Latest / GAIN Momentum / Astonishing Value from a Luxury CDP with AI Tools | with Michael Toedt
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- GAIN Momentum episode #118: Astonishing Value from a Luxury CDP with AI Tools | with Michael Toedt === Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to another exciting episode of the Gain Momentum podcast. I'm joined by my special guest, Dr. Michael Toedt. He's the CEO of dailypoint. Michael, how are you? Michael Toedt: Thanks, Adam. Very well. Welcome from good old Germany. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, southern, up in the Alps, the Bavarian Alps, where Vincent and I are both jealous of you for being in such a beautiful part of the world. But we're not here to talk about geography and the beauty of southern Germany. We're here to talk about CRMs. So tell us, what is dailypoint? Michael Toedt: Well, Daily Point is a data management platform. We started in the CRM business many years ago but transformed into a CDP. So we collect data from many touch points along the customer journey, consolidate data, clean the data, create a central profile, and then CRM is one of the many modules dailypoint offers today. Adam Mogelonsky: Now, this deserves unpacking the difference between a CRM and a CDP, where a CDP is in essence an input tool, and then a CRM is one of the outputs of that input. Is that a very top-level summary? Michael Toedt: Yeah. I would go with that. The CRM is what you do with the data, and the CDP really tells who the customer is. So it's the foundation for good output. Adam Mogelonsky: Okay. And give us a sense of what types of data are being fed into the CDP? Michael Toedt: Well, the beauty of our industry is that we have so many touch points, so much data. So from the website, the booking engine, the offer tools, the chat systems, of course, the PMS, the POS, the spa system, the feedback tool, the loyalty, the CRM. So basically all the tools where you collect data along the customer journey are sources for dailypoint. So that's a different approach instead of having tools, independent tools more or less along the customer journey. Everything comes together in dailypoint, connected via APIs or interfaces. It's really nice. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, it's a beauty to behold. And then from there it's brought together into analyses. So two terms that we have here for that analysis are segmentation and golden guest profiles, or just a guest profile within the CDP. Tell us about both those features and what they can, how they can help add value to a hotel. Michael Toedt: Well, I think the most important part for hotel is to learn who the customer is or who the customers are. And this is the missing piece. I mean, when you base your intelligence on the PMS, then you have multiple profiles for the same guest. And when we look along the customer journey, you have probably 10, 15 profiles for the same guest even after one stay. So everything you do is more like guessing instead of knowing. And with a central guest profile, you know exactly who the customer is and what he wants or she wants, and then you can deliver. It's like Amazon. So let's say if Amazon would work like most of the hotels, the customer would be fully unknown for Amazon. So every time you go on Amazon, you have to tell them who you are and what you want. And I think we all can imagine that Amazon would never been where it is right now without having a central profile. The same with Uber. It's the same with Booking.com. They all have the central guest profile as the key element of their solution, of their business. And in our industry, it's a little bit different. It changes. Vincent Somsen: It changes a lot. I mean, Adam and I were at the roundtable a couple of months ago, somewhere in the US, and there was a former CIO or former CTO of one of the larger hotel brands out there, and he internally checked at the time how many different profiles he had across all the thousands of properties in their portfolio. And I think, you know, Adam, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was above 50. Adam Mogelonsky: I think it was like 51. Vincent Somsen: His portfolio. Yeah, 51 profiles within all the thousands of hotels. So not even the big guys have it under control. So Michael, what are the things that you see hotels do after implementing Daily Point that they couldn't do before? Michael Toedt: Well, I think they can deliver more value. They can do a really good guest recognition. They can do very targeted sales and marketing. As I said before, it was more like guessing. I mean, you can do, of course, segmentation, but when you don't have a central profile, what do you segment? So you say, "Hey, I wanna do a special thing for my best customers." But when you have multiple profiles for your loyal customers, you don't know who your best customers are. And I think what hoteliers should understand is that they need to change their IT or they have to change their IT strategy, their tech stack, and really everything should be based on a central guest profile, because then the different tools can really deliver. So AI, for instance, is a great enabler to deliver individual communication, for instance. But AI without the right data just delivers a pretty crummy output. And I think everything just works better when you have a central profile. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. You know, the expression here that we're using for the industry is garbage in, garbage out, and I'm wondering if you could unpack that insofar as the work that dailypoint does behind the scenes to ensure that the data is really being cleaned and accurately verified before it's added to that central profile. Michael Toedt: Yeah, I mean, that's the hard work: cleaning data. It's not sexy. It's extremely complex, especially on an international base where you have different character sets, different languages people speak. So, like my name, Thoth, spelled in many different ways, and you need a lot of experience to then bring data from multiple sources together. Not bring data together, but then merge the profiles, standardize the profiles, make sure that you do not merge profiles which do not belong together because then you're in trouble. But especially, bring all the different profiles from the different systems together and then use the existing data to create the preferences. And I think this central profile, this is then really the base for everything. And many people ask me, "Are you nervous because data cleansing, especially with AI?" And there's such a heck of complexity behind it. We have a team now in the business for more than 20 years. We started in the luxury segment, and this is always the key element of dailypoint: data cleansing, creating a central profile. It's not sexy, as I said, but it is for me the most important part, and especially now with AI and, of course, big data, which is the foundation for AI. It is the key element. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. And you mentioned guest preferences, which now goes into, in the luxury end, we're talking about the ancillaries, the things that maybe on paper, as an individual income statement, those departments aren't profitable or maybe they are slightly profitable, but they don't necessarily drive the overall value for the hotel, which is the nightly rates, yet they're instrumental to getting the heads in beds. And those preferences are spa, dining, golf, excursions, activities. And having that central profile, you can structure all these little systems into one central profile to then show and reveal those patterns. So can you talk to us about the integral relationships between having central guest profiles and then from there driving more value for luxury or boutique or independent hotels? Michael Toedt: Well, I think when you have all the data together and you always say, "Yeah, beds and baths, and the revenue comes from the room," maybe the room is whatever, 2,000 US, and then the spa they spend 200. But maybe the reason why they came is the spa. So I think first of all, it's really important to understand why a customer is coming to your hotel, and I think that's a key driver. And then it is all about using this data along the customer journey and giving the different departments, the different vendors, the different solutions, the information they need to deliver the right content or the... Let's say on the website, I mean, let's say you know this is a double income, no kids couple, so maybe you should not display them the screaming kids on a water slide on your website, right? Or when someone is at the front desk, you give the front desk clerk the information he needs to welcome you and recognize you. And today it's not only limited to the data a hotel has. For instance, we check the internet for publicly available information. So what, especially in luxury segments, many hoteliers do, they Google the customers. I mean, I was in Dubai a couple weeks ago in a 1,000-room, five-star hotel, and they Googled their arrival list. This is crazy. Just imagine how much time they spend on Googling and searching on LinkedIn, okay, who are these guests? So we give this automatically to the front desk clerk, creating then also whether this is a VIP or sending a message to the GM. And it's all connected with, for instance, Opera Cloud. So it's not only having the data in a CDP, it's then really how this data, how this knowledge influences the marketing, the sales, the operations. I think that's the key. It's not only having, it's the usage of the data. Vincent Somsen: That makes sense. And I think that could be super valuable for portfolio-level groups. How do you translate the value to independents that maybe don't have returning guests across their 50 properties? Could you tell us a little bit more about that? Michael Toedt: I mean, we come from the individual hotel business. So when we started, 20 years ago, we mainly worked with individual luxury properties, and right now we still have a huge amount of individuals, especially. We're a partner of Leading Hotels of the World, so many of these hotels are just individual properties on a top segment. And for them, they normally have a high, well, maybe 20% repeat customer rate, 25% repeat customer rate. And to deliver the service these customers expect, that is key. And not only then on-site, but also in the communication. Maybe if you have a complaint or you call housekeeping, so that everyone really understands who's this person on the other side of the phone? Who texted me? So there's so much value. Or let's say a very simple example to follow is when you send out your feedback, your surveys after the checkout, and in many cases, these surveys are not connected to a central profile. Normally it's not. And then you go into your budget meeting, and you maybe decide on a 500K, a million budget based on an analysis which probably is misleading because for me, as a data guy, as an analytical guy, the first question is, "Who gave me the feedback? Is this my target group?" And then I can make, not only by gut feeling and maybe by misleading report, the right decisions. So it's not really how many hotels I have, it's really how professional I want to use data, and there's so much potential to do it. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. Well, you've talked about the grunt work, the non-sexy work of cleaning the data and structuring it in a usable way. But you also implied through properly harnessing feedback data is the other hard part, which is building these integrations and building deep integrations that have 20 to 200 endpoints that are built. So tell us what separates the surface-level integration from one that really maps that guest data properly? Michael Toedt: Yeah. I mean, we have both. We have integration like with Zapier, so it's great. Zapier has about 9,000 tools you can easily integrate to dailypoint. But let's say when you integrate a PMS or a POS system, it's not only this. It goes into the details. That's number one. And an API is not, and this is what I think many hoteliers don't get, is they ask, "Do you have an interface?" And then everyone says, "Yes." But it's about, okay, what fields are part of the