GAIN Momentum - Lessons from Leaders in Hospitality, Travel, Food Service, & Technology

GAIN Momentum episode #83: Owning Ancillary Spend for Total Revenue Growth | with Ricky Daniels and Steve Porter
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Adam Mogelonsky: welcome to the GAIN Momentum Podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in hospitality, food service, travel, and technology. I'm joined by the two co-founders of Trybe today, Steve Porter and Ricky Daniels. How are you both doing?
Ricky Daniels: Well, good, thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us.
Steve Porter: Thank you very much. For having us, uh, this evening. Thank you.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, it's great to have two, the both co-founders, uh, 'cause we can really drive into the details of how you both came together and how you started your company. Uh, that'll be the second question. First question. Give us the elevator pitch on what Trybe is so everyone knows. Mm-hmm.
Ricky Daniels: Yeah, absolutely. So Trybe is a fully cloud native operational platform. Used by properties with complex operational spar, leisure complex in nature, quite often because they're associated with hotels. Um, so that could be the property management system such as opera or muse or there's, there's, there's plenty of different PMSs out there, um, or complex in nature because it could be just because of the range of offerings that.
Treatments that could be, um, fitness classes, that can be private barbecue fire pits, that could be packages, um, where you're, you are combining all those different items into one, easy to use, use flow for the guest. And actually one of the fastest growing markets for us now is bath houses. Um, that can actually be standalone, um, and on the high street.
Um, but they have large wet facilities, um, access tos, um, and they have a quick turnaround time on high capacity and. There actually are some mobile houses, some bath houses, sorry, that also sell treatments alongside access to work facilities as well. Um, so really when you look at Trybe, you've got ability to manage bookings, um, to sell those bookings online, to manage them within the calendar.
Uh, you've also got full prepayments functionality, um, e-commerce and in person. You've got full vouchering functionality within our platform. You've got medical intake form management. Inventory management and the ability to sell retail, um, the ability to manage memberships reporting and more. I, I, I always like to say we are, we are the property management system, um, but we're the property management system for, for your spa, leisure and activities, um, and so much more.
But Steve, um, tell me if I've missed anything.
Steve Porter: That's pretty much it. It's the, it's the ultimate bookings and business management system for all of your ancillary spend. And we just, we just augment that property management system for hotels. But 'cause it's quite a, uh, advanced and flexible system, it can suit those, those high-end luxury bath houses and, and, and wellness facilities and results.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, and that's really a, a theme of hospitality now is the growth of total revenue, which is not just rooms, but ancillary products and how you sell those and merchandise those to maximize the guest utilization of a property. So this trend didn't come out of anywhere, didn't come out of nowhere, didn't come out of anywhere.
Uh, getting from my double negatives. Uh, but it came out, it came out from the inception of you both coming together and realizing that there was an opportunity here for helping guests. And hotels to come together to enjoy the properties as best as they could. So describe to us the seed to scale of how you both came together and, uh, founded Trybe.
Ricky Daniels: Absolutely. So really important to note that there is, there is three of us. Um, so you've got Will Taylor Jackson as well. Um, so it is Will Steven, myself. Um, and yeah, we've been in cloud-based software now for, so I wanna say collective well will being, being the longest, serving around 15 years.
Yes, he is been a farewell.
Um, so wool's definitely the old guard of, of the Trybe. Pardon? Um, but, um, we, prior to starting Trybe we've always been in cloud native, so cloud based software, cloud native software. So we were at a company called Design My Night. Um, based in the uk uh, there's lots of different facets to design mind, like we were early stage employees and, um, but you had a consumer facing discovery website called Design MyLight do com, which listed restaurants and bars and, and private high spaces and pubs here in the uk.
Um, across the sites. And I guess for the international viewers, um, really you, you might rec, you might know open table. For example, so very much a competitor at OpenTable and on the UK scene, but behind, behind the Discovery website, we, we built cloud native software for the hospitality industry. So we built a, a restaurant, um, a casual dining, uh, and pub booking system called Collins, which is in, um, over 8,000 venues now across the uk.
Um, predominantly UK and Australia. Somewhat Europe. Um, there was a ticketing software called Tonic to sell ticket events and a vouchering software called Soda to Sell Vouchers. Um, so at that company Will was a CT O Steve Lead developer, and I managed one of the sales teams. Um, and. Really, it was really successful.
Um, there was an acquisition, um, and that was acquired by a company called The Access Group, um, in 2018, I want to say. Um, and we were there as part of a managed buyout. Um, and, you know, our, our dreams individually had always been to, to one day do our own things. Uh, we, we were good friends.
Um, and we just got chatting and we thought, okay, well this is something that, you know, our skill complimentary each other. We can, we can really have a go here. And we thought, okay, well. What's an industry we love? Um, we love health and wellbeing all for different reasons, but we all love health and wellbeing.
So we thought, okay, well this is an industry we really wanna to come into. So in, in March of 2020, we made the move to leave design my night. Um, and we just started by going out to the health and wellbeing industry and saying, look, look, this is what we've done in the past. Uh, we'd love to come into the industry and build something that could have an impact.
Um, and this coincided with that event that we all know about A week later, we went into the first lockdown, um, which was. Obviously.
Adam Mogelonsky: Hold on, hold on. So you're te you're telling me that your decision to found Trybe occurred one week before the lockdowns and was made independently of. The worldwide event that happened in March, 2020. Wow.
Ricky Daniels: Being on a salary to, to not, and I've got a very dear friend, um, Mr. George Penman, who special shout out to George over in Columbia. Now he is. Um, and he said, look, uh, Ricky, you, you're going from a salary to nothing. Just come and move in with me. I've got my own place in London. Um, come and live, rent free, just pay bills.
Um, so I remember getting in a rental van, a move, a mover van, um, and driving through London and it being a ghost tap. Just looking out the window because of the lockdown. Um, and that was a, after we started, we decided to completely
know. People that were normally moving around at a million miles an hour, whether they were senior execs at, at, uh, big corporate firms, or they were founders of, of this, of great high street chains or whatever. They may be C-suite executives, that they were at home and they didn't have as much to do as they usually did, and they would just start fing a chat.
