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On this episode of Hospitable our host Rob Napoli sits down with Stayntouch CEO, Jacob Messina to talk about making hospitality human.
Join us as we discuss the importance of innovation in the digital world and how it can enhance the human aspect of hospitality. Our special guest, Jacob Messina, Senior VP of Technology at MCR and CEO of Stay In Touch, shares his insights on the role of technology in the industry and the need for competition to drive innovation. Tune in to discover how technology is revolutionizing the hospitality sector and making it more human-centric.
Join us as we discuss the importance of innovation in the digital world and how it can enhance the human aspect of hospitality. Our special guest, Jacob Messina, Senior VP of Technology at MCR and CEO of Stay In Touch, shares his insights on the role of technology in the industry and the need for competition to drive innovation. Tune in to discover how technology is revolutionizing the hospitality sector and making it more human-centric.
Learn about Jacob's unique path into hospitality and how his unique experience as a culinary teacher and his love for games such as RollarCoaster Tycoon has influenced his career path.
Don't forget to subscribe and review!
Timestamps:
Don't forget to subscribe and review!
Timestamps:
[00:01:26] Love for hospitality started.
[00:04:08] Less technology, more face-to-face.
[00:14:59] Making hospitality more human.
[00:17:41] Generational gap and technology.
[00:21:13] Learning retention in training.
[00:25:38] Best or worst travel stories.
[00:27:20] Getting immersed in other cultures.
[00:30:08] Hospitality and embracing imperfections.
[00:33:43] Cooperating with competition.
[00:36:39] Connecting with Jacob.
Shownotes:
00:04:57 Less technology, more face-to-face.
00:05:27 Technology should support, not hinder.
00:13:06 Simplicity and consistency are key.
00:15:40 Technology facilitates knowledge transfer.
00:19:44 Technology should be intuitive and easy to learn.
The timestamp in the podcast where it starts to say "Technology empowers and ruins experiences" is at 00:25:10. Technology empowers and ruins experiences.
00:29:19 Embrace imperfection in hospitality.
00:34:05 Competition drives innovation and growth.
Connect:
Jacob Messina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-messina-b6361311/
Stayntouch: https://www.stayntouch.com/
Omniboost: www.omniboost.com
Rob Napoli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robnap/
Show Produced by: Niranjan Deshpande (Nick), Broken Frames Studio, www.brokenframesstudio.com
Filmed at MCR Offices in One World Trade Tower in Manhattan, NYC: https://www.mcrhotels.com/
Filmed at MCR Offices in One World Trade Tower in Manhattan, NYC: https://www.mcrhotels.com/
Creators & Guests
Host
Guest
Jacob Messina
CEO of Stayntouch and technology leader with a focus on innovation and using technology to replace antiquated processes. Skilled in all areas of hotel technology, e-commerce, and performance marketing and lead the acquisition of two hotel technology companies. Strong product management professional with a Bachelor of Science in Hotel Administration from Cornell University.
What is Hospitable?
Hospitable is a podcast that discusses how to make hospitality MORE human through technology.
Hospitable focuses on discussing the leading challenges facing the hospitality industry and to explore the latest trends, technologies, and best practices that are shaping the industry. Each episode features interviews with hoteliers, restaurateurs, chefs, industry analysts, and other experts who share their insights and experiences on topics such as customer experience, sustainability, innovation, staffing, and more.
Hosted by Rob Napoli
00:00:18:05 - 00:00:56:13
Rob Napoli
All right. We are back for another episode of Hospitable. Hospitable is a podcast for the hospitality industry. And what we're trying to explore is how do you make hospitality more human in an age of digital innovation and technology? And that's why today is super excited. We're actually, you know, you can't probably see through well on these cameras, but we are on the 86th floor of One World Trade at the MCR offices with Jacob Messina, who is you're kind of in a dual role, right?
00:00:56:14 - 00:01:06:14
Rob Napoli
Senior VP of technology for MCR, but also CEO of Stay in Touch. Yeah. Jacob, thanks so much for letting us record man 86th floor overlooking have.
00:01:06:18 - 00:01:09:04
Jacob Messina
Happy to chat.
00:01:09:05 - 00:01:23:22
Rob Napoli
So what I want to start with, you know I was thinking about like doing this like lounge on an intro, but you have a unique background. You've been in hospitality for a while, but I was stalking you a little bit. You're a culinary teacher for a few years before you got into the hotel business. Talk to me about that.
00:01:23:22 - 00:01:26:24
Rob Napoli
What would your love for hospitality start?
00:01:27:01 - 00:01:52:14
Jacob Messina
Started at an early age, actually. You know, even before getting into restaurants, my hospitality interests came. I was an addict to roller coaster tycoon and The Sims. And I thought, how could I apply this amazing ability that I had at playing Sims and SimCity and these games to a career? And I started dabbling in restaurants and then into hospitality and things kind of went from there.
00:01:52:14 - 00:01:53:18
Jacob Messina
So yeah.
00:01:53:18 - 00:02:01:03
Rob Napoli
So I love that because that is so like nineties kids in the nineties I remember Sam's and Roller Coaster Tycoon very well.
