February 3, 2025 • 32 mins
How can a hotel chain leverage cutting-edge technology to redefine revenue management and enhance guest experience? In this episode, Fernando Vives, Chief Commercial Officer at Minor Hotels, reveals the transformative strategies that are setting his organization apart in the competitive hospitality landscape.
Key Takeaways:
- Discover how Minor Hotels utilizes a proprietary forecasting system to automate pricing and optimize revenue management across over 400 properties in Europe and the Americas.
- Learn about the strategic partnership with Duetto that has enabled Minor Hotels to implement dynamic pricing and open pricing models, allowing for unprecedented flexibility and responsiveness to market demand.
- Understand the importance of a customer-centric approach in hospitality, and how technology can augment human capabilities to enhance guest satisfaction and operational efficiency.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have our own proprietary system that is
giving us an automated forecastevery single day for the next
eighteen months for every singlehotel by channel and by segment.
And this is something that isgiving us a competitive
advantage on how we aresupporting our revenue managers.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider,
a show about the future ofhotels and the technology that
powers them.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
On this episode, we have an insightful conversation
with Fernando Vides, the chiefcommercial officer at Minor
Hotels, who represents over 400hotels across Europe and The
Americas. You won't want to misshearing about Minor Hotels'
approach to distribution, whichaims to consolidate the number
of distribution channels theywork with in order to preserve
(00:47):
rate integrity andprofitability. Well, thank you
so much, Fernando, for takingthe time to speak with us. Very
excited to chat with you, learnmore about your organization and
how you think about technology.I would love to start with a
quick intro on yourself.
If you could introduce yourself,let us know what you do at your
(01:09):
organization, how long you'vebeen there, and a little bit
about the properties you manage.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Very good. Thank you so much. First, thank you for
having us, and thank you forhaving me, especially
representing minor hotels, andspecifically minor hotels,
Europe and Americas. I'mFernando Dives. I'm the chief
commercial officer for minorhotels Europe and America.
I'm based in Madrid, Spain witha beautiful sun outside today as
(01:35):
usual. We are 1 of the citieswith, most amount of numbers
with, with daylight and withblue skies. It's a beautiful day
here. And I do represent over400 hotels, but of minor hotels
which are sitting in Europe andAmericas. I lead the commercial
discipline in the region, whichbasically means from sales,
(01:57):
revenue management,distribution, business
intelligence, ecommerce, digitalmarketing, our contact centers,
everything that is driving thetop line of the organization
within the region.
Minor Hotels Europe and Americasis owned by Minor International.
It's our main shareholder withmore than 95% of the shares of
Minor Hotels Europe andAmericas, and we are
(02:19):
headquartered in Bangkok.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
And I'm curious to know a bit more about the
hotels. I understand you haveproperties all over the world.
What is the target guest? Youknow, are they heavily branded
or independent? Could you tellme a little bit more?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Sure. In total, minor hotels operates close to 600
hotels. My division, which isEurope And Americas, we run over
400 properties. We are 1 of thetop operators in Spain, Italy,
The Netherlands, Germany. Verystrong presence in Latin
America, specifically Mexico,Colombia, Argentina, Chile.
(02:54):
And we operate under 8 brands.Our luxury brand, which is
Anantara hotels and resorts.It's followed by Tibony hotels
and resorts. This brand isheavily implemented in Portugal
and in Brazil. And now we areexpanding the brand through some
European countries such as Italyand Spain.
NH collection with over 100hotels in more than 50
(03:17):
destinations, which is the brandwith the biggest exposure in
terms of, where we are presentin different countries. We just
opened our first NH collectionin Thailand. We just opened our
first hotel collection NHcollection in Sri Lanka,
Maldives last year. So we areexpanding this brand very fast
on the upper upscale segment. NHcollection is followed by NH,
(03:41):
hotels and resorts.
NH hotels and resorts. It's ourbiggest brand with more than 250
hotels. Pretty muchconcentration in Europe and
Latin America. We are nowexpanding. Again, we just opened
a hotel in Malives.
We have opened a hotel in SouthAfrica, in Johannesburg, and in
Bangkok in the last couple ofmonths were signed and opened.
(04:02):
We operate another brand calledAvani. Oaks, which is very
strong in Australia and NewZealand with more than 60
hotels. And then Eleuana, whichare loaches sitting in Africa.
Very high end and luxurious,Eleuana, and specifically
sitting in Africa.
So we we are not 1 of thesehotel chains with more than 30
brands. We try to keep itsimple. 8 brands from luxury to
(04:25):
essential as we like to call it.I forgot 1 important brand which
is called Now, n h o w, which ismeant now. It's happening now,
playing with the NH words.
And we operate close to 10hotels. We are opening the now
in Lima at the this year in2025. And it's our lifestyle
brand.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Well, even though you don't have 30 brands, 8 is still
quite a lot of brands It's
Speaker 1 (04:49):
been a lot. Yeah. It's been a lot.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Operating in different segments, different
countries. I can imagine thattechnology is crucial for smooth
operations. What would youconsider to be the most critical
piece of software that you use?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Well, it absolutely, it's crucial. I mean, the PMS,
which is a transaction for anycommercial expert or any
commercial leader, we like tosay that we are agnostic to the
PMS. It's I mean, all the magicis happening when we talk about
the revenue management systemand when we talk about
distribution. So revenuemanagement, distribution, this
is absolutely key on how we areprogressing and how we are
(05:27):
making advancements on how wecommercialize our hotels. Since
the very beginning, I've beenwith minor hotels since 2014.
We made a big bet on our revenuemanagement strategy. So with a
provider based in The US calledDuetto, with whom we developed a
strategic partnership, allowedus to not only implement best in
(05:49):
class revenue management, butcreate a roadmap where we would
be able to implement revenuemanagement on different phases
as they were developing thesystem. When we first touch base
with Duetto, I think they hadless than 100 hotels. Now they
have thousands of properties,including our hotels. And it
made a lot of sense when we werelooking at our road map on how
(06:10):
we were gonna be able toprogress in terms of revenue
management and pricingimplementation, and then the
technology solution.
Now 1 of the things that theindustry sometimes tends to
focus is on what we do and howwe do it instead of thinking on
why we do stuff. And this issomething that I am pretty much
obsessed on everything that wedo, every single project that
(06:33):
we're doing that is driving thetop line based on either demand
generation, demand creation, ordemand optimization, what is
where revenue management isbeing focused is why we're doing
everything that we're doing. Andwhat's the plan behind it, not
only in the short term, but inthe midterm. And, again, it made
a lot of sense. We wanted tomove not only into dynamic
(06:53):
pricing.