So it it, for us, it, it meant that we could spend time speaking to these. These leaders within the industry are having great conversations, and we, we had some great conversation. We spoke to, you know, leaders of, of high street, uh, fitness studios and, and large gym chains, um, chiropractor, physiotherapists.
We spoke to, um, the first, the public sector here in the uk. And, and then we started to sitting down, um, with what we would always term complex operational spa and leisure where, where we kind of first started on the first question and we sat down with a, a, a wonderful lady named Lena Lotto. Who is virtually, um, with Lena, who's the spa director of a, of a beautiful estate in the new forest here in the United Kingdom called, and, and she said, look guys, you gotta come look at this side of the industry.
Um, there's. There's a handful of software servicing it, and there are huge frustrations around them all. And, and, and they were all similar. Uh, those frustrations, they were out of data technology, whether it's on premise or cloud hosted. Um, lack of an online bookings capability, um, lacking in memberships, um, and and so forth.
And we thought, okay, well this, this is something we can really sink our teeth into and, and, and have an impact with. So we said, okay, well we're gonna build, let, let, let's put our heads down, let's build it. So Stephen will. Started building and I just started going out to the industry and speaking to whoever I could.
And, and that went on for about a good six months, I wanna say. And through that time we met another. Wonderful lady, um, named Claire Caddick, um, who was a consultant in the industry and she ended up becoming, um, a really good consultant alongside us and helping us shape what the product is. And at the exact same time, we met another fantastic consultant named Katie Plowman who did the exact same.
So it's, it really was a case of thinking to ourselves, well, we've got a, we've got a great team here, we've got a great friendship. We can really build something that can have an impact. We love an industry. Let's find where that opportunity is. And that, and that's how Trybe came about.
Steve Porter: I think COVID, um, it was probably the best, worst, best time to start a, uh, to start a business, right? Like, uh, hotels, um, had to. A digitally transform, they had to, uh, implement contactless procedures. So, you know, we were able to, to, to really innovate, move quickly, uh, and, and speak to people who were at home and, and, and dying for this solution, but just didn't have the time to, to think about it, implement it during, uh, while they're managing their day jobs.
So, so yeah, like, it was, it was a really, really good opportunity for us.
Adam Mogelonsky: And now the hard part of a startup is getting your first clients. Um, yeah. You've mentioned a lot of different industries that Trybe can work for. Talk about your first clients, how you got them, but also talk about your first hospitality clients as well.
Ricky Daniels: Definitely, I'm gonna say this 2 very hard parts there. Getting, getting those first clients and getting them paying. For sure, for sure. I think for us it was, um, get Trybe into an operations by any means possible. So we, we just said take it. We want hear from you. We wanna learn from you, we want you to help shape the product.
And actually that, that one of those consultants who I mentioned, um, a minute ago, Claire Caddick, um, was working on a number of projects within the industry. Um, and Claire introduced us to a group called Amaze Hotels who have a number of properties in the group, um, and quite a. Um, spas, um, within there, and they had two, uh, properties, uh, that were, were running smaller operations, um, within the spa.
Um, a few, a number of treatment rooms and a small wet facilities and, and a, and a health club operation. And they weren't, they weren't using a system, so they said, okay, well let, let's give you a go. And, you know, we're incredibly grateful to a Maze Hotels. Uh, they put us into, um, riffing Castle in Wales and, uh, Chev Country Park, hotel and Spa in Yorkshire, which is about.
10 minutes down the road from where I grew up, which is incredibly funny. Yeah, well the chances of that. But, um, that, that's what, that's where it started. So we, we had these two properties using the system for free, just take it and we nurtured this relationship. And whilst that, and, and obviously when you look at the, it's crazy to look at where the product was when this, when it went, went into the hands of riffing Castle and Ching Country Park to where it is now.
Um, it was. It was a basic calendar. It was the ability to sell a treatment. And, and access to web facility, um, and a very basic bookings page. And the property couldn't even access the settings really for most changes to the system. They had to get in touch with us. We would make that change for them. Um, and from there, like Steve mentioned, we just kept building and building innovating.
Um, and all the property had to do was refresh their browser and they were on the latest version of our system. So there was no downtime. We, it was rapid innovation for sure. Um, all the while we were reaching out to more properties. And then getting them signed up, um, and eventually getting them all paying as well.
Adam Mogelonsky: Right. You have to have that, uh, that initial user base and then the cash flow is the whole other issue on the, on the back end there.
Steve Porter: At those, those early adopters, they were, they were very invaluable. They were happy to put up with. You know, a a a calendar where you can't drag and drop and just their feedback to help us push forward with the functionality that was, that was actually gonna make a difference to operation was, was amazing.
Ricky Daniels: Hotels. They the largest hotel spa. They have tri, quite.
They, the idea was, let's, let's see how Trybe does in smaller operations, and I think it was within three months of them being live on Trybe and seeing the power of the automation of online bookings, just dropping straight into the calendar. Um, the time savings that came with that for their central reservations team.
We were all, we were already talking about their, their flagship hotel spa, which was a large property. So it was, incredibly invigorating to see. That feedback so soon after going live in our first two properties.
Steve Porter: I think you've also gotta remember like when when the industry was opening back up, opening back up, we had this huge staff shortage. So there was nobody there to answer the phones. There was nobody there to check inboxes. So again, I think we were just really, really well timed. We were, when we went into strictly hall, 70% of their bookings were coming online.
And, you know, like if, if they didn't have an online booking system, they would've really, really, well, they would've struggled a lot more to recover from, from, from the pandemic. So, yeah, I think it's just, it's, it was a well-timed opportunity that we just, we just capitalized on.
Ricky Daniels: To further that we, we, I think property number seven, um, in Wales as well, Langley Hall Hotel and Spa, they, they blew up on social media. Um, and their, their online bookings just went crazy and they did not have an online booking engine to, to match that, that demand. And again, that's how the conversation opened up.
