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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 #30 - The Significance of Executive Team Alignment | with Frank Pitsikalis
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Jason Emanis: Welcome to another episode of the Gain Momentum podcast focusing on timeless lessons from global industry leaders about how to grow and scale a business in hospitality. Food service and technology. I'm Jason Emanis here with my co host Adam Mogelonsky. Adam, how are you?
Adam Mogelonsky: Doing great.
Jason Emanis: Very good. Today's guest is Frank Pitsikalis, former founder and CEO of Resort Suite, now senior VP product strategy for Agilisys. Hi Frank.
Frank Pitsikalis: Hey guys,
Jason Emanis: All right, Adam, take it away.
Adam Mogelonsky: So Frank, and to all listeners, we structured this podcast around four key questions to ask all guests about how to scale and grow a business from their experience. The first question, Frank, when it is comes to [00:01:00] scaling a business, What is the single piece of advice you would give entrepreneurs from your perspective as a professional in hospitality technology?
Frank Pitsikalis: well, thanks Adam. I think, uh, ultimately it's, it's about building the right team around you because, you know, obviously the product fit has to be right, but if you don't have the right team to sort of help you scale, uh, and have those really key hires, right? The Someone's going to manage operations, you know, obviously a chief, if I look at it from, you know, what we had set up, uh, you know, at Resort Suite, having a strong, CTO, and sometimes that can be the founder as well.
In my case, it was, and then, that transitioned to my number two, as playing that role as we grew as a business, but, uh, obviously having a strong CFO and then, you know, a chief operating officer, just so that. You've got that team that's going to help, you know, as you bring, uh, employees in at all levels, ensuring that [00:02:00] everyone's not just looking to you, in terms of, what to do, right?
You need to make sure that you've got a, a really strong, strong team that's going to help you execute, provide a, you know, a level of, of service that's, uh, that can really differentiate it in the marketplace. And obviously, uh, deliver and execute on your product strategy. So, uh, I think really my best advice would be surround yourself with A players. you know, don't try to, to go cheap in terms of, your team, structured in a way that, is scalable, is, is financially viable, but make sure you've got, people that may have strengths that you. you. may not have, right? And trying to hire people that think and, give you answers that sound like what you want to hear that is not a great way to grow a, product team in hospitality.
You need to have people that, you know, are going to, going to challenge and potentially Uh, shift your thinking, right? And so, uh, look at, look at things where I, I was, [00:03:00] you know, I was more of that strategic thinking, visionary type, but I wasn't, I wasn't great on, uh, you know, the, some of the smaller details, right?
So you have to have, you have to have people when you hire an executive assistant, make sure they're taking care of those, of those details, right? That you may not otherwise, focus on.
Jason Emanis: that's a great answer and we've heard that before, like, right? It's, people and you hire A players. That's hard to do, but let's say you get that done. How do you stay on the same page with that group? Like if you're talking about a startup, like on a weekly basis, right? And if you're in a scale up, maybe you can stretch that out to a bi monthly or monthly, but talk to us about staying on the same page.
Frank Pitsikalis: Yeah, it, it has to be. You know, I think the key, when you do make those hires, is making sure that ultimately you all share the same values, that you all have a very common vision for hospitality. So those are the [00:04:00] fundamentals, right? If you are aligned on values and you're aligned on, sort of strategic vision, the other things can be handled, not, you know, not everything is going to go smooth, not everything is going to be, everyone's going to see exactly eye to eye. When you build a really good team, that's part of being an A-player right? It's not, it's not just challenging you for the sake of challenging you or, or creating unnecessary friction, that, then wouldn't be a good fit. It's really about, you know, as you evolve, as long as you're aligned. on core values. for me, it just seemed like it always worked itself out and you've got to be fair. You can't be a dictator and, you know, ultimately sometimes a final decision does come down to you. But if your team feels that, you know, they have no, influence or, their contributions don't matter, they're not going to stay around.
So I think it's key to, to build a good management team that, you know, really can, can achieve great things.
Adam Mogelonsky: So this is from the perspective of Resort Suite and for everyone who's [00:05:00] listening Resort Suite was of course acquired by Agilisys and you then took on the role of Senior Vice President of Strategy and we're talking about aligning the core vision and I'm wondering how What sort of differences are there from coming from the founder and CEO perspective and then coming in to be a part of a much larger operation and a larger team in terms of aligning values?
How does that, how is that different?