We were very excited when theylaunched open pricing. I think
it was a breakthrough in theindustry, their approach to
pricing, and how this was givingflexibility in terms of pricing,
not just for the b to csegments, but for our b to b
clients. And we embrace thesystem, and we have been able to
be extremely successfulimplementing the system in 100%
(07:16):
of our portfolio with anadoption ratio of, 100%. I mean,
there could be no way that ourrevenue managers would be able
to manage pricing within thegroup without using the system
as the enabler in order to pushthe rates. Today, where we do
not only have automated pricing,this is something that we
(07:36):
implemented during the pandemicin 2020.
It was a project that funnyenough, we wanted to implement
in two years period.Unfortunately, the pandemic
came. We decided to speed up theprocess as most of our hotels
were closed and, some of ouremployees were on furlough. So
we didn't have resources tomanage either the little hotels
(07:59):
that we had open or at least thehotels that we were opening
where we didn't have enoughresources. So we decided to
speed up the implementationprocess from two years to in
basically three months.
Revenue managers thought thatthey would get all fired and
that's why we had a two yearperiod for implementation of
pricing automation. It was theopposite. We continue hiring
(08:21):
revenue managers. And what weare doing now is we're gaining
time to market. We are able tooptimize prices not only 3 or 4
times per day, but we haveimplemented in 2024 what we call
dynamic optimizations.
So this means that when thesystem is anticipating there is
a change on the demand trend, Weautomatically identify this, and
(08:41):
then we push the rates up to apoint where we are pushing close
to 2000000 rate changes on adaily basis. Not just for the
short term, but within aneighteen month period. And it's
absolutely fantastic. I mean,sometimes, not every day, but on
a twice or 3 times per week, Ilook at the rate change report
(09:02):
from our RMS, and it'sincredible to see how we are
making price changes for I don'tknow. We are in Jan.
0 today. Last week, I waslooking at rate changes for
February 2026 where in 1specific hotels, we were
increasing rates by €5, by €10.Things that the revenue manager
would never be able to do. Sothat why and again, the
(09:25):
technology, it's the what we areimplementing and then how we
execute this throughout theprocesses. How do we foresee the
future?
And the future, we callinternally bionic revenue
management. It's a combinationof the human and the machine and
how you are able to get the bestfrom both worlds. It's how
technology can help us automatedifferent processes. Pricing is
(09:46):
1 of the examples. We have aproprietary system that is
giving us on top of what theRMS, the revenue management
system, is doing, which isbasically forecast based on
transactional information andtransactional data.
We have our own proprietarysystem that is giving us an
automated forecast every singleday for the next eighteen months
(10:08):
for every single hotel bychannel and by segment. And this
is something that is giving us acompetitive advantage on how we
are supporting our revenuemanagers. Not just looking at 1
forecast or their own vision,but at the same time, at the
forecast from our own system.And then the combination of
these 3 factors is creating thehybrid forecast, which is the 1
(10:29):
provided by the system, themachines, and then the 1 that is
blended and utilized by ourrevenue managers. So I think
this is 1 of the examples wherein the end, what we expect is
how can we support our teams sothat they can dedicate more time
to specific strategic actions,looking at the dates where we
can really have a need ofoptimization and then securing
(10:52):
time to market and that we havethe right price at the right
point and time for the future.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
How did you make the decision to partner with Duetto?
What was that decision processlike? Were you looking at other
vendors, or what was it aboutDuetto that made you select that
system, especially when thecompany was still so young? It
sounds like it could have been abit of a risk on your side to
take a chance on a youngcompany.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yep. I guess I was ten years younger, and I was
willing to take more risks thanI would do today with, I didn't
have kids, and I have 2 kids. Soit's I don't know if I would
make the right decision.Actually, at 1 in time, I sat
down with the 3 founders,especially with Marco and with
Patrick. And I said, listen.
If I get fired, you need to giveme a job because this is a big
bet that I'm doing. I mean, weare a big chain. We're gonna be
(11:38):
your biggest client. And this isa big bet on you guys because
you don't have the historical Imean, you don't have the history
or the track record to securethat you would be delivering
your promises. No?
In reality, they not onlydeliver. I mean, they over
deliver. As I said, it's truethat we did as any process when
you want to change or adapt yourtechnology and your processes,
(12:01):
what you do is you do an RFI. Sofirst, we brought different
providers into the table.Actually, Duetto was 1 of the
latest SUCHA because there wereso many as we didn't know them.
So I'm just looking at I'mreading 1 press release on the
web. The team realized thatthere was another vendor, so we
add them at the final stage. Andthen once we had decided on the
(12:22):
3 finalists, we launched theRFP. And then throughout the
RFP, of course, you have notonly the technical requirements
and the business requirements,then then you have the financial
requirements. And what we likedabout Duetto was and how we were
able to build a tailor madeinterface that would allow us to
have a competitive advantageeven if we would be competing
(12:46):
against other clients of Duetto.
So we were not that muchconcerned that Duetto would
spread and that some of ourcompetitors would be using the
same technology because of thesingularity of our interface,
which I cannot elaborate as youcan imagine. But it has quite
specific certifications and datathat is traveling that allows us
(13:10):
to use the system on a way thatmany other hotels, even using
Duetto, may not be able to doit. No? At 1 in time, we even
rebranded. In fact, actually, wehave rebranded internally
Duetto.
We don't talk about Duetto. Wetalk about the NH game changer,
and this is how we internallyname our revenue management
system. No? But in the end, as Isaid at the beginning, it's the
(13:31):
roadmap on how we had to embracerevenue management that was
pretty much detail on our threeyear plan. And we knew that we
couldn't be from 0 to hero justin one year.
And we had to face thatimplementation of revenue
management processes, culture,teams, technology, pricing, and
(13:52):
so forth. So the roadmap on howDuetto was evolving under their
own roadmap and our roadmapmatched pretty well. If it
didn't match, we were able tofind a solution on how we would
be able to make it match. Andthen 1 of the things that we
fall in love was the openpricing concept, which is
something that we were trying todo without calling this open
(14:16):
pricing and with a manualperspective, which is trying to
avoid having specific pricepoints. And again, I'm talking
about almost eleven years agothat we started these
conversations where we still ourrevenue managers, they still
have a pricing grid with ten,fifteen, 20 price points.
And then we were using thoseprice points that were built on
(14:37):
the database in order to price.And then we were missing
opportunities. The idea of openpricing allowed us to go from
fifteen, twenty different rates,of course, then on the mirror
rates and the reference rates tothose specific rate codes. That
could be thousands of rates, butwe were pretty much limited. And
then we moved into a model wherewe started using infinite
(15:01):
prices, which would allow us tocompletely optimize the entire
demand curve at each specifichotel.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
What do you see as the key business impact of
thinking about revenuemanagement in this way? What are
the metrics that are mostaffected, or is it a growth
play? Is it efficiency for yourteam? You know, what are the
impacts that you've seen?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
What I would say is that I think there are 2 areas.
