The Modern Hotelier #118: Optimizing Hotel Operations with Predictive Technology | with Katherine Grass
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Steve Carran: Welcome to another edition of The Modern Hotelier. We're coming to you from the trade show floor of The Hospitality Show. We're joined by Catherine Grass, the CEO of Optii. Catherine, how are you doing today? 
Katherine Grass: Pretty good. How about yourself? 
Steve Carran: Doing great. Doing great. How's the show going for you so far? 
Katherine Grass: It's going well. You know, this is the second day. We've seen a lot of foot traffic and it's also been great to reconnect with old colleagues. 
Steve Carran: That's awesome. So tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into hospitality technology? 
Katherine Grass: So I started my career a few decades ago in, in travel and technology.
And you know, of all the dimensions of travel technology, hospitality, I always gravitated towards that. Um, the complexity of the hotels and how we could then really solve, um, guest experiences with technology for the hotel 
groups. 
David Millili: So from people who are familiar with technology or ai such as chat, GBT, how is AI impacting hotel operations right now? 
Katherine Grass: Big
buzzword, lots of AI talk, you know, for Optii, We have always used elements of machine learning, AI, predictive technologies, really important to us to, well, as we leverage that, but it's not just because this is a new technology and how do you solve problems with it. For us, it's always been about the business process impact that we could solve, and we're finding that AI is offering the best opportunity to solve that business problem.
So. For example, at Optii and in housekeeping, we optimize the routes and the cleaning in real time because maybe not every room is the same. One has four guests, one has a business traveler, and so as those, business impacts and, and reality, build out the schedules and build out the day, you need very efficient ways to take all that information in and make it.
Common sense ways of approaching, operations. So by us applying AI, we're able to optimize these routes, do that in real time and translate the reality through the technology, which then drives the most efficiencies and savings for 
the customers. 
David Millili: great. That's 
Steve Carran: great. 
So lately I've noticed that you guys have gained a lot of traction with brands and larger groups to be their preferred operations solution.
Why is that? 
Katherine Grass: So you'll hear us talk a lot about business process and common sense. I think, a lot of us come from deep hospitality backgrounds as well. And I think when we talk about Optii, we talk about hospitality first and then technology and not a tech company. Trying to attack the hospitality space.
So that walk and that talk, I think is really translating with some of these larger groups, how they are holistically looking at their business, um, opportunities across their portfolios. When they're thinking about group level or brand level efficiencies, accountability, benchmarking, and understand where the differences lie and whether those make sense and where the similarities lie, and then the ability to experiment and try new things in operations, or simply to measure the financial impact of those operation decisions, we are seeing that really resonate, above the fold. So it's not just the users who we are also hyper focused on in their user experience, but how those groups are empowered to make smart business decisions with the operational information that we can serve up to them. 
David Millili: So Optii's got a different approach to really an operations solution.
Can you explain more how it's different than other products that are out there? 
Katherine Grass: Yeah. So, all of our competitors take a very, let's say, task, tick box approach to operations. So, in the old days, maybe even now still, people are on pen and paper and a clipboard.
that is very task oriented, right? I, my to do list, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. A lot of our competitors have really translate that piece of paper onto a digital platform for you to then kind of task manage. We do not take that approach. We take a much more, um, holistic, what we call almost a revenue management approach to Understanding the efficiencies of the person.
So where do you need to move? Which route do you need to move around the hotel that is the most efficient for you being able to match it back up with those tasks? what rooms should you go to first? Because maybe there you want to turn over those rooms faster to get guests in. All those we call kind of common sense ways of how you would manage a hotel.
That's our. first stop in any of our business processes, any of our end to end customer journey processes, rather than simply just taking that task level of paper to, to technology 
David Millili: approach. 
Steve Carran: approach. 
Sure, sure. So one topic we have talked about all year on our podcast and quite a bit is the labor issues that we're having in the industry.
How are you helping hotels with their labor 
Katherine Grass: Hi, We've always had this problem, right? I think now, just with COVID, it's been exasperated. Uh, you know, the turnover continues. how you upskill someone, how you train them, how you onboard, how you give them constructive feedback and, and help the team, um, and also then reward the ones that are doing well as well and make sure that they're recognized.
that problem has always existed. I think 
it's just now, 
existing in different, in different ways and maybe to different degrees. So the first way that we approach that is you have to develop a technology with your users in mind. And that ease of use has to be as simple as possible. We're not approaching technology again as, um, how to make it complex and, and flex our muscles.
We want that user to be able to just tap, tap, tap and put it aside and go about job that they need and they know that they need to do. So that ease of use is very important, that helps with on boarding, but then as well, the way that we collect information and provide that back to the supervisors, back to the general managers or to the group, it allows them to see who's doing things well and who needs more training How you embed pictures of how they should set up the amenities, how you can make them very simple. Take a picture of something and create a job. I think all of the ways that our tool works should mimic, other, uh, tech user experiences they have in other platforms, as well as just really simple color coding, tap, tap, tap, um, as simple as possible for all the people involved. 
David Millili: so what trends are you seeing in hospitality that we should be 
Katherine Grass: you know, especially from an operations space, I think the operations probably used to be that last frontier that people weren't focused on. I think COVID really switched that conversation. So at least it switched the conversation.
Now it's actually starting to play a role in not just the efficiencies and productivity, but even how we connect much deeper to the revenue opportunity. What sort of personalized guest experiences do you want to offer? How do you personalize that? But how do you do it in a way that you're not creating bottlenecks on the operations side?
You don't want to necessarily be able to merchandise and address, guest, uh, preferences and tastes and desires. And then create a problem for your staff at at the back of the house. You want that to be seamless. You want that to be very easy. You want that to close loop, whatever you want to say. But on the backside where we're seeing the biggest trend and opportunity is how we much more communicate and align.
with those front facing tools. And so that's been something else we've been really passionate about last year and this year is opening up our APIs, making our open API is easy to work with and collaborate. We feel we're the best in class op solution, 
but when hotels want to make other tech decisions, we'll absolutely integrate with them and communicate with them so that they can offer a whole technology suite that they feel makes sense for their hotel. 
David Millili: hotel.
Steve Carran: whole technology suite that they feel makes sense for 
Katherine Grass: All right. Well, we, I can't believe you said 2024 
is 
almost
done. We 
have our 
foot 
on 
the throttle and we continue that through 2025.
We've completely replatformed the solution, you know, really, uh, you know, one really robust, uh, platform. We keep up with, with that really ease of use and we continue to make tweaks and changes there. So we're really excited as we're unveiling that here, um, the last few months. We continue to take AI to the next level.
So that's something that's really, has always been forefront and housekeeping. We're taking that through all the way now through our maintenance product where you don't just have. Preventative maintenance, it's becoming predictive, um, maintenance and really being able to predict what is going to happen and alert, uh, what is going to happen before it happens. and then we really expand all the way through, um, how we are interacting, how we are reporting, how we're serving up and delivering information to those enterprise customers, to those groups, so they don't need to be in the solution to be able to understand you know, what's happening within their properties that we serve that up in very different and unique ways for them to be able to understand the 
David Millili: great. Well, it's been great talking to you. Can you please let the people watching know how they can get in touch with you possibly or get in touch with Optii?
What are the best ways to 
Katherine Grass: do 
that?
Yeah. 
So 
please, uh, www. Optii. com, of course, our website, you're able to schedule appointments with the team that way and, uh, or me personally, either through LinkedIn or directly through our website. 
Steve Carran: another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Catherine, thank you for letting us stop by and chat with you today. We hope you enjoyed, whether you're watching or listening. Have a great day.