Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #341: 4 vs 5-Star Service, AI's Timeline, and Scaling Unique Hotel Brands | Hospitality Roundtable
Transcript
- The Modern Hotelier #341: 4 vs 5-Star Service, AI's Timeline, and Scaling Unique Hotel Brands | Hospitality Roundtable === David Millili: Welcome to a special roundtable episode of The Modern Hotelier. Steve, where are we at today? Steve Carran: Yeah, we're at The Gallery in The Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach, and we're joined by some of the brightest minds in hospitality. I'm gonna let you all introduce yourself. Stuart, we'll start with you. Stuart Greif: Stuart Greif, Chief Strategy Innovation Officer for Forbes Travel Guide, and just love supporting our industry. Luis Segredo: Luis Segredo, Co-founder of DataTravel, the developers of Happy, and my past life I developed a product called HotSauce and... products called HotSauce and Rex. Amber Asher: Amber Asher. I have probably too many jobs at the moment. I was the former CEO of The Standard Hotel, Standard International, before we sold to Hyatt. I'm now practicing law again. I'm a hotel lawyer and strategist at Helbraun Levy. I'm on the board of Lark, Mews Advisory Board, and I am going to be the chairwoman of Olive, that board as well. Josh Johnston: Josh Johnston. I'm the CEO and founder of Trayaway. Prior to founding Trayaway, my background was over a decade in the luxury hotel industry. Eight years Four Seasons, also with a couple of years Hilton all around the country. Jackson Hole, Philadelphia, Miami, St. Louis, Dallas, and New Orleans. David Millili: All right, so we're gonna go around. We've got some quick lightning round questions. Short questions, short answers. So Amber, when you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? Amber Asher: A ballet dancer, and then my grandmother told me there was no future in that for me. And so at 11 I decided to be a lawyer, and I wanted to be a lawyer for battered women. And then I became a real estate lawyer at Latham & Watkins, a real departure. Steve Carran: Cool. Luis, what do you think... What do you wish you were better at? Luis Segredo: Physical fitness. Having the discipline to work out. David Millili: Sure. All right. So Stuart, what's a luxury you can't live without? Stuart Greif: Time to rest and recharge. Going for walks, rock climbing, that white space to think, to decompress. Luis Segredo: That's David Millili: great. Josh Johnston: Good answer. Steve Carran: Josh, what's something on your bucket list? Josh Johnston: I need to get out and travel more. So we're supporting hotels in over 50 different countries, and I've not been, unfortunately, to most of them. So I need to make that a bigger priority. David Millili: All right. So now we're gonna dive into the conversation, and we'd like each one of you to tell us: How did you get your start in hospitality, and did you ever imagine you'd be in the role you're in today? Why don't you start, Stuart. Stuart Greif: There's no way I would have imagined my ... When ... The irony is when I look back, the decisions in my life were very, kind of nonlinear. So I actually lived out of a hotel as a consultant in New York City 18 months in a 22-month period when I was in consulting, and hung out with the staff, dated the staff inappropriately. I won't name the brand, but used to go down- It was David ... in the catacombs. You know. And, you know, something took root there. And it took me a long time to get back to it when the CEO, chairman and president of a publicly held company I worked for, we acquired JD Power, and I led the travel and hospitality practice there. It was many years later. But I think throughout my career, that sense of service, whether it was consulting in every role, coaching, mentoring, like, my heart and my soul was aligned with hospitality. And I love this stage. In addition to my role at Forbes Travel Guide, I do a lot in the industry, whether it's allyship for women, anti-human trafficking, a lot with startups and innovation. And I believe all of us can still compete while raising the bar for all of us. So my path was very circuitous, but when I look back at all the decisions, the decisions that were seemed the most significant in change and challenge were the ones when I look back that gave me the greatest, both personally and professionally, growth, and that have led me into hospitality, which is where my heart is. Luis Segredo: Mine will be a zealot one. When I grew up in an, in ho- in the hotel industry. My dad was a controller in a hotel, and so we spent many a weekend that I'd spend at a hotel while he was closing the books. And when I was in college, he partnered with my brother to write some software that I took to market while I was in college and failed. And then I worked in a hotel for a bit while I was in college as well. And afterwards, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and another idea came about, to another software idea. And about a year out of college, I told my brother, "Look, let's take this to market, and let's put this together." And we did. It was, you know, kind of not intentional. As you say Well, it was intentional in the decision, but you don't know about the scale and the size of a business and where it can go. And we ended up growing that business to ... We had thousands of customers in a hundred and something countries, and I traveled to a lot of them in the process. And the As far as where I am today, the question there, it's interesting 'cause I sold that one off, stayed with the company. I had the question of, "Well, you know, I don't think you'd work for somebody else." I'm like, "Why not?" I've asked people to work for me for years, so it would seem appropriate that I could work for someone else. I did that, and I enjoyed it a great deal. I went from a group of 50 to a group of 400. We sold to Amadeus and became a group of 10,000. Then I realized I had to go back to my entrepreneur roots. I've built it up again. I didn't think I would do that, but I've enjoyed it, and it's been a lot of fun to kind of be able to say you're not a one-hit wonder. You put it together and do it again, so. Amber Asher: I started in hospitality at 13, 14 years old, working in a cider mill in a small town in Fenton, called Fenton, Michigan. And I was working many, many hours and ... But I loved it. I loved the community of hospitality. And I feel like through different parts of my life, I worked in restaurants, I worked in law school at the Department of Justice, and at night I worked at a Calico Jack's in Midtown. So I really loved my time in hospitality, and I really ... When I decided to go be a lawyer in New York at a very young age, I started at Latham & Watkins when I was, you know, in my early 20s and became a real estate lawyer. My parents were developers, and I just felt very comfortable in that real estate world. And hotels were, was really the most exciting part and the sexiest part, especially the first hotel that I visited at, as a summer associate, was The Delano in Miami in two thousand and maybe one. And that's where you got to go for your diligence trips, which was an amazing perk. And I fell in love with it, and I'm actually staying at The Delano now. And it just opened after six years, and same amazing creative director as, that I was working with back at Morgan's. But it's ... You know, that opened my eyes to what lifestyle hospitality was, and I wanted to be a part of it. It had the food and beverage and the nightlife and the fashion and the design and the energy. And so I decided I was gonna find a way to get into hotels. So I, you know, worked on a few deals. I went to a firm that had hotel clients, and then I got recruited to go in-house to Morgan's hotel group right before the recession, which was a crazy time. But You know, where I am today, I never thought I would be president and then CEO of Standard Hotels. That was never on my list of things to do. And I loved it, and it was a great experience, and I never thought I'd be a lawyer again, but I'm doing that too. So, you know, I, but I really enjoyed being able to see the full