The Modern Hotelier #168: Automating Operations in Hospitality | with Dino Pietropaolo
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David M.: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged podcast. I'm David Millili.
Steve Carran: I'm Steve Carran.
David M.: Steve, who do we have with us today?
Steve Carran: David, today we have on Dino Pietropaolo. The Chief Technology Officer at Optii, thanks for joining us.
Dino Pietropaolo: Thank you. Thank you. So I do wanna say Sean Ryan is one of my favorite podcasters. He usually gives his guest a gift. I'm gonna do the same, but the inverse. I didn't know there was gonna be two of you. So I brought one, uh, air tag. Yes. Alright. 
Steve Carran: Thank you very much. That's very nice. 
David M.: First gift we've got on the podcast
Steve Carran: Thank you very much. You're welcome. 
David M.: All right, so we're gonna go through a couple sections. We're gonna go through a lightning round. I'm gonna ask you some short questions, preferably quick answers. We're gonna get, know you better, your background, your career, and then we're gonna dive into some industry topics. Sound good? Okay. Sounds fantastic. Alright. What is something you wish you were better at?
Dino Pietropaolo: Oh my goodness. Tennis.
David M.: What's the most used app on your phone?
Dino Pietropaolo: Open AI chat. Petite.
David M.: What's a luxury you can't live without?
Dino Pietropaolo: Open AI chat. Petit. That's fine. That works. 
David M.: If you could trade places with somebody for a day, who would it be? 
Dino Pietropaolo: Oh my goodness, trade places with somebody for a day. Probably some baseball player Jane Carlo Statin or Aaron Judd, somebody like that. Yeah. Especially this year. I love baseball. Yeah. 
David M.: You're Aaron Judd this year. That's something. Best piece of advice you've received?
Dino Pietropaolo: Just do it.
David M.: Got it. And what is your favorite city and why? 
Dino Pietropaolo: Austin, Texas.
Steve Carran: Very nice. So now we're gonna get into your background a little bit. So you're from Macallan, Texas, is that correct?
Dino Pietropaolo: How did you find that out?
Steve Carran: You gotta do our research.
Dino Pietropaolo: That is correct. They call it the Valley. So it's extremely southern Texas. I did, uh, grow up there for the most part, and then I lived across the country in a couple cities. 
Steve Carran: how did growing up in Macallan shape you into who you are today?
Dino Pietropaolo: That's a great question. I think it was a big contributor to, or a big motivator, I guess. Uh, so growing up as a child, I did kind of develop a high degree of kind of aspiration to succeed and, uh, motivation to just pursue what I wanna pursue my goals, et cetera. So definitely a great contributor.
David M.: Great. So you went to De Vry University and you studied computer science. So how did you end up there and why? Computer science. 
Dino Pietropaolo: Interesting. These are great questions without going too much into my personal background, uh, I was, uh, in a position where I had to choose a career to generate income, right? Okay. I had to take care of myself, uh, et cetera. So I figured computer science would be the best path for me. And also my older brother had attended De Vry University and also went through the computer science, uh, bachelor's, uh, program there. So I just made the DEC decision. Go to De Vry, get a computer science degree, get a, you know, a decent, you know, development job, engineering job out there.
Steve Carran: That's great. And you've lived all over the country. You've lived in Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois. I know you said Austin's your favorite city, but did one of those states really stick out to you? That's left an impact. 
Dino Pietropaolo: No. 
Steve Carran: Fair enough. No wrong answers. No, no. I'm saying yeah, that's fair. Truthful. Yeah. I have to be honest. Fair, fair, fair. Yeah. So now we'll dive into your career a little bit, how you got to your current role at Opti. So after college you worked in a few companies as a sales engineer. Uh, what did those early days teach you that you still take with you today? 
Dino Pietropaolo: So, for the first eight, nine years of my career, I was predominantly. Globalizing technology into other markets, that's not the us. So I, I really started taking technology into Latin America and really fundamentally understanding a bunch of d different business domains, just that Latin America was an under-resourced re region typically for these, uh, software companies. So those first eight or nine years, I, I really, truly learned.