00:02:01:05 - 00:02:21:08
Jacob Messina
So yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got into restaurants, I started working at restaurants in New York, I grew up in New York City, I started working in restaurants. I was 15 restaurants, catering kitchens, all sorts of stuff, you know, high end to low end. And I realized over time it was more of a passion than it was for a career for me.
00:02:21:10 - 00:02:39:09
Jacob Messina
And then when I was in high school, I was at the Cornell Hotel School and, you know, I got to attend bunch of classes and taught a couple on the culinary side, which was a lot of fun and like whole groups of people there, which was fun. So and it's fun. Even some of my colleagues here are former students of mine that I was there TIA’s
00:02:39:09 - 00:02:40:17
Jacob Messina
So I'm. Responsible.
00:02:40:17 - 00:02:44:01
Jacob Messina
For them passing culinary theory about that. Yeah.
00:02:44:03 - 00:02:55:01
Rob Napoli
So why culinary theory? What about culinary theory? Kind of got you started. I'm obviously we're in the hotel space now. We'll talk about that. But what what was the culinary theory? Where did that come from?
00:02:55:03 - 00:03:12:04
Jacob Messina
It's just so it was a very interesting class. It was kind of a two part class. So you learned the chemistry behind cooking and then you had to put it into practice. So it wasn't just a sit in a room and learn about how to do something. It was learn something, and then you have to go do something with that.
00:03:12:06 - 00:03:30:15
Jacob Messina
And it was a really interesting class. I learned a lot from it, both as a student in it and a teaching and in that culinary. Terrill The first part of that was, you know, when we started, when I was a student, we were in teams of two. And then the next year when I was did TIA on it, teams of four at the same amount of work.
00:03:30:18 - 00:03:55:16
Jacob Messina
And you actually found it that the student did worse. And it really showed that cooking and a very important part of cooking is communication. Yeah. So, you know, as a TIA I am thinking, Oh, this is going to be so much easier, they have twice as many resources. But it wasn't about resources. It was about being able to communicate, being able to plan ahead and to work with people and to understand what certain people are good at and some people are not, and being able to work around that.
00:03:55:22 - 00:03:57:10
Jacob Messina
So.
00:03:57:12 - 00:04:18:03
Rob Napoli
I mean, it sounds really interesting, especially if you are love Sims and roller coaster tycoon also makes sense. Now on the technology side of the business, we get to stay in touch in a little bit. Makes them more sense. I mean, because in a world of technology where we're overloaded with technology, we always think that technology is going to help us.
00:04:18:06 - 00:04:38:21
Rob Napoli
And another tool, another thing and I'll go so far to say is that there hasn't been a lot of true innovation in the last decade. It's a lot of iteration. And when we think about big innovation, you can argue maybe iPhone and Tesla, depending on what you want to call innovation. I think there's flavors of innovation that have happened, especially digital world.
00:04:38:23 - 00:04:47:07
Rob Napoli
But we've we see in a lot is just stacking on top of it like we're gonna make this thing 1% better, 1% better and that doesn't always work.
00:04:47:11 - 00:05:07:04
Jacob Messina
Yeah I actually I think less technology is what's somewhat needed in many cases and you wouldn't think of someone who's running a technology company to say that. But you know like what we're doing with Stay In Touch is not intended to be in people's faces with technology is to make things simpler so that people have more time to have a face to face conversation.
00:05:07:06 - 00:05:27:18
Jacob Messina
It's not, Oh, let me head down remembering short keys of what a deluxe King one is. So that way I can do it. You know, I was a ten year opera user back in the day, and, you know, I could still have all of those short codes memorized to four, but that's not helpful. That doesn't advance a conversation, it doesn't build a relationship or anything like that.
00:05:27:18 - 00:05:31:06
Jacob Messina
So technology needs to support people, not get in the way of them.
00:05:31:08 - 00:05:51:11
Rob Napoli
Yeah, and I love I use that because I also know that prior to the technology side of your marketing and as a marketer myself, you know, everyone thinks marketing is kind of sexy. I would I would actually say it's not it's, it's very boring and it's, it's test, iterate, test, iterate sexy. Part of it is like the advertising in the front end, the content.
00:05:51:13 - 00:06:12:20
Rob Napoli
But when you think about marketing theory and putting that in execution, it's a lot of testing one thing at a time with the idea that you're trying to limit as much friction, right? And I feel like that kind of has set you up to be on the tech side. So how did that transition for you of working in hotels for all that time on the more marketing into online, into the how do you get into the technology?
00:06:12:22 - 00:06:18:14
Rob Napoli
How did that career transition put you into a place where you're now running a technology company?
00:06:18:16 - 00:06:43:24
Jacob Messina
Yeah, it's a great question. Definitely took an interesting way of getting here. When I was with Loews Hotels, I got my start working with Loews Hotels, actually with their distribution team. So I'm kind of a behind the scenes role, but really a great way of learning like how the sausage gets made in the hotel space. And also you learned at that point the disparity and the problems between a lot of our systems.
