Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #293: A System that Actually Delivers Personalization & Improves the Guest Experience | with the Alliants Team
Transcript
- The Modern Hotelier #293: A System that Actually Delivers Personalization & Improves the Guest Experience | with the Alliants Team === Steve Carran: Welcome to an episode of The Modern Hotelier coming to you from HITEC from the Modern Hotelier booth. We are joined by our good friends, the Alliance team. We have Tristan Gadsby, the CEO, Andrew Pirret, the SVP of Customer Experience, and Alberto Santana, the CRO. Thanks for sitting down with us, gentlemen. How are we doing today? Tristan Gadsby: Very good. Beautiful. Alberto Santana: Very good, Steve. Thank you. It's great to be here. Santana. Santa brings you gifts on Christmas. Steve Carran: Did I say Santa? Alberto Santana: You did, but it's okay. Steve Carran: Santana. Alberto Santana: This is like a gift in and of itself being here with you. Tristan Gadsby: Alberto brings you gifts all year round. Alberto Santana: All year. That's— Steve Carran: The difference. You are a gift. You guys all are a gift. Tristan, you recently came back from Sydney where Alliance was a sponsor for the Le Cle d'Or event. Can you share a little bit more about the collaboration and what you learned from that event? Tristan Gadsby: Yeah, so Cle d'Or, they are the society of all the top concierges around the world, so absolutely amazing group of people. Obviously, they have hospitality at the core, so if you cut them in half, they literally say hospitality. No, it was absolutely amazing. We've been involved with them for the last three years formally. We're actually going to sponsor them for another year. We became part of their education day. When technology was becoming a bigger part of their everyday work, we wanted to really help them embrace the best of technology to help them do their job. We have a belief in Alliance that technology, whilst it can do a lot of things and automate a lot of mundane tasks, what it really does is help people become superhuman. Really, hospitality is about human interaction and contact. We wanted to inform them of the technology that they could use and then help them use that technology in their everyday job. So that was the idea of the collaboration. I hope they'd say that they've got a lot from it. It's certainly been really rewarding for us to be involved with them and see them grow and use technology way more effectively, and all the latest AI tech today versus a few years ago. Steve Carran: That's awesome. And Alberto, we heard a story you were sharing with the HSMAI and the HITEC group about Valentina's stay. Alberto Santana: Oh— Steve Carran: I love that. A World Cup story. Can you share a little bit more about this? Alberto Santana: Yeah, I'd love to. There's a huge opportunity to learn more about the people that are coming to your property, and you have a lot of information already. For example, you put out a World Cup deal, right? Somebody books that World Cup deal. Well, you already know what code they booked under. Tristan Gadsby: Sure. Alberto Santana: And then, if they're coming with other people, you're focused so much on that primary booker that you're kind of missing everything else, and you're not really paying attention to what that person is coming to your town for. So if you would think about it for a second, when was the last time a hotel said, "What's bringing you to town?" Steve Carran: Not recently. Alberto Santana: No, it basically doesn't happen, right? Yeah. So if you look at this opportunity, what we use here is an example of Valentina coming to Miami, Florida, because Uruguay, in that case, is playing in Miami, Florida. They're coming in. They made a reservation for three adults. You only have one name. What about the other two adults? Steve Carran: Yep. Alberto Santana: Right? And this happens a lot in our industry. And I'll make a little joke because Father's Day is coming up, and Jim Jefferies did a great job in saying this story. My idea of a good Father's Day is that nobody spends money for 24 hours. Okay? Give me just 24 hours without spending money. And that happens a lot when I'm booking a hotel stay. I'll book a hotel somewhere. Let's say it's four nights and it's $500 a night, just to use easy round numbers. That's $2,000, and you're trying to upsell me at the moment of booking. I'm already out two grand, and I haven't even gotten there yet. And then, what are you trying to upsell me? You're trying to upsell me a spa. Well, I told you I had kids with me. You're trying to upsell me a romance package. Again, I'm coming with the kids. By the way, the romance helped get the kids there, but it goes away the second the kids show up, right? So there's this huge opportunity, we think, where you can come in and say, "Hey, I know this person's coming for this reason. Let me do things that are part of that stay." Absolutely. "Let me do something that's part of what they're coming here for." And we hear all this when it comes to Taylor Swift, right? You see so many people that said, "Well, I did a Taylor Swift pop-up. I did a Taylor Swift this," and we got it all ready. Well, if your hotel's not decorating for the World Cup, if you're not decorating for the people that might be coming there, you're missing this opportunity to connect emotionally with people. Yeah. And more importantly, what about the other people