The Modern Hotelier #226: Navigating Trust, Innovation, & Partnerships in Hotel Tech | with Wendy Zapach
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Steve Carran: Welcome to another episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are coming to you from the Trade show floor of the Hospitality Show in Denver, Colorado. We're at the Optii booth with Wendy Zapach, the Chief Revenue Officer. Wendy, thanks for sitting down with us. How you doing? 
Wendy Zapach: I'm doing great. Thank you guys for joining me today, and we're looking forward to talking to you guys about Optii in the Future Hospitality.
Steve Carran: Absolutely. So I'm excited to get your thoughts on this. We've seen a lot of changes happening in the hotel tech side of things, mergers companies rebranding what's happening behind the scenes and how is it affecting hoteliers. 
Wendy Zapach: That's a really great question. We're at a point of consolidation. You're gonna notice that there's been a lot of smaller companies that have been gobbled up by some of the conglomerates, and with that, there's actually a lack of innovation.
So generally, when you get a really great small company that's doing well, and they're acquired by a much larger company, some of the things that they're like experts in, in that space, in the niche markets are lost when they're brought to a bigger company. And what we're really also noticing is that through these mergers, there's been not as much focus on customer expectations and on what is actually going to help hotels improve the most, they're thinking more about revenue, bottom line and ROI and how they can repackage their products, but not necessarily how that makes sense for operators. 
David M.: And so a lot of operators are wondering who they can trust right now. Why do you think the trust was lost, and what can you do to regain that trust?
Wendy Zapach: This is a great question, David. So I love this question because I think trust has been lost over many years with a lack of innovation. So. Hotels have been promised for so long that there's going to be a personalized travel path, whether it's in the booking engine or in the stay, the stay for guests and that hasn't really materialized.
And then with that, some of the biggest players in hospitality technology are legacy technologies that have been around for a very long time, and they're slow to adopt things like everyone's talking about right now. Right now, predictive intelligence. Machine learning AI. So with that, Hotelier are starting to think like, is this going to work for me? And how do we take long-term partners and will they be willing to think outside the box, walk down a road of innovation that we're hoping, you know, we see people adopt over the next 12 to 18 months. 
Steve Carran: Great. Well said. Something that we've seen a lot of is these bigger tech companies expanding their ecosystems. Does it that really mean? Does bigger really mean better in this situation? 
Wendy Zapach: I don't think so. I mean, so this is like we, there's two diverging schools of thought on this one school of thought for many, many years, and I think everyone knows it. Prior to Optii, I was with a couple of different companies. One of them was Travel Click, and there they're currently, you know, they were eaten up by Ames and there was this concept in the mid-2000 and tens that.
If you could have one stop shopping, it would be great because you'd have to deal with less people. But that was during a time when integrations were in their infancy. And so the way that technology integrated with a hotel was like really PMS, a lot of it was one way. Now with open APIs and like the two-way flow of information, it allows people to really make decisions that are best for their guest profile and their property and not necessarily have depend on the size of the company 'cause scale doesn't always equal a better customer experience. And I think that with the innovation of niche technologies that have open APIs and are hospitality at heart, they're really able to act like a big company and possibly provide a better customer guest experience for the hotels. 
David M.: So when a tech partner changes direction or ownership, it can leave operators uneasy. How should hotels navigate that kind of uncertainty? 
Wendy Zapach: Great question. So I think the, the first thing you should do is ask a really good set of tough questions. So what their plan is for migration. What is their plan for the technology itself? Is there going to be a roadmap that they're releasing? Do they have a plan on how they're going to integrate each other as a company?
And I think that over the past couple of years, there's been some definitely some mergers that have left people feeling that things they invested in were maybe not as important to the company as others because there's been this huge just growth in wanting to put together platforms and various platforms have different value to people.
Some make a lot of sense. Some you're like, Hey, did we just add another addition to the house? Um, and then I think understanding if those tough questions when they're answered. Mm-hmm. If that aligns with the vision of you as a hotel here and what you're looking to provide back to your guests and the guest experience.
David M.: Makes sense.
Steve Carran: The hot topic this year, everybody's been talking about AI. What we've kind of found out is, you know, some of it is really innovative tech. The other is a little bit more a fluff. How can hoteliers distinguish between that innovative AI and more of the fluff AIs? 
