Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's technology
now that allows them to
completely rethink what thatexperience should be. And
ultimately, only technology canget them there. But now we need
inspired hoteliers to rethinkwhat that experience is. And I
think that's what we're tryingto drive with Muse.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
From Hotel Tech
Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider,
a show about the future ofhotels and the technology that
powers them.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
On this episode,
you're in for a treat. We sit
down with Matt Well, the founderand CEO of the innovative
property management system,Muse. Matt's vision to
revolutionize the hospitalityindustry can be summed up as
striving to remove barriersbetween hoteliers and guests to
create more personal andpersonalized experiences. Give
(00:43):
this one a listen to learn howto do just that. Welcome to the
podcast, Matt.
Great to have you here. I'mexcited to chat with you and
learn about all things relatedto Muse. Before we really dive
into the details, I would lovefor you to give a quick intro on
(01:04):
Muse. Tell me the founding storyand maybe a bit about how the
company has evolved since thebeginning.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah. So I'm a
hotelier. I've come out of
hotels, and I've always grown upknowing I was gonna be a
hotelier, then did hotelmanagement, then started working
for one of the big brands forabout a decade. And I've deeply
felt the pain of bad technology.And at some point, I ran to
Richard who became a friend ofmine, and he was building a
hotel for his family.
He was the project manager forthe hotel. And he would pick my
(01:32):
brain over a few beers. We livein the Czech Republic where the
beer is the best quality in theworld. So we would have lots of
beers, and then he'd be like, sowhat are you doing at this big
brand? And I was like, you haveno idea how bad it is.
Like, we've just moved from DOS,which is this blue screen that
you sometimes still see at theairports. We've just moved into
Windows, and it's worse. Like,it got so much worse because now
there's a mouse. So now youcan't just fast key through a
(01:54):
screen. You have to actuallyconstantly grab the mouse.
So I was completelydisillusioned at this stage of
my journey. And then he said,well, maybe you should join us
at Muse, and we start figuringout a solution for my hotel
because I don't want a receptiondesk. He's like, I don't even
wanna buy the desk. And I waslike, well, that's impossible
because I don't think there's asolution on the market today
(02:14):
that allows you to just run yourhotel on a tablet. So you could
have a host at a door welcomingyou with a tablet.
And that really was the foundingstory of news where we just
said, well, if no one's doingit, maybe this is a problem that
we should be solving. So therewas iPhones in the world. Like,
there was no reason why hotelsshould be running on these old
systems, but that just was theworld at the time for hotels.
And I think it goes to theinertia that we feel as an
(02:36):
industry like, oh, it's notbroken. It's fine.
The system has done the job for20 years. Why would I change it
now? And we're like, no. No.It's broken.
And it's been broken for awhile. And we're really showing
that now with Muse where we'vereally helped digitize huge
amounts of these manualprocesses. Like, the experience
that you get in a hotel when youwalk in is, welcome to the
(02:58):
hotel. Can I have your passportand your credit card? And then
here's a reg card that you haveto fill in by hand.
And then I'm gonna retype thatmyself into a system. It's just
crazy that we're still doingthat today. But most of it is
because these systems are builtfor data entry. Well, we could
capture that data in muchsmarter ways nowadays. So it is
absolutely broken.
(03:18):
It's just that not everyone'syet seen the light.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
And what would you
say are some of the highlights
in the decade or so that Musehas existed? Like, where have
you seen the growth really startto happen? What are those
inflection points?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So the 1st few years
were very hard because we
stupidly didn't really know howhard it was gonna be to build a
property management system. Andwe serve in the hotel. Everyone
you can imagine, like thehousekeeper, the revenue
manager, the front desk agents,but also the front office
manager, the GM. So we have allthese personas that we have to
serve with individual screensand products. So it took us a
(03:55):
while before we started reallygetting traction, and the 1st 3
years were the hardest.
But really, we got tractionabout 5 years into the journey
when we started seeing reallyokay. Hey. This is working in
the Netherlands, and we startedto see pockets of that really
starting to accelerate. There'sa real big moment for us when we
figured out payments because Iremember in the early days,
everyone was like, your OTAswanted to send you unencrypted
(04:17):
credit card data. We're like,no.