Frank Pitsikalis: Well, I, I think it's still the same. Like, I think you're still at the, ultimately, you know, when I joined, when I joined Agilisys, and, and first of all, you know, when Ramesh called me about potentially acquiring Resort Suite, you know, I was, I was at my son's hockey practice and just got a call and out of the blue. And so we chatted and I was, you know, again, wasn't really looking to be acquired at that moment. and so we had a good chat and, um, but you know, what I had perceived of Agilisys at that [00:06:00] time, was very different than as I continued the conversations with Ramesh, I realized we had a really, uh, a common vision for. for Hospitality Technology. And as I started to meet more of the management team, I realized he really had created and assembled an amazing management team that, that sort of have each other's back and really, uh, we're doing some, some incredible things. and just, you know, since I joined them and the stocks almost tripled.
Uh, so that just speaks to just having, you know, really strong Uh, leaders that, can work together, can challenge each other, but ultimately, um, you know, it's, it's around those core values and common vision. So it doesn't change if you're an entrepreneur or you're part of, part of a larger company. And I've stayed because of it. I mean, my contract was really to stay on for a year, and now I'm into my third year. So, uh, and that's only because, you know, again, I, I really feel a [00:07:00] part of this management team. I, I really, uh, believe in the, in the vision that Agilisys is executing on. and so I think it's important no matter what size of company, you still have to have those fundamentals, you know, need to be consistent.
Adam Mogelonsky: And can you just for context, talk to us about what your day to day looks like now as a SVP of strategy at Agilisys?
Frank Pitsikalis: Sure. So, I sort of focus on, You know, obviously our product strategy and our corporate strategy, uh, and so lots of activity going on in both areas, but ultimately from a product perspective is, you know, I can bring that experience I have and where, you know, I believe we should be prioritizing things in our products that really differentiate us in the marketplace.
And so, um, the exciting thing, you know, being, coming from a small startup where you really had to think about, The investments you were making and growing your team [00:08:00] and all of that, especially from an R and D perspective to now, when we've got, you know,, close to 1400 people in our India development center. now we can come up with things that we believe are our priorities and our products and the pace of innovation, like how quickly we can get those things done, is amazing. So, It's great for me. I don't have to worry about payroll anymore. I don't have to worry about things as an entrepreneur that keep you up at night. Uh, and I can focus on the, on the fun things, which really is, you know, product strategy that will, you know, really set, agility apart, you know, as we continue to move forward here.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, Frank, we're going to dive into our second question, which is more reflective, I guess, of some of your experience as an entrepreneur and as the CEO of your own company. And that is, what are some of the common pitfalls or failures you have witnessed that business owners should look to avoid when scaling their business?
Frank Pitsikalis: Well, I think the important thing is not getting ahead of your skis, right? Um, so it's, it's a [00:09:00] thoughtful about how you take the next step in your business, how you grow, how you invest, and it's, it's really the most important thing is get the product right. Don't try to scale your revenues like right out of the gate and trying to, to put your foot on the gas when, you know, your product and probably your team are not quite ready, right?
it's better to to focus on creating really
good, Customer, success stories
and, nurturing those
relationships and, uh, and continue to evolve your product
with, you know, obviously the input you're getting
from your customers and not trying
to
to scale too many, you know, too many entrepreneurs come in thinking it's going to be a, you know, three to five years and they'll have
scaled it to, you know, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
and that's just not realistic. It, um, You know, unless, unless you catch,
you know, lightning in a bottle or
something, it's just not done that way. And, and for me, [00:10:00] we were kind of the longest running overnight success, right? It just, it took a lot of hard work and it may, may have appeared that, you know, Resort Suite, you know, was in a lot of opportunities and, and a lot of, uh, great iconic hotels and resorts around the world,
but that didn't come without a lot of work.
You know, over a long period of time that we, that we had to
do. So that was just, that was the approach that I took
and certainly worked for me.
Jason Emanis: When you're making those
product decisions,
like you're talking about, talk to us a little bit about maybe the early days
of those decisions that were made
to do this or not to do
that
not to get over your skis, to create the product
that, you thought
was the best product that you could make at that time or at the near term future, you know?
Does that make sense?
