Time Hotels' COO on Building Flexible Tech Stacks for Rapid Growth
Every customer knows when you connect with them. Every human being knows when you genuinely connect. So tech is to help us genuinely connect, but the interaction between a team member and a guest is ultimately hospitality. So tech will never take that away.
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're speaking with William Cossley, the chief operating officer of Time Hotels. We talked through William's recent experience choosing a new revenue management system and how he ensured his team chose the best system on the market. We also learned how they work to maintain a service culture throughout their rapid expansion. William, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm very excited to get to know you a bit better and learn about all the exciting things you're doing at Time Hotels.
Speaker 3:To get started, I would love for you to introduce yourself, tell us about your role, a little bit about your company, and some of the things that you're working on.
Speaker 1:Sure. Well, first of all, thank you, Adrian, for the invitation. It's great to be speaking with you in evening time Dubai and daytime over the pond. My role as chief operating officer of Times Hotel. I recently joined just about 8 months ago.
Speaker 1:The key things that I've been focusing on actually, a lot has to do with tech and how we're gonna use it moving forward. But a little bit about the hotel company. So Tyme Hotels is a regional Middle East company. It was started in Dubai about 12 years ago. Time Hotels is our major brand.
Speaker 1:We have Time Express. Part of the exciting journey for me in the last 8 months is developing new brands, building out a strategy to grow and develop the company moving forward. And at the same time, it's obviously very important that we review all our technical architectures and stacks that we've got throughout the organization. And as we grow and actually move into some new countries, that obviously will have an impact as well. But it's very exciting.
Speaker 1:We are looking to, in the next 3 to 5 years, go from 20 hotels to a 100. Being established now, more big investors and companies are actually reaching out to us to ask us, would we be interested, to potentially manage one of their assets? Where when you're small, you have to be a little bit more hungry and a little bit more proactive in terms of to try to get new deals as big international operators, obviously, of many brands and is a very competitive environment, not just in the Middle East, but in Africa where we want to grow and in Southeast Asia as well. So it's a very exciting time. Grow the company, review our processes and systems as we expand, launch new brands into the market, and at the same time, how does our whole tech stack and our current architecture fit into that development plan as well.
Speaker 3:For the growth that you're anticipating, are those owned assets, or does your company manage or franchise? How does that work?
Speaker 1:Right now, we are mostly an asset light company, so we manage other people's assets. We do have actually another company that we've been focused on to be a third party operator as well because in the Middle East, it's actually it's very interesting because in the US, the hospitality business is mostly franchise in terms of the big international operators. Over the last decade in Europe, that really has become the business model in Europe now. What is maybe 10 years ago, 90% were management contracts, now 90% are franchises. And this is now slowly in the last couple of years become far more prevalent in this part of the world.
Speaker 1:And come back to being flexible and adaptable. You know, we have to be able to offer different business models to investors and current owners, of hotels here in the region. But we are asset light. However, if we find a hotel in a great location, we wouldn't mind considering leasing a hotel. But, ultimately, asset light and managing other people's assets is our core, and that will probably be our core moving forward as well.
Speaker 3:Tell me a little bit about the brand. You mentioned there's one kind of flagship brand, but you're potentially launching some other brands. What would you say the differences between the brands are, and what sets you apart from competitors?
Speaker 1:Well, Tyme Hotels is if you want to reconcile it with big international brands, it's the flagship brand. So for Hilton is Hilton. For Marriott, it will be Marriott. So for Thyme Hotels, our upscale brand is Thyme Hotels. Thyme Hotels will be our upscale brand.
Speaker 1:Our midscale brand is Thyme Express. So that's if you want to align it with stars ratings, that would be like our 3 star brand. We have just where we will be launching, so it's not official yet. But we did sign 2 hotels in the Maldives for 2 new lifestyle brands. 1 is called Vivi by Thyme, which will be a soft brand, whereas Thyme Hotels and ThymeXpress are really hard brands.
Speaker 1:Vivi by Thyme will be our midscale, upscale lifestyle brand. And our lifestyle brand is Halo by Thyme, which will be our upper upscale brand as well. Our key focus for this will be really on sustainability, wellness, holistic approach. And then we are finalizing a luxury brand and a collaboration with quite a famous designer in Italy called that will be Rotella Hotels, which will be our luxury brand as well. But at the moment, we signed what's been fantastic.
