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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 #102: End to End from Digital Journey to Mobile, Tablet and Television | with Anne Frye & Dawid Dawod
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Adam Mogelonsky_1: Welcome to the GAIN Momentum Podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in hospitality, travel, food service, and technology. I'm joined by two members of the InnSpire team today, InnSpire with two ends, just to make it extra special for hospitality. Anne Frye, president and Dawid Dawod Head of product. How are you both doing?
Anne Frye: Great. Great. Thanks Adam. Thanks for having us today.
Adam Mogelonsky_1: Yeah, well, um, I'm very excited to
have you have you guys on because you have an incredible, incredible, platform and incredible products for. Really ing that, that next generation of hospitality experience. So to start off, I'm wondering if one of you could give the
elevator pitch on Inspire and the products that you offer to hotels.
Anne Frye: Sure, sure, I can do that Adam. Um,
again, thanks for having us. We really appreciate. It. So we live by, you know, the three pillars really by driving ancillary revenue. We're creating operational efficiencies and enhancing in the guest journey, and we're doing that from a digital guest journey platform and through multiple touch points along the guest stay. So from a, a guest mobile device via an AI concierge messaging platform, um, via mobile app. Um, other touchpoint along the way, really all the way into a, a guest room for I-F-P-T-V solutions and, um, the ability to cast and stream. We see these touchpoint as a way for hoteliers to really have a one ecosystem, right? But everything is also modular, so. If, um, a hotels are looking for, you know, really guest messaging platform, FMB, ordering IPTV solutions, we can have a modular platform, but everything is, uh, ecosystem based on an AI backbone.
Adam Mogelonsky_1: Cool. So. Within that digital guest journey you have. The center of that is this, uh, this category of technology called the guest management System, or the guest experience Management System, GMS or gems. The term is used interchangeably and I'm wondering if one of you could first describe what is meant by a Unif Unified inbox in Sofar as having all your messages come in from all these guest touch points and. Service agents can do to enable better service just by having everything unified.
Dawid Dawod: I mean, if we, if we look at it, um, the way that Ann
just described, I mean, we're, we're all about that
ecosystem with the various touch points. So obviously one way of streamlining operations is just getting all of that messaging, all of those requests into
one place, and hence why, you know, we developed the Inspire one platform to
be able to handle that.
the far more interesting question is,
I think based
on that
depending on what. What guest
touchpoints, um, the guests are using. How you orchestrate that journey and how you tailor, you know, the intelligence or, or the large language model to understand what those requests are and being able to categorize them in the right way or present the guest with the right user interface to achieve something or, or to pass that on as a task to to staff.
Adam Mogelonsky_1: Yeah, the, I mean the whole advent of LLMs large language models, really helping out to parse out a task. I'm wondering if we could just color that with a, a bit of a technical workflow. So a guest. Says to a hotel via WhatsApp, I need more towels right now. What happens?
Dawid Dawod: So, I mean, basically what happens is that the LLM identifies this as a request, just by the way that, um. The sentence is structured right?
That's, that's what LMS are great at, just like identifying data. So if, if it identifies that
as a task, what happens then is that the LLM creates a task through our system and basically takes that information,
posts it on a, uh, task board that we have inside of Inspire one, and we present it through our front end there
to Um, the staff.
Based on whether it's towels, right? It can, it can identify, okay, it's a towel. It probably should go
into housekeeping, right? To, to that. So it auto assigns, um,
the
housekeeping, uh, department, and then it's, it's up to the hotel, uh, or whether you automate that, to actually assign that to a living human or a person that could also be done.
So in a nutshell, that is what, what the
system does.
Anne Frye: And it all can also integrate with the guest ticketing system that the hotels may already have, right? So we have our own sys test management system, but you know, we're always trying to keep operational, you know, efficiencies. And, uh, the team is used to using, you know, a, a hot sauce or analyst or a third party ticketing system.
We can easily, uh, integrate. We already do integrate with that system, and then it could be a two-way integration. Right. So, you know, as David described, the guest is asking for the towels. Adam, you made a great point that a lot of times it's guests are looking for things urgently and then it's gonna create the ticket, the, the housekeeper on the back end.