Frank Pitsikalis: Yeah, no, no. I mean, it,
you, you have to sort of [00:11:00]
figure out who you want to be
and what you want to be, right. and
what's the market
that, that you want to address. and so for me,
it was interesting because I had a,
uh, a Hotel background in the sense that, my family at
the time, was owned a
resort, Hockley Valley Resort, uh, north of Toronto. and so I, I, growing up, I'd kind of done every job you
can do in hospitality, right? Work the front
desk, work banquets, you know, as a waiter in the
restaurant, open the door
for the, you know, to, to guests as they arrive. So really
did every job in hospitality was a
golf resort, a ski resort, and while I was, you know, after I
completed, you know, my, my university studies in computer
science and, and was in Silicon Valley
and, working with Ernst Young and a number
of other sort of startups in
technology, the the family came
calling, right, and said, you know, we need
to. We need to look at what, what system we can put in
place to run our
entire
resort. And, uh, and back then when I did [00:12:00] my my diligence, I really didn't find, you know, most of the products were these siloed products. They either did property management or they did F& B
or they did spa or golf or other things.
But, it was either I was going to put in a sort of a bit of a Frankenstein system or the, or the one software That did exist, that addressed some of those areas, was built on a database called FoxPro. So I said, there's no way I can recommend to our, you know, to the, the family to, to go and invest in that technology.
So I, I just, I just saw firsthand, I saw an opportunity, to build a product. So when we built Resort Suite, we wanted to have, it was a suite of modules to run an entire
resort. One guest profile kind of centered around a
CRM and
uh, and so we really
focused on that
vision. Spent 18 months building it and at the end of that, you know, the resort had something that uh, was now could run the
entire business and I had a product [00:13:00] now
that I could take to market.
So that was the, that was the arrangement And, you know, kind of the rest, the rest is history, but, but we stayed true
to that, to that
vision. We didn't try to, you know, go outside of, what we
had drawn on the back of
an envelope in
Yorkville. here's
what we're going to build. I kind of sat with my first hire,
uh, employee number one,
Stephan Kerenopoulos, and we sat down and I kind of drew out the vision
of, of what we were going to do and, and that's
what we did.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, just to backtrack to one of the first things you said here is this battle, I want to say, between product and revenue and getting out the gates and a lot of technology companies, when they're at the startup or early, early scale up stages, they have some sort of money behind them, some sort of seed could be VC, private equity, whatever.
And those guys are obviously looking for their return. How do you, how would you advise young entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs in technology [00:14:00] to fight that battle? To say, listen, we need to devote more time to make the product the viable product, more minimum. Have a higher minimum before we really go to market and really start to scale the revenues.
How do you, how do you get the money side to really back your vision to see that the see the light of day in that regard?
Frank Pitsikalis: Yeah, and there's, there's so many different ways to, and what works for others, you know, may not work for me. My approach was, you know, I really used, uh, my own capital, my own sort of friends and family money,
, to kind of bootstrap and then really grew the, grew the revenues,
you
know, organically.
I think if we had taken money too early, uh, it would have, you know, we would not have been able to execute the way that we wanted to execute because an investor, they might have a three or five year horizon and if you haven't met the goals, uh, they're going to want to get out and that can be very damaging to [00:15:00] a startup, you know, because they're going to have liquidation preferences, they're going to have a lot of terms in that agreement that, is going to be potentially a business ending event for a lot of startups and that's how they end up.
So for me, it's get as far as you can get with the minimum viable product on your own, right? and then decide at what point you want to inject capital, but it should be on your terms at that point. There's a lot of money out there. so, you know, make sure that when you, when you, accept capital, it It's on your terms and, and don't just take money.
Make sure that it's a, it's a strategic investor, somebody that can help the business in some way, shape or form, right? They could open doors in hospitality or they can, you know, certainly, provide additional assistance, maybe Uh, a fractional CFO or, or some other, other things that will, will save you costs moving forward, right?
But, you know, just [00:16:00] be very thoughtful, uh, and don't take money too early would be my advice.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, Frank, we're going to move on to our third question here, which is, what do you see as the key opportunities and challenges for hospitality technology companies in 2024 and beyond?