interface, right? Then how often do you get the data? In many cases, especially on the CRM side, many CRM systems just get a batch every day. So in our case, we work or we believe in real-time data, and we believe in two-way. And that is extremely important. And two-way also means we push as much as possible, for instance, back to the PMS. So we don't wanna force the user, the front desk, to work with dailypoint. No, they should work with the PMS, but they want to use or want to have the right data, correct data, the correct information in the system they already use. And I think that's very important. So integrations and then also the certification process with the integrations. Now with many API-first solutions, you have no certification processes anymore, which is on the one hand side nice because it reduces the costs, but on the other side you can never really be sure: does this interface really work correctly or not? Do they write the data or get the data and push it in the right fields? So integrating systems, it's a never-ending story. Same with every time, for instance, with Opera Cloud and with OHIP, I think we work now for three years on the OHIP interface. And when I talk with my interface team, I think we always have tickets to enhance this, enhance that. Then maybe the vendor changes something because they learn also their limitations, then you have to adapt on your side. Let's say when we started 20 years ago, it was, "Hey, here's a file, import the data, and you have time." And now everything is time crucial, so you really need to process everything as fast as possible to make sure, especially as a CDP, that the data can be used in operations and everywhere along the customer journey. Adam Mogelonsky: You mentioned that a lot of integrations are, let's say, an overnight export, a once-a-day update versus real time. And I guess my first thought is that a lot of people probably treat the CDP and CRM as the long-term single source of truth for the hotel, but not necessarily one that's used by daily operations teams like the front desk team that's gonna be looking at the PMS, housekeepers, et cetera. Are you implying with the real-time interfaces that you're setting up and supporting that you want dailypoint as a CDP to be that daily operations checkpoint for everything going on? Michael Toedt: Absolutely. For me, I hate it when we have a customer and we always get stuck in marketing. Now I want this huge knowledge we have about the customer to be delivered to the point of sale. What does it... I mean, you can create the nicest individual communication, but then I check in and the guy at the front desk doesn't know who I am. I mean, I have this big expectation, then I show up and I think, "Hey, what's wrong?" And I think that is extremely important, that the knowledge is available everywhere along the customer journey, and not only in marketing, not only in sales, not only in e-commerce. Really, operations is the key. So when I go to the F&B outlet, they need to know who I am. And now I check in, I fly to Dubai in two days, and I check in at the same hotel where I normally stay. It's a five-star hotel, like almost all hotels in Dubai are five-star hotels, but I know exactly they have no clue who I am. And now I start to hate it because I think, "Hey guys, I spend so much money, spend so much time with you, and I like your hotel, I like your location, but come on, get your data right." Adam Mogelonsky: And this hotel in Dubai, this thousand-room property, that was Atlantis The Royal or Atlantis? Yeah. Well, where I'm going with this is that at a thousand-room property, less so on the boutique and independent level, you're dealing with teams that are in the hundreds and thousands. So therefore, how do you lens the information? 'Cause you're collecting so much, and the customer profiles are getting so deep. How do you properly lens the information so that way it gives the on-site operator, whether it's food and beverage, retail, front desk, exactly what they need to know in that moment using Daily Point? Michael Toedt: Correct. I mean, it really always depends on the systems they use. As I said, we don't wanna force the user really to work with dailypoint directly. So in some departments like in marketing and sales or in loyalty, yes, they are quality management, they work with us directly. But at the front desk, I think there is no need. So there, for instance, it's important for us that we push the necessary information into the PMS, maybe create the alerts, so when they check in, it pops up and tells them, "Hey, this is a repeat customer. This is Michael," and blah, blah, blah. And it's the same with the POS systems, so it's not like, I mean, for loyalty is a good point. We have a very strong loyalty module, and there we integrate with a couple POS systems, so when you recognize the customer maybe at the check-in, "Hey, that's a loyal customer. Here's a loyalty card," then you have immediately access to the profile. You see the allergies. You see maybe vouchers. You maybe can automatically reduce or use the discount based on tier level. And there we always are keen to work with customers who really want to drive this to the next level. So for instance, Rotana in the Middle East is a great example. They are super tech-driven, and they always come up with new ideas. Normally I would say I'm more the guy who gives the ideas and says, "Hey, we need to go there and there." But they come up so often saying, "Hey, come on, we need to integrate with this system, with that system," the housekeeping tool. We developed with them, for instance, an app for their employees with a single sign-on, so that every employee in a hotel then has access through the smartphone to the current guest list and sees, okay, who's the guest and so on. So that is pretty cool to have. Vincent Somsen: And another topic that Adam and I discussed a couple months ago at one of the roundtables was data entry, right? So it's fairly easy to capture the data online, right? But those hidden gems, those nuggets of gold, so to say, they often come from floor-operating, on-floor supervisors