Hospitality America CEO on AI-Ready Hotel Data
We're giving that tool to our general managers and directors of sales, and they're engaging with that to make even faster decisions because AI is able to look at that data and tell us the trends that would have taken us two, three days worth of information to make the same assumption.
Speaker 2:From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider, a show about the future of hotels and the technology that powers them.
Speaker 3:Today, we speak with Ben Campbell, the president and CEO of Hospitality America. Ben brings ten years of operations experience to his role, and he currently leads a portfolio of 20 branded hotels in the Eastern US. Ben's approach to tech centers on enabling people to do their jobs better and build stronger relationships with guests and stakeholders. So there's a lot in this episode you can take away and apply to your own business. Let's dive Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today, Ben.
Speaker 3:Really looking forward to chatting with you. To kick things off, I would love for you to introduce yourself. Tell us a bit about your role and your company.
Speaker 1:Yeah. First, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you. My name is Ben Campbell, president and CEO of Hospitality America. I've been with our firm for ten years, almost eleven years now.
Speaker 1:But most recently, I've been as president and CEO for the past year and a half. We are based in Greenville, South Carolina. We operate hotels for franchisee owners. We have 20 hotels and we operate today and about eight fifty employees.
Speaker 3:Perfect. And can you share a bit about the hotels? Are there specific brands that you mostly work with, and how many keys in a typical hotel?
Speaker 1:Sure. Yeah. We operate primarily Hilton and Marriott hotels. They range anywhere from about a 100 keys to 250 keys. And we primarily operate, East Of The Mississippi, even though I am looking to expand over the Mississippi, probably into Texas and surrounding states.
Speaker 1:But we operate a select service, full service, soft branded tributes, tapestries, things of that nature. So we do it all.
Speaker 3:I would love to dig into the tech component. I'm curious based on a sizable portfolio of hotels and working with a handful of different brands as well, what would you consider to be the most critical piece of technology in your hotels?
Speaker 1:I'll answer it kind of twofold. I mean, from my seat, it's all the market driven data that we get from our Amadeus partner and TravelClick. You know, I'm able to really fine tune where our markets are, where they're headed, what does our pace look like, how are we performing against our competitive set, against our markets. As we all know, it all starts with top line revenue. You know, I have my finger on the pulse pretty well there just to understand those market dynamics.
Speaker 1:And then from there, honestly, Actable and Prophet Sword and Actable, which is Prophet Sword and Hotel Effectiveness. Without those two pieces of technology, I think it would be really, really hard for us to deliver on financial results for our ownership. Those are the two most critical. What I think high level, it all comes down to strategy. Where do we want to win?
Speaker 1:We're a hotel size that or portfolio size where we can't spend unlimitedly on tech. So we have to be pretty strategic on where we invest our dollars or our owner's dollars for that matter. And so today, what we are intently looking at is how can we own more data? The struggle with a lot of the hotel space or industry today is we isolated out each individual issue or problem that we have in hotels, and there's a tech for every single solution. But what that does is it your data now lives in all these different avenues.
Speaker 1:And so for us, it's about how can we get and tap into more of that data on a centralized level. So, that's where we're ultimately focused from a high level. The tech pieces that I talked about are the Amadeus and Actable play a key role in.
Speaker 3:So, let's talk through your tech stack a bit more. What tools does your team have at their disposal to manipulate rates, to generate demand? I would love for you to talk me through that component of your tech stack.
Speaker 1:I think the important piece that first I wanna outline is any tech is only as good as you utilize it. And the way that we look at tech is it's not gonna supplant boots on the ground, the real activity drivers, which is our general managers and our directors of sales. We want to empower them with more information, better information, and so that they can make better decisions locally. And so that's what we do. We we're utilizing that data to be able to make quick decisions, like with the travel click that we're talking about or translating that into forecasting with profit sort.
Speaker 1:And then once we understand that forecasting, looking further out thirty, sixty, 90, now we can start making decisions with our expense ratios quicker. And so that's how we expect our general managers and directors of sales to utilize this tech is to engage with it, understand it. It's not all going to be perfect, but the intent is to understand the data quicker so that we can then make decisions quicker and find marginal opportunities with our bottom lines.
Speaker 3:Totally makes sense. And are there any brand guidelines that you need to follow for, like, a revenue management system or PMS?
Speaker 1:You know, both with Hilton and Marriott, we use Grow with Hilton and OneYield with Marriott. And I would say they're very, very similar in what they're trying to accomplish or how they accomplish the results or how the tool is expected to be used. So we use that. Really, what we're going forward now is direct connections within Hilton and Marriott so that we can get an API connection and get the data that they have. They're not gonna share all their data.