Frank Pitsikalis: Well, I think here at Agilisys, I mean, we, we're really focused on delivering technologies that can match guest expectations today. Cause guests expectations have changed. Dramatically, just through COVID, um, you know, what we're seeing from guests, their expectation around mobile technology, uh, their expectations to be able to do things themselves. Uh, it used to be, you know, it was all about self service and Ernest R was always about hospitality is, is always one to one, right. And, and that's, that's never going to change, but technology can really help with that. To potentially take away the transactional parts of the [00:17:00] experience where somebody would rather kind of do it on their own, maybe a check in on their mobile device and provide their address and other things and only when they actually speak to somebody, let's say at a hotel or, um, that's checking them in, in some sort of experience, they can spend more time with the guests because they've taken care of all the transactional bits. And now they can be much, they can be much better hosts, right? They can be much better at, delivering that one to one hospitality, experience. And so I think as technology vendors, we really have to think about that end to end guest experience. How can we make it smooth when a guest goes online? If they have to log into six different systems to book an entire experience, that's not very. Uh, it's not a great customer experience, a guest experience, right? They want to be able to go on, you know, book their room, book their, spa treatments, book dining reservations, book golf teatimes, activities, you know, [00:18:00] whatever it is that that particular property has to offer, uh, making it really easy for that guest to interact and then potentially use their mobile device to check in. To have their itinerary, to add to their itinerary while they're having dinner and talking about a wonderful spa treatment they had, you know, book another one for the next day. You know, all of those things, just making it super easy for a guest to interact, and be in control of their experience, I think is key, is a key opportunity, uh, but it's also a challenge because a lot of the technology that's out there is, It's very fragmented. Trying to create that kind of experience across five or six different vendors is, uh, it's not easy. It, it almost demands of the hotel to become the integrator and bring all these vendors together trying to create, you know, a, a seamless experience. and that's pretty difficult. So we need to make sure that We're working together as an industry to make that, you know, as seamless as possible.
And I know all the work we're doing, [00:19:00] you know, at Agilisys, it's really about creating that end to end guest experience, which may be, you know, a lot of Agilisys technology or we may be, you know, through the integrations we have with other partners, we can, we can bring them in, for certain elements if someone is invested. And, you know, a separate system, you know, being open to, to obviously integrating with those. And I think the most important challenge for the industry is modernizing the technology stack, right? A lot of, vendors choose to basically put a pretty web front end on their old backend. So it's still the same software that was running before. It's still that in the back end and all they've done is they put a web front end so you can run it in the browser. But that doesn't, that doesn't scale. It's not built for SaaS. it's not built, you know, in a way that, makes that multi tenant and scalable. Uh, and so I think, you know, [00:20:00] as you look at that, and that was one of the things that we realized is that, when we were competing with the Agilisys that was going to be now, right, two or three years down the road. We could see the writing on the wall, right, that they were at some point going to surpass, you know, the depth of functionality that existed in Resort Suite. We've now put all of that into a modern cloud native stack. All of the products at Agilisys from PMS to SPA, Golf, Membership, F& B, everything has been completely modernized in a new stack.
so that takes investment, takes time. but it's an important next step for the industry.
Jason Emanis: How do you take your cues to know what the guest is looking for?
Frank Pitsikalis: I think guests, you know, experience in other segments of daily life, they, they experience, you know, the ability to order a Starbucks and have it [00:21:00] delivered curbside in advance. Now they can go to McDonald's and use a kiosk or, or order on their phone and, and now it's ready when they get there. You know, and if you have a. like my car, you know, four kids, six of us in the car and, and you pull up to a drive through. Not that we, we'd like to do that very often, but just use, let's, play with it as an example, to take everyone's order while someone's asking you, you know, on a, you can barely hear them on the loudspeaker, it, not a great experience.
So, so now many are, you know, using the technology to kind of serve themselves. and so this is what, and now these, guests actually post COVID, they were ordering delivery to their home, delivery of, they were shopping for items, they were delivering food delivery, and so, so the consumer kind of got used to that, but now they come to hotels and it's, almost like they've gone in the dark ages, right? it's now, oh, I have to pick up the phone and call to order room service? Or, you know, [00:22:00] uh, checking in, I got to stand in this long lineup and and wait to be checked in. there's got to be a better way, right? And using technology, and there may be still that guest that wants to line up. They want to speak to someone and that's okay.
But if 90 percent of your guests would prefer to just do the check in, get a digital key, go right to their room. Then, you know, offering that as an option, it's about choice, and I think you need to serve guests in the way that they want to be served, right? So it's all about omni channel.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, you talk about what Agilisys is building and what you built at Resorts World, which is our, are these all in one systems. And one interesting use case as an example that we've seen out of this is the whole idea of cross departmental programming and adjustments, where if somebody, let's say they, they have an easy on ramp to book a golf tee time at.
