Latest / GAIN Momentum / Leading an Entire Portfolio of Hotel Tech Companies | with Mark Loyd
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- GAIN Momentum episode #117: Leading an Entire Portfolio of Hotel Tech Companies | with Mark Loyd === Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to an exciting episode of the GAIN Momentum podcast. I'm joined by Mark Loyd, group president of hospitality at Fullsteam. Mark, how are you? Mark Loyd: I'm doing great, Adam. How are you? Adam Mogelonsky: Doing great. It looks like you're at the cottage. Is that correct? Mark Loyd: Something like that. This is actually a man cave and office I built myself on top of a barn, where I live in rural Colorado Adam Mogelonsky: Oh, wow. That's very cool. You know, I was just expecting you to be somewhere by a lake, but you blew that answer out, literally out of the water. So tell us, what is Fullsteam? Mark Loyd: So Fullsteam, the company is a payments platform that acquires vertical market software. And we take those vertical market software products and we put them on the Fullteam-- Fullsteam payments platform. And then we build into the businesses as we get revenue from the payments, we build more into those businesses to create great world-class software from those businesses that we acquire Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. Okay. And what businesses have been acquired? Mark Loyd: Oh, there's a handful of-- Well, there's about 90, so I probably won't go through the whole list with you. My view and really where I operate is within the hospitality division, which is about 30 different business units. We operate in hotels, golf resorts, ski resorts, activity-based destination centers, and the like. So we have about, 20 to 30 different business units with products that serve those verticals. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. And, you know, managing all those different products, systems is also a matter of managing different clients as well that have different rapports with various entities and customer support, and your job is to essentially unify all those various elements under the banner of hospitality. Is that correct? Mark Loyd: Yeah, that's probably a strong way of stating it because we aren't changing what we're good at in each of these business units of products. We're continuing to serve the clients that we have. But to your point, how do we bring our technologies together in a meaningful way to take advantage of the synergies we have, first off, with the payments platform that we offer across the ecosystem? But many, many of our clients are using two, three, four, five of our products. and when we acquired those products, they didn't work well together. So how do we work well together in the products? And then secondly, how do we as Fullsteam Hospitality within the hospitality vertical, how do we go to market effectively so that when a client comes to us, we can make sure we're connecting the right solutions in the right way for their specific needs? Adam Mogelonsky: So let's unpack that. So, unifying systems in various degrees. You're-- It would be great to say, "Okay, we're gonna redo the underlying architecture and coding for all these various systems," but you're also dealing with live products, various systems that are in production, and people are depending on them day to day. How do you guide that process of saying, Okay, well, we're gonna merge the backends of these six or so systems on a unified object architecture while also supporting various versions and sunsetting other ones and guiding customers onto the new end, whether they realize it or not? Mark Loyd: Man, that's the magic question, right? It is a difficult thing to do, and where do you draw the line and what do you try to bring together and what do you try to keep separated? And I think it's important to start with a really an understanding of what I call vertical market software. The software that runs in these vertical markets that are intimate and effective at solving specific vertical market problems. How do you maintain that intimacy and that ability to solve those problems, without diluting it by creating things like generic objects or generic, profiles of clients. So We tend to have this idea that we can create this magic generic problem-solving, technology, but that's not really how it works in vertical market software. And so what we need to balance is what do we pull together? How do we effectively pull that together while allowing each of our teams within each of those products continue to do what they're really good at, which is solving those specific problems they've learned to solve. I'll further answer that question, Adam, by saying that technology should be there to serve the product and the solution that we're building, and we shouldn't be looking at it the other way around, which is another mistake generally we in software tend to do. We tend to emphasize the technology more than what the technology's doing, to solve the problems that we face. And I know later we'll get into some of those specific problems, and we can talk about what to solve those problems. But we're not focused really on saying, "How do we rewrite these packages on the same technology?" we're focused more on saying, "How do we go to a client that wants the specific great things that each of these products do, but to work effectively together, first for the guest journey, and second for the operator who has to manage all of these different systems and users?" The answer isn't making all the technology the same. It's how do we talk, how do we have those systems talk to each other effectively? Adam Mogelonsky: Okay, so now we're looking at this whole idea of an all-in-one tech environment, getting all the systems to talk to one another to generate more value for the, all the various stakeholders. The hotels, the tour operators if we're talking about that side of hospitality, restaurants, everything versus the, I guess, point solutions, the best in breed, so to speak. So I'm wondering, could you talk to us a little bit about the real value that can be, ascertained once you have this all-in-one environment that's really honed and dialed everything in? Mark Loyd: Yeah. The value, I'll kind of anchor back to one of the things that I ended that last question with, which is, how does your guest have a unified experience going to a resort where they wanna golf, they wanna go to the spa, they wanna stay in the hotel room, they're gonna go to the restaurant, and every employee in that journey knows the client with the same level of understanding because they don't live in a silo in a specific system they're using? That's an abstract question, and so you're using the term of like all-in-one. So the idea would be that those touch points, somehow those systems work together in concert. And so what we really... The value that we have is to say, how can all of these systems respect, in this case, how can they all respect the same guest, the same rational guest that we all, I use the term subscribe to? So now I can go into one of our systems that says, "Hey, if you wanna sell to one of our resorts in our all-in-one solution system provider that we just acquired, you have to respect and subscribe to the centralized guest profile that we've defined on our platform." When that happens, and I use these terms intentionally, so respect and subscribe, it's the idea that we are going to get our master data from a platform source rather than our own database. And as you start answering those questions, you create this ecosystem where those systems respecting, in this case, the guest profile, will pull in those, those, the guest profile data to the operator. So when the operator sees Adam at the restaurant, I know that you just got done golfing. I know that you... tomorrow you're gonna get up early and you've got another golf outing, and I can address you in a meaningful way and say, "Hey, looks like you've got an early start tomorrow. Gonna be on the course, tomorrow morning. We're gonna get you taken care of tonight and get you out of here early so you get your rest." The value that you just created for that operator to be able to say that to a guest, you've connected that operator to that guest. Even though the operator really has no idea who you are, the system gave them the right information to be able to speak to you in a meaningful way. So that's the value that we can get with this all-in-one system. The guest profile is just one area. That's one specific area that we would create that platform approach of respecting and subscribing, to be able to create that kind of value Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. And I guess one of the core elements of that, all-in-one tech architecture that you're creating is the PMS for which Fullsteam has in its portfolio Maestro and WebResPro. So, how do you make these two PMS products live together, in one culture, in one company, in one overall environment? Mark Loyd: Well, generally speaking, we haven't merged the teams of our business units that we've acquired. We provide a set-centers of competency, and we provide the technology platform like I just described with the guest profile. And we-- but we work sort of independently within those respective teams. They each have a past of experience that is invaluable to the clients that they serve, and so we don't want to take that away from their clients', experience and expectations going forward. But what we do is we bring them together on technology calls when we talk about how we're introducing certain AI elements into our platform or how we're gonna approach speeding up development to give them the tools that they can be better. but I also think there's another question in your question, which is probably how do we go to market with two different property management systems? How do we sort the incoming leads and funnel them? there's a lot there, and we spent a lot of time really looking at what's the best way we can serve our clients? we are more of a consultative approach. When you come to us and you say, "I need a property management system. I think I want WebRes." We say, "Great. We're gonna show you WebRes." But as we get to know you and your challenges, we may say, "You probably want a different system that we can provide." It's not just Maestro. We have three or four other property management systems as well that we support. So that's really the approach that we take is this consultation when it comes to like go-to-market strategy. And then the last piece I'll mention is we align our go-to-market strategy and marketing and sales efforts around the sub-markets of hospitality that we best serve, that we can provide the best combination of products that we have, whether it's WebRes or Maestro, we are intentional about marketing those to specific segments Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, it's very interesting, to talk about it from a consultative point of view and then advising within that and not just the PMSs in your portfolio, but also some of the other systems of record that service ancillaries and tours and everything else that's cool that makes hospitality complete. Mark Loyd: That's right. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. So, beyond the PMS, we've talked about how Fullsteam is a payments company. So, you're bringing in a company that may be on some other form of payments, and I'm assuming it's an existing one, not a ground-up development. How do you make that infrastructural change work? Mark Loyd: Yeah, so when we get, when we work with clients and want to move them over to the Fullsteam payments platform, we have years and years and years of experience of, first off, the contracting, making sure the rates are competitive, the level of service they're expecting just from a pure payments play, is what they would expect, and we seek to exceed those expectations. From the technology itself, we've done so many of these migrations, Adam, it's just become a very smooth process of the backend organization process, the cards they have on file and getting them switched over to, you know, the current platform so that it's seamless for their clients. The operators, because everything is operated from an integrated perspective in the application they're used to using, it's very low impact. Probably the biggest part of the process, and maybe the most expensive, is making sure that the existing hardware works or that we have to, you know, get new hardware for them. 'Cause granted, hardware is usually tied to the Mews platform they're using. Adam Mogelonsky: And, yeah, that could be an expensive changeover for hardware, changing all those PEDs and everything else like that. Mark Loyd: Yeah, we find most people that are switching are getting quite the upgrade. Like they're on older ware and every, in every sense what the step that they're taking is an improvement to compared to what they've been doing Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. We talked about payments, talked about PMS, but earlier you mentioned that idea of a golf round the next morning, recognizing that and then being able to move it accordingly. So now we're getting into Fullsteam's ancillary system of records: golf, spa, tours, club management. Tell us what's in the portfolio and how they really end up complementing and improving the guest experience. Mark Loyd: A great question. So we have F&B solutions. We're restaurants, restaurants and hotels. We have a big footprint within breweries and other upscale white tablecloth restaurants. That's led by Silverware, the Silverware acquisition that we did. We've been working with Silverware for four or five years now, I think. I think five or six property management systems, which really helps us cover a wide variety of different types of hotel operations. We have a unique software called the FlyBook, and the FlyBook does activities and rentals like bike rentals or fly fishing tours. And it does kind of long tails of all of those kind of reservations and ancillary activities that you do when you're on a, like at a hotel or at a destination activity resort. And we have a huge footprint in golf, whether it's public, semi-private or private, with Club Profit and now a cloud version that we've launched here recently. But those form the core. We also have catering and bridal planning, wedding planning, that could fit into that ecosystem, as you can imagine, event planning, so forth. Tours, multi-day tours through Peak Fifteen. So if someone's into travel around the globe, we can stitch that together and the reservations that happen together, on a very complex and expensive tour with Peak Fifteen. So the... What we find is that the core of this, many of our clients were already using a business unit that we would just acquire. So it's clearly synergistic. The amount of hotels that have at least bike rentals sitting outside or tours that they're sending down the river, is high. There's a lot of that activity. And of course, the golf and hotel marriage is quite obvious. And so when many of our clients come to us, they come to us through one of those solutions that they're seeking, and then they come to find out, oh, you can also solve these other three or four problems that we have. Yeah, and then we can come together on a platform-based approach where it all fits together. It's on the same payments platform. It's all talking to the same guest profile and so forth. So yeah, those are the key areas we serve. One I forgot to mention, which we have a huge footprint and we dominate in, is wineries as well. Adam Mogelonsky: Wineries. Yeah. I mean, what we're getting down to is the niches of hospitality. Like if you mentioned you have breweries, you have wineries, and a winery may decide saying, "Hey, I want to build some, I want to build a hospitality product, 'cause I have 100 acres and I want to build a winery hotel." So they'd start off with the winery software and then that could be stitched together and they could use their customer profiles that exist within that to then formulate the basis for a hotel PMS that they'd want to onboard and they need for managing that next other product they're putting together. Mark Loyd: And traditionally what has happened is that as I've gotten the technology for, say, my winery, as in the case that you just presented, those solutions have historically not had strong ties to hotel reservation management solutions. And so just by the nature of the fact that you're buying into each of those, you end up with completely disparate data. You don't really know that the clients that are staying, that are doing things in the winery that are staying at the hotel are actually the same client record. You don't know how to pull that together to market. You don't know how to pull it together to serve them when they're there at the winery. Then when you add in the event planning, a wedding that might be happening there while you're on site, you want to add a golf course or whatever it is. Yeah, it's every one of those makes it harder and harder to even understand who your client is holistically and then take action like marketing to them effectively. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, so you're able to bridge all those records together. It creates more value in various ways, a lot of ways that the operators don't even know or haven't even thought about, just because they're so used to having disparate records. The question next is where is this going? I would like to say that the whole idea of a unified guest profile is unique, but it isn't. Everyone's sort of tackling this in various ways. Where do you see the industry going, and where's your vision for guiding this process to be the next step forward? Mark Loyd: That's a great question. Of course, I'm gonna have to say AI at this point, right? We need to bring AI into the equation, which is relatively new as far as it performing well and having some real value that you can tap into. So we'll talk about AI. Two, as far as having a centralized customer profile, it's been done many times and not that well. Most approach the architecture from a way that doesn't really help in the long run. We overnormalize records. We lose visibility. So I'll touch on kind of the architecture of and what's unique about how we're approaching the guest profile. And the third is really the staff that a company has. What is their experience? How can they help me? When we're working with the client who has fourteen wineries and seven hotels, and they're trying to just sort out their data, do they have a partner that can sit down with them and understand their specific needs and actually be able to come in with technology that doesn't just get placed down there, but it's a living organism because of the partnership they have with us? And so, as far as AI, data is a challenge, and we can try to over-match it, under-match it. We throw some stuff away because we don't know where to put it. We create these lakes, but then how do we relate that into our common profiles? And the more and more data, the more systems you have attributed to it, it sounds nice that we have a profile that we can subscribe to and that we can respect, but it's actually really hard to force that, especially across a bunch of different companies. So we approached our platform with an AI-first mindset, which was good because we just started building this about a year ago. And so we have modern tools. We don't have a bunch of legacy structure that we have to manage to try to migrate into a new structure. And we've done it in such a way of tiered data and with the anticipation of the type of performance and thinking, I guess, you can get from AI models, to be able to answer questions more easily, to be able to sort through data, and to have it pre-curated for specific use cases, for AI. And so being really starting from the ground up in architecture and thinking to be centric on AI is gonna make a difference, and it's already making a difference for us. So secondly, as far as the architecture, because we are all on the same team, the good thing is, you know, the thing I get to do is I get to work with teams, we'll say esto rotatively. So I could come in as a decision-maker, working with our teams. Obviously, I get so many ideas and good ideas and everything from our team. But you don't get that opportunity when you're working peer-to-peer on companies that aren't owned by the same parent company. So by the nature of the way that we have acquired these businesses and we have created this unifying plan across these businesses, allows us to do things and make decisions that we can just say, "We're going to support this. We're going to do this way. You're going to agree with this API approach." And even though a lot of robust conversation around different ways we could do it, at the end of the day, we're gonna make a decision, and we're gonna execute on that. And we have a great team, Adam. It's been awesome. Like, you know, you don't buy a team 'cause of the personality of the technical lead within that team necessarily, but we've just bought teams that have great personalities on the teams within the technical leads. And so we have built this community that just functions well together, and so we can capitalize on that by creating new and innovative approaches that we can all just agree to and execute. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. You know, it's, you talk about acquiring companies, you're also acquiring the culture and then the merging of those cultures is perhaps even harder than getting people to all think about AI and bringing ideas forward related to AI or anything, any other of the latest trends. So, therein, I'm wondering, do you have any specific words of wisdom or lessons that you've picked out from your experience right now leading this huge ship about how to bring cultures together with each acquisition and each new company that you're bringing into the Fullsteam portfolio? Mark Loyd: That's a really good question. I would say there's a couple of things that I've found to be critical over the time that I've spent. One is there needs to be a clear vision of what defines success that is motivating. We do define success by, from business profitability and growth kind of terms that we all need to ascribe to and seek after doing. But when I can meet with the team and I can say, "Our success is when this customer smiles and puts their arm around us." And so what I've found is we need to bring our leaders closer to that kind of felt success and focus. When that happens, that makes it much easier then