No. We're in the cloud. We'regood. Thanks. But we had to
somehow deal with credit cardsbecause that's what a check-in
is all about.
And at some point, we figuredout, hey, there's this thing
called tokenized payments. So wecan somehow accept these credit
cards, but we route them througha tokenized fold in Switzerland
where they store these cards andthen we can automate all of the
(04:37):
payments. And that became a realbig pivotal moments. So the way
that with an Uber where you havea profile and your credit card
sits against your profile andyou just walk out of the car and
you never think about payments,and then you get an email
receipt automatically in yourinbox. That's literally what
we've done for hotels.
It's we've made paymentscompletely automatic. But the
workflows are much, much harderbecause you get virtual cards.
(05:00):
Sometimes there's a prepaidrate. Sometimes it's a flexible
rate. Sometimes there's adeposit.
So the workflows are reallyhard. But once we figured that
out, that became a reallypivotal moment for growth for us
because we make some revenuefrom that. And another big
moment was really the open API.We were the first to really
publish our API on the websitebecause I remember when we wrote
(05:21):
it, and I asked the developer,do you mind if I just publish
this on the website? Because atthis time, we didn't have money
to have web designers.
I did our own Squarespacewebsites. And I said, do you
mind if I just publish it andsee what happens? And he's like,
no, you're crazy. And at somepoint, we convinced him to allow
us to just stick it on thewebsite. And then we realized,
oh my god, the whole industryhas been waiting for a PMS with
(05:43):
an open API Because all thesestartups that wanted to do
something cool couldn't becausethe industry leader had
disclosed the infrastructurethat you weren't allowed to
access.
And we put it on the website,and then suddenly all these
startups started building aroundMuse that suddenly could get
access to this really valuablereservation in guest data, and
suddenly you had upsellsolutions and new revenue
(06:04):
management solutions come out.So the API became this real
growth point, and we now haveover, I think, a 1,000 100
integrations on thatmarketplace. And that really was
because we pushed thatconversation very early on. And
it's so important for a hotel.We see today, if you're an SMB
hotel, you have probably 6integrations.
If you're mid market, youprobably have 12 to 15
(06:24):
integrations. And in everycountry, there are 15 different
integrations because those are alot of local solutions. So
you've got to get that open APIthat was really pivotal.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I'm curious as you're
thinking about building your own
product, how do you think aboutwhich features to build
yourselves versus partneringwith a really strong API
partner? So, like, paymentprocessing, is that part of Muse
own technology or is that apartner that's integrated?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah. So we work with
Stripe and with Adyen as the
payment providers behind it. Andwe will basically we've
completely white labeled thisdeeply into the system. So we
get often a hotel always like,oh, I've got a local bank that
I'm working with. Can you justintegrate that?
And we're like, no. No. This hastake multiple years to really
think about. Like, the workflowof a virtual card saying, okay.
If it's virtual card from thisOTA, then you can only charge on
(07:17):
checkout for this particularamount.
Like, those workflows are socomplex. It isn't just gonna be
in another local bank. And it'staken us years to build that. So
that really became a buildsolution where we built the
entire infrastructure inside ourtech stack. Whereas for example,
channel management ordistribution, we're like,
they're great players out there.
And 95% of our hotels have achannel manager or a central
(07:40):
reservation system integrated.And, like, there's not much
innovation that I can bring tothat category. So we're just
like, let's just partner withthe greatest in that particular
category. And we always thinkwhen we wanna build something,
could we innovate it? Is there areal space to drive a different
narrative of better integration?
One of the first acquisitions wedid was about 3 years ago, which
(08:02):
was a point of sale calledBizon, was was a fantastic
product. And we thought wereally need a point of sale
because there are such uniqueworkflows in hotel restaurants
and hotel bars that you don'thave when you go to the
Starbucks down the road, whereit's just, you know, you say
something, you order it, andthen it gets served, and then
you're good to go. Whereas inhotels, it's like room service.
