Hotel Tech Insider

SPEAKER_02:
Now we more have a vision of to move to the next level. We know exactly what we need and we're going to look for the right technology to support our growth. Up to now, we did the reverse, which was more reactive and say, oh, there's a new thing that's really interesting. What do we try and see if we can plug it in? So, yeah, the two main ones are distribution and I would say the revenue management system, because it really helps to maximize your profitability.

SPEAKER_00:
From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider, a show about the future of hotels and the technology that powers them.

SPEAKER_01:
Today we're talking with Antonio Duqueschi, the CCO of Star Hotels. Antonio has had quite the impressive career, from becoming one of Italy's youngest hotel GMs at the age of 30, to running sales and marketing at the iconic Fairmont Monte Carlo for seven years. At Star Hotels, Antonio has implemented some exciting new software, including a new CRM which will unlock opportunities to improve the group's loyalty program. You'll also want to hear Antonio's learnings from the pandemic, what skills he recommends all hoteliers hone, and how he leveraged technology to creatively sell rooms with the best views of the track during the Monaco Grand Prix. So at the beginning of these conversations, I'd like to take a minute to learn more about your background. I would love to hear about your career so far in the hotel industry, the roles you've had, the companies you've worked for, and then ultimately would love for you to share what you're doing now and what your role involves.

SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, basically I've started in the hotel business almost by accident. None of my family has ever been in the hotel business. But since I attended the hotel management school, you know, close to Florence quite a few years ago, then I got passionate about this industry and I started traveling around and making my experiences in different departments. You know, as everybody else start in a new industry, you start from the very basic jobs. and turning around and my turning point was when I moved to London to, it was technically to learn the language, but then eventually it turned out to be a great career improvement because I was able to work for an international company. into the financial accounts department which was very different from my previous experiences which were more operations. And then i started seeing you know side of the job which i didn't know i started learning more about you know international dynamics of the business and companies. And then I got hunted by a company in Italy that offered me a job as a hotel general manager. I was one of the youngest general managers in Italy. I was not even 30. And at the time, it was a big jump in a career, particularly because in our industry, the turnover at the time was very limited. So getting that kind of job was really a privilege and a total opportunity. and then I stayed in that company for around 10 years, initially as deputy general manager and then eventually as general manager. creates a opportunity to prove myself that I could, you know, lead a team of people, even if I was much younger than them. And, you know, I came from a very different experience. Then I thought that my time and that company was due to end and I wanted to move and make some more experiences, particularly because, you know, staying too long in the same company, don't learn more. And I didn't have anybody above me that could teach me more. So I went to work in Monaco, into the commercial department, complete a new experience, international company with Meridian. And I was in charge of the whole France and Southern Europe area. And then from there, I decided to move again in Luxembourg, where I worked for an American company, an American association, nonprofit association, still in the hospitality business, but more geared to the meeting and events and the marketing side. So the hotel companies were my clients primarily. So same industry, different side of the coin, different side of the fence. Very interesting experiences, three years. It enabled me to really work strategically because when you work in the hotel business, particularly on property, you have so much that can buy daily stuff that is difficult to get your head out of the water and get the, what we call the helicopter view. You're too much taken by the daily operations and daily challenges. I don't really have time to think strategically. Working remotely in a head office in Luxembourg, I was really able to get the strategic view of the business, planning long term, which is very unusual for Italians, but that's our nature. You know, but it really gave me another push in my career. And from there, I was headhunted by my same boss that I had in Monaco. He moved to another company, he moved to Fairmont, and he says, Antonio, I want you to come with me. So at the time, I thought three years in that company was a good time, was a good experience, but probably not the end of my journey. And then thinking about moving from Luxembourg with 300 days of rain to Monaco, 300 days of sun. I think the decision took me about 25 seconds. And then I said, okay, I'll come back to Monaco and work for Fairmont. And in that role, I was a director of sales and marketing for the whole of Europe. I was based in Monaco on the main property, which is the Fairmont Monte Carlo, but responsible for the key properties in Europe. And that company is really also where I learned something more about managing talents, growing talents, Fairmont, The international company was very, very focused on people and very focused on improving the quality of the top management. So for them to be able to deliver better results. So Unlike other American companies, which were more, you know, number driven, they were more people driven. Still, of course, with the focus on numbers, but, you know, with the attention on growing talents and selecting and, you know, cultivating the best ones. And then from there I decided after, you know, another seven years in Monaco was the time to move on again. And I was hunted by this company I work now, Star Hotels. It's a very small privately owned company, about 30 hotels compared to the previous companies I was before, which were very big. But I did like the project. I think that that was the next phase of my challenge. Try to bring my expertise into a company where was needed some international vision. This is a company that is pretty much driven by the Italian properties. We have 25 properties in Italy and only five abroad. We have London, Paris, and then New York. So the reason why they hired me is because I was coming with a background of international company experience, particularly into the luxury space, which is where I was working the last few years. So I came with a nice project to lead the luxury division. And then, you know, over the pandemic, we had a little reshuffling within the company. So instead of, you know, just managing the luxury division, I was then extending my role and managing the whole commercial department of the company. So now in my area of responsibility. There are marketing, sales, PR, revenue, central reservations, group tests, anything that generates revenue plus everything that generates the brand image or reputation of the company. So the two sides are revenue generating and brand position of the company. That's everything reporting to the commercial department. They have a you know, a relatively small team compared to big companies by five people. across the different disciplines. And as I said, we have the majority of our property in Italy, but we do have a footprint abroad. And, you know, we're celebrating 40 years of the company in 2020, which wasn't the best time to celebrate, but that's what happens. The company belongs to the same owner over the last 40 years. And one of the peculiarities of the company is that we own all the properties. which is very unusual in our space. You know, typically there's investment funds or banks or other investors and then you have an operating company. We have both owners and operators. We have quite a nice challenge because when you think the strategy, you think how you create the commercial results, but also how to protect your assets and value the assets. So there's two sides of the same company, which are equally important, the assets value and the commercial value. And so we kind of wear two hats. So that's where I stand today. All my career in hospitality with a little break into associations and alongside I've been also a member of several organizations. And right now I'm vice chair of the MPI Global Trustees Foundation, which is an organization within MPI, Meet the Profession International. that, you know, generate the right funds to expand and enhance the meeting and events business and meeting industry as a whole and supports the young generation to enter the industry and support their career path. So I do that as a volunteer role. but I've been always very involved into associations, which I think are a very, very good part of our business and particularly part of my high level network. You know, all the key people I've met, I've met primarily through associations. And also the exchange and then talking today about, you know, innovation and about new ideas is always a great environment to peer to peer exchange best practices and valuable, you know, insights and information on how to grow respectively the business. And even across industries, not just in our industry, you know, when you pick ideas from other industries are very valuable because our industry is and has been very traditional, too traditional sometimes. So sometimes picking ideas from other industries which are a little more dynamic, it helps.

SPEAKER_01:
So one question in your current role at Star Hotels, is the company seeking to expand and acquire more hotels or is the goal to manage and run the 30 hotels really well? without growth?

SPEAKER_02:
I think our aim is to expand. I think we have two models to expand, either lease or management contracts. Owning already 30 properties, continue buying hotels is not financially liable. It's going to be too financially intense. So the idea is to expand. We have great opportunities, particularly with small properties. In Italy, the second, third generation of hoteliers They don't really want to continue this business. You know, they, the owner wants to maintain the building because it's their be gone to their family. There's a, you know, attachment, which is not just a business case, but it's really emotional attachment to the properties, but they cannot run it because the new generation don't want to do it. So they need to give it to an operator. And I think sometimes we are the right fit because we're not too big. We're not too small. We are structured, but we don't come across with a hundred pages of content as a big company do. and we are more approachable. So we do have an opportunity to expand with individual properties that are the majority of the hotels in Italy. And we have a lot in the pipeline, you know, a lot of negotiations happen, particularly after the pandemic, when lots of the small properties have been badly affected and they realize that in bad times, they're not structured to survive those waves of business. So they want somebody to, to help them, support them, continue in a very, very different world than it was years ago. Right now, you know, small hotels, they struggle to survive coping with all the new technology, distribution initiatives. They don't have the resources to buy all this or to afford all of this, but they needed to do it to survive. So they rather align and get an alliance with somebody that can help them to stay in business. But more with companies like ourselves, which are more, you know, human size, I would say. So that's certainly an area of opportunity. Then we want to also grow into the luxury markets. We have a few properties, but that's our aim to expand in that area. And we do have the, now the skills and the resources and the tools to be able to get a footprint there, which wasn't the case a few years ago, but now we are kind of ready to go.