Let's say 10 a. m. and it goes a little bit [00:23:00] later, but they had a lunch reservation at 12. Well, there's a system to automatically paste that back to 12. And that's just one little micro use case of how hotels can really adjust on the back end with these all in one systems to adjust their labor, to adjust the end experience to make sure it's on par with what the hotel should deliver.
And I'm wondering if you could. To the Hotelier listeners, just open it up a little bit to show what's possible when you have an all in one system that can really help to amplify the end to end experience.
Frank Pitsikalis: Yeah, so, you know, I think it's a great question, you know, ultimately it's, what advantages can you create? for both the hotel, and, and for your product line that, really is kind of like one plus one is five, right?
Like, you want to make sure that each of the modules that you have can stand on their own as a best in class system.
So when one, someone is [00:24:00] reviewing spa software, you want to make sure that your, your spa system ticks all the boxes, right? And can do things like dynamic availability for revenue management. Uh, or Dynamic Pricing, you know, whatever strategy they want to use, having sort of industry leading capabilities in all of those areas.
So each module, like our food and beverage system is considered, you know, best in class. You know, our PMS system considered best in class. But when you bring them together, the key there is, how do you now create less is more \ for both the guest and, uh, and obviously the hotel operator, right? Now, I can put in one stack that was designed to work together, I don't have to pay for interfaces between all of these modules, I have a common profile shared across all of those systems, and a single itinerary, and that goes back to your point, Adam, that now it can detect when there's an issue, when there's a conflict, or something as, you know, extended, and they're not going to make their, their dinner reservation. [00:25:00] it should be able to act on that information and alert both the guest and potentially the operator, uh, as well, to suggest, you know, moving their, their dinner reservation to the lunch reservation. So, so yeah, all of that is possible, I think, you know, the ability to now curate for the guest, if they're staying on a certain package when they're booking online, they're not just booking a bunch of a la carte items, but it could be that, you know, that package might've included golf. So, you can prompt the guest to say you're staying for three days, on the first day, you know, when would you, you're allowed to play one of these three courses, when would you like to, book your tea time,
and then prompt them again for day two and day three. The same with spa treatments, it might be a wellness where they get two spa services per guest per day. And they can pick from one of these five and one of these three services and prompting them for those guests to fulfill the entitlements for their package.
That's the holy grail of hotel resort booking. it's not available today. And those [00:26:00] are the kinds of things we're working on is that making that as seamless as possible for the guest and for the operator.
again, just offering their. products and services, in a way that can engage the guests to upgrade their booking, upgrade their room type, you know, dynamically setting the price of that, as well as for, you know, ensuring that all of your amenities, are easy to book. and again, going beyond just, you know, revenue managing the head and bed reservation, our entire industry. is focused on your room rate, but once the guest books that room, there's very little consideration done to revenue managing the other parts of the experience. The spa, dining, golf, you know, activities, all of those other areas, uh, we need to be thoughtful about, you know, those areas also have demand. In some cases, room revenue might be number two or three in revenue contribution [00:27:00] overall.
Right? Your spa, if it's a wellness destination, the spa might be what really drives the engine, and the room is actually an amenity. So you have to think about revenue in a different way, and, you know, that's an area where, where we, you know, we really want to establish our thought leadership.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, you, you mentioned, uh, you know, rooms being number two or a contributor as part of a revenue mix and the term there, of course, is the push towards total revenue and I'm wondering if you could speak to Some of the features that would let hoteliers look on a reporting level to see how those ancillaries are performing and then to help guide the overall vision to ramping up those ancillaries to make to go from a heads and beds operation to realizing a full resort style, full service product where the rooms are part of this larger total [00:28:00] picture.
Frank Pitsikalis: Yeah, we could probably have a whole podcast on that, right?
On
that alone. Um, But, you know, really ultimately it comes down to those other areas of your operation, your spa, your golf, your dining, they all experience demand, right? So first of all, having, analytics, you know, business analytics, a BI product that can look across the entire property and see as your occupancy changes. And it might, you know, you might see other insights, right? I want to have a big group business that hasn't booked spa or golf. You know, my revenues might be lower on those days in spa and golf because now I don't have people in the hotel, they're all in meetings, so I don't have as much of a leisure mix that's driving, you know, spa and golf spend, right?