landscape and being able to work with clients on everything from every direction: operations, finance, legal, you know, talent recruitment, strategy, design. It's been really fun, to be an advisor and to be free. Yeah. Josh Johnston: Growing up, I was actually naturally drawn to business. You know, starting things in as early as elementary school, middle school, high school, always had something going on. And so at 19, sophomore in college, I finally had it all figured out, so I dropped out of college, started a financial company. Amazing experience. Don't regret it at all. Best learning experience of my life. Actually, you reminded me, during that time, the company I was affiliated with ran a contest, and I happened to win a weekend stay at the Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans. This was in the early 2000s. I grew up staying in hotels, Motel 6s, Holiday Inns. I was the youngest with two older sisters, so I ended up sleeping on the floor, typical vacation style. Yeah. So checking into my first Ritz-Carlton, someone helping with the bags, I had never had that type of experience. And so that just opened me up to a world that I didn't know existed as a kid, and this was, again, was at 19 and 20. Fast-forward to 21, unfortunately it was a very painful journey also. Realized I wasn't quite ready as I thought I was, and unfortunately had to look in the mirror and decide I had certainly failed at that point, incurred some personal debt. And so, thank goodness I was only 21, dusted my shoulders off. Actually got a job waiting tables at an incredible restaurant just to save up some money, to, you know, give myself some time to breathe, decide what I was gonna do next. And so decided to actually go back to school. But it was during that experience where I was working so hard, doubles many days, just again to save up money, pay down some debt at that time, where if I just focused on serving people, taking care of them in this really unexpected way, I found myself finding joy and more excitement because I'd really kind of gotten into a dark place for a couple of years just going through so much stress. And so that's where I fell in love with hospitality. Again, serving people, weirdly enough, helped me in my journey, and so ended up switching my major to hospitality, still minored in business, and that led me to the Four Seasons Hotels, where I started right out of college, is where I started my career. Steve Carran: I'm excited to hear your answers on this since you all have been so successful in the industry. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received? Josh, we'll start with you. Josh Johnston: Yeah, great question. You know, I don't remember specifically maybe who gave me this advice, but something that's kind of stuck with me is when you're When we all get to that elderly age and we look back, the thing that we might regret the most are the things that we didn't try, the risks that we didn't take. And so I kind of approach a lot of big decisions that way. I'm more afraid of not giving it a shot than, you know, being too cautious, if that makes sense so. Steve Carran: Great. Amber? Amber Asher: When I was at Morgan's Hotel Group, I worked with the chief investment officer, Mark Gordon, and he told me... And I used to always be, like, the last one in the office, and he was too. We were always doing deals, and staying late, and he said to, you know, one of the pieces of advice he gave me was to learn people's patterns- and to understand the patterns. And it really has helped me in my career, always being the only woman at the table, very often. You know, I'd always have to figure out how to navigate things, and so I would, one of the ways I would do it is really to understand what does that person need today? How are they gonna look good for their boss, for their shareholders? And really try to deliver what they need so that they can deliver to their boss. And it works in hospitality, too. I mean, you're understanding your, your, the patterns of your guests, of your patrons. So for me, that's been something that I've held. So thank you to Mark. But I've always held on to that, and I've given that advice to people as well. Luis Segredo: Empathy is key for everything, so. Yeah. Absolutely ... for me, it was Sean O'Neill, the chairman of Newmarket when we started talking. And we were talking about corporate culture, and he said, "You have to work with people you like." And, 'cause you spend way too much time, which, to larger part of your life working to do what people you don't enjoy. And I, particularly being in a leadership position, I cherished that, 'cause it was, it was a matter of building the culture. If you want to build the culture, you had to have the people that were properly aligned in that regard, so. Josh Johnston: I could not agree with that more. That's awesome. Luis Segredo: It's a privilege if you can do it. Yeah. But it doesn't always happen, but ... Stuart Greif: I remember, growing up, my father would repeatedly tell me, "Don't touch that." Pretty good advice in general. Pretty good advice for most things. But I had a unique opportunity in high school. One of our prominent alum from a school I went to was somebody who became very successful in business and philanthropy and art and was a former ambassador. And had an opportunity to meet him on a number of occasions, the late, honorable Walter H. Annenberg, and also a patron of education. And I remember he said to me, "Always respect the other fellow. Always respect the other fellow," which is another version of the golden rule. And I grew up seeing life on both sides of the tracks. I worked in ironworks and factories, literally putting screws in boards on a Herman Miller manufacturing line, washing dishes in a restaurant, like many of you. Starting and surrounded by people that had a lot more and a lot less and seeing the common humanity. And I also had a unique opportunity to spend a summer in Japan, in my teens on a scholarship, and that just exploded the aperture on life. And so being able, I think, to walk in other shoes with empathy and to respect others. I-- when I had the executive job, obviously as CEO, chairman, and president of a publicly held company, I remember Alfredo, who took my trash out, and accorded him the same love, respect, and dignity that I did the president of our segment and didn't put the president on my segment, with no disrespect, up on an elevated pedestal in a way that was, in some ways, not merited and always with respect. So to me, that's kind of a core value since I was younger. My folks also nurtured that growing up. My mother would say, and this might sound crass, "If you sh-," well, I won't use the four-letter word, "But if you shovel manure, be the best manure shoveler that you can." So. Luis Segredo: If I could add to that, I think that particularly in our industry- Stuart Greif: Mm-hmm Luis Segredo: that is so relevant. Yeah. Because you're dealing with folks at all levels. And if you can't show respect and understand the, the, show empathy and be in their shoe, and position yourself or respect where they stand- ... you can't be in a leadership position. So well put. David Millili: Absolutely. Great advice. So Lewis, this is for you. So as AI moves from experimentation into real hotel operations, what needs to change for hotels to trust AI that now it's more than just a chatbot? Luis Segredo: We could spend a lot of time on this, but we'll try and keep it short. I think that there's, to expand that out, What we need to do is we need to create a consolidation of data, that's trusted, so that you can really put aside the hallucinations. So if you're thinking about it in the context of a customer, you need to be able to consolidate the customer data from across multiple systems and bring it together to then have the AI interact with that in a way of trust. if you don't have that, then you won't be able to get beyond that, and that's one example. There's lots of examples that you're gonna have to, The hotels in there, it's not easy for hotels because hotels have lots of different solutions that they use. But the AIs in different disciplines are gonna have to build on trusted data is what I'd say. Steve Carran: All right, Josh, I got one for you now. Steve Carran: So what do you think are some of the biggest challenges for hotels when they're aspiring to constantly deliver four to five-star level of service? Josh Johnston: Good question. You know, I think it's changed over the last really 5, 10 years, definitely. So I think, you know, if you have the right hoteliers in place, they have all the passion and all the drive, they want to make it happen. