Transcript: Episode 197: Elevator Pitch at HITEC (Part 1)
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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor HITEC edition. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/197.
[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.
[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. I just got back from HITEC like less than an hour ago, where I spent several days talking to some of the most brilliant founders and leaders in hospitality. In this episode, part one, you will hear a collection of short, snappy elevator pitches for a wide variety of hospitality tech tools. You will meet a chief operating officer who once shared a hotel room with a dead bat, a former bouncer who got kicked out of his own nightclub and a marketing executive who had to rescue her team after they passed out in front of the wrong hotel. We also get serious, but not too serious about the real world impact of PMS platforms, AI concierge tools, group RFP response speed, and why your hotel data is probably speaking 10 different languages. Whether you are a tech skeptic, a gadget geek, or really just here for the loading dock stories, this episode has something for everyone. So hit the elevator button and ride up to the top floor.
Elevator rings.
I am here with David Fox, who is Chief Operating Officer at Core. David, give me your elevator pitch.
[00:02:08] David Fox: My elevator pitch for Core is that we are a communications and operations software for hotels, and what we do is we allow everything that used to be done with paper and pencil and radios, we allow that to be done electronically. So that's facilitating communication about guest requesting towels or having a problem with their sink and being able to have the engineering team do their preventative maintenance inspections - all in a digital platform so that the hotel has a level of accountability across their staff. And an above property level, a management company who are our primary customers are able to implement standards across their entire portfolio for things like preventative maintenance, so that it doesn't matter whether it's a Hilton property or an IHG property or Marriott property.
[00:02:55] Susan Barry: Excellent. So are you able to put in place things like timing goals or frequent goals? So for example, if you wanna make it quicker to repair the, I don't know, shower head in a guest room, if that's a goal of a hotel, is that something you can track?
[00:03:15] David Fox: The timing - there's certain aspects of timing where we do handle, and that's mostly around room cleanings. Being able to track how long an attendant takes to do X, Y, or Z, depending upon the room type. But from a maintenance perspective, we're more interested in making sure that the hotel knows that something is either done or not done.
[00:03:33] Susan Barry: Understood.
[00:03:35] David Fox: And that the engineering team is there to prioritize the work of things on their list. Is it impacting a guest like a clogged shower or is it just a light bulb that's out in the lobby?
[00:03:47] Susan Barry: Got it. And can an individual hotel property or like a general manager or chief engineer load in a list of things that need to be done, or does it have to be guest driven?
[00:03:58] David Fox: No. In fact, brands these days have their own set of things that you're supposed to comply with from a brand compliance perspective. So inspecting the lobby or doing the guest room, preventative maintenance inspections quarterly or semi-annually. And what we allow the engineering team or the staff to do was to load the templates in for those inspections and then they pop up according to the frequency. Is it a monthly inspection? Is it a quarterly inspection?
[00:04:28] Susan Barry: Got it. Excellent. Well, brewer has it that you may want to join me on the loading dock. So David, what is a story you would only tell on the loading dock?
[00:04:41] David Fox: I think that this is a fabulous story and every time I've told it, I get a shocked reaction. So I was at a hotel. I will go as far as to say it was a casino hotel.
[00:04:52] Susan Barry: Fantastic.
[00:04:54] David Fox: So it was a nice hotel. And I went to sleep and in the middle of the night I got up to use the restroom and out of the corner of my eye I saw what I thought was a rolled up sock. And I'm like, in the middle of the night — it's like, I don't remember my sock being over there? But that's probably what it is. And so I got back in bed, went to sleep, and I woke up the next morning and took a look at that sock. And that sock was not a sock, it was a dead bat.
[00:05:24] Susan Barry: What?
[00:05:26] David Fox: And needless to say —
[00:05:28] Susan Barry: I thought you were gonna say a mouse, but it was a dead bat?
[00:05:31] David Fox: A dead bat.
[00:05:32] Susan Barry: How did a bat get in your room?
[00:05:34] David Fox: I have no idea. The general manager had no idea. But needless to say, I did not pay for that night.
[00:05:40] Susan Barry: Oh my God. Do you think it was Dracula?
