Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #295: How Hotels Can Stay in Control in the AI Age | with Jesús Olivares Sánchez
Transcript
- The Modern Hotelier #295: How Hotels Can Stay in Control in the AI Age | with Jesús Olivares Sánchez === David Millili: Welcome to a special HITEC Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Make sure to subscribe, follow, like, and let us know in the comments what you think about today's episode. Steve, who do we have on the program today? Steve Carran: Yeah, David, excited for this one. We have on Jesús Olivares Sánchez, the SVP, Hospitality Portfolio Strategy & Product Marketing. Thanks for joining us, Jesús. How we doing today? Jesús Olivares Sánchez: Thank you, Steve. Thank you, David. Thanks for having me. Steve Carran: Yeah. So before we dive into Amadeus and how you're helping hoteliers, can you give us a little background on how you got into hospitality and hospitality tech? Jesús Olivares Sánchez: Sure. So, look. If we go back into my college days, I was studying engineering, and back then I learned a lot around how technology was actually impacting the real life. But I was very passionate around the world of business, so right after engineering I moved into financial services. Very different industry than travel and hospitality for sure, but it also gave me, through a number of years, the exposure of traveling a lot. I actually was based in Boston for a year and traveling around the country and living in hotels for a full year. So I remember in Boston staying on the Omni Parker House for tens and tens of nights, in New York, in Dallas, so all over the place. Pennsylvania, Philly. So that really got me to be very close to the hospitality industry and also very close to the Americas and the US. And so I guess that I was always very connected with how technology impacts real life. And once I was thinking for a new career, a new adventure, a new opportunity, again in my homegr- ground, my home city, Madrid, in Spain, in Europe, Amadeus has the headquarters. Yeah. And I had an opportunity to join the company. I really wanted to take that dive, and that was 10 years ago. David Millili: Wow. So, Jesús Olivares Sánchez: so that's a little bit of the story. You know, and I joined directly the area of the business that works for hospitality, and I've never moved since. That's great. David Millili: So hospitality industry is quickly evolving. What are you seeing are the biggest shifts right now? Jesús Olivares Sánchez: So probably we'll start with the traveler and the guest David Millili: Okay Jesús Olivares Sánchez: and how that is changing, right? Especially the way we see it from our side is the behavior and the expectations from the traveler and the guest haven't really changed that much over the last few years. But what is really changing is the window to express that. It's AI of course. And now all of us as consumers, as guests, we can basically explain and request everything that we want. So that is a huge change on how hotels are going to be able to respond and address those expectations, right? And provide the guest experience. So I think from there is where we see all of the big change happening because it's going to require hotels to really think very well how to remain in control, how to remain present, relevant, how to distribute, how to personalize, how to capture the demand, how to modernize their tech stack. That's where for us, technology and the real business of a hotel is so interesting. Steve Carran: That's great. And one thing you talk a lot about is connecting different parts of the hospitality ecosystem. What does that really look like for hoteliers? Jesús Olivares Sánchez: So I think the most relevant question that if I put myself in the shoes of our hotels, they should be asking is, how do I remain in control of my own destiny, of my own distribution strategies? How do I remain relevant and discoverable in this new AI consumer as AI assistance, new channels, right? So for me, that's the fundamental question, right? And to provide you with one concrete use case, right? Yesterday we announced our Amadeus AI Commerce solution, which is pretty much composed of three major announces that I think are going to help hotels, and our value proposition is precisely that, is to help hotels remain in control and discoverable, right? The first one, as I already mentioned, now to remain discoverable, they want to be showing up in those AI assistants, and we've released already a product that is called Performance Manager AI Search that already in the last months that we've been running pilots, shows that the guests ending up in the website of a hotel coming from AI search are much more willing to book directly or to move directly into the booking engine. And our stats or results provide that 44% of those are willing to move rather than 25% when they were coming through organic search. So I think that's the first element on the AI commerce hub. The second one is how to again power our hotels to remain in control in the full distribution. So we are doing two things there. On one side, we are joining forces as a founding partner with Google and other leading technology and hotels partners on defining the new protocols for lodging. It's called Universal Commerce Protocol. And at the same time of helping them in this joint industry effort, we are not waiting for that to be live, but we are working already on our agentic capabilities to power that channel, not just for discovery and planning, but also to transact, so to shop, to book, and to pay. And we have agentic capabilities live that then we'll be releasing once those AI assistants can consume it together. And the third thing is, and I'm going to tie it back probably into