00:06:44:01 - 00:07:07:23
Jacob Messina
I ended up running performance media, as you mentioned. And part of that I thought was around storytelling, you know, and you have to do that, but have data behind it. So to know what's working, what's not. I was frustrated by, you know, these we were doing what I started. We were 95% print with our ad spend. And, you know, it was a $70,000, you know, piece of media or one pager and travel and leisure.
00:07:07:23 - 00:07:30:12
Jacob Messina
And they told you everyone the United States saw you know, with digital, you had the ability to track. You have the ability to do your attribution, see what was working in sometimes in real time. And that was exciting to me to know what was working. How can I be doing better? How could we continue to evolve the story and know that, you know, nobody is seeing a banner ad and say, Oh, I'm going to go on a trip here because of that one view or something like that.
00:07:30:12 - 00:07:38:12
Jacob Messina
It's you had to be able to tell the story of it and also develop your value prop. I was like, why is why should someone purchase your product?
00:07:38:14 - 00:08:01:12
Rob Napoli
I think that's a really cool insight because I love telling stories. Like we I know we've sat talk before and we already free pre-show talking, all kinds of stories and fun stuff. I love this idea of telling stories. Telling stories with data. Right? It's it's there's the art of storytelling, but then you need that data attribution in today's world to make things hit right.
00:08:01:12 - 00:08:21:04
Rob Napoli
And so tracking data is really important, but it's also can seemingly be overwhelming. Like, what do you got to track? What are you attributing to it? Where's it come from? When we look at I'll say general about we're talking hospitality, we look at all these technology stacks out there and things that you have access to and you talk about.
00:08:21:06 - 00:08:32:09
Rob Napoli
You think less technology is needed. How do we achieve that? How do we look at or think about slimming down technology to be more effective so that we can have what we need without needing a million and a half things?
00:08:32:11 - 00:08:55:19
Jacob Messina
Yeah, you know, I think it's about enabling hoteliers. You know, not every hotel or every concept needs the same things. You know, that's the parts we take that stand out. We're very integrations focus and partner focused. You know thank you for our partnership with Omni boost that you know but we want hoteliers to be able to select a tech stack that works for them way too long.
00:08:55:19 - 00:09:13:06
Jacob Messina
In our industry, there were just vertical players who you had to buy everything from them, and then you're getting maybe one good product and ten bad products. And, you know, that's not the way to be successful in my opinion. And, you know, having been in a lot of roles within hospitality, you never want to be working with not the best product out there.
00:09:13:06 - 00:09:28:10
Jacob Messina
So if you know, you can use our property management system, but you're looking for X or your X functionality that meets your needs, we want to help you do that. Forcing people to use bad tech is an old way of thinking about it, and that's not going to be successful anymore.
00:09:28:13 - 00:09:43:08
Rob Napoli
No matter what I love, like you said. I mean, that's part of like the omnibus magic, right? Is that we're source agnostic and we like to think of ourselves as like a plug and we can plug in anything and help make things easier. And, you know, that's you've met case a couple of times and, you know, you know, that's his passion.
00:09:43:08 - 00:10:08:12
Rob Napoli
How do you how do we simplify people's lives? Right. And I think that's really cool because when we think about hospitality and hotels in general and we'll get into this kind of with the MCR side of things. So when you go to a hotel, when you're traveling, whether you're going for business or leisure or pleasure, you know, you get off a six hour flight, a seven hour flight or a redeye flight and you get to the hotel, the last thing you want is to not have a reservation there or they had a problem or they're on the computer the whole time.
00:10:08:12 - 00:10:25:23
Rob Napoli
You just want to get to your room and and sleep. So talk to me a little about you know, you just mentioned stay in touch and making things. I tell us, you say, what are some of the things that like you're passionate about Stay in touch. Like, what is the mission that you're trying to build to stay in touch as you've taken over as a CEO and really looking to scale?
00:10:25:23 - 00:10:30:00
Rob Napoli
What are the smart things that you really want to make an impact on in this hotel space today?
00:10:30:02 - 00:10:58:00
Jacob Messina
Yeah, you know, I'd say one of the first things, especially coming over from the customer side, and by that I don't mean, you know, staying in hotels, which I do clearly enjoy doing. But, you know, I was a customer of Stay in touch first implemented it at 11 properties boutique hotels everything from the hotel at JFK to the High Line to hotels in Pasadena and others, and realizing that each hotel required a different set of features and they leaned on different features there.
00:10:58:00 - 00:11:19:00
Jacob Messina
So that was important to know that not all hotels, it's not a cookie cutter approach. But what excites me about using technology in these hotels is that, you know, I can bring the customer side of this to the team. Yeah. You know, knowing what a customer is expecting and knowing that it's very important for this technology to work at all times.
00:11:19:02 - 00:11:41:11
Jacob Messina
Yeah. You know, especially with something as mission critical as a property management system when it doesn't work, you know, it has ramifications that others aren't aware of. So understanding that, you know, the customer has different needs than what a development team might need, are product team who think that, you know, oh, our three year vision of a product roadmap means, you know, it's got to do these three things.
00:11:41:16 - 00:11:55:18
Jacob Messina
We have to be more nimble than that and we need to understand that that the hot toddy tech industry three years ago looks nothing like it does today. And knowing that we need to be flexible enough to move and to innovate for the future there to Yeah.
