The Human Side of Hotel Tech: A GM's Perspective - Justin Rodriguez, Shashi Hotel

Josiah: Justin, thanks for taking time out of your day to talk. We're in a very busy end-of-year season. You have a sold-out hotel and a lot of activity happening here. I'm excited to sit down with you because I had a chance to speak with Dipesh Gupta, the owner of this hotel and also the founder of Shashi AI, an incredible technology company. I'll look in the show notes where people can hear more about that, but I wanted to get your perspective on all of this as somebody who is managing the place here, what the impact has been, and maybe as a way to tee up that conversation I wonder if you could describe a little bit about the technology that is live now that your guests are able to experience that's a little different than they might experience at another hotel.

Justin: Yeah, absolutely. So I'd say the biggest piece of tech that's live right now at this property that you're not going to find at most other properties is the living room in a box is what we call it. So, it is essentially a fully customizable room experience. So it takes the room product and really puts it in the guest's hands. Prior to check-in, you can set all of your personal preferences. You can let us know what temperature you'd like the room and what color you'd like the lights. You can have your personal family photos show up on the TV as kind of a rolling screensaver on the television. As well as let us know like, hey, I like extra towels or I like a room away from the elevator. When you go to check in, you can actually pick your room from the entire floor plan of the hotel the same way you would in an airplane. So it looks very similar to a check-in for an airline where you see these are the available rooms, this is what's already been booked, where would you like to be. Yes, some of those do come with a fee for the premium rooms, right? The same way they do on an airplane. When you get to your room, everything will already be set up exactly the way you want it to be. And then, once you're in the room, you can still control all of those things and change them. So, through the television experience, you can change lights, temperature, etc. There's a sleep concierge in there where you can have calming music at a certain time of night and then white noise kick in. And then when the alarm goes off in the morning, it'll turn the lights on slowly and start playing music. Just a lot of fun stuff like that, that, uh, really no other hotels offering.

Josiah: Well, it's amazing. So technically, some of these elements, you could have someone go in and change this, you know, maybe make a phone call and get all the preferences, but you're automating it and operating in a way that sort of matches the expectation of what people are experiencing elsewhere. You mentioned air travel. So travelers expect this sort of connectivity, this amount of personalization, and now it's available.

Justin: Not from the hospitality industry, unfortunately.

Josiah: You offer it. I'm very curious, it sounds like from a guest experience, you know, this is amazing, the Wall Street Journal and others have written about how cool this is. Your guests love it. I'm curious about your team's experience with this. How does this change their life? How do they interact with guests in this new tech-enabled guest experience?

Justin: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think, you know, For the team, especially the front desk team and the really guest-facing individuals, the biggest key is knowledge is power, right? So the more you know about your guests, the more confident you're going to be in speaking with this guest, the more you feel prepared for that interaction. So by having all this information and knowing that all these steps have already been taken care of, the guests have had the ability to do everything they need. If they're repeat guests, or even if they're not, if they've done the My Preferences, we know a bit about this guest before they even show up at the front desk. Or maybe they don't even show up at the front desk, but when they call the front desk, we have all this information. So it's really enabled the front desk team especially to just speak with like a level of confidence that they've never had before. and a real, let's say, empowerment feeling that they are equipped with everything they need to just create a stellar guest experience, right?

Josiah: They have all these superpowers. Has it required them to learn new skills?

Justin: Yeah, definitely. All of us, a little bit, right? You know, Sashi's the beta, right? So there's been a lot of learning on the fly for us, but honestly, a lot less daunting than I thought it was going to be. So going into it, obviously there's a lot of nerves and there's a lot of like, how's this going to go? Is it going to work?

Josiah: This is a great idea, big picture that everyone can choose all these preferences. But imagine you're thinking, okay, that's also a lot of preferences. We got to make sure that we live, right?

Justin: Yeah. So I think housekeeping especially was really nervous about launching this.

Josiah: Why?

Justin: Because if people can choose their room, is that room going to be ready at check-in time? And if somebody says I want extra firm pillows, can we get them there on time? Right? Like, so I think All of that was daunting at first, but then if you really think about it and you look at your housekeeping supervisors and you say, hey, I can tell you exactly what rooms you need available when. And you're not going to get any calls from the front desk like, hey, this person's requesting early check and I need this room right now. That's all gone, because we know when it's coming, or at least 90% of it, right? When you start putting it in those kind of terms, they're like, sign me up. What are we waiting for, right? So, it's daunting at first, it has been challenging, and we have had to learn new skills, change our operations a little bit, but it's all been for the better, to be honest with you. A lot less daunting than I thought it was gonna be.