(08:23):
How do you do poolside service?The breakfast room service.
There's so many unique workflowsthat we thought we've got to
bring that in house so that wereally build something custom
for hotels that deals with thosesituations. And that's how we
think about product build orbuy.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Why do you think
hotels are slower to adopt some
of these newer forms oftechnology?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Changing, like, a
system, like a property
management system is like openheart surgery because you don't
close the hotel to just changethe systems during the day. You
do this whilst you're runningthe hotel. And if anyone has
gone through a PMS change in thelast decade, it was awful. Like,
I've gone through this when Iworked in hotels, and it is one
of the most painful weeks ofyour life because people vividly
(09:08):
remember those memories. Andwhen you remember something so
vividly, it was either fantasticor it was terrible.
And we've had terribleexperiences, and it isn't like
that anymore. But it's just thatwe have this muscle memory of
how incredibly painful it wasback in the day to change your
PMS. We've completely reimaginedthat journey, but there's just
people have bad memories of it.And also people think I can
(09:31):
check people in. I can checkpeople out.
It's fine. It's working. Andwe're just like, yeah, but look
at this hotel next door that'snow running on Muse who are way
more efficient. They are drivingRevPAR improvements versus you.
And those things just take timeto really visualize.
So if you run an SCR report whenyou're comparing yourself
against your competitors,they're like, why are the
(09:52):
competitors winning? Like, theirproduct is the same. Their hotel
product hasn't changed. Theyhaven't renovated, and it's
because they've invested intosystems and technology to drive
much more efficiency, to drivebetter guest experiences. But it
takes a while for people torealize that and that it is
truly broken.
And I think we've reached thatmoment where, like, we've seen
real adoption in the market likeGermany, for example. And
(10:13):
Germany was probably one of theoldest mindset in terms of
legacy is fine. And suddenly,there's been this pivotal moment
that we've seen. We've beenthere for about 10 years talking
to Ateliers. And suddenly,they've just adopted and they're
seeing, hey.
If these brands are doing it, wecan all do it, and we're seeing
the real benefits of it. Andthat's the thing that excites me
(10:34):
so much when I can see verytraditional Iteliers embracing
technology and thinking, maybe akiosk could work in my mind. And
I'm like, wow. That is such amindset change from
conversations that I've had 3, 4years ago. But COVID has been
this really great accelerator ofsaying, kiosks are not bad.
Actually, kiosks do a muchbetter job at doing a check-in
(10:54):
than a human does in terms ofupselling. And you see this in
McDonald's, for example, wherethey've deployed kiosks. And
what they're seeing is thatpeople are ordering different
things. People are not orderingfries and a burger and a Coke.
They're ordering 2 burgers andfries because they don't have
the shame factor of having toexplain to a human that that's
just what they feel like.
(11:15):
And we're seeing the same thingon The Muse Kiosk where people
are buying the upsell to thenicer category in a room, or
they're willing to pay 20 hoursextra to just get access to that
room at 9 o'clock in the morninginstead of storing your luggage
in the back office and comingback at 3. I'm okay to pay for
that. Like, I want 6 hours moreof my room experience. This is
embracing that kiosk experience,and that would not have happened
(11:37):
pre COVID, to be honest. If youthink about the upsell, what a
human does is saying, actually,I have another room available.
It's slightly larger and it hasa view. And you're like, that
doesn't sound great. But on thekiosk, I have a visual image of
that nicer room and adescription that has been really
thought about. And getting ahuman trained to tell that story
(11:57):
in a vivid picture, it's really,really hard. Even our best
salespeople sometimes mess up intheir pitch.
The kiosk never messes up, thatyou've really curated that
content in the right way. And,you know, I love the human
upsell experience. When ithappens to me and they do a
really good job, I appreciateit. But it is so rare that it
happens in the right way. Butwhen you prioritize it, it's
pretty consistent.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
One challenge that I
hear from many hoteliers is that
all this data exists. The hotelknows who you are, why you're
traveling, where you live, howold you are, like, all this data
is there. But it's really hardto operationalize and turn that
data into a personal experience.How do you and your team at Muse
think about enabling hoteliersto use that information?