It's the same workflow for them, right? So they're, it's not something new or different, or. Change management is always an issue, but this is something where it's like, okay, I'm
used to getting it through the system rm. Um, they're able to complete the task, mark
it complete, and then we can send A follow up
message back
to
the guest.
You know the AI can, you know two a notification, close out the task and tell, let the guest know.
You know, I hope that you enjoy
your fresh cows or whatever
that might be.
Adam Mogelonsky_1: Yeah. You know, so much of, um, the experience or
the, the service management is managing expectations. So if something's gonna take 15 minutes to complete. Or three hours to complete, so long as we notify the guest of that
time rather than just leaving them in the loop and they request something and then they don't know what's happening.
So
just communicating that in advance of the task actually
being resolved is a huge modality where AI's
coming ahead. Um,
and on that front, uh, are there any other, uh, you know, basic LLM
driven, tools that you're implementing
or have seen that really drive that
value for
hotels to automate the guest service?
Dawid Dawod: Yeah, I, I can answer this I think that there's a really interesting frontier now in terms of m. Like LLMS are
great at understanding context, right? So being able to present the
guest with the right, you know, like offer or, uh, pushing the right message or the right marketing campaign at the right moment.
And this is something we're working extensively on in trying to, create better guest experiences to sort of time those messages, time those points where, um, where guests are. The mindset of either buying or, or, or they want something urgently at that time, while it also sort of drives the revenue and win.
Adam Mogelonsky_1: Right. Yeah. The, uh, the anticipating service, but also, of course, the whole idea of upselling and the context of when people are ready to buy and not giving them too much noise because as, as I see it, we're all suffering from digital noise
and you're trying to give signal to
that. Yeah.
Anne Frye: Yeah. I was just gonna mention kind of what you're, you know, mentioning about, you know, when they're ready to buy or what. Hotels are constantly trying to promote things. Right. So, you know, we were, I was talking with the property, a luxury property yesterday and you know, we're talking about, you're trying to get the word out right about, all of these different things that you are creating experiences, right? And so we're, they're trying to get the word out that they ha driving revenue on property from a DJ on the roof or happy hour by the pool. And, um, they're doing, you know, where it was clutter, like you mentioned, out of too much digital overload before it was like, you know, papers in the elevator paper on your check-in.
And so now we're trying to make that more seamless, um, digitally, and then be able to, you know, as, as David mentioned. time out, those messages. That's not overload, but, um, so people are ready to buy, ready to do things on property, spend money while they're there.
And then I a, a big advantage of, you know, using the LLM is the being able to be
multilingual, right?
So where you, especially in luxury properties, you have various
type of property really, but uh, depending on the location,
lots of different language. Barriers for
the staff and then the, the guests that are coming on property that maybe don't understand some of the messaging you're putting out there. Now you have, uh, AI is able to communicate with them their language, which has been.
Dawid Dawod: I think in general it's a really interesting, um, evolution happening where, where, you know, the old model has sort of been timed messages at certain points in time, and I think what LLMs are enabling is that we can start to record events happening in our system for ins I, I'll give you one example.
Like we can record the first time a guest uses the, the mobile key, right? So we know the exact moment they're entering the room for the first time. So what do you do with that information then? What kind of experience do you wanna build? Perhaps, you know, most guests want, want the wifi password when they enter their room, or you know, if they've provided that it's their birthday or they're celebrating something special.
Hotel staff might have prepared something in the mini bar, right? So. You would push that message to, to elevate that experience. So it's all like, it's all about,
you know, identifying those key moments, those key triggers in the system, and then, Uh, putting LLMs on
top of that to deliver messages. Right.
Adam Mogelonsky_1: Right. So just to, just to color what you just said there, which is. Amazing. Right? So you get this long
laundry list of what you need. Somewhere in there is the wifi password. And you're saying that based on the context of the guests saying when is the most likely instance when they want the wifi password, which is right when they, after they enter the room, that's when you can deliver an automated message that gives them exactly what they're looking for based on predictive analysis.