I mean, there are every area isimpacted by AI. Every single
area. Yeah. Yeah.
Saw a video on LinkedIn a fewdays ago from the CEO of Nvidia
saying that AI will not takeyour job. Someone who knows how
to use AI will take your job.And I shared this video with my
(15:49):
team. And, listen. I mean, weall need to I mean, this is a
conversation we started inSeptember.
I mean, we all need to startthinking about AI and how this
is gonna impact the way we work,our processes, our strategies,
or technology. And the way I seeit is it's quite simplistic.
Today, we have availabletechnology that it's either able
(16:10):
to augmentate, accelerate, orautomate what we do. Automate
tasks where the human is notbringing any value, and then
it's making our life easier.It's augmentating what we can do
today, and then it'saccelerating processes that
would take us before one or twodays into minutes.
(16:31):
And how we embrace this, it'ssomething that we need to think
strategically on how we're gonnaimplement this. And then, of
course, there are many vendorswho are selling us technology
that may be supporting us on 1very specific area. Now we are,
today working in a process thatis impacting sales. Again, what
can we automate? So we are we'rerevisiting all our processes.
(16:55):
What can we automate? How can weaugmentate? And how can we
accelerate what our salespeopleis doing so that they can become
more efficient. Not just withthe aim of being more efficient
or saving costs, but how can wededicate more time to those
customers where today we may notbe spending enough time with
them. So it's not a question onhow we save costs.
(17:15):
Actually, it's the opposite.It's how can we get more shade
of wallet from some of theaccounts that we know that we
have some leakage to thecompetition by having a better
service to those accounts, byhaving salespeople having more
time. There is a seconddiscipline, which is our contact
centers. I mean, there is a hugedisruption in this area, pretty
(17:36):
much impacted by technology, byvoice agents powered by AI,
chats, chatbots. It'sincredible.
I mean, today actually, today aswe speak, we are implementing a
technology that we didn't haveavailable that it's allowing our
supervisors to understand thecustomer sentiment of each call
(17:57):
within the reservation process.So, basically, our supervisors,
they do not only have today thequeues, the traffic, the waiting
times, the a vandal ratio, theSLAs. They have per call. They
have amper agent. They have thestatus as as a lighthouse with
(18:17):
greens, orange, and reds on howa conversation is going with 1
of our agents.
And we are able to approach orthe supervisor is able to jump
into 1 of this call to supportthe agent if the call is in red.
So that's something that it'sallowing us anticipate massively
when we see that a consumer maynot be happy. He may be having a
(18:41):
strong conversation with 1 ofour agents and then support
first our agent so that we candeliver a better service. And
then the last component, it'srevenue management. And I think
there is no area against sales,contact centers, revenue
management, which is gonna havebiggest disruption in the next
years.
(19:01):
And then the KPIs that you'rementioning is the number of
hotels that the revenue managercan manage when we are talking
about either economy hotels, bedand breakfast hotels. If today
they're managing 5 hotels, maybetomorrow they can manage 10 or
15 because you would havetechnology that is supporting,
automating, or augmentating whatthe revenue manager can do. Now
(19:25):
there is another philosophybecause then we tend this is
like when we implemented pricingautomation. You know, the
revenue managers thought theywould get fired. We haven't
fired anybody yet.
This is due due to the priceautomation. The opposite is if
we are able to free time or orif revenue managers are able to
have more time to value drivendecisions. And as revenue
(19:49):
management is being impactingnot only on rooms revenue, but
in all their revenues and in alltheir components of a hotel. I'm
specifically thinking todayabout meeting space rental. I'm
thinking heavily, massivelyabout food and beverage.
Why not revenue managers as theyhave now the time and they have
(20:09):
the skills, they have theeducation, they have the
knowledge, they should bededicating time to other point
of sales within the hotel, puton my words, meeting space. And
this goes from minibar, fromroom service, from the
restaurant revenue, and soforth.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Thinking of guest experience, I'm curious to hear
a bit more how do you thinkabout reputation and guest
reviews Given that you have somany properties, so many
different types of guests, howare you thinking about upholding
that strong reputation andmaintaining good review scores?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
As my boss would say, I'm the advocate of the
consumer, the internal advocate.So it basically means that I
think I look on a monthly basis.We are receiving the guest
experience reviews with all thedata for hotel, our scores. I
think I'm the first one openingthe file when we receive this
this report on a monthly basis.Because it's scientifically
(21:09):
demonstrated on how improvedguest experience and high scores
on guest reviews, they give youmore visibility and gave and
they give you more traction ondistribution.
That's something that wefollow-up very closely from the
commercial perspective. Ouroperations team is doing an
excellent job in all thedifferent brands. We are happy
(21:32):
to say that our scores arealways over delivering what the
competition is doing, which onthe other hand is giving me more
pressure to deliver betterresults because everybody at the
organization is aware of that. Imean, the better quality we
give, the more first we will beable to charge and the better
visibility we will have in thedistribution channels and the
(21:54):
different distributionplatforms. So it's absolutely we
take this for granted.
I'm not gonna talk about thisreport from review pro many
years ago and Cornell where theywere saying that an improvement
of 10% on the quality score, Ithink it would give you an
increased RevPAR of at least 1%.So it's very clear that it has
an impact. What we measurealmost on a daily basis on this,
(22:17):
our technology and the reports,we measure this and it's part of
our day by day routine of ourrevenue managers is looking at
the quality scores and lookingat what we call our quality
filtration index. And then howthis will be impacting our
pricing versus our competition.Something that we measure a lot
is the value for money.
It has been heavily impacted inthe last years. Not only for us,
(22:40):
but for the entire industry aswe have been able to fill the
hotels after the pandemic veryfast with very high rates,
because, of course, we had tocounter fight the huge inflation
we had, not only impacting costbut impacting payroll in many
countries. And we may not beable in the past to fill the
(23:00):
different positions that we hadopen until the just after the
pandemic. So this was giving usI mean, it's been some kind of a
nightmare in terms ofoperations, but we have been
able to recover very fast. But,yeah, the value for money, the
quality penetration index, theGRI, we are using a CG review
pro now.