Speaker 1 (12:42):
So it was really
hard, but it isn't anymore. 2
years ago, when large languagemodels came to market, those
models, all they do is justconsume huge amounts of
information and give it back toyou in a digestible way. And
that's how we thought aboutintegrating AI into our products
where we're like, right, let'sjust make sure that we look at
the historic stays. What didthey spend? Did they buy an
(13:04):
upsell?
Are there notes about dietaryand allergy restrictions? And we
read all of that and on thefuture evaluations. And then we
consume it. And then we feed itback. We added these new smart
tips.
And would just say, let's giveit back to them in a tweet size
where we just say, hey. Matt'sallergic. He complained last
time. He was promised anupgrade. And then it becomes
actionable.
So right now, we add the tweetsize kind of smart tip in the
(13:28):
product. But in the future, andthis is a near future, we could
actually say create a task forhousekeeping to remove the
feather pillows from the room.And that's the exciting thing
about AI. We just need hoteliersto give us more data. And this
is one of the challenges thatI've been vocalizing saying,
right, instead of asking forpassports and credit cards, we
(13:48):
should be saying, what could wedo to make your stay remarkable
this time?
And that question will elicit anactual response about why
they're in town. And then weneed to capture that in the
system. That's much moreexciting stuff to capture.
Because the moment we've got inyour guest profile, we start to
get to know these customers. Andthen we can really think about,
okay, great.
Now we know that they care aboutFormula 1. So maybe we could do
(14:10):
something fun with that. And Ithink there has to be the shift
of asking for passports andcredit cards to asking open
questions that start aconversation. And that's a very
different skill set. And maybethe caliber of people that we
hire shouldn't be people thathave been trained on legacy
systems that can input datareally fast.
They should be people that cravehuman interaction and that can
(14:33):
then capture that and thenaction that into something fun.
Because if I care about Formula1, which I don't, but if I did
care about Formula 1, you coulddo a fun VIP setup in my room
that next time I check-in, youremember that I cared about that
and put a fun photo about thatFormula 1 car in my room of
something. And then suddenly,like, wow, they remembered that
(14:53):
they've really saw me as ahuman. And I think that's really
the exciting bit about AI.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Can you tell me a bit
about what you would consider
power users of Muse, hoteliersthat are using all the features,
they're really successful atreaching their goals. What would
you say some of the key thingsthat they do differently are?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
We see hotels that
are larger with lots of
integrations just thrive becausethey're like, we don't do
everything. And I don't think wewant to do everything because if
we do everything, we doeverything poorly. So we're
like, right. Let's sit at thecore and let's do that PMS thing
really well and then havefantastic integration partners
(15:32):
that work with us reallyclosely. So you might have
brands that are city centerlocate that need a different
system to support upselling andhousekeeping versus a
countryside hotel.
And I think it's the when yousee a tech stack over 10
integrations, you're like, oh,okay. They are not afraid to
test out things. And if itdoesn't work, they switch it
off. They move on to the nextthing. When you see hotels that
(15:54):
are really saying, I just wannabuy everything from you.
Like, why are you not offeringeverything yourself? That type
of customer, I'm like, that'shard because they're not going
to try new things. They're notgonna push the boundaries of
what you could do withtechnology. So that's why we're
really saying, okay, you shouldbe out test driving everything.
If you have a free trial, great.
(16:15):
Switch it on for 30 days. And ifyou don't like it, there's
probably 10 other options in themarketplace until you find the
thing that works best for you.And I think those are the
hoteliers that thrive with Muse.The ones that come in to just
replace legacy system with Museand then they just use it like
they always have. They're notgetting the full benefit.
They might get some of thebenefits that we natively build
(16:36):
in, but I think the marketplaceis just so powerful.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I've had several
conversations with hoteliers
about keyless entry versusphysical keys. What's your take
on physical room keys?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
There is no need for
those today. So we built Amuse
Digital Key because we found theadoption of digital key to be so
slow. And it's became such a biginvestment for hotels that we
thought, well, we actually haveintegrations with the door lock
vendor. So why aren't we theones that do that? Because we do
the online check-in.