00:11:55:18 - 00:12:14:20
Rob Napoli
So I really like they talk. I want to ask this question because there's so much to say about this question. First, MCR has a huge portfolio right? You mentioned being on the customer side and implementing Stay in Touch is how you fell in love with the product and now you're CEO. When you look at MCR, you guys have went over 180 plus properties now.
00:12:14:22 - 00:12:15:21
Jacob Messina
00:12:15:22 - 00:12:41:07
Rob Napoli
151. So, 151 plus properties across the country here. So when you think about those different you guys have boutiques all the way through kind of big chains, how do you go about evaluating that? So anything about the hotel? There's a chain. Well, it's a boutique and you think about their needs. How do you go about evaluating what individual hotelier needs versus like a chain?
00:12:41:07 - 00:12:46:05
Rob Napoli
And is there like a whole can you give me some insight? I'd love to learn about those and those insights there.
00:12:46:05 - 00:13:06:18
Jacob Messina
Sure. I mean, it was a very interesting and experience for me and I learned a ton from it, especially going into branded hotels as well as independents. You know, there's often there's areas that the needs are wildly different, but there are a lot of commonalities between what people are looking for and what will make them successful. At the end of the day, people are looking for simplicity.
00:13:06:18 - 00:13:22:14
Jacob Messina
You know, I would say simplicity is really important. Technology can't burden people. It can't go over the top. It can't make their lives harder. If you use technology and it gets in the way of what you're trying to do, it's not going to be successful. So it's got to be really simple. And that's what we do, is stay in touch.
00:13:22:14 - 00:13:42:09
Jacob Messina
Like the product is simple to use. You don't have to have used a property management system before. You know, one of the issues on the branded side that we see is your labor pools are really small because, you know, if Marriott hotels, for example, they only hire from people that have worked at Marriott before because they know the system technology, it's not agnostic between them.
00:13:42:09 - 00:14:06:07
Jacob Messina
Yeah, and that's a limiting factor and it doesn't matter how you're doing it, but, you know, you need to make things simple for people to learn so you can expand where you're hiring from, bring new people into the industry is very important. But also, I would say simplicity, consistency is important too, and that can be from a guest facing side to make sure it's a similar experience, but even more so from systems and technology.
00:14:06:09 - 00:14:26:23
Jacob Messina
If you're not building things with the idea of being simple or consistent and one hotel, two hotels, 100 hotels, you can't scale, you know, otherwise it becomes a labor problem and you need to throw people at these problems. So consistency is a big piece of that. And that's something that technology can help enable very well.
00:14:27:00 - 00:14:53:01
Rob Napoli
Yeah, I love that because, you know, the industry has changed obviously, with not only technology changing, you know, the world changed in the last three years with the pandemic and travel's change and the way we the way we look at traveling. And, you know, it's no shortage of issues with airports and more people are traveling than ever. And the hotel experience taught me a lot about this.
00:14:53:01 - 00:15:09:22
Rob Napoli
This you know, we have this idea that we can make hospitality more human through technology. What does that mean? And in your kind of words and the work that you do both at MCR and Stay in Touch, like what does that mean to you? Like, what does that mean to Jacob?
00:15:09:24 - 00:15:33:01
Jacob Messina
Well, I'll share something before even just an earlier realization. I remember back when I was the Loews Hotels, you know, I was at the corporate office and we'd hear about turnover that happened at our hotel. And it took a while before I really made the connection. You know, we'd see turnover that happened within a team and then maybe like 2 to 3 months later, the performance of the hotel would start to suffer.
00:15:33:03 - 00:15:53:22
Jacob Messina
And it wasn't easy to make that direct correlation. But part of the realization that I'd had over time was, you know, we were at so much information both about guests, about the properties, about the destination was being stored in our team members heads. Yeah. And that's something that's very difficult to transfer to someone, you know. And to me that was a failure of technology.
00:15:53:22 - 00:16:11:20
Jacob Messina
We didn't have systems in place to allow for that knowledge transfer. So, you know, when I think about technology now and how you can be using it, whether it's stay in touch or others, it's the need to facilitate those conversations and that knowledge transfer. Yeah, we can't rely on employees to be able to have all this in their head because then you're, you know, it's a single point of failure.
00:16:12:00 - 00:16:28:21
Jacob Messina
You know, Rob decides to go from this hotel to that that information walks out with them. But also you want to make sure that the information is readily available so you're not getting in the way. You know, they have access to it and they if they need to know information about the guest, whether it's looking at profiles or preferences, it's there.
00:16:28:23 - 00:16:34:24
Jacob Messina
Or maybe they want to have a genuine new conversation. And so it allows for that flexibility.
00:16:35:01 - 00:16:50:01
Rob Napoli
I mean, that that kind of geeks me out so much because as a former recruiter and, you know, Salesforce and like CRMs, right. How many and this is the kind of point of failure for a lot of sales organizations is is everyone has their, you know, Rolodex or whatever. And CRMs are clunky and they're not easy to store it.
