Turning Technology into a Competitive Advantage for Hotels - Mark Fancourt

Josiah:  You said the conference that you just came off of was a particularly good one. I wonder if you could share a little bit kind of what you saw, what you heard at ILHA that stood out to you.

Mark: Luxury hospitality is very close to my heart because my whole operational career was in luxury hospitality. So it's always really nice to get together with that group of people because whilst the greater industry has its commonalities. When you're in the luxury space, you are striving for what I believe the heart of hospitality is all about. And it's high touch, it's very, very tight relationship with the customer, at least striving for that. So this is the first time I think they've had ILHA in Las Vegas. And very well attended, as I understand the best attendance that they've had to date. I think there's about a thousand people there. And I really enjoyed the way that they had the event set up. They had four breakout conference rooms and then a main stage, and the amount of content that was shared with the topics. I mean, there must have been, I'd say there would have had to have been 50 sessions with quality input or output, I should say, from the people who were participating in it. So that was particularly attractive, but I also like these types of events because they're a bit more intimate, you know, and it's very hard at the larger events in the industry to make the connections, you know, so having the opportunity to just speak with people and have real conversations versus, oh, hi, how are you, and sort of keep moving on is really, I think, the asset of these types of events.

Josiah: What's interesting, you mentioned the content and then the conversations that take place. I am curious for you because you spend a lot of time teaching others about technology, about innovation in hospitality. So I'm always curious for people like you that are teaching, where do you go to learn? Are events a key piece of it?

Mark: I think, yes they are, but I think the thing about technology is that it's ever-changing. And I think across my career, what's been most interesting for me is watching an industry that has very much had to have its own vertical technology. to support it now moving into more opportunities for mainstream technology and because you're looking out in that direction. I think that's what keeps the curiosity going and the learning going. My motivations, I'm a technology consultant, but I came into technology from hospitality operations with Fidelio back in the 80s. I've always had a business orientation to what I do, and that's sort of what keeps me motivated, keeps me searching, if you like, for where can we go from here, what can be next, where are the next opportunities for us to use tools to shift the industry in another direction or bring another level of capability or automation to a part of the business. Yeah, that's part of it. And I do a lot of reading. For an industry, we're pretty fortunate. We have a lot of people who, probably because of the nature of our industry and the types of people that work, they're very giving with their thoughts and their insights and their views and opinions. And that's a real catalyst for me. And then just reading in general. What I get most enthusiastic about is the business possibilities, right? Because of technology, not the technology itself. There will always be technology, but, but it's what you can achieve as a role. And that's, that's what I get a kick out of more than anything.

Josiah: Do you believe there's an especially interesting application for technology in the hospitality industry? I'm curious why you continue to focus your efforts in hotels. You mentioned building an operational career, but then when you move to technology advisory work, you could apply that anywhere, but you seem to stay focused on travel and hospitality. What is it about travel and hospitality that you think is especially interesting when it comes to applying technology?

Mark: Well, it's, I mean, it's a great industry, right? I mean, you know, travel, hotels, quality, food and beverage. I mean, I love the history of the industry and I often say that, you know, there was a time when hotels were the bastion, the last bastion of civilization in a place, you know, and you can imagine yourself back in the day stumbling in to some hotel out of the jungle or out of the bush or out of the desert. And here you are with this little piece of civilization. And I love the way that the hospitality industry has a tradition of being the first often to step into a new marketplace. You look at a company like Amal Resorts, for example, which Adriaan Zeker built his vision on, opening up new markets and being that bastion of civilization in that place and bringing a bit of what we bring in hospitality to a vocation. And I think that's fascinating. I'm lucky enough to, you know, I've lived and worked and traveled in more than 60 countries and hospitality's taken me all of those places. So, you know, if I can tie my work in with something that I was educated in, I've worked in, and it keeps me out and vibrant in the world because a lot of my learning comes from the global view that I've always been lucky enough to have. That's why I work in hospitality.

Josiah: It makes sense. I want to pick up on the hotel history piece because I love hotel history as well. I'm based in San Francisco, whether it is here, whether it's other parts of the world. I'm very fascinated by these iconic old hotels. You and I were talking a few minutes ago about coming off of this luxury hospitality. conference, I'm very interested if you believe luxury hospitality and what that can look like is applicable more broadly. Because if I think about other forms of innovation, I think about Tesla, for example, starts out with a very high end luxury car and then the innovation makes its way in. Is it fair to say that luxury hospitality, even if your business isn't focused, there is a place to look for innovation because that might be a signal to where hospitality is going?

