to be very mature leader out of that program.
Speaker 1:So 1 third of our head office is graduates at this stage. So, you know, that's one thing we're really, really proud of. If we take a step back, we look at, okay, like IG, Accor, you know, they're all saying ESG ESG, but what can they really do to push the boundaries? It's not about just, you know, eliminating plastics. Right?
Speaker 1:It's about looking at I think the number one area that we need to address is the energy consumption is, I think there's a lot of buildings out there, legacy buildings, old buildings. They're just chewing up probably, I would say, 80% more power than in any other traditional new building that we you build. So I think there's a responsibility we're starting to see, like, banks not allowing refinancing if you don't hold a certain ESG rating. So it's a responsibility to do with, you know, the initial cycle of investors. And I think the big brands should only partner with responsible owners.
Speaker 1:You know, we need to start creating that boundary. If you're not committed on this level, it's very CapEx intensive. So we haven't seen a framework out there for a large brand to say, this is what you need to do to comply with our ESG rating. It's very green washy at the moment. They eliminated plastic.
Speaker 1:They do a few things very optically, and I think they've ticked the box. Right? But you don't see anyone holding the neighbors rating, you know, like, it should be something the hotel brands being, you know, they're the one who's is driving this demand. They should be kinda mandating this. It's a big problem for our environment.
Speaker 3:And from a cybersecurity perspective, where do you feel like the state of cybersecurity is for Australian hotels? Obviously, Australia may not be a big target, but hotels always are because of the transaction volumes. Where are you guys in that journey? What do your vendors look like?
Speaker 1:You are correct. You know, like, cybersecurity is probably 20% of my remit. You know, that's what keeps me up at night. And, you know, there was a period where during the Russian Ukraine war, Australia was a target because of the influence in certain aspects of involvement with some donations. So I saw probably 200% growth in DDoS attacks from Russia.
Speaker 1:And so that's a big issue. So we've had some major breaches. Medibank, one of the largest breaches, like everyone that was affected in the country. I think they had 80% of the country on their database that's been affected. But it's true.
Speaker 1:I've worked for so many hotel groups. We're very lucky that our footprint's so small. It is not even worth the time and effort to hack such a small hotel group. Hackers only really target people in the billions, you know, and the 200,000,000 plus ransomware. So I'm really concerned by a lot of hotel groups, you know, a lot of PMSs too.
Speaker 1:During the due diligence of PMSs, I asked them, do you mandate 2 factor authentication? Do you have geo, fencing for your PMS? 90% of the PMS don't have that capability. So if you get key logged, if the hacker knew how to get into a PMS and they knew the product, we would have probably 90% data breaches everywhere. And we've got so many weak solutions out there that don't mandate 2FA.
Speaker 1:One thing I like about Oracle solution is it's mandatory. It's not negotiable. Right? They apply that minimum framework compliance framework on their platform, so you can't breach the platform.
Speaker 3:Anything else other than 2FA that you look for in a PMS that differentiates between the good and the bad ones?
Speaker 1:So geofencing is one of the number one, probably, things I look for. So Oracle, for example, you can go geofencing you can turn on, like, IP white listing. So what that means is, on your network, your office can access that Cloud PMS. Being a Cloud PMS, you don't want people in Russia logging into your platform. Like, it's scary.
Speaker 1:Right? You know, it's so accessible. So that's the number 2 feature I look into. Number 3 is I look at their whether they've achieved certain compliance, you know, ISO 2027001 compliance for data protection laws. So what that means effectively is they purge their data, they purge their credit cards, they follow such a rigor compliance.
Speaker 1:Even if you breach, it's not gonna be a mass breach. It's a bit of very limited contained breach.
Speaker 3:And probably lower probability of a breach because the hackers know there's less loot when they get in.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And then tokenization, you know, till this day, there are some vendors that some PMS's don't mandate tokenization for credit cards, which is concerning. But then the fraud protection of credit cards are so great now that it's pretty hard to know. Like, hackers probably don't look for credit cards anymore. What they are looking for, if you look at the behavior of a hacker, they're looking for your information, looking for your date of birth so they can steal your identity and empty your bank account, steal your mobile.
Speaker 1:They're they're looking for enough information so they can take your mobile from you, and then they can eventually probably reset your 2FA and then get into your bank account.
Speaker 3:So in that rubric, there's ISO certification, there's 2FA, and then what were the other ones that would be those check boxes?
Speaker 1:SOC compliance, we look for. Just make sure that if you're holding credit card, what PCI level you're holding. So we look at all those type of things. More certification, the better, I would say.
Speaker 3:And so it's just those certifications for anything that contains booking or payment information, basically?
Speaker 1:Any type of, like, guest data. Anything, like, considered as PI data, they've got to have that minimum level of compliance. So when we onboard a supplier, everyone needs to make sure they complete a privacy impact assessment. A lot of people don't do that. Like, it's quite scary.
Speaker 1:Like, they're getting non IT people approving cloud products, you know, for HR systems or even, like, storage platforms. There was a big hotel group, independent operator, that got hacked because they put the entire employee filing system in a cloud, you know, a cloud software storage provider. Right? It only took 1 HR person to get keylogged and hacked, and they had the entire employee database. So isolating sense information is so critical in this day and age, and encrypting, very important.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Well, Howard, I know you have a busy day ahead of you. Is there anything else that you feel like hoteliers need to be aware of today that we haven't covered?
Speaker 1:I think the most prominent point I would probably make is your tech strategies, it's gotta be layered with AI, Genov AI, not just AI, but Genov AI. And more we push as an industry, the more innovation that will occur. There's only a handful providers that are looking into the space and invest in the space. So we don't wanna be behind the 8 ball with technology, and we all have a collective responsibility to push our vendors to to innovate. You know, if we're putting in crap solutions because it's so cheap, like, we don't have ourselves to blame.
Speaker 1:So I think I would really recommend everyone to spend their time to make sure they're looking through the road map for every every solution putting in.
Speaker 3:Howard, thanks so much for coming on the show today. This has been awesome, and we're absolutely gonna have to have you back soon because I know there's a ton more to cover.
Speaker 1:Sounds Sounds great, Jordan. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 2:That's all for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Hotel Tech Insider produced by hotel tech report.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.
