The Neighborhood Hotel's Director of Ops on the Aparthotel Tech Playbook
Like, we were at 5 nights last summer. We didn't get as many far out bookings. So, actually, the 3 4 nights is where it's working. Let's set it at 4 for now. So you're setting it.
Speaker 1:You're telling it if it's a 180 days out, you're at 4. Now when it's under 90 days, and you can also base it all all based on occupancy.
Speaker 2:From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider, a show about the future of hotels and the technology that powers them.
Speaker 3:Today, we chat with Matt Shamley, the director of revenue and operations at at the Neighborhood Hotel, a hospitality brand that operates 4 properties in Chicago and Southwest Michigan. Matt brings his background in software consulting to this tech forward brand, which aims to deliver the best of a hotel and an Airbnb. If you're curious about how to implement technology in any facet of your hospitality business, you'll want
Speaker 4:to listen to this episode. I'd like to kick off the conversation learning a bit more about your background. So if you could please introduce yourself, let us know what you're doing now, what your career has been like so far, and a couple things maybe you're looking forward to in the future.
Speaker 1:For sure. So the Neighborhood Hotel is a hybrid apartment style hotel where we marry, you know, the best of a hotel experience with the best of an Airbnb experience. So what we mean by that is well, what do you think about when you think of what's good about a hotel? It's reliable, it's clean, well maintained. You really know what you're getting.
Speaker 1:And what's the best of an Airbnb? I personally like, you know, the spaciousness of it. You've got typically a kitchen, a living area. A lot of times, it'll have, you know, more interesting design. You know, it's curated by somebody who lives there.
Speaker 1:It's typically, you know, located in the heart of a neighborhood. Got remote check ins, so you don't have to, you know, wait at a front desk. You can kinda come and go as you please. And the whole thing just really allows you to live more like a local. With that said, we've all booked Airbnb, and I'm sure we've had fantastic experiences, some not so good ones because they're not all professionally managed, so they're not as reliable as obviously a hotel.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, you know, the pictures don't necessarily tell a story or you show up and your code doesn't work or it might not have been cleaned, certain things like that. So really the foundation of the brand was marrying those two things of what we like about hotels, what we like about Airbnbs. And the founder, Jonathan Gordon, really founded it based out of his own necessity, where he felt like there was a void in the marketplace As he was a business traveler and he would go to cities, his whole experience would be isolated in a single hotel. You know, the room is there, the meeting space, there's restaurants where you're getting breakfast, lunch, sometimes even dinner. So you could be there for several days and never leave the hotel.
Speaker 1:So on one of his trips, he actually booked an Airbnb, which allowed him to explore a neighborhood. He's got a craving for, you know, finding interesting restaurants, getting those kinda more local experiences, and he had a great time. Booked another wasn't as great because of some of the things I just listed, the other unreliable liability. So because of that, it's like, well, there should be something that marries these two things. Right?
Speaker 1:So in 2020, that's when our first building opened up in Lincoln Park. So the company is based out of Chicago. Lincoln Park, you know, is northeast of the city, closer to the lake. We took a traditional apartment building with 14 suites, renovated it, brought it because it's an 18 nineties building. So we like buildings with a lot of history and character and a plus locations.
Speaker 1:We furnished it, and then we opened it up as an apartment style hotel. As you can imagine, not necessarily the best time to launch a hospitality brand, you know, with that whole COVID thing happening. But the fact that they were larger units, which had, you know, kitchens and washer dryers, that actually allowed us to get some longer term leases while we ramped it up as a hotel and people actually started taking trips and participating in tourism again. And the response was fantastic, and it allowed us to do a couple of things too. You know, it was a little bit slower ramp up being that people took a while to really start traveling and occupying it, at least the transient people.
Speaker 1:We did have half the building as long term leases. But with those transient guests, we're able to kinda dial in how this is gonna operate. Right? Because we're also not traditional in the sense that we don't have everything a hotel has in terms of when you walk in the lobby, there's not a front desk. There's not a concierge.
