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Each episode of GAIN Momentum focuses on timeless lessons to help grow and scale a business in hospitality, travel, and technology. Whether you’re a veteran industry leader looking for some inspiration to guide the next phase of growth or an aspiring executive looking to fast-track the learning process, this podcast is here with key lessons centered around four questions we ask each guest.
GAIN Momentum episode #35 - The Reason Behind Hotel Tech Integration Challenges | with Charlie Osmond
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Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the Gain Momentum podcast focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in hospitality, travel, food service, and technology. I'm joined today with our special co host Neil Foster. How are you?
Neil Foster: I'm great, Adam. How are you Doing
Adam Mogelonsky: Doing fantastic. And our special guest today is Charlie Osman, co founder Triptease. Charlie, how are you?
Charlie Osmond: Very good, thank you.
Adam Mogelonsky: Awesome, great to have you on. We have a lot to discuss here, based on Triptease and any other past experience you want to throw in the mix. So our podcast is structured around answering four key questions and then we drill into some follow up.
So that first question is, Charlie, when it comes to scaling a business, what is the single piece of advice you would give entrepreneurs from your perspective [00:01:00] as a professional in hospitality technology?
Charlie Osmond: I think the key thing is to be really clear on your ICP, your ideal customer profile. And that's difficult if you're new into this industry because you perhaps don't have a feel for all of the wide variety of different types of hotels and hoteliers. but for us, that was definitely like a key turning point.
The more we focus down on a specific type of customer, um, the easier it was to build products just for that type of customer, to build sales capabilities just to sell to that kind of customer, um, and also support team to look after them and help them deliver. So. What do I mean by that? I think, you know, to give you a sense of the kind of customers we work with today, they vary from independent boutique hotels with sort of 50 rooms, where the general manager is the buyer and they're frantically running around all day.
They never are online browsing around for hotel tech products. They aren't au fait necessarily with [00:02:00] the forefront of digital marketing. That's very, very different from, you know, well, thinking of Canadian hotel groups, Neil. The Four Seasons, you know, head of digital, who is like an absolute digital marketing expert, knows about every system, everything that's going on at the cutting edge, and wants to be sold to in a very different way.
Wants to buy in a different way and wants systems that do something completely different because they're working across hundreds of hotels. So by being really clear, you know, what exactly, um, your ideal customer would be, and it can of course change, right? You might want to start really, really tight and then evolve that over, over multiple years.
But the temptation for an entrepreneur, particularly an optimistic type of person is to think, great, we can solve all these hotels are getting in touch with us and who are out there. and you often stretch yourself a bit too thin in the early days.
Adam Mogelonsky: So one of the One of the unique qualities, more unique qualities of hospitality is the sales process and we can slice the [00:03:00] pie by hotel category, independent, small group, luxury, economy, everything. Or you can slice it by who your internal champion is going to be, whether that's the director of marketing, the GM or somebody above property.
Knowing about how to slice the pie like this, who was your ideal customer when you were just starting off Triptease and simultaneously trying to grow the actual product, the data marketing platform?
Charlie Osmond: Our ideal customer was sort of mid size hotel groups, um, and that remains the case, but I think at the same time in the early days, we were also happy to experiment because we were learning about the market with enterprise, um, size, uh, scale hotel groups and also occasional, small, like luxury, uh, independent properties.
So for us, it was, you know, hotels with 10 to 50 properties or groups with 10 to 50 properties. So they had a. Centralised digital marketing function,
centralised, um, [00:04:00] management function
and they really cared about driving direct bookings. So we found that was kind of the
sweet spot for us and has remained so, but yeah, but it's not just, it's not just the scale of hotels, it's also the geography. and then it's also, I guess psychographics, if
that's the fancy word, the way that people behave. There are some hotels in some regions who, I heard on your previous one of your podcasts, Citizen M. And, you know, that's a forward thinking. Their whole reason for being is we want to push this industry forwards and try
new things. That is very different from some other hotels in their backyard, who, whose view is, You know, we've been running hotels for hundreds of years, um, sure the whole industry might go and do something and we'll wait 10 years and see how it works before
we adopt. So there's a speed of adoption, there are so many different, lenses
through which to look at the ICP, that it's taken us time to evolve to find, right, who do we want at what stage, of business.