Speaker 1:We signed 2 brand new hotels in the Maldives. What a way to launch new brands as a brand new asset. So we'll be built to spec. And so our by time and our hello by time, they'll be our 1st 2 official lifestyle hotels for these brands. However, if there is an opportunity to get a conversion hotel before they are completed by q 4 2026, then, of course, you know, we'd be delighted to expand them prior.
Speaker 1:But so that's just a little bit about where the brands will fit between midscale up to luxury. And there'll be more official announcements coming out by the end of the year. But because we signed it to Namal, there's an announcement at FHI recently in Dubai, we can easily discuss it today.
Speaker 3:So let's talk about your tech stack. I know you're currently sort of reviewing the systems that you have in place and making sure that everything makes sense and is performing well and the way you need it. So talk me through what would you say is the most critical piece of your tech stack right now?
Speaker 1:I think for any hospitality company, the most important part of, hotels tech stack is is PMS. Ultimately, because the PMS connects with everything. PMS connects obviously directly and indirectly with the guests through our, you know, check-in, check out, our guests through management systems, our key card systems, Wi Fi, IPTV. But then also from a commercial perspective, it connects with our CRS, our central reservation system, our CRM, our central relationship management system, CMS, content management system, our RMS for some of our hotels, because, obviously, our PMS is a single source of the truth. And then, of course, there's F and B point of sale systems that connects to spa systems that connects to so, ultimately, the most important piece of tech stack in a hotel is this PMS just because it's so fundamental to managing relationships both internally and externally.
Speaker 1:And, actually, what we did this time, just before arrived, was to have a strategic partnership with Shishi, which are growing fast. We are the 1st company that's in the Middle East to sign with them. Predominantly, in the past, everybody was Fidelio. That was used to be the only option. Right?
Speaker 1:And globally, and opera, then when Oracle took over as well. But we've decided to go with Shiji, which we found is a great partner. I think, you know, they want to grow, and we were a small chain that give them the opportunity to get into the region. And being the 1st, we had built excellent relations with them and is really going from strength to strength. So as I mentioned earlier, if there's one thing that any new hotels that we really, really need to convince an owner is is to go with as a proprietary time hotels PMS.
Speaker 1:On top of that, over the last few months, we've been looking at our commercial stack as well. You know, some of our hotels have get not a lot of keys. Some, you know, it goes from, like, 48 key hotel to a 776 bedroom hotel. So you can imagine the type of technology required can vary dramatically. And you also find that sometimes a lot of the big tech companies have flat fees, which are not commercially viable for smaller hotels.
Speaker 1:And that's something which when we've been negotiating with a couple of vendors, we've been selling, guys. You need to have a reality check here. If you want all of them, if you want the big ones, you need to take some of our smaller key cam hotels, and you need to make it realistic for the ownership so it becomes commercially viable. So we've actually been looking at our CRS, our CRM, our CMS, and introducing revenue management system as well because none of our hotels today had that post COVID. So we've just moved over our CRS system.
Speaker 1:So we've moved over to Amadeus, which from another vendor, which I won't name. So not respect, but they do know, so don't worry. So we've been are actually right in the middle of the integration for our hotels. And this is one of the important things going back to him. All our hotels been on Shiji.
Speaker 1:It's been much more seamless and easier to convert with Amadeus because they've already got a lot of the integration between both of these systems in place already. And so that's made it very easy for us. That will make it very easy for our other commercial online partners like OTAs, like our, wholesalers. So the connectivity for them will be very seamless as well. So that's one of the key reasons we went with Amadeus.
Speaker 1:And similarly as well that they have got other solutions for CMS CRM, which at the moment work with other vendors. But when those contracts expire, it certainly will provide us other options. And as I say, when you get all your key commercial platforms, if there was only 2 vendors, it really just makes it much, much easier to manage systems internally as you can do enterprise changes much quicker. If you need to do any updates, it's much easier as well than going to 3, 4, or 5 vendors to try and upgrade something. So this has been taken up a lot of time and also implementing, as I say, in a smaller company, for example, revenue management systems.