Quite a lot on the business side of the things, not necessarily related directly to my technical role, but more on the business side and becoming an intrapreneur and taking technology, taking anything for that matter, and penetrating a net new market with it. So it was almost like a mini startup, in essence.
Yeah, and it was pretty darn cool, and it gave me a lot of experience to actually lead into an entrepreneurial path for me. I did at one point in 2014, become a co-founder of. My own company with my brother. Yeah. 
David M.: Very nice. Yeah. So you've been at Opti for three and a half years. Yep. As the Chief Technology Officer, how did you end up in hospitality and then how'd you end up at Opti?
Dino Pietropaolo: It's been a long time. I've been in the industry for about 23 years. Um, so I spent the first eight or nine years in cybersecurity. Yep. And then I had that entrepreneurial, uh, stint. I did co-found a company within the cybersecurity space with my brother, sold that company. And then I joined a startup company.
Uh. Yeah, dealing with data governance, so this was back in 2017 ish. A lot of enterprises, organizations were throwing data in the clouds, IE, snowflake, et cetera. Spent quite a bit of time in data governance and big data. Then I became truly obsessed with big data, uh, and just business intelligence as they call it today, analytics.
Then I went into financial services and, uh, started dabbling in A IML. Uh, and became obsessed with ai. And then I came to a point where for all of my career, I've, I virtually have touched every industry except hospitality. So I, that's why I joined Hospitality. It was really by cha by chance, merely by chance that I never had worked in hospitality and I wanted to really bring what I've learned and a lot of mistakes that I made, but really bring what I, what I had learned from a, from a big data and AI perspective to the hospitality industry.
Steve Carran: So that actually perfectly leads into my next question. You have worked in quite a few different industries. What makes working in hospitality unique and what really stands out about it? 
Dino Pietropaolo: Let me think about this answer. Uh, there's so many different answers I could give. Um, so I've, I, I really have a true passion for innovation, right?
So for introducing new ideas, new ways of doing things across industry, I think the last stat that I check hospitality from an adoption, uh, rate perspective is only leading government in AI adoption. I. So you have retail, you have, uh, fintechs, financial services and technology industries above hospitality.
So that's why in and of itself, it's a unique industry in that you're dealing with a market or an industry where innovation is slow. Uh, they're slow to embrace new technologies. So it's, it's, and new concepts and new ideas like ai. So. What I wanted to do is to make it easier for the hospitality industry to use nascent technologies or new emerging technologies like ai.
So that's why I find it unique and it's something that I, I wanted to get into. Absolutely. 
David M.: And so those who are listening or watching who don't know what Opti does, can you explain and go into a little bit depth there? 
Dino Pietropaolo: Yeah. So we are the global leader. Yes. It feels good to say, right? Yeah. In operations automation, uh, for hospitality.
So what that basically means is we have an AI driven cloud platform that helps, uh, our customers properties, uh, large groups, et cetera, select service, independence, et cetera, better manage their back of the house, their operations across different functional areas. Uh, housekeeping being one of 'em. The service or engineering being another maintenance or preventative maintenance being another.
And also, uh, accelerating or enhancing the way that the operations teams, uh, communicate with each other. Uh, so that's basically the most simplistic way I can describe it. 
Steve Carran: That's great. So now we're gonna get into the industry thoughts part of the podcast. So AI has been all the hype this year. Yeah. I think we talk about it on every podcast pretty much.
Yeah. Uh, is it warranted? What do you guys think? I think it is, I, I'm a huge fan of ai. Like you said, I use chat GPT to write some of these questions even and in my daily life. So I'm all about it. Yeah. 
Dino Pietropaolo: I mean, and I haven't fully walked the floor, uh, here at High Tech. Uh, but I think about 60% of the billboards that I've seen have, have AI on it.