00:16:50:01 - 00:17:09:12
Rob Napoli
I mean, if you think about a PMS, it's a CRM for the front at the front of the hotel. And so I think that it's really interesting for me is how do we create tech that is intuitive. So the other thing that you brought up right, is tech has to be easy, cannot burden the experience, but we have a generational gap, right?
00:17:09:12 - 00:17:26:06
Rob Napoli
And we saw this coming out of COVID. If you go to a restaurant, especially in New York City, nine times out of ten, it's a QR code and there's no more physical menus. But, you know, I was my mom wants a physical menu because she can't see that her iPhone is too small sometimes, that she wants that physical need to read through.
00:17:26:08 - 00:17:41:01
Rob Napoli
So how do you how has how have you seen maybe that generational gap of technology effects in a positive or negative way? The hotel experience from from what you see every day building technology for this space.
00:17:41:03 - 00:18:02:13
Jacob Messina
It's good and complex question there. You know, I would say one of the things probably the biggest challenge that we have at Stay in Touch is often change management. You know, everyone wants newer technology and newer systems, but then it's a little bit scary when you finally get it. You know, people are moving off of what they know, what they've used.
00:18:02:13 - 00:18:25:10
Jacob Messina
And especially and in our space, people have used some legacy products for years which didn't change ever. So the buttons were always in the same place. Yeah. And now it's scary when the buttons are going to be in different places and updates happen every, you know, every couple weeks as opposed to every couple years. So there is definitely, you know, the speed of change is happening quite quickly here.
00:18:25:12 - 00:18:45:05
Jacob Messina
So change management is a big piece of that. But you also have to be flexible enough that everyone's going to use your product differently, you know, whether that's using it from mobile devices or things like that, the way that we try to do it is we speak in plain English. You know, we're you know, we're not using complicated hospitality terms within it.
00:18:45:05 - 00:19:01:00
Jacob Messina
And that's something we spend a lot of time on. We have people from outside the industry that review our products so that way it makes sense to someone when they pick it up for the first time. It's not like you've had to be in the industry for 15 years. Yeah, you know, if you're in, stay in touch. There are very few acronyms used.
00:19:01:00 - 00:19:08:09
Jacob Messina
I mean, we love talking in acronyms and that industry. I mean, he aims for one. Yeah. Like, you know.
00:19:08:13 - 00:19:30:20
Rob Napoli
I'm getting the I'm getting a crash course on the acronyms. You know Ominboost is a partner model. We work with very different partners and everyone has different acronyms and it's been exhausting and I think that's really cool. And I think more organizations need to think about how do we simplify? It used to be obvious, like business jargon, and you wanted to have it.
00:19:30:20 - 00:19:54:03
Rob Napoli
And I think we need to simplify it down because I don't think there's any reason why some you will walk out of the, you know, walking from another industry off the street and be able to speak the same language and be able to kind of seamlessly integrate. And that's the beauty of technology today, is that no matter your background, where you come from, what you've done in the past, you should be able to kind of step in and seamlessly integrate because the system should be simplistic enough.
00:19:54:03 - 00:20:11:21
Rob Napoli
Now there's obviously the outliers and certain things and coding and whatnot. That takes time. But I think on the base level, most things should be intuitive from a technology standpoint. I mean, my five year old niece face time me all the time and she's just like, what? You know, she runs a iPhone better than I do. And I've been using my iPhone for ten years.
00:20:11:24 - 00:20:33:22
Jacob Messina
Well, you know, it's interesting. Like, I think back to my first front desk job, you know, it probably took me honestly, two months before I felt confident standing at the desk by myself and feeling comfortable there. You know, the learning curve was so high. You know, not only are you trying to learn how to build and manage a relationship with a guest, you have these systems that are complex and antiquated.
00:20:33:24 - 00:20:54:23
Jacob Messina
You know, one of the things we pride ourselves on with what we've built and stay in touch is a front desk agent can learn how to use the system to do a full check in and more in 45 minutes. You know, that is a huge step just towards gaining that confidence and building that. And if they can feel confident in their systems, then it allows them the flexibility to have those conversations.
00:20:54:23 - 00:21:00:12
Jacob Messina
They're not worried, oh, is this going to work? Am I going to be like, check this customer and you know, they know that already. Yeah.
00:21:00:14 - 00:21:22:24
Rob Napoli
And I think that too, we look at time and attention. It's getting longer, really short with Tick tock and now it's kind of working its way back up and you know, you're missing out. But if you make things so complicated that it takes 2 hours or a week to learn something, As humans, we sit in an hour long training.
00:21:23:01 - 00:21:26:01
Rob Napoli
After about 30 minutes, we only retain 30%.
00:21:26:07 - 00:21:26:19
Jacob Messina
Yeah.
00:21:26:21 - 00:21:47:08
Rob Napoli
So, you know, I did a lot of in my consulting life, a lot of corporate contact training and training. And I would go to these organizations and we do two hour trainings and I would I'd have to know that that's about 30, 45 minutes a second half. That training has to change in the way that you have impact, in the way that you break and break out rooms and do different things because their retention is going to lower.