Um, so yeah, absolutely
Adam Mogelonsky: And all of these initial properties we're talking about, they are in England, close to home,
Ricky Daniels: correct, correct.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, uh, therein we should give some context to English hospitality and what distinguishes some of those hotels, as well as talking about boots on the ground, this whole idea that yeah, we're developing cloud-based software so technically can work anywhere around the world, but still a lot of technology in hospitality is sold locally in a lot of ways.
Um, do you have any comments on what distinguishes English hospitality? Start off there.
Ricky Daniels: Yeah, I, I, I would have to say that it really revolves around the experience in British hospitality. Uh, it's something that we saw very early on, and I think we've identified for sure that we, we as a nation are of, are at the forefront of this. Um, we we're brilliant at selling, uh, a package, an experience that that combines.
Multiple aspects of a properties ancillary services. you know, it, it could be as simple as just a spa day where you're selling a treatment, you get access to wet facilities, and then you get some food and beverage, um, whilst you're there, your lunch or an afternoon tea. But that is, that is very much a standard here in the uk and you can package that up with an accommodation and overnight break as well.
Um, driver. And revenue and I believe we lead the, that's shaped. So find in is. Again, I to to mention what I said earlier, property management system for those, for your ancillary services, but something that on top of that can wrap those offerings up into a package, um, and sell every aspect of that package online, in person over the phone, pulling with from each component.
And that package is live availability for sure, but we do hospitality incredibly well here in Britain. Something to be very proud of for sure.
Adam Mogelonsky: the second part of that is the whole idea of selling locally. Um. Did you find that that was, that was critical to your success getting started, where you were talking with people and you really could develop that connection, whether it was virtually, and then eventually you probably were doing site visits after these places as the world, uh, or as the UK opened back up.
Did you find that was helpful?
Ricky Daniels: Do you know, it's funny. Um. so again, I'll come back to our previous experience. So at Design my night, I, I was on the road every day. I was, I was, I would be in Liverpool one day. I would then be in Brighton the next, and then over in Wales the next day. And it was, it was all on site meetings and, and then COVID came about and.
And it really felt like senior leadership, decision makers, senior influencers were embraced this, this communicate, this online communication where, where like, where we're speaking today and, and it, and it, it's, it's still carrying through today. I, I, I. I I look at the proportion of demos and meetings we're having, and I, I want to say we are 99% online and, and that's driven by the person we're speaking to.
They just want to meet online. Uh, they wanna be able to put their laptop down, get back into their day and not have to travel or, or whatever it may be same, same on our side for sure, but even when we were selling in the early years to begin with, to the UK market. It was very much virtual. Um, probably driven by the fact that we were in and outta lockdowns.
I think it was three times in the early days. But even as we embraced normality, um, and that, that's still true today. Um, and I think that's really helped us massively in this last two and a half years as we've moved outside of the UK and into Europe and across North America. The fact that these, um, these individuals, these customers are very embracing of online communication such as, such as this.
Steve Porter: I think like to expand on that as well, I think that's what's made these in person. Networking events even more special and more purposeful. You know, people who are taking time away to go to these, they're, they're networking more, they're sharing experiences more at these, these events. So, um, the, the spa association events that we're going, uh, going to like the UK Spa Association and, and Spa Life, like everybody there is, is, is learning and sharing off each other because, you know, uh, when we started they were just doing, you know, um, screen time.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, it's, uh, it's amazing how the, the world has, you know, it moved from going, you'd have to go to present something in person, and then we went to a more efficient. Model of having everything virtually. And now we found this hybrid and it's just been growth throughout. And, uh, dare I say it, but now people are working harder than ever.
Uh, you know, because the expectation now is that you're able to fit in five meetings a day instead of two.
Ricky Daniels: We try and embrace a, a cohesive working environment where we can, you know, in, in the office. Uh, we're based over in Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury way in London, just just by Holden. Um, and we, we practice hybrid working, so we we're, we're in the office Monday to Wednesday. We think it's incredibly important that the team have that face-to-face interaction with each other.
They can bounce off each other in a work, in an office environment. Um, and then Thursday, Friday is, is work from home. And we think that's a really nice way to do it. It it allows them to kind of enter the week on a much calmer, calmer foot for sure.
Adam Mogelonsky: I think that is the, the way going forward. Um, next question here. You mentioned. Starting in the UK now throughout Europe and now into North America. Where is Trybe now in terms of C clients, territories, et cetera?
Ricky Daniels: So we we're now 80 properties. Uh, we in 27 different countries, um, and, and growing a number are.
Really range across the board. It, it could be individually, um, owned businesses, uh, standalone properties on the high street or, or hotel hotels as well. Um, all the way up to large corporate chains. We, we, we have IHG properties, um, with, with the chosen provider there for the UK managed estate to the Dorchester collection, sorry.
Um, 10 global properties, um, are Trybe’s in all each of those properties. Um, so. It really ranges. And, and I think that's the beauty of Trybe. It it's, it's a very flexible solution. It, it can, it can service that individual property will be up into a large chain and that could be a property that has, um, a number of treatment rooms and sells, just treatments, um, to properties that have treatments and access to facilities and, and sell many, many packages.
Um, two properties that. Like, like Bluestone in Wales who are a, a huge operation that have not only spar and leisure, but loads of activities, whether it's cocktail master classes, sourdough bread, making kids activities, bowling, the lift goes on, and again, they're all managed through Trybe um, health Club operations that are managing their memberships through our system, uh, their membership charges and, and, and whatnot.
Um. And so it is, it's a, it's a real range of properties for sure, um, including multi-property, um, as well. And we don't, we don't lock ourselves to one segment. It's not like we define ourselves as suitable just for luxury. It's, it's completely across the board. It's it's luxury, it's mid-market.
It's, it's the complete range. And, and that really does help us in terms of opening up a global market. And in terms of where we, our predominant focus lies, um, it's across Europe, um, and across North America.
Steve Porter: I guess like in, in terms of numbers as well, like. We're now processing about, uh, 60 million. 60 million or statin dollars. Six, about $80 million of, of, of bookings a month now. Um, about 250,000 guests a month. Uh, go through the platform. So it's, yeah, it's there. It's, it's quite a, it's, it's quite a crazy number now, actually.