Dawid Dawod: Yeah, and this is, and this is really hard to do. Uh, and, and, uh, we, I think we have a long way ahead, ahead, ahead of us to create that truly, truly seamless experience. But I think the tools and the technology is there now for us to start to craft these experiences, which is, really, really
interesting
Anne Frye: We're also, you know, working with the properties to train the AI on what, you know, anticipating what questions they're gonna ask. So like, instead of maybe bombarding on them with stuff, let's say that we are anticipating they're gonna ask these questions. So, and that can be really as we're setting up, you know, the model with the concierge team on property, right?
So like what kind of questions do you typically get asked? Okay, well, let's put those questions, um, train the start training the AI based on what they're t are typically asking. So when they do say, what's the wifi password? The AI knows the answer, right? So, 'cause there's, you know, we're, we're pulling our responses, you know, based on the hotel website, you know, from going out,
you know, crawling the web, but fenced in.
Um, but some things are just, you know, are
put out there on
the website, right? So we
wanna train the AI based on, are typically looking for, and
then we, we take our analytics
and say, okay, what kind of. What are
the trends that guests are
also
asking? Right? So then we can
look back
and say, you know what you have, you know,
so many guests as we're talking earlier about the towels, asking for more
towels.
Why don't you put four towels in the room instead of
two, and then you'll get that less request.
So, so we're trying to help you, um, AI
to create, you know, or to look at the analytics with the hotel so they can improve their operation to know.
Adam Mogelonsky_1: Yeah,
that
semantic analysis, if 60% of your guests are saying
you need more towels, just add more. And then, then it's a, uh, then it's
a linen replenishment, uh, issue And, not a, uh, actual guest servicing issue.
Anne Frye: Right, right.
Adam Mogelonsky_1: So, Anne, you
previously you?
mentioned,
uh, a luxury hotel, and I'm
wondering how does a digital journey differ for a luxury hotel versus those properties in other categories?
Mm-hmm.
Anne Frye: Yeah, that's a really great question. 'cause we do, you know, our and inspire our niche has really for a long time been the luxury hotel, um, lifestyle independent. Um, with our AI concierge tool, we are working with a lot more midscale and, um, more select service hotels. What we see for the luxury hotels though, is the. As the luxury hotel guest, right? They might, um, expect to go to the front desk, right? And you want your team as the luxury Hotelier to offer this really great service. And so we can configure our, guest journey based on the type of property. So an example I would use is, you know, even this. This ho luxury hotel speaking with in Mexico yesterday, right? They're like, we're gonna have our guests come to the, for the front desk. They have to give their id. We don't want them to go through the full check-in. But you know, but what we always talk to the hotel about is like, hey, let the Travelers are used to checking in more online, right? The ho their airline and um, you know, different. Things along the way. So let's, let's take the administrative piece out of the check-in, right? So like they can enter in their information, their address, their email address. We can write that back down to the PS or the marketing teams. But then that allows, you know, the, we work with the, the front desk, right?
To say, okay, now you can see these people. Completed the pre-arrival have their key ready to go. So when they ar arrive, they've entered in their arrival time. And so like if I've entered in, I'm arriving at three o'clock, I expect to get to the hotel and the them to know that I'm there. Right? So that's a luxury experience, right? He and Fry, we were expecting you, we have your key ready. Let me tell you all about the resort and all the things that are happening. So we see that check-in experience differ from a luxury traveler. Um, you know. We like to say that the technology compliments that guest service, um, rather than replace in that case, you know, when we're saying, okay, as the luxury traveler, you're sitting by the pool.
Yes, you might be at a resort where there's lots of servers walking around, but you know, as soon as there's not and you wanna drink, you want the drink, and then you're like looking around. So we wanna be able to give them the options, right? So we don't have to replace the service that you're giving, but we wanna be able to enhance it and really make it a experience that they're expecting. Even into the tv, right? So people are expecting the luxury experience to feel like home. Yeah. I worked in hotels for a long time and it was like hotels are becoming a lot more like your home. And your home is becoming a lot more like a hotel as always to say. And so when you go into your guest room, you expect to be able to cast and stream and um, and have that kind of residential experience.