So we ask for the passport andthe credit card, and we do the
upsell, and we have a messagingtool. But the last mile is
(17:11):
always, how do I get a plastickey in the hang of a customer?
Well, the only way to get aplastic key in the hand of a
customer is through kiosk or ahuman. But the digital key is
the last thing. And we thoughtthat was the last kind of
bastion that we had to kind ofconquer.
And we did. We now deployed withASSA ABLOY their latest logs,
Visio Online and Vostio, so thatwe can just literally deploy
(17:32):
digital key. And basically, youdo the online check-in and it
says download the key. And itdoesn't make you go into the App
Store. It just downloadsstraight onto your phone in a
lite app.
And then the moment your room isinspected and assigned, we can
just ping you a pushnotification saying, hey, you're
in room 306. Your room is readyfor you when you get to the
hotel. And that's a much betterexperience than having to go to
(17:53):
the hotel to be told that yourroom is not ready to store your
luggage and then to come back at3. And I think that's the thing
that excites me about thedigital key so much. And I think
not everyone will always embraceit because some people just like
to come to the reception, butit's more about providing choice
for guests saying, if you're abusiness traveler and you just
wanna get into your room as fastas possible, great.
(18:13):
Here's the digital key product.But if you're a leisure
customer, we freed up that queueat the receptionist so that they
have actual time to spend withyou. And we can give you that
pass the key because we've nowhad a real conversation, but
we're just trying to make thewhole flow efficient and giving
choice to customers.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
How would Apple
Wallet help to unlock this
problem?
Speaker 1 (18:33):
I think the Apple
Wallet solution is so well done.
Like, the way that you just youdon't even need your phone to be
charged. You just hold itagainst the lock and it opens
it. It's beautiful. And we areunder NDA, so I can't really
talk to what we're doing.
But what's known publicly aboutthe app wallets, I've been blown
(18:54):
away by because it's so smartlydone. Like, even if your battery
dies, you can still get intoyour room. And that's always
been the biggest question arounddigital keys. Like, what if my
battery dies? Which is very rarenowadays because phones have
decent batteries.
Like, I never have a batteryloss on any of my devices
anymore, but at least it'sticked that box. So I think that
that is definitely the best andsmoothest solution that I've
(19:16):
seen so far.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
One other product I
wanted to ask about is space,
event space, public spaceswithin a hotel. How do you think
about enabling hoteliers tomonetize those spaces more
effectively?
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Love your question
because I'm deeply passionate
about this. Like, the mostexpensive real estate of the
hotel is that beautiful lobby.And then they stick a reception
desk in the middle of the lobby,and they make no revenue from
the best real estate in thehotel. And I think we've gotta
reimagine what a lobby could be.And some hotels that are very
business focused.
That could be a coworking spacewhere you rent out desks in the
(19:53):
lobby, but you can also get avibe from it with a coffee shop.
And suddenly, that very boringempty space with a few sofas
could turn into a buzzing kindof local community. I think
that's really how we shouldthink about spaces. Like, is
this the most optimized usage ofthis space? Could we flip it?
Could you turn a space from ameeting room to a different type
(20:15):
of event space at night? How dowe drive revenue at the
poolside? Why am I alwayslooking for that waiter when I'm
lying by the pool my holidays?Why don't you just put a QR code
on my deck chair that allows mejust order? And you might not
have need a waiter, but when I'mready to buy something, you can
just deliver the order to mewithout me having to wander
around the pool looking for thewaiter.
(20:35):
And it's really thinking aboutevery single square foot, square
meter of hotel space andthinking, is this the most
optimized usage for this hotel?And a lot of hotels have not
really thought about that. Theythought about filling the rooms
with the highest paying guests,but maybe the highest paying
guest is not the one spendingmost money at your hotel. And
(20:56):
you also want to capture theirancillary revenues, so maybe we
should look at total guestrevenue. And connecting the
dots, one thing we did or areabout to release that is super
exciting is connecting all thecredit card tokens to a single
profile.
