Designing a Magical Guest Experience with Technology - Martin Soler

Josiah: 0:00

Today we're learning from a hospitality leader who, after running a hotel in Paris, has gone on to help build technology companies that power the guest experience and operations for tens of thousands of hospitality businesses around the globe. Stick around if you want to hear his insights that you can apply to your business today. Martin Soler is Partner at Soler & Associates and guides hotels and hotel technology companies on brand positioning and strategy. In this episode, you'll about experience design and technology product design, but we start off talking about the barriers to innovation today.

Martin, thank you for taking some time to chat here. You and I have known each other for quite some time. I've appreciated your perspective on technology as a former hotelier, as somebody who's been a technology leader across many different companies for quite some time, you have an incredible global perspective on technology in hospitality. You and I were talking a little bit before about hotels' willingness to invest in FF&E versus technology. There might not be a clear answer to that, but as a former general manager, I'd be curious to hear what's driving some of that and what have you seen in that area.

Martin: 1:32

If I take my former general manager's way of life or decision-making process, I would invest in anything that would increase guest experience because I think that's how I can raise the price. So any FF&E tends to go high up there from that point of view because it's tangible for the guest, it's visible, it's tangible and therefore it's something that they really want. I think I can raise the price. Technology goes really low on the list. But what's weird with that is that today, most of the engagement that's happening, most of the interaction that's happening with the rest of the world, is through some kind of a technology interface. And I think that's where there is a disconnect For me, now that I'm on the other side. I'm on the tech side and I see that technology is basically the lever that will be the future guest experience and people are now totally expecting that. We're totally expecting our phone to. This is the other companies that have made us want something. We turn on the chat, and we text somebody. We don't sit and wait and dial four and then wait and then dial three. That's not how we prefer to interact anymore.

Josiah: 2:55

Expectations are set elsewhere.

Martin: 2:57

Correct And we don't want to wait and we've been so accustomed to everything all the time open anywhere we want to go.

Josiah: 3:06

I wonder if we talk a little bit about the barriers to adoption because we're all using these advanced technologies in our personal lives And we've all been to conferences where they're like hoteliers should be a little bit more up with the times. So what's the hangup? What's holding us back?

Martin: 3:23

 It's a lot of little things because a lot of this technology is out there. It exists, but it's hard to get it all to work together. It takes a lot of work to get all of the pieces to fit, to get the puzzle to interact, and then it has to interact friendly And a lot of these things are not friendly with each other. So a lot of the technology is not friendly with each other. Because you compete in this space, therefore I'm not going to let you access that part and therefore they add friction. So from a tech side, needs to be fixed, and that was I think there was one of the missions of some of the associations was to fix that. I don't know if it has been fixed. It hasn't really been fixed. Unfortunately, politics exist and you got to overcome that somehow. And then the other one is well, I know from having change tech that the in-house training, the whole change the friction that it causes. Because you know the front desk isn't a tech person, he's there to be a people person. You know the housekeeping are there to do their number of rooms. They're not there to. You know, log in to a smartphone that may or may not work at that very instant. You know it's just that friction. So there is the training part. You know there is that part. But you know someone recently quoted from the CEO of Marriott who says you know that we're so used to having tech that it doesn't need a manual, don't need three weeks of training, doesn't need, you know, an extra day session where you have to come in off hours and so on, and we, you know, you pick up the phone and unbox it and you figure out how to use it. This is how the users are today. So why isn't the enterprise tech or why isn't our tech? you know, in our industry working the same way?

Josiah: 5:38

You and I have talked a number of times about connectivity being one aspect of things working, but there's also product design that plays an important role in supporting that sort of experience. 