Speaker 1:That's some of the frustration that we have as a management company. But we can get a lot of that data that is readily available to us in a direct feed so that we're not having to go source it, download it ourselves. We want that we wanna interact with that data as quick as possible. That's something that we're trying to accomplish right now. We've achieved that with one of them, and we're trying to achieve it with the other.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where the power is going to be for us is not just in having the tools or having the tech stack, but having our environment of the tech stack interact with each other based upon our expectations or our involved. Right? Our hotels portfolio is gonna be different. The makeup of it is gonna be different than, you know, a bigger company with more airport hotels or more convention hotels. We want to understand the data that we have for our hotels, how that interacts, and then make those decisions.
Speaker 1:For example, if you have an airport hotel, your booking window is going to be much shorter. Your length of stay is going to be much shorter. We want to understand down to the penny how that affects our bottom lines when we source different pieces of business. So in order to do that, we need to then take that data and apply that to labor data and understand how those cost per occupied rooms is different based upon when we go after a crew piece of business or if we go after a leisure transient business at an airport hotel. It all depends then on our staffing models, how we need to adjust our staffing, or when we take a large piece of business, what type of changes do we need to make right now to ensure that that piece of business is as profitable as possible.
Speaker 3:I wanna rewind and dig into something you mentioned, which is getting API connections to data that Marriott and Hilton have. What data exactly is that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, it could be something as simple as our invoices from accounting standpoint to the revenue management data that we're talking about with Grow and OneYield. That data is available to us today, but we're having to manually download it and then import it into our environment. Whereas if we're able to have that API connection, same with Profit Sword. That's our data that lives in there that we engage with it on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1:But we need to then be able to export that quickly every single day to then run those type of regression models or run, you know, scenarios around specific datasets. And we're only able to do that if data from Prophet Sword and RMS data live in the same place. So some of that is available in Profit Sword, but we wanna be able to export that out and work with it a little bit more organically, if you will.
Speaker 3:Is there a system you're using to consolidate that data? Is that in ProphetSword?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, we try to feed as much into ProphetSword as possible so that it can be our one single data of truth, if you will. But out of that, we made a decision to go hard in with Microsoft a few years ago and not just, you know, for Outlook or Teams, but a lot more beyond that. We did foresee some of the AI capabilities coming, but not to this level. And but I'm happy with the investment that we've made with Microsoft.
Speaker 1:Now we're getting that information into our data lake today. But in order for us to really take that to the next level to where eventually we wanna be able to put Copilot on top of that data that we can then engage with it. That's gonna take another level of system that Microsoft has, but they're still working out a lot of the kinks with it. And so that's the world in which we see is that if we can get all of that data into one singular place, then eventually when AI is to a place where we trust it, it's secure, we understand the positives and the negatives, and we have a lot of the fencing off with that, then we're giving that tool to our general managers and directors of sales, and they're engaging with that to make even faster decisions because AI is able to look at that data and tell us the trends that would have taken us two, three days worth of information to make the same assumption.
Speaker 3:So thinking in the future when Copilot is kind of the interface to get insights through, are you thinking a GM would be able to ask Copilot, what's my forecasted occupancy for the weekend? Or how many housekeepers do I need on the schedule? Or, like, those kinds of questions.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Scheduling really I mean, and labor planning really take care of itself at that point. We all know that an airport hotel requires a different level and different structure of labor. Right? But as things shift and as things change either by season, by week, then we should be able to trend line that out to know exactly what when we should be hiring for peak demand, when we should be scaling back on our labor, and have that more fine tuned and more specific than we do today.
Speaker 1:A lot of it is off of a great GM who's been at a hotel for a long time and understands those ebbs and flows. But we have some great GMs that have been in their hotels for ten plus years, but they've never seen the environment that COVID provided. They've never seen the environment that we're kind of in today where it gets rocky because of politics or tariff policy or whatever. So we wanna take the emotions out of it as much as we can and just look at what the data is telling us, then make the best decision.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Totally makes sense. And do you see sales and revenue teams taking advantage of this as well? Like, could a sales manager ask Copilot, like, should I take group a or group b, or what should the rate be? Or
Speaker 1:That's the nuances that, again, I mean, you know, we have the vision. When I say when I say we, I do wanna give the credit where the credit's due. Our chief strategy officer, Lee Holloway, has just really crafted this vision that I can understand enough to the point that we're talking about it today. She really knows it to a deep, deep level, but that's the scenario that you described that we are hopeful for. But we also don't know what the AI is gonna bring.
Speaker 1:Everything has to be vetted just like we've always said with our revenue management systems. You know, you validate the decision that Grow is making. You don't just trust it 100%. AI, I think, is gonna be the same way for the foreseeable future. But before we just relinquish the reins there and just give it to across the company, we gotta be very careful with that.