You know, our hotels, it's 1 ofthe tools that we use on a daily
(23:22):
basis. It's part of the DNA ofour pricing strategy.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Speaking of distribution, curious how you
approach distribution. What'syour mindset on direct versus
third party bookings? If youcould tell me a bit about your
distribution setup and yourbooking engine.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
We are a very asset heavy company. So when you
compare ourselves, The USbrands, today, we can say that
we are not franchising yet. Soit means that we own or lease
more than 80% of our portfolio.And that is giving us some kind
of, owner mentality against someother brands, which are mostly
(24:04):
focused on the franchisebusiness. There is a different
motivation.
It's when you are on thefranchise business, you're
trying to make your pipesbigger. You are trying to drive
the most amount of businessdirect loyalty program. I'm not
saying we are not focused onthis direction. Because, I mean,
we have a very strong more than50% of our business is direct.
(24:26):
So we have a strong push on thisregard, but at the same time, we
always say that we are EBITDAfocused.
I mean, what rules is theEBITDA? And some cases, when the
EBITDA rules, you put in adifferent stage of priority,
your channel mix. Again, I'm notsaying that we do not need to
prioritize, brand.com directsales. I mean, we do and we
(24:49):
have, quite aggressive growth oneach of these, channels. But the
reality is that we need to havea different mentality, let's
say, this way.
Because in the end, we own 80%of our portfolio and the p and
l. And we have a massive amountof risk in those hotels that we
are leasing. Now distribution,it's getting more and more
complex. This is changing verydynamically, not as dynamic and
(25:10):
fast as GM AI into our lives.But the reality is that it's
something that is shifting andprogressing very fast.
We have moved from adiversification strategy and
distribution that we had until2018, '20 '19 to a concentration
model. So we would what we havebeen trying to do is to
concentrate our distributionwith as few partners as
(25:35):
possible, and then trying to getcapillarity and distribution
throughout these parties. 1 ofthe things that we did is we
signed an strategic agreementwith HBX, with HotelBets in
2021, which has been extremelysuccessful. And we decided to
concentrate our b to bdistribution through HBX for
different reasons. First,because of the capability they
(25:55):
have as a b to b partner, thecapacity they have to be an
extension of our sales force,the transparency of the
agreement, and, of course, thecommercials as you can imagine.
But at the same time, on how wehave been able to work with this
partner very closely and alignboth strategies on how we would
approach and would regaincontrol of our b to b
(26:16):
distribution.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
What would you say the business impact of this
strategy has been? Have you seenADR increase or have you seen
share shift as you're workingwith fewer partners?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
I mean, we've seen a massive improvement on what we
call the distribution healthscore, which basically it's
price competitiveness, rateparity. I mean, however you
wanna call it. We've seen amassive increase, more than 35%
increase on this regard, whichis massive because it's very
challenging. From the consumerperspective, rate integrity
means more sales, not onlydirect, but more sales because
(26:53):
you are giving more trust to theconsumer that what they see,
which is the same rateeverywhere, it's trustworthy.
Right?
There will not be anotherchannel that may be cheaper. So
in the end, many customers, theyhave decision fatigue, and they
see, I don't know. Wow. Thishotel, they go on Google,
Trivago, and then they see 5different rates in 5 different
(27:15):
channels. And they say, I Imean, why wouldn't be a 6
channel which could be cheaper?
And then in the end, they decideto book somewhere else, not that
specific hotel. So we have seena massive increase on that
perspective. 1 of the thingsthat from the distribution
perspective, I always like tosay is that not necessarily
connecting more channels willgive you incrementality. So this
(27:36):
is something that we look at itwith a lot of care, which is the
incrementality of the sales ofeach of the partners, and then
how we are able to usedistribution as a commercial
tool to be able to gainpopularity and distribution
power in those markets whereour, let's say, our brand
awareness may not be as big asit is. I mean, we are pretty
(27:58):
much known in Europe.
We are pretty much known inLatin America. But when you look
at The US, I mean, we only have1 hotel in New York, DNH
collection Madison Avenue. Bythe way, it's a fantastic
property. But it's, I mean, weare competing in The US against
the Marriott's, the Hilton's,IHG's, IHG's. I mean, we are
probably significant from thebrand awareness perspective to
(28:19):
some of The US consumers.
So so it's being able to have agood policy where we have
popularity, where we havevisibility, and we are able to
get to the right consumer, it'ssomething that it really makes
sense. So, again, distributionby recommendation to everybody
would be I mean, do not thinkthat distribution is
incremental. I mean, noteverything is incremental
(28:40):
because everybody's buying toeach other. So that's the
pressure I have from my regions.I mean, my regions, they call me
our commercial directors,director of sales.
Say, hey. Listen. I have thispartner. We need to connect.
Because everybody wants directconnectivity.
Okay. The first question is, arewe already sourcing to this
(29:00):
account through some of ourpartnerships? And if the answer
is yes, it's unlikely that wewill build a direct connect with
that account. Because if we arepresent, we have visibility,
that's enough.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Well, I would love to wrap up with 1 last question.
I'd like to draw on yourexperience at your organization
and throughout your career. Whatwould you say are 1 or 2 skills
that are absolutely crucial fora hotelier to have today?
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Well, I'm gonna say more. First, customer focus.
This is hospitality. So wecannot forget that everything
that we do needs to be customercentric. And sometimes, this is
an exercise that I think we needto do on a daily basis, that our
reason of existence is theconsumer, is the customer.
(29:51):
So as a hotelier, being able tobe customer focused. Self
awareness, resilience, not beingcomplacent, those are things and
skills that are very necessary.And in the end, the more we move
into digital world and the morewe will be able to embrace
technology to do things that wehave been used to do in the
(30:12):
past, like managing excels,doing calculations. I mean,
those things will be doneautomatically by an AI agent, by
any kind of technology. So wherewe will be able to influence
would be on the human touch, onhow we are able to drive that
human touch, that level ofpersonalization, both with the
(30:33):
consumer and then working withteams, which is having empathy,
being able to be a team player.
Not just a solo guy who's justtrying to deliver their own
results. So those are gonna beskills that are changing. So in
the end, I think that the notjust for hospitality. I think
for the entire workforce, it'sgonna be a huge change. First,
(30:54):
the skills that were requiredwhen I started working, the
skills that are required now,and the skills that would be
required in the future.
I read I think it was from theWorld Council. There will be
360000000 new jobs created until2030. Jobs will disappear. But
(31:18):
in the end, the net is positive.So there will be more than 60 to
70000000 new jobs that will becreated in the future.
But if you do not adapt to thesenew jobs that will be coming,
this is where you will be losingthe job instead of migrating to
different tasks. No? But, yeah,very exciting times for
everybody who's in the industry.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time,
Fernando. It was really greattalking with you.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
That's all for today's episode. Thanks for
listening to Hotel Tech Insiderproduced by hoteltechreport.com.