Mark: Well, I think so because you've got more moving parts. I often describe this level of hospitality as sort of a rich product and service business. So if you look at the United States as a marketplace today, we're talking about being up in the 90s where it's largely just a 90 percentile, where it's largely just an accommodation-driven experience. When you move into luxury, you bring in obviously accommodation, you bring in dining operations, you bring in lifestyle operations, entertainment, the event side of things, and then also retail. So, the complexity of that environment requires a much broader thought process than, you know, I've just got a rooms product to sell. I've often described hospitality at that level as it's like a little city. You've got the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. And as a technologist, you have to provide tool sets that can support all these diverse little businesses. It's almost like a high street, if you like, from using the British term. So that, I think, is what keeps it fresh and gives the opportunity for innovation. Uh, because there's so many, so many aspects to delivering the business and that's just on the front of the house. And then you, you come into the back of the house and, and yeah, there's, there's as many business functions again that you've got to support for, for, for the staff of the business.

Josiah: Fascinating. One thing I have been thinking about a lot leading up to our conversation, Mark, that I wanted to ask you is, what excites you most in technology now? Because I started my career in 2007, 2008. I feel like there was a rise of social networks, a rise of more mobile connectivity. It felt like a very exciting time, and I was just emotionally excited about a lot of technology. I don't know if it's just I'm a little more But I found those moments of excitement around technology to be a lot more kind of rare and kind of few and far between. You've been at this a while. You see the industry from a really interesting perspective. What are you getting excited about when it comes to technology?

Mark: I think one of the terms that I use as far as what I think a big opportunity is, Yeah, total revenue, total distribution. These are a couple of things. Now, what do I mean by that? So, you know, it's really interesting as an industry that as we went digital, the thing that we ended up focusing on naturally because it was the most progressed technology environment was digital room sales, right? We created a digital marketplace and it's very established now and it's quite sophisticated. But for the most part, it stops there, right? So, where is our robust digital network for meetings and events, for dining operations, for lifestyle operations and activities? Well, that doesn't really exist yet in a fully cohesive way. And yet, when we talk about luxury hospitality, these are all very, very important revenue centers that, you know, we've been trying to activate and generate, you know, generate returns from largely in a sort of somewhat manual and somewhat offline way. And that's going to change. And we're going to, we talk about distribution, we talk about revenue management. the entire product set being on what I describe as the digital shelf. And not only in terms of your own direct-to-customer presentation, but extended out beyond that into the various marketplaces that exist. for those sorts of products. And that is, you know, I spent a lot of time in my career bringing brand platforms to hotel companies. I worked and assisted some of the leading operators in the world, you know, at Maman Resorts, Peninsula, Banyan Tree, Oberoi, for example, to leverage distribution, you know, customer relationship management and e-commerce at the very early stages, but now that's about to go like this. And we're going to have all of our products and services, not only on our own digital shelf, but we're going to be pushing those out into marketplaces that we haven't necessarily always been that focused on as an industry. So the complexities, of course, are massive. But if you look at, for example, Google in terms of where they were with Google trips and pulling the whole sets of experiences together, well, we're going to meet that on the other side as an industry and start to provision all those products out so that it truly can be a connected marketplace.

Josiah: What's changed to make that happen, either technologically or otherwise? What's behind this?

Mark: Well, I think the revenue growth is part of it. Doing a better job with selling all the products and services that we've got. And also, I think on the customer side of it, as we hear a lot more about experiential hospitality. And what does that mean? Well, to me, what that means is exactly what we're talking about. It's giving me the ability to consume the things you've got to offer. you know, more often than not for our industry, that whole capture rate side of our industry is very last minute. And, you know, I think we're moving into an environment where we'll be in a position to make that very much in the foreground when the customer is looking to craft an overall experience from hospitality business. So, I think there's multiple pressures that are bringing this to pass. And then, of course, there's the technology side of it. So, I think dining is a really exciting space for technology because I would argue that it's sort of at the point where the rooms business wasn't around about the turn of the century when e-commerce started to come alive. you know, distribution from a software perspective started to be more of a reality. Well, dining is sort of on the verge of that now. And, you know, anytime you get to sort of break open a piece of industry and make it so much better is, you know, incredibly exciting, I think.

Josiah: I think dining is actually a good springboard into, I want to tie this back to what you mentioned earlier where There are interesting technology opportunities, it sounds like, across the ecosystem. My career in technology in hotels has been very vertical. It's these solutions that are built for hospitality and Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to indicate that there is now opportunity from broader participants. And actually, when I missed you in Vegas, I was there to speak with someone from MGM, and she was talking about working with IBM and some of these just huge tech companies. Are these opportunities only available to big companies? And the reason I'm kind of connecting it to dining is dining feels very unique to hospitality, right? And if I had to maybe make it a better question, I'm just curious how you think about this now, where does it have to be a vertical solution or are there opportunities to work with some of these bigger players?