00:21:47:10 - 00:22:06:17
Rob Napoli
But if you can get them into thinking critically, doing real world examples or whatever, you can spend them back in for sure. Retention, right? And I think so many times you mentioned your organization. It's just like long training videos and long demos and like I want to be able to go online and like look on YouTube via a five minute demo, understand the product, go swipe my credit card.
00:22:06:17 - 00:22:15:24
Rob Napoli
I don't have to talk to the salesperson anymore. You know those and those are functionalities that we're working on in Omniboost as well. Yeah, because that's that's, that's the world we live in today.
00:22:15:24 - 00:22:38:16
Jacob Messina
I think my biggest contribution at a meeting a couple of weeks ago, which has been repeated a lot, is, you know, I was talking about something similar. People don't learn in long form anymore. They're learning at their own speed, at their own time, you know, like on their own time. We started doing a lot of our trainings in what I referred to as snackable content, and that's been a big, you know, term that we use internally.
00:22:38:16 - 00:22:56:04
Jacob Messina
Like, you know, it's like a tldr, like too long didn't read, you know, that's not getting the point across. Maybe it's good to have that much detail, but if you're just reading it for it to be in an email that's unhelpful and needs to be snackable so that people can, you know, understand what they're trying to do, learn from it, and then take it to the next step.
00:22:56:06 - 00:23:23:05
Jacob Messina
I would say it also is important to be able to apply it, you know, kind of calling back to that earlier comment around and story around culinary theory. You know, it's one thing to learn in a classroom, but you're not going to retain that information if you don't start using it. And if you don't start applying it. Like I remember that, for example, that, you know, pasta, you need to get it to 180 degrees because that's when the gluten is able to change form.
00:23:23:07 - 00:23:32:00
Jacob Messina
Otherwise you don't use it. But if you just learn that, you know, it's 180 degrees, but you know, you're not applying it in a real life form, you know, it's for not so.
00:23:32:02 - 00:23:47:22
Rob Napoli
But I think that's, you know, really interesting to going back to, you know, I was recently traveling and we got in and it was after midnight and we had used a third party booking to sacrilegious.
00:23:48:03 - 00:23:50:02
Jacob Messina
I know.
00:23:50:04 - 00:24:10:13
Rob Napoli
I know so bad. And I always joke like, don't hate me when I say this a lot because sometimes we just have to, you know, whatever. And as we get in and one of the rooms was ready or it wasn't available, we couldn't find it. And it was what happened is they accidentally checked somebody else in.
00:24:10:14 - 00:24:11:22
Jacob Messina
Oh, one second.
00:24:11:24 - 00:24:34:13
Rob Napoli
But no one actually either they just like hit a button. And so so it wasn't showing because it wasn't it took the person about 10 minutes to figure it out. But what I thought was really cool at this particular hotel and this experience was the person was empowered to handle it. And you could tell that he had done this before because there's three of us and we had just gone off.
00:24:34:14 - 00:24:54:17
Rob Napoli
I had actually been traveling as this in Europe. I'd been traveling actually, layover landed in the morning, got a day room for a couple of hours, took a nap, got up, got ready, flew up, you know, flew up to another part of Europe, to northern Europe. And so it was a long day of travel and I was just like, that's like it's like this out.
00:24:54:17 - 00:25:13:16
Rob Napoli
And but going back to this point of, you know, the theory of they knew what they were doing, they knew where to look. They had the checks and balances in place. And he felt so empowered to handle the situation that there wasn't a need to like call him manager or get too upset. And that's where technology makes an impact, right?
00:25:13:16 - 00:25:33:20
Rob Napoli
That's where technology can save the day. And it's also where technology can ruin the day. Because if you don't know what's going on and you blame the system, I don't care if it's time I have to look at another hotel. You can I don't care if it's a systematic or what it is like. It's your fault. So I think that's a really cool point and kind of coming back that you work in this space for so long.
00:25:33:22 - 00:25:46:09
Rob Napoli
Give me one of your best travel stories, whether best or worst travel stories. I know you've had a lot of them and I put you on the spot to give me it. Give me a travel story that sticks out in your mind.
00:25:46:11 - 00:26:04:14
Jacob Messina
Let's see. I'm actually go with a professional one first and probably not how you intended the question, but the worst thing I've ever had to do at the most painful thing is walking guests. So a situation similar to yours or you were flying in. I remember I was working at the Roger Williams Hotel here in New York City.
00:26:04:14 - 00:26:26:00
Jacob Messina
My I think it was like 17 or 18 only person at the desk. You want to think you're empowered until you have no rooms left to sell. And it was the last person in late at night, probably 10:30 arrival. And, you know, this guest came to check in and we were oversold and there was also a convention in New York City.
00:26:26:00 - 00:26:37:20
Jacob Messina
So I had to walk this guest out of state. The closest hotel room we could get. This guest was in New Jersey. And that was probably one of the most difficult things I've done from a professional side in the hospitality piece.
00:26:37:20 - 00:26:51:08
Rob Napoli
But what's the key lesson for you? Like when you when you look back at that and the fact that, you know, here we are talking about it today, that's vivid in your mind from 17 or 18 year old. What was the lesson you took away from that?