Adam Mogelonsky: and then I guess another question about the. Whole founding of a company is the funding of it. You know, starting bootstrapping during COVID and then all the way now, and now you look at a territory expansion in North America, uh, that is not a cheap venture because you have to put a lot of time towards sales and marketing and, and then, uh, vetting the product with specific features.
Talk to us about how you found funding and, and what you're able to disclose for right now.
Steve Porter: Yeah, of course. Like a, I think we probably ripped up the tech fundraising playbook, so we haven't raised a Series A yet, and I think Will, Ricky and I, when we, when we originally set out to build a business, the one thing that we wanted to do was build, a sustainable business. We didn't wanna be one of those tech companies that raised millions of pounds, didn't know what to do of it, and disappeared like a, a, a couple of years later.
We are very much shoestring budget. Uh, we, we funded the business originally from, from Share options that we, that we received from Design My nights and savings of our own. Um, we didn't take a salary for the first 18 months, uh, uh, together. So it was, it was, it was tough. Um, but, from Ricky, like going out and reaching to people and showing people Trybe built up a relationship with somebody inside the industry who was just.
Really interested in what we were doing. Completely understood the problem, um, with, with legacy, uh, integratable systems, uh, that were, that were managing spa and wellness operations and was just like, um, I want to integrate with you, but also how can I help? How can I get you everywhere? And that's where, that's where we got our first, uh, our first investor from.
From a UK company called, uh, UK Company, CEO, called Jason Goldberg of, of Spar Seekers. Uh, and that's sta that gave us an amount of money for us to to, to get our first couple of hires. And, uh, uh, we, we hired, um, uh, two people that we'd worked with from design, another person on the engineering team, uh, Dan Johnson and, and a head of customer experience, Jess.
And, and we had a, we had some runway, for a good 12 plus months. Uh, and then, you know, as, as of any business you want to scale, so, um, through our existing, uh, network of angel investors from design by night, uh, relationships that we already had, we just approached them and said, look, we wish starting this new thing, um, are you interested?
And, uh, uh, and yeah, we, we, we, we, we raised another two rounds with them and friends and family and, and that's what we've raised so far. I suppose like in terms of like advice for, for people who are wanting to, to, to fundraise, um, in the tech scene, in the ho uh, for hotel tech. I think if, as long as you're building something that people want and there's a demand, I think you, you just, just grow.
Like people, people will constantly be knocking on your door trying to, to, to potentially give you money. Like just, just be a lean startup, MVP, get feedback, iterate, learn, repeat, and that's our ethos here at Trybe.
Ricky Daniels: I will add one more as well, which is, um. I, I dunno how I would do this or be here without Steve and Will. So, you know, we formed a, a great team, with skillset sets that compliments to each other. Um, and we had a, a, we built a strong relationship together before we started the business. Um, so it really, it really was that, that founding team that set us up, you know, strong foundation. on which we could build from and to Hired Dan and Jess as our are next two, who again, we've worked really closely with for many years. And again, we're we, we we're privileged enough to call good friends. just felt right. Um, the foundation was so strong from what we could do and, and from there we could really just go for it. Um, give it our everything.
And at the end of the day, as long as we knew we'd given it our everything, what all be will be.
Adam Mogelonsky: You guys make it sound so simple. But, you know, developing an MVP, then iterating and iterating, that's, that's thousands, tens of thousands of hours of work to do that.
Steve Porter: I remember, um, the, the first, the first like three to six months of just trying to get in, um, ch and riff. It was me and Will. Lots and lots and lots of long hours, but we loved it. You know, like the, when you're starting a company, there is nothing more exciting than, and me, me, and, well, technology enthusiasts, like, um, no, no technology education, no university degree.
We just love problem solving with technology. So the first, the first three to six months were awesome. Like we could, and nobody was doing anything outside, and we could just, we could just code. We could just solve problems. And uh, and, uh, Dan is exactly the same. You know, like our next engineering hire is exactly the same.
So we were, we were almost like, you know, um, the social network, uh, uh, the film, uh, the Jesse Eisenberg film, it was like that. It was like we were plugged in. The rooms weren't dark, but we were just, building. We were, we were, we were solving real problems.
Ricky Daniels: I think, yeah.
biggest, biggest learning was, um, so I, my, my background's always been sales. So, uh, life, life and sales. Is this. It's just up and down. It's up and down. It's up and down. What, what I came to learn was whilst sales might be this, starting a business is this.
And when, when you're in sales and you, you, you are, you've had a low day, you dunno what's around the corner 'cause you don't know, you don't dunno what cold emails getting responded to you Dunno what in what inbounds being passed your weight.
Um. What I found when you're down there after some, you know, you, you thought you're a week away from getting a new property. Who was property number three or four or five? Um, we built a feature that we thought was, you know, the, the customer was gonna love and the reception wasn't that great or that it needed to be built even further.
Um, the lows were, were so, so, so low and the only way to pick your, to get back out of that low and back up to a high was, was yourself. It's the only, the only way you could wake up the next morning and you had to get yourself. Outta that low. And then the highs were the, the best things in the world celebrating like crazy at the top.
And, and I think a big learning over that first six months was trying to level out those highs and lows so that you didn't become just completely exhausted and, and that that was a huge learning for sure. For sure.
Adam Mogelonsky: Uh, you know, I, I, I, I've never been in that situation, but it's unenviable and but exciting as you said, Steve, like you're able to just plug yourself in and just, you, you know, you're, you get into that deep state afloat where it's like four hours passes and a whole day passes, and you're just like, whoa, what happened?
And then it's like, wow, I actually got a lot done.
And
yeah.
Steve Porter: It's, productive dopamine. It's not doom. Scroll dopamine. And yeah. It's, it's that, it's that buzz.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, I guess to shift gears about dopamine, uh, dopamine is reward and we're giving the guests, uh, the reward of being able to book great experiences. And you talked about legacy systems and you mentioned a specific feature, the drag and drop into an avail availability, uh, availability calendar for, uh, treatments.
So I'm wondering if you could. Discuss some of the features on Trybe that help to solve the pain points that spas and other ancillary businesses have traditionally had in selling their services, selling their spaces, and really creating experiences for their guests and their customers.