Mark: Yeah, I think it depends on the part of the business. Yeah, the reality is that we do have a lot of sort of product idiosyncrasies to the hospitality sector, and that's why we have the vertical solutions that we do have. you know, the places where the immediate opportunities for growth beyond, well, long-term, obviously, it's always been financial management and supply chain. We've always had the opportunity to do that, whether as an industry we've done it as aggressively as we could have is probably a different question, but that's always been there. But I think now the real opportunities to get above industry, as I call it, really exist in the CRM space. Yeah, and the ability to actually now take a product from outside hospitality and leverage that for all the power that that brings is much, much more real today than it ever has been. But on the, you know, on the product and service sales side of things, I think that will stay, it'll stay in the vertical for some time to come. You know, pricing management, pricing structuring is so unique, I think, to the hospitality industry. And what I foresee is that the pricing management and complexity of pricing will extend across the products as we go further.

Josiah: That makes sense. Could I just follow up though on the CRM piece of it? Because you wrote an article recently around where does the property management system sit within the ecosystem? I can link to that in the show notes. People can check that out, but I would love to get your thoughts on how you view that today, maybe where the space is going, because it seems to me a CRM isn't a one-for-one swap for a property management system, very different, but it does seem there's some crossover where modern PMSs are moving to a CRM. How do you see that space now?

Mark: Yeah, well I think that, you know, I just read an article the other day about, you know, Fidelio when they first started and the thing that set Fidelio apart from the competition was profiles, right? So, you know, up until then, most hospitality systems had been totally transaction-oriented. It was about, oh, the room, the reservation, but along came Fidelio and they said, well, don't you want a bit more information about the customer and everyone? Yes, we do. So, that fueled the incredible growth that ultimately became Opera today. But on CRM, I think that for the same reasons, what's made that happen, when I was back In my earlier career at Microsoft, we were delivering enterprise-level customer information platforms with properly synchronized data for a brand across all their business units. And this was as the internet came to life. Sometimes we were even doing it over satellite or the CETA network, which a lot of the airline systems worked on previous to today's internet. The PMS will continue on, right? And the reason for that is that it comes back to what we were talking about before. Availability, rates, inventory and controls is complex. Anyone who has been involved in the product development side of a hotel property management system will tell you that this is the most intense part of the platforms. And it's going to be a while, in my view, before someone can sort of get that up and out of our sector. But CRM is different. And in a connected world, the CRM makes so much more sense now with some of the ease of you know, passing data that was not so, so straightforward before, and even, even across disparate systems, that's what's making that much more viable for us now as an industry. But I think, you know, for me, It's difficult, I think, for an industry to sort of say, oh, we're all about the customer and not have something like that inside our businesses. And I think, going back to your point before about the vertical nature of our solutions, well, with few exceptions, most hospitality operators do have a vertical solution for each of their core business centers. And that's where the complexity comes from, because you can't really have a single customer record at that level as a result. So you've got to get it up and above the business to be able to consolidate it. So that's the driver there. And I think what you'll find is that There'll be more and more of these that sit above businesses, even small businesses, independent and small operators, because you'll want that consolidation of customer. And I think the customer will also want that from us as well as we move forward.

Josiah: It's interesting you say that. I was talking to LoseAmerica a few days ago about, he was sharing some things he picked up at an AI event from HSMAI. And one of the things was, how might an AI native company operate? One of the notions was this sense of boundaryless intelligence, which I think is, if I understand it, aligned to kind of what you're saying, where there's a layer on top or something above these silos that we're sitting in. That's intriguing to me. I'm curious about practically what does it take to get to that place? And more broadly, how do you prepare for an AI-driven world? Is it accurate to say that maybe one of the early steps is developing the capacity to pull data out of systems into some above-property environment?

Mark: Yeah, I think so. I mean, look, you can certainly, as we know from when we use the tools today, you can feed data into these from multiple sources and so on and so forth, and that becomes easier. But still, a holistic view is a holistic view. And a lot of organizations that I deal with, working on exactly that problem, it's always about the consolidation of information. at an enterprise level. That might be a massive enterprise or it might be a small enterprise, but it's still the same challenge and opportunity. Where does AI come in to the hospitality sector? Well, I'm a very strong believer in the reality that the hospitality industry is a consumer of technology. It's not a builder of technology. And I don't think that we should be, because our focus is meant to be customers, people, the art of hospitality, if you like.

Josiah: So we can settle the build versus buy debate. Buy. Yeah.

