Embedding Machine Learning into Websites, IBE, RMS and CRM | with Rod Jimenez
​GAIN Momentum episode #66: Embedding Machine Learning into Websites, IBE, RMS and CRM | with Rod Jimenez
===
Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the Game Momentum Podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in hospitality, travel, food service, and technology. My co-host today is Michael Goldrich, and our special guest today is Rod Jimenez, CEO of SHR, and Access Company. Rod, how are you?
Rod Jimenez: Adam. Good. See. Hi Michael.
Adam Mogelonsky: So I'm wondering, um, to start things off, to make sure we're all on the same page, give us the elevator pitch for SHR all its product suite and how it's really helping hotels, uh, you know, get onto the next generation of hotel technology.
Rod Jimenez: Yeah, absolutely. So SHR provides a suite of interoperable applications to help hotels. Have a simpler [00:01:00] life and free them to do more. And by more we mean more hospitality. those applications include, uh, central reservations, revenue management, uh, and CRM. We also have a series of ancillary services around that, like digital marketing and web development that enhance the impact that those applications can, um, deliver for hotels. And so, and I underline the, the, you know, to ask your question specifically about how we help hotels or how best. Uh, we are positioned in terms of helping hotels is that from the beginning, and we'll get into that a little later as far as the, the timeline, but when we decided to expand our suite of products, [00:02:00] we really were very focused on delivering something that allowed hotels to have a suite of applications that. Would be friendly to each other. Right? And by that we mean can we create things that, um, allow hotels to create workflows, for example, if this happens in this application, then make this application do something else. So that interoperability is sort of at the core of what we wanna do, the ancillary services, and then. The, the human aspect of it is the service that we bring that surround the delivery of those applications. So that's, that's SHR in a, in a nutshell,
Michael Goldrich: what does SHR stand for?
Rod Jimenez: it stands for sector hospitality resources, that's a long story. If, if we, we may take half of the podcast if I tell you that long story, but the [00:03:00] brief version of the story is that. Um, at one part in our history, we, created a joint venture with City Developments Limited out of Singapore. We were Whiteboard labs. They had a, they owned its subsidiary in Denver that had been around for a long time, called Scepter Inc. And so when we created a new entity. Into which we contributed the technology and then they contributed Growth Capital. One of the requirements was that the, the name was gonna remain scepter, and so then it was not gonna be Scepter Ink. It became Scepter Hospitality Resources, which is a mouthful, a challenge from a logo perspective. You know, all of those things. So. Pretty soon after that, we rebranded and we said, you know what?
Let's just refer, to ourselves as SHR. And
so that's [00:04:00] how SHR and the new logo and the new, uh, domain name, uh, was, was
born.
Michael Goldrich: Okay. Yeah, I always wondered. Thank you.
Rod Jimenez: Yeah.
Adam Mogelonsky: it raises an important thing to talk about with you, rod, is that you are a senior leader who has this timeless experience that goes not just with SHR and where it is, but going back. many decades. And one other, I guess, company that you've been involved with is Travel, click and iHotelier.
Um, could you speak to a lot of your previous experience prior to SHR and how that's guided your leadership in the world of hotel technology?
Rod Jimenez: Yeah, absolutely. So I started my career in banking.
So I worked for Bank of America and for Chase, uh, for a total of about 10 years. And so [00:05:00] that was a, a very interesting start because it gave me a really good view of a number of businesses. And from a corporate banking perspective, you're looking at. The mechanics within those companies in those industries, and they're all the metrics, all the key metrics at the end of the day end up being the same, right? If you talk about EBITDA and the growth of your revenue and things like that, but the mechanics inside of that, the levers that you can push or that you can pull are very different, right?
And so, Ironically, I started working with, with hotels, even in that role as, as a banker. And then a friend of mine who is working for NASA at the time, you know, he was, he's the, the friend that you have that you're always saying, oh, one day we should do [00:06:00] this. You know, and so we were both very into technology and so we were always comparing notes about what was going on.
And this is, this is obviously gonna. Date me. 'cause this is late 1990. So nascent a stages when, when it comes to the web, right? The internet had been around working for nasa. He, he was using the internet, but he built one of the few, one of the first few websites out there for his. Lab in at nasa, the, hypervelocity impact test facility is what he was working in.