Josiah: Interesting. You say it's been for the better. So I imagine happier guests. Yeah.

Justin: Any other benefits you're seeing? Oh, for sure. Staffing-wise, just efficiency-wise, the more that's automated, the less room there is for human error. Right. Like all the way across the board. It's interesting with these technologies because You start out this venture thinking, okay, this is going to eliminate the chance for human error and it's probably going to streamline some things. And then you start getting deep into it and people start thinking like, Well, what if we did this? Like this has never been done, right? So like it, it always starts as like this, like, oh, we're just trying to make things easier. And then it very quickly transitions to, we're going to make things better. And then it very quickly transitions from making things better into like, let's try something that's never been done, right?

Josiah: That's fascinating to me. What lies beyond when you take care of the table stakes? Has there been, you know, kind of something that's emerged from that sort of like beyond the boundary of what you thought was possible? It's been interesting to you?

Justin: Yeah, lots of stuff. We want to do welcome beverages and things at check-in, right? And we give hot towel service. And there are these really nice touch points that happen at the check-in experience. Well, if people are doing mobile check-in and they're completely skipping the front desk, we lose all of that. But through Living Room in a Box, we can target those guests. So we can say, okay, everyone that did mobile check-in, let's ping their TV with an offer that says, hey, at four o'clock we're hosting you for wine and cheese tasting or whatever in the lobby, and maybe we can get them down for a totally unique experience because they missed the front desk experience. But that's something you would never think of without this tech. This would never even be possible. So there's all of these little things along the way that you can start doing. I just ordered really nice like hair straighteners and curling irons and things and like now in the tv under the essentials where you can request things there's like a whole hair care selection and like I probably would have never even carried those things in the past because like who's gonna think to ask for it nobody's gonna call the front desk and be like I need a really expensive curling iron can you bring me that like nobody's gonna do that but if it's on the tv and it's available for them that's a new service I can offer that really doesn't cost me much right

Josiah: And probably most of your guests have this at home. It's so funny, you go to most hotels though, and this isn't even an option. It's not an option, so you wouldn't think to ask for it.

Justin: Right. Here we can offer it. Interesting. So there's just like kind of the sky's the limit. Like it all, it's funny how it starts leading to this direction of Because like what's the holy grail in hospitality is like to create a memorable experience, something that people is unique, they can't get elsewhere and they remember it, right? Because especially for a lot of these business travelers, like our target clientele, they stay in hotels all the time. And they remember when you screw up. They don't remember much else. Right. Most of the time, unless, you know, you have a stellar, like food and beverage experience, or maybe your rental car breaks down and that hotel like nails it. And one of the staff members happens to have a patch kit in their car. And like, you know, like there's these opportunities for the above and beyond service, but beyond that, you're not going to remember the experience. Right. And so when you can start doing things that are unique and that people are going to remember. you're offering something nobody else can, right?

Josiah: Super interesting. I love that this has opened up an opportunity to think more creatively. It's also interesting to hear you talk about how this affects people's days and how they spend their time. Because I find among the most sophisticated users of technology, people like yourself who are kind of at the leading edge of building things, it does seem a big focus is also on this sort of workflow management or staffing models and stuff like that. It sounds like you can be a lot more precise in offering this. Has there been any other impacts on the staffing models or how your team goes about their day?

Justin: That's an interesting question. Definitely. So it's funny. We launched this tech at the same time that we've really been pushing the brand, uh, from more like competing in a luxury comp set. So it's more been like, instead of finding ways to reduce staffing and save money, it's been more like. how can I add more services without adding more labor? You know what I mean? So we look at it a little differently. I could see if you're using this technology in more of a limited service model or a select service hotel, there would be tons of opportunities to create operational efficiencies and probably reduce staffing. I've kind of been looking at it the other way, which is how do I add more service without adding more staff?

Josiah: When it gets to the same end state, right? Same outcome, right? It reduces your profit margins. You could approach it both ways. They both get the same result. And also, we're sitting in this beautiful hotel. It creates a better guest experience when you're operating as you're operating.

