The Modern Hotelier #178: An End-To-End Technology Solution for Hotels & Resorts | with Dan Bell
===
David M.: Welcome to another episode of The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged podcast. We're here at HITEC and Steve, who do we have on the program? 
Steve Carran: David, today we have on Dan Bell, the VP of Hotels and Resorts. Thanks for sitting down with us. Dan, how are you doing today?
Dan Bell: I'm well. Good morning guys, and welcome to the Agilysys booth at HITEC 2025.
Steve Carran: Wonderful booth. This is incredible. Yeah, it's really good.
Dan Bell: Great booth, great activity this week, we're super excited to be here and look forward to another productive day. 
David M.: So Dan, we're gonna go through lightning round of some quick questions. We're gonna dive into your personal background, your career, and then we're gonna jump into some industry topics. Sound good? 
Dan Bell: Sounds perfect. Thank you guys. All right. 
David M.: What's something you wish you were better at? 
Dan Bell: Something I wish I was better at. Um, I would say I would lead with golf. Um, I love the sport. Just, uh, hasn't come naturally to me. I keep working at it, but I keep getting worse, so That's good. 
David M.: What's the most used app on your phone?
Dan Bell: I would say, Lyft, just with all the traveling I'm doing, I'm constantly using it, constantly getting from point A to point B and love the lovely utilization of it. What's a luxury you can't live without? Oh boy. Um, I'm glad you're asking me and not my wife. I would say staying in nice hotels used to go backpacking quite a bit as a kid, but now it's, it's four or five star hotels. Okay. 
David M.: You could trade places with anyone for a day. Who would you trade places with? 
Dan Bell: Wow. I would say, anybody that plays with the New York Yankees, Aaron Judge would come to mind. Yeah, it's good time to do it. it's my lifelong career ambition is to play for the Yankees and and center field in particular. 
David M.: Alright. What's the best piece of advice you've received? 
Dan Bell: Wow. I would say steady as you go, be patient, but be persistent and, and work towards goals on a yearly basis. Um, I give that that advice to my kids all the time.
David M.: Alright. What's your favorite 
Dan Bell: city and why? Favorite city, Soreto, Italy. Um, y it's where my wife and I honeymoons, um, a few years back. Um, just great memories of that city, the Mafi coast, the people, hotels, everything that went along with it. 
Steve Carran: Absolutely. That was great. So now we're gonna get it into your background a little bit.
Sure. You grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania, is that correct? I did, yes. How did growing up in Easton shape you into who you are 
Dan Bell: today? Yeah, very blue collar city, I would say. Um, known for Larry Holmes, the fighter known for Benny and Smith. Crans known for Dixie Cup back in the day. But wow. You know, a lot of my, um, friends, relatives, neighbors, worked for one of those companies.
My dad worked for a power company there called Metropolitan Edison, but just very much a strong work ethic area. And David, you would know this being from Philadelphia as well? 
David M.: Yeah. That's great. So you graduated from Penn State with a degree in speech. Communication and business. What made you decide to go to Penn State in, in those degrees?
Dan Bell: Yeah, good question. I didn't start there. That's where I finished. I started in Parks and Recreation. You never know where your paths lead. I got, uh, interested in, um, speech communication, getting in front of, of groups. Uh, the business degree was in part because of that time of, um, my life. There was a recession and I figured parks and recreation wasn't gonna be, it got into business couple with speech, and I think it's served me well over the years. 
Steve Carran: Absolutely. So one of your top places on your travel bucket list is Spain. Yes. What makes Spain top of your bucket list and, uh, anything specific you're looking to do there? 
Dan Bell: Yeah, I've just, it's one of those places I haven't been, it's one of those places that many friends and colleagues have told me they've gone to and loved Barcelona in particular. I've heard super things with, um, the, the hotels, the dining, the sports. All of that is, super appealing to me. 