Martin: 5:51

I mean, product design is a complex problem because we're so used to user-friendly design, right, we're so used to these big icons and you know big tap and you know don't make me think the type of design. But then, when you're in front of B2B space, when you're actually in a work environment, that's not the right. That's a completely different way of using tech, right? Technology is totally different, right? Suddenly you need much more data in front of your. You know when you have to take that or make that decision, you need a whole bunch more data. So suddenly it looks ugly or it needs a bit more training, so it's. But product design needs to be up there. But we also need to take into account, like it's really about getting down in the seat of the user. And what do they need at that very moment? Is it more important that they have all the data there or that they have fewer clicks? Is it more important that you know they have a clean, you know very big button so that they can't miss it? or you know housekeeping might need that more than a lot of data there, right, they just need to be able to say the room is done, versus someone at the front desk needs to be able to see that this is a repeat customer that has been there you know so many times, that has accumulated so and so many points at the same time at check-in and the fact that you know they need to be informed that they have been upgraded Like. All of that needs to be presented in a way that's super easy to deal with, right?

Josiah: 7:37

I appreciate you touching on that, though, because that's the inherent trade-off in product design,  in that, yes, if we added more buttons or more features, we might have more data, but the other piece of that is okay, we might have more data, but if adoption is very low, usage is very low, it doesn't matter even to begin with, and so it sounds that focusing on adoption and usability is job number one, and if we start detracting from that, all the other points might not be that good.

Martin: 8:00

That's where it's much harder to measure in B2B tech. You know, this is your job. You're paid to use the software. It doesn't matter whether you like it or not, you have to use it. So it's not like on a B2C tech where you will see adoption and you will see people say, well, I don't want to use it, it's too complex. No, this is what your job is. You have to just suffer through this. This is what we pay you for, suffer through this very badly designed software. We don't care right, so you won't have that like, there will be adoption. It will be bad adoption. It would not be. They won't love it, but they'll do it right. So it's harder to measure that. And what's harder, to switch out the whole system or to a free trial would be fun on paper. It's a great idea. In reality, it isn't, because you're not going to do a free trial, train half your team, and then find out it was not a good point-of-sale system and now you're going to swap it out. And even if it's easy to swap out, now you have to train the whole team again. Now you have to re-input all your menus and no one's going to get upset, so it gets different problems. But for design, you need to go in and find out are the people able to use it the way they want to, and so on. It's really about listening and the stats, the numbers, won't tell you everything, because they're obliged to use it.

Josiah: 9:35

So free trials might seem like a good idea, but it's not really practical for B2B at scale, and I think my question for you would be how would you advise hoteliers to think about shopping for or evaluating technology? you know, heading into these trade shows, but just in general, because there are so many participants out there and it might seem overwhelming.

Martin: 9:54

From my experience so far, I would say the most important isn't the free trial is more than how easy is it to plug that system in with something else? and you get an IT person who knows APIs, who has experience with APIs, to come with you in the shopping process and go and check that out because we don't know what's going to be next. Right, we don't know what mass adoption, consumer tech is going to be, but we do know that if it's connectable, then it will work. Right. Then it's kind of future. Proof. The only way to future-proof your technology today is to have something that you can connect easily and where you can hold, have the control. So if there is a published API that is accessible without being outrageously expensive, and that does not require incredibly long and painful approval processes, then you could get a developer or two to help you connect to systems. Worst case scenario if there isn't already but more important than is there or isn't there a connection is, can you build it? because I see a lot of the smaller independent brands are the ones who are kind of pioneering better guest experiences.

Josiah: 11:16

Why is that?

Martin: 11:18

More control. They have full control. They own everything. If you look at the smaller brands, the owner decides we're going to do this and they do it. The bigger brands, due to the structure of franchising agreements and management companies and the multi-levels, multiple levels of decisions and financing, then have much less control. So they only have the above property control, but that means that everything that happens on the property is out of their control or is complex to be controlled.

Josiah: 11:58

You've touched a few times on technical talent and the person that is a provider of great hospitality may not be the one to build the systems. I'm curious how you think about this and if it varies from the size of the company to the company, but how listeners working at hotel companies or hotel brands should think about hiring technical talent internally versus where do you look externally for technical talent to help you develop this?