So
that is
a luxury, um, touchpoint as well on the tv. So there's lots of different
touch points, uh, along a
luxury stay
that can, you know, differ
from the select service midscale, where maybe it's more about, Hey, we need to really streamline
operations. we have a we work with some hotels that
don't even have a front desk at all and say they wanna automate that whole
experience.
That's a different experience than the luxury hotels. So we look at it more of a
compliment.
Adam Mogelonsky_1: you know, the, the whole thing of
a digital journey. Some hotels have
tablets and then others are
increasingly going towards mobile apps. So I'm wondering, um, you know, for.
Most hotels out there, they may look at it and go,
well, people are
apt out. We don't
need to have an
advanced TV because our guests aren't really staying in the rooms and
tablets is another expense.
how can you convince them to say these things really add value and
can really differentiate your brand to
drive both bookings and uh, loyalty. what would you say to that in terms of driving value?
Anne Frye: No, I was just gonna mention one thing. I'll turn it to you, David, just what you mentioned, Adam, on the tablet perspective. David and I were just talking about this yesterday. I mean, we're seeing a luxury hotels trending back towards tablets where maybe that was not as front of, um, those tech stack.
Uh, you know. It was, and there was it. Now it seems to be coming back because people do wanna disconnect, right? Yeah, I think you hit it on the head there, Adam. It's like, okay, a luxury travel does wanna disconnect, but they still wanna be in their room and be able to maybe order room service. We wanna drive revenue, we wanna be able to control the curtains. We might have a really comfortable bed, but we don't, the only way to control it through the iPad. So I just wanted to mention the piece, but I'll turn it over to David.
Dawid Dawod: Yeah, and, and I just wanted to say that, that, you know, The right touch, point is great for the right, purpose right. So so if we're talking about tablets for instance they're fantastic at controlling room controlling room controls Well if you would do that through Your your personal device you need to connect to, to a network and, and there's all sorts of things that could go wrong there, but while if you have a dedicated tablet to do that, it's, it's, it's very fast and seamless. Same thing with the tv. TVs are great for entertainment and displaying information.
Maybe they shouldn't be used as devices to order food on. And just to build on what Anne said, I think one really, really interesting aspect is that if we're talking about disconnecting, uh, to her point. Is that, you know, you, you wanna disconnect, but from all the boring messages that you might get from, from work or, or from things that you wanna, uh, get away from, right.
But you still wanna be able to message that concierge service and get service while you're there. So, you know, you need to find that balance. And I think that can be done with the right touch points, but, but also with, with the right, um, experiences.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: So, and just to go back to the point you mentioned earlier about how the industry's going towards tablet, then away, and now they're back. And I really love tablets because it, as you said, it gives people a chance to disconnect from their own phone and just sort of have that structured, pleasurable experience.
A tablet, and I'm wondering if you could color that just in terms of what you're seeing in a tablet in terms
of how it encourages, uh, people to really explore a hotel. Uh, and by
explore,
I mean learn about all that's available to the
hotel and also
the potential for upsell.
Anne Frye: Yeah, absolutely. We are, um, installing a really amazing luxury property opening up in Charleston, and it's been a pleasure looking at kind of with them what. They're what they offer to guests, right? So really amazing things on the water and activities. Um, uh, so They can book activities through the tablet.
They can book a course, um, room service, but there's multiple, uh, restaurants and outlets on properties. So information about those, the ability to book cabanas up by the pool, um, and then really take. All of those things that the guest is booking. So driving revenue through the tablet and all those touch points, and then taking those bookings and creating itinerary.
So when the traveler looks at the tablet, they say, okay, great. I have reservations at the
dinner tonight at six. I'm in the morning, I'm going to the spa at eight 30. I'm
going on a,
a boat ride at noon. So you are able
to really, uh, communicate what the guest is gonna be doing. But we're also seeing more and more, you know, properties that are looking at, um, things in the room, right?