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the resources that are at their disposal. Every property's owned by a different group, they have different budgets to work with, and, in today's environment, labor standards are generally tighter than ever and resources for other investments unfortunately are also very strict depending on, again, the group. And so I think just the operational challenges that come along with that. That's really part of what led us to starting TrayAway is finding affordable, budget-appropriate technologies that hotels can easily implement, very simply and then help them meet the standards that they're trying to obtain, because again, not speaking on one organization or another where there's diamonds or stars or what have you, but there's hospitality which is the human element, the eye contact, the warm smile and then there's the actual core service standards. We provide technology, but we call it human touch technology. The guest can actually touch our hardware which is paired with the software. We can't replace hospitality, nor would we ever want to, but we can give those hardworking, room service servers or housekeepers tools to do a better job, so that they can actually meet the service standards while providing that human interaction. Stuart Greif: Yeah, obviously I have a bias in, you know, the stars, but, you know, there's a gentleman named Rick who is in the industry, worked for me at JD Power, and he used to tell this story about his dry cleaner. He had this wonderful hospitality dry cleaner. He'd be, "Rick, it's so good to see you, Verja. How was your daughter's softball game? And I heard your son got great grades. This, you know, it's great to see you." And it, like, just, you know, you don't have to be in a hotel to be in hospitality. There was just one problem. He was a terrible dry cleaner. So, like, you know, I mean, like he'd come up, the stuff wasn't ready, the stains didn't come out. And so to your point, it's a marriage of hospitality. You need that heart and that caring, and the service and consistency. The biggest difference between four and five-star hotels is actually really, not only consistency for you as a guest during your stay across the stay, and then other guests, and then all the guests over time. So many of the four-star hotels operate at a five-star level, they just don't do it as consistently as one would need. And the other thing I would say, this is my personal view, I'm not speaking for the company. I view standards as the skeletal system, that holds us up and all of the other parts around it, that anticipatory service. But it takes a heart of hospitality and the human brain, both intellect and discipline commercially, and the artistry and creativity which I see in a lot of independent hotels, lifestyle where a lot of that comes where you can do things that are more constrained in other environments. And I feel like sometimes we conflate standards or doing that with, no, that's like the foundation, right? Without which everything else falls down. But I feel like all of these pieces work together, and I love what you built with The Standard, and we talked about the Asia Cuba days and Morgan's hotels. I feel like, where we are as an industry, I'm curious what you think of the challenge, 'cause the diving, the level of difficulty's that much harder as a GM to manage the cost, to manage owners, to manage profitability. Labor, we talk about labor in the abstract, but these are colleagues, these are people. Nobody's accusing them of living a rich lifestyle, so, like, what are the... I love TrayAway because the innovation and Happy saves money, creates a better experience, revenue. How do you think about how we get out of the challenge of profit pressure while still delivering something unique and compelling that people feel and get back to the caring? Luis Segredo: With the amount of turnover in the industry, how do you marry that with delivering the service consistently? Stuart Greif: Mm-hmm. Luis Segredo: Because if you're trying to elevate the service and you're, you have standards, and you wanna build upon that, but if you're turning people over, it's even harder, and the industry has a problem. And Amber, you built that, successfully scaled it globally in addition to that, like— Amber Asher: Well, it wasn't just me, but yeah, I mean, but yeah— Stuart Greif: You and your team, I'm sorry. Amber Asher: Of course, yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, it's hard to scale creativity and culture, especially in multiple countries, multiple places. But it can be done. We did that and a lot of the kind of lifestyle boutique hotel independents will say, "Oh, we don't have brand standards. That's why we're special. That's why we're unique." We built brand standards in 2016, but it wasn't, "Oh, this is how big the room has to be, and this is, this is how..." There were certain things that we cared about. Operable windows. I'm not sure that we've still held true to that. Andre Balazs wanted operable windows. But there was always this idea that there are certain things that make us really unique. The way we do our guest experience, the way that we deliver our amenity, the way our tone of voice in our marketing, the way that we keep sales and marketing separate. Marketing goes with culture, sales is separate. There are things like that are unique to Standard and that we wanted to protect as we were going into different countries, and also understanding and being cognizant of what that country—how they experience us—but being true to who we are, but making sure that those standards, for lack of a better word, that we held onto those. And I think it's important as you're scaling companies to have that. And you can still be creative and have each place have a sense of place and make sure that the teams there understand it. But they all drank the Kool-Aid of it in a sense, because we always said we are not for everyone, but everyone is welcome. And I think that was having a unique point of view, but being very open and welcoming to everybody. Nice people, especially. Josh Johnston: Amazing. And just to piggyback on what you said, I really liked where you're going with that. So I joined Four Seasons in late '07, '08. That's a weird time in our history. It was a good time to be tucked away in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a few years starting that career. You know, one way I look at that was I feel like I joined the Four Seasons, and this is not about that brand in particular, but the industry as a whole at kind of the tail end of the golden era. And what I mean by that is, there was actually silver silverware in the dining room. There were actually fresh flowers on the room service trolleys. Only the highest grade food was purchased, whether it's ahi tuna flown in fresh six days a week, and it was a belief that we just give the absolute best experience, the loyalty will follow, and everyone wins in the long run. As we all know, all those private properties are now publicly owned. The quarterly profit measurements are very important as they should be for running an operation, and so I think that's where the challenges have really started in the last 10, 15, 20 years. So to get back to one of your points you were bringing up, I think, and I'll defer to Luis on AI and how this is gonna play out exactly, but I think the power of AI and the technologies that are becoming available are gonna give us maybe the new golden era of hospitality, where all the mundane tasks that used to be costly by someone can now be done more automated so that those