And so that started the conversations about, Hey, something is gonna happen here, right? This, this may be big. And our vision was so small. I mean, we thought, we were thinking really, really big. 'cause we said the company that all that. Ended up generated was called web [00:07:00] advertising. 'cause the idea was, hey, web advertising is going to be just as crucial as tv, radio, and, and you know, paper advertising.
So everybody's gonna need a website. And that was the extent of our gigantic vision, right? Let's just get ready to give everybody a website. Well, little did we know that pretty soon everybody was gonna be able to do that, right? And so. But by the time all of that started changing in terms of everybody could do it and, and you know, just web development shops popping up everywhere. We had already moved into more and more of the application development world. In fact, our tagline at the time was, what does your website do? And we just wanted our clients to, or we wanted to ask the question. That question of our clients in terms of saying, we can build [00:08:00] you a website that allows you to do something.
And that's something, as you can imagine, was very small at the beginning. But as the technology evolved, then all of a sudden we could query a database from a website. and again, coincidentally again, back to hotels, we started working with. A couple of ad agencies that represented the tourism agencies in South Carolina and in Rhode Island. And as you know, probably one of the most active members of A CVB are always the hotels. And so all of a sudden we, we end up dealing with hotels and a couple of early clients just pushed us and pushed us. In fact, one, one of our clients said, you know, pulled out the business card and said, it says here, what does your website do? What does my website do? Make it do something. So he had a bunch of golf courses around him. And so we started with that. We started an [00:09:00] online tee time request, right? And so it generated an an email in the back and all that, and then all of a sudden it's like, well, why couldn't we do this for hotel reservations?
I get emails all the time about asking, do you have availability for this date? And we would have it. Or we, he would show us a, a, a threat including, you know, 10 emails going back and forth. this is obviously before PCI days, the credit card in the last email saying, okay, book the, the reservation.
So anyway, so that all led to getting into that world more and more and more. And then we ended up. Developing the early version of iHotelier. And so we, we just thought when we launched iHotelier the tagline was an online reservations engine. So we, that's all we thought that [00:10:00] we needed to worry about. And I'll confess even back then, I said. The web is the new GDS. Why do we care about even connecting to the GDS? Well, a couple of years later, we ended up having to connect to the GDS to be competitive. And so before we knew it, not knowing it really that that was what we were creating. We had a CRS and hoteliers started just focusing on the website and then the online reservations only, and then we added. all of the channel connectivity and then we added, um, GDS and then we added call center application, and so it, it became A-G-D-A-A-A-A-C-R-S, right? Again, we didn't set out to build a CRS. We were just answering and following what our clients were saying. You know, a client would buy I hotelier in the early days and [00:11:00] then all of a sudden come back and say, look, this was doable. When I would get two or three reservations a day online, that's getting more and more and more, and now I'm getting a hundred reservations a day online. I don't wanna swivel around and go to my PMS and connect. So then that was the next thing. It's like, okay, now we need to look at connectivity. And as you know, that's been the, the, the pain for any startup in the, in the hotel industry.
Right. Realizing that. You have to go figure out how to interface with opera. Right. Or, or
with, you know, name the PMS. Right. And so, and, and back then, you know, we were, there were several initiatives about creating standards and, you know, all of that. But, but yeah, so that's how, that's how iHotelier was born and that's how iHotelier became a CRS. And then [00:12:00] in 2004, That was acquired by, by, uh, travel Click. And so, uh, when we sold to Travel Click, we sold the IP of I hotelier. and then we all went to work for TravelClick for a while, and then it's coming out of that. That then Whiteboard Labs was born, which is the company that then did a joint venture with, uh, CDL, which became SHR.
So that's kind of the, the timeline there.
Michael Goldrich: That's really interesting. So when you were building this first booking engine, what was a problem that you encountered that you were surprised by? Like one of the first things that spent a lot of time to work through.
Rod Jimenez: well, this is interesting. it's a great question 'cause I remember. it would sound crazy to a, to a young person, but one of our, [00:13:00] one of our issues became we're sell, we're selling a, a, an online booking engine, and hotels don't have a website. And so, so the, I remember the first trade show, we went to our opening line to engage with the. The hotelier walking by our booth was, does your hotel have a website? And they're like, no. That we don't, you know, we don't think that that's, you know, we're a in, in some cases the answer would be, we're a luxury hotel. We deal with our, guests, you know, one-on-one and in person. And so then we needed to figure out, okay, well how do we package this?