what we were discussing about the behavior. Steve Carran: Yeah. Jesús Olivares Sánchez: All of us, we're getting so used to interacting across our lives, not just for travel and hospitality through conversational search or conversational interfaces, that we are using the same capabilities, and we are placing it in our iHotelier booking engine, so that when a consumer is not going through an AI assistant to search for their travel, they are going to the website of the hotel that they really know and like, they can already interact with that booking engine in a similar manner that they would be interacting with any other AI assistant. So I think that provides you a comprehensive view of how we see these new agentic channels. Steve Carran: That's great. So one thing we talk about on the podcast quite a bit is how guest expectations are changing and rising about personalization. What does it look like to deliver personalization effectively? Jesús Olivares Sánchez: So I think getting back into part of my explanation, it starts with having the right data and the right system of record with a modern stack so that you can then plug your intelligence layer in to orchestrate the demand. I can share with you a case study that we're currently working with one of our customers. The Ascott Limited is one of the regional leaders in Asia. They have more than 1,000 properties, and it's our latest customer in ACRS, in our Amadeus CRS. Beyond the next-generation capabilities for distribution and personalization, they are using ACRS to be able to power those priorities of how to really be primed for AI agents and AI assistant, new distribution, and personalization. So I'm going to give you three examples of how they are using that transformation together with us beyond the next-generation distribution capabilities. They are using this transformation, for instance, to connect historically siloed systems like CRS, PMS, CRMs, so that they have a single copy of availability, rates, inventory, guest profile. The second one is, through that transformation, to receive cleaner and richer data so that they can inject that into what they call their own recommendation engine. Why? To deliver personalized experiences. They looked at historical interactions of their loyalty members throughout their properties, their preferences in the CRMs, and other algorithms so that they can proactively target with, "This could be your next destination," or "This could be your next experience." And last but not least, the third priority that they are using this transformation for is to really start moving into the next level, attribute-based selling, and how they can be prepared with a future-proof platform to be ready to provide personalized offers for the guests. David Millili: So how should hoteliers and destinations be thinking about demand and revenue in a more complex multi-channel environment? Jesús Olivares Sánchez: So I think especially these days with the new channels, there are a lot of opportunities and challenges for every player in that distribution landscape. Revenue first, one of the things that we say is that we enable hotels to power total demand. The first thing is that you need to look at that from a total breadth perspective. You need to be able to distribute every type of business across any type of channel. At Amadeus, for instance, we power our customers to be able to distribute transient groups, leisure, corporate meetings, events through all of the traditional relevant channels. And as I mentioned as well, in the new channels, we are at the forefront and leisure-focused on delivering that. But this goes beyond normal distribution and normal revenue on room revenue or meetings and events revenue. It also goes into non-room products and everything that a property has to offer, and everything in the surroundings those properties have. I'm talking about tours, activities, experiences. So I think if you put all of those together is how I believe hotels are starting to look. This is not new, but the changes in dynamics are creating new opportunities in new channels. Steve Carran: So looking ahead to the next few years, what do you think is really going to define success for hospitality organizations? Jesús Olivares Sánchez: I would probably say twofold. On one side, they're going to need to jump very quickly to these new channels and this new way of orchestrating the demand, and going through those steps of ensuring that your data is correct, you have a modern backend and tech stack, and you can orchestrate the demand proactively. At the same time, they're going to be starting to think about the mid to long term. So I would summarize with delivering while transforming. Balancing that short-term need to remain in control, discoverable, and creating demand generation, while transforming to ensure that you are future-proof. And I would probably say that those two are the most important ones. Steve Carran: Well said. Well said. David Millili: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is where you get to let people know how they can get in touch with you, how they can find out more about Amadeus, and maybe even mix in a good restaurant in Madrid. Jesús Olivares Sánchez: Oh, yes. So look, they can get in contact through us in any of the social media, through our website. They can obviously talk to us through LinkedIn, and I'm more than happy to recommend any restaurant in Madrid or any experience or hotel for that matter. David Millili: Hotel. All right. Jesús Olivares Sánchez: That's great. David Millili: Thank you very much. Jesús Olivares Sánchez: Of course. David Millili: Well, that does it for this special HITEC Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be again with you soon. Thank you.