Neil Foster: I just have a quick question, Charlie, and backing up a
tiny bit. I've been reading that it hasn't always been your business model as it [00:05:00] is now. was it always the case and, uh, that you were, uh, looking to almost compete or, or perhaps compete, uh, directly head on with, uh, with
TripAdvisor? We'd love to hear about that experience and how you pivoted into the business model as it is.
Charlie Osmond: Okay, wow. This takes me back. I haven't, yes, when we first launched Triptease, it was something else. There is a reason why we have this silly name, Triptease. so, originally, partly from, I'd been running
a, data and digital and social agency before. The problem we were trying to solve was driving hotels, direct bookings, and doing that using social sharing.
It occurred to me that at the time, the number one thing people were sharing in social media on Facebook, which was the key driver back then, was, were photos of travel. That was like the, by far and away, most shared content. and then when I also, the other side of social media, in the way we, it was defined back then, was, um, people creating reviews, [00:06:00] and TripAdvisor had huge impact on people's booking behaviors, because they'd read reviews and make decisions on it, but no one would ever share a review, right?
It's just not something you would TripAdvisor, I'm gonna go share it. So, our original hypothesis was It must be possible for people to tie together, um, their experience, photos, perhaps from their travel, with a review of the place. And then they're much more likely to share it. And of course, in a sense, that's what Instagram has become for many, influencers. And so we originally launched actually an app on iPads. Apple loved it. They loved it. iPads when you went into a shop and you were looking at great apps because it was really beautiful when people put their photos with, with their reviews. Anyway, that's what Triptease was about. It was using social sharing to drive direct bookings because people would be directed back to the hotel and it was going great and we were having the average sort of time
people were spending on the site was jumping up to 20, 30 minutes as we were improving it. people got hooked. It was fabulous, but, the challenge for us was every time we spoke to an [00:07:00] investor Booking. com, Expedia, they've won. Consumer travel booking is done. Um, we don't want to invest in, in companies like that. We're much more interested in B2B. And we realized that the content that guests were sharing and creating about hotels, the hotel is loved. And we found that when we spoke to hoteliers as like, Hey, would you encourage your guests to do this? actually they were more likely to work with us if we charged them a fee for it. And so we suddenly realized, Oh, we've got revenue coming in from this B2B product, which is helping hotels drive visual reviews and get people to share them and direct bookings. and so we pivoted to being B2B. That is a story I've not told in so long that, um, that forgive me, it's a little, uh, it's a little rusty.
But yeah, basically we, we spent two years trying to chase. Social sharing as a way of driving bookings. And there is, sorry, I should say, there is a lesson in here for wannabe entrepreneurs in hospitality. and ultimately for that, for us, that was, once it got going, [00:08:00] right, and we got people sharing their content, sharing reviews, we raised money, and we got our first round of funding. And we were very excited, uh, as you are when you've spent, like, months or years not being able to pay yourself anything. and then we, we were, when we were looking at people sharing this content and the number of bookings it drove, um, we suddenly realized, It created great content, the hoteliers loved it, the guests loved to share it, but just because I've shared my experience of staying in Paris last week, it doesn't mean that my friends are actually going to go to Paris for the next five years.
And by the time that my friends go to Paris, they'll have forgotten that that thing was shared. And so, we realized that, it created a lot of excitement and fun, but, actually driving to a booking, And actually show me the money was really challenging. And so that's, that's a point where literally after the investors gave us the money, we went and reassessed all the numbers and then we realized, Oh, actually we don't believe in this as much as we thought we did.
We want to change the business. So in our first meeting with our investors who just give us a million pounds, we said, we actually want to [00:09:00] completely change the business you just invested in. I hope that's okay. they said no, and a month later we went back and said, well, we did it because we just have to.