Speaker 1:We've tried to digitize all of that. So instead of having a concierge, we actually have a custom field guide that gets sent to you, you know, 5 days prior to your arrival, or it's also sitting for you in the suite so you can flip through it, you know, if you care about those things. Same with the check-in, instead of having somebody waiting a long queue, you're actually getting a code sent to you. Once you fill out your registration card and your identity is verified, it matches the credit card. You You get a code on the day of check-in, which allows you to seamlessly check-in, check out at your own.
Speaker 1:So, you know, again, it's all based on kinda desire to have a little bit more space in your unit, which allows you also to stay for longer. Like, if you're a Monday through Thursday traveler, you really can get used to it. You can bring all your workout clothes, throw them in the washer, you know, travel home with stuff that's been used already. But you also know exactly what you're getting every time you show up. So that's been the foundation of the brands, which we're now up to 4 locations, 2 in Chicago, 2 in Southwest Michigan.
Speaker 1:We've got 72 suites across those 4 operating assets, And this year, we're on pace to do $4,000,000 in revenue, which we were really excited about. And the response to the product is, you know, exactly what we're hoping for. People really love the design, like the partner that we've founded for the interior design, Rebel House. They've done a fantastic job. They've done all 4 of our locations.
Speaker 1:It really resonates with people. They like the little touches of the field guides or, you know, the sleeper sofa that pulls out so they can travel with kids and not necessarily have to book a 2 bedroom. So, yeah, it's been really exciting. To your original question about my background, so I actually wasn't in real estate. I was in software.
Speaker 1:So I graduated from the University of Michigan in 2018, moved to Chicago, and worked for a Curon, and we were software consultants in higher education and health care space. And it really nicely ties into what I'm doing now and the conversation we're gonna have because we would work at these large institutions and they would purchase really big ERP and HR systems to find, you know, everything that happens on campus or in the hospital. So they would buy, like, a Workday, Oracle Cloud, and we would help them basically consolidate all the processes they're doing, all the data, all the reporting into this one system. Because as you can imagine, you know, if you go to the University of Michigan and there are all these different faculty that need to get hired and all these different systems, fundraising, grants, all of that, and it was very, like, fragmented. So our job was to consolidate.
Speaker 1:Let's streamline the business policies. Let's make sure all our data is good so we have a centralized place to report from, and I've applied all that to what we're doing now. So when I first met Jonathan and he was explaining, first of all, the concept of larger living and everything in the units. I thought that was fantastic. But then, at least, we want to operate at a hotel in terms of the revenue that we're producing, but but try and keep the expenses closer to, you know, running an apartment building.
Speaker 1:The way we're going to do that is by leaning into technology. That just lit my eyes up because then I was able to apply what I was doing at Huron to, okay, well, so what are the systems now? Where can we really streamline everything, consolidate, and make sure there's a good centralized hub that is sturdy and reliable, and then we can start adding in all the fun things. So that's kind of how my background tied into this, and it's just been a really fun ride. Learned a lot, and, you know, we're still getting better every day, but it really has been the adoption of technology that's fueled us to this point.
Speaker 4:So let's dive right in to the tech stack. Curious to hear from you. What is your most critical technology partner or the system that's most important to operations in your org?
Speaker 1:Really good question. And it's a little tricky only because we really try to think of our tech stack holistically. It's like almost a living, breathing thing that's it's always fluid. It's always getting better. But I think it goes back to really the foundational piece.
Speaker 1:Right? So the first thing I really vetted when stepping into this role was the property management system. Right? You gotta get that thing right because that is where all the information is feeding in and out of. Right?
Speaker 1:That's what's housing the reservations. You're gonna start pushing your pricing and restrictions in there, and then all of the other integrations really rely on that system to feed out and work. So that was the first thing I did when I stepped in was, alright, let's demo all these technologies, interview for customer service. That's always key, you know, making sure you have a good resource on the other end who can help catch up speed and tell you about new things or listen to your requests. And we landed on Muse, which has been a really strong partner of ours.
Speaker 1:We've grown with them, great customer support, all that good stuff. And that was a new process, you know. Then we were migrating over from our legacy system, but it gave us a clean slate to get things right, to get all of the accounting set up correctly, make sure we're cleaning all our data, and setting up a good foundation for our integrations. And then I think the next couple foundational pieces were our revenue management system, which we use PriceLABS for, really fantastic tool as well. That's the you know, we're setting algorithms based on our comp sets.
