Hotel Tech Insider

SPEAKER_02:
Historically, PMS was always at the center of everything that hotels did, because naturally it held your customer dates, your transactional dates, your credit card details, you know, all these kind of truly crucial pieces of the business would sit in PMS. And it still does. But as I see the evolution of PMS these days over the last probably five, six, maybe seven years now, that piece, kind of the PMS as an overall solution has been shrinking.

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 chat with Loutaris Vedkavikas, the Managing Director of The Zetter Group, which runs a collection of three boutique hotels in London. LV has already had quite the career in the hotel industry, working his way up the ranks in operations and revenue management, but his early interest in computer science stuck with him and always kept him interested in tech. This background prepared him well to do over 30 system migrations and build several tech stacks from scratch. In our conversation, we cover his PMS selection process at the Zetter Group, how introducing a housekeeping management system made personalizing guest stays easier, and why he consciously chose to keep in-room tech to a minimum. Thanks so much for being here. So let's dive right in. To start the conversation, I would love to hear about your current role, your company, and your background in the industry.

SPEAKER_02:
Oh, where to start? So been in this industry for about 17 years now. Initially, I wanted to be a developer when I was much, much, much younger. So I was kind of studying to do a bit of coding and whatnot. And then I spent like three years doing that and then realized like, it's not for me, just didn't want to be kind of stuck in front of a computer for the rest of my life. Then pretty much by accident decided to study international business came to UK originally from Lithuania so I came to UK to study and then within a month I just got a job at the hotel, local hotel and that's how my career kind of started and I very quickly realized that whatever I was studying at uni complimented really nicely what I was doing at work, you know all the learnings and understanding cost and you know people management and reading PNL and all these kind of things. i'm so sorry for me my bag on general speaking is operations and revenue that's why i got the tech eventually i think the fact that i before. That's a kind of want to study development tech was always kind of back of my mind so i was always curious about it and also realize very quickly that hotels in general of a very behind tech. Compared to anything else you know we have a latest iphone you can do so much on your iphone and then you go back to work and you know some of the technology you have to use at work was twenty years old at the time is like this hurts. So i think i'm back in about twenty fifteen twenty sixteen maybe i was working parts in company called queens we grew up and then there was a project coming up at the time to do basic tech migration anything to do with. Let me know pms channel managers know these kind of things to kind of change first of all find solutions and don't change it. So at the time i wasn't really that experience i didn't really understand how things work properly but i was my chance to come in and learn from my boss at the time and work with him and the group to bring some sort of change and for me that's how i started the whole tech side of things. i'm not gonna fast forwards i've now done about thirty migrations that individual hotels build about seven or eight text tax all together can i. Some of them will i copy paste for five hotel some of them copy paste to hotel some of them are complete individual text text i have done about thirty migrations at this stage and the latest one was set to what i am now i'm unemployed. as a managing director of this group which means that's anything and everything is my responsibility essentially reporting straight to the owners. It's a private equity company we own the hotels we on the brands before that means that we can do whatever we want with that brand. No without great power comes great responsibility which means that you know what are the decisions we make. There's no layers of corporate accounts or corporate head offices to run by, right? Whatever we decide, we take responsibility of that. And of course, we make it happen at the same time, which can be nerve-wracking, I'll be honest, because you go like, ooh, if this piece of tech I just chose is not going to work for whatever reason, well, it's my fault, quite plainly. I can't blame a corporate office in Houston or whatever. It's just me, right? But also, there's fun in that, because I end up meeting a lot of tech suppliers, talking to a lot of interesting people out there. get a lot of opinions so it's kind of two sides of the same coin where on one hand you get all this freedom to do whatever you want within reason of course. On the other hand this also responsibility that we get with that so yeah that's what i do essentially what a fantastic team with me are the very tech savvy as well which was really help so whatever decisions we had made in the past. the team went with it, the team understood why we have to change the team understood my personal drive to improve those things. Team really understands still for this day needs to automate things to keep up with latest developments to keep up with, with the needs of the business. And again, you know, we're quite a small hotel group, only three hotels in central London. But that also allows us to punch about our weight, you know, there's a lot of small groups out there that kind of like stuck behind a little bit and maybe yeah trying to be a risk of us and we kind of did it the other way around and say look let's try these things let's be a bit more experimental let's try to be a bit more adventurous with everything that we do that includes technology behind it. But also let's be clever about less analyzing properly before we take any decision let's take all the boxes let's check it let's drive it and it's really paid off and last year we kind of got. what we call in the UK the kind of Oscars of the industry. We got a KT award, which was for the use of best tech stacks. Essentially, everything and anything that we did at Bizetta, we got awarded for that, you know, best tech stack in the UK, which is nice, nice awards to kind of get. So is that. So that's what I do. And anything and everything that we do here is our responsibility, but we kind of tackle that head on and we enjoy it. We love it. We love a bit of challenge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:
Can you tell me a little more about your team? Are you overseeing a corporate team, or are you working closely with folks on property?