So we would have these amazing bed types. You know, I stayed at a property that had some, you know, ability to have controls in the rooms. They had a, something with the bed, but it was a different, you had to go to a. Uh, phone to, to control the bed, you had to go to something else to control the lights, and it was a disjointed experience and they wanted to bring all these amazing touch points in the room in including the mini bar and selling things through the mini bar and, um, wellness things that they are selling, but all that in one experience.
So the tablet really allows the guest to control the room, kind of as David mentioned, but really as you mentioned, Adam create, revenue opportunities across property for experiences.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: Yeah, that's very interesting about bringing the mini bar into the room there. Uh, just to know, because I know a lot of people don't even wanna open the
mini bar simply because it's, you know, stocked with whatever. But that, could allow you to give another
touch point to say, listen, it's not just Coca-Cola and Pepsi in there.
It's, you know,
where we've have this local vendor that we have this bespoke Kohler or something like that for you to try and highlight that.
Anne Frye: Yeah. You know, I spoke to a property the other day who was looking for something really cool. I just wanna piggyback on that, Adam. They were, they wanted a, a bespoke cocktail program, right? So where, um, they would have sort of ai, you
know, they would come up with the cocktails, um, and then AI would help kind of. Guide the traveler into what the cocktail program was gonna be, and then that was a bespoke experience that the in-room dining could bring up versus just like you mentioned, all this random sta, you know, standard things are in there, but it's not personalized to what me as the traveler wants. So it does
create a neat touch point.
Dawid Dawod: We're talking a lot about digital touchpoint, but I think, I think in the hotel industry, which is, this is my, my
basically my, my first time working in it. It's so interesting to look at touch points because a mini bar is also a
touchpoint. It could also be a branded experience, right? And, I'm really passionate about how you
bring, you know, tech into branded experiences, hence why we're doing all of this.
So
it's a really interesting topic.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: Well, I, find it super interesting because what we're essentially talking about is giving hoteliers tools to automate a lot of the mechanics, to then enable the hoteliers to be more creative with the experiences that they're offering and. And then, and then invite guests to partake in these experiences.
Um, so Anna, I'm wondering, You mentioned The word
itinerary
earlier. Um, what does Inspire have
in terms of a itinerary planner for the guest? Could you color that, that feature a little bit more? Because this is a huge way to really enrich experiences.
Anne Frye: Yeah, exactly. So what we do is, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about how we're integrated, right? So InnSpire is, uh, you know, this seamless touchpoint tablet, tv, or phone, right? Mobile device. But, um, it's a seamless experience. But on the backend, there's a lot of integrations that bring these experiences to life, right?
Hotels are using a lot of different
platforms. So then.
You know, when we're talking about itinerary, the itinerary builder is pulling from the
integrations across, right? So I might have booked my dinner reservation through seven rooms. I've booked my,
um,
activity through real-time
reservations or way, and then I've booked my, um, spa for book for
time.
But we're pulling that all
into one spot.
So, 'cause the. traveler doesn't know all those things. They're just looking at one
spot. They're booking
these
things. So we pull those in from the various, um, integrations and deliver that seamlessly through
either, you know, that tablet or.
phone
Adam Mogelonsky_2: yeah, You know, the analogy that is so often said is that the average person doesn't know how a car works, but they
still know how to
get to point from from point A to point B, and they know how to drive a car. So essentially that's what you're doing, is you're
bringing everything together. you
allow the guest to have that clarity on their whole day, and then.
They know exactly where they need to be for
that great experience.
Anne, when bringing all these together, all these touch points, you know, you mentioned, uh, seven rooms for dining book, for time, for spa, way for activities, bringing it all to one in this, all in one platform. And really this is a big trend in hotel tech where
you're taking single
endpoint
solutions and really going towards an all in one platform.
I'm wondering, could you just
color, uh, what are the
inherent advantages of going for all in one versus best in breed endpoint?
Anne Frye: Yeah, and you know, we, we talk about this a lot, you know, that we don't want to. Recreate the wheel in some spots, you know? So there are a lot of great systems that, um, that the travel government, sorry, that the hotel uses, right? So be it a POS, you know, guest ticketing, we talked about those, but we want to, integrate those so it is seamless for the guest and we do all of our own integrations. But we do also get a lot of conversations about dashboard fatigue, right? That there are, I was at a conference last year where a GM in New York City spoke about her front desk and that they had, she had pulled her front desk and they said they used the front desk alone, used 21 different systems, right?