Martin: 12:26

A lot of hotels have tried to build their own tech and many of them have also figured out that that's not a great idea When you build your entire, your complete own tech. Few people realize how much maintenance is involved with tech. Tech is not like a built-the-app now I can go off and do something else. You built the app and now you've got endless worsening situations of bugs and fixes and upgrades and redevelopment and so on. So, yeah, so few. You know there's too few that have realized that or are realizing it now. I think where there is tech talent to be had is on building APIs, right on connecting systems, where, if you can have tech talent either directly depending on your size but own that tech talent, or have that within your own team. So you are not always asking for the vendor and when will the vendor connect to the other vendor, and so they can, but you can access the APIs and build your own and you can then be pretty nimble in building future tech.

Josiah: 13:39

Interesting. I'm curious. Throughout your career, in all the roles that you've held, what have you learned from hotel companies that have implemented technology most successfully? What are other common characteristics of those companies or how they operated?

Martin: 13:54

Yeah, I would say and this is something I've been thinking about quite a lot lately is this a role that kind of exists in those successful companies which hasn't been sort of clearly put on paper anywhere? but it's like a guest experience designer And it's not a role that is written down anywhere. but I remember working with independent hotels which really did a great job I looked at why were they doing a good job And it was a general manager who was basically a guest experience designer, but he had enough understanding of technology that he could then go and say, okay, i want the check-in process to work this way, so that the people who walk in they go like that and the front desk people are not front desk people anymore because now they're checking in, roving check-ins and so on and they're doing differently. But he's designing that guest experience. and other hotels and smaller groups that I've seen that do the same. They sit and design the experience and they include tech, and we have it in hotels and hotels are really good at designing experiences, except they often forget to include tech. And so I think that role of a guest experience designer, who is part architect, part tech, part service, is kind of a hybrid and maybe that is what the GM is. but I think the GM is so busy running the day-to-day that they need somebody with them who's kind of a bit on all of these fields where you can do some of the FF&E investments but you can also do the tech investments and you can do the training investments so that whole guest experience flows together.

Josiah: 15:45

I'm trying to think how we can illustrate this for listeners, and it feels pointless to ask for what is the best practice on this because the guest experiences could be as diverse as you know, as you can imagine. Right, that's the beauty of different brands and different properties. But I'm curious: Is there an experience, a hospitality experience you've experienced personally recently that stood out to you as this was really enjoyable, really special, and if so, what? why was that?

Martin: 16:13

I think one of them that really struck me was an independent hotel in Prague where I walked in at I think it was 10 pm. It was pretty late. I'd been working all day, took the plane arrived, and was in the cabin. I was dreading that. Oh god, now I'm gonna have to do this check-in. I'm so tired. I'm meeting early in the morning. I just want to go to my room and sleep. And I walked in the front desk and someone was sat in front of me, like sat at the front desk, speaking with the receptionist, and I was like, oh, this is it, this is like a. You know, I'm really tired, I just want to go to sleep. And the front desk lady looked up and said, oh, Mr Soler, here's your room key. And I was like, okay, this is magic, this is not this. How does she know that? she googled my name, it turns out. I think it was really simple. I was the last person to check in like it was that. You know, it was that, but it like it felt like magic, right, I'd say. How did she know it was me? how did she have the key ready? that's just fantastic. I walked into my room and it was. You know it couldn't have, like it's so over, you know, delivered on my expectations. So you know, it's those things, right? It's not that I want no human interaction, it's that I just wanted that the human interactions are available when I need them. And I'm not being sort of, you know, it's not that I need to follow the processes of the hotel, is that the hotels are kind of following my processes, which you know, standing in line at the front desk means I now need to follow. It's not hotel, it's not guest first, right, its hotel processes before the guest, right, whereas any the really really good experiences are, you know, somehow, magically, those processes, this don't exist and the guest comes first. So that's where you know. That's a really good experience for me and I think tech can help, right? I think tech should vanish, I think tech should disappear in the background so that it's just the humans like we, only we have those kind of interactions. Tech has helped them know that I'm coming, or they've texted me and I'm in the cab, and I've texted back, said I'm in the cab, great, because they know it's late at night, or something you know like. Tech can enable these kinds of experiences pretty easily.