someones can put on that smile, create that eye contact and still provide that amazing level of experience, while keeping the operators happy with those quarterly PNLs. But at least that's something that we're working towards. Amber Asher: AI is not gonna be just about cutting costs, although I do think there's gonna be systems. Our systems have always been very antiquated in hospitality, and they don't speak to each other, and those things are starting to shift. But I think it's also about revenue and new sources of revenue. And as everyone's going into lifestyle hotels, which is where I've spent my whole career, you're not just selling a room, you're selling the experience of food and beverage, the retail, the live music event, whatever it is. And I think there's groups like Olive, or others that will create new commerce platforms and ways that independents can compete and sell other parts of their business. And so often I was... I stayed at the Marram in Montauk recently, I love that hotel. It's a cool hotel. And they send an email that says, "Oh, would you like an early check-in?" Yeah, in the Hamptons, of course you want an early check-in. "Would you like a bottle of champagne?" "Yes, I would definitely like a bottle of champagne." And it's like you don't think necessarily of those things, and we definitely did that at The Standard as well. But when you don't have the big distribution platforms behind you, the independents compete at a different level. And so I think some of these tools that can take away the friction is important, but also that can elevate the revenue sources as well. Stuart Greif: That's a unique opportunity, I think, for the independents. I'll share a little bit of what I shared from on stage from the Independent Hotel Show in Miami earlier today on AI. And I'm speaking more from my global leadership role as one of three global executives for Microsoft in travel and hospitality in an AI-native startup that is a unicorn now. So the irony is in the age of AI, that the actual lived experience, what we're talking about, what hospitality, what we all wanna give, is actually being magnified in differentiating. So it's one thing a lot of people appropriately look at, "How do I show up? How am I visible with AI?" You need to do that, but that's more about accuracy, understanding is there a hotel, is there a pet policy, what types of suites? Asking questions that are accuracy. That's different from being recommended. McKinsey data from towards the end of last year showed across all four LLMs that what you do on your website, what you do with your marketing, your attempts to advertise is only 20% or less of how you show up and get recommended. 80% plus is other sources. Actually in luxury hospitality, and is this a little self-serving? No, it's a lot self-serving, but it's true. Forbes Travel Guide is— Amber Asher: It's right up there... Stuart Greif: And when you look at it, it's not because I work there. It's because since 1958, it's an independent third-party brand that focuses on service and experience. There are others there too. It's earned media. It's your reputation. It's what others are saying about you. So you can market. My friend Calvin Stottle says, if you have a mediocre experience as a hotel, as a restaurant, doesn't matter, no amount of marketing's effectively gonna save you. All it's gonna do is let more people know you're mediocre. And your AI digital assistant wants Amber to be happy. So even if you don't say best, if you're like, "Give me the hotels that fit this, I'm looking for these things," it's not coming back with the three most mediocre examples. And what's showing up, and this is why I think independents, just like when TripAdvisor started, the little smaller one-offs have the opportunity to show up higher than the big scale players because they can create a differentiated experience. And if people are talking and having a great experience, which is the ground truth of caring and hospitality, you're gonna be at the top. And if you're not, you'll still have a business if you're near the convention center, you're part of a large loyalty program. But are you really gonna not just be visible, are you gonna be recommended? And the top hotels that do are gonna drive the highest ADRs, and then you're gonna get recommended the next tier down if they're all sold out, right? So I really think it's gonna magnify those that are giving real hospitality and value. Amber Asher: Yeah. When ChatGPT was kind of first becoming more relevant, I was sitting in The Standard office with Amar, who was my former colleague, dear friend, and we said— I said, "Let's try, like, what's the coolest hotel in New York City?" And they said, "The Standard." And we were like, "Yes, The Standard." And I, you know, but that's... We weren't, we don't advertise, you know? I think what was unique about The Standard when I originally started working with Andre, was the press they were getting was not a press release they were putting out, it was actual press. People wanted to talk about what was going on there, and I think that's the kind of, you know, that's what was driving the recognition that they were getting. It's not the coolest because we said it was the coolest, but a lot of other people said it was the coolest. So, you know, that's— Luis Segredo: And what's the coolest for you may not be the coolest for someone else. So if you think about, well, I mean, you may be wrong, obviously. Obviously, I could be wrong. Amber Asher: Obviously, you could be wrong. Luis Segredo: No, but if you were to think of the example I've heard is, if you're a parent traveling with a girls' volleyball teamand you're looking for a hotel in that, in a particular city, there's a context of the purpose of the , party. Luis Segredo: The other folks that have stayed there in that same capacity or that same situation, that have said, "Oh, yeah, the girls had a great time in the pool afterwards. It was very safe, and we had a great time," that is all feeding the AI so that when you're coming in and saying, "Hey, I've got a girls' group that I'm taking to St. Louis, what's the Stuart Greif: right fit... Luis Segredo: what's the right fit? Steve Carran: Yeah. That was great. So this is the envelope portion of the round table. So we're gonna have each of you pick an envelope, read the question. You can answer it, or you can ask somebody else to answer it. So do we have any volunteer to pick the first envelope? Lewis, okay. I saw you flinch. Luis Segredo: Yeah. Yeah. There we go. You reached for the glasses. Just in case I gotta read this. I'm gonna go with Cheese Pizza. Stuart Greif: Yeah, Mr. Carson. Be funny if it's what's your favorite food. Luis Segredo: Yeah. Work and technology best support hotel teams while still preserving the human element of hospitality. So I'll start, and then we'll see who else wants to pick up on this. I'd say that there is so much work that's behind the scenes that could be removed, that needs to be removed, so that the frontline folks, because number one, because we can't find the staffing, and number two, because they're not necessarily going to do it accurately. So we can improve the performance of the operations by doing it. But then that frees them up to do the front facing, the front of the house work. In addition, I think that you also have the opportunity that technology can provide the right information at the right time to the staff to give that special moment that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get. It's that notion, like in the example of AI, that you ask it to evaluate 100 different permutations, and it comes back with the best answer. There's no way that you could figure that out on your own if you're doing that. So I think we could say there's... And I've said a lot there, but I'll Josh Johnston: Yeah, I mean, I'll essentially echo mostly what you said there, is really helping the operations be more efficient. And whether they're short staffed due to recruiting challenges or due to tightened labor standards, giving the team that they do have the most effective technology to run the smoothest shift possible so