to have harder conversations about change that has to happen. Which brings me to my next point, which is be clear on the change. From my experience, there's probably a couple of things that really need to be thought about and executed. One is defining, clearly defining what success means to these new acquisitions. They've operated on a certain model with certain leadership for a certain amount of time, and if we try to just pull them in and say, "Hey, just keep doing what you're doing," it won't bring the alignment that you want. So be clear on what the objectives are, and those objectives should, as much as possible, be objectives that are tangible and that we can connect to emotionally, not just driving financial performance or financial growth, but connecting us with wins that we can have, like with clients. We had the opportunity to go to HITEC, and you were just mentioning that, we had a conversation at HITEC. We got to meet clients across our portfolio and take them to dinner and do things with them, and they were so pleased by the service they were getting from us. It's those types of wins and those types of connections that will start aligning people with the vision and the purpose of Fullsteam. Secondly, there's gonna be change. When a company's acquired, they have patterns of behavior. Those patterns are gonna change. We're going to do things differently. Being just abundantly clear on those changes, why we're doing those changes, connecting that with what we just described as our success criteria and what's gonna make us successful. Being, in a sense, unapologetic about that, but also respecting where they come from. Those are all very important things. When people can get a vision for where they're going and believe in that vision, then you can transform culture, you can bring people along. What-- If you don't get that done right, it's just a very difficult, long fight. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, I guess the misaligned incentives can take over within each division and everything, but having those objectives and key results that you expect to help guide everyone and everyone knows how they fit into the bigger picture of bringing together different systems to guide great experiences. Mark Loyd: And nobody gets frustrated with success. So when you begin to succeed and when they feel that momentum, then that'll change minds and align people. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. To pick out one word you said earlier, the word is partner. You're not just a vendor or a supplier to hotels, you're a partner. And therein it's almost like part of Fullsteam's role is to help their clients, help your clients realize all the potential benefits they can get from using your software. Do you see that as another guiding philosophy? Mark Loyd: 100%. Absolutely. And if you look at the roots of what we're trying to do, which is solve a client's problem, that really is partnership. You join together and yoke together with someone as a partner when there's a mutual positive relationship. And so we are very intentional around how we talk about our clients. That client, as we develop software, we get our clients a view of what we're developing early on. We don't try to polish it and finish it and put it on a shelf for someone to come buy. We identify a client early in the development process and try to get on a standup on a weekly basis so they can see what we're doing. That creates that partnership, that gives them a voice into what we're doing and allows us to then respond appropriately and create what they want. So then it's more than just words. It has to drive deep into your culture and your organization. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. You know, the whole idea of lead user-generated software comes to mind, but it really is, I guess, the keyword I'd use is collaborative, in terms of how it's brought together. And you have your key customers that maybe are piloting it or, you know, they're gonna do something interesting that they would really benefit from those tools that you build out. Mark Loyd: The economics of software is actually pretty simple. Vertical market software where you're gonna use a system for five, 10, 15 years, the economics is as simple as do I wanna keep using this software as a consumer? And so for us, the number one thing we should do is understand what our clients need from that software and be willing to evolve and change and invest in our software over time, which just requires that connection, that kind of partnership in everything that we do. Adam Mogelonsky: So that begs the question, what do your clients need from their software to have it work for them for now in 2026 through to 2036? Mark Loyd: There's a lot of needs out there. I think right now there's a lot of noise around AI. There's a lot of-- I don't think the dust has settled on some of what's gonna stick for AI features. The dust hasn't settled on what is AI gonna actually be able to tap into, as I mentioned before, into our massive data stores. And so I would just say that our clients are in this position of some of them not knowing what they're gonna need as consumer behavior might be changing. We don't know where that's gonna land. And so, just kind of going back to what I just said, it's critically important whenever you have these kinds of disruptions like AI is causing, it's critically important that we're walking every single day with each client in their context to understand what's on the horizon for them, so that we can be agile and evolve with them as our market changes. There isn't a coalescing need, a specific need, other than I would say in general, it's the guest journey, right? We need to have that guest journey work seamlessly across our organization. That's probably the number one common need that we get. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. I mean, that's a good, I guess, unifying force for what success looks like. Improve the guest journey, improve the guest experience, and everything else sort of falls in line from there. Mark Loyd: Yeah. Adam Mogelonsky: Are you looking, one of the hot trends now is this whole idea around MCP, model context protocol or APIs for AI. Are you looking into anything within that field for Fullsteam? Mark Loyd: Yeah. So we released a, what we call the Alliance API. We released it last year, and that was our step into a technology platform that all of our applications can use for all of our operations. So the idea is someone coming to Fullsteam, a technology provider that wants to integrate with any of our business units integrates once to our platform. That provides a hub and spoke kind of model of integration. We're adding these kinds of tools to that platform. So rather than having... MCP is a new protocol. There's nothing particularly magic about it. It's technology. It's a protocol of technology, just like we've gone through iterations in the past. But being able to produce it in one centralized location that then behaves similarly across all of our BUs, that's the kind of all-in-one that our clients are looking for, so that the nuances of the different types of MCP endpoints that they might be consuming, those nuances don't matter because they just go to their central API. So the answer is yes, MCP is the future for especially AI automation and integration. So we have a strategy for that and have released one on top of our platform. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, the whole idea of a singular reliance API, as you said, a singular point really does help with the governance of all these various endpoints that you're trying to integrate, because that can be a nightmare to manage unto itself for various levels of credentials and, you know, you're sunsetting this, you want to re-- stand up this, you want to give access here, and you're dealing with then giving access to AIs, which is dangerous from a cybersecurity point of view for internal data use. Mark Loyd: That's right. Yep. And we have monitors that can now watch the flows between all of our systems and identify where anything might be happening. And we have one system to secure, which is much easier than 30. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. And it certainly just gives even more credence to the whole idea of the value of an all-in-one system versus having to maintain and monitor various endpoint solutions. Mark Loyd: Yep. Adam Mogelonsky: You know, it's been a delightful conversation. Definitely fantastic to learn about what you're doing at Fullsteam. Are there any other specific products you want to highlight or new developments you want to mention? Mark Loyd: Oh man, this feels like a great opportunity to have had that ready for you, Adam. I would say, you know, we are a huge focus on AI and what we're delivering with AI. So one of the things-- I'll give you a little peek under the cover. One of the things that we hope to bring to the market pretty soon is really an AI assistant. We talked about the ability to, for staff across a guest's journey at a resort, wherever that touch point is. I know that you're golfing tomorrow. I can talk to you about that experience. AI is gonna be assisting in helping us know how to talk to each individual. Because AI can go a very deep dive and understand, okay, I'm working on a front desk. I have a 15-second window or a one-minute window with this client. What should I, how should I interact with them? So AI would be like, "Hey, here's what-- here's the conversation you should have," rather than me having to try to dig through all that. So there's tools like that that we're able to now present at every outlet that is subscribed to this platform, to bring that level of service to a place where I can hire someone yesterday, train them on the technology, and they'll start this kind of personal interaction with every client we have on day two. Adam Mogelonsky: Wow. Is there a term for that? 'Cause it's not just an AI assistant, it's contextual summarization and recommendations using AI, powered by AI. Mark Loyd: Yeah. I guess we should coin one. I think when we go to market with this, we'll call it something. It's not my department. Adam Mogelonsky: But it is the tool because there are still hotels around the world that are solving for the challenge of recognizing a recurring guest when they show up at the front desk. Mark Loyd: That's right. And this goes back to that. Even though we've been trying to solve this problem for twenty years, if it's not done right at the data layer, the AI doesn't even know where to go get this data. If you can just slap an MCP on something and all of a sudden AI can do all of this. So we have the right architecture, and now we're bringing to market the things that we think will be really valuable. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. And that's a very, very valuable tool because it, again, improves the entire guest experience, from the check-in to how guests are appreciated throughout the journey to then downstream effects for CRM and loyalty, everything. Mark Loyd: Yep. Adam Mogelonsky: Mark, it's been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for coming on the show and letting us all have the key insights into what you're doing at Fullsteam. Thank you. Mark Loyd: Yeah, my pleasure. Have a great day.