Speaker 1:It's looking at both Airbnbs that we can aggregate based on, you know, they had a 4.5 or higher rating. You literally are selecting the listings so you can give a look and feel of what these people are listing at. Is that comparable to our product? Yes. So it's gonna aggregate that and say, you know, where they're pricing at and then also all the hotels in the area too.
Speaker 1:So it's nice that it pulls in both those things because, again, that's really what we're trying to marry. So PriceLEV is a great tool in terms of setting your rates and also the restrictions. I think that's one of the areas they absolutely are headed and shoulders above because they there's so much automation going on with, like, how many late to stay, basically. The restrictions around how long you are allowing people to book for, which is really interesting because of, like, our Southwest Michigan properties, that market's super seasonal. And so, you know, you could think of how critical it is to get June through, really, I mean, end of August, early September.
Speaker 1:You gotta maximize those days. So you need to know, you know, a year out, people are booking it. How many nights should we be? Where should the pricing be at? And then also automating if we've got 2, 3 night bookings, well, then we gotta drop that to 1 night.
Speaker 1:Like, we gotta really, really maximize, which has worked. Yeah. We're at 95% at our Grand Beach property this month, which is fantastic and a big help because of Price Labs. So you can't be doing those things manually. You need them automated, especially when you're trying to scale.
Speaker 4:Talk to me a little more about the automation piece. I think this is really interesting for our audience to sort of think about automating some of these revenue management practices. So how does that work with Price Labs? Do you need to give some input or, like, set a strategy and then Price Labs follows rules that you set?
Speaker 1:A little bit of both. Right? So we are. We're coming up with based on now it's nice having historical data to rely on, but you can look at, you know, length of stay, what were people booking at, and where are they booking at the highest ADR. Right?
Speaker 1:And so then we're saying, okay. Actually, these 3 4 nights like, we were at 5 nights last summer. We didn't get as many far out bookings. So, actually, the 3 4 nights is where it's working. Let's set it at 4 for now.
Speaker 1:So you're setting it. You're telling it if it's, you know, a 180 days out, you're at 4. Now when it's under 90 days, and you can also base it all based on occupancy. Right? So if it's not getting booked, then it's gonna start dropping it sooner.
Speaker 1:But if it's dang booked, we're gonna keep it at 4. So you can set up all these rules and you have to come up with a strategy. Right? But then it's you can just trust it. You can rely on it.
Speaker 1:Another huge automation piece has been what we consider these orphan days. So that was tricky too. It's like, if you have 3 night minimum on the weekends, then people book Monday to Friday, and then there's a Sunday to Tuesday. Well, now you got a 2 night one, but there's typically a 3 night minimum there. Like, it has to know to drop that to 2, or it has to find those where there's just one night and drop it.
Speaker 1:And, also, we can add, like, a premium to that one night. So we, for a while, weren't doing one night bookings because the cost to turn it, you know, was high. But now we can add a premium to it. You can actually bake that cleaning fee in to offset it. So now we're getting all these one night bookings coming in.
Speaker 1:It's a really flexible tool. You definitely do need to have a strategy. Right? You wanna be mindful of historical data or look at your comp sets, where is everybody else coming in in terms of length of stay. But then once those rules are set, it's been nice to really be able to rely on them to actually make those changes to the length of stay.
Speaker 4:I wanna step back and talk a little more about your PMS, Muse. You mentioned you migrated from a system you were using previously. Can you talk to me a bit about the process to find Muse? You mentioned you looked at a few vendors. What were the criteria that helped you choose Muse?
Speaker 4:What were you looking for? How did you vet a few different systems to land on one that you went with?
Speaker 1:It's a combination of things. So, one, we demoed a lot. At that time, very early stages, we had one, maybe 2 hotels live. So cost was definitely a factor then. Right?
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna lie. They're, like, definitely more robust ones that if you have larger unit buildings, might make sense. But for where we were at in terms of, like, the size of our buildings and the revenue our company is generating, it was a really good price point, and it allows for you to really onboard new hotels quite easily and to have more of, like, a enterprise level look. So it's super easy to kinda toggle between the 4 we have now, hopefully adding a couple more pretty soon here. And so it really is, like, each time, we wanted it to be able to grow pretty easily.