SPEAKER_02:
Yes. Yes, I do. It's quite a small team. It's quite an efficient team. Even though we're growing, we just recently purchased another hotel, which is not live. That core team of people is only about seven, eight people, including myself. It's not a big team. We don't have a huge finance function, but that's where technology comes in, for example. We automate a lot of these things. We don't have a huge revenue department. Revenue and reservations is only three people. And again technology is a big part of that because we enable our team to do a lot of these things and essentially whatever possible supervisor technology. Control the technology and get a lot of this tedious tasks. Automatically rather than having to do manual copy paste and writing things or whatever sales we got to two people in sales as well as events team as well again so it's a teeny tiny team that delivers that. The logic here, when we decided to change technology and whatnot, is to keep that central team as efficient as possible, to enable the people to make the right decisions without having to do manual tasks, if that makes sense. And then the same logic went to our operations team as well. So we've got three hotels, so three sets of individual teams, reception team, housekeeping team, maintenance, chefs, F&B teams. And again, that logic kind of spread out throughout the entire business saying, how do we take away unnecessary tasks from our people so they can actually focus on our customers, they can focus on creating this customer experience and customer service, rather than having to do end of shift, balancing tech, you know, counting cash, counting credit card receipts, doing daily reconciliation, you know, we don't do any of that technology does it for us. Yes it's kind of it is a small team it's a very tiny team from corporates being 70 people to you know kind of operations which is about 80 people give or take in our case as well so it's that kind of setup.

SPEAKER_01:
And so you mentioned there are the three hotels there's one under development as well can you tell me a little more about the properties.

SPEAKER_02:
Yeah so boutique hotels each and every room each and every property is completely different each and every property took about two years to develop from being bought to built to renovated and everything else. A lot of furniture, a lot of artwork that you see in our hotels is vintage, is antique, is bespoke, is unique. the properties of full of character and then with that comes not sure the experience that we want to create to our customers experience is kind of twofold thing one is design elements we can go right we hire architects and designers and build that that's one side. It's very expensive but in many ways it's the easier part. The harder part as i see this once you get the keys to that building is operating those buildings in the right way creating the custom experience to compliments the design elements and design decisions that each and every bedroom individually has. I think i'm gonna come back to knowledge is how do we or is as a manager of the business how do i. Remove those distractions from my team on the team that are on the ground at reception in our bars and restaurants. How do I get away from that? Well, they don't need to worry about procurements, purchase orders, processing invoices, again, doing shifts. Any of that stuff automates things as much as possible. Dare I say, we have succeeded really well with the technology that we kind of brought to the business two and a half years ago now. And we still kind of keep tweaking things almost on a daily basis, if you like. But yeah, it's creating that bespoke element, bespoke experience to our customers. We're not cheap. We're not for everyone. can afford to stay with us and we know that so therefore we appreciate when customers keep coming back to us again and again and again. We want to properly look after them as individuals rather than the kind of conveyor belts, check-in, check-outs attitudes. We kind of want to be the opposite of that transactional kind of experience. We want to be individual experience, boutique experience rather than transactional.

SPEAKER_01:
Well, you mentioned your award winning tech stack. So I'm very interested to learn more. If you can tell me just to start this part of the conversation, what is the most critical tech partner that you have right now? And how does it play into the success of your properties?