SPEAKER_01:
So speaking of that new technology, I would love to learn more about your tech stack and all the systems you're using within that commercial umbrella. What do you consider to be the most valuable, the most crucial tech vendor that you work with right now?

SPEAKER_02:
We have two key partners. One is Amadeus, which runs all our distribution, our booking engine and channel manager. That's key today to be able to have a very, very solid distribution is the key to success. You can generate a lot of interesting people. You can generate a lot of, you know, buzz, but if you don't have all the right channels available for people to find you easy, book you easy, you know, that's certainly not set for success. And the other vendors, which we have just hired a few months ago, we just completed their onboarding, is Ideas with the new revenue management system. We didn't have one. I mean, we have a company that comes from various schools. So when we think about tech stack, we build the technology bit by bit, sometimes not really with a clear strategy, to be honest with you. maybe 10 years ago, there wasn't a vision of where do we want to get and how do we get there technology wise, step by step. I think we have embraced technology as it comes, which is certainly not the right strategy, not the, not what we want to do now. Now we more have a vision of to move to the next level. We know exactly what we need and we're going to look for the right technology to support our growth. Up to now, we did the reverse, which was more reactive and say, Oh, there's a new thing. That's really interesting. What do we try and see if we can plug it in? So yeah, the two main ones are distribution. And I would say the revenue management system, because it really helps to maximize your profitability and you cannot do it with human being alone today. There's too much sophistication, too much of information to process in a very, very short period of time that only machine can do. We have a very good team of revenue managers, very, very structured. And I think they saw the changes by using the new system. We completed rollout a week ago. So the last hotels went live a week ago. So we're really, really fresh, but we can already see the results of the performance of the improvement or how we can optimize It's a great car. It's a Formula One car. It needs a driver. So we have to train our driver to drive a Formula One car. They were trained to drive kind of normal cars and now they need to drive much better ones. So it's a, it's a collective effort to improve your knowledge, your skills and constantly improve as the machine improves. But that's set to the two key vendors we have today. Then we have, I would say, another two, which are coming up now. We have a new CRM. We partnered with Microsoft and that's really going to give us a big push in our ability to identify opportunities, to be more selective in our communication and our research of the right clients and set to be going to enhance our loyalty program. We are a very small fish. We have a very, very small loyalty program so far, but then we've grown because we didn't have the technology behind it to make it grow. So we had the willingness but not the technology behind. So now we identified this partner that certainly helped us to grow again. And the other one that which is in our meeting and event space because of our hotels, you know, a good portion of them are very good into the meeting and event space is Cvent. Cvent is a company, it's a worldwide provider of technology. And the good thing is that they come up every year with solutions to the problems. I am part of their advisory board and every year we do a focus group and they ask all the OTDA, what do you need? What do you need more from us? And they take all this feedback and they develop the right technology for us. So that's a, that's a good partnership that listen and implement new things based on market demand. And it's helping us a great deal, not just for the visibility, but to implement new tools that enable us to be more reactive. to do our work a little more efficiently in many areas. We have other vendors, but those are the key vendors I would say in our portfolio of technology vendors. These are four ones that are strategic for us. Without them, we wouldn't be able to move to the next level.

SPEAKER_01:
And you say you mentioned ideas is quite new. Are these other systems newly implemented or has Star Hotels used them for a while?