[00:05:43] David Fox: No, I do not, but I did check my neck to see if I'd been bitten anywhere while I was sleeping.
[00:05:48] Susan Barry: Oh wow. That is insane.
[00:05:52] David Fox: 100% true story.
[00:05:54] Susan Barry: I can safely tell you, I have never heard of a dead bat story, so. Thank you so much for riding up to the top floor. I so much appreciate it.
[00:06:03] David Fox: I appreciate you having me here. It's been a great.
[00:06:06] Susan Barry: I am here with Mark Lewis-Brown, president and CEO of Zucchetti North America. And Mark, you have a story that you would only tell on the loading dock.
[00:06:19] Mark Lewis-Brown: This story goes back in my younger years, I think it was like in my late — mid to late twenties. I worked for Delta Airlines. My partner and I at that time we were looking at a magazine Conde Nast. There's a beautiful palm tree on the front of that. And this is pre-internet, you know, we use guidebooks and all that. And so we decided let's go find that palm tree that'll give us motivation for a trip.
[00:06:46] Susan Barry: Oh, what a cool idea.
[00:06:48] Mark Lewis-Brown: And we could go anywhere, we’re standby and all that. So it turns out it was in the Maldives, so it was not an easy place to get to, especially back then. This is pre like Maldives being what it is today. Right? It was more basic. So we go to Tokyo and down to Singapore and then over to the Maldives and arrive around 11 o'clock at night. Take a little boat over to Bandos. So Bandos was the main island and there was Little Bandos where the palm tree was. So we're taking a little like African queen put-put over to Little Bando, over to Bandos. It was great. It was beautiful flying fish, moon, it was so, it was like glass. It was gorgeous. We get there, check in. They take us to our room. Well, our room was a cement block, like hut and with no windows, just openings and like plastic curtains. No fresh water, just to drink. The shower was salt water.
[00:07:52] Susan Barry: Crazy.
[00:07:54] Mark Lewis-Brown: And we're like, okay, make the best of it. We can't leave.
[00:07:57] Susan Barry: Wait, so this wasn't the over water bungalows would be that people are picturing from the Maldives.
[00:08:02] Mark Lewis-Brown: Oh, no, no.
[00:08:03] Susan Barry: Okay, got it.
[00:08:05] Mark Lewis-Brown: Still outside our door, gorgeous. Just like what you see today, right? So anyway, we get up. So we make the best of it. We get up in the morning and we walk around Little Bandos — er, big, this is big Bandos. And we, I hear an air conditioner because there wasn't any air conditioner in our hut and so humid there. So I hear an air conditioner, and then I start to see all these little, those really nice little casitas. They're, they're on the land, not over the water. So we immediately run back to the front desk and we find out that they'd overbook the island. And we were in the employee’s rooms.
[00:08:40] Susan Barry: Oh, you kidding me?
[00:08:42] Mark Lewis-Brown: Yes. So we were where the employees go and we were airline employees. We were on some kind of a discount. They're like, too bad.
[00:08:48] Susan Barry: ID 90.
[00:08:49] Mark Lewis-Brown: Yeah. Right, right.So they're like, too bad. That's where you gotta stay. So we're like, okay, make the best of it, right? So that day we, one of our big events was to take a little boat over to Little Bandos.
This is where the palm tree was, right? The whole reason for our trip. So we take the little boat over and he says, go to the right and just walk around on the other side of the island. And that walk takes five minutes. So, we start walking around. And we get to the other side of the island and there's the palm tree along with 50 other people doing the same thing.
[00:09:24] Susan Barry: Are you serious?
[00:09:25] Mark Lewis-Brown: So it was it was unbelievable. We had to get in line to take our picture. Take our picture on it.
[00:09:31] Susan Barry: This was like the most famous palm tree in the history of time.
[00:09:34] Mark Lewis-Brown: I know. It was unbelievable. And it was a lot of people from like China and Japan. So obviously Conde Nast had done a really good job.
[00:09:42] Susan Barry: Wow.
[00:09:42] Mark Lewis-Brown: And so we got in line, we had two minutes to sit on the palm tree, get our picture taken. So, anyway, it was fun. We found the palm tree. We go back to our little cement—
[00:09:54] Susan Barry: Your hut?