SPEAKER_02:
So, two elements of that, and I'll explain that in a minute, but historically, PMS was always at the center of everything that hotels did, because naturally, it held your customer dates, your transactional dates, your credit card details, you know, all these kind of truly crucial pieces of the business would sit in PMS. And it still does, but as I see the evolution of PMS these days, over the last probably five, six, maybe seven years now, that piece, kind of the PMS as an overall solution, has been shrinking. It's been simplified by a lot of players. You know, you've got Muse in the market, you've got Stay In Touch, you've got Apple Air, which we use here. So they kind of went in and said, look, we're going to do these parts very well. We're going to keep it pretty much invisible to our customers, which they did. and then we're gonna make sure that our system that's been p.m. talk to everyone else as much as possible open api essentially that was kind of a crucial on the main criteria for us to make sure that whatever p.m. as we choose, it has a full api connections with a lot of other things or players that we want to work with a second part of that and that's where i get the shrinking part comes in for p.m. is this year and essentially truly understanding our customers date with pms starting storing the data. Add this to the shrinking. They started analyzing that particular data less and less so while it's still there it's not being analyzed you know you can't pull. Detail reports you can't see you can't do anything you know apart from just looking at the data which you know we can look at excel spreadsheet but that doesn't really tell us a story unless you are. potential genius so cnm came in and in my mind cnm is pretty much kind of filling that void that reduced pms is have left and cnm is really. That analytical tool that really truly helps understand our customers how do they broke when do they broke which room time do they prefer. Is there a particular profile of customer that prefers certain experiences that you know is there a reason why they choose to stay with us. And that was for us still is and will continue to be that kind of even more crucial. Part go forward where is pms again is transactional and it should be and very much is something that purpose is very much about the future of how do we. I don't understand how customers better today so we can adjust our products you know we got a hotel coming up next year now. So how do we build that hotel to serve those needs, those evolving needs of our current customers to make sure that you know, they keep coming back to us. Thirdly, then making sure that any marketing activities, what is some could be activation, it could be live events, it could be I don't know, food and beverage offering, it could be a new drinks menu that we've gotten our cocktail lounges. Again, it suits the customers that we have now where we can evolve together with those customers continue producing, let's say a fairly safe product offering a service offering that they know and love but also keep surprising them in the same way so it's being both predictable and safe but also. Continuously evolving to continue, can i surprise them in a nice way in a safe environment is it's a very fine line and that's why i can about luxury boutique sector comes in because there's a lot of these kind of things that we do that are small touches that are. crucial to our survival. We would never otherwise be able to compete against the big brands because big brands are known, trusted, and they do things really well. They're well-oiled machines. We are the opposite of that. But what makes us different is that ability to offer great customer service, great touch points, and create that ever-surprising positive experience. And again, for me, at this stage, it comes down to CRM because if we understand our customers, if we understand their behavior, before we can predict the future, or we can adjust the future a little bit better than the same brand would ever do, because the brand would be going like, this is our SOP, we do things in a very standard way, and customers trust that, but they don't get surprised by that, they don't get wowed by that, they don't get, you know, kind of positively influenced by that, and that's the sphere where we come in, and that's what we can do better than those brands, and that's what allows us to become a bit more, to kind of allow us to compete against them, into the future because otherwise well why are we here and i'm kind of over the fourth element to that serum that's keeps helping us. It's looking at customer behavior on demographic so the old way we used to be. you know, age group, male, female, spending limits, potentially postcode where they live, because the postcode may or may not define that kind of, you know, behaviors and whatnot. We found that that is not completely gone, but it's almost irrelevant because you get average young person, so we say 25 to 30 year olds, that may spend a little bit more than the demographics may suggest just because we want that experience. Or you may find that some people from slightly wealthier areas, wealthier postcodes, are not going to be as big of a spender because actually that's not their lifestyle. So it's, again, cutting through those traditional fashion demographics and going into behavior stats and trying to predict that is the CRM. That's, for me, the biggest change over the last couple of years. And that's what we are trying to, again, every day, we keep learning every day here. It's not set in stone.

SPEAKER_01:
And what vendor are you using for CRM?

SPEAKER_02:
So for CRM, we use a company called Foresight. I may be wrong. I can't remember. They're either based in Scotland or Northern Ireland, probably Scotland, but I don't want to kind of misquote. I think it's one of those places. So there's kind of a UK grown brand that specialize in boutique hoteliers, hotels just like us. And I'm very perceptive in kind of developing and working with us so we can then become better actually to our customers.