SPEAKER_02:
We use TravelClick, which then was acquired by Amadeus since 2019. So it's already 2018, I think. So it's already four years since we have implemented new systems. You know, as I said in hospitality, technology has come very late compared to other industries because we were very traditional the way we're doing things. So I think the both processes, sometimes we spot new technology that solve problem we didn't know we had. Right. Some vendor comes up and say, Hey, I have a new technology does ABC. And I said, Hey, I never thought about doing this in a much smarter way. One example is a platform, which is called Urbanics. It's a very new startup. They do a very simple thing. They try to help you to approach all the smart workers that are, you know, around that they need a space to work. And, you know, we have the empty space in hotels, like lobbies, bars, uh, space that we don't use all the day. You know, there's some, most of the time they're empty. But through this platform, you can rent those spaces to specific people looking for areas to work quietly, privately, which are not offices. You know, sometimes imagine you're in Milan and you're three hours before your train departs. You cannot work in a train station. It's very difficult. So you need to find maybe a space and with the application of Urbanics, you can spot a hotel in the area that can allocate a little area for you with a very little budget and helps you, you know, increase your revenue, increase your visibility. You have little more bars in the lobby and the bar, you know, you create a little dynamic inside. You can sell additional services. You can sell, you know, F&B You can sell other services, which you wouldn't sell in the first place if people wouldn't come in your hotel. So I think bit by bit, we come across new companies that are offering solutions to very, very niche areas, which is important. Sometimes we would love all the systems to talk to each other. Not always possible. You know, whenever we have to integrate some new system, we always ask them if they work with our PMS, which is Opera. which is a main hub. Lots of people are working with the PMS Opera, but other systems and with our channel distribution system. So If they're not connected, then it's difficult to identify new technology that are really, really helpful. But those small companies are coming up offering different services. There is a new company I came across a month ago that offer platform for people to use luxury properties only on services, which has not room related. You know, I want to use the pool of the four seasons. Technically, if I'm an external customer, I wouldn't be able to call the 4Season and say, can I come to your pool? Because maybe, you know, I don't feel comfortable in doing that. And that platform, you can put all your luxury services available to external clients that just want to use a portion of your services, but not the room. So again, all these new things that are helping you be a little more conscious of all the business opportunities that can come across. As I said, in the ideal world, you should have a strategy and then find the technology. Reality is sometimes in both ways. You know, sometimes technology comes to you and offer you things that you haven't thought about.

SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. And you mentioned previously, many of the technology decisions were more reactive and now you've made a choice to switch to a more proactive strategy. What spurred that change? You know, what inspired you to start thinking more proactively rather than reactive?

SPEAKER_02:
I think the pandemic with all the bad things that brought with it, it taught us that you need to be able to work a little more efficiently and you know, with less resources, we had to do the same job. So you have to be creative in two ways. One, Enable your team not to waste any time on admin staff or other areas which have no value adds. And two, to easy the tasks of your clients, but also to find additional revenue opportunities. You know, given a very stupid example, but during the pandemic, we had empty buildings in the middle of the town. So the two things that hotels are built for, sleep and eat, we couldn't do it. So we said, what do we do with these empty buildings? And so we came up with, uh, rented the parking space to rental car companies. Rental car companies had a big challenge because typically 70% of their vehicles are circulating and 30% are parked. And during the pandemic, a hundred percent were to be parked because we couldn't circulate. So they had no space at all. So we had to rent our parking space to rental car companies. It was a win-win. We got a little money, they got a little extra thing. We got the rooms converted into a little concert hall to be able to the orchestra to perform because the theater were closed. We had to convert rooms into gym to train athletes that could not go to the proper gym, you know? So it taught us to say, let's look at outside the box in a very proactive way, not just in a reactive way. And one of the thing is, okay, What kind of technology would we need to work a little more efficient that's why i went to see vent and say guys my challenge is today to be able to reply within two hours because first to reply statistically is probably more chances to win the business. So they said, how can I get these like an automatic reply so that people knows that we're working on it, like acknowledge it, you know? So, and they worked on that and say, okay, let's do this. How can I get small meetings to be able to be booked online and not to a physical person? If I have to book a 10 people meeting, I don't need to go through a contract. I don't want to write any emails. I want to go online and find my meeting room, my bedrooms, full stop. One, I saw they came up with solutions on that. So We were the one not driving technology, but highlighting our, you know, pain points and say, Hey, we have five pain points. Can you address technology in these pain points? Sometimes I get mad to IT people when I say there is no solutions, because if you can go to the moon, Hey, Honestly, we can find solutions to small problems, but it's always a big debate. But that's what drives our innovation today. Identify what do we need and what kind of technology can help us making us smarter, faster, easier to talk to the client. Sometimes it's just making it easy for the client to do business with us. That's what they need. They want to, you know, to book a room in three clicks, it needs to be three clicks. Statistically, if you pay an extra click, 20% of the business goes somewhere else. It's the statistic we have today. So the more you shorten the booking process, identification process, and the more you have chances to increase your business.