Steve Carran: That's great. So now we're gonna dive into your career, how you got to be Atsy. So you were a long time Micros Oracle employee and you worked your, you worked your way up to group a VP of North America in hotels and sports and entertainment. What did those early days teach you that you still take with you today? 
Dan Bell: Yeah, that's a great question and I don't know. Don't know if we have enough time for me to go through my whole career, uh, today, but, but it's a great question. I was just speaking with one of our colleagues about it today. When I first started in the industry, I was selling point of sale solutions to, to restaurants, um, implementing them, supporting them at night, the whole nine yards.
So it really helped me learn the products, learn the business. Um, as well, and understanding restaurants and how technology can be applied to those operations. 
David M.: So before agilysys, you were at CG and Toast? Correct. What brought you to agilysys? 
Dan Bell: Yeah. Well, if you see the screen behind me, there's a plethora of products. It's the company's commitment to the industry. This is what we do. It's all we do. We're not diluted into other industries like retail and. Sports and entertainment. We're focused and growing in hotels and resorts, and this is really my passion. It's where I want to be, and I like the whole end-to-end story, that agility can tell.
It's not one segment of the business, but it's everything. And so we've got plenty of our own products, but we're also very happy to partner with others. Um, we understand hotel companies have other choices that they've made and they're invested in. So we can play with them or we can, um, continue to add products from, from our own company as well.
Steve Carran: Sure. So for those that might not be as familiar with Gilis, I'm sure they heard the name in the industry. Sure. But can you explain a little bit more about what you do? 
Dan Bell: Yeah. I think we're still somewhat of a well kept secret in the hotel and resort industry. You know, we're known back historically with within casinos, um, we're in food service management.
But I think the appeal to me here is our, our passion for guest service. Um, since I've been here, we've added, um, over a dozen new sales executives, account executives. These are people that are experienced in the industry. Uh, we have other over 1500 development staff in the industry. We have a customer advisory board, so we wanna understand what customer's challenges are, how do we solve them?
Oftentimes in in sales meetings, I'm out with development staff as well. They wanna listen, learn, understand what's driving the industry or where there may be gaps, and then how do we solve that with, uh, with our staff. 
David M.: And so what sets at JY apart from other technology companies? 
Dan Bell: Yeah, I think it's the focused commitment on the industry. It's our products. And services that we provide. Services is another huge aspect of our business that we're constantly iterating on. Um, either we do a full, IM implementation, it's hybrid. We can teach the customer how to do it, we can do it remotely. Uh, so we're always learning, you know, how to do that better.
And there's, you know, there's small projects, there's medium sized projects and there's large resort projects. So we can, everyone looks different. Each one has their own personality. That's great. 
Steve Carran: So now we're gonna move on to industry thoughts. Um, what measurable gains in revenue, operational efficiency and guest experience are forward-thinking, hospitality leaders achieving through the adoption of a more modern integrated technology?
Dan Bell: Yeah, I think it's always good to start with any IT project with where are we, where do we want to be, how do we get there, and what are the gaps, you know, in between that need to be solved for. And we're very collaborative and working with our customers along those lines. Um, you know, I think it's, it's also good to have measurements along the way, right?
What are the, the compelling measurements that we want to achieve during the project? After the project, three months, six months after the project, what can we do better? I think a good example is, um, we did some work with a company called Little River Casino in Michigan. We integrated our Versa product with our IG point of sale solution spa golf, so that that resort can understand where is their guest on property.
At any given point in time, they could be playing golf and have a reservation. The restaurant, they're worried about making their reservation, but we can see where they are. They may be tied up so the, the restaurant can hold their table. Move their table, whatever they need to do to satisfy that guest so that when they arrive to have their dining experience, they had a good round of golf and now they can relax and have dinner as well.
David M.: And can you speak about how localized end-to-end support is driving success? 
Dan Bell: Yeah, this is big for us, um, and a big investment that we've made. I mentioned about the account executives that we, we've hired. They're all in place in their territories. I think it's one of those things that we, as IT providers need to recognize that.
