Royal Orchid President on the Driving Grassroots Hotel Innovation
I don't think we're ever gonna get to that level of seamlessness where you can walk through the front doors and check-in through your mobile phone and use your mobile phone in order to open a room door without meeting a single human being along the way, I don't think we'll ever get there.
Speaker 2:From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider, a show about the future of hotels and the technology that powers them.
Speaker 3:On this episode, we speak with Arjun Bal the president of Royal Orchid Hotels. This India based company operates over 100 properties including over 250 food and beverage outlets. Arjun walks us through his tech stack which is composed of many innovative startups that work together to form one holistic tech ecosystem. And this program has contributed to a boost in direct bookings in the few months since implementation. I like to start the conversation by learning a bit about your background and your current role.
Speaker 3:Would you please tell me what you're doing now and what your role consists of, what your responsibilities are, and a little bit about your company as well?
Speaker 1:Sure. My name is Arjun Balaji. I'm the president of Royal Oak Kid Hotels. Royal Oak Kid is a full stack hotel company. We have a little over a 100 actually, a 108 operating hotels in India.
Speaker 1:We've got a couple of hotels operating in Nepal and one in Sri Lanka. We are an Indian company. We started with the idea of bringing hospitality across the board. We are now in the middle of reimagining our business just because we have scale per se. So in reimagining our business, you know, we are creating new hotel brands.
Speaker 1:So we have a slew of 5 hotel brands that we're rolling out. It's fast growing. We have hotels that we own, we lease, we manage, and we franchise. We run all the f and b ourselves, so that'll be about 250 odd f and b outlets plus banquets plus you know, so it's a large operation. And in order to enable this, we started our journey to move to the cloud from a PMS perspective about 4 years ago.
Speaker 1:And, obviously, I found it, you know, interesting and challenging. And, yeah, we're on that journey now, and we're integrating with multiple technologies to enable us to do things in a more seamless manner. So my job today in the company is, about reimagining the brands that we have, setting each brand on a path to growth, setting process and systems to enable those brands, and that one of those facets is to use technology in an effective manner so that we can, you know, monitor the growth of these brands. Our hotel owners are happy with how they're performing, and we can push more guest services through those technologies to make the lives of our guests easier.
Speaker 3:And you mentioned there are a couple of brands within the Royal Orchid portfolio. How many brands are you working with?
Speaker 1:So they're all our own brands. Royal Orchid Hotels has their own brands. We've got Royal Orchid, which is an upscale brand that we've currently got, across 15 locations, and the rest fall under a brand called Regenta. And Regenta has a number of silos under it. So it's got Regenta Inn, which is going to be rebranded now.
Speaker 1:Then we got Regenta Place, which is the quirky fun local hotel. And then, you know, you've got Legenda Centrals, which are your bog standard, what you see is what you get kind of 4 style hotel offering.
Speaker 3:And are the properties typically in urban areas? Who's your typical guest?
Speaker 1:It's even key across the board with business and leisure. I think what's happened in India over the last couple of years is people are even willing to go and check out, you know, thanks to COVID, the explore India offering has grown considerably. So, you know, we've basically doubled our portfolio in the last 3 years. It's been an incredible hockey stick type of growth. And as I said, we're currently an Indian company catering to India.
Speaker 1:Right? And it's India, middle market, and Apple middle market who we cater to, and that's our guest. So it could be the same corporate customer who comes into our city hotels, who then takes his family and friends over to one of our vacation spots for the weekend. So kinda works out to be pretty much the same kind of customer.
Speaker 3:Got it. Very cool. And one thing you mentioned just briefly is you have doubled your portfolio size in the last couple of years. Can you talk to me about how technology has maybe helped you with that growth or made that growth more efficient?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, it's not so much the technology that has made that efficient. I think, the fact that there's opportunity in India, you know, we're a very agile hotel company. We follow an asset like model right now, so it's kind of a management platform to, you know, wanna call it that. So we're very flexible with the hotel owners. However, with each of our contracts, we're very clear that I go back to hospitality first principles.