Our goal with this podcast is toshow you how the best in the
business are leveragingtechnology to grow their
properties and outperform theconcept by using innovative
digital tools and strategies. Iencourage all of our listeners
to go try at least 1 of thesestrategies or tools that you
(32:09):
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 (32:20):
Do you
Speaker 2 (32:20):
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,
follow Hotel Tech Insider on allmajor streaming platforms like
Spotify and Apple Music.
We have our own proprietary system that is
giving us an automated forecastevery single day for the next
eighteen months for every singlehotel by channel and by segment.
And this is something that isgiving us a competitive
advantage on how we aresupporting our revenue managers.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider,
a show about the future ofhotels and the technology that
powers them.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
On this episode, we have an insightful conversation
with Fernando Vides, the chiefcommercial officer at Minor
Hotels, who represents over 400hotels across Europe and The
Americas. You won't want to misshearing about Minor Hotels'
approach to distribution, whichaims to consolidate the number
of distribution channels theywork with in order to preserve
(00:47):
rate integrity andprofitability. Well, thank you
so much, Fernando, for takingthe time to speak with us. Very
excited to chat with you, learnmore about your organization and
how you think about technology.I would love to start with a
quick intro on yourself.
If you could introduce yourself,let us know what you do at your
(01:09):
organization, how long you'vebeen there, and a little bit
about the properties you manage.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Very good. Thank you so much. First, thank you for
having us, and thank you forhaving me, especially
representing minor hotels, andspecifically minor hotels,
Europe and Americas. I'mFernando Dives. I'm the chief
commercial officer for minorhotels Europe and America.
I'm based in Madrid, Spain witha beautiful sun outside today as
(01:35):
usual. We are 1 of the citieswith, most amount of numbers
with, with daylight and withblue skies. It's a beautiful day
here. And I do represent over400 hotels, but of minor hotels
which are sitting in Europe andAmericas. I lead the commercial
discipline in the region, whichbasically means from sales,
(01:57):
revenue management,distribution, business
intelligence, ecommerce, digitalmarketing, our contact centers,
everything that is driving thetop line of the organization
within the region.
Minor Hotels Europe and Americasis owned by Minor International.
It's our main shareholder withmore than 95% of the shares of
Minor Hotels Europe andAmericas, and we are
(02:19):
headquartered in Bangkok.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
And I'm curious to know a bit more about the
hotels. I understand you haveproperties all over the world.
What is the target guest? Youknow, are they heavily branded
or independent? Could you tellme a little bit more?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Sure. In total, minor hotels operates close to 600
hotels. My division, which isEurope And Americas, we run over
400 properties. We are 1 of thetop operators in Spain, Italy,
The Netherlands, Germany. Verystrong presence in Latin
America, specifically Mexico,Colombia, Argentina, Chile.
(02:54):
And we operate under 8 brands.Our luxury brand, which is
Anantara hotels and resorts.It's followed by Tibony hotels
and resorts. This brand isheavily implemented in Portugal
and in Brazil. And now we areexpanding the brand through some
European countries such as Italyand Spain.
NH collection with over 100hotels in more than 50
(03:17):
destinations, which is the brandwith the biggest exposure in
terms of, where we are presentin different countries. We just
opened our first NH collectionin Thailand. We just opened our
first hotel collection NHcollection in Sri Lanka,
Maldives last year. So we areexpanding this brand very fast
on the upper upscale segment. NHcollection is followed by NH,
(03:41):
hotels and resorts.
NH hotels and resorts. It's ourbiggest brand with more than 250
hotels. Pretty muchconcentration in Europe and
Latin America. We are nowexpanding. Again, we just opened
a hotel in Malives.
We have opened a hotel in SouthAfrica, in Johannesburg, and in
Bangkok in the last couple ofmonths were signed and opened.
(04:02):
We operate another brand calledAvani. Oaks, which is very
strong in Australia and NewZealand with more than 60
hotels. And then Eleuana, whichare loaches sitting in Africa.
Very high end and luxurious,Eleuana, and specifically
sitting in Africa.
So we we are not 1 of thesehotel chains with more than 30
brands. We try to keep itsimple. 8 brands from luxury to
(04:25):
essential as we like to call it.I forgot 1 important brand which
is called Now, n h o w, which ismeant now. It's happening now,
playing with the NH words.
And we operate close to 10hotels. We are opening the now
in Lima at the this year in2025. And it's our lifestyle
brand.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Well, even though you don't have 30 brands, 8 is still
quite a lot of brands It's
Speaker 1 (04:49):
been a lot. Yeah. It's been a lot.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Operating in different segments, different
countries. I can imagine thattechnology is crucial for smooth
operations. What would youconsider to be the most critical
piece of software that you use?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Well, it absolutely, it's crucial. I mean, the PMS,
which is a transaction for anycommercial expert or any
commercial leader, we like tosay that we are agnostic to the
PMS. It's I mean, all the magicis happening when we talk about
the revenue management systemand when we talk about
distribution. So revenuemanagement, distribution, this
is absolutely key on how we areprogressing and how we are
(05:27):
making advancements on how wecommercialize our hotels. Since
the very beginning, I've beenwith minor hotels since 2014.
We made a big bet on our revenuemanagement strategy. So with a
provider based in The US calledDuetto, with whom we developed a
strategic partnership, allowedus to not only implement best in
(05:49):
class revenue management, butcreate a roadmap where we would
be able to implement revenuemanagement on different phases
as they were developing thesystem. When we first touch base
with Duetto, I think they hadless than 100 hotels. Now they
have thousands of properties,including our hotels. And it
made a lot of sense when we werelooking at our road map on how
(06:10):
we were gonna be able toprogress in terms of revenue
management and pricingimplementation, and then the
technology solution.
Now 1 of the things that theindustry sometimes tends to
focus is on what we do and howwe do it instead of thinking on
why we do stuff. And this issomething that I am pretty much
obsessed on everything that wedo, every single project that
(06:33):
we're doing that is driving thetop line based on either demand
generation, demand creation, ordemand optimization, what is
where revenue management isbeing focused is why we're doing
everything that we're doing. Andwhat's the plan behind it, not
only in the short term, but inthe midterm. And, again, it made
a lot of sense. We wanted tomove not only into dynamic
(06:53):
pricing.
We were very excited when theylaunched open pricing. I think
it was a breakthrough in theindustry, their approach to
pricing, and how this was givingflexibility in terms of pricing,
not just for the b to csegments, but for our b to b
clients. And we embrace thesystem, and we have been able to
be extremely successfulimplementing the system in 100%
(07:16):
of our portfolio with anadoption ratio of, 100%. I mean,
there could be no way that ourrevenue managers would be able
to manage pricing within thegroup without using the system
as the enabler in order to pushthe rates. Today, where we do
not only have automated pricing,this is something that we
(07:36):
implemented during the pandemicin 2020.