[00:09:56] Mark Lewis-Brown: Our little hut. That night, we went to dinner. It was all inclusive, right? So dinner and all that, had dinner. So we go about 11, midnight o'clock at night, I start not feeling good, right? So I'm like, oof. And then I got really sick and no A/C, no fresh water. So I'm like, I have to find someplace and some way to get comfortable. So I go out and get in the water, right? And in the Maldives it's very salty, so you float really good there. So I was just floating. I was just floating in this, out at night. But the moon’s there, it's kind of bright, you can see. I could feel a little fish like nipping at me and stuff. But my partner, he's like, you can't just lay in the ocean all night. What if you fall asleep? You'll float away. So he found a rope and he tied my ankle to a palm tree.
[00:10:50] Susan Barry: Shut up. Are you kidding?
[00:10:52] Mark Lewis-Brown: No. This is the truth. So, and then I laid there all night. And then in the morning he just comes in, reels me in
[00:10:59] Susan Barry: No way.
[00:11:00] Mark Lewis-Brown: And I felt better. So that was the good news, but it was actually, it was comfortable. You know what I mean? And it, it was cold.
[00:11:07] Susan Barry: Did you sleep?
[00:11:08] Mark Lewis-Brown: I did fall asleep, yes.
[00:11:10] Susan Barry: Wow. Oh my goodness.
[00:11:13] Mark Lewis-Brown: So needless to say, I mean, and all in all, even with all that, we had a beautiful trip. 'Cause Maldives is gorgeous, but it was an experience.
[00:11:21] Susan Barry: That is the craziest thing I've ever heard. I'm so relieved that you were not shark bait.
[00:11:26] Mark Lewis-Brown: No, no. It wasn't very deep. But it was one of those places where I saw a little octopus, all the colorful fish. It was gorgeous. And I did get a few little, like, just little nips. None I have to worry about. So, it was fabulous.
[00:11:45] Susan Barry: Excellent. Well, I don't know that I've ever heard a story quite like that, mark. But I really enjoyed it and I appreciate you riding up to the top floor with us.
[00:11:54] Mark Lewis-Brown: Oh, my pleasure. Nice to see you.
[00:11:57] Susan Barry: I am here with Estella Hale, vice President of Commercial Strategy for Zucchetti North America. Estella, you are following in the footsteps of your CEO Mark. So what is your elevator pitch?
[00:12:14] Estella Hale: Well first, yes, I have followed his footsteps for many years, so I am right where I need to be. The elevator pitch for Zucchetti North America is that our core is that we bring integrated solutions for the hotelier to bring pricing decisions where buying decisions are made. Our core has always been distribution, but our perspective on distribution is that we are connecting hotels to their guests by the means of channels.
[00:12:48] Susan Barry: Okay.
[00:12:49] Estella Hale: In the past CRS and channel managers were connecting hotels to channels — maybe still, some still are. But for us, we connect hotels to their guest with a deep focus on proprietary booking engine and bringing strategy into how to price in the different channels. Because of that, we integrate our solutions to bring the CRS distribution, GDS, OTAs, and now a revenue management system that can help them price according to each channel. With this is how we are bringing those pricing decisions where guests are making their booking decisions.
[00:13:30] Susan Barry: Understood. Talk about what Zucchetti looks like from the guest journey perspective.
[00:13:38] Estella Hale: So let me back out a little bit and bring the other components of the integrated solution that we bring. Because in Zucchetti North America, we have other components to our integrated solution such as a PMS for complex properties like Marinas, campgrounds, et cetera. We have a POS that even has AI enabled where they can do a vision AI for someone to check out, simply placing their tray within the AI module. We have a revenue management system that does the strategy for pricing, but again, our core is distribution. So bringing all of that operation strategy, all of that technology integrated so that the hotel can show their best face to the guest. But to the guest, we are seamless. For the guest, we focus on independent hotels and we focus on shining them at the best light, but the guest is always booking directly with the hotel.
[00:14:42] Susan Barry: Got it. Well, thank you so much for riding to the top floor, Ella.