Speaker 1:Also, you know, unlimited number of integrations. They had a lot in their marketplace, and, actually, we found more recently that, you know, if we find someone, they're, like, willing to onboard them to the marketplace. So, like I said, they've also good customer service that has allowed us to really grow with them because I think that, you know, bringing new people to marketplace helps them too. And then finally, like, they have really nice real time reporting, which was critical. We didn't have that before.
Speaker 1:It was a lot of exporting, building our own dashboards, which works, but it's just taking time. And when you're a lean, you know, small start up team, time matters, and they had that stuff real time.
Speaker 4:One other foundational piece I'm curious about is communication with guests, like the contactless check-in process. I'm sure that it's crucial that the guest receives their code and that if the guest has problems, they need to be able to reach someone on your team. So what kind of tech do you use to manage the guest experience?
Speaker 1:There's, like, almost 3 buckets I'd consider, like, foundational, property management, revenue management, channel manager, and then operational and revenue. And so the operational one, to your point, critical, especially with no front desk or someone to immediately physically bounce questions off of. So we rely really heavily on that. And I think the first piece, to your point, remote access. How do we make sure that is streamlined and right every time?
Speaker 1:Because if you show up and your code doesn't work and you're stuck out and it's the middle of the night, you're gonna have a problem. So that is one of the number one things that we focus on that people obviously care about as they should. So we partnered with Ocerto very early on when we were designing our first building, and they basically integrate with our property management system. So they take all the reservations that come in and they create the reservation in their system, which creates a unique code for that guest. And it is only accessible based on you can set the parameters to, let's say, 2 PM on the day of check-in or check-in 3 PM, and it should and then noon on the day of checkout.
Speaker 1:And so it's all automated, and they actually then push that code while they first push it to the lock. You have to have the right door hardware. Don't go cheap on that. That is a critical piece. You want it to work every time as much as you can.
Speaker 1:So it installs it, and then it actually pushes that 4 digit code back to the PMS, so back to Muse. Now it's sitting in there, which allows our next piece of technology to come in, which is Akia. They have been a fantastic partner of ours as well. So they really focus on guest messaging. We use them in a ton of different ways, but, you know, walking through the guest life cycle process.
Speaker 1:So they booked, reservation from Sento Alberto, Code gets sent to the door, back to Muse. Now Akia is taking that. So Akia has actually been involved when you booked. So once you book, whether you booked on Airbnb, Expedia, or Direct, or, actually, most of our business comes, you're gonna get a text from Akia, text or email, kinda depends on how you filled out your preference. But let's say it's a text.
Speaker 1:So you get that text and it's saying, hey. Thanks for booking at the neighborhood hotel. You have a link. It shows recap of your reservation, check-in dates, the unit you booked, ask for a little bit more information, how to hear about us, all that good stuff. But then that's also Akia's we're using that as our guest verification.
Speaker 1:So you then have to take a picture of your driver's license or passport and a selfie of yourself. It's then looking at that, making sure those two things match. That's one of the checks. Making sure it's valid. That's another check.
Speaker 1:And then it's also tying, is it matching the name on the reservation? And you can even take it a step further. Does the credit card match? So that's, like, a key key step. And if there's any red flags along the way, our team gets involved because sometimes, you know, there are legitimate cases where it isn't right.
Speaker 1:If somebody booked on your behalf, so the credit card doesn't match, but you just get on the phone, you know, you clarify that stuff. And then you've got that thread to text if you're more comfortable texting. Obviously, we have a hotline too to call. But a lot of people are totally comfortable texting. So then on the day of check-in, that 4 digit code, Akia picks that up.
Speaker 1:It's got an templated email with a lot of great information. It's got, like, that link to the field guide, which I mentioned earlier, that has great details about what to do in the neighborhood. It's got very specific check-in instructions, and then it's got your suite number, your code. And so you've got all your info. Got a question, maybe you're trying to do really check-in, things like that.