Speaker 1:We took an independent company to do the RFP for us. This takes away internal preferences. You know, some of my colleagues have worked with different international companies that use different systems. So this takes away any preference in that respect. And it was really critical to have an RFP so that there's a genuine apple for apple comparison when it comes to functionality, when it comes to cost, when it comes to user friendliness, when it comes to integration with our other systems.
Speaker 1:For example, you know, being able to integrate with with and other other systems that we've got. So we actually have chosen 3 of our hotels. Actually, we're gonna start in January with Flyer or our revenue management system. We went through a robust RFP process. We went down to 3 vendors.
Speaker 1:We had the initial presentations, and then we decided to go with flyer as we felt that they were the right fit, both functionality wise, both on added value to our company, to the hotels themselves, and obviously price as well. So it's not just a price deal. You know? It has to really add value to the business and our commercial opportunities.
Speaker 3:So during that RFP process, did you have some specific criteria that you were looking for, or how did you narrow down all those vendors to the final 3? And then how did you make the ultimate decision with Flyer?
Speaker 1:Well, through the RFP process, we obviously developed our metrics in terms of what were important things to the business. So we have, like, hotel residences. So we have large hotels 770 keys, which are seasonal, for example, in Macca. So grips is very important. So so that some of the criteria was a grip capability, forecasting capability, because some just manage the revenue, but don't necessarily automate forecasting.
Speaker 1:For us, enterprise above property revenue management was another thing. The user friendliness of that because we have a centralized reservations and revenue management platform based on our Cairo office. So it was looking at the user friendliness of that. Obviously, cost, training, service provision, length of contract as well, because some big vendors want you 3, 4, 5 years. And these days with tech, it can change so quickly.
Speaker 1:So we don't want to be committed, you know, to longer terms in that respect as well. Because we're a small company, and one of our advantages is we can be flexible and adaptable and agile. But if you're locked in for a 5 year contract with an almost watertight American vendor contract, You know, it's maybe you're in for 4 and a half years. You may get out 6 months earlier. But if a vendor is willing to say, okay then, you're new.
Speaker 1:You're not well known globally. Give me 12 months, and we can review it. And then, you know, if we feel it's working well, then we can continue, or we can look for something. So the flexibility of the vendor when it came to contracting was very important because technology grows so far just move so fast. We don't want to be locked in for long periods of time, which was the norm.
Speaker 1:To be honest, it still is for some big international companies. But when you're smaller, you need to maintain your agility and your adaptability in the market. So these were a lot of the questions that we put forward to them. Use of friendliness as well was very important because when you get a presentation from a vendor like Flyer or any other vendors out there, for us, it was simplicity. Don't give me all the bells and whistles, and I'll be here for 1 hour looking at things.
Speaker 1:You're clicking and clicking and clicking. Just these are the key things I need to know. Show me them. And at the same time, for us, forecasting was a big thing, and the data analytics, which was another thing. And flyer, I have to say, between all the vendors for RMS, their data analytics reporting, I mean, for me, it was fantastic, Really fantastic.
Speaker 1:And AI forecasting, not having to load history of your performance for the last 3 years, but using AI, we can almost plug and play within 2 weeks, and we're ready to go with future forecasting events. So that was some of the key things that made us go with them.
Speaker 3:How do you think about technology versus human interaction? Can you talk to me about your guest experience and and the role technology plays there?
Speaker 1:Sure. I mean, this is something I'm very, very passionate about. Tech is an enabler of the guest experience. It is not the guest experience. So tech should be there to make things easier and take away the mundane processing parts of hospitality and service delivery is should be used for data collection as well.
Speaker 1:And having that data on our guest is so as you quote, you're right. Let's say, first of all, garbage in, garbage out. So you need to make sure you're putting quality data in, but then when is that is how do you then use it? So tech IC is in a marvelous tool to consolidate data, to consolidate preferences of our guests, to take away a lot of friction from our guest experience as well when they're physically in a hotel. But for me, the guest experience fundamentally is me and the guest.
Speaker 1:The hardware and the software of tech are great enablers. But for me, software is from the heart. You sell from the heart. You know, I think one of the most interesting observations I made during COVID was that, and I don't even want to remember everybody wearing a mask, but you remember that dream when everybody wore a mask, you could still tell some they were smiling, couldn't they, even wearing the mask. And it was because it was coming from the heart and it was coming out of the eyes.