SPEAKER_01:
And how do you understand if that technology is working for you? Are there metrics you look at or you listen to feedback from your staff?

SPEAKER_02:
Um, yeah, certainly we set some key PIs up front and say, okay, if for example, this event, we say we need to reply faster because we understand the statistics are telling us that those who reply faster get more business. Now over a period of maybe six months, we track conversion and we say now with new technology, has our conversion improved? Yes or no. And by how much? And so how much we invested, how much our conversion has improved, how much we generate more with a new conversion. So that's, as long as you set KPIs upfront, then you can track the results. I must admit sometimes can decision be made out of common sense. Today, if you wait to have all the statistics and the measuring, Maybe you come too late in the business. You know, it's a fast paced world. Sometimes when you have an idea and you think out of experience say, in my view, this should work. Do you have all the metrics that are telling us it's going to work? No. You need to have the courage to start and adjust as you go along and say, okay, I know it's going to work. I don't know how if the first version of what we're going to implement is going to work properly. Maybe as we implement, we identify opportunity to adjust it, to twist it. You need to have the courage to start. If you wait to have a hundred percent of your information ready, When you start, everybody's already in the market. So it's a bit tricky sometimes, um, whether you, you decide to make it work immediately or you decide to take the, I would say safe, the safe routes and say, I want to have all the tests made before I go ahead. Depend on the approach and depend on the size of the risk. On things that are very limited risk, you know what, I go ahead. Things that have a big risk for the company, maybe I take a step back and we're trying to have all the pilots before we start rolling out. But there's never right or wrong. I think that you only know afterwards, but certainly you need to have some KPIs to measure the results and see whether it was successful or not. And it's a question of personality. I had a very British boss and he was very structured and wanted to have all the tests before we were doing anything. I'm a little more outgoing because I'm Italian and you know, my heart sometimes goes faster than my brain. So, but there's no right or wrong. I think it's, as you said, out of, you know, measuring the risk first.

SPEAKER_01:
So one other type of technology that I hear from many hoteliers is a system that helps with upselling or adding some ancillary revenue. Is that something your team is working with as well?