Speaker 1:Either text or call, get that sorted, can update when the codes install on our end, and then you show up, enter your 4 digit code, the same code on your suite, and then boom, you're in. Akki has been great in terms of automating all of that, and then there's really nice automation in terms of follow-up. So, you know, if it's a longer term guess, we're gonna check-in with you 48 hours and say, hey. How's your stay going? What can we do to help?
Speaker 1:Anything to flag or note for our team? And then at the end of the year stay, it's gonna send a message just asking how things were going, if there's anything we could have done better. So it's really nice, and then you can report on all that stuff. Really big on reporting. So it's always fun to see, you know, internally how many one out of fives did we get, how many new guests.
Speaker 1:It's also pulling in length of stay, and all that really interesting stuff. And then we can look back and see how many texts we handled and how many of that was handled through automation. You know, technology that's getting us excited is trying to lean more into that artificial intelligence without it seeming too robotic. I think that's kind of the key, but it is pretty interesting to see how you can start to automate more and more responses because I think really what's surprised us is, 1, people are pretty capable. You know, it's not super common where people come and have, like, a 1000000 questions.
Speaker 1:Like, they're very capable of especially if they book directly. They know what they're getting. They've got all the information at their fingertips. So there's, I would say, 80, 85 percent of our guests who we really don't ever hear from. A lot of it's automated.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, the rest, a lot of the questions are pretty repeated for the most part. So I think there's a really big chance to lean into even those questions that do come up, just getting smarter on how we can kinda automate them or just make it quicker to respond so that the guest is just always we're right there to feel like, yeah, there is somebody at a front desk downstairs. But really, it's just, you know, we're here in the office.
Speaker 4:How are you approaching channel management? Are you using Muse or are you using an integration?
Speaker 1:So we're using an integration. We use Rentals United as our channel manager. It's really just a gateway. That's how I think of it a lot of the time. It's just taking what's in your property management system, and Rentals is great because it does kinda like a mass push to send all that info to rentals, and then it lives in there.
Speaker 1:And that's why it's pushing to, you know, Airbnb, Expedia, Booking dotcom, all those large channels. But it's nice because it pushes, like, the images and the descriptions in addition to, obviously, pricing and restrictions. But it's nice when you're doing, like, seasonal updates to be able to just change the pictures and maybe tweak the descriptions, move up information where you need to in one place, and then know that it's pushing to everywhere else because, you know, we are listed on quite a few channels. Recently, we've got on Marriott Homes and Villas, which is really exciting. Actually, I think only the second location in Chicago to be on there, and it was super seamless to just get on that platform.
Speaker 1:Right? Channel management didn't exist. That would be unbelievably time consuming, but it's really nice to just a little bit more than flip a switch, but sometimes it really is that easy. And so, you know, rentals has been great for that. And, yeah, if we didn't have that, obviously, it would just be extremely difficult to to manage a calendar.
Speaker 1:Muse does definitely have some direct integrations, so that's an option. It just really depends on if you wanna be on a lot of channels. You know, they don't have everything, so it's worth having a channel manager for. And, yeah, Rentals has been another really solid partner, critical piece to that foundation of the tech stack.
Speaker 4:I'm hearing a lot in the industry about personalization and learning a little more about guests, being able to incorporate those learnings into a more personalized experience. Are you using any software for CRM, or how are you thinking about building out that guest profile?
Speaker 1:So that is when we think about our brand, and a lot of question we get is who is your customer. Right? And it differs truly based on location, but that's why I'm super excited about what we're doing with the Google Analytics and Amadeus stuff because now we can even layer in, and this is a piece I'm trying to to work on is, like I said earlier, you know, we are grabbing even, like, driver's license and things like that. So the information that if we could figure out how to extract everything that's on there, we're already getting a lot based on where people fill out their registration card, where they put as their dates and everything. But even if we could get their age and different things like that, that would be fantastic, or just validating that we have the right ZIP codes that we're targeting in our Google Ads campaigns and our meta, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:So that is really something we wanna lean into as well. Another funny piece is, I think we could even almost cater the messaging that we send. So I don't wanna pick on this population, but our hotel is definitely I would say, like, the average person's probably in young thirties maybe. So sometimes when someone in, you know, say, like, 65 or older shows up, they book through booking.com or Expedia where they always book their hotel, they're expecting a traditional hotel. Right?