We think there's much better ROI for hotels if we do something else. So yeah, I guess the, forgive me that long story, but our takeaway from that was just being really, really clear about, uh, is the product that we're creating driving bottom line value for hotels, you know, and is it very, very measurable? Um, and that's what we then decided to flip to.
Adam Mogelonsky: Just
for
Neil Foster: great story.
Adam Mogelonsky: just for context, what years did this pivot occur in?
Charlie Osmond: I guess 2012 to 2014, we spent doing the consumer Apple based kind of thing. And then, um, and then, yeah, 2013, 2014, we were saying, look, we really love the direct bookings. Um, but we really love this content, but actually we'd love even more is actually just seeing the ROI on it. So that's, that was the pivot time.
Adam Mogelonsky: And culturally, how [00:10:00] did the pivot go internally with getting the team to basically shift their focus from being a UGC oriented company to one that was really focused on the value that could be driven for hotels directly?
Charlie Osmond: I don't think that took more than five minutes conversation because when you've got
a, when you've got a founder who goes, right, we're going this way, everyone goes, oh, okay. Uh, I mean, people had joined a business that was in its real nascent form and was, we were changing every, everything was up for grabs every day. For the, for, you know, for months, right? That's just, that's kind of how you have to live when you're hunting product market fit. So, the fact that, okay, and now we're going to try this, and now we're going to try this, that was just what, we were living that every day, so I don't think culturally that was a challenge, and it just, it, it made sense to everyone, so it was, it was part of the ride.
I mean, that's the, the joy and pain and everything of, of startups, right? Just constantly, you know, Ducking and diving, trying new things.
Adam Mogelonsky: it's great [00:11:00] you have it, that easy culturally, I guess you could say. but potentially there may have been other problems elsewhere that we can drill into. So, let's go into our second question here, Charlie, which is, What are some of the common pitfalls or failures you have witnessed that business owners should look to avoid when scaling their business?
Charlie Osmond: well, it wasn't easy when we were hunting for product market fits. Um, so there were lots of challenges back then, but I think more recent challenges, particularly, you know, the more, more time we've spent in this industry and, you know, hotel tech, there's only one answer to this question in my mind, that the thing that is hard and challenging when we're trying to expand is, um, is integrations with other partners in this industry. There are, you know, many reasons why, there are disincentives for partners to work with you. And it's a real shame because ultimately it just hurts the hotelier. Uh, so for us with what we do, we are, you know, the first of our products, first capability [00:12:00] was, building personalization on top of booking engines.
So making the hotel booking engine a far more. Performance system, far more personalization, driving higher conversion rates. And, that's great. If you've got a booking engine that is charging hotels a percentage of bookings or making revenue based on getting more bookings for the hotel. And we say to the booking engine, Hey, we can improve that. they do, they run a test, they see it and they're like, this is fabulous. We need all our hotels to take this. And you have a very quick integration. You have a positive partner who wants to work with you. If, however, you've got a booking engine. Where they make money based on, you know, someone pays us at the beginning of the month, and it's a flat fee, and it doesn't matter how well it performs, they're kind of locked in because it's our CRS, they've got all these integrations of PMS, we know that the hotel's not going to leave us, they signed a 10 year agreement. Then, you know, The challenge to get those partners to work with new startup, hotel tech companies is really hard. And it, it's even harder when they then also see it as a threat because so often, right, those booking engine [00:13:00] partners are, sort of, see the idea that the new startup's doing and say, Oh, we thought that, we want to do that too. Um, or maybe they haven't thought about it, they go, wow, that looks really good. And people are really excited about it. We'd love to build that. And so in their own minds, they're like, that's something we should do ourselves. Um, we don't have time right now, but we should really get to it. And so they try and slow down the process, often of kind of, of working with new innovations because it's just not in their interests, when they're thinking they might develop it themselves, or they've got a million other things to do, frankly. and also could they be helping a future competitor, I think is the other thing that's very much in their minds. So the challenge we have had, Year after year, and continue to, we just had a, you know, major partner recently who started getting much more challenging on allowing hotels to integrate. With us, uh, is that people see, see new startups as a threat. And so rather than is this great for hotels, they're like, Hmm, is this great for our business? And if not, then let's make it a little bit difficult, uh, for integrations to happen.