Speaker 1:And even without seeing the mouth and, you know, raising north and that's for me is every customer knows when you connect with them. Every human being knows when you genuinely connect. So tech is to help us genuinely connect, but the interaction between a team member and a guest is ultimately hospitality. So tech will never take that away. No matter what system you've got, you could have all these systems.
Speaker 1:But if there's not a culture of genuine service and hospitality, it's irrelevant. You can have all the tech in the world, but you're still not gonna drive great memorable guest experiences. And guests are looking for experiences more than anything. Now it's not just a bit coming and staying. They want to have a positive experience and the hotel or in the environment around the hotel.
Speaker 3:And for guests at Tyme Hotels, where do they encounter technology during their stay experience, and are there certain parts of the guest journey where it's only human interaction, or is the tech mostly behind the scenes? How does that look from the guest's view?
Speaker 1:At this moment in time, most of the tech is behind the scenes, and most of the guest interaction is obviously with the team members. It's quite interesting because some of the normal equipment in a guest room now is almost redundant. Like if you take a television and a television in the past up until a few years ago, really, it was to watch TV in your room and watch a movie in the room. Today, it's just an extension of your mobile phone. I've got apps from all over.
Speaker 1:I've got my Netflix app. I've got my Amazon Prime app. I've got my app for my football, soccer in America. I've got my app for my UK channels back home. And so, actually, watching a TV in a room is completely redundant.
Speaker 1:Now it's what guest are asking is I need to connect to the TV, not I want to watch the TV. So these sort of things are very, very important. I think the next thing that will become the norm in a room or change functionality, because I don't think anybody's fully been able to make the phone, you know, manage your curtains, manage your lights, manage the temperature in the room. There's so much tech out there that might think they do it. But again, getting back to integration, I haven't seen one that works really well because most of the tech is not hotels to protect it.
Speaker 1:My belief is that guests want to be in control of their environment. So we have to be able to create the systems that guests can get through the telephone because everybody uses a phone for everything. Right? And, the most obvious one at the moment is, you know, the TV is now an extension of your telephone because that's what all your apps are. And I think next will be giving the guests full control of everything in the room.
Speaker 1:So whatever company can come up with a seamless, frictionless application, I think they will do extremely well because I think there's so many guests and someone in hotel companies would love that. My home is in Scotland. It's minus 2 at the moment. So I'm on my phone and my app, and I'm controlling my boilers back home. But there's not really a company yet who's curated something for hospitality.
Speaker 1:And I really believe that this would be for a guest, front facing. I think this would be a key thing. As I say, you know, most guests know, you know, again, in the past, they said, do you have a spa or a swimming pool or a gym? And if you never did not use it these days, customers are even saying, you know, do you have a smart TV? Because we know that not all hotels are smart TVs and some people are making decisions to stay in a hotel based on, can I connect?
Speaker 1:But it's a simple thing. But back in the day, you went to a hotel to experience things you never had at home. Right? Now it sounds almost flipping. Like, you get things at home now that you don't get in hotels, which frustrates you even more.
Speaker 1:So I think that's the next step where technology will truly be frictionless for our guest experience will be when they can connect through the phone to what they want. They're in control, not us.
Speaker 3:I'm curious to dig in to the ReviewPro tool. How has analyzing guest review data helped you uncover insights?
Speaker 1:Well, let me give you just a quick overview. The ReviewPro consolidates every online guest feedback for your hotel and your competitor. So for example, you know, I'll take every online sales of a 250 online guest review, the tripadvisor, booking.com, Google holiday check. I mean, those just hundreds of them out there. So this consolidates every single guest feedback.
Speaker 1:It actually aggregates it for different parts of the guest experience. It compels you against yourself. It compels you against your competition even so you can benchmark yourself. It is multilingual. So if you want to translate into any language, it provides it.
Speaker 1:So if we get even a reply in Russian, we can the tool translates into English so we can understand. We can either reply in Russian, which is the preferred, you know, try and reply in the language of the gear sculpture. And then it tells you what's trending up. What's trending down. What are you doing good on the, be it as an English language, as a Arabic in terms of your trending up or down?