[00:14:46] Estella Hale: My pleasure. This has been a great experience. I appreciate your invite.
[00:14:52] Susan Barry: I am here with Christian Arias, Senior Vice President of Sales and marketing at Hapi. Christian, give me your elevator pitch.
[00:15:03] Christian Arias: So the way I compare Hapi is, if you're walking through HITEC, there are hundreds of technology providers here in Indianapolis, and what hotels are wondering as they go and see the latest in AI or CRM or the coolest app, they're like, okay, but does it work? And the big part of “does it work” is, is there the data that I need to make sure that all of this, all of these different apps work? So when it comes to innovation and hospitality, hoteliers kind of get stifled when it comes to innovation. They need to make sure that their apps have data. That's where we come in. We are an integration platform that gets things like guest profile, activities data. We connect it at scale. So you have a ton of this useful data sitting at the property and it's like, Hey, now I want to go power my CRM or my AI, which is doing it, which is a big one here. We come in, we make sure the data gets to the place that it needs to be, so that hoteliers can innovate, tech providers can scale. So we're all about data where, where data meets opportunity is what we like to say.
[00:16:03] Susan Barry: Very interesting. Yeah. Can you walk through sort of the user journey? Say I'm a hotel and I am now a Hapi hotel. What happens next?
[00:16:16] Christian Arias: So, at Hapi, it's funny 'cause we don't have like a UI. We're like a bit of a Wizard of Oz where everything is in the background. So the story is, you're a hotel and you want to implement Salesforce CRM as an example. And Salesforce is a huge platform. You can do a ton of different things on it. But one of the things you need to make sure is that if you're a hotelier, once you access Salesforce, that it has things like it looks usable. So we also work in Salesforce and build UI on Salesforce. We happen to take the data step further with Salesforce, so we actually make it hotelier-friendly. But the data that goes into there, let's say that you're a hotel enterprise - 'cause we really work at the enterprise level - and throughout all your portfolio you have different PMS systems like Opera or Infor or Muse. But then you also have spas, like book-for-time or you have table reservation, like Open Table or Seven Rooms. Well all of that data needs to somehow, it's like everybody is speaking different languages from all these different technology companies when it comes to data. So we're like the universal translator. We're gonna get all of that. The hotelier says, great. I now have a real 360 degree profile view.
[00:17:20] Susan Barry: Got it.
[00:17:20] Christian Arias: I put it in Salesforce, which does all the Salesforce magic, fun, of personalization and marketing and AI. We call ourselves hospitality’s connectivity partner — that portion in the middle of making sure the data is right, then can go on to do all the neat stuff.
[00:17:37] Susan Barry: So if I have a guest profile in my spa CRM, my hotel CRM, my restaurant CRM, are you able to identify yes, this is the same person and put it together?
[00:17:52] Christian Arias: Yeah, that's a huge part of it. The profile matching and merging, the identity resolution. So where we have as our backend and our integration platform is the ability to make sure that Susan Barry. It's spelled depending on however your name is spelled or their email membership ID, we're able to make sure that it connects.
[00:18:12] Susan Barry: All right, Christian. Well, a rumor has it that you used to be a nightclub bouncer, so I have to believe that you have visited the loading dock at some point in your career.
[00:18:26] Christian Arias: Yeah.
[00:18:27] Susan Barry: Tell me a story you would only tell me on the loading dock.
[00:18:30] Christian Arias: Okay, I used to be a bouncer, but actually the funny story that happened is when I visited the club, I used to be a bouncer at after I was working there. So essentially I was a bouncer in college. I went to University of Florida.
[00:18:45] Susan Barry: I went to FSU. How dare you!
[00:18:46] Christian Arias: Oh, no. So we like to party.
[00:18:51] Susan Barry: Yes. Heard.
[00:18:52] Christian Arias: And as I was there as a bouncer, the owner used to always say, man, you have a lot of people that come visit you. Your friends visit you all the time while you're working, like you should promote here. I'm like, okay, I'll be a promoter.
[00:19:01] Susan Barry: Oh, nice. Okay.