Speaker 1:Right? And we kind of use a simple 2 part question in making any decision across the board. And the first question is, will my guest love it? And the second question is, will it make me money? And if the answer is yes to both those questions, we go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1:And so part of the digitization of our company stem from those 2. Right? So you've got, you know, typical hotel tech stack. Right? Like, we've got the PMS.
Speaker 1:You've got basically the channel manager. You've got revenue manager. You've got all these different pieces of software that come together to make a hotel work. What we found over our years of, I wanna say experimentation, is that there are either the super large Oracle Mycross type people who do a phenomenal job at what they do, but they're frankly expensive for the smaller hotels and the Indian hotels that we operate. Right?
Speaker 1:So we had to go and tinker around and find a tech stack that suited us. And that tech stack was a culmination of specific hotel piece or specific piece of software that actually are really good at what they do. Right? So we got post folks who do, you know, their online accounting platform, and they're phenomenal. So we have hotel logics sitting in the middle of it, and then, you know, like, listen.
Speaker 1:How do I take hotel logics and API integrated with pauses, which is a phenomenal food and beverage offering, a beverage management platform, And connect that to Hostbooks, which is the accounting platform for everything else. That then gets connected to Rategain, which is the channel manager. Right? And then it's connected to another piece of revenue management software. And you got Salesforce sitting somewhere that is connected to all of it so that sales and marketing and development efforts can kind of, you know, go through the Salesforce channel.
Speaker 1:Right? So we've had to pick and choose all of these, you know, 5, 6 different pieces of software and make them talk to each other. And in doing that, we came up with a really cool tech stack that is now compulsory for our Dell owners to adopt. Right? But at the same time, the text tag is cost effective for them to adopt.
Speaker 1:Right? And that really was a very interesting little piece where you could go to a hotel owner. It's a cost per room basis right, that we don't make any money out of. Right? So it's a direct contract between the hotel owner and the tech companies themselves.
Speaker 1:Right? But we'll just ensure that this is all implemented for them at a really, really cost effective manner.
Speaker 3:Tell me a bit about how these changes come into play. Like, you have an idea. You suggest it to maybe the product team at Hotel Logix. And are they generally supportive of building it, or is there some negotiation there?
Speaker 1:I could tell you that with Hotel Logix, you know, they're a startup. They're a well funded startup. They are agile. Their founders are incredible people, and they kinda get it. Right?
Speaker 1:So exactly the same ethos of me sharing value or knowledge with them. And where do I get this idea? I don't get this idea. Right? It's never me.
Speaker 1:It's always a user within our ecosystem, within the hotels, who comes back and says, listen. If this functionality was there, it'll just make our life easier. Right? So that demand has come from the end user, not from me. I I don't know how to even run that piece of tech, frankly.
Speaker 1:Right? So somebody who's the end user of that tech comes up with a request. It goes back to us to say, maybe if it's done in the x manner, it'll help our end employee. And then we send that on to Telogix to say, hey. Listen.
Speaker 1:Is this possible? They would then come back with we already have this tool, and maybe you could let's get a new training session done. Or it's a good idea. Let's develop it or let's dwell on it and then develop it. You know, 4 to 6 week cycle, we have an impacts that we wanted.
Speaker 1:Right? So it's been a collaborative effort with all of our vendors, right, to try and get the best solution that our end user and for software, our end user is our employee. Right? It's the last waiter. It's the last housekeeper.
Speaker 1:It's the last front desk agent. Right? So we need to ensure that everything works.
Speaker 3:And you mentioned it was about 4 years ago that you migrated from a legacy system to Hotel Logix. Tell me about how you chose Hotel Logix. How did that decision come to pass that you were ready to change PMS vendors, which I can imagine for a portfolio your size is no small feat?