Ricky Daniels: Absolutely, and I would probably break this down into two, two sides. So you've got the technical side and you, you've got the practical side. So if we were, start with the technical side. Passion it quite a few times now during the conversation, um, Trybe is, is fully cloud native. Um, when you compare that to the, the expectation of the market, when you look at our competitors, they, the, they're all. On premise, so downloads to that server in the hotel, um, or cloud hosted, so on a server in a data center somewhere. And, and there's, there's a huge range of competitive, competitive advantages that come with Trybe being Cloud native. So firstly, you can access Trybe from anywhere in the world with varying levels of role-based permissions.
Those with complete admin rights can see everything. Whereas those, that, that just managed bookings can see the booking to just accounts teams that can see finance reports, for example. Um, we also support single sign on, uh, to help further that data security aspect. Um, there's also the point that there's a, it's rapid innovation.
We've spoken again, again, I get that but that ability for Steve and Will and, and as the development team grew to just con, continue to build and test and release. Repeat and all the operator or end user had to do was refresh their browser, led to a system that just got better and better and better.
Week on week, new features every week, excitement building around what was gonna be that next feature coming from us, um, compared to cloud hosted solutions or, or, um, on-premise solutions where you have to wait six months for a new update to come out, has to go offline for to.
Yeah, comparing that it's, there's quite a big difference there for sure. Speed of use Trybe is insanely quick. Doesn't matter where you're in the world. Um, our capacity is essentially infinite being cloud native. It doesn't matter how much data you put on our system, we're never gonna slow down. We have, we've migrated so many properties away from systems.
Well, I, I've watched them. Well, I mean, it's, it's crazy to say we, we've had properties tell us, we, we've stopped taking bookings over the phone and entering into the system whilst we're taking the booking because it, we timed it and it took us 20 minutes. So we just write it down on a piece of paper. And then after the booking reality.
Well, that sounds incredibly unsecured from a data perspective, but that's, that's where, that's where properties were left with cloud hosted or cloud or on-premise, excuse me, solutions. There is the security aspect around, um, cloud native solutions as well. it is and can be incredibly secure. Um, data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
We've tried, um, and our equipment to our customers on how seriously we take handling their data security lies in our ISO 27,001 2022 certification, which essentially just means we're audited rigorously, yearly, on our own internal data security processes. Um, so that's our commitment to our customers due to the nature of our technology.
Um. Trybe has been built from the ground up as an incredibly open platform. Uh, we have open APIs, we've got many data endpoints, and on top of that we have webhooks as well, which properties can, can work from as well. Um, it's been awesome to see how properties have embraced that and. Custom developed Trybe into more individual, requirements within a property.
Whether that's you, uh, bespoke customer bookings journeys that they built on top of a Trybe and whatever else, it might be a PM property management system. Uh, whether that's integrating Trybe into more, uh, powerful reporting solutions such as Power bi. Um, there's been some great use cases.
Um, Steve, I dunno if you wanna, on the open APIs.
Steve Porter: That's, it's, it's one of our biggest differentiators, right? Like, uh, 99.999% of the API endpoints we have are public. So you could go and build the Trybe application yourself from the, from the APIs and you know, we've seen people do some pretty crazy things with that. But we have, we have one clients. A bathhouse, um, in, in New York, bathhouse, flat Island, Williamsburg, like, they're, they're accepting Bitcoin as a method of payment, like Bitcoin to, to book spa days, uh, and treatments at their, at their bathhouse and, and cool story there.
Um, their, their pool is actually heated by a Bitcoin mining farm. Like, it's quite cool. You only check that out and, you know, we have, um. Somebody working on an integration, um, with our platform to take bookings over the phone and with the rise of, um, these, these, um, AI tools that are just opening up coding to, to the masses.
You know, we've got people asking us questions, um, about web hooks and how they can use tools like Zapier to absorb our information and book those into like AI flows. So I, I suppose like that's our, that's one of our biggest competitive advantages and it's, it's how we started, uh, Trybe, like being open.
Ricky Daniels: Shout out to Jason and over above.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, I, I, I know about Bathos, powered by the Bitcoin mining. Um, so to pick out some technical details, 'cause this is really, I find fascinating and I bet a lot of other people do. Uh, you mentioned. Of course within Cloud native, there's data in transit and data at rest, and you're encrypting on both ends.
Can you first describe what the difference is there, and then also talk about where you are storing your data. You're in 27 different countries where you store your data is important in order to be compliant. Talk to us about that situation.
Steve Porter: Yeah, of course. So like, um, encrypted in transit just essentially means that a secure. A line of communication, is opened up between, um, us and a user or a booker of the platforms. You know, like how previously you'd open up your browser internet explorer and the bar would be green and there'd be a padlock.
That's essentially encryption, in transit. And, uh, encryption at rest is when we, we take the data that is stored for the platform. It's not the raw, the raw data, it's encrypted before ve.
Security is, is really important for a cloud native, um, multi-tenancy platform. 'cause if we get a data breach, fundamentally, like we, we don't have a business anymore. Like if people can't trust us to store their data, that's it. Trybe is no longer a thing, which is why we take security so seriously.
Like security is, it's part of that development.
flow
Adam Mogelonsky: do you wanna talk about where you store the data? Because this is, different countries have different compliance rules.
Steve Porter: Of course, all of our data is stored in, um, in S one Ireland. Um, the platform is stored on, on, on Amazon web services and, uh, that that's where the data is today. So, um, important for GDPR compliance, uh, uh, yeah, and that's that's the home of drive.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. Now to pick out another part of what you said, Ricky, uh, talking about how a lot of these places were taking information over the phone. It was 20. 20 minutes per call. So you're, you're giving, making it a lot more efficient. But part of the whole reason why that call was 20 minutes was because the person wanted to do something very complex in terms of, uh, arranging different treatments in a certain order.
And now with a. Very flexible platform. You can do dynamic packaging to bring these all together and essentially replicate that phone call. But in a booking engine environment, uh, can either you talk about that specific feature and what you've done to bring those individual treatments or services together into something that's not only more value to the business, but also more value to the, uh, guest or customer.