Mark: I mean, over three decades, the very, very small instances of the idea of actually sort of building technology. And look, sometimes you've got to do that to achieve outcomes that you want, but it requires so much resource, so much expertise and so much ongoing investment that it becomes untenable. And even the largest companies in our industry have sort of reached that point. And I think that's good. I think that's a good thing as a realization for the industry. I think that the one place that it is worthwhile looking at that, as things stand today, is on the digital side of bookings. You cannot buy today a comprehensive booking product that allows you to sell all your products and services. Can't do it, doesn't exist. So, going back to some of the earlier topics that we talked about, that for me is a place where the time is well spent at the moment. Now, in the future, we'll overcome that. But right now, the competitive advantage, the opportunity, is to be able to sell all products and services at that point of booking in a cohesive way based on the real-time availability and real-time pricing. And that is, for the most part, beyond the industry, pretty much globally. But for me, it's the next big challenge to overcome. It's certainly something that I'm spending a lot of time working on doing exactly that.

Josiah: Just to this point, Mark, though, the next big challenge to overcome, you've referenced observations that you've had over the past three decades working in these different environments. History doesn't repeat, but I think it rhymes. And I'm curious if you've seen things in past innovation cycles you think are informative for us now as we are in a next big cycle around AI. Obviously, AI is not brand new. A lot of people talking about it. Do you think there's things we can learn in the past around big breakthroughs that we can apply now?

Mark: I tend to look at these as more generational shifts of technology generally. We make a lot of, I've been around that model, I've been through so many different big buzzwords of technology change, technology change, but the funny thing that I always go back to is at the end of the day, it's still software sitting on a server somewhere. And that hasn't changed. So there's a lot of commonality about what technology was and where it is now. And AI will just become the next layer of capability, of technology. And obviously there's a lot of money to be made to hype these things up, right? But eventually it will just become normal and it'll just be another layer of core technology that's available to everyone. I try not to get so excited about that type of thing. I get more excited about just the general application of it as it comes. You know, the way IA will come to the hospitality industry for the most part is through our vendors. You know, the incentive is for the vendors to bring that capability into their products, which we as users of their tools will leverage. I think what's more exciting about that, Josiah, is that I'm looking forward to the point where we're able to talk to our technology. Why is that? Oh, because ultimately our most efficient form of communication is talking, right? And it comes most naturally to us, and it's also the fastest. When we can take our fingers off something and we can just communicate, we're much, much swifter at getting things done. So you think about, for example, the application of AI. Well, I'm a receptionist at a hotel, and I know you're coming in to stay today. PMS, or CRM, what can you tell me about Zion McKenzie that I should know that's important when he arrives here today? Output versus digging and scraping. That's exciting.

Josiah: It's interesting you mention that, because I feel like even in the current generation of ChatGTP, or Cloud, or Gemini, they're all chat-based. an interface that we've been using for decades into this more conversational, but still text-based, but it's that question-answer format. It's a different way of interacting with machines. And so obviously we can talk much faster than we can type. So it's interesting to see this is a logical progression that makes intelligence available to all of us and more real-time, more usable.

Mark: Absolutely. I think that one of the pieces of technology that remains so impressive to me, particularly having spent a lot of my career working internationally and across cultures and across language barriers, Um, you know, it was, it was when Google brought out, I just can't remember what the name of the product was now, but basically it was a little, sort of like a little Google home device where a customer could speak to it in their language and it would immediately translate to the staff and make it speak back in their language and immediately translate it back. You know, the, the impact of that technology on the travel experience is I think extraordinary.

Josiah: How far away are we from that being practical? Because I was looking at a chart the other day. It looks like a lot of this has been, depending on response times from these LLMs, which seems to be going down. Do you feel like we're relatively close to this?

Mark: Well, I mean, it exists.

Josiah: But badly though, right? Because if I have Google Translate open, it does exist, but it's not usable, I feel.

Mark: Is it just me? No, I understand what you mean. But at the same time, think about how much closer we are to fully experiencing something because the ability to communicate has been improved so vastly and it doesn't matter. I used to, back in my earlier career, when I was on the vendor side of things, I was working You know, I was delivering Micros Fidelio's products into third cultures where they didn't speak my language. And I was, you know, educating them on, you know, what was one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology the industry had seen. And they were trying to learn from me as I spoke in English and, you know, from what they learned. Well, imagine that now. You know, and going back to your earlier points about education, it's huge. I mean, I think it's one of the most important things that technology has done for us because it just makes the world so much smaller. And for me as a, you know, a hotelier first and a hospitality professional, Anything that allows us to have a better level of connection and communication with our customers is just a wonderful thing. I worked for many years, most of my earlier career, particularly in operations, was with Japanese companies. And then, of course, when I was at Pan Pacific, we were a Japanese company. And a lot of our customers were Japanese, right? And to use an example at the time, I was trying to find a solution for in-room thermostats and controls where I could somehow real-time translate the labels between languages so that our Japanese customers, who generally at that point didn't necessarily speak so much English, could see something in their own language, you know? Well, today, that's real. And it just removes so many barriers and so many obstacles to the full enjoyment of the hospitality experience, and that's what I love about it.