Speaker 1:Well, listen. It's an ongoing process. Just remember that, you know, we added 50 hotels over the last 3 years. Right? So then there was COVID before that.
Speaker 1:We lost a number of hotels. Number of hotels shut down. So this journey actually started just before COVID when we decided that, listen, we want to digitize. We wanna move to the cloud, and let's go out and shop around for a PMS system that actually suits us. Now the one thing that I could tell you is that one of the key decisions of choosing Hotel Logix was that their founders were in India, and they were backed by name brand venture partners, like Accel Ventures that Accel put money in them.
Speaker 1:Right? So there's automatic credibility with Accel that I didn't put the stamp of approval on them. Right? That was a key consideration. The fact that they were accessible to us, this was an experiment that we were starting with, and I didn't want to and we started with just a couple of hotels.
Speaker 1:Right? So the experiment was let's start with a couple of hotels that we own, that we can control, and then if things don't work out, we can move back really quickly to the legacy systems. So now months on end, we'll be actually 2 systems running in parallel. Right? It was a complete pain for hotel operations team, but we had to do that.
Speaker 1:Right? So there were a number of vendors who we spoke to, and I just think there was a meeting of the minds between the founders at Hotel Logix and us. Right? It really was. It was a meeting of minds.
Speaker 1:It was something that we got on instantly with the vision that they were on and the path they were on and where I kind of saw my company going through. Right? And it just kind of became a story where, alright. Well, you know, let's grow together. Right?
Speaker 1:Rather than you being a vendor per se and me being a client and me begging you to go for service. And it just morphed into a partnership rather than a vendor seller type situation.
Speaker 3:Is there any new vendor on the market, not for PMS, but for another type of software that might be on your wish list, something you've seen recently that you're considering implementing?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, the one thing that we're just we've done 2 pilots of, one is a web app version of a hotel concierge app. It's digitization of hotel services and experiences, and it's pretty cool how simple they made it to implement. I mean, you can implement a hotel a day. Right? Why do you have your data correctly?
Speaker 1:And they are currently being integrated with Hotel Logix as we speak so that, you know, if a guest checks into room 401, he can order whatever he wants via his web app. Right? And it's built through Zoom. And the reason we went to web app route is that I mean, how many hotel apps are you going to download? It's just it's it's crazy.
Speaker 1:And I think the way guests see it is, when we come to a hotel, there's a QR code, you scan it, the app opens up, and once you leave, you forget about it. Right? I don't see myself interacting with the Four Seasons hotel app on my phone when I'm not staying at the Four Seasons. Right? I mean, I don't even go through that app if I'm not staying there.
Speaker 1:That is crazy. So that's one that we're doing. The second that we are mucking around with is the voice AI piece, right, for customer service. The only bit that we're struggling with is India has 26 languages and maybe 260 different dialects to it. So how do I get vernacular AI voice chat going where the AI actually understands the need of the consumer that may not be in the Queen's English.
Speaker 1:That's the puzzle that we're still trying to solve. The third piece that we've started implementing across the board, actually, is kind of a virtual tool for banqueting. Right? And we've got so many banquet venues and halls across our hotels. So in 2 hotels, you started this trial where, you know, there's a proper walk through that you can do to the hall.
Speaker 1:You can choose the kind of setting and display you want, and you will actually see the 3 d rendering of it come up. You can drag and drop what you want from your menu, and then you click checkout and a RFP is made for you instead. And then it's real time rate, real time inventory for that banquet hall as well. Right? And so there's no picking up the phone and speaking to anyone.
Speaker 1:You can do that, and then somebody, of course, will call you to complete the transaction. But I just think that a picture speaks a 1,000 words, and the fact that if you're able to walk around the hall, almost like walking around in a metaverse, it's kinda cool. Right? So we've done that with one implementation, and now we're trying to figure out how to rule it out across the platform, but it's frightfully expensive today to do. So maybe we won't get to 107, but, you know, maybe we can get to 20 or 30 hotels or the larger ones at least.