It was a project that funnyenough, we wanted to implement
in two years period.Unfortunately, the pandemic
came. We decided to speed up theprocess as most of our hotels
were closed and, some of ouremployees were on furlough. So
we didn't have resources tomanage either the little hotels
(07:59):
that we had open or at least thehotels that we were opening
where we didn't have enoughresources. So we decided to
speed up the implementationprocess from two years to in
basically three months.
Revenue managers thought thatthey would get all fired and
that's why we had a two yearperiod for implementation of
pricing automation. It was theopposite. We continue hiring
(08:21):
revenue managers. And what weare doing now is we're gaining
time to market. We are able tooptimize prices not only 3 or 4
times per day, but we haveimplemented in 2024 what we call
dynamic optimizations.
So this means that when thesystem is anticipating there is
a change on the demand trend, Weautomatically identify this, and
(08:41):
then we push the rates up to apoint where we are pushing close
to 2000000 rate changes on adaily basis. Not just for the
short term, but within aneighteen month period. And it's
absolutely fantastic. I mean,sometimes, not every day, but on
a twice or 3 times per week, Ilook at the rate change report
(09:02):
from our RMS, and it'sincredible to see how we are
making price changes for I don'tknow. We are in Jan.
0 today. Last week, I waslooking at rate changes for
February 2026 where in 1specific hotels, we were
increasing rates by €5, by €10.Things that the revenue manager
would never be able to do. Sothat why and again, the
(09:25):
technology, it's the what we areimplementing and then how we
execute this throughout theprocesses. How do we foresee the
future?
And the future, we callinternally bionic revenue
management. It's a combinationof the human and the machine and
how you are able to get the bestfrom both worlds. It's how
technology can help us automatedifferent processes. Pricing is
(09:46):
1 of the examples. We have aproprietary system that is
giving us on top of what theRMS, the revenue management
system, is doing, which isbasically forecast based on
transactional information andtransactional data.
We have our own proprietarysystem that is giving us an
automated forecast every singleday for the next eighteen months
(10:08):
for every single hotel bychannel and by segment. And this
is something that is giving us acompetitive advantage on how we
are supporting our revenuemanagers. Not just looking at 1
forecast or their own vision,but at the same time, at the
forecast from our own system.And then the combination of
these 3 factors is creating thehybrid forecast, which is the 1
(10:29):
provided by the system, themachines, and then the 1 that is
blended and utilized by ourrevenue managers. So I think
this is 1 of the examples wherein the end, what we expect is
how can we support our teams sothat they can dedicate more time
to specific strategic actions,looking at the dates where we
can really have a need ofoptimization and then securing
(10:52):
time to market and that we havethe right price at the right
point and time for the future.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
How did you make the decision to partner with Duetto?
What was that decision processlike? Were you looking at other
vendors, or what was it aboutDuetto that made you select that
system, especially when thecompany was still so young? It
sounds like it could have been abit of a risk on your side to
take a chance on a youngcompany.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yep. I guess I was ten years younger, and I was
willing to take more risks thanI would do today with, I didn't
have kids, and I have 2 kids. Soit's I don't know if I would
make the right decision.Actually, at 1 in time, I sat
down with the 3 founders,especially with Marco and with
Patrick. And I said, listen.
If I get fired, you need to giveme a job because this is a big
bet that I'm doing. I mean, weare a big chain. We're gonna be
(11:38):
your biggest client. And this isa big bet on you guys because
you don't have the historical Imean, you don't have the history
or the track record to securethat you would be delivering
your promises. No?
In reality, they not onlydeliver. I mean, they over
deliver. As I said, it's truethat we did as any process when
you want to change or adapt yourtechnology and your processes,
(12:01):
what you do is you do an RFI. Sofirst, we brought different
providers into the table.Actually, Duetto was 1 of the
latest SUCHA because there wereso many as we didn't know them.
So I'm just looking at I'mreading 1 press release on the
web. The team realized thatthere was another vendor, so we
add them at the final stage. Andthen once we had decided on the
(12:22):
3 finalists, we launched theRFP. And then throughout the
RFP, of course, you have notonly the technical requirements
and the business requirements,then then you have the financial
requirements. And what we likedabout Duetto was and how we were
able to build a tailor madeinterface that would allow us to
have a competitive advantageeven if we would be competing
(12:46):
against other clients of Duetto.
So we were not that muchconcerned that Duetto would
spread and that some of ourcompetitors would be using the
same technology because of thesingularity of our interface,
which I cannot elaborate as youcan imagine. But it has quite
specific certifications and datathat is traveling that allows us
(13:10):
to use the system on a way thatmany other hotels, even using
Duetto, may not be able to doit. No? At 1 in time, we even
rebranded. In fact, actually, wehave rebranded internally
Duetto.
We don't talk about Duetto. Wetalk about the NH game changer,
and this is how we internallyname our revenue management
system. No? But in the end, as Isaid at the beginning, it's the
(13:31):
roadmap on how we had to embracerevenue management that was
pretty much detail on our threeyear plan. And we knew that we
couldn't be from 0 to hero justin one year.
And we had to face thatimplementation of revenue
management processes, culture,teams, technology, pricing, and
(13:52):
so forth. So the roadmap on howDuetto was evolving under their
own roadmap and our roadmapmatched pretty well. If it
didn't match, we were able tofind a solution on how we would
be able to make it match. Andthen 1 of the things that we
fall in love was the openpricing concept, which is
something that we were trying todo without calling this open
(14:16):
pricing and with a manualperspective, which is trying to
avoid having specific pricepoints. And again, I'm talking
about almost eleven years agothat we started these
conversations where we still ourrevenue managers, they still
have a pricing grid with ten,fifteen, 20 price points.
And then we were using thoseprice points that were built on
(14:37):
the database in order to price.And then we were missing
opportunities. The idea of openpricing allowed us to go from
fifteen, twenty different rates,of course, then on the mirror
rates and the reference rates tothose specific rate codes. That
could be thousands of rates, butwe were pretty much limited. And
then we moved into a model wherewe started using infinite
(15:01):
prices, which would allow us tocompletely optimize the entire
demand curve at each specifichotel.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
What do you see as the key business impact of
thinking about revenuemanagement in this way? What are
the metrics that are mostaffected, or is it a growth
play? Is it efficiency for yourteam? You know, what are the
impacts that you've seen?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
What I would say is that I think there are 2 areas.
I mean, there are every area isimpacted by AI. Every single
area. Yeah. Yeah.