[00:19:01] Christian Arias: It gets paid better pay and free booze and you're in college it’s incredible. So I used to let anybody do whatever they want. Dance on tables — as a bouncer. I used to let them dance on tables and throw napkins in the air, whatever. I thought it was fine, right? You're there to party. So when I visited back to my old stomping grounds, I'd been a bar bouncer there and promoting. I'm like, I'm gonna have a great time. So, a song comes on — and I don't know if when you're in college, like when a certain song comes on, people would get napkins and throw it in the air when the beat drops. So I'm like, immediately the bouncer, who didn't know who I was, is grabbing me from behind and took me out.
[00:19:38] Susan Barry: Are you serious?
[00:19:01] Christian Arias: I'm like, what do you mean? This is a club? This is what we do. The owner had to come. He is like, no, he is cool. And I'm like screaming at the bouncer. I'm like, we're here to let people have a good time. I mean, it's like a typical like drunk college kid story. I always thought if I let everybody else party hard, I could too.
[00:19:57] Susan Barry: Yes, of course. That makes total sense. Well, Christian Arias, thank you so much for riding up to the top floor with us.
[00:20:05] Christian Arias: It's been wonderful. Thank you for having me.
[00:20:08] Susan Barry: I am here with Doug Ralston, president and CEO of True Omni. Doug, what's your elevator pitch?
[00:20:17] Doug Ralston: Oh, elevator pitch. Okay. So True Omni is omni-channel platform. What does that mean? We connect property management systems, event systems, any type of CRM. We pull all that great content and then we send it out through an interactive experience. So that can be digital signage. It can be interactive kiosk. It can be anything that's self-service. So our tools connect all of those experiences and they also drive data and new ways to engage visitors and guests.
[00:20:47] Susan Barry: Excellent. So this isn't a situation where a guest has to like download an app or go to a website in order to see what you're talking about?
[00:20:58] Doug Ralston: Right. This is something where they can use their mobile product — usually in the hotel concept, it's a pre-arrival. They get a QR code, they walk in the lobby, they use the check-in kiosk to get a physical or digital key. And then they can use it for event things and, and all those types of details. So you can use whatever device you want. That's kinda like the omni-channel example there.
[00:21:17] Susan Barry: Got it. Interesting. Alright, well, Doug - rumor has it that you might have a loading dock story for me. So what is something you would only tell me on the loading dock.
[00:21:28] Doug Ralston: Okay, well this is a two-parter, but I'll make it quick. So, there's two things. When I meet with hoteliers, I'm also a hotelier myself. I own a couple boutiques in Mexico. And we've automated those in self-service and that's how a lot of the technology evolved. And so, in that I always ask my hotelers like, tell me your craziest story. GM story. And in essence there was a scenario where the GM was called to the restaurant bar area, 'cause there was somebody over in the corner that was having fun with several ladies. And I was like, oh! And he went over to kind of break it all up and so who stood up was David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen.
[00:22:20] Susan Barry: You are kidding me.
[00:22:21] Doug Ralston: No. And I think he was totally caught off guard and he just kind of said, Hey, you can't do that in here. And just kind of moving on. And they just kind of said, oh, no problem. And, and they're just very friendly. And so that was like one of the stories I heard as of recent.
[00:22:36] Susan Barry: Oh my gosh.
[00:22:37] Doug Ralston: In my hotel, one of the things that I love watching is that when you walk into a hotel in Mexico and you don't see a front desk — and I know this is maybe avant garde in some ways. Sometimes people get a little, they're like, wait, there's no front desk. Uh, what do I do? And I've seen people come up to the kiosk and start talking to it.
[00:22:58] Susan Barry: Are you serious?
[00:22:58] Doug Ralston: Like it's a person.
[00:22:59] Susan Barry: That's funny
[00:23:00] Doug Ralston: I've seen a kind of a weird situation, but once they get used to it, it's kind of like a little bit of change in guest behavior, but it is funny to watch them try to figure it out for the first time.
[00:23:13] Susan Barry: That is amazing. I love it. Well, Doug, thank you so much for riding up to the top floor.
[00:23:19] Doug Ralston: Oh, my pleasure. Yeah. Thank you so much, Susan.