in F&B or housekeeping or front desk agents that are offline, right? It's a human interface. So how do you make it easy for those frontline employees to enter all that information in dailypoint, right? Because those are often really the hidden gems and the golden nuggets. Michael Toedt: Well, actually, I'm not a big fan of adding something manually. I mean, you can always push the people, but I think this is more kind of the past. So Amazon and Uber never ask you who you are, what you want. They just look at the data, right? I think that you can deliver a five-star, super-luxury service without asking the customer, "What do you want?" Just making the data work. But we also have the functionality, especially in the app, where then someone can add something and review. What is also doable and what we do is, for many cases in the hotels, you have comment fields and then the different staff members add comments. And all this text mining, for instance, that was super difficult and expensive in the past, but now with AI it's just another function, right? You can add it to the tool. So then it's more like mapping the information to existing preferences today than in the past. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, the comments field, the dreaded comments field. And one feature that I really like about dailypoint is the extra fields that you can add or the user-defined fields. So tell us about what those are and how they can really add value to the hotel enterprise. Michael Toedt: Well, our industry is so heterogeneous, right? And everyone thinks we have to do it a little bit different. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. Michael Toedt: And also in the PMS, it's one of the key sources. If you have a user or whatever, now they Mews, for instance, or other PMS systems, you can never be sure that in this field is the data you expect. So that's one thing which is, I think, pretty crazy in our industry: hoteliers often have many ideas of how to use a system. Let's keep it that way. We have a bunch of extra fields connected to the profile, connected to the stay list, and this is fully configurable. And I think this is also important because with all the connections we have to the different systems, you cannot have all the fields for each system. So it gives our customers the flexibility that we really can map the data they want to have in the system. And right now, for instance, we convert someone from an IBM sales system into our Daily Point sales system, and they have data fields we don't have, which is normal. So normally you would say, "Oh, we can't import them." But with the extra fields, we can say, "Okay, let's just map them into these fields," and then you have it. So it gives you flexibility. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. And it allows every hotel to feel unique in terms of what they're mapping and all the other various systems, the complexity of hotel tech stacks with everything that's going on there. Michael Toedt: Right. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. So we're now in the age of AI, or we're edging into it. So tell us about some of the AI features that you've added to dailypoint aside from, I guess, the summarization of the dreaded comments section. Michael Toedt: Well, I think for me, one of the nicest things is our AI snapshot. So it's basically a summary of all the information we have from the guests and what we then connect or hope to deliver, for instance, to the point of sale, to the PMS. So it gives you a clear, very brief overview of who the customer is, including a prominent check. I think that's one of the coolest features. I love, for instance, for luxury hotels that we check the web if this person who arrives is somewhere on our planet a prominent guy. And I think that's very cool. And of course, in marketing, the content creation. There are many. For B2B, we have an ICP analysis. It's just uncountable right now already where we use AI, and we have a bunch of new features in the pipeline for Q3, Q4, and next year. And it's a thin line because many things you can already do with Claude or ChatGPT, and when we see how fast these tools develop, it is just crazy. It makes no sense for us to redevelop something that these guys, with probably 10,000 developers in India, can develop way faster and way better than what we can do. So for us, the focus is really on creating what they can do. This is the knowledge and the central profile, and giving access to this data so then the customer can use this with the tools they want to use. So I'm also a fan of best of breed. I'm not a fan of everything coming from one vendor. So this platform approach, I'm not a big fan. I'm not a believer in it. I think hoteliers should pick the systems they love most. Then it's about how to connect these systems and make sure that they have an IT stack where all the systems are connected to a central profile and work properly together. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. I mean, it's beautifully said. You mentioned Claude and ChatGPT, and before we started recording, we talked briefly about dailypoint's MCP that you announced at HITEC. So tell us about that feature and again, how it drives value for hotels. Michael Toedt: Yeah, I mean, just imagine you go on Claude or you go on ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT, "Who's coming today? Do I have VIPs?" And then ChatGPT gives you the answer. And maybe then you can say, "Hey, also create an email via my Outlook connection and send this to my head of departments." So not everything you wanna do is something we can do, or maybe we could develop it, but then it takes time. And now you have these crazy complex tools with all these new features coming with updates every week, every month, and you can use it, so you have very easy access to the data in dailypoint via the tools you like. That is pretty cool. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. And to draw the conversation full circle, we started with CRM, then we really drove deep on CDP and what that portends. But now back to the output function of a CDP, which is the CRM, the customer relationship management and those emails. Where I see this going is towards personalized packaging. So knowing who your guest is and then sending them out a one-to-one marketing communication that then has some form of personalized offer. Do you share this outlook? Michael Toedt: Yes. I mean, everything should be individualized. I think it's also in the offer, in the marketing message. So I think the time where you create target groups, this is over. This is a piece of history. Again, Amazon. Just think that Amazon would create target groups. So where should they start and where should they end? So they just have, "Here's my profile, here's my content pieces, and now the system collects the right content pieces, puts them in the right order, and sends them out to my customers." And this is exactly where it goes. We call it, in our case, a content bot, where you then only define the content pieces. And then, based on the different content pieces, for instance, for a newsletter, the app looks at each individual recipient and says, "Okay, this recipient has this preference." And we also weight preferences, so it's not that everyone has golf and ski and spa. You can say, "Okay, this is 90% ski, this is 50% spa." And then the information comes, or the content gets sorted in the right order. And I think that's pretty cool instead of only providing an individual service on-site, but especially in the luxury segment, many people or many hotels try to do this, especially after the check-in. But this is also what people today expect in our industry, and this generic communication, what you normally get from groups or also from individual hotels, this is just not enough anymore. Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. So to close out here our conversation, there's so many things to look forward to with regards to merging and cleaning that guest data, then having all these various outputs that can improve the value to both the guest experience and to the hotel. We touched on the read/write access back into the PMS to give on-site operators. We talked about the CRM output. We talked about all the other elements that can happen from just having that central guest profile. Is there anything else that you want to touch on that you can mention publicly? Michael Toedt: Well, for me, the most important piece is still the people. We can deliver the best software, but if we don't have the right management on the other side and the right users, then it's not really delivering any value. And you're in the consulting business, you know exactly what I'm talking about, right? Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. Michael Toedt: And that's key, and this is also... Some people say, "Hey, this competitor is using you, so we cannot use you." And we say, "Well, look, it's really up to you what you are doing with the system. It's not about us. We can only offer you solutions, but then it's really up to you how much are you into that topic." And I love to work with data, but if you don't love to work with data, it's pretty hard. Vincent Somsen: That makes sense. Michael, how would you describe the difference between some of the other CDPs and, not to name them, but some of these CRMs that are not hospitality-specific? What would you say the difference is between the CDPs but also the CRMs? Michael Toedt: For me, if you're not a hotel-specific solution, I think it's very tricky to deal with hospitality. As I said, it's about the integrations. So even if they have maybe great functionality for the automotive or insurance companies, our industry is extremely complex. The data is, there's so many vendors you need to integrate with, and especially the big ones, the Salesforces, et cetera, they don't want to integrate with the questionnaire tool coming from Vietnam. They're not interested, right? So I think it's good advice to pick a hotel solution, because all the vendors understand the business. When I compare dailypoint with other CRM CDPs, it's a little bit hard because CRM CDP is a little bit of a concept. Of course, it's collecting data, creating a central profile, but most of the CRM systems have renamed their solution into a CDP over the last two years. So for me, it's more becoming a marketing message than really a solution. That's a bit of a problem because as a user who wants to pick a solution, you have to evaluate, okay, is it a real CDP or is it a CRM? And then when I compare us with others, I think we just go two steps further than others. So if someone has simple requirements and wants to send a monthly newsletter, we are probably not the right solution. But if you really want to become guest-centric and you want to connect all the systems along the customer journey, then this is where we come into the picture. And it's about the complexity and the quality you want to deliver. It's not about the size. We have customers with 10 rooms, but maybe it's a chalet where you pay 5,000 a day. And on the other side, we have properties with 2,000 rooms, and we have groups, and they all work on the same application. I think this is also a key. There are a couple of larger vendors who bought other systems, but they never really created one single system. So you cannot, if you go to this vendor, then you probably end up with a very old solution they bought five years ago, and they will never spend money on it again. So, yeah, I think we are a little bit different. Vincent Somsen: Makes sense. Adam Mogelonsky: A little bit different, but a lot of golden nuggets throughout what you've said. The deepness of integrations, the timing of it, what you intend to use your CDP for, and then from there, adding value along the whole chain, the entire end-to-end of the guest journey. Yeah. Michael, it's been a fantastic conversation. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Again, keys to the kingdom for understanding the nature of how a CDP works and how it can help hotels. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Michael Toedt: Adam, Vincent, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Vincent Somsen: Thank you, Michael.