Wendy Zapach: Yeah, I mean, I think that the first question you should be asking yourself as a Hotelier with AI is it going to help your employees be able to provide a more authentic or surprise and delight experience and still allow you to not lose what makes hospitality so special? Which is your employees and the secret sauce of what makes people feel good. So I think that's the first thing, is focusing on your guest experience and your employees as guests is your internal guests and is their experience. I think that if it can help you make better decisions on operating your hotel in a very granular way, like is this the BA best rate plan?
Is this the right way to plan preventative maintenance, thinking of what we do. If there's concrete answers that allow you to keep focus and attention on guests, then you should be thinking about it for yourself. And I think that, you know, there's been so much talk about data and AI with hospitality that it's almost like an overload.
It's like an overload of how many pieces of data do you need to, like, let's play a riddle. Like how many pieces of data do you need to run a hotel? And in the end, is that gonna, is that AI gonna help you have happy guests? I don't know the answer to that, but if you can say that the AI is gonna help you have happy guests regardless of your star level, regardless of your rate level, then you should think about where to, um, you know, make decisions on for it, for your properties.
David M.: So if you're a GM or director of operations listening to this, what would you be demanding right now from your tech partners? 
Wendy Zapach: So hospitality is built on relationships. You have to love what you do. You have to like the people you work with. You have to like the people you partner with. You have to trust them, that they're going to give you good advice and you need to be able to feel proud of the relationship you have with the partners you're investing in as a hotel. So you need to have great support. I think support is very important. I think you have to have incredible online resources for people to have, like Frontline 24/7, and then I think you have to have transparency about things that operators get questioned on that are very, uh, you know, like intangible, like cybersecurity.
So, for example, we were getting people asking us constantly like, you know, what are your securities? So we created a trust center on our website that tells you like everything that we're in compliance with, where you can find it, when we got it, what our processes around it, what we're doing to keep people safe. And I think the more transparency you add and the more that you treat the solution like it's a human, that you'll get a better relationship in the end. 
Steve Carran: I agree. And you know, those long-term relationships between hotels and tech companies are so crucial. What does a good relationship look like and how do you spot those red flags a little bit earlier?
Wendy Zapach: This is a great question and I think things that people have to think about when they're entering into relationships. One is, when I think of red flags, these are a no order of importance. But if there's like vague product release notes and updates. You have to have like full transparency about what time is it happening, how long is it gonna take, what are we planning? Did you get communication before when it's going on, after leadership changes? I think when there's a lot of leadership changes that it signals that there's some friction at the top of the company, which usually is about vision, revenue, or product direction, and then product stagnation. I can't say enough about.
If a product has not evolved with the current climate of things we've mentioned in our conversation already, ai, predictive intelligence and machine learning. If they, if your product set has not evolved in the past 24 months, I tell people all the time, ask them for what they've done in the past 24 months and we'll put it up against what we've done in the past 24 months. And I think that that level of transparency is, is really important in healthy relationship. 
David M.: So if we're having this same conversation a year from now, what do you hope that conversation looks like? 
Wendy Zapach: I mean, one, I would say that I hope we're having the same conversation in a year from now, and I think that there's going to just be some more open doors with tech partners in the space that have to assess the way that they interact with hotels. And I don't think so many of my answers would change, but I hope that our customer base would be larger and there's possibility that I'd have more gray hair, but it's a possibility and we'd be in a little bit of a warmer location if we're in Miami. 
Steve Carran: Correct? Yeah, that's true. Well, hopefully we have more customers and not more gray hairs next year. So what advice would you give to hoteliers that are looking to reevaluate their tech stack right now? 
Wendy Zapach: I think there's a lot of reevaluation going on. I think that there's a lot of conversation on what people are doing and I'm regularly urging people to work with companies that you believe are innovative, that you think are agile, that they are willing to listen to what you have to say, and they wanna hear about what your vision will be in the future. And with agility, you're sometimes going to maybe not find that level of flexibility in some of the legacy players. 
Steve Carran: Yep. 
Wendy Zapach: So just think of like who's innovative. Who's doing things differently? Is that something that you'd wanna bring to your property and help you know, you future proof your business? And I think it that those are things that people should think about as they're reevaluating their tech stack.
David M.: Well said. So this has been a great conversation. Let people know how they can get in touch with you and how they can find out more about. 
Wendy Zapach: You can find us on LinkedIn. You find me on LinkedIn. Wendy Zapach, Chief Revenue Officer of Optii. You can go to sales@opti.com and we will be more than happy to talk to you about the future of operations at your hotel and the industry in in general.
David M.: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged Podcast. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and see you again soon. Thank you. 
Wendy Zapach: Thank you.