Steve Porter: So I think ultimately guests want choice and flexibility. That was the one thing that we noticed when, uh, uh, from the very beginning and that was lacking in all of the possible booking experiences. And if you take a look at how. Hoteliers are marketing, uh, are marketing their stays at the moment. They're marketing experiences.
They're marketing, um, spa breaks, uh, afternoon tea spa days where, you know, you get a choice of treatment. It's no longer you get a 60 minute back, back massage. It's, do you want a 60 minute back massage? Do you want a facial? do you want to, to to pay an extra 50 bucks for, for, for the 90 minute massage?
So what we built are these dynamic packages where. The hoteliers can bundle up all of their different ancillary services into some choices. It's, and choice form will be like, what treatment would you like? And you have the range of, uh, treatments that are included in the package as well as any ole options.
And the second choice is. When do you want to have access to the, to the wet facilities? If it's a half day, um, spa treatment, then um, the treatment has to, to be in the morning and, um, the access to the wet facilities has to be in the morning. And then the third slot is, well, what time would you like your, your afternoon tea reservation?
And we integrate with a number of, uh, restaurant systems where we can pull live availability outta that and even include that as part of that booking experience. So that's, that's what we mean by dynamic packages. It's, it's that. It's that single marketed experience at, at these, at these places, um, with giving the guests the, the power to, to configure that itinerary and, and and give that guest the flexibility to book exactly what it's, they want.
Ricky Daniels: It's also just nice to say is like how we're, uh, we, we continue to push that as far as it as that boundary can take us. Uh, the next level for us is, and, and going light as we speak, is in including accommodation into those package bookings. So we are, uh, releasing as we speak an inclusive, uh, spa break booking engine, where one component of that package is accommodation.
So, we're, we're not slowing down on the dynamic packages front. We're only speeding up for sure. But I just, just to add. I think another real benefit alongside the dynamic packages is, is that ability that, that all in one shock and Trybe, that ability to have on the one booking engine, um, packages for spa, individual treatments, fitness classes, um, activities such as tennis, squash, and the list goes on.
But it's that that's also a huge, uh, strong element of Trybe. Is that all in one solution? For sure.
Steve Porter: To touch what Ricky says there, like all of those experiences that he's just, they're all different booking experiences. Uh. You may remember, like some hotels, like five, 10 years ago, they might have had like a basic website and very much a shopping cart where you can add a treatment, uh, not select the time or, or, or add something else.
And it just, that's not personal. It's not how people want to book. So we've got different booking experiences depending on what, what is being booked. And that's, that's one of the big powerful things behind Trybe.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, I mean the, the term I see to describe this movement that you're on the forefront of is conversational. Because you had the phone call, which was 20 minutes long, and the reason why it was 20 minutes long was people wanted to ask questions. They wanted to book at specific times. They wanted to rearrange things on the fly, and they would have a, a conversation with someone on the team, whether that's as far receptionist, a concierge, et cetera, to have that really meet their individual needs.
Now you're essentially, we've gone full, full circle with trying to automate it and we had this, this, uh, cart based model and now we're going all the way back to what essentially is, is a true conversation that is just has a lot of object architecture under the hood to enable that. Yeah. And therein another part of enabling that you mentioned, uh, restaurants within there and pulling over availability.
Uh, talked about APIs and, uh, mentioning things like web service calls and webhooks and different types of APIs. Uh, that still requires a lot of work, uh, to integrate various systems and work is time and money. So how do you strategically decide. Where to devote resources to develop your integration partners?
Steve Porter: A, that's a really, really good question. Um, I suppose when you're an open platform and you wanna integrate with everyone, that's a, that's hard. But I think, um, obviously like, uh, we are, we're very, we're very demand driven. So, uh, when, when, when people are approaching us and saying, uh, like, we really want this integration, we think it's gonna be valuable.
Like, we listen to our clients. So, and as we move to this, this world where we we're moving away from these all in ones, um, which was a, uh, uh, which, which I think personally is, is, is a good thing. Like we're seeing a rise of best in breed softwares. I think, we're having to make sure that, uh, together.
Like we're not silo systems, but we integrate well enough to, to, to be that new all in one, uh, system with, with best in breed, uh, uh, systems, managing the different parts of the operation. So I think we're just looking, always looking for partners to, to, to fill those gaps. And, you know, we integrate with Muse, um, which are a huge partner of ours, uh, opera and guest line, as well.
And, and, and, yeah, like, uh, I think, I think that's, I suppose like integrations is really important. We're always continuing to, to develop new ones, uh, all the time.
Ricky Daniels: We wanna, we wanna say, we wanna stay specialists in what we do and do it as well as we can, and work really close to other specialists to do what they do best. And that's how we believe we build a much stronger ecosystem for the industry as compared to an all-in-one that's doing everything to a very average level.
Dropping balls in the process for sure. Um, it can, it can be very challenging for sure when there are so many great, um, partners, um, potential partners in the industry, and we have, uh, limited resource whilst we're focusing on building functionality within our own platform and looking to build integrations to others and, and assist those partners as they're building integrations from us.
Um, it's a challenging one, but it's one we, we embrace, we love and it's great to see the, the end results because of that.
Steve Porter: I suppose like speaking from our experience, like when we were very early, um, on like getting integrations with. With the big boys was really, really hard. Like, 'cause they, they didn't have capacity for, for Trybe with free clients in, in the north of England. So that's, that was I think probably one of the driving decisions, um, around being open so that if people wanted to integrate with us, they could do the work, we would have the documentation and you know, like, uh, in, in the tech scene, Stripe are probably one of the best tech platforms.
On the market, their documentation is beautiful. Like you can, you can go from zero to taking a payment in about, uh, like half an hour. We, we wanted to be that, but in, in, in this, this wellness booking space, this, this ancillary spend and, and bookings management space.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, it's a very interesting world, uh, with hospitality, technology, the number of players, uh, and just having to integrate them and then getting your foot in the door where the bigger players actually give you the time of day to notice you. And, but you mentioned something very important, which is making their jobs easier.