Speaker 1:So it's good. So many opportunities to really cut up and analyze different parts of the business. Also, does it for the competition? So I'll give you an example. Some of your listeners would know about revenue management system.
Speaker 1:Sorry. STR. So STR tells you how you compare your RevPAR against the competition. But in the past, you could only do that when you were opened. Now, when we were opening new hotels and my old company review crew allows me to go and check the competition before I'm opened so I can see their scores, what they do well, what they don't do well, even to the extent of I can find out there's somebody named a lot, a good team member who's named on a lot of reviews.
Speaker 1:I could proactively tell my HR team, hey, guys, this guy in that bar, I've seen his name so many times, go and employ and poach him. I don't care. So actually, having your competitors data as well can tell you what they're doing well, what they can improve. So even though if you're doing preopening and you want to go on sales calls, the information you've got in your competition is really powerful as well. And it allows you to have really meaningful conversations with competition.
Speaker 1:So it compels you every part of the hotel, different nationality. It gives you by nationality as well. It's just such a great aggregator of data, and it's very simple and is very quick. You know, you can get reports. It's live.
Speaker 1:It's dynamic. It's up to date. It refreshes by the hours, not by the days. And as I said, it's really a great preopening tool. And at the same time, it's the STR for guest experience.
Speaker 1:So you can really use it to measure really benchmark yourself against the competition, which is really good as well. So, yeah, it's a great tool. I haven't seen a better tool that consolidates guest reviews than review pro. I'm sure there's many out there, but it would have to be really special to use up ReviewPro. And I don't get any commission from Shishi.
Speaker 1:Don't worry.
Speaker 3:I wanna have just one more question. Drawing on your experience at different brands working around the world, what would you say are 1 or 2 qualities that a hotelier should have in order to be successful today?
Speaker 1:Number 1, and it's not even today. I think it's in the past, It's in the present and it will be in the future. You must embrace change. Maybe even in life, you know, being able to embrace change and adapt is really, really important. Business is moving so fast.
Speaker 1:So dynamically, it's really important to embrace change. Don't fight it because it's going to happen. It's inevitable. So as how do you optimize and how do you drive and get competitive advantage in the change process? Been in many companies and I've experienced companies and people within a company who have an embraced change and has been painful.
Speaker 1:And I've seen people really thrive both individually and as as a company. So I think number 1 is is really embrace change and be agile and adaptable. Number 2, God gave us 2 eyes, 2 ears, and 1 mouth. And I think he was trying to tell us something that we should listen twice as much as we speak. I think listening is a very powerful tool that is underestimated.
Speaker 1:I think in the hospitality industry, the more you listen and observe, you'll make much better decisions you'll be far more engaging. You'll solve problems better and you'll create truly great guest experiences because you're really listening to what the guest wants. So I think that's not, so number 1 is change, embrace it and, you know, be agile through the process. Number 2 is listening. And number 3 again is, you know, just be positive.
Speaker 1:It's infectious. I think when you work in a team, having a positive energy within your department really adds tremendous value. And hospitality is just teamwork. Nobody does anything by themselves. You know?
Speaker 1:And we are all interdependent, and if we're all really embracing the dynamics of change in the fast pace of what's happening in our hotels, if we listen to each other, and if we remain positive, we'll have a great working environment and a great environment for guests to get a great guest experience.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you for sharing. And thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. It was really lovely chatting with you and learning all about the exciting things that you're doing.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and you have a great day ahead.
Speaker 2:That's all for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Hotel Tech Insider produced by hotel tech report.com. Our goal with this podcast is to show you how the best in the business are leveraging technology to grow their properties and outperform the concept by using innovative digital tools and strategies. I encourage all of our listeners to go try at least one of these strategies or tools that you learned from today's episode. Successful digital transformation is all about consistent small experiments over a long period of time, so don't wait until tomorrow to try something new.
Speaker 2:Do you know a hotelier who would be great to feature on this show, or do you think that your story would bring a lot of value to our audience? Reach out to me directly on LinkedIn by searching for Jordan Hollander. For more episodes like this, follow Hotel Tech Insider on all major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.