So then we created this thing that we called look. we give you everything. We give you your online lobby, which is your website, and we give you your online reservations agent, which is the booking engine, [00:14:00] and then we give you a marketing tool. And this was, this was one of the coolest things we did at the time.
It's that we allowed hotels to use the data in the CRS to remarket, to hotels, and so we created it. an email, uh, engine where they could, they could query the database and say, well, I, I just need to send this offer to people from, from Florida, for example, and I'm just gonna, my hotel is in Florida.
I'm gonna create an offer for guests in Florida, and I'm just gonna say, this is the, the local special or whatever. Right? And so to answer your question, Michael, that was. A challenge because we basically needed to enter the business of building hotel websites and, and doing early digital marketing so that we could sell the booking engine.
Michael Goldrich: That's so interesting 'cause I'm encountering similar thing [00:15:00] with, uh, like generative AI in terms of hotel saying, oh, you know, we wanna deal with people directly. We, we don't wanna use that. Technology is gonna make it more impersonal. It's sort of similar sort of discussions that we're having now.
Rod Jimenez: Very, very similar 'cause I remember the answer that we gave back then. It's applicable as an answer to, to the question you just brought up with regards to AI is, no, we would, we wanna free you up so that you can be. More focused on hospitality, more focused in real life conversations. Instead of being on the phone booking, reservations, you free up your, your folks to be ambassadors for your hotel and, and offering hospitality to your, to your guests.
Michael Goldrich: How did you convince them to, if they didn't believe in it? Like was there like stats? Did they want bi or did because you know. Hoteliers are notorious copycats. So once [00:16:00] you get a couple on, then they're like, oh, just point to what so and so is doing.
Like how do you get there?
Rod Jimenez: Yeah. It, it was a combination. So we, we did wanna create case studies and, and, and show people data. But one of the biggest thing, what biggest things that happened for us at the time, this was. The year 2000, I believe, to maybe, maybe late 2000 is we got the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs as a client. and to your point, a lot of hotels would say, well, who's UI don't wanna be your Guinea pig. You know, who's using the technology? And we would say, well, the Broadmoor uses it. And they're like, okay, that's my due diligence. If they're, if it's working for them. I mean, yeah. So that was our biggest. You know, point that we use to convince hotels is that the more that we got, it was like, yeah, we have the broad more and this hotel and, and those early, it was so early and, and things were changing so quickly [00:17:00] that we have very close relationships with those early clients as you should. and so they became good. Uh, they were always very willing to endorse. What we were doing. Um, and so that helped a lot.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. The, the phrase that comes to mind and why I brought up your experience and your, and your history Rod, is history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
And I believe that's, Oscar Wilde, and it's so important for people to hear about the challenges you were solving during Dot-Com boom. Which are now, as Michael said, being repeated with similar conversations with a, with ai, and to fully bring that into 2025.
Let's talk about SHR and the conversations you're having with uh, what features are being requested that are on the forefront, as well as what challenges you're solving for right [00:18:00] now. So, uh, ad adaptive websites, interoperability of workflows. what's happening, what's on the forefront?
Rod Jimenez: It's interesting. One thing that's different. This time around, is that it? The resistance is there, right? In in, in some cases, like Michael brought up. But, but we see more of, there is a bit of a skepticism and and so it's like, well, just don't tell me that you're focused on ai. Just show me something. Right?
Like, 'cause I think people are tired of the. AI in every tagline and, in every banner and every booth, and then they scratch the surface and there's not a whole lot in there. So we, we started, using AI much more seriously when we got into the RMS [00:19:00] world. So one of the things that came together with our expansion of being a distribution only company, when we only had one product, the CRS, and that was, you know, many years from two, 2010 when we launched the, the current CRS, uh, which we branded as windsurfer at the time. 2018 when we decided, okay, we're gonna strategically sort of zoom out and we're gonna go from being just distribution to being revenue generation focused. Right? And so to do that, we said, okay, what's all, you know, we know that we're very connected to the PMS, but the PMs is, as I always told people, is behind the front desk.
We're. Outside of the front desk. So how do we stay outside of the front desk for now? And what other pieces [00:20:00] are there in terms of revenue generation? So obviously revenue management was a very quick answer. Right? And then CRM was the next answer. So we, we set out to work on that and as I said earlier, we want it.