SPEAKER_01:
Curious to learn more about the other components of your tech stack if you could walk me through everything from PMS down to, you know, guest app or any in room tech that you use.

SPEAKER_02:
So kind of, again, the logic when we set out to build brand new tech sec was like I mentioned earlier, open API. So anything and everything should, in theory, at least be able to talk to any other parts, if it's necessary, of course. So starting with PMS, which was a paleo because a paleo is an API first platform, which essentially the first developer API, ie connections to other business, and then they build a function and data behind it. what is that we found very useful but i can't afford looking. Solution that really helped us to kind of go like okay so i can talk to a pretty much any other system out there that can connect to another system so we choose that and we can try to see what fits within that text as a whole so i play. Forsythe mentioned that as a CRM start, we use guest review for our guest reviews, so that gives us aggregated data through both internal service that our customers get post departure, but also booking.com, TripAdvisor, Google, Expedia, any review that you can see out there, including Facebook. We just get a kind of aggregated data and we can analyze that. Going back to CRM, that's where it helps us because, again, it plugs it back into CRM and we can see the full journey saying, you know, this customer, book with us twenty days out state in this room in this hotel this is what they had during the stay and this is the review the last so we can kind of see the full launch of saying. What if the customer books last minute in the book not from the rates they're more likely to spend a little bit more money in house with us in our coffee lounge and this is the review that they leave and you know that was a high satisfaction guess because the book in advance before they made an educated decision there for the satisfaction was good you know. what are we seeing people the last minutes we probably are not always the first choice maybe they're not as well informed the photos review scores are slightly lower not by much but just like a five percentage points like okay how can we adjust and kind of tackle that and can we. maybe clarify some things about check out for those that book last minute it's just one of the example that can help us go back to the text so we use apple flex keeping that allows us to manage our housekeeping and maintenance apartments essentially get it plugged into a pms so whenever customers check out housekeeping get straight to a notification on the phone saying all this was checked out if there's a note for example housekeeping cleaning the room in the notes there's a leaky tap as an example the straight away log it up office multiple languages so you know the average housekeepers Romania may not speak such a great english. They are have ability to log in romanian english maintenance guy gets notification straight away saying i saw a leaky tap i'm gonna go fix it straight away so i can bring those efficiencies because what we found in operations in general people tend to kind of. write things on notes and saying oh you know room checked out and they complain about leaky tap and the notes get lost and then maintenance don't get told. All these kind of silly scenarios are now avoided because everything's on the app, everything's recorded. And the year comes for me, I get a full report, analytics and say, okay, we had 20 leaky taps over the last 12 months, actually, do we put some capex investment to replace those tabs, because fixing them in the end is more expensive than getting new tabs. It was silly examples, but it just saves us so much time, because we're not working people's memories, we're working on actual data and analytics and kind of just reports behind that. so i mentioned that distribution we use a company called pay so it's not a thing as a management tool again it's gonna be ok. Homegrown solution i can specialize in small hotels and hotel chains which we are one. it works really well because it plugs into our benchmark solutions which is what's your insights what was not called white house i believe they recently changed so you know we work with them and again there's a wealth of data that come from that and essentially all goes out every new director who then can i analyze this data saying okay, this hotel this room type does the man coming to this area because of this events on this particular date what can we do you know and then we pull out all website data saying, is a conversion that are the clicks for particular dates as demands going up can we compare that against airline dates so there's so many kind of multiple multiple layers of data points that we get through pace and the lighthouse that is just almost endless. When it goes back to that decision making for the director for example saying that she have everything she needs. to make a decision. Because at the end of the day, you can say, I'm going to charge £150 for that room, or you can charge £500, just depending on where the month is, where your occupancy is. So again, it's a wealth of data and it comes down to enabling our team to make the right decisions and be as efficient as possible with all the data systemized, pulled together, presented to him or her in the right way, in a timely manner, latest up-to-date information. So that channel manager, we use kind of a combination of direct connections and also TypeMinder, just because TypeMinder is, you know, Super simple to use. Yeah, it just works out. Mind it, for me, it's like one of those crucial tools that is, if it works, when it works, because it does work in our case, it's just invisible, you plug it in, and forget about it, because data just keeps flowing, which is fine, which is exactly what we want. But that, again, allows us to kind of distribute real live data to booking.com, to Expedia, to hotels.com, to Agoda, you know, multiple are the OTAs that really help us out. What else? Just thinking about tech stack, so we've got front of house solutions, so a bar system essentially, POS, that is called Lightspeed, again, fantastic solution, again, open API, cloud-based, everything is essentially, well, in the cloud, online, super simple to use, yeah, just works like magic. which then integrates with paypal without kind of card reading machines which again allows us to not have any shift day week month banking procedures as well because whatever you say if i'm charging five dollars on this card. No one can even physically override anything so there's no balancing issues there's never ever any kind of discrepancies there's never issues there's never yeah it just works you know whatever we need to charge we do charge, payment goes through next day we open a bank account and it's there and you know it just balances as simple as that. We also use a system called zero for counting, which again, integrates with multiple other touch points from kind of merchants payment merchant to PMS to invoice uploads that also again, the same logic throughout, everything is pretty much automated. So we still have a human element to check that to make sure that things do actually balance and make sure that you know, things are kind of adding up on a daily and weekly monthly basis. But by the time now and the period comes be it's a week and a month and a quarter, whatever it is, Our accounts team have very little to do because they don't need to worry about just loading a bunch of data or posting a bunch of invoices or posting a bunch of reddit because things are done in a very nice, concise, consistent way.