that everything's under control. And when they're actually having that human interaction, they're able to shine through that hospitality piece of the puzzle. That's really one of our core missions, whether it's housekeeping or in room dining or pool and beach, all of our technology is designed to just help the team member do a better job at what they already are attempting their best to do, which ultimately leads to a better guest experience. So it's enhancing the human touch, I think. Stuart Greif: I think a couple things are helpful for framing. Stepping out, I think this point in time we're moving from, and this is Andreessen Horowitz that was seminal in the internet era, also in the AI era. So essentially we're moving from information gathering and analysis to real actual operational execution. Not robustly, but starting. So for example, if you think about the ability using AI, chatbots or assistants to actually request towels and have that go into the housekeeping ticket, your former HotSauce and what you talked about. That's actually happening, not theory. The ability, for example, to make reservations and actual bookings. There was a company, I don't want to mention their name, but a startup that's actually doing this at hotels that was at the event today. If you think about front desk, the time consuming task of pulling together who gets upgraded, who's what loyalty member, how long are they staying. Hugely manual, 95% of that automated for a human in the loop to then review that. The ability as well to look at the GM report that would take hours and hours in different groups to have AI automate that which has been done. And at the push of the button any time for an owner, for the GM, that data information can be pulled seamlessly. That's giving time back. That's reducing the workload. In F&B in the kitchen, food waste, and it's not all, "Okay, how much got wasted?" It's, "Hey, people at buffets are taking a bite out of everything because they want to try it. Let's make smaller pastries so they eat." So the thing is, it's such a broad based tool that can be applied in so many areas. In revenue management it's being used. In sales, for example, getting a first cut, you can feed emails and texts and even voice memos into AI to respond to a proposal. And for the lower quality or ones you can much more quickly have a response to free up time to focus on the higher ones. So these are all actual use cases that are being implemented, and increasingly what I'm seeing, because I spend a lot of time with startups, with corporates, with venture like you, Amber, I'm on boards and advisors and work in my free time passion in tech, is we're actually starting to increasingly free and give time back through actual execution. Luis Segredo: There's a physical side of it as well, and I think, for example, the robotic vacuums Stuart Greif: Mm hmm... Luis Segredo: I think is a godsend. To get that working right and remove the notion of having to shuffle this around was wonderful. Amber Asher: Yeah. Just one thing I was thinking when you were talking about the human element is, you know, at the, maybe in the few years ago at Standard, I felt like, and this is anywhere, I think that the layers of the hotel business where now there's owners, there's asset managers, there's lenders, there's so many different layers. There's so many reports that are constantly being produced, and I think, oftentimes when you have, well, certainly when you have food and beverage, you want those managers on the floor. You don't want them in the back office filling out reports all night. And so if you can start to be able to automate some of those things or make them work in a flow much easier, I think that would be really helpful. Stuart Greif: Horst Schulze talked about the need for more leaders building trust on the floor with their colleagues and with clients and less managers behind. And then, some of you may know my good friend Gilad, who's on the board of Virtuoso in AI, and he speaks quite a bit. He says something to the fact of nobody got in this industry to be a clerk, to be an administrator behind the scenes, right? We got in because we care about people. So I love what you said because it's about returning us to that part of hospitality. Amber Asher: Not writing reports in the back office. No. Steve Carran: All right, who wants to take the next one? Amber Asher: I'll do it. Steve Carran: All right. Amber Asher: If I read it out loud. Hotels often work across dozens of disconnected systems. What problems does that create that the industry still hasn't solved? Steve Carran: I don't know who to ask this to. Amber Asher: Stuart. Stuart Greif: One more time. Amber Asher: Hotels often work across dozens of disconnected systems. What problems does that create that the industry still hasn't solved? Stuart Greif: So if the legacy approach to connecting systems could work by tautology, by definition, it would have. It's failed, okay? And there's nothing wrong with them in it. There's not enough time, treasure, both in terms of dollars available and human resource, to solve things the old fashioned way. Chris Hemmeter of Their Ventures is probably the longest in the space, talks about what's different now with generative AI versus kind of plain vanilla AI, if you will, is the ability, and these are paraphrasing his words, to go around the creaky legacy systems to be able to take out the information you need and to kind of solve that in a more forward thinking. And we went through this process of, okay, you got to connect all the things individually, and then, okay, we can do API as a product, and there's a little more scale way, and we built middleware buses to say, "Well, we don't want to rip and replace the PMS. Let's build something here and pipe all the data in, and we have cloud on the back end, and we can do it." So what the AI is enabling is the ability to go into all those different systems without having to build this heavy cost intensity and much more quickly, with less time, cost, et cetera. There's, at Destination AI, which is coming up, the deepest AI hotel event, there's a gentleman who worked with Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos at Microsoft. He, this guy, Jim Harding, co created, or created rather, MS DOS and co created the Amazon Marketplace. He's somebody that's innovative. His predicate is that we need a new operating system for AI that it's still, even if you, Amber, do a great job, you're still connected to us. Sorry about that. But you can't, like the theory of constraints, you can't go faster than the constraint in the system. That we need a system that's up here where agentic AI can work and be able to connect seamlessly without having to go through a major tech player or others. He calls this the Peranet, and he'll be talking, actually the keynote at Destination AI, which is wonderful. But I think, like, that ability of how can we, people can start a company with less cost and intensity. So I think the economics are changing and the tech is changing because doing it the way we did simply has failed. Otherwise, we wouldn't all be here, right? Mm hmm. So I'm excited about that aspect. I wonder what the gentlemen with technology backgrounds think. I'm going to Luis Segredo: challenge you on this one. Stuart Greif: Good. I love Luis Segredo: that. I'm going to challenge you on this one because AI is not the panacea for all things. Stuart Greif: I agree with that. I agree so far. Luis Segredo: AI serves as an opportunity to accelerate. But what we're seeing here is, historically, you have point based solutions that are built for different parts of the operation because they're required. Something as basic as, you have table reservations running in one system. You have spas that are running in another. And because hotels are the way they are, there's tenants running at each property. And then you have a property management system and then you have reviews, and then you have... And so you have all these different data sources that are available out there for you. You could say, "AI, help me go off and build software," to tie that together. And it