SPEAKER_02:
Yeah. We work with different systems. Those who provide the upselling upfront and those who help you doing the upselling at the desk. So we had a company called TSA that was a company I've been working with for many years that was specialized in to training people on how to upsell upon arrival and also at reservation on the phone. So they were very focused on tracking your upselling. and training the team to get the right language, to find the right words, to make people to buy into the upsell. That was more on the human side. So training people to do the upselling into a very structured system, because TSA had a very good technology that could track everything. Then there are other technologies. One we're looking at is, uh, Oaki. I think it's Dutch based. We met them last year and they do more, they're selling upfront. So they base themselves on pre-stay emailing, which they propose different opportunity and different ways of people to buy little extra, whether it's extra services or better rooms. The one company I came across, which is very, very interesting, which does a very unusual upselling. I don't know if you never heard is Upsell Guru. Upset Guru does a very different approach in which they don't tell you how much you should pay for a better room, but they ask you how much are you willing to pay to get a better room. It's a kind of a bidding system. And it says, you know what, you bought a kind of standard room, you went to the labs, how much are you prepared to pay for the labs? And you can say $20, $50, it's up to you. You put a bid and then 24 hours before you arrive, you know whether they accept the bid or not. If they don't, you stay where you are in your room. And if they accept it, you're going to pay the rate that you decide to pay for a better category. So the hotel, what does is if the room is empty, I'm going to accept your bid because even if it was only $20, it's still $20 more, which I would lose anyway. If I sold those kind of category, then I don't accept it because I know I was able to sell it to the right price, not to your bid. But it's very fascinating because it also helps people to decide how much you're prepared to pay for a better service. You know, instead of putting yourself at thresholds, you just ask people to look in their own pockets and say, Hey, that's how much I can afford. Why not? I think it's a very good, interesting system. We haven't tried, we were looking at them just before the pandemic. Then when the pandemic came, to be honest with you, there was no need to try and upsell. They were trying to find clients more than upselling. But we're looking at now reconnect with them because I think it's a very, it's a very nice system. Another vendors which I have learned at the Amadeus Leadership Forum I attended in September is Galvendi, which is trying to sell rooms rather than by room category, by attributes. It's a very difficult, different, uh, it's a power by artificial intelligence that identify your preferences and say, you know, if you have certain preferences, you're not going to look at like, I want the deluxe or the superior or the junior suite. I want that feature in my room. I want the room to have, I don't know, a certain particular feature. So you set the attributes before you set the category. So it's a different approach to more gear to customer experience and expectations rather than, you know, putting them into a box or categories. I think it's a new way of accommodating the new customers. which are not driven by the square meter of the room. I dream more what's the need for me. You know, I want a room with a red light, I want a room with a hi-fi, I want a room with, you know, the latest TV technologies. I don't know. It's a, it's more of aligned to my taste rather than to just a space. Interesting concept. We haven't tried, but I found it particularly interesting as a, as a way of approaching the business.

SPEAKER_01:
One thing many hoteliers are trying to do is make the experience very personalized. And by letting guests pick their rooms, not just by the room type, which is a very broad sort of structure that the hotel has implemented, letting the guests choose exactly those features that matter most to them, that can be pretty powerful.

SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, that's more of a technology helping you. If I can tell you that 10 years ago, when I came to Monaco at the Ferme Monte Carlo during the Grand Prix, I've changed completely the way we are selling the rooms for the Grand Prix because they had all the rooms facing the Grand Prix, which we are transforming to hospitality suites because you accommodate on the suites. And because although they're all on the circuits, Each one of them has a very different view. So I said, instead of selling by category or by floor, you're going to sell it by experience, like a theater. I say, you know what, you can choose the seats in the theater and the theater is the Grand Prix and that's our chair. So you choose from which angle you want to see the theater. And they were choosing their specific rooms based on each room at the price, because each room had a very specific view. So it could be based on your taste, better view, lesser view, angle view, front view, and like a theater. So I think it's a matter of thinking it through and trying to adapt to people's tastes rather than being, you know, traditional and structured as we all are. It's more easy to say than to do it, to be honest with you, but at least you give it a try.

SPEAKER_01:
I want to just switch gears slightly. I'm curious to hear about one or two of your highest priority business objectives and how technology is helping you get there.