SPEAKER_01:
Website? Booking engine?

SPEAKER_02:
Yes, so we use quite a straightforward booking engine, it's called Desco Booking Engine. Again, it came through Apollo App Store, so we kind of went with Apollo, they were like, guys, this is all these systems that we work with, literally like an app store, you just click and it just goes live within minutes in most cases. Very straightforward, since our website was bespoke, so we used a local agency called Apple Hotel Agency. over here in the UK they kind of did it twice for us, because we kind of refreshed the website two years ago now and then did it again a couple of months ago, just kind of in line with new branding. But yeah, again, it's the same logic. Website is done on WordPress, which essentially allows us to change and update things instantly here by any of us it doesn't need major development required of course we got professionals for that but otherwise on a day to day basis is a very straightforward process that we have opted in to do so. reduces the risk and reduces us having to wait for things and we can get a small hotel group so whenever there's a change in the market whatever that may be good or bad. We are able to react to things straight away. And you know what office house without any magic like notice that there's this event in june next year. Is that a bruce springsteen coming to london so we need to be our prices and then i'll mark the manager was like what the case will do a promotion for that day. then our reservations manager goes like, okay, we need to review the rates for that day. And you know, that whole thing takes 10 minutes rather than hours and days because we don't have to seek approval. We don't have to call anyone to do anything for us. It's just kind of instant decision making.

SPEAKER_01:
Any tech that your guests use? Do you have an app or a communication tool?

SPEAKER_02:
No we have lots of discussions about it and we don't decide it so those couple of discussions number one was self-checking kiosks or desks. Which we said no explain why and the second was yes and anything kind of to alleviate or help our customers and we said no to both of them that came back to who we are being boutique personable. brands we wanted to keep that tech highly efficient. Hi effective and high invisible to our customers. So is bringing a human element back to hospitality as much as possible now if we were. i don't know brandon hotel a big hotel and business was built on again transactions with a short length of stay and lots of people checking in and checking out every day this would be different because i would look to bring those efficiencies into the house and the whole experience including the apps including your t.v. systems and what not it's the opposite here so we consciously chose not to do any of that, what is it because what's that, Maintain a human element where technology is there any solution that we may want to bring the future. Is already enabled through our architecture through our overall kind of structure of the system so we can plug things in and out as we want without much without breaking anything without having to rebuild everything but no we specifically consciously chose not to bring any other elements for that reason.

SPEAKER_01:
So wondering out of all the tech that you've talked about, or maybe one that you have not implemented yet, what is one vendor or one app that you feel is really innovative that you've seen on the market? Maybe you've recently added it, or maybe you haven't added it yet, but what's one that you are excited about?