will do a great job to help you get to a certain point. But can you... To my earlier point, can you trust that data? Amber Asher: Yeah. Luis Segredo: And in that regard, and to be self serving, this is a space that we've settled into to say we need to be able to create the fabric to connect all these systems, to connect the data in a way that you can... and normalize it, because different systems are gonna be in different ways, so that you can then trust it and build upon it. Stuart Greif: So I think we would disagree on time horizon. I agree with you for the most part today. You know, we're in year three since ChatGPT. I worked on generative AI and agentic at Microsoft. Skift, there's an article in 2017. When it came out, everybody took a year to catch up. If you look at what a mobile phone, not when it was invented, mass commercialization looked like physically, I shared this today, in year three. And then go look at how it was one of the first that had a website when internet, when websites were already a thing. And three years, not the first year, like when websites were there, it looks horrible. So, like, is it... Sometimes it is. Is it 100 years? Now, is it 50? Is it 20? Is it 10? I think the time horizon is much longer than people think. But I do think that the tools are gonna enable us because I've, I'm privy to some that I can't talk about because of NDA, that are really changing the economics and dynamics. I'm not smart enough. No one is to know where it's going. Amber Asher: Another drink. Have another drink, and then tell us. Stuart Greif: Yeah. Yeah. Luis Segredo: What I'd say here is, yes, it's a matter of time horizon, but I think it's also a rearchitecture of the systems and the way that they function. That's fair. Because if I come to you and I say, "You're a chat assistant," and I go, "You're the Marriott chat assistant," and I go, "Where am I staying tonight?" Steve Carran: Mm hmm. Luis Segredo: Or where do I have a table reservation for dinner tonight? You'd have to peer out potentially through thousands of different connection endpoints to get that answer, which is not tenable in today's architecture. Stuart Greif: Today, I agree. That's why my point about the architecture is legacy. Luis Segredo: Right. So it's a rearchitecture of the legacy, so it's a replacement of the systems. Until such time as we have tenances Stuart Greif: Mews, Mews publicly has talked about their rearchitecting, 'cause I think they realize that over 10 to 20 years, I don't want to speak for Richard Matthew, a native AI system, this is why a lot of the SaaS players, which I believe the incumbents have much longer lead time. Like, you know, Salesforce may be the CRM even if there's no CRM and you're just asking questions of it. So I don't disagree with you. I think we're in more violent agreement than disagreement. I think it's Luis Segredo: We have to get violent. Yeah. But Stuart Greif: But I think it is more of a, like, over the next five, 10, 10 to 20 year arc, and I think about the internet and other technology and where we are today. I agree it's not any time in the next one to two years. Is it three? No, there's so much that has to change. Amber Asher: Everything's going fast. Apparently, the world's ending in 20, oh, in 2031. Well, so we don't. So we should. I'll make you a bet, Mike. Have a drink. 2032. Yeah, by 2032. Let's come back here when the world's over. Let's check in. Josh Johnston: That's it. Steve Carran: All right. Got two more. Josh Johnston: Oh, goodness. What if we won? What does another industry do exceptionally well that hospitality could learn from? Interesting. Amber, I'll give you that one. Amber Asher: I think that as, you know, I realized when I, after I sold company and had a lot of time to think about what my hobbies were, I realized I did not have a ton of hobbies, but working was my hobby. The other one was shopping. And I felt like add to cart was something that I was constantly doing. And I think, you know, the retail and a lot of those ways, and this is again going back to Olive, why it resonates with me, is that there's so many opportunities, like to buy different things and to like when you think about The Standard or Bunkhouse, they have amazing retail. When I would go to Bunkhouse for like a board meeting or to meet, to be with the team, they would buy gifts for me to bring back to my children. They would think about it ahead of time and we had amazing gift shops that did really well. So they would set up gifts that I could, or bags of candy. Like, if you could go in and be able to pre order, "Oh, do you need a gift for this?" Or, "Do you want to get a college sweatshirt?" Or whatever it is, and be able to do things in add to cart in that way, or be able to continue to grow revenue. I think that the retail business has done a great job of staying top of mind and growing revenue and add basically through the add to cart program. Luis Segredo: I'd say that kind of speaking to the earlier point, if we look at the travel journey in the airlines compared to hotels, they can create a much more fluid experience Steve Carran: Mm. Luis Segredo: because they've created more consolidation around the systems. Steve Carran: Mm hmm. Luis Segredo: And that actually says two things, because there's a technical side of that, but there's a reason why that exists Steve Carran: Mm. Luis Segredo: and it's the operational side of it. The notion of brand management owner in the chains creates those fractures. Steve Carran: Yeah. That's true. Luis Segredo: And if we could get around that, that would be wonderful. But Stuart Greif: I think that's really interesting. There's this strange juxtaposition. I don't have an answer per se, but it's an observation in that, you know, since we went asset light twenty five years ago and whether private equity or public ownership, there's constant pressure on both the bottom line and top line growth, and that cumulatively and a slightly misalignment of long term incentives. What's interesting to me is many other industries, tech, retail, are much faster in terms of innovation and changing and things like that. But ironically, all the other industries are realizing there was, I think it was a Fortune article about hospitality is the most underrated discipline. When you look at other industries, opening hotels, getting into experiences, understanding that the connection with their brand is emotional and it's deep down, and that there's only so much you can do clienteling in a boutique and that all these other things, whether experiential, for example, and this is public, it was with permission shared on LinkedIn. I gave a keynote at Bugatti, so the hypercar company at Molsheim at their headquarters, the first time they had somebody outside of it. They make what are arguably like this form, technique, art, like together sculptural beauty, performance, et cetera. One of the most magnificent cars, but the problem is people increasingly, they wanna live that lifestyle, they wanna identify, they wanna be treated when they come in, they wanna have the experience. And the moment that, imagine I told them, I showed them an image, I apologized to the CEO, of canvas seats that were disgusting in a Bugatti, makes you throw up, right? But no sooner would you have that than have the rest of the experience, right? Not be at that same level. And so I think it's curious that other industries are, and I agree with you, I think industry structure is a big, and you talked about it in different ways with the ports and management, and yet everybody understands that the industry we're in is like the essence of connection with humans, especially as these devices have made us more connected and yet more lonely or disassociated, that what we're doing is what everybody else is realizing is the heart of what it is to be human and what people really crave. I don't have a better answer, just an observation. Luis Segredo: So the observation is, forget what we could learn from somebody else. They should just keep learning from us. Stuart Greif: We should learn from them too. I think both directions, yeah. Steve Carran: Stuart, I think