SPEAKER_02:
There's two areas we need to focus on when we talk about business priorities. One is the go-to-market. We need to be fast on the go-to-market. We need to be not reactive, but proactive in identifying what's needed and how fast we can implement that and how efficient we can be in creating that, you know, smooth customer journey. The other area is really to make the life of the clients as easy as possible in every single way. So when you look at your customer journey, how easy are you to be found? How easy are you to deal with? And every step of the way you need to analyze, can I do a little better? Can I do a little better? Can I do a little better? Just to analyze every step that the customer journey implies. And that's where technology can help you improve every single area. We both have a new system that now kind of compress all the pictures. Compressing the picture helps you navigate faster because the truth is that the hotel websites are beautiful as a showcase. They're not good for booking engines because We tend to want to show our brand, our experiences, our beauty, but not practical. That's why then people look at the website and the book on booking.com. So that's a challenge. But if you want to keep the people there, you need to give them the ability to say, okay, it's beautiful. I can book it fast and I can check pictures very fast. So even a small technology that compress the pictures and helps navigating faster, It's a small thing, but it helps a lot because we can see the pushback. Sometimes people, you know, I can see my daughter, she spends probably two seconds for every picture. If it's more than two seconds, she just pop channel because it's too long. You know, and then everything, everything that helps the client to get to the end, of the journey in a very small way. Also operationally, you know, when they come in the hotel, how fast they just check in, how fast they check into the room, how fast it's connecting to your wifi. Is it easier to navigate, easier to connect, easier to order? Do you need the room service and you really pick up the phone and call the room service or do you have a, just a button to press where there's a picture on it because you overcome language barrier. You know, sometimes we don't think about that, but you know, having customers that are now coming from Far East, they're not really all fluent in English or fluent in other languages. And if you make their life easy and say, I can really select what they want. in a very fast way, you're going to increase your sales. I have an example. When I was in Korea, South Korea, about a couple of months ago, one of the things that they said, why lots of Korean people are coming to Italy, for example, there's a huge number of Korean people because they have a lot of Italian restaurants in South Korea and sounds stupid, but they know what to order when they come to Italy. Because they've seen the menu, they've seen the dishes, they feel comfortable in coming to Italy because they know they go to a restaurant and they know exactly what to order and how to order. They don't feel uncomfortable. Now it's not the only reason why I hope they come to Italy, but it's a small thing that drives people to make choices. So our priority are making it easier for the client to do business with us. That's priority number one. Priority number two, having our team a little more efficient. And then certainly, as we said, you know, the revenue management system that helps you optimize your revenues and identify opportunities in a more structured and automated ways, considering and processing lots of information which you cannot process. for a human being. So that's kind of in line. But number one, to me, is making the life of the client easier. Because people today want to have an easy journey and easy access to you as a provider.

SPEAKER_01:
And are you using any technology to help you understand what guests are saying? Like anything to help you manage your reputation?

SPEAKER_02:
We have an aggregator, which is called TrustYou. And TrustYou help us, you know, collecting the voice of the customer from all the social channels and review sites. So texting to Consolation, TripAdvisor, Expedia Booking, HotelBeds, Hotel.com, and sometimes also some selected social media. So TrustYou is not really a channel, it's an aggregator. aggregates all this data and they give us the sentiment details across different channels and different areas. So you might have isolated the sentiment only on bedrooms, only restaurant, only the service, or the global sentiment of the customers. And by aggregating all this data, then you can identify one, if you're performing well in terms of customer experience, two, Very important to me is analyzing the keywords. What kind of words are the customer using when they are unhappy or happy? And sometimes I tell my marketing team, use the words that people are writing when they're very happy, because these are the words we need to use in our lingo, in our language marketing material, because we know these are relevant to them. If you see on a property repeatedly that they say, location, beautiful location, location, location, location. That means that location is something very important to the clients. If they say service, maybe the service is the key point of this property. And we need to emphasize the service because we are good at it. And it's one of the key guest satisfaction index in that particular property. So using those tools, I'm glad you brought it up. It was very useful for us, not only to measure our service performance, but also to identify the keywords that are relevant to the people. All those are main pinpoints. If they say Wi-Fi doesn't work and they say that doesn't work 10 times, then you have a problem because Wi-Fi today is like the hot water. Actually, you probably can cope with the cold water, not with no Wi-Fi. Right. So it's probably more important. I'll give you a very quick example of a property I had in Monaco for the Grand Prix, because when we're selling those hospitality rooms, actually our price were much higher than all the apartments around the city because it's a better service. And I thought the reason why people were buying those rooms at a very high price was because of our brand, because we are Fairmont, you know, we give reassurance of a very good service and quality. But one day I asked the client, I says, look, you know, thank you for your business. What makes you choose our property over other options we have in town, which are much cheaper? And you know what he said to me? From here, we can take the best pictures. And all of a sudden there was a wake up call to me. I says, you know, I never thought about that. The people are choosing us because we are so close to the circuit and the cars come so slow, they can really take the best shots. So I said to my marketing team, change completely our marketing speech. We need to focus on pictures because that's what people want. That's why people are choosing us. It's a place to take pictures. And I remember we changed overnight our marketing material online. We had 20% more visits on the websites just because we're, you know, adapting to what really the customer looking at. Incredible. So yeah, you're right. It's just listening to them in a very, very, you know, sensitive way and, and use them the words they use.