And being able to make sure you're, making the right offers to the right guests, to potentially opening it up to local markets and all of those things, but, you know, for other days that you know the demand is very [00:29:00] high. So, one of the things that you can do or will be as you're forecasting your pace of spa bookings, let's say, is maybe changing the mix of revenue of services that are available down to your highest margin treatments
during your peak times,
right? So now, the guest might want a wax service, which is a low, you know, low margin treatment, um, and, and you'd, you know, you'd say, well, Even though you have it available at two o'clock when they requested, you say, well, I have it available at seven, which is a low demand time that usually goes unfilled. So now you're pushing, you know, your low margin treatments into your non peak times. And during your peak times, you're protecting it. And so they're now going to book a high value facial in those times, you know, you're going to be fully booked. and a facial also draws, retail revenue, right? Cause people want to use. So, if you just change [00:30:00] the mix of what's available when, it can have a huge impact on overall revenue and create a better experience for all of your guests as well. So, you know, I think there's, there's really a win win there. You're not changing the price necessarily. We have that option. You can do what's called dynamic pricing.
Many spas will do. so much for joining us today, and we hope you have a
Adam Mogelonsky: you know, aside from just dynamic availability of offering the, I guess, profit maximizing treatments facial versus a wax at the optimal times when your spas are busiest, you also have through business intelligence, you can also see the cross pollination with the actual spa boutique in terms of.
Uh, you know, somebody, 10 people got a facial and then of that 2, 2 out of 10 went on immediately afterwards and they bought the Biologique Recherche or Natura [00:31:00] Bissé products right there in the, in the spa boutique immediately afterwards. So that's really cool.
Frank Pitsikalis: A lot of spas just operate in a very, if it's available in the, in this, in the schedule, just book it. Right? And not putting a lot of thought into that, you know, you know, into revenue managing their operation. But, hotels have been doing it for a long time, obviously airlines, car rental companies. The time has come for golf operators, spa operators, uh, to really think about that because it can have a profound impact. Um, on their financial results and, and the financial health of the business as we saw through COVID is just as important as anything else, right? So, um, so I really do think, uh, you know, the time has come to really be revenue managing all those amenities.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, Frank, [00:32:00] uh, we can end off with more about the spa and wellness and, you know, we're both big believers about how important it is for hotels, but we'll dive into our fourth and final question before we, uh, dovetail back into that. So, Frank, what are the key things innovative leaders and entrepreneurs should prioritize and focus on to gain traction for their business?
Frank Pitsikalis: I think it's, don't just build another mousetrap or even a slightly better mousetrap, right? It's really about finding your niche, like find how can you do something different, right? How can you like the conversation we were just having, right? How can you find things that you can do that really move the needle and, and think in a different way, provide a product or service that's not available today and in the way that you're envisioning, right?
So, I think. You know, innovation has to be about creating those differentiating features, that will, will fundamentally change the business, right? You can, you know, you can build [00:33:00] yet another PMS or yet another point of sale product, but, you know, ultimately you've got to look at what is it that you are going to do, you know, pretty differently that's, that's going to differentiate you from. So, um, I think it's about finding, you know, finding that niche, creating an innovative culture in your company, right, where, you know, new ideas are welcomed and, celebrated. And we did a lot of that even in our Resorts Week days, right, really focused on our team To come to meetings with, with new ideas and even spend time on those ideas, uh, and sometimes on their own time, right, and come in and say, here's, and then propose it to their peers, right?
It was really a fun time and, and a lot of product features came out of those innovative, uh, meetings that we had, right? So, you [00:34:00] know, it's, it's really about. Ensuring that, uh, that everyone has a voice and, uh, and creating that, that culture of innovation.
Jason Emanis: Talk to us a little bit more about the different, like it sounds like you niched down with resorts and you stood there and anytime you're doing anything different it takes quite a bit of education. It's a different, it's kind of a different go to market when you do that because people don't know what they don't know
and you have to spend Some effort, right?
Educating. It's like, this is the way. That's the old way. That's, that's, you don't want to do it that way anymore. Talk to us about that.
Frank Pitsikalis: Well, we, we focused on, we focused on a segment of the market that, like, we just didn't want to be another PMS and have to go up against every other PMS company that was out there, right? So we focused on, uh, [00:35:00] a part of our product, that resort suite. and what we've now brought over to Agilisys as well, and Agilisys now, uh, I think from a best in class perspective on a modern stack, uh, there, there isn't a SPA product that can compare, right?
So, with ResortSuite, as an entrepreneur, I focused on that was going to be the market segment, that we were going to really dominate in, right? So when you're looking at hotels, it wasn't just, there's all kinds of different, you Classes of hotels, right? From, you know, um, select service, you know, all the way up to, to luxury resorts and, and everything else.