Speaker 3:I'm interested to learn a little bit more. You mentioned the web app for your guests. What other pieces of technology do guests use? Like, how is check-in handled at your properties?
Speaker 1:Right now, check-in is very, very simple. You come to a front desk and you give your name and whatever it is, and you're checked in like it's a pretty manual process. Right? Now we've experimented with the entire digital check-in story, and we're doing a pilot at a hotel at the inn level, right, which is the bottom of the pyramid, story. So that's been rebranded as Regenda zed, or Regenda z, and we're rolling that out.
Speaker 1:So how does one do a AI avatar bot that you can go and talk to and check-in through that bot. There is obviously the safety and security concerns. So the fact that we do want people to when they walk into the hotel, they're gonna have to be scanned. And there's a law in India where you will need back a scanner, people to physically check or walk into a door frame detector. There is a law that, you know, you do need to take ID of the person staying in a hotel.
Speaker 1:And so keeping all of these laws in mind, you need human interaction at some point, right, during the checking process. So we're trying to see how we can minimize human interaction and make it more seamless. Right? The flip to that is, you know, we've got a 1000000000 and a half people in India and, you know, somebody's gonna employ them. Right?
Speaker 1:So we don't really want to be replacing so the purpose of technology for me, personally, is not to replace the human being, but to enable them to perform better. Okay? And I don't think we're ever gonna get to that level of seamlessness where you can walk through the front doors and check-in through your mobile phone and use your mobile phone in order to open a room door without meeting a single human being along the way. I don't think we'll ever get there, but never say never. We already have that tech.
Speaker 1:Right? We just not enabled it, which is to use your phone key to open the door. I mean, that exists. Right? That's there with us too.
Speaker 1:Right? We've just not done that yet.
Speaker 3:Taking just a little step back, talk to me about your rewards program. I understand that this is a newer addition to your tech stack. How does it work? You know, what are all the pieces that are in play there?
Speaker 1:So we wanted to simplify the method of earning and burning for the customer. And we wanted to simplify the idea of what they earn and what does that actually amount to. Right? What does a point mean? Right?
Speaker 1:So very simply, if you're a base category member, it works out to be a 2% cashback. Right? So So think about it. For every $100 you earn, you want $2 back. This is instant real time.
Speaker 1:Right? Done. Then if you go to a second tier of rewards, which you currently have just 2. Right? And you won 4 rupees of 4% cash back for a $100 that you spent with us.
Speaker 1:Right? Now along with that, there's obviously f and b discounts, you know, between anywhere ranging between 15 25%. There's beverage discounts, spa discounts. I mean, the the works. Right?
Speaker 1:That's all kind of loaded in there. Right? In these two programs. But the key is that if somebody sits and earns, you know, the $2 on his stay, where does he burn it? Right?
Speaker 1:And while we're saying you earn with us as a in a closed community, right, you've got to come to me to spend the money for me to reward you, we want you to be able to burn that money or that 2% cashback that you accumulate. I want you to be able to use it anywhere you please. Right? Because it's your money. You know, it's as good as me giving you $2 back for a $100.
Speaker 1:Right? Now if that's the principle, right, you could be sitting at the coffee shop and, you know, at our coffee shop and use the $2 instantly to buy yourself a cup of coffee, or you could accumulate that and buy yourself a pair of Levi's jeans. Right? Get an Amazon voucher for that amount for all I care. Right?
Speaker 1:So as far as we're concerned, we're very clear that this 2% that we are allocating towards a reward is a debt we owe to the customer. Okay? And that is a principle in which we're saying if that's a debt I owe, it's sitting on my balance sheet as money that I have to pay someone somewhere or a it's a collective number of people who I owe this money to. Then whether I pay that money to my own hotel or I pay that money to a charity or I pay that money to Amazon, right, that doesn't matter to me. There's money that has to go anywhere.