Neil Foster: That's a great [00:14:00] observation, coming from you, Charlie, uh, one of the things that we struggle with as an industry is that innovation has not come easily for us. And this may be one of the challenges, uh, that barriers to entry and creating friction for, for new startups and folks out there with fresh perspectives with new ideas. Uh, that this is really interesting to hear. Just a quick follow up question on that. Now, your background's fascinating. If I'm not mistaken, you have an engineering degree from Oxford. you basically, as you've described in your earlier story, that you're almost in the business of psychology, trying to help hotels, find new New habits or patterns that guests are willing to follow in terms of finding the bookings, so going directly versus through the OTAs. How did you get involved in hospitality and where, I guess, from the perspective of solving the problem, How have you sort of stuck your guns to continue [00:15:00] where, the landscape is potentially threatening and, maybe even avoiding, acquisitions? Has acquisition ever been a consideration for you?
Charlie Osmond: Whew, lots of questions in there. So, uh, so quickly on the, how do we get to, I mean, I, the, the first, the kind of, the reason I jumped into hospitality was I, exited my last business, sold that, and I was thinking that took 10 years. So I was like, great, what's my next? all so much for joining me today, and I hope to see you again in the next decade.
What I want to invest that in, which industry do I want to choose? and I was drawn to hospitality. One, we all often are, right? We love traveling, but mostly because I found, whilst I love travel, there was nothing in my life that annoyed me more than booking a hotel and booking travel for my family. When I was thinking about going away with my family for, you know, five, six day trip, I found that, I'd spend sort of four weekends in a row of planning, checking prices, making sure I wasn't getting ripped off, looking at different hotels and flight options. And I was like, how do my, how does it take me eight days of pain to book a trip that's only six days of joy?
And I just really [00:16:00] disliked that. And I thought at the time travel was by far the biggest industry on the internet. And I didn't understand how can this thing that is so big and kind of forward leading on in terms of internet commerce be so unpleasant in an experience. And so that was like, there's a problem here to solve.
It's worth solving. I think travel is really important. Other people have this same unpleasant experience. I want to get in there. And I felt, and fundamentally for me, that was always part of that has to be about the direct booking experience and hotel websites and booking engines weren't great. So I've kind of stayed true to that and that desire to help people have a better experience, help hotels get more direct business and be able to reinvest in those experiences, that's kind of stayed true. in terms of, As the business has grown, I mean, it's been fascinating, right? The last three, four years, there's been an extraordinary amount of consolidation in the industry. different players getting together, partly, you know, driven by COVID. Hotels have fewer staff. Hotels desire to buy from one [00:17:00] Provider, um, has driven, desire, uh, for like single providers to do everything. Also, I think a lot of people like us have kind of grown up in the hotel tech industry and then maybe a really strong in one market, one geography. And so actually joining up with others, it actually, it provides just a great opportunity for business and so. Yeah, we're constantly talking to competitors, partners and just, and looking at new startups and thinking about what are the opportunities for us to be joining forces with others?
where would that make sense? Where doesn't that make sense? It's just, it's, it's kind of like something you're just always having in your mind because there are a lot of investors looking at our industry and saying, Oh, you know, well, I got an email from one this morning that I don't know saying, Hey, can we talk about your business?
And I'm sure every founder in hotel tech startups is getting those all every week. Uh, but yeah, sorry, in terms of why not, it, you just if you're getting into bed with someone, right, you want to really make sure it's the right thing to do. And so, uh, we're a little cautious and we see a lot of excitement and opportunity for us in our current state, so we're very happy running forwards as we [00:18:00] are.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, you're, you're in a good place. That brings us up to speed for the third question, which is looking ahead to what's coming. So, Charlie, what do you see as the key opportunities and challenges for hospitality technology companies in 2024 and beyond?