Josiah: It's exciting to see about that. I mean, think about that from a travel perspective, right? But also in the industry serving others, you invest so much time in education. I feel like you and I sort of lucked out in a sense, right? Because English is our native language and it ends up being kind of an internationally used language. So we're kind of lucky in that sense. But I think about like, what if we were born somewhere else? And you mentioned Japan. I lived in Europe for a while. It's really helpful to live in an environment where English is not the default language. And I think it really trains you to think about what is it like to interact in these environments for people from all over the globe? Hospitality is, by definition, inclusive. It's very international. So this is exciting. It's really exciting to think about. I'm curious. I want to have that world as soon as possible. As you mentioned, a lot of the technology is here. It's only going to get better. I think for me, then the question becomes, okay, how do we get to a place where we can benefit from this? Because you've seen technology implemented in a lot of cases in a lot of ways. You're working with a lot of people now. Are there common challenges that come up that you see and how do we get through these? Because one thing to talk about exciting technology, it's another thing to actually have it and use it. So how do we get there?

Mark: Well, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? As much as technology is exciting for our industry, the core challenge remains the same. We still have this love-hate relationship with it. As a person who's been an operational hotelier, been a vendor to the industry and also led technology, naturally I have a lot of frustration with that. But at the same time, I can also appreciate it when you look at it from a traditional hospitality perspective. I think that the big barrier at the moment is that we just need to get beyond the idea that technology is somewhat optional in our industry. You know, it just isn't anymore. And a couple of very simple scenarios. Our entire, at least Rooms marketplace is digital. Our manpower at this point, for the most part, except for dinosaurs like me, is digital. So in five to 10 years from now, and even now, when the credit card processor is offline in a hotel, no one knows what to do. When I grew up, we started with manual credit card processing. So there's just a really simple example of a demonstration that, look, it's all technology and you've got to remove those artificial barriers that we put in place as an industry. and just start moving forward with tool sets that are going to be absolutely necessary to deliver your business, but they're also what your staff will expect to be able to work on as they remain delivering the business on the human side.

Josiah: So this is like a mindset thing first for the leaders that are listening to this. You got it. You can't view this as optional. Maybe someone's listening and saying, I'm bought in. I believe this. How do I convince people who can approve something? What have you found effective in moving these projects forward? How do you sell up?

Mark: Well, that's the word. I always used to say to my colleagues and certainly to my teams when I was running technology that the head of technology for a hospitality organization is ultimately a salesperson. You talked earlier about education, it's all about education. I learned a long time ago that if you want to succeed with technology in the hospitality industry, stop talking about technology. That's how you succeed. Because there was no different yesterday at Ilha, so I sat on a panel with Rodney Linville from Nobu and Rohan from Hyatt. And we were talking about some of the same challenges with technology and it's you're ultimately a salesperson and you need to be able to converse in the business of hospitality not the business of technology. So i used to send my teams we worry about the technology. we talk about the business and what they can achieve with the team. And that's where the success comes from. Now the big challenge that we've had traditionally in our industry is that a lot of our technology resources come from more of a techie background. And that's important but it's also a little bit of a hamstring because hoteliers don't speak in tech language, they speak in the language of the business of hospitality. So it starts there and you must understand, I mean it's necessary as a technology leader to understand the breadth of the business anyway from a product, service and process perspective. you really do have to deeply understand it if you want to make the big wins. Otherwise, it just sort of becomes that incremental small growth and sort of more focus on keeping the lights on when in actual fact, 80% of the time should be spent on moving forwards and 20% should be spent on keeping the lights on. So you better be a good salesperson, you better be a good communicator, and you better be a good educator.

Josiah: I guess on those three points, it feels a lot of the conversation around technology is around things that are somewhat high level around, it'll make you more efficient, it'll make you more money. And I wonder in some cases it's hard to sell because the people that you're selling to are trying to convince, I've heard this for so long, they might be a little bit jaded because it hasn't delivered those payoffs. Is there a certain element to this of trying to experiment somehow to build a bit of a proof of concept that you found to be useful?