SPEAKER_02:
So the latest one, I think we've had it for like nine months now, so it's not that new, really. It's Roomdext, essentially an upselling tool for prearrivals. And we, all of us, we really like it, but again, going back to the human element, we never wanted to be too pushy about our upselling elements of the business, because it's a fine line, right? Some people do upselling much better, where they sometimes suggest saying, you know, would you like a room upgrade? Is there a special occasion? Maybe I can offer you this deluxe room, and would you like some champagne in it? You know, so there's subtle ways to deal with some customers, whereas I think the majority of cases, and it's not just hotels, it's retail as well, it can feel push you can feel tacky can feel a little bit of almost intrusive it's a very fine line it often depends on individual doing it rather than anything else is that look is there a way for us to do upselling or be gentle about it. Why not destroying this customer experience and that's what we came in essentially where it's. You still get an email if there's rooms available you can still upgrade your room. But we try to do it again in a subtle, more intrusive, more of a suggestive way. No upselling that's not new that's that's been around for think ages what i think what i found to do next that's much better they offer a dynamic upselling technique essentially it looks in our inventory it looks which ones are available and it really offers our customers proper upgrade rather than just kind of default oh you pay fifty pounds more than you get this room because that's what most do they kind of do like this template to think if but then and that's the ultimate email where is a good room that is much more flexible than that and then really kind of create value for us cuz every month we get about between six and seven thousand pounds. an extra revenue that probably wouldn't have otherwise through upgrades through kind of people saying oh yes i do want breakfast or didn't think about before so i have now all that. Oh yeah does this nice room so i pay for your accommodation but actually your price difference not that much so i'll pay a little bit extra. What's likely about the room and what not and again it then allows going back to the kind of personal experience and then allows our front of house teams not be that not be that pushy salesperson. just say i saw your grades you know what a great choice is your key is a woman you don't keep the process as simple as possible where you can talk about the weather you can talk about how long it took you to get here talk about your favorite cocktail because i bought and i can mix it up for you straight away rather than going like. Oh would you like another room i was gonna be another hundred pounds i was gonna be this kinda like. Again it's through technology enabling that human interaction and being more natural about that interaction rather than trying to.

SPEAKER_01:
Switching gears a little bit i would love to hear about one or two highest priority business objectives that you're focused on and how technology helps you get there.

SPEAKER_02:
Cost controls. which is probably the last month for sure in europe and you can't particular has been quite has been hot topic with inflation ramping up and. What should i kind of global events happening which natural influence. How much things cost and often not being able to predict the future that far ahead so it's really cost controls and again it's we turned technology and no it's not exclusive to hotels but it really allowed us to. keep tabs keep you know full visibility of what was happening in the business of a kind of day in and day out and for us again as part of this text that's completely visible talk. Customers talking to a guest yeah just having a system that allows me as a managing director to have an overview of whatever my team is buying real time. things that are being posted in our accounting system straight away in real time so i don't have to wait till the end of a month to suddenly go like oh my god guys you spent too much money and there's nothing i can do now because you already done it. Is that is allowing me in particular because again it's my responsibility to make sure the business is successful to understand exactly where we are and then if our revenue projections are dropping because let's say the bookings are not picking up, I'm the straight away able to make adjustments on the cost basis going forward and i got a customer don't see that they don't have to miss an invisible thing but. It's very very important for me because you know people sometimes forget it's still a business you know people talk about. Concepts and experience and everything else and i do as well but. What's your business it needs to be profitable and to be well controlled and to be accounted for. Yeah so for me again not exclusive hospitality hotels but to me that was the most crucial bit of the last 12 months and it will continue being that. in the next 12 months. And it's not a very sexy topic because accountants talk about it rather than hoteliers, but I could not survive without it.

SPEAKER_01:
So thinking about today's very dynamic, fast-changing environment, what do you feel are one or two important skills that hoteliers should have?