Speaker 1:They show up and they don't have anybody checking them in. That can be, like, pretty startling and obviously we're right there to, like, walk them through it virtually. But if we knew ahead of time that this population is checking in, we could have a totally different approach. Flag them in the PMS, give them a call that morning or the day before saying, hey, what time are you arriving? Just wanted to remind you, you know, we are remote access.
Speaker 1:So you're gonna get that code set at 11:30. If you don't get that, please give us a call so we know that you get you know, so there's, like, a little more hand holding we could do. So, yeah, another initiative we wanna do is understand the segmentation because Akki also gives us really good stats on, like, heat maps of throughout the day where the most messages coming in and things like that. So that's what I dig into. But if we could even build it out based off the customer profile and, like, the number of messages we receive based on people 40 to 50, 50 to 60, or even regional, like, if people in Chicago may be more familiar with the brand.
Speaker 1:They know it. You know, they're like it's pretty endless. And this is all very new, like, that enhanced booking engine where we're getting ZIP codes and things like that. But I think that's why everybody's eyes are kinda lit up with the possibilities. Because, again, like, the goal is to just make it so everybody's happy.
Speaker 1:And I think, you know, where that can fall off is with some sort of miscommunication. So if we can get ahead of it, as you said, that just makes everybody more comfortable and ultimately a better experience for both of us.
Speaker 4:Well, we've talked a lot about the tech that you have in place today. Anything on your wish list? If you, you know, had extra bandwidth or extra budget, what's something that you would implement if you could?
Speaker 1:So one of the technologies that we're really excited about, and this is a unique this is not something I've done before, is they're really in beta phase. And they are looking for operators like us to kinda help grow the product. So we are working side by side with them. They want us to use it real time, give them feedback, and they keep tweaking the tool. Never done anything like that.
Speaker 1:Like, you have a full house of engineers behind you. It's like a dream. You know, who gets to have that? But we're they are and the company is called Kismet, and they're all hotel people, but now I brought on a pretty impressive engineering team. And so they're working on automation.
Speaker 1:And right now, they're really focused on driving group bookings or, like, room blocks, things like that. And so we get like I said, a lot of that Southwest Michigan off season business is group bookings, And now with the Little Italy property being 35 units, you know, we have more to fill so we can allow groups, and so that's become important business to us. And we get a lot of inquiries via forms, and it just becomes very manual. It's a lot of back and forth sending messages. Like, the sales funnel is just long and hard to keep track of, and so they're trying to help with that.
Speaker 1:So they will take that initial inquiry and auto generate an AI response. So they're integrating with our PMS. They know what's available. They know, you know, the rates. They can also say, is this, like, a good business?
Speaker 1:Right? Because Grand Beach, if somebody looking to book 2 nights for a wedding in the summer, that's not a good booking. We're like, we need those 4, 5 nights. We can't just have them take in the whole hotel for 2 nights. So it, like, knows all of that based on historical data, some of the stuff we're extracting from our revenue management system.
Speaker 1:And then it also, like, gives a lead score. So it's linking stuff to our website, and it's tracking. Did they actually click to the website? If they did, that raises the intent to book a little bit more. And now it's, like, building dashboards.
Speaker 1:So we got, you know, 45 group inquiries in the last 30 days, whatever. Where did they fall off? Like, how many responses were there? What was the possible revenue? You know, did we send them a contract?
Speaker 1:You know, and you can just do, like, percentages of all of it. So how many got to the contract space? How many booked? So is the average booking run? And so it's just a really, really fascinating tool, and it's cool to develop it alongside them.
Speaker 1:And it's already saving us a ton of money and resources because now it's all just, like, in one dashboard. Super nice. And so, yeah, we'll see how it continue because even they're asking, like, how else can we use this tool? And so another thing we do is extended stays. So if people are looking to stay for 30 plus days, which again, because it's apartment style, we get a lot of those.