Charlie Osmond: So, I, I guess there are a couple of different ways to answer this. There are some things that I'm, see as great opportunities I'm really interested in. Saudi, the opportunity in the Middle East, um, the growth market that that is, I think it's just a whole new world is, going to be opening up in the next decade.
So I'm, interested personally to learn more and work out what the opportunities are there. Um, long stay, I think is another sort of area of opportunity for the hospitality industry that I just think is fascinating. I know my own habits have evolved a lot over the last couple of years. Frequently, I'll be travelling somewhere and I will go for the week.
And if I'm going somewhere for the week, I actually really want to have, a kitchen sink. and so whether that's something like Sonder or extended stay properties, I'm far more [00:19:00] likely to stay in those today than I ever was, five, six years ago. Uh, and it's, uh, yeah, in fact, ITB, our team went to Berlin and they stayed in a hotel, and I stayed. Um, separately in a place that had a, had a kitchen because I was like, I want to be able to come back quickly, eat dinner or whatever it is and go out in Berlin. so I feel, and often I, I have often experienced that I'm a relatively early adopter of things. And so I think that's just a market that's going to keep growing. so those are kind of like hospitality market things. And then from a hotel technology perspective, I think area, I think one of the things that's just really interesting, and I hesitate to say it cause it's kind of a bit twee and obvious, but is, is how we use data to improve guest experiences. for a long time, uh, you know, hotels said, Oh, okay, why should I? Get a direct booking rather than an OTA booking and the obvious answer to people OTA commission and we've felt and have said for like 10 years now, actually, that's, that is not the number one reason. The number one reason is there's a strategic opportunity if you're building a direct relationship with guests before they walk in the [00:20:00] door, if you're building a, you know, connected via email, connected via, you know, Um, a mobile phone number that you can text or WhatsApp, you actually start to change experience you can deliver. So many of the innovations that I expect in hospitality in the future will come from, you know, our digital devices. And if the hotel that you're staying at isn't connected to you through that digital device before you walk through the door, you're instantly losing opportunities to innovate, and have a, and deliver better experiences.
So You know, a lot of what we're doing right now is looking at how can we use what guests are doing before they arrive at the hotel. So when they're on the hotel website, what the things they're searching in Google are that are bringing them to this hotel, why they chose this hotel, which dates they look for, which ones that were booked up and they couldn't stay, all those, data points about that guest experience and funneling that into the sort of this single guest profile that more and more hoteliers are building. Through their CRM or CDP and then using that extra guest data to segment people better, to personalize better and to deliver improved experiences. So I feel like [00:21:00] just that, that that whole, data piece is, the biggest opportunity that like we are really excited about. So building out the guest 360 profile and better segmenting guests to provide better experiences and better marketing
Adam Mogelonsky: The whole idea of segmentation is something that I'm so gung ho about because we have these assumptions about Our segments, leisure, business, group, and you yourself don't fit into any category. You are leisure. You are blended travel. So how do we know you from the next person who doesn't necessarily want a sink as the key feature.
They want, uh, you know, uh, a quiet, a really quiet room away from the elevator, something, some other attribute.
Charlie Osmond: and, and, and of course it's, and it's doubly hard, right? Because when I travel on my own, I'm a completely different person from when I travel with my family. Totally different searches, totally different requirements, yes, it is, it is hard to segment people.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, on that note, the [00:22:00] note about you being a different traveler over time, based on your context of travel, could you give us an example, just to color it in people's minds, about how Triptease can go from the entire pre stay journey, from a Google browser, meta search website, post booking email.
confirmation, everything through to the actual stay, how you're using that data to improve service, anticipate service requirements, and give the hoteliers more, more ammunition to deliver an incredible experience.
Charlie Osmond: so I think the first thing to say is, tip number one for, uh, for entrepreneurs in hotel tech is don't try and do everything. Everything you just described, we don't do everything you just described.
That would be far too much and we wouldn't do it well enough. But what we can do and what we really try to do is focus on who are the [00:23:00] partners that we can work with?