Justin: Yeah. So I think, you know, from operational efficiency-wise, nothing's lost in translation because everything's digital, right? Like you don't have to call the front desk to ask for things. Somebody writes down the wrong room number and doesn't hear it correctly. You know, all this sort of stuff is just gone, right? Like it's all automated now. It's all through apps. It's all streamlined. Room service is the same way. You order it through the TV. So there are definitely opportunities where I probably need fewer people answering phones. I probably could. You know, like, I've been toying around because we have some other select service properties that we will launch this tech in very shortly. And, like, how do we use this to get people to select their housekeeping services ahead of time, like, hey, tomorrow? Maybe I get some extra points on my account if I opt out, right? Like ping them on the TV, like, hey, tomorrow I might be short on housekeeping. Can I offer extra incentives for people to, you know, hang a DND on their door? Like those sorts of things in a select service model. I mean, the opportunities are endless for doing that stuff. For me, I'm in a unique, I'm in a very blessed scenario where my only outlook on this is how do I add more?

Josiah: I think that's great, though. I was going to ask you how your work has evolved. And just from what you shared just now and kind of through our conversation, it sounds like you're thinking about how do we improve the guest experience. What are some ways that we can drive more profits? Yeah. And you're more interested in kind of going up and it's all your services.

Justin: It's all about more top line and more, more services. That's where Shashi's at today, you know, because we're still building. We opened during COVID, right? Like there was a lot, um, you know, we're not branded, right? We're a unique brand. So, uh, looking to expand the brand to other locations. So it's, it's a unique environment where the sky's the limit for us. Right. And with this emerging tech and because we're still building some of the things that we want to do with it, the only real limit is our imagination, you know, which is like crazy to say, you know, it's kind of cliche. You hear that in startups and stuff like that, but when you're knee deep in it, you kind of realize like, no, that's actually true. Like, it's just a matter of how much resource do you want to apply to it, but there's really no other limit, you know.

Josiah: So let me ask you this. You're trying a lot of things. You're thinking about how do we innovate? What are some of the key metrics you're looking at to understand if this is moving in the right direction?

Justin: Yeah, obviously, GSS scores, number one, right? Like your guest is going to drive it. And then we do track a lot of metrics as far as usage rate. Like on the back end, we can see how many people are engaging with certain access, certain aspects of the app, right? The TV app and also the mobile app. What is our engagement rate with mobile check-in? How many people are using it? What are the barriers to entry to that? How do we increase that? Right now we're looking at allowing people to go all the way through room selection and mobile check-in without having to necessarily swipe for incidentals and show their IDs and all that sort of stuff because you won't be able to get your key until you do those things. Well, at least you can, you know, it's a web-based portal now where you don't have to download an app and we can still drive some of that ancillary revenue. Interesting. Right? So you can, you can, you can pay for early check-in, you can pay for a premium room, but you can't physically get a key and go to your room unless you stop by the front desk and show us your ID, right? Or download the app and scan your ID. So if you want to get all the way through it, you do have to download the app. But if you want to spend some money, you don't. So how do we drive more ancillary revenue and empower the guests to drive their experience without creating as many barriers? And so hopefully, that increases the usage rate. So those are the type of metrics we're looking at.

Josiah: Interesting. So usage rate, driving up, you mentioned ancillary revenue. Are there other financial metrics that you're looking at that are more downstream from GSS scores?

Justin: As immediately as possible, just because everything is so fresh and everything is so like, well, let's change that. You know what I mean? That's almost always the answer. Like, well, let's fix it. Let's, if that would be cool, let's do it. You know what I mean? There's no like, hey, let's put that on the roadmap for Q2 next year. Like, that's just not where we're at. Right. When we have You know, a hundred hotels on the platform and making changes is going to impact people on a larger scale, that sort of thing. Um, maybe that is more how things work. We look at financial metrics on where do we want to apply resources and, you know, further down the roadmap. But right now it's like, if there's something there, we grab it right away, you know, so.

Josiah: You are also in a really interesting position because right next to Google, you're in the midst of, you're right next door to all these big Silicon Valley tech companies. A lot of your guests work for these companies. And so they're the people that are building the technology that all of us are using. And so I imagine you get some really interesting feedback, you know, kind of Winsbury reception, or like, you know, what do you hear?