So if I'm the guest at the hoteland I charge to my room, yeah,
sure. I know what the totalguest value is. But if I go to
(21:18):
your restaurant and I pay bycredit card, the hotel doesn't
know that I'm Matthijs, who hasalready stayed at your hotel.
But we can now recognize thecredit card tokens and then
merge those profiles togetherwith all the revenue attached,
and that becomes incrediblypowerful. But now I know exactly
how much you spend in thecasino, in the spa, in the
restaurants.
And then you can start to reallycapture total guest value. And
(21:41):
these are some of the piecesthat are going to fall in place
for us next year that we've beenbuilding for a long, long time
to try and connect all the dots.But when I can show you what
mister James spends at the hotelversus missus James, Maybe we
should be targeting missus Jamesbecause she spends much more at
the additional facilities of thehotel. But those are answers
that no one in the industrystill has today. My husband and
(22:04):
I, we don't really traveltogether often.
But when we do, I wake up at 5and he wakes up at 8. So So for
3 hours, I'm sitting in thisdark with everyone thinking, I
wish that there was a space thatI could just go to to work, and
I don't. And one of theworkflows that you could have is
you can have a chatbotintegrated like a Runner AI or a
Book Boost. That the moment youcheck-in, it pings you a message
(22:24):
saying, hey, if you wanna book acowork, here's a link to book a
desk in the lobby. And that's agreat way to completely automate
that entire journey.
And it could ping that maybeonly 2 people that are there for
hybrid stays or dual occupancybecause they know that one
person might wake up early, forexample. But you can automate
those workflows today with thesegreat integration partners. But
(22:45):
very few hoteliers do thatbecause they just think in the
traditional way. But I lovehybrid travel. I love staying in
a hotel where I can check-in onThursday, have 2 days of
business and then enjoy theweekend at that hotel.
And that does mean that on aThursday, I'm a different guest
than I am on Saturday. So myneeds change over time. And the
segmentation that we've alwayshistorically done in hotels is
(23:06):
either your business or eitheryour leisure. And you still get
this question when you book onbooking. Are you traveling for
business or leisure?
I'm like, both. Like, give methe both option because that's
what I'm doing. And then if youknow which days I'm on business,
which is most like the midweekdays, maybe I'm expecting
different things from the hotelthan I'm expecting from the
weekend days. And a good AI botcould jump into that.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
How would you
recommend hotels collect that
information? Like, if I see a 3night stay for you as a hotel,
you know, do I ask that?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Honestly, I think
this gets much more interesting
when you could just dump thatinformation into your profile,
not thinking about which fielddo we have to write because now
you have to do multiple segmentsand you have to segments per
day. Or if you can just put thatas a note into the reservation,
we will just consume it. Our AIwill just read it and tell you
this is a guest that on aThursday is there for business.
(23:59):
And then you could have actiontriggers that build on this. It
can read all of the notes today,but the action triggers that
will come next year.
Honestly, I think we need lessfields, but we need people to
put more data into the fields sothat we can just consume that
data.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
So speaking of data,
of course, hotels have a lot of
personal data, a lot ofsensitive data. We hear often
about cyber attacks or databreaches. What advice would you
give hotels to preventing anysort of security issue?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
It is honestly
relentless. The attacks that
we're seeing and have beenseeing for an amount of months
right now coming out of EasternRepublics have been relentless,
and they're government funded.So the Russian governments have
whole centers where they'refunding some of these attacks,
which is crazy, but it's thenormal way of life. And they're
(24:51):
getting really good. This is notyour Nigerian prince that writes
you a lovely email about prizemoney that you've won.
It's them trying to spin up afake website that looks exactly
like the login page of yourtrusted systems and then capture
your login credentials throughGoogle AdWords. Like, they're
basically paying lots of AdWordsto Google to make sure that that
login page comes to the top.It's slightly misspelled URL,
(25:13):
but it looks exactly like whatyou're used to. It's really
good. And it happens acrosssystems in hospitality.