You have all the, the documentation of the SDKs, uh, software development kits ready for them so they can, they can put you into their development pipeline.
So,
yeah.
Ricky Daniels: A huge, there's a huge amount of sales involved as well, right? You can look at it like sales. Uh, we were, even in the early days, we would treat a. Potential integration partner like we would securing a new property, um, trying to get, trying to get noticed and reaching out to whoever we could that we thought would be a senior influencer or a decision maker on that side.
So, um, it's, it's amazing to see some of the larger integration partners we have now who we dreamed about integrating within the early days. But again, it was the thousand nos finding the final yes. to get that partnership.
Adam Mogelonsky: It's, it's really interesting that it's, it's fascinating that you mention that as sales because, uh, traditionally we always thought about sales as new client. Which in our case would be getting the hotels, getting the spas, getting the bathhouses. And then of course there's, uh, the internal sales or customer success as Mark Benioff coined it, which is getting them to use more of your product.
Right. To get more throughput and sell them on additional modules. And now you're saying that there's a third element of sales, which is selling to other companies to develop. Ecosystem around your product.
Ricky Daniels: I would, yeah. And I would go as far to say that's, that's not, um, we're not the only industry to, to have that challenge, let's call it. Um, when, again, coming back to us, the point we discussed a second ago, we are now in this world where. Thankfully you have best in breeds that are specialists in what they do and, and, and stay in their lane and look to build really strong integrations with other specialists.
Um, and with the aim of building a much stronger ecosystem and, and that that's, that's cross industry for sure.
Adam Mogelonsky: So one, one best of breed area that, um, a lot of software companies, uh, have not really focused on. Is the actual payment rails where they wanna focus on their product, and then they integrate this to, uh, some sort of processing entity. And you have Trybe Pay, which is one of your, uh, part of your software suite.
Talk to us about not only what the product is, but how you decided to go that route of developing your own, uh, your own embedded payment rails.
Steve Porter: yeah, sure. So, uh, I suppose Trybe Pays, it's an, it's an omnichannel embedded and integrated payment solution directly in Trybe. So that means that you can take payments, um, via eCommerce online, uh, and in person. A by link. Uh, all, all of those different mediums like, uh, integrative in the system. And, um, why, why that's, uh, powerful is we've chosen to do it like this.
'cause we didn't want to have to integrate with all of the various different payment gateways, uh, payment processing services. 'cause they don't all have the same functionality. They're not all easy to integrate with. And it would just be a. The different features that you can or can't do with all of the features that we have within Trybes. So that's why we have Trybe pay. Well, we can manage everything. We, we don't have those, those complexities. And ultimately we can innovate faster. We can, we can use, uh, the, the tools that are enabled to us to, to do some really cool things like, uh, um, wearable payments, for example.
Like we're working on something which is super exciting where we're able to tokenize, uh, uh, the payments, any of our, um, uh, interaction points. Essentially, uh, um, link those payments opens to, to wristband. So if you imagine that guest experience at these really high end bath houses are hotels, you, you check in, you pick up your wristband for your access control and access to your lockers, that's now your method of payment for you to use at, at any point of sale across the property, which is really exciting.
And I suppose like how it's working, um, under the hood really is that there, there's a payment is being captured by, by our platform, um, not through us. Uh, it goes to our, our payment provider. It gets tokenized. So all we are storing is a, is a token of that payment. Think of it as like a, a fingerprint, uh, so that we, we can remain PCI compliant.
We don't have to touch any of those particular card details. And then using that token, we can, we can just charge it.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. That's, uh, that's, that's the perfect way to describe it. I mean, you know, tokens, uh, a little bit different than encryption. I'm not sure we need to go heavy into, into that, the, that nuance there, but that's really cool. And, and so you mentioned wearable payments, and my first hunch was to basically say that the cruise industry has been doing this for a long time, uh, with a lot of their, uh, medallion, uh, wristbands as well.
Uh, where did that idea come from, and are there any clients that are using this, uh, that you're piloting?
Steve Porter: Great question. So where did the idea come from? I think, um, uh, we, we quite, quite often get our, uh, our, our heads together in the tech team and, and, and try to think of something that's cooler. I remember, I think it was, um, Dan and I, a good couple of years ago, we were, we were looking at the, there's a, I think it was, um, it was for Bristol and Thames Lido.
It's a lido outside British Summer, you, you sit around the pool, lovely restaurant on the side. And they were after this solution where, you know, they didn't want people to, to tap their, uh, uh, like tap their phones or anything because.
You know, there's, there's a swimming pool involved and they wanted this contact contactless payment solution, but they didn't want to add another system in, into their, into their, um, their tech stack that wouldn't talk to anything else. And I just think that, that, that got us thinking. It's like, how could we solve that particular problem with.
Our payment solution and, and, and our tech. And fast forward, uh, uh, a couple of years, um, we were, we started speaking to Bathhouse in New York, about the possibility 'cause they were interested in exactly the same thing. And we were like, right, let's build it. Like Bathhouse are a forward thinking company.
Um, they wanna work with forward thinking companies like us, let's together build this solution. And we're actually going live with bathhouse with these check-in, um, KIOS. And this wearable payment solution. Um, hopefully next month, like we're, we're doing some onsite testing, uh, early September with hopefully a, a launch, um, shortly after.
Adam Mogelonsky: One other aspect of wearables or any sort of payment digitally in this manner is the upside of increased revenue, where the thesis on it psychologically is the more you remove. A person from the physical pain of paying, moving from coins to notes, to credit cards, plastic to mobile credit cards, and now to wearables.
The theory is that you increased total dollar per customer. Uh, have you noticed that at all? Uh, are you seeing that? What, what can you say to that trend?
Steve Porter: I think it's, it's not a trend that we're noticing at the moment 'cause uh, we don't have this live yet, but it's, it, it is so true, right? Like, uh, if you remove all of these barriers, if you make it easier, if you go from having to, um, insert your card to chip and pin to being contactless, people will spend more money.
And I think, uh, let's jump on a call in six months time and like we'll have a load of data that we can share with you, with, you know, how much additional revenue these, these wearable bracelets will. We'll, we'll we'll bring in for our, for our customers.