00:26:51:10 - 00:27:10:06
Jacob Messina
One was not thrilled with my revenue management team at the time for overselling there. But, you know, it's one it's very easy to sit in an office and think, all right, you know, we can oversell to a certain level. You know, and there's no impact of that. But there is there's a real customer impact and there's a relationship impact.
00:27:10:06 - 00:27:32:09
Jacob Messina
It's very unlikely that guest is going to stay at that hotel ever again. Yeah. So it's you know, there's both the human side as well as the technology side there. You know, you asked about my favorite moments in travel. You know, probably it was one that involved almost no technology. You know, I pre-COVID my last trip before COVID.
00:27:32:11 - 00:27:57:19
Jacob Messina
I got to go. I was hiking in Patagonia and down in Chile. And I had thanks to the beauty of the Internet, I had organized and booked a stay in Estancia on this farm, not realizing that they didn't speak English. So I found myself in Chile, unable to communicate with this family that I was with, and there was no Internet, nothing so very off off the grid in that sense.
00:27:57:21 - 00:28:14:01
Jacob Messina
So I spent a week learning how to communicate nonverbally for the most part, mostly through photos on my phone. You know, when I was hungry, you know, we had a great time. I was able to, like, learn from them. And, you know, but I love just getting to be immersed in other cultures and other places.
00:28:14:01 - 00:28:34:08
Rob Napoli
So I love that. I think that's such a cool experience. And it also tells you and it's a great it shows you that this industry, while technology is super important, it's still about human connection, it's still about the relationship, it's about being human. And I think that's such a cool experience that you get to have and super jealous.
00:28:34:08 - 00:28:53:14
Rob Napoli
And it, you know, makes me think about here on the news a lot about, you know, getting bumped from flights because they're overselling it. We're seeing this happen more now than ever. Or maybe it's just more in the media about it and it's causing more of a stir. So my last question as we kind of wrap up for you is what do you think?
00:28:53:16 - 00:29:11:13
Rob Napoli
It's a two part question. What do you think is the biggest challenge still need to be solved in hospitality today? And what do you most excited for as it relates to hospitality? As we look at the rest of this year going into next year? And it could be some the stuff you're working on, stay in touch. It could just be what you're seeing as industry trends.
00:29:11:15 - 00:29:18:00
Rob Napoli
So what do you think the biggest problem that we need to say still face challenges and what are you most excited for?
00:29:18:02 - 00:29:48:22
Jacob Messina
Okay, so in the problem one, I'm going to answer this a little bit of a different way. So you know, something that I try to coach the stay in touch team and even when we're in sales pitches or meetings is there's nothing perfect about hospitality. There are problems galore. Anyone who tells you differently is lying to you or they haven't spent a day in the industry, you know, So, you know, coming from the customer side, I can't tell you how many times I've been in a sales meeting or something like, Oh, this is going to work on day one and it's going to be perfect.
00:29:48:22 - 00:30:07:22
Jacob Messina
All your problems are going to be solved. That's just false, you know? So, you know, literally, I meet with our sales team and with the other members of our team. Our job is not to be perfect. I don't expect that. I don't want that. If you spend all your time trying to be perfect, you're going to be unsuccessful and it's going to take you a long time to be unsuccessful.
00:30:07:22 - 00:30:28:03
Jacob Messina
Yeah. So it's better to spend your time knowing that nothing will go perfectly because nothing in our industry does. Yeah, and be prepared for it and have the teams ready and knowledgeable to know what happens when you get twists and things when you know it doesn't go right. I think that's where companies and you know, in our space and hospitality, that's where you know you show your true color.
00:30:28:03 - 00:30:33:11
Jacob Messina
Yeah. Are you there when it goes wrong? You know that's important to us. So important to me.
00:30:33:11 - 00:30:51:06
Rob Napoli
I love that. And it makes me think about I always just joke. I was a recruiter for ten years and I always joke that recruiting is one of the hardest things you ever have to do. So the sheer fact that in recruiting us with people, people on but you weren't selling a product, you're selling people, right? That's selling people, helping people.
00:30:51:07 - 00:31:08:05
Rob Napoli
I think with that, you know, I mean, you're saying that the opportunity for people to connect right now, when you have people on both sides of an equation, people inherently are crazy. And so you get crazy. It's going to happen. And crazy can take many forms, so nothing's ever going to go as planned. And I think hospitality is a similar space, right?
00:31:08:05 - 00:31:29:10
Rob Napoli
Whether it's a business traveler or leisure travel, leisure traveler or solo traveler or traveling with family and kids, things happen. And traveling is it's amazing the experience. You can't. Yeah, I've been lucky to live in Europe for two years and travel a lot of places. And I know you travel a lot. We've shared some some travel stories, immersing cultures.
00:31:29:10 - 00:31:48:07
Rob Napoli
It's one of the most amazing things you ever have there. Doesn't mean it's not there. It is hard and there's always new goes wrong. So I love that you share that. And I think that it's just it's something so unique, especially when you teach a team that that's going to happen. Because when a team is ready and willing and able to be of service.
00:31:48:09 - 00:31:48:22
Jacob Messina
Yeah.