that were coming to the room? What if Valentina made the booking because she's the one that gets the Zelles or the one that you Venmo later on? Because we all have a friend like that, but you're missing out on the other two people that are there. We should learn their names. And we have a customer recently—out of 20,000 check-ins, 13,000 added additional names to the reservation. Wow. That's 13,000 more profiles than you have today. And again, if it works out the way it does in my house—Father's Day, I'm not going to spend any money—but if you find out Mrs. Santana and you get her name and information, I promise you you're going to get everything that there is to offer there. And this is what you need to be doing, and this is the opportunity that we're providing to people. Steve Carran: I never really thought about that, but if you're not on the reservation, you're almost like a second-class citizen invisible of that hotel, and you're completely invisible. Nothing there. Yeah. Very awe, and nobody really. Alberto Santana: And think about it. When you make that booking, you had the money for the booking. Yeah. You're out two grand. Let's say you're paying for it, right? For the most part. But I have vacation money like everybody else. Yeah. That extra little wallet, kind of like when you leave room for dessert, right? That little extra wallet comes up. You can get that when you connect with people, and you have a great opportunity. They told you what they were coming in for. Just like this show right here. We're here at HITEC. You know who booked under a HITEC res code. You know what they're doing here. You know what time they're going to get home. You know what time they're going to leave in the morning. You can open up huge opportunities around that. Steve Carran: Agree 100%. That is awesome. You guys are extending the personalization that everybody's talking about. Few are doing it, and you guys are putting the words into action. Say that. So Andrew, we're going to go over to you now. Why is it the right time for digital wallets, and how is Alliance different when it comes to contactless check-ins? Andrew Pirret: Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think the product and the information out there have matured, right? So the solutions are out there. They're vastly available. You have multiple wallet providers and underlying lock providers that are out in the market that have their solutions there, and it's across their estate. That was one of the biggest blockers originally, actually being able to get the tech there and getting it upgraded. That's now matured massively, especially over the last 24 months, and that's really grown. But I think what it does is it gives a good base to where it's going in the future. Now, Apple has just announced a load of features and enhancements that they're doing in regard to bringing a lot of that itinerary and information to the Apple Key that will go out later in the year, which will be fantastic to see, and we hope to bring that to some of our customers. But I think it's starting to stitch those journeys together. It's not that fragmented journey, so you've got a single place that's already on your phone. There's no downloading of an application. You can go in there natively. Whether you're a loyalty member or not, you can benefit from that, and I can share it with my loved ones as well. So my wife, it's easy for me just to send it to her and take it away if I need to, if I wanted to. But I think what we're also seeing is those same pressures that have always existed are again being pushed on. We've got high staff turnover. We've got economic pressures as well, so the cost efficiencies and making sure that we're being efficient. There are the abilities now, with a lot more of the maturity of the guest-facing APIs that PMS providers offer, to really expedite that check-in so you don't have to land off a plane and go through another admin process because I think that's the antithesis of any customer journey. I don't want to go through the long-haul flight into San Antonio, wait in a line, then go through a whole admin process. Airlines have got it better, but hotels have got to catch up there. So I think there's huge opportunity. Steve Carran: I agree, and especially with the delays that we've heard about at HITEC here. There have been a few travel delays. There've been a few. Yes, there's been a few canceled flights and things like that. The last thing you want to do when you show up to a hotel is wait in line and even have to extend your travel longer. So you're making a lot of customers happy on that one. So Alberto, can you share a little bit more about how you can see upcoming stays and how that even helps loyalty with the Apple Wallet? Alberto Santana: Yeah, so I think the key about the wallet here, and I think Andrew touched on it, is I'm seeing it. It lives permanently in that wallet, right? So it's always there. And then what you're looking at is that with the member pass, what it's doing is it's giving you all the upcoming stays that I have as well. I kind of like, as well, for people that are listening right now that maybe don't even travel that much, or hoteliers who tend to go to their sister properties. You have a different experience than the rest of us do, right? And I don't think you can really appreciate it, but I'll use another analogy here. I have AXS loaded on my wallet as well. They're a ticketing company, right? Steve