What we really felt was if we could create a product that, really dominated in one particular sector and some of the customers we had early on, they weren't, you know, hotels with a spa, they were spas with a hotel. Right, where the room's the amenity. And so, so creating that wellness experience, that wellness journey, the PMS became important, [00:36:00] but secondary to being able to deliver this end to end guest experience that was built around a wellness journey or a wellness experience.
And, and that was very different. Most other PMS companies were, we, we want to take your reservation, we want to check you in. You know, and, and check you out smoothly and all of that, and that's what a lot of PMS systems do, but in a lot of ways, it's a commodity. So what can you do differently? How can you approach the problem differently and make yourself look different, you know, in the process so that you're not trying to boil the ocean and, you know, sell to everybody in the same way that, oh, we have the same features as these other PMS products, right? It's about how do you approach. The market build, uh, a beachhead. I got very involved with ISPA and the Global Wellness Summit and a number of organizations in spa and wellness that, you know, I, I was able to be in the room with, with other leaders and understand, you [00:37:00] know, the challenges that the industry faced and how could we build our products to address those challenges, right?
So, um, so that was just my approach to it and, it worked, it worked well.
Adam Mogelonsky: One thing, Frank, I guess that you and I are really trying to push forward is, is the future of hospitality is wellness in many ways. And yes, there's always going to be the need for select service hotels that are heads and beds, but really focusing on the wellness journey, and I use that word journey because I do think that technology can really aid in driving that journey.
So Can you talk to us about some of the features that you've seen that can really help hotels really maximize the on site wellness journey for guests across, whether that's across rooms, spa? Activities other touch points.
Frank Pitsikalis: Yeah, no, I think, um, and then, you know, as we talked about the whole package booking, right, [00:38:00] allowing a guest to go on and book an entire, experience, which can include, you know, spa treatments and yoga classes and hiking and activities all built around wellness, you know, food and nutrition is a big part of wellness.
So, ensuring that your F&B offerings, um. Uh, also, have a wellness component, so as they're selecting, you know, being able to show them ingredients and show them that this is matched to your profile. These are the items we recommend based on your assessment that we did when you first arrived, right? and so it's about curating that experience in a very personalized way and, uh, and being able to do personalization at scale. Uh, because it's easy when you're. A bed and breakfast with five rooms, right? You know, all your guest names, uh, you can learn a little bit about them and everything else. But when you have a team of hundreds of employees that are serving guests, you need technology to be able to deliver that personalization at scale, right?
So if I reported that [00:39:00] I have an allergy to nuts in the spa, now I'm having dinner, uh, the server's telling me to stay away from two or three items because they do have nuts in them,
right? So it's about how do you create. Those conditions of providing a, personalized experience at scale.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, the whole idea of a single guest journey whether that's both the itinerary and also the the guest profile CRM component of that in terms of making sure that the nut allergy isn't just some something in a comment field that stays there, but It translates across every touchpoint with the guest. Um, to close out with I guess the last question is, a tagline I've heard for Agilisys is return on experience.
And in my mind that's, that's synonymous with wellness because wellness is a, is an experience and it really adds to satisfaction as well as the total revenue component. And I'm wondering if, if again you could colour that in terms of actually measuring all these [00:40:00] little micro experiences and different experiences that a guest can have.
Would have across a full service product and then how we report on that and how we can see that
in real time using technology.
Frank Pitsikalis: Yeah, I mean, it, it really does come down to,
Having technology
that that can, um,
really be part of that entire
end-to-end experience. Right. And then it, it's, it's a lot easier to activate. That return on experience, um, to measure it and, uh, and just really, you know, our thought around that from a marketing perspective is, uh, it's not just a return on investment.
It's not just a siloed thinking of every product we put in place, a PMS system, an FMV system, but how do we look at it holistically and, and then look at, you know, how we can create, the types of moments. And experiences that guests crave and that guests will, will rave about, right? And, uh, and [00:41:00] so it's that return on experience that's, uh, most important in hospitality because we are about creating experiences for guests, right?
So if you're focused on that as a metric, I think you're on the right track. It was
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, Frank, it's been a delight to have you on and to talk about a lot of very important topics for both entrepreneurs and hoteliers to think about. Frank, thank you.
Frank Pitsikalis: a pleasure, Adam. Thanks Jason. Thanks.
guys.