And then we said, but let's make sure that we don't just have three. Isolated applications that don't talk to each other and, and really don't offer any of that value add in terms of the interoperability and perhaps even sharing of data and all of that. So what that led us to was to say, okay, so how do we accomplish that?
Right? So that, I always joke that we didn't want integration at the invoice level only, right? Like. Three completely separate applications. They don't talk to each other, but it's one invoice, right? It's like, so we'd wanted that communication between them. So that started to lead us [00:21:00] down the path of automations, of workflows and RPA, and so we said. Okay, this makes sense because we can create the workflows and have things happen in one application because the trigger actually was in a different application. So that that was, you know, machine learning. And obviously as you know, RMS is very heavy algorithmic, right? And so, so that. Really got us down that path.
And there's a, there are a couple of guys in our, in our company that are very focused on this, it, you know, primarily David Moneo, who's our, head of product. And so then the question started shifting to, okay, that's, that's very, you know, sort of static, right? And, and rules based. Can [00:22:00] we start doing something that's more, generative AI driven?
So we're, we started with the kind of the mundane side of things, like inside of the CRS we have, assistance that can help with the translations. for example, as you know, GDS has a lot of restrictions in terms of what the. Character limitations are and what, how it needs to be formatted and all that. We were wanting to take hours of work away from a hotelier's plate, right? And translating things or taking a very rich description from a website, and then turn it into a GDS dis description. and The ability to say, make it sound more businesslike, right? And things like that with descriptions.
So that's all sort of not, viewable or, or impactful for the guest, but it's very, [00:23:00] IM impactful for the hotelier. And then gradually we're moving more and. The idea of, I mean, we, we think that the future is, uh, agents, right? And it's, it's the ai not just, you know, following rules, which is very useful and very, you know, time saving, but actually making decisions, right?
and analyzing things and, and saying, okay, well this is. This is how, this is what I need to present now. So for example, very simple example on some of the things that we're working on with an initiative that, that we call concierge, is the idea that you can op open a separate panel and you, so you've got a conversation going over a chat, uh, online chat, [00:24:00] and then. If I say, are there any restaurants around your hotel? Then I can then now on the other and the new panel that opens up, show you where the location is for those restaurants. Or the minute I say, do you have availability for July the second, then I pull up the booking engine. I start guiding the, the process, the AI starts guiding the process of actually booking a reservation. It's still happening on the, on the booking engine, but the dialogue between the hotel and the guest is being mediated by an ai, uh, uh, chat bot, right? and then the next step of that is, for example, if I say that, I'm interested, [00:25:00] I'm, I'm considering your hotel, but I'm wondering about kids' activities. Then the idea of saying, okay, I can go and search in the RMS, all of the reviews. That are positive about kids' activities at my hotel. And then as I'm answering the question, I'm actually displaying positive reviews about, oh my gosh, the kids club is fantastic at this hotel. You know, so and so guest on this date.
And then another one underneath that, and another one underneath that. So it's early days. I mean, it, it, it. It's changing so fast like that every day feels like, you know, a new day. And, that's a little scary from a company perspective because it's, it's intimidating to [00:26:00] make a decision to go full force ahead in a particular direction and start making investments
and then all of a sudden everything is different.
Michael Goldrich: All right.
I got. Two questions. I got two questions. So, uh, agent as a service, like, have you guys thought about that? And then, um, one of the things I imagine with you have so much, um, someone goes onto your suite of technology, they probably only use about 20% of it for about 80% of their tasks. Now, with the new computer use capabilities, in theory.
People will be able, you know, hoteliers will able to use a, pretty much all of your functionality, which will allow them to drive so much more opportunity. So, Have you thought about those two things in terms of your services?