AI for this, AI for that ai for this, I am a technologist. I. I would prefer not to get into the intricacies of, you know, what traditional AI is, what the evolution of AI is, generative versus agent base, versus a gentech, et cetera. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Good. Uh, what, what, what enterprises with customers really care about is what, uh, business outcomes you're delivering.
They don't care if you use open AI or anthropic or, you know, hyperlaxity or whatever, LLM out there. They just care about what. Business value, you're driving with ai. That's what we're focused about, which is why you don't see AI on the billboard here. But, uh, but yeah. So do I think it's warranted? Yes, it's absolutely warranted.
We're in a from an AI evolutionary perspective, we're in a state right now where, uh, knowledge is a commodity. So. Uh, technology vendors out there, or companies such as Opti are in a unique position to develop, uh, real AI based applications at scale and in a way that truly, uh, would eliminate a lot of the barriers that exist from an adoption perspective.
It's absolutely, absolutely warranted. Absolutely warranted. Yeah. And I can go on and on, but yeah. Yeah. 
David M.: And so one of the things we do, we talk about, we talk about is that the, the, the, the hotel tech stack is growing and yeah, more and more solutions. How is technology changing the guest experience and how hotels are operated?
Dino Pietropaolo: Changing the guest experience, it hasn't really changed it much, not yet. Uh, it will, as a guest myself, uh, I, I can only speak from that experience. I don't, I don't think. They fully have fleshed that out. Right? Uh, I think from a technology perspective, I think where we're now is, is, is kind of fundamental guest engagement.
Uh, so you're able to, uh, communicate with the property, uh, make certain requests with the property. You may have a mobile key that you can lock and unlock your door, et cetera. Uh, but that's, that's table stakes, right? That's fundamental. Guest engagement where I truly think it's headed, uh, it's more, uh, and I think you've seen some of that here is, is what they call hyper-personalization.
Uh, so I think to truly, to truly in my humble, humble opinion, to truly nail down the guest experience, you have to invoke, uh, more of a human connection with the guest, right? So to me, the fact that I can request two towels via SMS to a property is fantastic. Right. But there is no human experience. There is no human connection with the property.
They don't really know who I am, what my preferences are, how many times I've stayed there. They might have an idea, they might not know that I complained about, you know, the squeaky elevator that I stayed next to, right? That I prefer for one versus floor 10, et cetera. So that's what I truly mean, right?
The guest experience should really be driven by personalization, like they, by really knowing who your guest is. Yep. 
Steve Carran: Do you think personalization is an overlooked area for hotels, and do you think there's any other areas that are overlooked that hotels can increase that a standout experience? 
Dino Pietropaolo: I do. I've been talking about a lot about personalization, which oddly enough is not within my domain or optis domain.
Uh uh, kind of is, I was having a conversation this week, uh, with somebody, uh, from somewhere, uh, and he mentioned he. Loves to receive notes. Have you ever stayed at a hotel where you get a welcome note? Absolutely. You have? Yeah. How did you feel? Loved it. Loved it. Did you have a logical reaction or an emotional reaction?
Probably more emotional. Yeah, I would agree. So it's, it's it extremely ironic, right? Because the, the kind of theme here is ai, right? And it's extremely ironic because you can. It is underlooked and hospitality can actually, in my opinion, leverage AI to create a more human connection with the guest. So for example, knowing that Steve is arriving to the hotel, I know all of your pre arrival history.
I know how many times he stayed at the hotel. I know what you prefer. I know what pillows you prefer. I know what rooms you prefer on, what floor you prefer when you arrive. The front desk actually knows who Steve is, right? So. That is entirely driven by ai, right? So it actually allows hospitality, it allows the property to create a better human connection by using artificial intelligence.
David M.: Absolutely. In my opinion. Yep. So maybe just keeping down that road, how should hotels balance technology efficiency and the human touch,
Dino Pietropaolo: Automate, what you can automate? 
Steve Carran: That's great. That's good. That's great. No, 
Dino Pietropaolo: automate what you can automate. You want a short answer or you want my typical long answer. 