SPEAKER_01:
So I'm curious to hear from you, given all your experience, you've worked in multiple countries, different companies. What do you consider one or two essential skills that a hotelier should have to be successful, especially considering today's dynamic world with technology and so many things changing quickly?

SPEAKER_02:
I think it's two. One, in my view, is communication skills. Today, you need to have a great communication skills because whatever you do, you need to bring on board either your stakeholders, your team, your customers. If you do great things, but you don't tell them in the right way, if you want to innovate, but you can't convince your investors to invest in innovation technology and why is important and what benefits they can get from it. They're not going to do it. If you want the people to innovate and change the way they work, first of all, you need to convince them that's the right way forward. And it's a question of communication because technology before anything is mindset. You can't innovate just by implementing new technology if you don't change your mindset. So, and that goes with really communication skills that enables you to find the right way to bring people on board on new journeys, new things that you want to do. And the second thing is challenge the status quo. Our industry is so traditional. If you don't challenge the status quo, you're never going to improve. And it's painful. You know, when you change, it's always painful. No change comes without the pain, but people are able to challenge themselves, challenge their teams and try to innovate and find new ways of doing things. Those are the ones who can be successful. If you go the easy way and you follow, yeah, you can have some success. but you're never really going to change your company because you're just going to follow the others, you know, bit by bits. And again, it's really a question of courage as well, because innovating and changing things, particularly when they go well. You might ask yourself, why change? You know, we're going so well, why making changes? Cause that's the right time. When you go downhill, that's too late because you're already declining. It's why you're on the edge. You need to have the ability and the courage to change again and go in a famous blue ocean space if you can. But it seemed obvious, but not many people do. I think many people settle down their successes and they're not willing to challenge themselves to the new step. And today, you know, new generation are pushing us very fast. I'll give you an example, which is completely different from what we're discussing today, but about the new mindset of people. I was interviewing a young guy, 25 years old, then, you know, typically the question they ask you, so much a salary, what's about a job? And the first question he asked me says, what do you do about sustainability? I was really surprised. I said, you know, okay, fine. Are you interviewing me or interviewing you? But it was fascinating because the first question is usually about the job, the task, the salary, the conditions. And the first question was, I want to know if your company is aligned to my values. So, you know, we really are operating in a very different environment. We need to be able to understand what's going on around us and what's the priority of people, people working with us, the customers, the priority are changing very rapidly. I can tell you. So that kind of question was a wake up call for me and say, Hey, this is something valuable for them. If they want to work for you, they choose you, you don't choose them, right?

SPEAKER_01:
Do you have any final thoughts or any other topics that we didn't cover that you'd like to bring up?

SPEAKER_02:
I think we cover a lot. I think you can see I'm very passionate about our industry and what we do. And I think having worked in many different places and there's another thing that we don't consider too often is cultural differences. I was working in Monaco in an environment where, you know, in a country of 36,000 habitants, you have 125 different nationalities. In a team of 40, I had 17 different nationalities. If you understand cultural differences, diversities, preferences, it can be a great value to operate. If you don't understand them, it can be a great unsuccess. So I think today, the ability to do not just tailor made, but understand different perceptions, different culture, it's one of the keys to success. We operate in a very global world. And you know, each one of us is kind of a, you know, president worldwide, not only with the customers, but also with your employees. You have more and more employees coming from everywhere. And I think the ability to understand the differences is really key today. And we're not doing enough. We're not spending enough time to understand why people are behaving a certain way. And, you know, can we adapt? Can we do a better job to understand all the different preferences? I have a Some people in my team, which are vegetarian, some people are vegan. And when I do a little staff party, I need to think it through before I do it, say, Hey, I need to be having something for them because I know it's important for them. And it shows a little sensitivity to the preferences, to their beliefs. So small things that because we work in a, in a people business, it's really important for us to show that we want to talk. And then this is our priority. It's really to understand. people's preferences and people's sensitivity sometimes. It's a very touchy subject, but it's crucial in our industry, more than other industries, I would say.

SPEAKER_01:
Well, thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it. Great talking with you.

SPEAKER_02:
Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01:
Thanks, Antonio. Take care.

SPEAKER_00:
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 comp set 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.