I've had conversations with CEOsin all categories of hospitality
and everyone's experiencing it.I don't think enough systems are
talking about it because there'sthis fear obviously about if you
talk about this publicly thatpeople are afraid. It's like,
oh, this is an unsafe system.This is happening across the
(25:36):
industry. And we talk about itquite openly now because I think
it is important that we educatethat always check the URL,
always bookmark your websitelogin pages.
Don't ever Google a login to awebsite because that's where the
criminals are. Google isn't goodenough at sunsetting those
domains fast enough. And if theyjust get one of your hotel
(25:57):
employees, you've now beencompromised. And this is not a
new system breach. They haveliterally psychologically
convinced your team member tohand over their login
credentials.
And I think that's the biggestfear that I have. They're
getting so good, and I canrecognize some of it, but my
parents cannot. That generationis not used to the very advanced
(26:19):
phishing attacks that arehappening across hospitality. So
this is just a lot of education.Yes.
There is technology that we canput in place, but you're never
100% protected. And education issuch a key piece to this. Our IT
department sends us fakephishing emails through some
system. And if you fall for thetrap, then you're forced through
e learning. I failed on Fridaybecause it was like a DocuSign,
(26:41):
and I get so many DocuSignstoday.
And I opened the attachmentthinking, this doesn't look
good. And because I opened theattachment, I fell for it. And
it's so good that we're doingthis, and then you get forced
through relearning kind of whatyou fell for. Like, if you're
not, as a hotel, thinking aboutcybersecurity and education,
honestly, whilst it isn't sexy,it is really critical to running
(27:02):
a business.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
One last question
before we wrap up. I always like
to end with a hot take. What isone thing that you believe about
hotel technology in our industrythat your competitors or peers
might disagree with?
Speaker 1 (27:18):
A lot of our
competitor systems are built for
employee to enter data. And Ithink we should leverage the
cloud in a very different way.There's a different mindset that
comes with the cloud, and itmeans you should also build
guest products that engage We'reall sitting on the same
database, and it's not just youremployees that can log into it,
but there should be a guestfacing site to this. And every
(27:41):
PMS should come with a wholebody of kind of guest products
that say online check-in, onlinecheck out, and doing all of
these things online. And most ofthem are built really to make
data entry easier.
But if that's what you want,then you're not changing
hospitality. Like, ultimately, Ithink hotels are about human
interaction, and that isn'tabout credit cards and passport.
(28:03):
It's about having those reallyopen and frank conversations
with customers and thencapturing that data. But you can
only do that if you solve forsome of the other efficiency
challenges. So that's probablymy whole take.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Before we wrap up,
just wanna open it up to you if
there's anything else you wannamention, any other topics you
wanna get into.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I think that summary
nailed it for me. Yes. I'm
excited about technology, but,ultimately, I'm more excited
about the travel experiencesthat we're driving. And, like, I
love hotels. I just wish that Ihad a differentiated experience.
I wish that brands wouldn't justcopy each other. They all do the
same. I could not tell you whatthe difference is between some
of these brands. But there'stechnology now that allows them
(28:44):
to completely rethink what thatexperience should be. And
ultimately, only technology canget them there.
But now we need inspiredhoteliers to rethink what that
experience is, and I thinkthat's what we're trying to
drive with Muse, really changinghospitality for good.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Well, thank you so
much for your time. Such a
pleasure to chat with you.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
That's all for
today's episode. Thanks for
listening to Hotel Tech Insiderproduced by hotel tech
report.com. Our goal with thispodcast is to show you how the
best in the business areleveraging technology to grow
their properties and outperformthe concept by using innovative
digital tools and strategies. Iencourage all of our listeners
to go try at least one of thesestrategies or tools that you
(29:26):
learned from today's episode.Successful digital
transformation is all aboutconsistent small experiments
over a long period of time, Sodon't wait until tomorrow to try
something new.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Do you
Speaker 2 (29:37):
know a hotelier who
would be great to feature on
this show, or do you think thatyour story would bring a lot of
value to our audience? Reach outto me directly on LinkedIn by
searching for Jordan Hollander.For more episodes like this,
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