Justin: That's funny you say, I've actually had guests unsolicited from us send us full reports. Like they checked out and it's like, seven paragraph long email that just goes to the general info email, like they didn't even converse with any of us about doing this and was like, hey, I found a bug here, but like this was awesome. This worked flawlessly. I would love to see this integrated into the software. Because these are like totally advanced software engineers staying in this hotel that work at Google. And so like even the gentleman that you mentioned, the Wall Street Journal article, the gentleman that was quoted in that article, who's a regular of ours, is a senior software engineer at Google, and that's how we got to talking, and that's how we ended up volunteering to be quoted in the journal, because he did exactly that. He wrote us a full report after he checked out, and he's like, this is super cool, love what you're doing. By the way, this didn't work. This was early in. This was probably, shoot, this was nine months ago now or something, almost a year ago, where he sent us that report, because we had actually He just randomly stayed in one of the test rooms, so we only had like two or three rooms in the hotel live at the time, and we were like really in testing mode, and he happened to stay in one of those rooms and was like, I'm going to send him a full report. But he's not the only one who's done it. We get a lot of really interesting feedback, the conversations you have with guests. It's funny, a lot of people gravitate towards the IOT aspect of things, like the smart devices that, because I think it's just like such a low hanging fruit that nobody's ever gone after. Like everyone in their home, like at my house two years ago, all of my lights were voice command. My HVAC was voice command, like everything was IOT technology integrated like years ago in my own home, but no hotels done it. It's so weird. And it's not expensive. So it's really interesting to me. We get a lot of comments about like, I don't know why no one else has done the thing with the lights that you guys did. That's so cool.

Josiah: You know, I imagine that's especially interesting for people who are traveling for business, because if you're traveling for fun, you might just be out in the town all day. But when you're traveling for business, you kind of just want things to work. Yeah. You know, and so just to have a baseline of this is at least as good as at home.

Justin: That's funny. So like a lot of business travelers, we've kind of forced them to engage a little bit. So when we first launched the technology, We weren't necessarily getting as many comments as we thought we would. And so we were like, well, why is that? And we started to quickly realize that when you turn on the TV, it was taking you right to like some of the entertainment apps and it wasn't forcing you to start off like with the tech. So like now when you turn on the TV, the first screen that loads is like, do you want to change your lights, different colors and stuff like that. And like this time of year, there's a holiday theme. So if you click the Christmas light scene, all the lights in the room turn red and green in different places and stuff. And so like now it loads to that screen and like people kind of stop and are like, wait, what is this? You know what I mean? Before it was like, you turn on the TV, you go right to your streaming apps. Like your average business traveler may not go any further than that. They might put on CNN and, or maybe not even turn on the TV and realize that any of this is possible, right? So.

Josiah: You need to have an entree into what you offer.

Justin: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. On the weekend, the leisure traveler, obviously it's the exact opposite. Um, they are in their room much more. Um, they want to use the amenities and explore much more within the software. So I think, um, with them, it's a lot easier to get the feedback, right? Like they're, you get tons of commentary with, it was funny with the business travelers at first, we almost had to like force them to engage a little bit. And once they did, they're obviously blown away.

Josiah: So interesting. If we could, just two more questions before we go. One is in my conversation with Dipesh, he talked about guests living these multidimensional lifestyles where they're using the hotel differently throughout the day. You and I are sitting recording this in a little meeting room off of your main lobby, and I think, I'm used to this sort of environment in the flexible office space I work from. I rarely see it in the hotels, and if I walk around this hotel, there's really interesting, it seems like, flexible or kind of diverse use of space. I guess my question for you is, how do you think about, I guess, A, using that space, and then, you know, kind of teaching your teams on how to engage and making the most out of this? Because I feel like there's something there, about thinking more creatively about the use of space.

Justin: You know, obviously that's dictated quite a bit by the geography of the property. This property being where it is right on top of Google campus, we're minutes away from Intuit HQ, Microsoft HQ, like et cetera, et cetera. We want to make our space feel, during certain hours of the day, as flexible and operable as the campuses they're used to staying at. Before we opened this property, we had a lot of insiders at Google and some of these other campuses, relationships built through the sales team. to show us around their campuses and kind of say like, hey, this is what our cafeterias look like. This is what our co-working environments work like. This is what someone's office looks like. And we kind of took that all to heart and applied it to the property and kind of tried to create an environment where people could use it the same way they did if they wanted to get off campus and they were staying here. And then on top of that layer in service, right? So we have, you know, during times of the day in a hotel like this on a Wednesday, you know, do I need a bellman walking around the ground floor? Probably not, but we have one, right? Because like, I want people to feel like there's somebody there to service them. Um, the coffee shop stays open and the baristas don't just hide behind the counter. They walk around and they engage and see if they could refill people's coffees and things like that. So, It's almost like being on your corporate campus with the hospitality layered into that.