So that's a lot. And so we're trying to. Combine those into an ecosystem to make it easier for, okay, this is the same place that you're gonna go in and message the guests. You're gonna upload your promotions and this is a project, I'll turn it to David to talk more about, but you know, one stop for the backend to streamline the operations, is really important.
So I'll turn that over to David
Dawid Dawod: yeah, and that's, that's the beauty of InnSpire One, right? So we're pulling all of this information from these different sources, but it's also, it also gives you a snapshot to. What the guests are doing, how they're interacting with all the different touch points, you know, what is converting, what is not converting, where can we improve, um, how many digital keys are issued, et cetera.
So, so we really trying to give that operational efficiency to the hotel ears that ultimately use the system right.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: Uh, yeah. Dawid, uh,
at the
of InnSpire one,
I'm wondering if you could just,
uh, take a step back And, tell us what is this platform and what data sources
is it bringing together, and
who is it for in terms of the end user?
Dawid Dawod: So if we're, if we're thinking about, about it as, you know, we have the touch points And, that's the guest layer, right? And, uh, those are the layers
that we're building and distributing to guests and, and working with. So all the information that that comes from how the guests are interacting are landing into Inspire one.
So Inspire one is your, uh, well as, as we've been talking about here, your guest experience system, right? But it's, it also serves as your, um, CMS where you can update those touch points. You can upload new information, but it also actually serves as your messaging platform, right? So we're trying to encompass all of this into, into one system where.
You as a Hotelier you get a clear overview of your operations and of your touch points, so you understand, okay, what messages are coming in? What do I need to answer to? How do I build my campaigns? How do I design my pages inside of the, either the native app or across the guest journey, or the messages that go out, go out to the guests?
So it's that. It's that control tower for your full hotel operations, essentially.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: Control tower. Very cool. And Yeah. I like that. Uh, so what, what else, uh, does Inspire do? Could you talk about some of the other features or, uh, tools that you'd wanna mention?
Dawid Dawod: Yeah. Uh, as a matter of fact, we're, we're launching a new product right now and we're doing a pilot, uh, here in New York, hence why I'm in New York, and we call it the, the digital guest journey. so if you think about the world as it was, you know, say five years ago, everyone was talking about apps and native apps, et cetera. What, and, and this also comes back to what m have, have enabled, right? We were talking about text messaging and. Uh, the right moment when the guest interacts with the system. Well, this is what the digital guest journey is, so it's a, it's a text-based guest experience where, you know, most of the stuff that, that the guests do happen through text, right?
You get reminded to check in. You can't really check in through text, right? So it delivers the right user interface for you to do that check in. So providing your credit card details, doing the ID verification. We do like a biometric scan of your face where we compare, uh, these things to verify you as a guest.
So that needs to hand happen on a user interface level. So you're texting, you get user interfaces when you need them. We issue the key when you need it. After you've done your check-in, we provide the room to you. You know, when, as I talked to you earlier, uh, when you enter the room, we know that for the first time we can trigger a personalized message.
So it's a text-based experience, but with, UI elements that serve as, as you know, for those experiences.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: Cool. and we started the conversation, we mentioned the term AI and LLMs. I'm wondering if we could revert back to that because it is all the rage here, but there are so many ways that. These tools can improve operations. And one interesting thought here just to frame this for listeners as well as to frame what tools, uh, you can mention here, is liberating human teams so that way the humans can have a really fun time on site helping guests out.
Talking with them, doing the running around. And then, uh, AI is there to help out, uh, alongside any other
automated tools. So therein, I'm
wondering what does Inspire offer with that as our North Star? And, uh, what
else are you seeing in the market that really
intrigues you? Dawid, if you wanna start off.
Dawid Dawod: Sure.
So look, Adam, so when, when we're looking at our operations, what. What, what we see now in, in, um, our AI concierge service is that I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, but 75% of all queries that come into the hotels are answered on the fly by the ai, which is what LLMs have enabled. And I think this is just the first step in, in what the development will be when we go into agents in the, future now this is bit farfetched, but when we go into agents that can handle, you know.