[00:23:21] Susan Barry: I am here with Ethan Wiseman from Sabre Hospitality. Ethan has a pitch for us today, so Ethan, take it away.
[00:23:31] Ethan Wiseman: Thanks so much. I'm so excited to speak about SynXis Booking Engine concierge today. Hoteliers do a phenomenal job curating experiences on the property, and one of the most unique things about it is the concierge and how the concierge helps you. So what we did was we found out a way that we could bring the concierge into the digital space, 24/7, to help your guests truly understand your property and all the uniqueness that it has. So we're gonna work with them in over 50 different languages to be able to ensure that your guest is able to communicate in the language that's their preference and in the channel of their preference.
[00:24:08] Susan Barry: Ohwow. So is it like a chat bot-style situation, or…? Say a little bit more about what the guest experience is like.
[00:24:17] Ethan Wiseman: It's chat and voice and it's in multiple different channels. So if you want to engage with your guest via Instagram, for example, you can talk to them in chat in Instagram, you can talk to them in WhatsApp. You can also speak with them via voice and the prompts will actually be able to come back to them in natural human language. So then that way you can free up your operation, but be able to provide curated information.
[00:24:39] Susan Barry: Excellent. And I assume that you need to be a SynXis hotel in order to use this?
[00:24:44] Ethan Wiseman: You need to be a SynXis hotel. The beautiful thing is we, we operate with tens of thousands of properties around the world. So there's gonna be a whole bunch of hotels that are gonna instantly get to, to benefit from this amazing opportunity.
[00:24:57] Susan Barry: Excellent. Well, Ethan, now that we've heard your elevator pitch, I gotta ask you if you've got a loading dock story for our listeners.
[00:25:07] Ethan Wiseman: So a friend of mine was actually staying at a hotel. Family went to sleep and everything, everything was perfectly fine. And then all of a sudden the door opened and a whole bunch of people came in drunk at like 3:00 AM. And they started yelling and screaming, and they got angry because they're like, you're in our room. And he is like, no, I'm, I'm clearly sleeping, so I'm not in your room. But they actually started having a fight with each other about whose room this was at 3:00 AM with kids and everyone asleep and everything. Because they came and flipped on all the lights. So it just shows you like hotel operations is super hard when you get it wrong, it can get pretty wrong. So you can imagine that with you and your family.
[00:25:46] Susan Barry: Holy mackerel. So do you know how it resolved?
[00:25:50] Ethan Wiseman: They ended up having to just go down to the front desk and get reallocated but thankfully he was able to stay in his original room and they were able to get the other group there. But I find it interesting that it always seems to happen when people have been like out late. And then either they've lost a card or something like that and it gets reissued and you tap on that at the front desk. It goes back out and the guest ends up in the wrong room.
[00:26:13] Susan Barry: That is insane. Well, thank you so much for sharing your pitch and your story, and I appreciate you riding up to the top floor.
[00:26:23] Ethan Wiseman: Thanks. I appreciate it. Have a good one.
[00:26:26] Susan Barry: I am here with Sandrine Zechbauer, chief Marketing Officer of RMS. Sandrine, what is your elevator pitch?
[00:26:36] Sandrine Zechbauer: Thank you for having me. The elevator pitch is RMS is a hospitality platform. We started off in Australia 40 years ago, grew from there and now we are this super power PMS so to speak. The PMS is a category that everybody knows, but we are really thinking of ourselves as a platform. Because we've got payments, hundreds of integrations, a super user-friendly interface and loads of plans to innovate. So that's RMS. A bit of a misnomer. You might think of another category, but we definitely property management software.
[00:27:11] Susan Barry: That's, I did think that you were gonna say that you're revenue management system, so I know property management system, correct. But goes by the name RMS.
[00:27:20] Sandrine Zechbauer: Correct, 'cause we, the RMS stands for Reservation Management System.
[00:27:24] Susan Barry: Ah!
[00:27:24] Sandrine Zechbauer: We were created before Revenue management system was a category that tells you, that kind of places it in time.
[00:27:29] Susan Barry: Understood. Excellent. And so one of the things that I've been hearing everyone talking about at HITEC this week is how their stuff is now AI powered. Is that something that you all are looking at or doing, or does it make you roll your eyes?