With whom that can be delivered. So, you know, for example, there are, you know, lots, quite a few established CRM, CDP, vendors in the industry who hold that kind of golden profile, that customer record for a hotel on their behalf. we're not trying to, be that one that, that holds that, that profile. That profile is often driven by PMS data, maybe F& B data, you know, SPARs, what the guests have done on property. What we're doing is, we, we've spent 10 years building up, tracking everything that a guest is doing in terms of marketing touch points. So everything that is touching them when they're making a booking, all the attribution between, you know, was it the search that was a hotel in New York with a swimming pool that brought them there?
Or was it actually the meta search that brought them back or a retargeting advert or all of those touch points. And then equally. Everything they did on the hotel website and booking engine. were they looking at suites when they booked a lower room? Were they looking for different dates that were more expensive?
So they changed. So everything that kind of [00:24:00] comes before you arrive, and we can push that data into, the sort of profile of the guest and then it's added to with, well, how, uh, how many times did they repeat visit, did they spend a lot of money in house, all those kinds of things. So, And then you can use the data in, yeah, really clever ways.
So, for example, let's say we see a guest, uh, who's booked before, and they come back onto the hotel website, and they run a search for certain dates. And they might, they might want to, you know, you might say, Hey, leave your email address. If you're not ready to book and we'll let you know if this price changes, for example, that data can then be passed to a CRM and the CRM can then email out a guest, with, Oh, you didn't book this date.
The price has changed, or it's about to be updated. Why don't you book now? And we'll hold the original price you saw, for example. Um, so it's about using little bits of information from across the journey and then pushing that into another part of the journey to make it personalized. You don't have to join everything up, it doesn't have to be perfect, there can just be specific use cases that drive really clear value, [00:25:00] and that's generally what we recommend to start with, is identify, you know, we know someone looked for the 4th of July, and we know that they saw the price of 100.
So if, you know, We're doing ad retargeting to them or we're sending them an email. Make sure in that email you say, Hey, we know you looked at the 4th of July. Here's the current price for the 4th of July. Just those like little touch points start to bring continuity and personalization across the system. But yeah, it's about joining other. It's not just all on Triptease. we can't do it all.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, I guess the, um, the original intent of, increasing net revenues by reducing third party commissions through all those unique drivers to get people to book direct and then from there, once they're direct, you have all your data that can then be tied in with all the other data to apply whatever sort of pattern recognition you want towards it.
It's, it's so fascinating, uh, in terms of all the data points that can be tied in.
Charlie Osmond: It is. And, and sorry, and again, you've made me think of when I'm just thinking about the, [00:26:00] what will people have, where, where, where are the useful, uh, things for people to learn from all this? One of the things that has been extraordinary for me that I've learned in hotel tech is it's not, it's, it's not a complicated thought, what you just described, right?
Joining up data, holding data about someone, and then giving them personalized experience. It's, that's not something that we all just came up with in 2022. It's been obvious for 15 years that that's what companies should be doing, and that's what hotels should be doing, and hotels have known it and wanted it as well for a long time. The thing that is always extraordinary about this industry is the ideas might be obvious and clear that that's where we're heading, but it can take not just a couple of years more than you think to get there, it can take five or ten years longer for the industry to get there than it, than you expect. And so I think that has been a real Learning for me here is often you think, okay, oh, this is where the market's going to move to, and it should get there fast. and often it doesn't, which, has opportunities for entrepreneurs, um, as well as challenges. But [00:27:00] I never ceased to be surprised by how long the industry can take to evolve to the next obvious stage.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, while remaining as politically correct as we can, what would you attribute that lag from expectation to reality towards?
Charlie Osmond: Integrations.
Um,
it's data, it's data in multiple systems is often the problem. I don't, because I I don't, there are many, many people in this industry who are early adopters, want to go fast, want to change things. It's just really hard.
Um, And I mean, and that's also true across other industries. The obvious thing, you know, with, we should have AI that's writing all our ad copy tomorrow.