Buying things for the guests, or ordering things for the guests, or booking for the guests. That's really when we, I think we will see, the huge untapped potential that this has in, in both alleviating, you know, operations on site, but also providing a much better guest experience.
Anne Frye: And just to piggyback on that a little bit, as you mentioned, uh, as we talked about earlier, the task management, right? So I think. Where, you know, AI understanding tasks is really saving the front desk time, right? As you mentioned, Adam, this is. to freeing up the guest service agents right now, what we're calling front desk, that's what you want them to do is give guest service.
And how many times have you been to a hotel and they're on the phone and they're ta you know, Hey, we wanna do, you know, we're taking calls and taking, you know, information instead of talking to the guests. So we wanna take all that, you know, administrative, you know. Tasks and try to take those off their plate. Um, we're tracking, you know, time that we're saving them. Um, and then we're, you know, working with the properties to say, okay, you know. Maybe on Sundays we're saving you this much time. Can we look at that as labor hour savings? You know, as labor market is increasing and wages are increasing and Labor is decreasing, wage is increasing. Right? The, the hotels can be pressed and so we want to, you know, really give the hotels that chance to have their team talking to the, the guest, We all know that the hotel industry in general can be. Kind of behind on technology and what we're seeing, especially the coming into 2026, I think, you know, if you're not trying to implement AI in some capacity, you're sort of behind. And so now we're seeing people that are like, oh my gosh, you know, where the, the, what we talked about before of like a, a luxury hotel, you're saying we don't wanna use technology. Um, because our guests are so high touch, right? And so now it's like they're high touch, but how do we help our high touch team actually have that interaction and use technology to help them? I think there's been a big shift. I mean, we really felt like it was a, the last couple years, like, you know, how do we, may we can't decide if we should use technology to now, like we should have been using it. How how do we use it correctly and what's the best path forward? We've seen that as a big shift.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: Yeah, it, it is a big shift, but therein, uh, to go back to that North Star, it's all about picking off ways that we can automate, uh, tasks one by one to then free up the teams. Um, who, uh, as we all know, labor is a huge cost, but also in huge shortage right now. So, uh, I see these tools as helping inspire. Huh? The next generation. you just got it. Yeah. Inspiring the next generation of hoteliers to come back to the industry and saying like, look, um, you know, with all these automated tools, you can have a lot of fun just walking around a hotel and helping guests out and not have to do all this clerical work that, you aren't really, really intrigued by doing.
on that front, I'm wondering, uh,
you mentioned
labor savings. Could you color that just with a numerical value,
just to give hotels a picture in their mind of how much they're actually saving.
Anne Frye: I mean, we, we were, we typically, you know. Kind of based on hotels
but what we are typically saying is each one of those tasks is a saving about a two minute call to the front desk, right? So if I say, you know, it's gonna, I'm gonna call down to the front desk, I'm gonna ask for these things to the ho, the front office agent, guest agent's on the phone for about two minutes. And so then we can say, okay, then we look at the number of tasks that we're creating. Through the system. And we have a property, for instance, that we track 48 hours, right in a month. So then now where we're looking to drill down more is how does that. You know, 'cause we can see that, those hours per day and see how does that translate to a shift now?
Right now? Is it actually like, you know, are we saying, oh, we're gonna be able to eliminate a position? I mean, many times, you know, there's one or two people that are needed to be there, but we we're doing is saying we're saving these hours and just saying exactly what we said earlier, Adam, to free them up to do other things.
So instead of, you know, the other guests standing around waiting for them to finish up. On those two minutes, they're able to interact with them and provide a better overall guest experience. So we're showing our saved, typically based on that, two minutes and then what David mentioned that about, we do average 75% of the messages, um, that are coming in.
And, and you know, we talked a little bit earlier about guest expectations and, you know, guests are expecting to get. Instantaneous responses. Right When, you know, when I was at a hotel once I, not one of our hotels, but I went to text and it said, you'll get a message. Expect five minutes. And then that's a long time.
