Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #305: Transparency & Confidence is Key in Owner Accounting | with Brian McGeown
Transcript
- The Modern Hotelier #305: Transparency & Confidence is Key in Owner Accounting | with Brian McGeown === David Millili: Welcome to a special HITEC episode of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Please make sure to follow, like, subscribe and let us know in the comments what you think about today's episode. Steve, who do we have on the program? Steve Carran: Yeah, David, today we have Brian McGeown, the General Manager of Owner Relations. Thanks for joining us, Brian. How are you doing today? Brian McGeown: I'm great, thank you. Thank you for having me. Steve Carran: Good. So first question for you, Brian, what challenges in owner accounting and financial transparency led you to develop this solution? Brian McGeown: The corporate accounting software that's out there does the corporate thing well, but when it comes to owner accounting, it doesn't. That's where we saw a big gap in the market, and that's where Owner Relations comes in. David Millili: So many hotels still rely on manual processes and spreadsheets. What are the biggest risks and inefficiencies you see with traditional owner accounting workflows? Brian McGeown: Yeah, the Excel spreadsheets are the challenge. That's one of the key things. You move a cell, the calculation goes. Also, there's normally an individual doing that. So if you're relying on one person's knowledge and experience, if they move on somewhere else, you've got to restart again. That's a really big challenge for a lot of our clients that haven't used our system before. Yeah. Steve Carran: Financial transparency is a major theme in hospitality these days. How does real-time reporting help the relationship between owners, operators, and even the management companies? Brian McGeown: Yeah. Transparency is key, isn't it? Confidence in the data. So from the management companies, seeing that data flowing over and being accurate gives them a sense of, are we doing our calculations and distributions to the owners correctly, and therefore making a profit? And from the owner's perspective, they want to have confidence in the data as well. It's really important to them. David Millili: You integrate with leading property management systems. Why is seamless integration so important, and what are some of the operational benefits it creates for hotel teams? Brian McGeown: Yeah. You're right. We do integrate with a lot of the PMSs out there. One is obviously getting the data so it can be used in our systems, but also we've got the opportunity to go back into the PMS, giving owners the ability to book their own unit themselves in real time. Those are really important aspects. Steve Carran: Hotels and management companies often struggle with the balance of standardization and brand identity. How does your experience really help those organizations maintain consistency while serving different ownership groups? Brian McGeown: Yeah, and when you start using the word brand, the bigger players are really into their brands. We pride ourselves in helping to support the brand image. So with the owner statements, we'll brand them with logos, color schemes, and fonts for those clients as well. Then we also do an owner portal, which can be customizable to that brand as well, down to the individual resort within a brand. David Millili: As hotel portfolios grow, complexity tends to increase. How does your solution scale from a single property to regional or global portfolios? Brian McGeown: We're seeing that in the condominium branded residency space, with that global expansion happening with the brands. We can be deployed as an individual instance, but we're also now seeing more enterprise level. The benefit there to the corporate ones is that from a corporate viewpoint, they've got one login and they can see all their portfolio. Then, from the owner perspective, they just see their own information. We're building out that reporting to help those brands understand at a regional and brand level, because some of these companies have got multiple brands in them as well, haven't they? So really important. Steve Carran: So how have your clients used automation to improve efficiencies and reduce support requests from owners and stakeholders? Brian McGeown: Yeah. Some of the big savings in time, particularly for our clients, is when they produce the statements with our software, it's going directly out to an owner portal, and the owners have instant access to it 24/7. So that saves a lot of time for individuals mailing out or emailing those statements. Also, the distribution payment process—we've really reduced the amount of time it takes people. Before, they were spending hours cutting checks or doing payments. So all those types of things can be sped up in our software. Yeah. David Millili: So looking ahead, how do you see owner reporting, financial communication, and hospitality accounting evolving over the next several years? Brian McGeown: Yeah. I think it's more about that transparency, being able to demonstrate to the owners where the numbers are coming from and what the expenses are. Particularly in things like FF&E funds or reserve funds as well. It's a really big one. Some of these funds are really large in some of these luxury hotels, so having that tracked well is becoming more and more important. Again, back to the scale part, I think as these organizations scale, you need systems to do it. It can't just be people. So we see that as a key point. Also, it protects the brand and the reputation of that organization as well. David Millili: So before I take us out, how has HITEC been for you? Brian McGeown: It's been great. We've been coming to HITEC for over 25 years. Normally we've walked the floor. This year we put a booth in, and we found it a really quality event for us. Meeting existing clients, potential clients, but also building these partnerships with other organizations has been really important. David Millili: Great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is where you get to let people know how they can get in touch with you and how they can find out more about Owner Relations. Brian McGeown: Yeah. Visit our website, ownerrelations.com. The name says what we do, right? We'd love to talk to you if we can help you. David Millili: All right. Well, that does it for this special HITEC Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thank you.