Josiah: Fascinating. I love that approach to how you thought about using the space here. And we've talked about this a few points in our conversation, but I'm just so interested. You're in the middle of Silicon Valley. Your guests are early adopters, you know, by and large. Is there anything else you're noticing in how your guests are interacting with your hotel or what they want that might give us a sense of where hospitality might be going in the future?

Justin: Yeah, it's funny. So there's still quite a few people that don't want to do mobile check-in, that want the service at the front desk. And there's a lot of people that don't. And they're for very different reasons, you know. And it might be the same guest on different trips wants to engage today, but doesn't want to next time. Because maybe last time their flight was delayed and They had to, they were stuck in an airport for longer than they wanted to be. And then when they get here, they're like, I don't want to talk to anyone. I just want to go to my room. And the next time they're like, you know, they had a pleasant trip and they're in a good mood and they want to chop it up something like it's, it's, it's crazy how Having this technology and this building has given us the ability to kind of meet the guest where they want to be.

Josiah: And this time. So this is an important point. It's not saying last time Justin checked in online. So every time he comes, I'm going to push that. He's like, what does Justin want today?

Justin: Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of having the tech be in the background in a sense, like it's there if you want it, you don't have to though, right? Like it's not like because you can request things through the TV, we stop answering the phones at the front desk and like, no, use the TV, right? Like we meet you where you want to be. And I think that's been the biggest thing that I've noticed that I was kind of surprised by is Just how dynamic one guest can be, you know, and like you said, living multiple lifestyles and using the hotel of different things. We really try and transform the property throughout the course of the day because we know that a bit of people like early in the morning you're on a different. you're moving at a different speed than you are later in the afternoon. So like we try and make sure that like we have we have yogas and zumbas and things like that in the mornings. But then in the afternoons, like certain days of the week, we have like chair massage available, like you can come and just get 15 minute chair massage. And then at four o'clock, we're going to do a wine and cheese hour. But the live music is not going to start till five thirty when we kind of want to bring that energy back up. Right. So we kind of pace our programming throughout the day in a way that Hopefully the energy of the building is meeting where you're at, kind of in your daily journey. If I was speaking to other GMs and other, like, DOSs or operators who were thinking of implementing tech similar to this, whether it be Satya or somebody else, right? Like, be a little fearless in your approach, because I feel like a lot of my apprehension going into this was kind of unwarranted. And I've been on quite a few calls with potential clients. We've already signed contracts with some pretty big names. And so this tech is getting out there. And almost every single one of those calls, those people had the same apprehensions I did.

Josiah: You know? And earlier we talked about this where it's kind of like, oh, there's all these things that could go wrong.

Justin: Yeah. And it's like, actually. Generally speaking, even from some of the competitor softwares that I've seen, everything's customizable, right? So like, if you're worried about this being an operational hindrance for you, turn it off, right? Like there's so many elements to all these things, and you're really in control. You can roll it out in a very layered approach. You know, you don't have to go all in all at once. And there's really no reason to be so apprehensive. Like, yeah, if I had the opportunity to speak to other GMs that are kind of looking at this tech as like, I don't know, like, like, rip the Band-Aid off, man. Like it's so beneficial, you know, it really is.

Josiah: Is there anything you did to teach, you know, yourself or your team that made that easy? Because it seems like education is a piece of this.

Justin: Yeah, yeah. So I just would look at them and say, what are the biggest complaints? If you could change something about this hotel, what would you change that would make this a better work experience for you? And a lot of them had similar answers, obviously. And I said, OK, well, what if we use this tech to do this, and that was no longer a problem? They're like, oh, well, all right. So you kind of turn it back around on them very quickly, and then they're like, So what are we waiting for? You know, like that smart sales is like, what's in it for me? What's in it for you? Exactly. Exactly. Right. And so in that respect, it was pretty easy to get their buy-in, you know, to turn that around pretty quickly.