SPEAKER_02:
Flexibility. I think that's number one because if you're not able to adjust... And again, I'm speaking as myself because I work within an independent hotel sphere or economy. When you work for a branded hotel, you have some safety net. You have bigger people, bigger corporations, you get probably slightly wider funding, kind of pots where you have a lot more information because there's a lot more people vested in your success. Whereas in my environment, we're independent. Again, like I said, there's a lot of freedom to that. There's a lot of freedom to make decisions and do things, but there's also a lot more responsibility, so there's no room for error. whatever decisions we make, we need to kind of check and check again, we do not have luxury of waiting for something we need to make decisions that and then something that flexibility but but also that decision making to kind of. Do not wait to not procrastinate is very very important. And then being able to add a third one i suppose is that ongoing learning. You cannot use the same learning so same information or same skills that you had ten years ago because. no i gotta start in the business seventeen years ago and whatever i learned there or then does not no longer applies. The world has changed the market has changed the landscape of hospitality as a whole has changed for that ability to learn and evolve and i'm kind of trying to foresee a little bit maybe not foresee but kind of adjust your mindset knowing that the future will look different even if you don't know how different it will look or what it will look like that's very important because i've seen people time and time again kind of. crumble or almost freeze in themselves where they go like, I don't know what to do. It never happened to me. And it's a very human reaction. It's just normal. We all have moments of doubts in ourselves and whatnot. But not making a decision, not being able to evolve is much worse than making the wrong decision, I find. When you freeze, you lose time. When you make a wrong decision, at least you can learn from that and then adjust and move on, but at least make a decision. Yeah, flexibility, ability to learn and just keep up with the times is otherwise it's not going to be easy.

SPEAKER_01:
Do you have any advice on keeping up with new developments? How do you stay up to date?

SPEAKER_02:
My network, essentially, my connections, my friends, just that, it's networking and networking and networking, and that comes in various shapes and forms these days. You get a bunch of very interesting podcasts these days, listen to some of them. You get websites such as yours. Again, I read it from time to time because I'm curious to see what's happening there. you know the last couple years i feel like innovation slow down about five years ago there was lots and lots of new tech that came out like this is amazing and now i feel like that tech is getting better. What innovation has stopped is almost like people keep doing the same thing just get better and improving and evolving which is great. where's the new stuff and i can feel like there's a bit more than some sort of gap and i don't know what the new thing will be a crystal ball on that. What innovation has stopped but again you know that's the only way to keep up writing getting those ideas you know a lot of people keep talking about which is fantastic it's amazing and you know you see open your eyes doing all these amazing things great. No people keep talking about it i'm like what is it is good to talk about it is important to talk about it, what is it does no samples i haven't seen anything just yet people sometimes presents things as a guy. Can you like but that's not a nice just a clever algorithm that's not the same thing as a guy. And the last thing probably linkedin as well you know learn most things would be tech or kind of industry news or whatever just linkedin, what is people know that the posting it whether it's kind of reputable magazines that keep posting a lot of things that's the only way to keep up is the only way to kind of keep an eye on what's happening and what's next. Yeah also need to be able to probably have a good sense of filter because there's a lot of noise out there there's a lot of people again not people publications that kind of. recycle same things again and again, and it's often relevant. So a good sense of maybe moral compass as well as ability to filter out what's true and what's not, and maintaining that good healthy level of criticism for yourself and others is also a good thing to have.

SPEAKER_01:
So last question, always a fun one. What is one thing that you believe about hotel tech that other folks in the industry may not agree with?

SPEAKER_02:
That legacy pms and legacy systems are dead it's a very slow very painful death in the song going. What ages did you step through my friends and my network and then all colleagues current colleagues i just yeah it's a dying breed it's the only. Reason why legacy pms systems are still there is because no one has ever gotten fired for choosing a legacy system that's the only thing so people some hotels i keep going with them just because it's a low risk you can not get. Why you cannot get out of into trouble by your owners or your operators whatever it is when you choose a system that everyone else has been using for the last thirty years. But as a piece of technology, as a piece of, as a solution to a business, it's dying because with the cost and the speed and limitations that they come with, it's no longer business friendly solution. That's my slightly controversial thing, which I'm very happy to say out loud.

SPEAKER_01:
And by legacy, do you mean like system that you're installing on hardware, like on premise, you know, no open API? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:
That kind of thing, that kind of thing that is essentially close to the world that you need someone else to configure for you. A system, yeah, that just, you know, has a high risk of losing your data if the hard drive gets fried or something. Something that was built, developed 20, 30 years ago, and actually, at the core of it, forget the user interface, but at the core of it has not been evolved. To me, that's a legacy system.

SPEAKER_01:
Well, thank you so much for going through the questions with me. Have a good rest of your day. You too. Thank you.

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.