Speaker 1:Again, it's slow. It's a lot of back and forth. It's not like you just send them to the booking engine. They book them, but for themselves. So they're kinda developing the tool around that as well to say, okay.
Speaker 1:You know, they're looking for 60 days. Is there a way to create a gap there? If so, like, what's the right rate to push? You know, we can go 30% down because you're not spending money on cleaning and refreshing the room with toilet paper and things like that. So that's, like, another thing we're exploring is how to kinda automate and speed up that process because those are great bookings for us too.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think just we're excited about that, and it's really the AI side of it is fascinating just, you know, how quickly it can extract that information, which I think Kazakhstan's excited to be able to, you know, keep going with that and experiment with it more on the guest side.
Speaker 4:I know tech is really important to the business model for your brand, but I am curious if there are any other high priority business objectives that you're focused on, and how is technology helping you get there?
Speaker 1:I think right now, we really ramped up quickly, and so it's been fun to now really dive into the operations and and do a proof of concept. Right? We had 2 years of COVID, basically, and now we have 4 locations. The 4th one, you know, is making its way through its 1st year. So I think the next exciting thing is to continue to scale this.
Speaker 1:You know, we've really dialed in the tech stack. We've professionalized the team. We've got a strong accounting background. So now it's time to start to scale everything. And I think it's gonna be so much easier, like some of the business we're pitching or some of the buildings we're pursuing.
Speaker 1:We really know what the added expense will be if we're taking just a traditional apartment building. Now we know, you know, because of all the accounting and operating history, the expenses within the building, but also the tech expenses. And once you get it going a little bit, it's marginally more to add more locations. So that's an exciting part is, like, with economies of scale, it all becomes a little bit cheaper and less burdensome on the properties. And in continuing to add to the tech stack, which is always getting better even in the last 12 months, think about where we were, like, without Halkia is pretty crazy without breezeway and having the visibility into our cleaners.
Speaker 1:But I think now it's in a really good place to go out and win some more business, keep adding units, and it's gonna be like a true test to see, is the tech good? Is the team reliable and where it needs to be? And are the customers staying happy? Right? That's the biggest thing is as you scale, you know, you wanna maintain that really strong customer satisfaction, which we know we have.
Speaker 1:Like, our reviews speak to that and everything. But we just wanna make sure if we are leaning into technology, are people getting it? Are we minimizing any stress or or anxiety with check ins, things like that, which I think we are, but, you know, we won't know until we keep adding location. So that's the goal moving forward.
Speaker 4:Last question. I always like to end it on a fun note. Always a good question. What is one thing you believe about technology that your peers or competitors might disagree with?
Speaker 1:I think it's that people are better at using technology than you think. I think they're more receptive to technology than you'd imagine. I think traditional hotels where I don't know if it's 1 to 4, some, like, really high end HealthSherley brands. It's like a 1 to 4 ratio, like, staffed together or something like that with all this food and beverage and spa and everything. I think people are actually more capable than you think of getting a text on their phone, checking in.
Speaker 1:Like, they get it, and a lot of times they want it. I have a friend who works for one of the biggest hotels in Chicago. He sent me a picture of the check-in desks the other day, desks, plural, because it looked like an airport. It looked like a terminal with all these different queues of people just waiting to check-in and check out. And I personally hated that process.
Speaker 1:I love just being able to zip in and zip out. I think people, like, really kinda get that and are okay if there isn't somebody there. So I think that's, like, you know, a misconception when I've explained the brand to friends, family, especially older family. Like, what do you mean that there's nobody there? Like, trust me.
Speaker 1:It works. We do it all the time. We've got 72 units doing it. Thousands and thousands of guests. It does work.
Speaker 1:People not only get it, but end up liking it.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you so much for your time, Matt. Great talking with you. Good luck with everything.
Speaker 1:Thank you. It was fun chatting.
Speaker 2:That's all for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Hotel Tech Insider produced by hoteltechreport.com. Our goal with this podcast is to show you how the best in the business are leveraging technology to grow their properties and outperform the concept by using innovative digital tools and strategies. I encourage all of our listeners to go try at least one of these strategies or tools that you learned from today's episode. Successful digital transformation is all about consistent small experiments over a long period of time.
Speaker 2: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.