00:31:48:24 - 00:32:04:21
Rob Napoli
And judging judging your team on are we do we show up when things go wrong? That is such an amazing thing. I love that you share that. So what are you most excited for? What is the most exciting thing as we look at the back half year of 2023 and going into 2024 that you're excited about?
00:32:04:23 - 00:32:35:12
Jacob Messina
Yeah, you know, in terms of what I'm most excited about, you know, I'm so happy for, you know, the resurgence that we're seeing and travel, especially coming out of COVID travel, opening back up and the opportunities it gave us both within companies to grow again and flourish. You know, what I see is exciting from a technology side is the facilitation of how we have these conversations, you know, whether it's, you know, using a piece of technology or not.
00:32:35:14 - 00:32:56:18
Jacob Messina
But it's the ability for us to, you know, hotels are finally investing in technology, which didn't happen for a really long time. I mean, anyone who's worked in the space has known that it was always the same five systems that hotels were using. You know, I love having competition. You know, whether it's stay in touch or others, I'm sure you do.
00:32:56:18 - 00:33:19:16
Jacob Messina
On the Omniboost it makes us all better. That, to me is exciting. I want us to have better players in the space that are pushing us to innovate and do more because that didn't exist, you know, and it let people be lazy. And I let you know, we were in situations where products didn't change for 2 to 3 years at a time, but now that can't happen.
00:33:19:16 - 00:33:31:05
Jacob Messina
You need to be constantly pushing for what's next and how do you do better and how do you make sure you're listening to your customers so that you know what they need? That's what's exciting to me is more competition.
00:33:31:05 - 00:33:53:05
Rob Napoli
Honestly, I love it and I use I use the word. I wrote a book called The Social Soul, and then I was talking about what I call comperatition. So it's cooperating with your competition. And it was turned by a friend of mine and I just thought was really cool because I think there's something unique about working and solving problems as an industry, even though we're competing.
00:33:53:05 - 00:34:13:04
Rob Napoli
But how do we solve this problem as an industry? How do we create this to be better? Because when we talk about hospitality, it's to be hospitable, it's to be human, it's to welcome. And sometimes we need to have that competition to make the industry better so that we can go back to what it means to be human.
00:34:13:04 - 00:34:14:01
Rob Napoli
Yeah, that's what's amazing.
00:34:14:01 - 00:34:31:15
Jacob Messina
I think that's a really great point. I mean, the nice part is the barriers to entry have come down. There's a lot more technology that's available. There's new companies that are, you know, coming to market every day and we all learn from one another. And when sometimes someone is going to win one, you know, deal because of something I've done and, you know, you learn from that.
00:34:31:16 - 00:34:46:18
Jacob Messina
You take it to the next one, but it makes us better. Yeah, I appreciate a lot of the things that my competitors are doing and, you know, it's my job to make sure that we're innovating at the same speed or faster than them and making sure that we're listening at the same time.
00:34:46:20 - 00:35:10:22
Rob Napoli
I I love that. I think that the last thing that you said is is so important is, listen, I think it's really easy for a lot of for all of us to say we're listening, but we're such an echo chamber to really listen to the customer. It's such a unique thing. So that's really cool. And I'm really excited to see what you continue to do, not only with Stay In Touch, but I know you've got the MCR stuff and so it's really cool to see you grow.
00:35:10:22 - 00:35:33:00
Rob Napoli
And I've just been so it's so much fun to get to know you and learn a little bit about, you know, how you get to play in both worlds and see things coming from the customer side, but also the technology side. So excited to see your continued growth and the success of your teams and obviously for the partnership with Omni Boost and excited to see where that continues to take us as as we continue to build out, do cool shit together.
00:35:33:00 - 00:35:35:10
Jacob Messina
So I'm excited about that to appreciate you.
00:35:35:10 - 00:35:47:19
Rob Napoli
I appreciate you letting us come. Let me come to the World Trade Center here and see this amazing view and record. If anybody wants to learn more about what you're or stay in touch, how can they find you?
00:35:47:21 - 00:36:12:24
Jacob Messina
Oh, there's many ways. You know, just send me an email. The first one, you know, I'm very accessible through all channels. So jacob.messina@stayintouch.com always open to talking hotel tech. You know, whether it's related to our business or others, We love putting folks in touch with others that are innovating and doing really cool and interesting things, Omniboost included.
00:36:13:01 - 00:36:15:09
Jacob Messina
So yeah, please reach out happy to talk.
00:36:15:15 - 00:36:30:17
Rob Napoli
Awesome. And I'll make sure to link if you wanna learn more about stay in touch. I'll put the website put your linkedin We'll connect with you there and I think it's really and I know that you mean this what you say because we've talked about this and everybody makes a different connections. But I think it's really easy for us to say, Oh, I love talking about this.
00:36:30:17 - 00:36:48:05
Rob Napoli
And but when I tell you all that he is my most successful people in the world, he is very, very genuine. So make sure you hit him up with that if you're interested at all in what they're doing or just connecting with Jacob. I highly, highly recommend you reach out to him. Jacob, thank you again for the hospitality here today.
00:36:48:05 - 00:36:55:18
Rob Napoli
I appreciate you and looking forward to quite a few more stories and having a beer sometime. So appreciate you my friend.