Yeah, we're not developing solutions for IT geeks like us, right? We're developing solutions for employees of hotels and restaurants and they're guests. We have guests driving, um, solutions as well that we wanna make it easy for them and then we wanna measure that along the way. How are we doing against service level performance?
What's exciting to me is not, I've always said, and I've been a lifelong sales person or sales leader, but the hard part starts when we start the implementation. And that's where I, that's where I get personally gratified by seeing customers utilize the solutions that we put out there and help them grow their business and thrive.
Steve Carran: Dan, where do you see the hospitality industry headed when it comes to post-sale service? 
Dan Bell: Yeah, this is crucial to me as I mentioned, you know, there's the sale selling part of things, but the support part of it is, is extremely important and we've got a fantastic support organization, seven by 24 service.
We measure SLAs, we have quarterly business reviews with our, our larger accounts. We always wanna understand, you know, how did things go? Maybe what's not working? We're not perfect. It's technology and harsh environments at times, especially in the restaurant space. And we wanna make sure that we're serving them well and and doing a great job by their standards.
And we measure this. Net promoter scores other different ways, but. It's, it's never finished. It's not a transactional business. It's, it's not stop, start and stop. It's start and iterate through. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. 
David M.: So how critical is a hundred percent focus on hospitality when evaluating tech providers? And what advantages does that singular commitment. Offer over vendor serving multiple industries? 
Dan Bell: Yeah, I think it's crucial and it's a big reason why I'm here at Agility is our focus on this industry, especially when it comes to hotels and resorts. We're investing in people, we're investing in product innovation.
I mentioned the development staff that we've got of over 1500 developers, um, in our India development center, and then this professional services support. All that goes along with that. I think if you. Take away that focus. You dilute the, the products and we wanna focus in our development on this industry, um, in addition to our casino and food service management.
But hotels at this point, near and dear to my heart, what I'm responsible for. It's what I'm focused on. 
Steve Carran: That's great. So Dan, we've been asking you the questions this whole time. This is where we're gonna turn the tables. Oh. And let you ask David and I a question 
Dan Bell: if you had a choice of where you'd want to go and best hotel experience that you've had, where would you say that's been?
David M.: Well and why? I would say I would go, I would, I would like to answer it where my bucket list is, and I have not been to Italy. Nice. And so I would ask someone who's been to Italy like you, and I would say, you know, tell me where to go. And what to do. Um, I've just had so many great hotel experiences. I'm looking now kind of as I'm getting, I'm grayer and grayer finding those spots I haven't been to that I really wanna make sure I get to do it.
Steve Carran: Happy to help. Absolutely. So my, one of my favorite properties that I've been to is the Lafayette in San Diego. Nice. Great concept. A lot of focus on food and beverage and the people there were incredible. One property that I really is on a, my bucket list is the Imam property, specifically the one in Utah, it just looks, the aesthetics look incredible and it's obviously a high end luxury resort, which I would enjoy. I feel like. So. Awesome. Good stuff. 
David M.: Yeah, those are one. So that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. So Dan, this is where you get to let people know how they can connect with you, how they can find out more Abouty.
Dan Bell: Yeah. Uh, very easy. atis.com or. Dan dot bell aty.com. Happy to turn you over to anybody you know on our team that can facilitate. The great thing here is we've got from Ramesh, our CEO, all the way down to everybody working in the company. We're super focused on the industry. Easy to find. If you have any trouble, reach out to me directly.
David M.: That's great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged Podcast. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to see you again soon. Thank you, Dan. Appreciate it guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. 
Demo: So this right here is, uh, agility versa.
It's our modern property management system, uh, really easy to use, intuitive. Um, our main navigation right here is at the top. And then we have our main dashboard, really clean layout here and, and, and, um, very customizable throughout the application. So we have some very important, like widgets here. We're key performance indicators from our operator perspective.