Speaker 1:And I think today, our main mission is getting our arms around the data. And we've spent the last thirty six months identifying the best tech stack for Hospitality America and our owners. And a lot of that was based upon who could give us the data and what did the data look like when it came over to us, and what did it cost to get all that. Now it's about phase two. Okay.
Speaker 1:Let's get our arms around all this. How much is it gonna cost? How quickly do we think we can accomplish it? And then start running the project in that way. We hope that we can get to the other end of that rainbow one day.
Speaker 1:But I can tell you that the companies that do figure it out and get to the other side of that are the ones that are gonna have the competitive advantage because this climate is changing very, very quickly.
Speaker 3:Well, I would love to learn a bit more about how you think about tech from a guest facing perspective. So if you could talk me through the journey from booking, pre arrival, check-in, post stay, what are the different touch points a guest interacts with, and what are the systems that power those?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm happy to say that our VP of commercial, Daniel Locke, has a great grasp on all of that. And so a lot of what I understand about that, I understood as a GM and a director of sales, but it's gone to another level based upon my conversations with them. And so where that journey starts for us is the brand positioning and the hotel positioning of the hotel inside of all of our markets. Not every hotel appeals to every single guest.
Speaker 1:And so knowing how to sell a Hampton Inn versus a Tapestry by Hilton, Right? And who that guest attracts, you have to understand until you're not appealing to the wrong customer. And so that's where the journey starts for us first, identifying that guest. And then from there, a lot of the tech is forward facing on pre arrival, making sure that we're communicating to the guest exactly what they can expect. We operate Amato by Hilton, which is a micro room hotel in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Speaker 1:Great, amazing hotel with great public area, but it is a micro room. And so the average square footage of that room is about a 180 square feet. We have to be very intentional of how we communicate that to the guests so that they understand and those expectations are managed. From there, we are sending out pre arrival. We're talking through every segment.
Speaker 1:We're communicating to the consumer, the guest. You know, if it's a Smurf group, a wedding group, a sports group, we are taking it to another level in that communication so that they understand at that hotel and across our company what they can expect from us as a hospitality America brand hotel. Then it's about delivery. One of the great things about being with Hilton and Marriott is their apps are really powerful. And so the communication is now happening more frequently.
Speaker 1:That said, you know, it probably doesn't have the adoption rate that the brands want because it just begins it's another you have to download the app, but then also you don't always want another app to be able to communicate through. So email is a great way, but in some of our international hotels, like in Miami that we get a lot of international, we've looked at WhatsApp because that's the most common app for international guests to use. So it depends again on what you're identifying the guest, who you're targeting, and then what is their preferred method of communication. But the brands have given us a lot of tech to be like Kipsu to be able to communicate with the guest through. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then on the post, I would say once we deliver on the expectations with the guest and deliver on those promises, It's then about following up with them, ensuring that we understand how we serve them at our hotels and through our guest surveys.
Speaker 3:Do you have your own proprietary guest survey or do you use TripAdvisor reviews, or how do you gather that sort of feedback?
Speaker 1:So we gather that feedback through the brand system. So they've been changing a few of their systems, but it's very similar to how we the data that we get from that is very similar to the data that we get from EnerGauge, our employee survey company. So that's really what kinda sparked how we really chose EnerGauge as a supplier or a vendor for our employee surveys is because we do a lot of we get a lot of data on our guests from, you know, the guest surveys that we get back, and that data is then spliced down to how they like breakfast or the lobby or the bed or the shower. We wanted to know that on our people side too. We wanna provide just a good experience for our employees as we do our guests.
Speaker 3:In the typical guest journey, are they interacting with any tech during their stay? Like, if they need to make a special request, would they do that through the app? Or is there like a tablet in the guest room or some other sort of interactive tool for them?
Speaker 1:No tablet in the guest room. It's really the app again to be able to, you know, make a request through the hotel. We actually watch all of our response rates from our front desk to know how long it's taking to respond to the guest pre arrival during their stay and post arrival to ensure that we don't have guests that are waiting. But, you know, some guests like to use the app and request things, but I think when it's more immediate, they're still picking up the phone call on the front desk or going down to desk. Some other apps or technology that we've been implementing at our hotels is at the Sweet Shop or our markets beside the front desk.
Speaker 1:A lot of people just wanna be able to grab a soda and a water and go and not have to wait at the front desk to pay for it. So we've been putting POS systems that can scan, charge directly to the room, and then the guests can go up to their room or wherever they're going.
Speaker 3:So we've talked a lot about your tech stack. I'm curious to understand how tech fits into the broader strategic objectives for Hospitality America. Could you talk me through one or two high level business objectives that you're working toward and how tech fits in there?
Speaker 1:Yeah. One of the big ones is on the accounting side. I think we see that our accounting department, our accounting future as being one of the areas that we can automate the most. And so we have some great people inside of our accounting department that that I think that then frees them up to do a lot more and provide a lot more detailed level of service to our owners and to our GMs. So I think that's one of our biggest overarching goals probably in the short term.