But of course it's not ready for that tomorrow. It's going to take a couple of years to get there. And then implementation of that might take another couple of years beyond that. So, no, I just, I think it's, it's just hard because we all, we have systems. Those systems have integrations to make changes in one has impacts on others. [00:28:00] At the same time, you've got. the vendor that you might be working with who could be the right one to deliver the next thing you need. They've got, you know, a thousand other hotels asking for things that are slightly different and they've got issues with their current tech that they need to solve.
So everyone's stretched, right? and that just means it takes time.
Adam Mogelonsky: whew, I don't envy that. I don't envy your position there, navigating those
waters.
Charlie Osmond: sometimes I, sometimes I kind of celebrate it to myself. I'm like, you know, You think, Oh God, we need to be able to do this in six months. I speak to my product team and they say, well, that's not achievable in six months and it frustrates me. And then I go, okay, actually it's probably all right because actually the market's probably not really ready for it for two years.
So sometimes it's kind of, it's a good time. It gives you time to, to solve some of the challenges you have internally. I just find it really useful to keep reminding myself that it's the reality we live in.
Adam Mogelonsky: Charlie, we're going to move into our fourth and final question here. What are the key things innovative leaders and entrepreneurs should prioritize and focus on [00:29:00] to gain traction for their business?
Charlie Osmond: so I think this is a, this is an interesting one, you're all, because I think there, there is no right way. well, I've seen many different hotel tech companies reach great success over the last decade in different ways. And one example of that is, I'm just going to compare us to, we both, Triptease's and Mews both got invested in by, um, uh, The Notion Capital, uh, a VC in London, and so we've kind of grown up at the same time. And when I think about what the team at Muse did, they went really deep on getting the tech right, um, and grew the number of hotels they had quite slowly. Compared to us, right? They're building a system that requires a big commitment from a hotel to switch to a PMS But when a hotel is switched, they're likely to be a customer for a very long time And you've got a very deep relationship with them.
So, you know, they they've scaled incredibly well, but Not for the first few years, right? It was, we're going to get this right and we're going [00:30:00] to go slow with a small number of hotels and then, and then we'll accelerate. Well, what we did was, well, we, built products that very specifically are easy to adopt.
So we can very quickly get to like 10, 000 hotels because people can make a decision about our products, add it on, try it for a few months, and then make it part of their tech stack. And so those are two quite different strategies. One is lighter touch, very fast speed to market, accelerate, get loads of hotels, and the other one is slower, and then you've kind of signed up hotel for much longer periods of time. And, you know, one is more sticky and, and everything else. So I think there are different approaches and it depends on what your starting point is, uh, where you see an opportunity in the market, and so yeah, I think, I, I think there are, there are a number of different ways to, to drive success.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, you talk about the lighter touch and technologies that are easy to implement. And that is easy to say in hindsight. And I'm [00:31:00] wondering, how did you figure out your sales pitch to know What, who are the right people to target in, within a hospitality organization in order to get that, get that quick yes, and that signing on the line and then getting them actually using the product, which is the post signing installation problem as well.
Charlie Osmond: I mean, for us, it's, I think it's. More that the nature of the product makes it easy to adopt. And by the way, easy to adopt equals also easy to rip out, right? And to flip. That's, that's the downside of it. But the, the, it was the nature of our product that made it easy to adopt because it's a single line of script.
You put it on your website and boom, you're off. so in a sense that was the driver of the adoption. Speed, not necessarily just finding the right people. For us to find the right people was anyone who ran the website for the hotel. So we were just identifying those people and it's like, you know, here's something you can add on and, the cost is also relatively easy to get.
people, it was within people's budget sign [00:32:00] off. I think that's another, another
key point. but no, I mean, uh, for us it was, as I think with many hotel tech products, they are sold to hotels. If this is not an industry where hoteliers are hanging out online, browsing around, looking for the next thing to adopt, they are busy in the hotels, um, looking after guests or doing what it is. And so, you know, you do have to have a sales force in this industry, I think, to drive sales. Most of the time you, there are partnerships where, where that can really help. You can do it with partners. but I think for most of the companies certainly that grown up with us at the same time, it's been outbound sales has helped them identify who to pitch to.