Carran: Yep. Alberto Santana: And I have everything on there, and it even says it on there, "Don't delete me so you can see upcoming shows." Right? So I look at it the same way. It lives there. It shows me all my upcoming shows. I can see exactly what's happening. I can have my itinerary. I know where I'm going. This is just a game changer for how do you meet your customer where they are because that's where they are, right? Absolutely. I can't get into anything without going to my wallet right now. Steve Carran: Right. Yeah. Alberto Santana: Did you hear about the Dodgers guy that had season tickets for over 50 years, and they won't even print them out for him? They're like, "No, you have to use the wallet." No kidding. And this guy's 90 years old. Yeah. He's like, "Try to print it out for me." The rest of us, though, we've already given in. For sure. It's so much easier. Steve Carran: Absolutely. And I know some of my family members still love to print out their paper boarding passes and stuff like that. So Tristan, we're going to do the final question for you here. Can you share a little bit more about how you're pairing agentic AI and data to really create a better guest experience? Tristan Gadsby: Yeah, so I think we've always been a guest experience system that collects a lot more information than you typically collect in a PMS. So we have preferences from all different systems coming together, but we also have a huge amount of conversational data that we've had with customers through the years. You can use that to observe things, to tag profiles with certain attributes that allow us to personalize in a very different way. First of all, you've got to understand the customer. That's the first thing. Yeah. The second thing is you've got to make sure you understand the context. Don't recommend me a restaurant if you know I've already got a restaurant on my itinerary tonight. Don't recommend transportation if I've already got it. So it's really important to understand the context, the stay, and everything around that. And as Alberto said, why am I coming to town? That's also really important to know. The final thing is also knowing about the hotel and what the hotel has to offer, but also what the local area has to offer. Going back to the concierge, all of that information around all the great things they can recommend—we need that available as well. Once you've got that data layer, you can use AI to really tailor very specific recommendations to a customer. But not only that, you can also use it to really help staff. One of the first applications—and this is working with a luxury client of ours—Andrew, you probably know this better than anyone because Andrew used to be a night manager. Alberto Santana: Ah. Tristan Gadsby: As a night manager, you used to have to sit there and prepare the morning report. Who are the guests coming in? What do they look like? Can we get a photo of them? What are their preferences? What are they up to while they're here? What are the things that we've learned about them? Using AI, you can summarize that data very quickly. So we've built a morning meeting agent that is the first of many agents that we're building, but with real practical applications. The idea is that it can be used every morning and provide a consistent experience across all the different properties because the problem today is that it depends on how good the night manager is and how good a job they actually do at preparing that report. Trust me, most night managers probably would not want to produce that report if they could get away with it. Yeah. So that's a really practical example of where we're building specific agents to do specific tasks within the property. But it all starts with having the right data. Absolutely. If you don't have that foundation, you can put as much technology over the top as you like. Shit in, shit out. Yes. I mean, it is that simple. Steve Carran: Absolutely. You guys are doing some awesome stuff, and I appreciate it. I'm kind of a guest experience nerd, as I call myself. When I've been to a property multiple times and they're like, "Oh, is it your first time here?" I'm just like, "Ah, come on." So I really appreciate what you guys are doing for the industry and creating these more personalized and better guest experiences. Thank you so much for sitting down with me. Always a pleasure to see you. Alberto Santana: Very good, Steve. Steve Carran: I do believe I messed up your name last year too. Alberto Santana: That's okay. Tristan Gadsby: I like Alberto Santa. We're going to start using it internally. It's amazing. All internal communications. Alberto Santana: Fifteen platinum albums, and he can't say Santana. Steve Carran: I know. It's like the easiest last name, and my brain isn't working today. But that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. We appreciate you guys sitting down with me. Can you share how to get in touch with you for those hotels that want to create these better guest experiences and how they can learn more about Alliant? Alberto Santana: Sure. They can find any one of us on LinkedIn. Or visit us at alliant.com. Alliant is the insurance company. We're Alliant. Steve Carran: Alliant, yes. And it's Alberto Santana, not Santa. But we appreciate you all. Thanks again for sitting down with us. Make sure to follow, like, and subscribe to The Modern Hotelier, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you.