Mark: Well, look, I'd sort of take it a step further, you know, because I, look, technology's competitive advantage. That's what it is, right? And there are people who don't necessarily agree with me on that statement, and that's okay. But I have operated based on that principle as long as I've been involved in it. Because, you know, just to give you a really simple example, so in our industry, it's largely a real estate driven industry. And in real estate, it's location, location, location. And that's a big part of hospitality too. But here's the thing. I can't change my location. I'm stuck with the location. So what can you do to be faster, higher, stronger than the guy with the better location, your tool sets, right? Your tool sets, and that's what technology is. So, you know, I might not be in the best location in my marketplace, but the power I have to run my business more effectively on the front and the back end gives me a competitive advantage where that isn't quite the encumbrance that it would have been in a less enabled business. So, you know, I think start there. Start there thinking about your technology as a competitive advantage because I often use this example. In our industry, the difference between you and I adopting a piece of technology can be 20 years. 20 years, right? So imagine if you could move one kilometer faster than the guy next to you for 20 years. What a difference that makes over that time. It's massive, right? And if you are on the forward-leaning side of technology, because a lot of people think there's this risk in technology. I disagree. We're well and truly past the risk stage, you know, the stability of platforms, the power of platforms, the ability of the technology community to move them forwards at a pretty rapid clip now removes a lot of the risk. And therefore, when a lot of that risk is removed, then why not trace the reward? Why not go for the competitive advantage that it can bring to you. And for me, that's where it should always start when you're thinking about technology assets. It should start there. How can I gain competitive advantage through this tool?

Josiah: This is good because I feel like effective sales is speaking the language of the people that you're speaking with. top leaders in your company. To your point earlier, you can't be talking tech, right? You have to talk business. But especially for top leaders, it needs to be bigger than that. So it needs to be about competitive advantage. That piece is very interesting to me because I think there is a piece of technology that is not, this is not incremental advantage because technology seems to compound and build on itself. Yes, that 1% advantage or even that analogy you shared of one kilometer faster. Yes, you'll be further ahead. But I do feel like you're building capabilities, you're gathering data. You might even be attracting talent or winning management deals based on this. So it feels it's actually building a flywheel. So it only underscores your point where this is not optional.

Mark: No, it's absolutely true. I'll give you an example. You'll hear a lot of people often say to you, particularly in my line of work, I need a new PMS. And often my immediate response is, well do you? And there's two key aspects to this. One is, one of the things that we're terrible at as an industry, which is what drives so much of the dissatisfaction, if I could use that term, and churn with technology providers, is that We invest in technology, but we don't invest in education and research. And that's more often than not, in my experience, why a vendor loses a client. Not because the product doesn't do what the product needs to do, but because we have this, oh, we'll accept and forget and it'll look after itself and everyone will remember. Well, you know, I have examples where we deployed a piece of technology two weeks ago and the staff already can't remember some of the core functionality that it had. So, if you're not going to continually educate, then you're not going to leverage your tools. This is number one mission critical behavior as far as I'm concerned when it comes to optimization of technology assets. The second part of it is that, well, I need a new PMS. And to your point, Often, you'll hear this from perhaps an organization or property that doesn't have a sales and catering system. And so, the question becomes, well, okay, maybe you do need a PMS, but maybe your PMS is actually all right, and maybe you just need to re-educate in your PMS, and instead puts putting that money into removing and replacing a particular piece of technology, why not acquire a capability that you don't already have? And that's your point about the flywheel, because the more you have, the more power you gain. And it becomes like a snowball. It rolls and it grows. Can you extend your capability is an organization which opens you up to other opportunities. Because of it not to mention the fact that you doing these processes anyway. You just not having the benefit of retaining the information in the learning from which is one of the key reasons just to have technology alone.

Josiah: because I get to keep the information, right? I'm curious for your perspective, Mark. So this brings up an interesting thing where for our listeners, how would you advise them? Is there a question or a framework you would have where they might find themselves in that situation where they're thinking, do we need to replace a key piece of our technology or do we need to add something new or do something different? How do you encourage people to think about that?

Mark: I always talk about education. That's where I start. That's where I start. And the next point would be, well, have you given your partner, because it needs to be viewed that way. an opportunity to correct any misunderstandings or help you with what you perceive shortcomings might be. That's a hell of a lot cheaper than having to replace a piece of technology that, you know, I mean, I think there's another part to it as well, Desiree, is that like, look, Technology, it's a swings and roundabouts game. You have to have a long-term view of it and a long-term view of your relationships because one day one technology player will be up. and then the next day their competition will be. The skill is to maintain those relationships and work together to bridge the shortcomings that might exist or the functionality opportunities that might need to be realized and work with them over time to do so. I often say to people when I talk about this, you should have a view that your software assets will be there for the life of the business. And start with that view. And I would argue that you shouldn't move from that view unless a point comes where you and your partner cannot move forwards together because there's a direction you want to go in and they can't go, physically, for whatever reason that might be. or that they tell you that they're just going to stop developing the product in keeping with industry need. But beyond that, you should be investing more time into the relationship and moving the product forward together for everyone's benefit.