Adam Mogelonsky: Oh, on that note, uh, I guess final question is outbound sales is, uh, you talk about budget and where to put sales dollars. What was your outbound strategy? And I say that context before we actually got on record here was we were talking about the nature of conferences in our industry and about how you could be traveling [00:33:00] 50 weeks out of a year if you so desired to various conferences, but that's a lot of budget.
So how did you decide what your outbound sales budget would be?
Charlie Osmond: test everything and see what the ROI is. And we're still doing it today. You know, it's still with every event we do with every extra event, we're identifying, you know, what do we think the ROI is going to be? How do we increase or decrease that? and then we track every lead that comes from any activity that we do. So that we can then say, okay, is this something we should be investing more in? Uh, so that, I think also with my experience in my previous business, I'd seen how well outbound telephone sales works and how important it is to speak to people. Um, so I guess I had a bias from that angle. Um, but you know, we, we tried things.
So for example, we had a SDR team, doing outbound calls, about, seven, eight years ago. We tried that and we decided it didn't work. And then we turned it off and we didn't do that for six years and we just restarted it and found that now we've worked out how to make it work for us. And so, you know, sometimes a [00:34:00] different manager, a different person, a different time, different brand over time, you've evolved the brand obviously, can drive different results from theoretically the same channel.
So yeah, constant testing and it never ends.
Adam Mogelonsky: Wow. And, uh, that is a good place to finish off, because, uh, that is what you can do with a lot of data, you can keep testing, so it's all about getting it to the right place.
Neil Foster: That's it. Well, just, uh, love hearing that that perspective really speaks to the scientific method, uh, which I sense we haven't been doing as great a job as we could be doing in the hotel industry. I just wanted to ask you one sort of last question, Charlie, if you could give some advice to hotels and hotel companies on how to develop their tech stacks, what would be a couple of suggestions that you think would be important for them to look out for as they're thinking about bringing different technologies together?
Charlie Osmond: I think the one that nobody talks about or thinks about because it's very hard to assess, and this is, and I have huge bias in this answer, [00:35:00] is. Hotels will, for example, sign up a PMS or a CRS booking engine and they see the price on day one. And what they don't know, or they don't, they find hard to assess is, to what extent is this vendor that's then going to be working with me? Going to charge everyone, whoever wants to connect to them. Because every time I can tell you, like from our point of view, every time there's a vendor middleman who then goes, Ooh, now we can charge for every connection and every other company, it just massively harms innovation.
And they really reduce the extent to which the rest of the industry is going to work with that vendor. And the vendors doesn't care for a certain amount of time because they they're driving revenues. That's their focus for a certain amount of time. And so. I think what I'd say to hotels is, one of the questions you should be asking is, I want to know every single thing that you're charging for when there's an integration.
How do you charge right now? Who are the other vendors? Because like, I see it. I know that we can bring our innovation and we see many other companies like us bringing their innovations, We can bring it to some booking [00:36:00] engines and then there are others who are like, Oh, we want to be a closed system. We don't want any external innovation.
We're going to try and do it all ourselves. And you just don't see that when you're signing the deal with them. Um, as the hotel on day one, I sometimes think we should create like a, Industry blacklist of, here's the truth about different booking engines and who they, how they charge and how they will or won't integrate with other partners. because it really harms the hotel, uh, and it's very hard to assess up front. So, I hope, does that answer the question?
Neil Foster: That's great advice.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, just fantastic, because, uh, That's something that, uh, CIOs or CTOs might not put into the RFI when they're first looking at signing on the dotted line as that preliminary evaluation process. Charlie, it's been a fantastic 40 minutes. Can't thank you enough for coming on.
Charlie Osmond: Oh, a lot of fun, thank you. Great to see
Adam Mogelonsky: Thank you.
Neil Foster: Great to see you, Charlie.
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