Speaker 1:Right? So that's kind of how we designed it. So we got a rewards platform partner again to help power it. We sat and tweaked and tweaked and tweaked and came up with, you know, the ideal program for us. We then had them integrate with our channel manager so that guests can book directly, but the booking engine, we developed ourselves.
Speaker 1:Right? So the hotel booking engine that takes, you know, the friends and family code, let's say, if today, it's your birthday, it should automatically know that it's your birthday and therefore automatically apply that discount on your room rate. Right? It just needs to do that. You know, so it's things like this that we are doing and thinking from a guest perspective.
Speaker 1:Right? Of how do you get them to book directly to us, right, or through the rewards program. Right? But they will get the best rate and the best guarantee. The other thing that we did is, and we're rolling this out, is that free Wi Fi across hotel is open to our rewards program members.
Speaker 1:Right? And that's it. Right? So if you're not a rewards program member, you don't get free Wi Fi. Then you pay for it.
Speaker 1:Right? Now what we suddenly had is a 100% of the guests checking into the hotel now become rewards members. Right? So in a matter of two and a half months, we've signed up 370,000 active rewards program members, and they're active. It's not like they're speeding up for the free Wi Fi and bugger off.
Speaker 1:If signed up, they're actually engaging with us, you know, on a regular basis. So, you know, we want to make that engagement higher, and we're very happy to be giving away 2 4% cash back to these guys, but they are loyal members who will keep coming back. Right? And so it's been a conscious effort of getting them to engage with us more, right, on a regular basis, and, therefore, allow us the opportunity to reward them. Right?
Speaker 1:That's the principle where we're coming.
Speaker 3:And do you find that guests are happy with the program? Do you have any surveys, or do guests mention it in reviews or anything like that?
Speaker 1:So it's a new program for them to be mentioning in reviews right now, but, you know, I can see when I it's there, walk around some of the hotels. I actually see that at the restaurant when they're about to pay their oh, listen. I'm a rewards member and pull up their it's digital. Right? So lots of rewards and say, hey.
Speaker 1:Listen. Give us the discount. No. That's fine. Right?
Speaker 1:But at least they're, you know, they are able to record their rewards points instantly, and they're able to earn their spend. Right?
Speaker 3:How much of a discount are you giving on the website for the loyalty program members?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Again, it's tiered based, and it's also length of stay based, and it's the number of room nights you've done. So, anyway, up 10% and above. But what's interesting is that, you know, we've got a gamification piece where you get instant rewards. I mean, you know, 1 month, you could get a cup of coffee at any of the hotels.
Speaker 1:The next month, you could get 2 nights free at any of the hotels. So, you know, we're putting in the idea of instant gratification because I think in today's generation, if I sign up, what do I get? It's like, in order to sign up, you get free WiFi and you get a discount. If you stay with us, instantly you get, you know, free beverage. Right?
Speaker 1:So you get a beer free the moment you check-in for the first time. Right? So that's kind of instant gratification for the customer. Right? So it's a combination of discounts, and it's a combination of freebies.
Speaker 1:Right? We had to do that.
Speaker 3:I'm curious to hear about a couple of your top business objectives. As you think about the future of Royal Orchid Hotels, what are a couple high level goals that you're working toward, and how does technology help you get there?
Speaker 1:Very simply, we this Regenta zed, or zed by Regenta value price hotel platform that we are rolling out starting this month is a pure play franchise model. Right? So the way that we're imagining our business is that on one silo, you have brand technology and basically brand technology and the revenue of that technology. Right? The revenue of those hotels coming on one side.
Speaker 1:On the other side, we've got hotels where we own the asset and we own the, basically, the meat of the business. So if you look at the management company side of things, technology plays a really vital role for us because it's the way to ensure standard basically, ensure rate parity for the customers. You know, we've done I think we're among the only hotel companies in the world that does a daily profit and loss account for each of our hotels. Okay? So you gotta know real time how much money you made at the end of the day, right, in each hotel.