Steve Carran: That's great. If you wanna go on longer, you're more than welcome 
Dino Pietropaolo: to. But automate what you can automate. Uh, and I say that because automation leads to a more balanced human touch.
Absolutely. Uh, which is going back to my previous answer. Yeah. 
Steve Carran: Yeah. 
Dino Pietropaolo: That's great. I'll get that one short because I've been long-winded on the 
Steve Carran: edge. You no good. You're good. You're doing great. So. In your opinion, what do you think the hospitality industry is gonna look like in five to 10 years? 
Dino Pietropaolo: Oh wow.
Here we go. Yeah. How much, how much, how much do we got all the time in the world? Um, so have you guys heard of a jump tech ai? I don't, I, no. AgTech AI is basically, think of it as an. An AI system that can execute complex tasks autonomously with little to no human interaction, instruction, et cetera. For example, I'm a large hotel operator.
I have 12 properties. Uh, we know that energy consumption is a big cost bucket, right? Five to 10 years from now, we will have the capability to. Subscribe to an EENs X system and I can tell the EENs X system, connect to my smart devices, which you see all of these all around here, collect, connect to my thermostats, connect to, you know, my ac uh, HVAC systems, et cetera.
And I give it one simple instruction for 2026. I want you to reduce my energy consumption by 40%. That's the only instruction you give it. A gentech truly means these, these are AI agents that. Uh, work collaboratively, uh, are self-guided, self instructed, are connected to their environment, can reason through things, can self reward themselves, uh, can self penalize themselves for mistakes, can set their own execution, task and priority, all working together to reduce your energy consumption by 40%.
No humans involved. That's what I think. 
Steve Carran: Yeah, 
Dino Pietropaolo: I hope it would look like in, in five to 10 years. Yeah. Great. 
David M.: So is there anything here at High Tech that Opti is announcing and is there anything that's coming up in the future this year that you'd like to talk about? 
Dino Pietropaolo: Absolutely nothing related to ai. That's, uh, yeah.
So at Opti we're having a ton of fun, uh, as it pertains to, to ai. I would consider ourselves to be fairly advanced. Uh, we did release a lot of key functionality. Uh, prior to coming to High Tech that we've been, uh, demonstrating to, uh, people that come to the booth and specific meetings that we've been having, and the AI functionality is really meant to accelerate resolution time at properties.
Well, what I mean by resolution time is. The time that it takes to resolve a particular problem. That problem could be, it could originate from the guests, it could originate from a housekeeper, reporting it from an engineer, walking the halls. Uh, anything really. So what the features that we introduce is basically what we call it is job automation through ai.
And there's now with Opti, there are several different ways you can use natural language. Your voice, uh, you can use text, you can use pictures to generate service requests. So it's no longer a tedious, laborious task to log into the platform to go through the different pages, click, add a job, go through the, you know, the questionnaire of fields you have to fill.
You can literally click on a button, use your voice in any language to create a job to repair the light bulb in four, two, for example. So what that really does, it dramatically reduces the re resolution time, which, uh, fundamentally not only makes, uh, your operations seem more efficient, but also makes the guest happier because you're now gonna be able to fix a thermostats that's not working in two minutes versus 40 minutes or two hours in some cases.
Absolutely. Uh, so that's some of the capabilities that we've released, which are, we're getting tremendous feedback on the other one. Is an opti agent, uh, who isn't your prototypical chat bot who does keyword searching against some repository of data. Uh, this is a true, true agent in that, uh, it can give you, uh, it's a conversational agent that you can launch an opti agent and you can ask it questions about your operations.
Uh, so these are questions that are more complex in nature that your basic analytic dashboard or visualization can't address. So you. You wanna look at, you know, the average duration, time to complete a job in the last 30 days across your engineering and housekeeping department, for example. So when you wanna look at your operations through several different dimensions or several different metrics, this agent can in under five seconds answer that wow for the user.