Josiah: 18:41

I think it's been said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic right, and I think that I appreciate you sharing that experience, because it inspires us to think about what is possible. What does the ideal state look like, and maybe technology is there to enable that today? Maybe it's going to take a little bit of work, but starting with the, that ideal state and working backward as opposed to these are the processes we have to use is awesome for guest experience design. I do want to be aware, though, of listeners who might be listening to that and could be in these companies, in these environments where it's going to take some change, and I'm curious, as a former general manager, somebody who has built many technology companies what have you learned about successful change management? how can listeners think about okay, how do I show up to work and start affecting change in my organization?

Martin: 19:33

Yeah, I think it comes down to why are you doing it. Why are you? What is the goal with this? Is it just you got to change? are you changing the technology because everyone's going to the cloud and therefore you've got to do a cloud thing, because that's what's popular, or because everyone's doing generative AI or whatever it is? Is that why you're doing it? or are you doing it because this is what the guest needs? There are some people who come up with incredible ideas, but they're also not very practical. There are some amazing ideas of tech that could be, yes, but what is it like? take one thing, one thing that could remove one level of friction for the guest. What could it be? And it might not be. You might need to change all the door locks and that's not going to happen. So then find something else, right, but the reason why you're doing it has to be what can you do to reduce, remove friction Somewhere? What can you do somewhere, is it? and that's where payments is like the low-hanging fruit, for example?

Josiah: 20:44

Tell me more about payments. I keep payments keep coming up for me in these conversations. What's the opportunity here with payments?

Martin: 20:51

I mean payments in hospitality, are just triple friction, triple-level friction. You book your room, you pull out your credit card, you pay And let me just rewind. This is like it's not humanly nice, like one of those high, great levels. You're never. You know, even when you buy your house, the house of your life, you're not happy, like you're signing that big check and it's still, you know, it stings. The payments are just not a great human interaction period. So when you're booking your hotel, you pull out your credit card the first time. When you're booking it on the OTA, and you arrive at the hotel and you pull out your credit card again because I don't know why, because why did you do it in the OTA? It doesn't well, okay, it doesn't matter, but that was just to reserve the. Okay, whatever, that's not my problem that you only use my credit card to reserve. I gave you my credit card, right? And you come in the front desk, they pull it again And it's like oh, this is just in case you break something or steal the, you know, steal the furniture. Okay, that's thanks, that's really good. And then when you leave, you know you have to actually do the payment Right. So you're actually paying three times for the same service, right? So you're pulling out that really bad friction, like a really bad guess, or human interaction, three times for no good reason. Right, it's because that's the way we've always done it, right? When you look at you know a lot of the big tech companies just removed all of that. Uber, you just walk out, you don't even have that payment interaction. It doesn't happen anymore. Like you just book it and it's done. You get in the cab, arrive, leave, you don't sit on the, you know, on the street and haggle to negotiate. And the same with Airbnb. It's just, it's that's removed, it doesn't exist anymore. And in our industry, it's like a low-hanging fruit because payments, just solutions, exist, right, and it's been done by the OTA. So there is ways to interact, to build the payment infrastructure in your hotel And that's, you know it's, it's not more expensive, it's not, you know it's not harder, it's like the technology exists, you could plug it into your existing solutions and literally that's it, it's done and trust that. You know. okay, so there will be some loss, but e-commerce people know that you will always have refunds. Right, in the hotel industry, it seems like there are no refunds ever. You know somebody will break something. So you're really going to, like, argue with them at the front desk when they leave that no like somebody reported that you broke the lamp. No, I mean, it's one out of 20, one out of 30. Okay, so you're going to anyways have a replacement.

Josiah: 23:57

You bake it into your cost of doing business And there are innovative brands like Zoku in the Netherlands and their properties all over Europe, but you know, they were telling me about their community closet where they have little amenities or stuff And it's just there. People can take it, use it and people don't steal things, and people starting that brand, everyone was saying, oh, you got to be careful, Everyone's just going to take it away And it's like, by and large, it does not happen right. But for almost 99% of people that don't steal things, it's a much better experience.