Latest / The Modern Hotelier / #298: Why Consolidation Is the Biggest Opportunity in Hospitality | with Shawn Tarter
Transcript
- The Modern Hotelier #298: Why Consolidation Is the Biggest Opportunity in Hospitality | with Shawn Tarter === 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, excited for this. We have on Shawn Tarter, the CEO of Real Time Reservations. Thanks for sitting down with us, Shawn. How are we doing today? Shawn Tarter: Very good. Thanks for having me. David Millili: All right, so we're gonna jump in. You made one of the biggest announcements of your career at HITEC yesterday. Tell us about when you and Joan met at HITEC a few years ago. Shawn Tarter: Yeah. David Millili: And did you ever think it would lead to this? Shawn Tarter: Yeah, when we started, we were looking at all ancillary revenue reservation systems. We always thought, "Why can't I just book my cabana, book a spa massage, the kids are in the kids' club, amenities going to the room, to the cabanas," things like that. So we always wanted a single checkout with one itinerary and one enterprise report. And I met Joan about two years ago at HITEC, and we sat down. Joan's got 1,500 properties. There's a lot of overlap in really complementary concepts between the two of us, and we just sat down and said, "What if we could pull together a 2,600 hotel property portfolio and really work with each property individually and really build something? What if we could pull that off?" Steve Carran: So one thing we talk about is the connected guest journey, and there's a lot of talk about that in hospitality, but Real Time Reservations and Stay are actually doing something about it. What does that look like, and what changes are starting today? Shawn Tarter: Yeah, so the first thing is the one checkout. So we want to have an opportunity where you could bundle spa and cabanas, everything together. Having one checkout means you don't have to have eight different systems. You don't need a spa management system, a reservation system. You don't need to have all these things. There's one place. And I think what Stay brings to the table, you really have... It's almost like an Amazon checkout cart, and no one's doing that. No one figured out that you could actually have a restaurant reservation on top of a spa reservation. So you wind up having an itinerary for spa, and you have to manually write in the restaurant time. So we want to bring everything into one place. The clients are super happy, and that's what it really means for our customers. It means everything. Steve Carran: That's great. David Millili: So obviously the buzz is all about AI. A lot of the booths here you walk by make sure they've got either AI on the graphic or .ai as their domain. So where is AI really delivering value to hotels? Shawn Tarter: Yeah. I think the data has to be perfect. So we have every reservation system for ancillary revenue. Every one. We're mapping it exactly the right way. The enterprise reporting has everything. We send that out to the data lake of the properties, and then all of a sudden, with the reservation engines and the data lake being perfect, now you can put an AI layer on top of it, and all of a sudden you really have something very powerful. The data has to be perfect. Steve Carran: Yeah. Absolutely. So we talked to hoteliers, and one thing that they're getting exhausted about is finding the right tech partners, but we're seeing consolidation in hospitality tech. What advice do you give to hoteliers that might be getting vendor fatigue? And any advice on how to find a good long-term partner? Shawn Tarter: I think you have to really get along culturally with who you look to partner with. I think that's the biggest thing. Joan and I sat down together, and we really kind of hit it off. We didn't have egos saying which software is better. We said, "How do we actually build this together? How do we actually find a way for the customer?" What's unique, I think, about Joan, and why I always thought, "I better figure out a way to work with him," is because he actually listens to the hotels he works with, and we do as well. So we're building a spa system from the ground up based on what the hotel is saying. The restaurants are based on what large clients are asking us to build that the typical reservation engines are not really addressing. David Millili: So HITEC's been booming, buzzing this year... whatever word you want to use. You announced the acquisition. You had a Forbes interview. Shawn Tarter: Yeah. David Millili: You're on our podcast today, so what's next for Real Time Reservations? Shawn Tarter: We have to really consolidate this industry. I think that's the biggest opportunity we have. We know what hotels want, and we're global, so all the payments have to be perfect. Every language has to exist. Every point of sale has to be integrated. We have to build this the right way. Also, when it comes to keeping the human in the loop, we always hear, "Keep the human there." And that's so important when it comes to support. So now we have 140 employees, so we have support everywhere in the globe, and it's just nice that a hotel can actually reach out to a local representative, and they're actually there for them, listening to them. David Millili: Right. Well, it's been great talking to you. That does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Can you tell people how they can get in touch with you and how they can find out more about the company? Shawn Tarter: Yeah. So we're still working on the website and the company name, but you can just reach out to us at realtimereservation.com David Millili: Well, that does it for this special HITEC episode of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. So whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thank you. Shawn Tarter: Thanks for having me. Thanks, guys.