Uh, and it caters to different personas of the property. Uh, so it's really meant to be a real time knowledge base. Uh, for your operations. Alright. The other really cool thing it can do is you can also instruct it to do things, right? So, uh, that's another way of creating jobs in Opti is you could be someone, uh, in a call center somewhere that isn't actually at the property, but is using our above property controls and opti to actually see there's a problem at a particular, uh, location or room at a particular property can actually tell the agent, Hey.
Create a job to repair the AC unit and room 4 0 1 at this particular property and it can actually go out and do it for you in under five seconds. 
Steve Carran: Wow. 
Dino Pietropaolo: So that's kind of what I'm talking about, like how we do it. Nobody cares whether it's a gentech and all this stuff. It's, it's about driving business outcomes and I we're obsessed about that.
Steve Carran:  Yeah
Dino Pietropaolo: We’re passionate about that. Oh, said. 
Steve Carran: Yep. Well said. Yep. So, do you have any advice out there for somebody who, their goal is to be an executive in the hospitality industry? It's a curve ball. Gotta keep you on your toes. Yeah. 
Dino Pietropaolo: Being 
executive. Uh, so to me the challenge for me was really pivoting, uh, from non housekeeping industries to housekeeping. Uh, it's definitely a, a, a new world. You know, there's so many different ways that properties operate. It, it functions differently.
They buy software differently, et cetera. The problems you're solving from an executive perspective are, I think, radically different. Uh, so I think, you know, to become an executive in the hospitality industry, the best advice I can give is to do your homework. That's great. And use open ai, great advice or quad or whatever you choose.
Uh, do your homework and be as best if, especially if you're not coming from the hospitality industry. Be as. As prepared as you can be because it's, it's definitely a different world. Definitely a different 
Steve Carran: world. Yeah. So this is the, the part, we've been asking you questions this whole time, right? So now we're gonna turn the tables and let you ask us a, a question.
Dino Pietropaolo: Do you guys think is, is the challenge that hospitality faces or challenges in, in, in relation to, to adopting? I wouldn't necessarily just say AI technology, but, but just innovative. Technology, 
David M.: I'll go first. I think there's this gap between ownership and management companies where they're not getting the budget to actually probably use some of the technologies that they want to use because the ownership group doesn't see the value in spending that money where it, they're not gonna feel the pain.
The hotel will feel the pain by not, so if a hotel doesn't have opti, they're gonna be, it's gonna be much more difficult for the staff and, and making sure the guests are taken care of than if they do, but they still need ownership. To step in and say, yes, we want you to spend the money there. So for me, that's always been the biggest challenge in the space, is really, and one other thing is just, it's, it's an industry that it just takes a long time.
People like, you know, they, if someone says, oh, why would anybody even use an app? Why do they wanna use their phone? And it's like, well, you get an Uber with your phone, you, you airlines with your phone. So I think it's that gap between ownership and management. 
Steve Carran: Yeah. Yeah. I, I. I would agree with David. Um, I think, you know, we're a little bit more lenient I think, you know, coming from hotel technology sales, sometimes there are people over promise and underachieve on the product, and due to that, people get nervous and they find a technology that might not be perfect, but guess what?
It's better than switching and potentially having that technology fail and then having to switch again. Yep. So I think that's part of it. Um, and. There are so many options out there. You know, I come from the PMMS space. There's a lot of PMSs, CRSs, CRMs, so there's a lot of choices and a lot of research that needs to be done.
And especially with our staffing shortages right now, that takes up a lot of time for hoteliers. So I think it's a combination of agree with David said and those those things as well. Yeah. Fantastic. 
David M.: Fantastic. Well that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is where you get to plug Optii.
How can folks signed out? More about Opti. How can they get in touch with you if they want to? So the floor is yours. 
Dino Pietropaolo: Absolutely. So if you want to get in touch with me, dino@optiisolutions.com, optiisolutions.com is our domain.
David M.: 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 be with you again soon. Thanks for joining us. 
Dino Pietropaolo: Yeah. Thank you guys. 
David M.: Thank you. Appreciate it.