Ricky Daniels: It's slightly related, but, um, and this, this thiss to our private previous line designed, but you, our book engine have great upsell selling tools. We have a large number of properties and it's, it sounds so simple, but let's say a package includes a glass of Prosecco, but as a final step, uh, why not upgrade to a bottle of Prosecco for an additional 20 pounds, $30, whatever it might be.
And the ups, the, the revenue pickup that we see off the back of that is ginormous. And what more we see customers who have paid for that proco coming on site and forgetting, spending that, um. Moving on. Spending more on buying. So effect from absolutely huge.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, and, and all told together we're not talking about, um, selling an additional thousand rooms. It's always the string of quick wins and building. Incremental revenue. Revenue that is really gonna take a property from a ancillary, um, contribution of let's say 20% of GRR uh, gross rooms revenue up to 50 or even 60% for some places to really drive that ROI from a total revenue perspective, it's a series of quick wins built into the platform and enabling these upselling opportunities at every step of the guest journey.
Steve Porter: It's exactly that, and it's just making sure that the systems are integrated and cohesive enough to to, to deliver that objective.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. And, and without any service faults, uh, which is the other side as well. There's the, there's the, the revenue on the books and then there's the execution upon that, which is of all their sides. So integrating to ops platforms very important, or I guess, what are they calling them now? Service optimizations, uh, systems, sauces. I think that's the. Again, and yet another industry acronym right there. Uh, there wasn't enough before.
Steve Porter: Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Mogelonsky: Um, so we'd be remiss, uh, to not talk about, uh, with a technology company, machine learning, it's very real. Uh, what is Trybe doing in this capacity?
Steve Porter: With machine learning, like what we, what we, what we're toying with and, and, and doing small hack days on is, is using machine learning to, to help us like, um, with, with revenue management, helping our, our customers, uh, put together some pricing strategies for, for, for what it is that they're, um, that they're, what they're selling their, their, those experiences.
So, you know, if, if your occupancy is low on a, uh, lower than usual on a Tuesday, coming up with ways that we can, you know, try and capture that additional revenue to get you to where you need to be. So like we're looking at, um, advanced shield management, so machine learning to help our users, um, make more informed decisions.
And I suppose like off the back of the machine learning conversation, you've also got ai, like AI is obviously hot. Uh, hot topic at the moment. Everyone's talking about ai, uh, and it's kind of lost its meaning. And I suppose like from, from our point of view, like, uh, we we're, we're, we're exploring ways to incorporate, you know, AI into our platform, but in a, in a purposeful and meaningful way.
Not, not just, not just slapping on a landing page to try and tell everybody that we're doing cool things, but, but seeing if we can, um, you know, explore ways that we can extract data in a conversational manner, uh, as opposed to, you know, just pulling reports and things like that.
Adam Mogelonsky: That's very interesting. Uh, that's, and that's a great use case. Uh, but yes, AI is, um, overused now, but. Um, it's still, there's a, there's a ton of potential, uh, just taking the data you have and then optimizing in various ways and offering suggestions to, to do this sorts of yield management. Um, are you doing anything with respect to within that yield management, to dynamic pricing and dynamic availability, uh, within your platforms?
Steve Porter: So not currently, but that's, that's the vision, right? Like the vision is to, to to continue to iterate and, and use these technologies to, to, to, to enhance the platform.
Adam Mogelonsky: Awesome. So what does the future look like for Trybe? Mm-hmm.
Steve Porter: So I guess we, we want to, to own the, an the ancillary spend. Hotel, hotel rooms like a, they're, they're a big part of the, the lifetime value of customers, but we want a platform that helps drive the other parts and. Continue, um, from an operator's perspective to feel like they're using that all in one software, not not feel like they're jumping from all the different systems.
Like the operator's got a cohesive experience and ultimately the guest has got a, a cohesive experience. So Ricky mentioned this earlier, like overnights, um, booking experiences. that's being released very, very soon. So the ability to be able a spa break. Um, and we, we mentioned the, uh, the, the contactless payments and the kiosks that's just around the corner and, um.
Quite a lot of our, uh, customers, the high-end, um, places here in the UK have golf courses and, and all of them are like, you're doing really real, really real, really, really well. The spark, we are really struggling to find a golf system
Adam Mogelonsky: Started. Yeah.
Steve Porter: And Ricky, Ricky will and I are always like, well, you know, what can we build next?
What can we build next? And there's so many things that we could do, but it's just, it's just making sure ultimately, that we don't become another one of those incumbent all in one. Like not staying in our lane, but making sure that if we, if we, if we, if we veer off of course, a little bit, that it's purposeful, it's intentional, and we do that well.
Ricky Daniels: One thing we value very close to our hearts is as a, as a three is, is our, is our relationships with our customers. Um. We wanna hear from our customers what it is we should be building next. And that's how we believe we truly build the strongest product on the market. Um, we'll always be open and honest with our customers.
There's certain things that we won't do and there's things that really interest us. And, and Steve touched on the wearable payment tech and how when Bathhouse mentioned that to us, our eyes, there's something excitement because it sounded just like such cool tech to bring to into Trybe. Um, so we, we would always be driven somewhat by.
By our customers. And, and where the industry is, is looking at what's called and exciting next. Um, there's also that piece around advance your management. We we're gonna be looking at very closely early next year, um, and, and looking at ways that we can, um, drive demand, um, pricing based on demand. Sorry, I should say for sure.
Steve Porter: We really well from the beginning. We were built for the industry by the industry, right? We were advised by people in this, in the industry, and that's worked really well for us. So it's important that we, that.
Adam Mogelonsky: Awesome and to close out. Um, is there anything else that you guys wanna mention?
Steve Porter: I guess some really exciting news is, is watch this space. You know, like we've got some exciting things around the corner. North America's a, a, a huge focus for us, so yeah, like stay tuned. There'll be some, there'll be some big announcements on that front too.
Adam Mogelonsky: Awesome. Well, Ricky, Steve, thank you so much for coming on the show. Uh, truly fantastic hour long conversation. A gold mine of information for anyone who is really interested in owning the ancillary spend. Thank you.