Saw a video on LinkedIn a fewdays ago from the CEO of Nvidia
saying that AI will not takeyour job. Someone who knows how
to use AI will take your job.And I shared this video with my
(15:49):
team. And, listen. I mean, weall need to I mean, this is a
conversation we started inSeptember.
I mean, we all need to startthinking about AI and how this
is gonna impact the way we work,our processes, our strategies,
or technology. And the way I seeit is it's quite simplistic.
Today, we have availabletechnology that it's either able
(16:10):
to augmentate, accelerate, orautomate what we do. Automate
tasks where the human is notbringing any value, and then
it's making our life easier.It's augmentating what we can do
today, and then it'saccelerating processes that
would take us before one or twodays into minutes.
(16:31):
And how we embrace this, it'ssomething that we need to think
strategically on how we're gonnaimplement this. And then, of
course, there are many vendorswho are selling us technology
that may be supporting us on 1very specific area. Now we are,
today working in a process thatis impacting sales. Again, what
can we automate? So we are we'rerevisiting all our processes.
(16:55):
What can we automate? How can weaugmentate? And how can we
accelerate what our salespeopleis doing so that they can become
more efficient. Not just withthe aim of being more efficient
or saving costs, but how can wededicate more time to those
customers where today we may notbe spending enough time with
them. So it's not a question onhow we save costs.
(17:15):
Actually, it's the opposite.It's how can we get more shade
of wallet from some of theaccounts that we know that we
have some leakage to thecompetition by having a better
service to those accounts, byhaving salespeople having more
time. There is a seconddiscipline, which is our contact
centers. I mean, there is a hugedisruption in this area, pretty
(17:36):
much impacted by technology, byvoice agents powered by AI,
chats, chatbots. It'sincredible.
I mean, today actually, today aswe speak, we are implementing a
technology that we didn't haveavailable that it's allowing our
supervisors to understand thecustomer sentiment of each call
(17:57):
within the reservation process.So, basically, our supervisors,
they do not only have today thequeues, the traffic, the waiting
times, the a vandal ratio, theSLAs. They have per call. They
have amper agent. They have thestatus as as a lighthouse with
(18:17):
greens, orange, and reds on howa conversation is going with 1
of our agents.
And we are able to approach orthe supervisor is able to jump
into 1 of this call to supportthe agent if the call is in red.
So that's something that it'sallowing us anticipate massively
when we see that a consumer maynot be happy. He may be having a
(18:41):
strong conversation with 1 ofour agents and then support
first our agent so that we candeliver a better service. And
then the last component, it'srevenue management. And I think
there is no area against sales,contact centers, revenue
management, which is gonna havebiggest disruption in the next
years.
(19:01):
And then the KPIs that you'rementioning is the number of
hotels that the revenue managercan manage when we are talking
about either economy hotels, bedand breakfast hotels. If today
they're managing 5 hotels, maybetomorrow they can manage 10 or
15 because you would havetechnology that is supporting,
automating, or augmentating whatthe revenue manager can do. Now
(19:25):
there is another philosophybecause then we tend this is
like when we implemented pricingautomation. You know, the
revenue managers thought theywould get fired. We haven't
fired anybody yet.
This is due due to the priceautomation. The opposite is if
we are able to free time or orif revenue managers are able to
have more time to value drivendecisions. And as revenue
(19:49):
management is being impactingnot only on rooms revenue, but
in all their revenues and in alltheir components of a hotel. I'm
specifically thinking todayabout meeting space rental. I'm
thinking heavily, massivelyabout food and beverage.
Why not revenue managers as theyhave now the time and they have
(20:09):
the skills, they have theeducation, they have the
knowledge, they should bededicating time to other point
of sales within the hotel, puton my words, meeting space. And
this goes from minibar, fromroom service, from the
restaurant revenue, and soforth.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Thinking of guest experience, I'm curious to hear
a bit more how do you thinkabout reputation and guest
reviews Given that you have somany properties, so many
different types of guests, howare you thinking about upholding
that strong reputation andmaintaining good review scores?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
As my boss would say, I'm the advocate of the
consumer, the internal advocate.So it basically means that I
think I look on a monthly basis.We are receiving the guest
experience reviews with all thedata for hotel, our scores. I
think I'm the first one openingthe file when we receive this
this report on a monthly basis.Because it's scientifically
(21:09):
demonstrated on how improvedguest experience and high scores
on guest reviews, they give youmore visibility and gave and
they give you more traction ondistribution.
That's something that wefollow-up very closely from the
commercial perspective. Ouroperations team is doing an
excellent job in all thedifferent brands. We are happy
(21:32):
to say that our scores arealways over delivering what the
competition is doing, which onthe other hand is giving me more
pressure to deliver betterresults because everybody at the
organization is aware of that. Imean, the better quality we
give, the more first we will beable to charge and the better
visibility we will have in thedistribution channels and the
(21:54):
different distributionplatforms. So it's absolutely we
take this for granted.
I'm not gonna talk about thisreport from review pro many
years ago and Cornell where theywere saying that an improvement
of 10% on the quality score, Ithink it would give you an
increased RevPAR of at least 1%.So it's very clear that it has
an impact. What we measurealmost on a daily basis on this,
(22:17):
our technology and the reports,we measure this and it's part of
our day by day routine of ourrevenue managers is looking at
the quality scores and lookingat what we call our quality
filtration index. And then howthis will be impacting our
pricing versus our competition.Something that we measure a lot
is the value for money.
It has been heavily impacted inthe last years. Not only for us,
(22:40):
but for the entire industry aswe have been able to fill the
hotels after the pandemic veryfast with very high rates,
because, of course, we had tocounter fight the huge inflation
we had, not only impacting costbut impacting payroll in many
countries. And we may not beable in the past to fill the
(23:00):
different positions that we hadopen until the just after the
pandemic. So this was giving usI mean, it's been some kind of a
nightmare in terms ofoperations, but we have been
able to recover very fast. But,yeah, the value for money, the
quality penetration index, theGRI, we are using a CG review
pro now.
You know, our hotels, it's 1 ofthe tools that we use on a daily
(23:22):
basis. It's part of the DNA ofour pricing strategy.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Speaking of distribution, curious how you
approach distribution. What'syour mindset on direct versus
third party bookings? If youcould tell me a bit about your
distribution setup and yourbooking engine.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
We are a very asset heavy company. So when you
compare ourselves, The USbrands, today, we can say that
we are not franchising yet. Soit means that we own or lease
more than 80% of our portfolio.And that is giving us some kind
of, owner mentality against someother brands, which are mostly
(24:04):
focused on the franchisebusiness. There is a different
motivation.