you got the last one. Stuart Greif: Oh. Okay. Ready to do the Carson thing, not because of what it'll say inside, but what might come out of my mouth. Ah, okay. Well, this is a spell apple. That's an easy one. This is a three parter. Which is worse, that you buy your outfits or you choose to wear them out in public? And does your wife know? Actually, my wife encourages me on the louder ones to wear them when I'm out of town, not with her. So here's a question, and I want everybody, including the two of you, please, to answer it as well. What keeps you up at night as a hospitality leader in 2026? What keeps you up at night as a hospitality leader? And don't tell me it's the light from the alarm clock. You can tell me that. Luis Segredo: The industry issue that I think worries me the most is the margin compression that owners are experiencing, and it's not necessarily understood well. I think it's taken a couple of years for the brands to understand this and to truly engage, more than lip service. But there's a real challenge there that we have to figure out how to solve, or not solve, but work towards. You've seen rate, and thankfully yours are performing. But revenue's flat, and expenses don't stop. Stuart Greif: So brands are profitable, but if the management and owners aren't, then you kind of kill the goose that lays the golden egg because nobody wants to get into hospitality, right? Because then there's no reason. And the brands need unit growth as well. Luis Segredo: Yeah, and it was the follow on to the conversation we were just having before. Stuart Greif: Economics. Luis Segredo: That's an excellent point. Stuart Greif: What keeps you up at night? Amber Asher: Honestly, all the years of working in hospitality, working as a lawyer on the biggest things that were going wrong at a company and the biggest deals that were happening, I was up a lot of nights. And then running the company, taking it global, there were so many things that kept me up at night. I was going through all of it in my head. Right now, nothing's keeping me up at night except for my 15 year old daughter. She's keeping me up at night, and my 12 year old as well. But right now, when I'm sitting back and I'm not running a company, and I'm working on various different things and helping different groups as they grow and scale, I'm excited for hospitality. I'm excited that it's going to maintain what's special about it as the world becomes more automated. And I think it's an opportunity for people to touch the guests more, to have those experiences, and to experience what we know is so special about hospitality. So nothing is keeping me up at night. I sleep quite well. David Millili: Other than tray tables in the hallway. Stuart Greif: Other than tray tables in the hallway. Josh Johnston: It keeps everyone up at night. Yes, exactly. That's what we're here to help with, help you sleep better. Great question. I think, at the core of it, maybe it's just not doing my best at things that are within my control. I don't worry almost at all about things that are out of my control. We launched TrayAway literally right before the pandemic. Terrible time to launch a new hotel technology company. That was out of everyone's control. It wasn't in the business plan, and we weathered that storm, thankfully. But today, there are lots of things within our control, within our reach, and it's just a matter of whether we're doing our best. I liked what you talked about earlier about company culture. Our big three things, we were just hiring last week, with new team members starting the following week, are positive attitude, work ethic, and doing your best every day. I call it the mirror test, something we came up with internally. Over time, we'll know if your performance is meeting what the team needs, but on a day to day basis, when you look in the mirror, only you know if you're giving your best, right? That's something you have to answer for yourself each day. I think about that a lot. I have days when I feel like I did great. I have days when I feel like I struggled. Did I feel like I gave it my best? If I don't, then that might be something that would keep me up at night. Steve Carran: Yeah. I have a six month old. I'm with Amber. I'm getting... Amber Asher: Sleep every moment you can. Steve Carran: Yeah. No, she's doing great. But I wouldn't say it keeps me up at night. I've said this on the podcast 100 times: when an independent hotel gets bought up by a brand, a little piece of me dies. We have these leaders from great independent hotels and great groups who come on, and I'm always like, "Don't sell. Just hold on as long as you can." It's like I feel like the chubby kid in The Sandlot when he's like, "Don't grow up. Don't ever grow up." I don't know. I get so sad when that happens. I understand why they do it, but at the same time, I want to see that one independent hotel group that gets to that level, becomes successful, and is ready to sell but doesn't because they're so passionate about the independent space. Luis Segredo: There are a lot of small groups. There are a lot of great small groups out there. Steve Carran: There are. Luis Segredo: You were mentioning some before that hopefully will continue to... Amber Asher: And hopefully the AI and the technology will help. Luis Segredo: Yeah, and I think we talked about this. Maybe that's the next 45 minute section. But there's so much opportunity for them to differentiate, as you were talking about before, and stand out today. Steve Carran: Absolutely. Building into the local community and really finding what makes them unique to differentiate them from the brand, so when you walk into that hotel, you're like, "This is something that I haven't seen in this city," right? Really tying into the culture, whether that's culinary or whatever it may be. Having something in the rooms that ties back to the city or state they're in. So that's my soapbox. David Millili: For me, it would be that we can't have that if we don't have the next generation and people don't look at hospitality as a career and have that passion. I've always felt that way. I started out as a busboy, worked every job in a hotel, ran tech companies, and I always felt like it was my duty. I was sometimes even happy when people left my company because I felt like I helped them in their career and helped them go to the next level. Sometimes, when you talk to certain people from companies or go into hotels, you realize we need people who are passionate about hospitality and view it as a career, not just a job. Not someone thinking, "I don't want to work at McDonald's, so I'm going to work the front desk." I think we need more and more leaders who help pull people up as they're starting out in hospitality, moving them up the ranks with us. I agree with what Steve said, but I don't think we can have that unless people get passionate about the industry and help pull everybody along. Stuart Greif: For me, it's what you talked about. It's where we are at this point in time with profitability, industry structure, and economics, so that everybody can win, including people working in hotels. Without that, there isn't a sustainable future. Especially at a time when younger generations are less inclined to enter the industry for a variety of reasons. In luxury alone, the number of luxury hotels and branded residences is supposed to double in the next five years. Where are the people going to come from? We've already grown a lot, and you can't clone our CEO, Herman Elder, a world class five star hotelier, or Barry Sternlicht at Baccarat and Montage, who actually grew Ritz Carlton for Horst Schulze as one of his GMs around the world. You can't clone Herman in five years. You can't clone you. Without senior people to coach, mentor, and develop others and shorten that learning time, my concern is that even if there is demand in the market, the industry may struggle to provide the level of experience and service people expect. I think there are people like Alex Cabañas, the chairman of Pyramid, whom we've all talked about. He's someone who can be a catalyst because he touches so many areas through his