Josiah: And is that, I imagine SaaS makes this possible, right? Because they can always be pushing updates. And so this is interesting too, when you're shopping for technology, think about who could be a lifetime partner, understanding there will be exponential leaps in technology, but this organization, the team here, the philosophy is aligned such that they're always thinking about innovation and growth. And then from a delivery perspective, we're accessing it in a SaaS environment where we'll always have the latest. Is that, that's- Yeah.

Mark: I mean, it's so much more straightforward now for us, because I come from a world where we used to do physical upgrades. And that was a problem, because people were like, well, it costs money. It's like, well, it costs money, but you get more capability. So isn't that money worth spending? So now this is one of the great Yeah, obviously one of the great developments of software as a service as a model and the ability for the vendor community to keep their products moving more effectively than they could in the past and obviously removing the load on industry to sort of manage the migration of versions of software. So that's a huge advantage, that's for sure.

Josiah: That makes a lot of sense. Just a quick time check. We're a couple of minutes until the top of the hour. Can you go maybe five or 10 minutes over? Yeah, no problem. There's so much I want to kind of get into here. I do love taking this theory and kind of helping people understand it through story. And I wonder if there are hospitality companies maybe you've worked with or maybe you've seen in the market that have done technology implementations or they're using technology in a way you feel we can all learn from, just to bring this to life. Any best practices come to mind here?

Mark: Um, yes, uh, very distinct. Um, one of the, uh, one of the people that, that, you know, in my career that was, uh, I was privileged enough to be my client for many years was, um, Peninsula, um, Peninsula as a group. Um, The gentleman by the name of Shane Isaacs ran technology for the company for many, many years. Stability in your technology leadership is a very powerful thing, and Peninsula had that for a very long time. But what Shane understood was that To be effective as an organization and from a technology perspective, you need to put your stake in the ground with tool sets. So, Peninsula had standard products across their entire line of business, which they used globally on a standard configuration for the entire organization for every part of the business. And the power that that brings, as well as the organizational behavioral cohesion that it brings, the ability to move your team throughout the organization knowing exactly what they're going to walk into and find and operate on. is such a powerful thing. Now that takes extraordinary discipline and extraordinary determination. And I learnt that from Shane, watching him do it and his team and having the privilege of being one of the most important vendors to the company. I took a lot of that away in terms of my technology leadership journey and the approach to single product platforms for the business. The upside of that is that it simplifies technology management and it allows you to focus on core capability and not constantly deal with the noise of multiple moving parts and different vendor relationships that are out there. You know, for me, it's the difference between gaining the most from your technology assets and spending a lot of time being busy trying to make your technology assets work. You know, you imagine the power of doing something once for the benefit of everyone. Versus something different in every location and trying to get, let alone a standard operating process for the business, but the customer experience. It's no secret why the customer experience in a peninsular hotel is what it is. It comes from the stability, it comes from this core approach to running the business technically and through the product and service delivery to the customer. There's no secret. It's a foundation, and Shane did it. Having sat in that chair, I know how difficult that is, and it takes extraordinary determination and resilience. You know, because technologists, oh, I think we should use this and I think we should use that. So, yeah, that's the best I've seen, Josiah. And to the best of my knowledge with the current leadership, they still maintain that practice today and more power to the board.

Josiah: I appreciate you sharing that story. I am curious also to get your thoughts on if there are things happening outside of the world of hospitality that you think we can learn from and bring into the industry. And I ask that not because we're always just looking for more ideas and kind of shiny object syndrome here, but I'm trying to speak to people who are kind of in the process of laying this foundation and are looking to say, how do we build these fundamental, maybe timeless things that could be interesting. And I do feel creativity and innovation can happen from anywhere. Do you see innovation happening elsewhere that maybe our listeners should keep in mind?