It's when you are on thefranchise business, you're
trying to make your pipesbigger. You are trying to drive
the most amount of businessdirect loyalty program. I'm not
saying we are not focused onthis direction. Because, I mean,
we have a very strong more than50% of our business is direct.
(24:26):
So we have a strong push on thisregard, but at the same time, we
always say that we are EBITDAfocused.
I mean, what rules is theEBITDA? And some cases, when the
EBITDA rules, you put in adifferent stage of priority,
your channel mix. Again, I'm notsaying that we do not need to
prioritize, brand.com directsales. I mean, we do and we
(24:49):
have, quite aggressive growth oneach of these, channels. But the
reality is that we need to havea different mentality, let's
say, this way.
Because in the end, we own 80%of our portfolio and the p and
l. And we have a massive amountof risk in those hotels that we
are leasing. Now distribution,it's getting more and more
complex. This is changing verydynamically, not as dynamic and
(25:10):
fast as GM AI into our lives.But the reality is that it's
something that is shifting andprogressing very fast.
We have moved from adiversification strategy and
distribution that we had until2018, '20 '19 to a concentration
model. So we would what we havebeen trying to do is to
concentrate our distributionwith as few partners as
(25:35):
possible, and then trying to getcapillarity and distribution
throughout these parties. 1 ofthe things that we did is we
signed an strategic agreementwith HBX, with HotelBets in
2021, which has been extremelysuccessful. And we decided to
concentrate our b to bdistribution through HBX for
different reasons. First,because of the capability they
(25:55):
have as a b to b partner, thecapacity they have to be an
extension of our sales force,the transparency of the
agreement, and, of course, thecommercials as you can imagine.
But at the same time, on how wehave been able to work with this
partner very closely and alignboth strategies on how we would
approach and would regaincontrol of our b to b
(26:16):
distribution.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
What would you say the business impact of this
strategy has been? Have you seenADR increase or have you seen
share shift as you're workingwith fewer partners?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
I mean, we've seen a massive improvement on what we
call the distribution healthscore, which basically it's
price competitiveness, rateparity. I mean, however you
wanna call it. We've seen amassive increase, more than 35%
increase on this regard, whichis massive because it's very
challenging. From the consumerperspective, rate integrity
means more sales, not onlydirect, but more sales because
(26:53):
you are giving more trust to theconsumer that what they see,
which is the same rateeverywhere, it's trustworthy.
Right?
There will not be anotherchannel that may be cheaper. So
in the end, many customers, theyhave decision fatigue, and they
see, I don't know. Wow. Thishotel, they go on Google,
Trivago, and then they see 5different rates in 5 different
(27:15):
channels. And they say, I Imean, why wouldn't be a 6
channel which could be cheaper?
And then in the end, they decideto book somewhere else, not that
specific hotel. So we have seena massive increase on that
perspective. 1 of the thingsthat from the distribution
perspective, I always like tosay is that not necessarily
connecting more channels willgive you incrementality. So this
(27:36):
is something that we look at itwith a lot of care, which is the
incrementality of the sales ofeach of the partners, and then
how we are able to usedistribution as a commercial
tool to be able to gainpopularity and distribution
power in those markets whereour, let's say, our brand
awareness may not be as big asit is. I mean, we are pretty
(27:58):
much known in Europe.
We are pretty much known inLatin America. But when you look
at The US, I mean, we only have1 hotel in New York, DNH
collection Madison Avenue. Bythe way, it's a fantastic
property. But it's, I mean, weare competing in The US against
the Marriott's, the Hilton's,IHG's, IHG's. I mean, we are
probably significant from thebrand awareness perspective to
(28:19):
some of The US consumers.
So so it's being able to have agood policy where we have
popularity, where we havevisibility, and we are able to
get to the right consumer, it'ssomething that it really makes
sense. So, again, distributionby recommendation to everybody
would be I mean, do not thinkthat distribution is
incremental. I mean, noteverything is incremental
(28:40):
because everybody's buying toeach other. So that's the
pressure I have from my regions.I mean, my regions, they call me
our commercial directors,director of sales.
Say, hey. Listen. I have thispartner. We need to connect.
Because everybody wants directconnectivity.
Okay. The first question is, arewe already sourcing to this
(29:00):
account through some of ourpartnerships? And if the answer
is yes, it's unlikely that wewill build a direct connect with
that account. Because if we arepresent, we have visibility,
that's enough.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Well, I would love to wrap up with 1 last question.
I'd like to draw on yourexperience at your organization
and throughout your career. Whatwould you say are 1 or 2 skills
that are absolutely crucial fora hotelier to have today?
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Well, I'm gonna say more. First, customer focus.
This is hospitality. So wecannot forget that everything
that we do needs to be customercentric. And sometimes, this is
an exercise that I think we needto do on a daily basis, that our
reason of existence is theconsumer, is the customer.
(29:51):
So as a hotelier, being able tobe customer focused. Self
awareness, resilience, not beingcomplacent, those are things and
skills that are very necessary.And in the end, the more we move
into digital world and the morewe will be able to embrace
technology to do things that wehave been used to do in the
(30:12):
past, like managing excels,doing calculations. I mean,
those things will be doneautomatically by an AI agent, by
any kind of technology. So wherewe will be able to influence
would be on the human touch, onhow we are able to drive that
human touch, that level ofpersonalization, both with the
(30:33):
consumer and then working withteams, which is having empathy,
being able to be a team player.
Not just a solo guy who's justtrying to deliver their own
results. So those are gonna beskills that are changing. So in
the end, I think that the notjust for hospitality. I think
for the entire workforce, it'sgonna be a huge change. First,
(30:54):
the skills that were requiredwhen I started working, the
skills that are required now,and the skills that would be
required in the future.
I read I think it was from theWorld Council. There will be
360000000 new jobs created until2030. Jobs will disappear. But
(31:18):
in the end, the net is positive.So there will be more than 60 to
70000000 new jobs that will becreated in the future.
But if you do not adapt to thesenew jobs that will be coming,
this is where you will be losingthe job instead of migrating to
different tasks. No? But, yeah,very exciting times for
everybody who's in the industry.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time,
Fernando. It was really greattalking with you.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
That's all for today's episode. Thanks for
listening to Hotel Tech Insiderproduced by hoteltechreport.com.
Our goal with this podcast is toshow you how the best in the
business are leveragingtechnology to grow their
properties and outperform theconcept by using innovative
digital tools and strategies. Iencourage all of our listeners
to go try at least 1 of thesestrategies or tools that you
(32:09):
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 (32:20):
Do you
Speaker 2 (32:20):
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,
follow Hotel Tech Insider on allmajor streaming platforms like
Spotify and Apple Music.
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