Speaker 1:K? And that is only enabled by technology. So even for the smaller hotels, I mean, you have hotels in our system that are 30 rooms. Right? That's it.
Speaker 1:Right? We've got hotels now in 70 locations around India. Some are in far flung locations where access to regular monitoring is way tough. So you have to rely on the individual sitting there. So be it, you know, high definition remote cameras to ensuring that a guest has seamless check-in experience with the Wi Fi being available to the fact that, you know, you have to monitor the inventory of the hotel, you know, that the guy's got his soap and whatever shower gel in the hotel room that is consistent with the rest of the premises, the rest of the group.
Speaker 1:And so, you know, I mean, they're little piece of the puzzle that all have to come together, and they're all available just because all monitorable by corporate office just because we've been able to or we're trying to set up this seamless cloud based tech stack. Right? And on the zen platform piece, you know, we got really, really ambitious targets of franchise to hit a couple of 100 hotels in the next 2 years. Right? How do I do that without actually going in there with a hotel in a box model, which is here are all the branding elements, here are all the technology elements, and you're off to the races.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 3:Have you thought about any roles on property being able to do business from a smartphone? Like, I don't know, housekeeping supervisor. You know, is the PMS available on mobile? Yeah. We have that already.
Speaker 3:We have
Speaker 1:that already. That's rolled out. PMS mobile, you know, rooms whether they're clean, not clean, under renovation, you know, all of those stats are there, are able. We have mobile check-in today. We have the ability to check-in our guest on an iPad.
Speaker 1:Right? So all of that, that was kind of done on day 0. But that's enabled and it's not rolled out across the platform yet. Right? But it's there.
Speaker 1:Right? You know, it's being done in, couple of the hotels where guests have more time. Right? Say the check-in process and all of that. You know?
Speaker 1:We take them to the room. We explain what the room features are, the property features are, sit there and have a cup of tea with them, and then get them to sign on an iPad. I mean, all that stuff is there. But, you know, we have the ability and we've started rolling that out of taking orders on a mobile phone, right, rather than on a battery paper. So that's there.
Speaker 1:That's there. We've enabled all that there.
Speaker 3:In just the last couple of minutes we have, I'm curious, based on your experience, what would you say are 1 or 2 skills that a hotelier should have to be successful today?
Speaker 1:Humility. First skill. There's always going to be somebody who's going to do particular process or a restaurant or a room. Somebody's gonna do always gonna do it better. Always.
Speaker 1:Right? You need to be humble to realize that, you know, what you were will not be who you are tomorrow, And, therefore, you have to continue to want to learn with the changes in the market. Right? You have to continue, and you have to be humble enough to learn, to know that you don't know it all. Right?
Speaker 1:That's the first thing. And I think that the second piece that I've learned, right, is the old adage. Right? They say the guest is always right. I think hospitality has to design itself around what the guest wants and not what it who's the guest.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, they're the ones paying the bills. Right? And by that, I mean that, you know, in the hotel school back in the day, you were taught about how a service should be done and you serve from the left, you know, from the right, all of that nonsense. Right? And we've done all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:But, really, does that matter? Right? In today's day and age where the customer is predominantly younger than what they were back in the day, they're influenced by pop culture, and they have a shorter attention span than what people had, you know, 2 decades ago. Right? They are far more casual today than they were.
Speaker 1:Right? Do we really need to stick to our rules of engagement with the customer, or should we adapt to the way the customer wants us to serve them? Right? And that I think is extremely important that old adage of the customer is always right is true because we need to adapt to what the customer wants. Right?
Speaker 1:And, also, you know, what I've learned is that we don't need to speak the queen's English in order to serve the customer. We just need to speak the language of the customer in order to serve the customer. And those are 2 hugely different things.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much, Arjun, for your time. It was great chatting with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Arjun. It's been a pleasure speaking to you.
Speaker 2:That's all for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Hotel Tech Insider produced by Hotel Tech Report dotcom. 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.