Mark: Yes, of course. But I think there's a much more fundamental element to our business that needs to be much better understood. A lot of other industries operate on enterprise platforms and have done for a very long time, as far back as the 80s. The term ERP is not a new term, it's an old term. And yet in our industry, we've got a different piece of technology for every part of the business. Imagine if you're, you know, imagine if you're Walmart and I've got to have a piece of technology for the butcher and for the baker and for the dairy section and for the canned goods, you know, let alone front and back of the house, right? So, you know, I was lucky enough to have a very pivotal opportunity in my career, both with MGM Resorts, but also following that up with a company called Sanyam. And Sanyam's secret was that it was a single platform for the entire front and back of house of a hospitality business. Yeah, a few exceptions off the side of it, but almost the entire operation in a single place, single customer record. a single vendor record, finance connected to the back of the house. Now, these are no small things to achieve from an execution perspective, but the power that these types of platforms bring is something that the industry you know, doesn't really appreciate or understand. When you get into an environment like that, it allows you to re-examine the entire way that our industry works. And, you know, let's face it, we're not that efficient as an industry, and we should certainly do with a little bit of reworking to make things better. And in that environment, what it meant was that technology was no longer determining the way we needed to work. We'd broken down all those barriers and it went, well, what do job roles look like? in this type of environment? How would we operate hospitality without the barriers that we've always had? That's exciting. That's exciting. Those are the things that really, you know, get my ears prick up and I get excited about because the outcome of that environment for staff, of course, is extremely valuable in an industry where we're struggling. You know, modern job roles with more expansive responsibilities and a cross-business capability is attractive to young people who want to feel involved. But even more importantly, if you can operate that way, you can serve the customer that way. And that is really the essence of what hospitality is meant to be all about. So it's not so much innovation in that respect. It's just the idea that there's a very, very strong idea in our industry that people think, well, I've got to have a separate PMS. I've got to have it. No. I've lived in those environments. You don't. And technology has moved to a point now where, sure, you might have to give up a bit of functionality here and there, but you're giving up functionality depending on the vertical product you pick anyway. But what you don't have is all the interfaces all the connectivity, the communication or lack thereof of communication between business functions, let alone the customer and how you see the customer as you present yourself to present the business to them. That is not new, but it's extremely innovative and potentially industry shifting for hospitality. It's fascinating.

Josiah: Yeah, it's interesting to hear that and kind of think about some of these other, whether it's in retail or elsewhere, how they function. You think about the complexity of that, the complexity of hotels, are there things that you can learn in that regard? I'm going to include a link to your website, Mark, in the show notes. I would encourage people who are kind of thinking about this, trying to figure out where do we go with technology to reach out to you and have a conversation. Because I would love to close with some takeaways or things that people can do. that's going to be highly dependent on everyone's situation. But I feel like we should try to anyway. Any, I guess, general things you would like to leave our listeners with, whether it's action items or just things to be thinking about?

Mark: Yeah, look, I think number one is technology cannot be viewed from an individual product or part of the business. You can't do that. One of the things I do with my clients is look at their comprehensive business for the business that they want to be. And only then can we start to understand the tool set. We don't intend to do that in the hospital. Going back to my earlier, I need a new PMS. You've got to shift away from that attitude and think more broadly about the type of business that you want to be because that's what drives your technology requirements, if you like. So that's one. The other is start with the end in mind. One of the things that's always bothered me about the way that we tend to generally look at it is the cost of technology, the expense of technology. They're assets. They're not expenses. And you have to view it that way. We're very good at asset management in our industry when it comes to the real estate aspects of our business. We're not very good at it when it comes to the asset management of our technology assets. And they are assets. So I would encourage leadership, both in the organisation level and technology, to take far more asset management approach towards how they administer and invest, invest being the key word, in technology. Not just for the initial investments, but the ongoing investment in predominantly education. It's not technology, it's education and re-education. And if you do that, you will have the outcomes for business exponential. If you use your technology well, your business will benefit in ways that you just can't even envision. just purely by using your tools well. There's so much to be gained and that's well within everyone's capacity to structure ongoing investments to make sure that they leverage things well. It's in everyone's own best interest to do so. And the beauty of that is that's not hard to do. That doesn't require a huge transformation or it just requires being sensible about putting some funding towards that exercise and making sure it becomes routine part of how you do business as an operator.

Josiah: I love it, Mark. We covered a lot in this conversation, but some of the things that are standing out to me, reflecting back on what we covered, are to view technology as an opportunity to build competitive advantage, view technology as an asset, and treat it as such, invest in it as such, and teach your teams. Empower your people to get the most out of it. Speaking of teaching, you do a lot to teach the industry on technology. I'll link to your website and your profiles where people can learn more about you and your work. But thank you for taking the time to talk today. I learned a lot from you and appreciate your time.

Mark: No, my pleasure. Thank you. It was a real thrill to, as I said, have the chance to connect with you. I really admire what you're doing and the people that have the good fortune to join you and feel very grateful for the opportunity. Thank you.