The Modern Hotelier #84: An Inside Look at the Acquisition of SHR | with Rodrigo Jimenez
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Steve Carran: Welcome to another episode of The Modern Hotelier. We're coming to you from the SHR booth and I am joined by their CEO, Rod Jimenez. Welcome to the show, Rod.
Rodrigo Jimenez: Thanks.
Steve Carran: How's it been going?
Rodrigo Jimenez: It's been going great.
Steve Carran: So a couple weeks ago, huge news broke, right? Access Company has acquired you. How has it been the last couple weeks?
Rodrigo Jimenez: Well, it's been really busy, but it's really exciting because getting to know a whole bunch of people. A bunch of new people that's going through, starting to explore, you know, way deeper how the combination opens up doors of [00:01:00] opportunities. So I think that the short answer is it's been busy.
Yeah, but it's it's been very exciting.
Yeah. Good. 
Steve Carran: Good. Can you tell us, me a little bit more and those that might not be as familiar, a little bit more about Access Company and maybe other companies that they've acquired or you'll be sister companies with?
Rodrigo Jimenez: Yeah, so the Access group is a really big company out of the UK.
They have about 7000 employees probably 1.3-1.4 billion dollars in revenue a year. So and they focus on kind of the middle market and they started with ERP and accounting systems and then they have grown tremendously over the last 20 years. by adding different verticals, so construction, education, non profit and government, and one of the last, divisions to be created is hospitality So Access hospitality is part of the Access group and it, [00:02:00] started coming together with a couple of acquisitions in the restaurant side of the business and then. a big acquisition about a year ago, which was, PMS out of the, UK, Guestline. And so, that's actually kind of our connection.
I knew Andrew McGregor and he and I had talked years ago, probably five, six years ago about how, you know, we were adding pieces to the puzzle and how this final piece on just sort of jumping over to the operation side of the house and how that would add to the data pool that then would open up all kinds of opportunities And so that interest in growing the hospitality division at Access combined with another very
strong area of focus, which is growing in North America. Made SHR a natural, you know, candidate and [00:03:00] those conversations started and, you know, here we are. So now we're part of the AXS group and inside of the AXS group, AXS 
Steve Carran: Sure.
So there has been a lot of buzz on the trade show. People are saying that we're finally back, right? It's been a while since COVID and things like that. How has it been on the trade show floor for you at high tech and you know, how has it been?
Rodrigo Jimenez: Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, you probably have a better pulse on that than I do, out of our own presence here, it's been really exciting, and I mean, I think what you're saying in terms of, you know, we're back, I think definitely hospitality, I mean feels like, we're back, but but I think also Hoteliers are much more focused now on, Hey, this is what we need to do to compete well.
This is what we need to do to continue to deliver hospitality. And that's the piece where technology plays such a great [00:04:00] role, right? To allow hoteliers to be hoteliers. And then in our case, as you know, we don't sort of say, Here's our toolbox and you need it all or nothing, right? It's like we can, we can pick and choose.
We, we continue to work with a lot of other people in the, tech ecosystem that, you know, in some cases we may even compete with. The idea is to give our clients what they need to be able to be great hoteliers, right And provide hospitality. So it, it feels like. That's much more clear now, right? need to be very smart about guest profiles.
They need to be very smart about revenue generation and rate optimization and all of those things. and a much more clear vision of what that looks like at a hotel and the technologies that they need to so we've had great, great conversations around those, those topics.
Steve Carran: That's awesome. And that's one thing that's awesome about you [00:05:00] guys. You have products that you can buy all in together and your CRS, CRM all work together or you can integrate with other people as 
well. So it's a really cool how it all works 
together.
But any, any insight on uh, what's next for SHR? Any, any big announcements or anything fun coming 
Rodrigo Jimenez: up? 
Well, no, no big announcements yet. I think that, it's sort of like a lot of, a lot more of the same, right? So we want to be continuing to. We help all of our clients with great technology, great service and then the exciting part is that we're part of a much bigger organization with great resources that, you know, the cross pollination between other areas in access and how we can benefit from those is interesting.
But, we have a regional. President, that, uh, Jonah Peresky, that's focusing on, North America and the growth here. [00:06:00] So I think we, we're going to see other additions to the family at some point over the next 12, 24 months. And then that hopefully will continue to give more, critical mass to the, to the hospitality division.
And not just that, but, here in North America and the pieces that we can act. continue to add to the puzzle. So, yeah, so I think that that's the exciting part that I think we're, going to see more growth, um, more, um, key pieces added to that suite of solutions that then create all the great sources of data that then enable us to do more with that.
So it's sort of to keep that, uh, flywheel going,
Steve Carran: So Rod, for people 
that want to get in touch with you or find out more about SHR, where can they go? How can they get in contact with you?
Rodrigo Jimenez: Yeah. Well, rod. himenez, shrgroup. com for sure. And then shrgroup. com, it's [00:07:00] all there. We actually just updated our website, so it's fresh, fresh content.
Steve Carran: Beautiful. Go check out the new website. This does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Thank you for joining us and have a great rest of the day.