Rod Jimenez: Yeah, so, so I think ultimately the direction would be agent as a service, right? And, trying to figure out how to, how to get there. Um, and, [00:27:00] and, yeah, you're absolutely right. One of our big objectives is, basically utilize a lot of the power that it's there in the applications that it's, it's going unutilized and let the AI use it, right? so so for example, all the data is there to, to. See, you know, what type of reservations you're booking and all of that, but the idea of having the application tell you, Hey, out of your current book of reservations, these hundred reservations are categorized as highly, highly probable in terms of cancellations. So. Then the next question becomes, okay, that may be where the human comes in and the hotelier goes, okay, okay. I need to go [00:28:00] and set up a campaign for these people in the, in the CRM and offer an upgrade or something. We need to make, we need to bring that risk down and if, if everything goes well, com, maybe even get to a commitment place right where they now booked. Under non-refundable rate or something like that. So, so that to me, then, if we have it to where the hotel has to take the action, it's like, okay, we're first, it went from the data to now the, the guidance, right? Like, we did the work of analyzing the data for you. So here's the, The outcome of that, you need to make a decision as to how to act on it. The next step is, well, let's, let's set up the initial, uh, rules and then let the AI decide that it's time to trigger an offer to this clients and to trigger an offer [00:29:00] that maybe includes an upgrade or includes a 10% discount or includes a. Cocktail at arrival, depending on the value of that reservation. Right? And so it, you start to replace the thinking and the decision making. again, it's, it's still very scary for a lot of people. 'cause even when you talk e even just with RMS, right? We, we have situations where hotels are very. Hesitant of turning autopilot on, uh, autopilot on, because it just, it just feels weird to let the machine price your hotel.
Michael Goldrich: Yeah, no, it all comes down to human in the loop, so it's autopilot, but you're still in control.
That's the message.
Rod Jimenez: have, in the RMS, we have a function that's called the strategy builder that basically lets hotels just. Intervene, intervene [00:30:00] wherever they, they wanna intervene in, in the setting of the ultimate rate that gets published.
Adam Mogelonsky: Okay, so the world is changing fast and you have to take a risk on what features to develop, uh, without knowing where we're gonna be with artificial intelligence one year, two years from now. What is your thought process behind deciding where to lead a multinational company?
Rod Jimenez: Yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a. Good question. And it's a complicated, I mean, it's probably one of, from a managerial perspective, one of the biggest challenges that we're facing right now, right? Our approach has been, you know, now as part of the access group, uh, in the access group, we always talk about the concept of the two-way door.
Is it a two-way door or is it a one-way door? Right.
Adam Mogelonsky: That's, that's a Jeff Bezos,
Rod Jimenez: Yeah, there's a, [00:31:00] uh, a, uh, framework, right, for, for decision making. And so we, we use that a lot. And when people are talking about decisions, a lot of the, you know, very frequently the question comes up. It's like, is it a two-way door? Yeah. It's like, well then let's move fast and if it's a one-way door and we're gonna bet the future of the company, then. We, we need to be very careful on the analysis and all of that. So with that in mind and with the idea that the Access Group is a collection of not just companies within divisions, but divisions in multiple industries, we get to benefit from what others are doing and learning those lessons. So we, we get to avoid mistakes. Or move faster because we, we avoid the, the learning or, or we jumpstart [00:32:00] or bypass portions of the learning, curve. So within that framework axis is, is working on, on an initiative called EVO that is aiming to bring a, a very accessible. Use of AI across their applications, but obviously all of that needs to trickle down to the individual company. the specific segment and the specific industry. So in our case, what we're doing, taking advantage of leveraging all of that, is trying to take risks that are two-way doors and saying, look, if this doesn't work, we can always shift. And because of the, the rapid change, what we're banking on is that we're not gonna come out empty ha empty handed out of any effort.
We. [00:33:00] Undertake because we're, we're gonna, we're gonna save the learning, right? It's like, if, if it pivots this way, whatever we learned over here, it's going to be useful. And so we're, we're making those smaller bets and taking those risks. That something we do for, just to give you an example, right?
Our, our concierge concept of the, double panel. Well now there is, you know, chat GPT operator, which is. Sort of basically the same thing. So it's like, well, could we do it? Could we deploy it a lot, a lot faster if we, use that right? And so, but we've, but all of the thinking and all of the analysis is not wasted. We just don't wanna sit still and not be experimenting and challenging ourselves with what could be possible. And so I mean, as you, as you know, one of the, [00:34:00] in my mind, one of the coolest things in terms of, you know, what hoteliers can get is that data is always so hard to get and to analyze. And this idea of using natural language to ask for your reports, right? It, you know, these revenue meetings, our hotels are data heavy and PowerPoint heavy and all that. How about I just pull up my screen and we'll start asking questions about how is last week compared to this week? And then have AI just build a report on the fly. And, and then it's like, what about versus last year? And so that to me is, is something that, you know, it's already there. It's just that we have to embrace it In hospitality and bring it to hotels. Again, I, I keep highlighting the bigger, the overall objective of saying, [00:35:00] we wanna free you up to be as good a hotelier as you can be when it comes to the guest,
when it comes to creating that experience and that memorable
Michael Goldrich: Right. How do you address the GM or the revenue manager just says, you know, what about hallucinations? And they're afraid that just one or two data points will be wrong, and therefore they lose confidence in absolutely everything. Like how do you address that? Because I think that is. That is why you can't actually do it in those meetings, because you can run those reports, but then you need to have the human in the loop that validates that because that's actually the person's job.