Speaker 1:And then after we automate, it really then goes down to the data piece. I know we've talked about it a lot already, but everything is going to come down to understanding that data and then utilizing it. And so also the other thing I can't reiterate enough is that data is only as good as you use it. The tech tools are only as good as you use it. We constantly remind our GMs of that.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, it's still our decision makers that drive our business forward.
Speaker 3:And on the data side, how do you foster a sort of culture of making data driven decisions? I think it can be intimidating for someone who is maybe not in a primarily data focused role. As a GM, maybe you've had a very operational background. Data might not be your instinct. So how do you build a culture where your team feels like they have all the resources they need and the kind of coaching to make data part of their day to day work life?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I think it all always comes down to explaining the why. Why we see this as powerful and how we deliver on it to make it powerful. And so a lot of times, I mean, of course, we've had pushback or, you know, some people across the company not quite understand what we're trying to achieve, and that's fine. At the end of the day, it proves that you have to be able to show it to them and not just talk about it.
Speaker 1:You have to show them proof. So at our tech stack, we've definitely done that. And then on the data side of things, what we'll then end up showing them is the power of it. I think they understand the why because they're utilizing it. They just don't understand, which I don't think any of us really do, the power of it when it lives in one central place.
Speaker 1:And I think just being able to interact with it. And, again, the purpose of it is to empower them and support them in making the best decisions. We're not trying to take the decision making away. We're just trying to enhance their abilities.
Speaker 3:Do you have, like, a business intelligence team?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we're building it out. We have two individuals that lead that department. We have a VP of business intelligence, and then we have a director of business intelligence. And, you know, with them together, again, ran in the power of Lee Holloway's vision, we really feel that we can accomplish this.
Speaker 1:But, again, you know, I've had a tech buddy tell me one time, you know, it's gonna cost twice as much as you think it is, and it's gonna take you twice as long as you think it will. And we're definitely walking into that arena now, but we're not losing faith that we can accomplish it. We'll just continue to work hard and work the plan.
Speaker 3:Well, on that note, kind of a good segue into my next question. What would you feel are or what do you think are one or two of the most important skills hoteliers should have in today's environment, which is very different than it was ten, twenty years ago, even five years ago. What skills do you think people should have to be successful?
Speaker 1:The skill side, I think it's taking a look at your business. At the end of the day, every hotel that we have is a small business, and you have to lead. I can provide you with as much information and data as possible, but you still have to be able to think about it critically. You still have to put forth the effort to understand your business, understand your guest. A lot of hoteliers I see today, they just especially in our branded world, they just they demand comes in.
Speaker 1:People come in, and they just and it becomes a monotonous type of thing. Then that's how hotels lose. You have to continually provide, unique experiences to the guest and show them that you're thankful they're there. And, you know, some of that may sound, you know, elementary, but I think the core of the hotelier hasn't changed. But what it happens is then how do you take that creative and critical thinking skill and apply it with the tools that a company like Hospitality America is giving you?
Speaker 1:And then the last, it's really not a skill. It's more of a characteristic. It's continuing to be adaptable. That's the one thing that I love about our industry is it always changes, and it happens really quickly. And so every hotelier has to be adaptable.
Speaker 3:Last question before we wrap up. I would love to hear from you. What is one thing you believe about technology in the hotel space that your peers or competitors might disagree with?
Speaker 1:I think we've talked a lot about it. In our industry, there's an unlimited amount of challenges and problems to be solved. And as an industry, we've done a great job of creating another solution to another problem or the same problem. What I think is different is, you know, we have to be able to take all those solutions and consolidate them to make the best decision. The general manager or the management company has always been that glue between all of those solutions to then, you know, deploy the tactics to be successful.
Speaker 1:And that is, I think, the environment is changing to where the management company or the company that's consolidating that and then deploying it. And so I think too many companies out there today look at their tech stack and are okay with all of that information living in seven, eight different data sources. So I'd probably say that's one of the biggest.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much, Ben, for being on the podcast. Really great chatting with you. I wish you all the best in the future for Hospitality America.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:That's all for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Hotel Tech Insider produced by hoteltechreport.com. Our goal with this podcast is to show you how the best in the business are leveraging technology to grow their properties and outperform the concept by using innovative digital tools and strategies. I encourage all of our listeners to go try at least one of these strategies or tools that you learned from today's episode. Successful digital transformation is all about consistent small experiments over a long period of time, so don't wait until tomorrow to try something new.
Speaker 1:Do you
Speaker 2:know a hotelier who would be great to feature on this show, or do you think that your story would bring a lot of value to our audience? Reach out to me directly on LinkedIn by searching for Jordan Hollander. For more episodes like this, follow Hotel Tech Insider on all major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.