Just seeing how our hotel is doing, ooc, occupancy wise, what our average daily rate, how our housekeeping team is doing, our total arrivals and departures, all things that matter to a hotel operator. Again, this is also customizable, highly customizable from a user perspective. Things can be moved around to a user, pre, uh, to a user's, uh, preference.
Things that can roll around these widgets right here. Just a a, a drag and drop, and then they can drag, uh, they can customize it to their liking. And then next, I'll go into reservations right here. We have our reservations list gets, and it'll take you guys into a reservation.
So our reservation display right here, all the important information to a operator. The payment details, the market segmentation codes, their folio and their action buttons, right there on the right hand side. Modules that we include are reservations, housekeeping. We include the maintenance module.
Counting, um, of course all your night audit reports. And then transition to what we're really, really excited about is what we call the intelligent guest profile. So with the intelligent guest profile, it's like the holy grail profiles in the PMS world or in the hotel world. And what we've really done over, um, past couple years, we really focus on is intelligent, what we call the intelligent guest profile, where we're aggregating all the data and it's really important to hoteliers.
And so right here we have Frank, and we can track. The lifetime revenue, um, how many nights he total stayed with us, his dining, um, spa reservations, things that are really important, um, to hotel operators. We got it all in one single profile. And then along with that, it is available across all our PMS products, so not only the hotel, but a spa, golf activities, and dining too as well.
So things that you can see on their profile. Right along with their data is like their guest preferences, right? So Frank likes a soft mattress with a CVU high floor, and we can see that right there at our fingertips. We can also see like a complete itinerary current, past and future of when he's gonna be staying with us.
In addition to that, we can see, right, that we can see frequency of how many times he stayed with us, his lifetime trips, and of course his preferences. And we can actually see related profiles like his family members that are along staying with us. Okay, perfect. In addition to that, we can also see if there's any survey, if he's completed any surveys.
We'll be able to see this from this, what we call for thet, inte gas profile. So right here on on Frank's profile too, on the recency frequency and monetary tab, we could see how much he is of value to the property in terms of hotel. In terms of spa, golf, dining, and other activities at the hotel. Over on the right hand side, we can see how many times it's frequented at our property, or lifetime trips with total bookings, right?
His average length of stay, which is really important data to our property, right? So we can curate, you know, communication to that guest and bringing him back to the property. Scroll a little bit further. We can see like his average daily rate with us, his average daily revenue, and actually a total 360 view of his total lifetime spend with us, as you can see here.
So really nicely laid out things that matter to a hotel and, and that really solves a lot of problems for hotels when they have multiple systems and gathering all that data into one. Where now is that within the digital ecosystem, we can look at the profile and gather all the data from our products into one single intelligent guest profile.
So the other important advantage of logistics versa is in a single pane of glass, we can not only add a hotel room, but we can also add a spa appointment, a golf tee time activities that the property has any such as like horseback riding or jet skiing, and also dieting, reservations. So for a Hotelier, be able to do that and also just from a single application, it's really important and beneficial and efficient. So as you can see right here, I'm still in the versa PMS application, but when I click on add-ons, I can come over here and look what available times are for a spa. I can look at available times, so right if I'm at the front desk as an agent, I can actually speak to guests and your guest comes over to the front desk is asking, Hey Jay, is there any available times for a spot appointment for my wife?
I can actually do that. The employee doesn't have to call the other department like the spa or the golf pro shop to see that they can actually have the power to be able to do that, right from versa. So right here, I'm just kind of showing you the, when I click on the spa, I can look at available tee times and I can book that and add that for the guest right then and there.
I can look at the golf tee times in there and I can add a golf tee time for that guest for him and his son. I can book an activities should they choose to, and you know, book a yoga session, book a horseback riding. Right within the versa, I'm not leaving another application. And then lastly, I can also book dining reservations, putting it all together right here.
I have Frank, and as you can see here on the right hand side, I can have his hotel, his spa tee times all set and then complete and book that itinerary. So really the advantage, one of the differentiators of a Joseph Versa, is to be able to do that all from one single application.