Astound Ventures, where he's trying to look at innovation. Not all innovation has to be AI or even software. For example, one of the companies he's supported makes heated outdoor furniture. Instead of using outdoor heat lamps, which can be environmentally burdensome, you can stay warmer in these heated units. You can stay outside longer, which also means food and beverage sales can continue around the clock and year round. I think innovation and recalibration of negotiations across brands and all the different stakeholders need to find a path forward. AI will play a key role in that. In the short to medium term, I think the next couple of years, maybe up to five years, will be a really bumpy challenge. I do think AI taking away entry level positions in other industries, and I have children, so I'm not happy about this, may bring more people back to hospitality. We're in a real life environment, and it feels good to give somebody a good experience. It feels good when you have the ability to impact somebody. These people may discover or rediscover hospitality and understand, as I did, that even if they didn't start in this industry, it's where their heart and soul have always been. Luis Segredo: Well, if people love that, and I agree with you, nobody goes into the field because they want to build reports. But if we can use technology to create automation, increase accuracy, and take some of the manual labor out of the work, then we're inviting people into an industry where they can be more customer facing and do the parts that are more profitable. So we're actually solving both problems at the same time. I think technology can really get us out of this problem. Stuart Greif: The part I always come back to is Barry Diller's quote. He was at Phocuswright last year, I think, and said, "Where there's life, there's travel." After COVID, the notion that we've traveled as a species since time immemorial for survival and gathering, then for commerce, and then to adventure and expand our horizons, is important. I love Pico Iyer. He's a friend and a writer who wrote something to the effect of, "We travel first to lose ourselves. We travel next to find ourselves." I'm encouraged that the younger generation is traveling more because, in a world that's more fragmented, more contentious, and more tribal than ever, the ability of people to see life through another perspective and walk in someone else's shoes, even across town in the same city, gives me hope. It doesn't have to be halfway around the world. That ability to see another perspective gives me hope that the younger generation will see travel as a means to create and foster more connection and hospitality as human beings. I'm a realist. I'm not living in the clouds, but that's really my hope: that it creates more people who build bridges instead of erecting walls or barriers. Luis Segredo: Love that. David Millili: All right. We have a couple more before we wrap this up. Luis, we've talked a lot about technology. Hotels have more technology than ever. We all know that over the past 25 years, the tech stack keeps getting bigger and bigger, but the teams still struggle to get a complete picture of what's going on across the business. What do you think the biggest disconnects are today? Luis Segredo: Again, we were talking about it earlier. The different disciplines within an operation are using their own technologies. The opportunity is to bring that data together so they have an understanding of where they stand. For example, you may have a pre arrival tool sending out outreach to the customer to encourage them to upgrade or buy amenities, but the person at the front desk may have no idea that any of that has occurred. You may have a table management system with restaurant reservations that's fantastic for a lifestyle property, but if the front desk doesn't know when guests arrive, or the restaurant doesn't know that the people arriving are staying at the hotel, that's a problem. We need to bring that together, and it's possible. The technology is available, AI assists, and then it serves up an insight. You have to digest all this information and then tell the person interacting with the guest what the right question is. It's possible, but it is still a real problem. Amber Asher: Yeah, I think what's interesting is that hospitality is a 24 hour business, as we know, and food and beverage moves quickly. When we would use new technology, we didn't want to have to train someone on it. I think it's because, generationally, I didn't grow up with an iPhone. I didn't have one until I was older, and that made it harder. You couldn't waste a couple of days training someone on new technology, so you just used what everyone already had. Now, we give our children phones and iPads at a very young age. They are so technologically savvy that they can run circles around us. I do think there will be a shift where it will just be second nature for them to use technology that, for my generation, maybe the one right beneath me, and definitely the one above me, was harder to transition to. I think it will naturally evolve, and I think it's going to happen really quickly. David Millili: Man, I'm so old. At one of the first hotels I ran in New York City, it was the first time the staff was using a mouse, so we encouraged them to play Solitaire so they knew how to use the mouse to operate the system. Luis Segredo: I'm so old, I was training people how to use a mouse. David Millili: Yeah, because nobody knew how to use one. Nobody had one. Josh Johnston: That's interesting. Steve Carran: All right, final question. This has been a great conversation. We appreciate you all. Josh, I'm going to ask you this one first. What does meaningful hospitality innovation look like, and how can hotels embrace new technology without overcomplicating it for the staff and the guests? Josh Johnston: I think meaningful technology innovation is about keeping it simple, right? Really looking at everything as intuitively as possible. At TrayAway, literally every product and solution we provide starts with the staff experience. The in room dining server and order taker are going to be using this technology every day. I knew that if the director or whoever the decision maker was purchased and implemented it, but they didn't enjoy using it every day, ultimately they would stop using it, and then they would no longer be a customer. We really thought about the core of how easy it is to use. If they're not very technologically savvy, is it color coded? Is it simple to navigate, like you were talking about? While your daughters are young and it's second nature, a lot of in room dining teams have staff who may be 40, 50, or even 60 years old, and English may be a second language. So a lot of thought went into the user experience, meaning the staff experience, in our technology. We work hard every day to get that right. Then that leads to the guest experience. On the guest experience side, unique to TrayAway, the only thing guests know about our technology is that, in most cases, there's a button on their tray. They click it, and it sends a signal through the hotel Wi Fi to the staff. The staff handles everything else, but the guest can click a button. If you're out at a pool and beach operation and want to order lunch or a round of drinks, you click a button attached to an umbrella pole. It notifies the staff on their wristwatch, and they come over and take care of you. It's all very intuitive. We're bringing the internet into reality and making things seamless and simple. Stuart Greif: If you press it rapidly 10 times, do they cut you off? Is that the signal they know? Josh Johnston: Thankfully, we have features built in for that. You have to breathe into the straw first. We thankfully have a precaution built in for that, so they won't get pinged 10 times in that example. Stuart Greif: Very cool. David Millili: All right. Well, that does it for this special roundtable episode of The Modern Hotelier. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. Amber Asher: Thank you. Luis Segredo: Thank you. Josh Johnston: Thank you for having us. Luis Segredo: Thank you.