[00:27:50] Sandrine Zechbauer: No rolling of the eyes just yet. AI is everywhere. We certainly are using it as at RMS as an internal use case. We're deploying some AI workflows. I will say what we're wary of is the sort of announcement effect, like, oh, look at us. We've got this AI thingy that actually doesn't really do much. So we're working on some things, but we just want it to be really considered, I guess, and to deliver meaningful change for hotel as opposed to just something labeled AI that doesn't actually transform anything. So, hoteliers are - I was thinking about this as HITEC today when I was walking the floor - hoteliers are faced with a number of choices, right? If they've got a, an investment envelope that they are, think of deploying at HITEC. Like what can they do? They can do a chatbot, they can do door technology, internet of things, guest experience. There is so many options, and AI is one of them. So really thinking about like, how is it maybe AI, but is it really doing something meaningful either for my staff or for my guests? So how is that actually doing anything? So that's what we're kind of thinking about at RMS. Like we're definitely thinking about it, but we just want it to be more than an announcement effect. So I don't wanna say watch this space, but still watch this space because we will launch, but we just want it to be meaningful, I guess we we're trying to be considered with it.
[00:29:26] Susan Barry: Understood. Well, what is a story you would only tell me on the loading dock?
[00:29:32] Sandrine Zechbauer: So. I used to work. I used to work in travel tech actually. And travel and technology are big drinking, big, big drinking places,
[00:29:46] Susan Barry: Not hospitality. No. Way
[00:29:48] Sandrine Zechbauer: Worse I would say. Here it's super friendly. Maybe it's actually dated, 'cause I'm old now, so I'm thinking back sort of 10 years or so ago. I've always been in marketing, so marketing’s always get roped in with the events and so on. And we were doing this event in Las Vegas. It was a sales kickoff, which traditionally has a lot of drinking involved many, many different hours of the day. And I was in charge of these, these young SDR we call it like in technology. Typically people who pick up the phone and get the inbounds and trying to get you some, some leads. And I would, these like five SDRs that were with us. And then the next day we were at this hotel, we went out for partying and then next day couldn't find them. And we're like, oh my God, we're in Vegas. What's going on?
[00:30:36] Susan Barry: You couldn't find all of them?
[00:30:38] Sandrine Zechbauer: We couldn't find them, all five of them were missing.
[00:30:40] Susan Barry: Oh, no.
[00:30:40] Sandrine Zechbauer: And basically what happened is they misremembered the hotel, so they went to a different hotel in Las Vegas. And they had their key cards with them and they all tried to like, tap and open their door.
[00:30:55] Susan Barry: Right.
[00:30:56] Sandrine Zechbauer: Obviously, wrong hotel, so nothing worked. And they all like, kind of fell asleep.
[00:31:01] Susan Barry: Oh no.
[00:31:01] Sandrine Zechbauer: On the doorstep. And they're like, oh yeah, it's not gonna happen. They kind of like lay down on the floor and kind of like, and kind of just like, fell asleep there. And then I just, I'm always thinking like those, people that were in the room.
[00:31:16] Susan Barry: Yes.
[00:31:16] Sandrine Zechbauer: Would have opened the door, like see these like drunk—
[00:31:20] Susan Barry: Children. Oh my God.
[00:31:22] Sandrine Zechbauer: I've never seen anything like it, to completely get the wrong hotel back. So that was a fun, that was a fun story.
[00:31:27] Susan Barry: That is amazing. Well, thank you so much for riding up to the top floor.
[00:31:22] Sandrine Zechbauer: Of course. Thank you for having me.
[00:33:02] Susan Barry: That is a wrap on part one of our HITEC coverage on Top Floor. Huge thanks to all of our guests for bringing the stories, the smarts, and some surprises, and an even bigger thank you to our friends at HFTP for hosting such a welcoming and wonderfully weird gathering of hotel tech brains. We will be back soon with more conversations from the conference, until then, keep your badge handy and your elevator pitch ready.
Thanks so much for joining us for this special HITEC edition of Top Floor. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/197. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.
[00:32:51] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor Podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 8504049630 to be featured in a future episode.