So I think that people's job in the future will not be to do the work. It is to ask the questions and validate the work and think about the work. It's the critical thinking.
Rod Jimenez: yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And, and it is one of the, it, it, data quality is a huge thing, right? And so we're, we're obviously trying [00:36:00] to demonstrate to hoteliers that when, you know, the, the, the data that you're. Feeding the model is the right data that you reduce the chances of that, but it is part of that learning curve and it's, you know, maybe we're gonna have to run things in parallel a lot, right?
That you, you still run your same revenue meeting and you still have the, the AI window open to maybe me, maybe it's a question that's not answered here, and then you go, well, let's go. Ask, and then you get a crazy answer and you go, well, that's a crazy answer. Don't you know, we're not gonna trust it.
Right? So it's a process. We just wanna, as a company, we wanna be moving and, you know, we wanna be moving forward with this, and then we want our clients to, at whatever pace they choose to kind of come along on that, on that [00:37:00] journey, but it is, it's very different. 'cause it depends on, and this is, this is what we also shouldn't forget as a technology company that no technology is great in itself, right?
Like, you need humans. To embrace it. You need humans to alter process, to change ways of doing things. And that's all in the category of change with which, as you know, we all tend to fight a lot. Right? And so the question is, what are gonna be the biggest things that, that force change, right? we saw a lot of that with. COVID right and the the shrinking Of of teams and the, the consolidation of a commercial strategy team into an a, into a smaller team instead of separating marketing and sales and [00:38:00] revenue and distribution. And so that's a change that I think, in my opinion, it's been helpful in terms of having a, a a set of humans at the hotel that mimics. How the technology is sort of becoming interconnected. And then so if the humans are interconnected, they're gonna be sort of more friendly towards like the idea of leveraging what the technology can do.
Michael Goldrich: Right. Like for me it's mindset. It's a mindset to remind people. It is a tool. It's not some sort of magical thing. It's a word generation machine. It does like a calculations, but it's. A tool, it's a tool that facilitates everyone to be better than average. That's number one. But also is, is allows them to facilitate this work.
So once people can understand and make that [00:39:00] switch, that it's not some amorphous thing that's just gonna replace them, it is actually, uh, something that enables them to get so much more done. Because if you talk to any hotel team, any hotelier, they have a list of things that they can never get to. They do not have enough time.
Rod Jimenez: Yeah.
Michael Goldrich: this is a technology that creates time,
Rod Jimenez: yeah.
Michael Goldrich: and so it allows them to get the, all the stuff done. It's
Rod Jimenez: yeah,
Michael Goldrich: mindset.
Rod Jimenez: and internally. So, so we always have to remind ourselves that, Hey, wait a minute. we also have processes. We also have clients that need more of our attention, and we also have a shortage of. Resources and, fixed number of hours in the day. And so under this, EVO initiative inside of Access, we're, we're trying to give our teams the ability to save as much time as possible. And sometimes it's like it's [00:40:00] really mundane thing, right? If, if I asked you, Hey, can you tell me what we. Pay this vendor, six months ago when we did this, you know, project. Well, I'm gonna, it, you know, it seems like a very innocent ask, but now I'm gonna have to stop doing what I was doing. I need to go dig it up.
I need to make sure that that's the correct number. I need to send it to you. again, inside of, of our big, Operational applications that we have internally, those are the things that we're creating that somebody in HR can just say, when did Adam start with this company? Oh, January 1st X date.
Right? That's a now a two second task versus a, oh, well, I gotta pull up this file and I gotta go look. And then make sure that that's, that's the correct record, and [00:41:00] then publish it. So we, as technology providers can also be beneficiaries of that so that we have more time to work with, with our clients in the more strategic type of conversations.
Adam Mogelonsky: So this all rings in my mind towards the thought about customer education and to what Michael was saying, what you're, what you're saying. Going back to this, the simple trade show, ask, do you have a website?
And to sort of close things out here, what are some of the biggest obstacles you've encountered with hospitality?
Customer education and how are you solving that challenge to help bring your clients and other hotels forward into this next generation of more efficient work processes, conversational reporting, as you've talked about, and better [00:42:00] selling tools.
Rod Jimenez: Yeah, so. one of the challenges that, and it, it's not a new challenge, but, it resurfaces when you're bringing something new is change, right? It that, that personnel changes a lot and people have views on how to do certain things or what the priorities are. And so in some cases we may be. Pretty far along a conversation with, in a very, sort of, uh, same wavelength type of approach. And the excitement is there and, the willingness to try something. And then, and then there's a change, right? Oh, I'm, I'm leaving. This person is coming. And then you, you start from zero, right? And then now. What tends to happen is that, you know, we follow that person to wherever they're calling or, or they call [00:43:00] us when they get there, it's like, okay, let's continue the conversation. But here, that's a challenge. And it just, it's, it's been there all the time because it, you know, hotel industry tends to have a lot of rotation. in terms of people, but they don't leave the industry, right? So our job is to make sure that we form strong enough relationships so that they bring us into the new conversations. So that's, that's one challenge. The other challenge is, you know, the, the challenge that Michael brought up, which is credibility, right? How do I know that this is right? How do I know that it's not gonna. Mess things up. How do I know that it's not gonna say something crazy if it's a, if it's an AI driven chat bot, right? And not just a, a pre-programed set of answers, right? If the question is, are you close to the airport, the answer is yes.
If you, you know it, it's just all a library of [00:44:00] questions and answers. That's. Way safer. Right? And, and so people are going, I've I've heard horror stories and I don't, I don't want my hotel to be a, a viral story about being rude to somebody or worse, you know, disrespectful or said something like, because the, the, the AI goes. Crazy, right? And so, so that's, that hesitation is still, and that's why we're trying to sort of take baby steps in terms of like, look, it's your GDS, uh, descriptions, right? It's translations, it's calculations that you need anyway. it's things that we're gonna add a layer of validation so that. Humans can say yes, you know, I'm agreeing with this. So those are probably the, the two most, [00:45:00] the, the two that come to mind. as I think about that question, Adam.
Adam Mogelonsky: Awesome. That's very, uh, that's a very important timeless lesson baked in there about how to go about solving that and really bring that forward. Uh, rod, any, any final thoughts before we close out?
Rod Jimenez: Thanks. Thanks for the invitation. I, I really enjoyed the conversation. I think it's, it's exciting times, right?
it's, it's, I forgot to say this and I was thinking, Michael, I. I don't know either. Either Michael or you alluding to this, the fear of what AI is gonna do to our jobs and all that. And it, I really do think that idea that AI is not gonna steal your job. Another human that knows how to use AI is gonna steal your job. And so that's, that's kind of the philosophy is like, let's. You know, let's try something. Let's, let's educate your, not just your staff, but your guests. And so I think that [00:46:00] we haven't seen most of the, the changes that are impactful to our industry are still to come.
And so that's. That's exciting. It's, it's a good time to, to be in technology and, and I think it's a good time to be a hotelier, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: I mean it's, it's becoming almost where the job of a hotel you're at the senior level is you have to know technology,
and that is another value add to the industry is because not only do you get to learn about service and you get to work in cool places, but you get to learn about all these incredible tools that are.
And how the, they actually connect into, into the architecture, uh, the systems architecture for a hotel. Yeah.
Rod Jimenez: I think that the days of the GM just only focusing on, on the ground day to day are, are gone. You're, you're [00:47:00] exactly right. they're technologists now or they need to become,
Adam Mogelonsky: Also data scientists.
Rod Jimenez: yeah.
Adam Mogelonsky: To Michael's point,
Rod Jimenez: Yeah.
Adam Mogelonsky: rod, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a delight to talk with you and really, really fantastic words, uh, of advice based on your career as well as where we're going in the near, in the near term with artificial intelligence.
Rod Jimenez: I enjoyed it. Appreciate the invite.
Adam Mogelonsky: Thanks, rod.
Michael Goldrich: Thank you.