I was like, first of all, five minutes is a long time. Second of all, they ne it never responded, but um ours is responding very quickly and answering 75% of those messages. And when you, you know, we have a great quote from one of our partners, it said that is, that alone is allowing our guests to provide these great services because great, great guest service.
'cause a lot of the questions are the similar, like we talked about earlier, what time is checkout? You know, where is the closest place to get breakfast? I mean, it's typically those questions are. Pretty repetitive. And if AI is responding to those, that's freeing up somebody from looking at a dashboard and answering these manually.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: Yeah. So, uh, let's look broader a little bit here. 'cause we've covered off a lot about what A GMS can do and, uh, offered some great, great points to, for hoteliers to really get creative. Um. Of course we're adapting technology to what the larger trends are. So, uh, therein I'm wondering if either you or both could chime into what
hotel,
hotel
trends you're seeing,
uh, whether they be design or activities, operations, and then how is helping in, uh, how is
inspire helping hotels address these upcoming trends?
Anne Frye: I can take that and then I'll give it to David. But you know, think about this. Lot. Right? What are the trends? and you know, it's like
as, as technology has been quickly, um, trending, right, for hotels to adopt, there's still this major human element, right? So, so then we're almost saying already so quickly, a little bit of a backlash.
Well, the human element. The human element. So we really are focused on using technology to make that experience feel personal. You know, so how do we personalize that? Stay you, we talked about, guest data and, you know, we don't store data or have data, but how do we get touch points from their, the CRM that the hotel's using the PMS to really make that a personalized experience?
I mean, that is what guests are looking for. You know, they don't, you know, nobody wants to have stayed at a hotel. Many times. Many times and get there and say, have you stayed here before? I mean, that just happened to me when I went the other day. I, I've stayed here like 50 times, you know, so, you know, how do we recognize these guests?
Um, and then, you know, recognize the, the things that they like to do, whether they're on property, um, but really precisely stay to the touchpoint. I'll, I'll pass that over to David.
Dawid Dawod: Yeah.
And what I touched on with with personal this day for guests, I think I'm seeing a huge trend in also creating. The branded experiences for these digital touchpoint. So nobody wants to use a white label experience that looks like every other experience, right? You wanna be able to influence the AI's tone of voice.
You wanna be able to, if there's a user interface that the, that the guests are interacting with, you want them to be branded with the hotels, you know, profile with the tone of voice. It, it should, all, the whole digital guest journey should feel like an end to end. Extension of your branded experience on site, right?
So, so that is something we're working very hard with to, to be able to, to both, you know, enable that, but also do it at scale, right? So, so that it's very easy to ship, you know, a, a white labeled experience, one size fits all, but how do you tweak that at scale when you're working with, you know, thousands of hotels that have different tone of voice, a different, uh, graphic profile. A different branded experience, right? So, so that is very intriguing.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: you know, to close out here. I'm wondering if there's anything else that either you wanna mention that we haven't
covered, and,
uh, any other things that really excite you about
the hospitality industry.
Anne Frye: Well, I can, uh, one thing just to touch on the one on the TV side. We're excited to see this experience be a more cohesive with a Google cast embedded in the TVs and airplay. So that's something that we've launched that we're excited about as well. I think for me, from a personal perspective, exciting about the hospitality industry, you know, as an industry I personally worked in for 25 years.
Right. And I, so I understand what, um, happens at the different departments and different, uh, levels of positions within the hotel. And I, on a personal level, love working for a company where I feel like we're supporting those team members and I'm able to work with them in this new way, right. Of like. Providing, as you mentioned earlier, Adam, like how do we make their, um, job a little more seamless and easy to streamline their operations that they can most people get in hotels because they're people people, right? And they wanna talk, they wanna give good service, they wanna deliver, you know, amazing experiences.
And so I think that's what we're teed up to help them with.
Dawid Dawod: and from my side, I think, uh, I've never worked in the hospitality industry. To this job, right? So I come, I come from actually industrial design where I worked with a lot of hardware, but for me, it's so intriguing with the hospitality industry where. Ho hotels are basically storytellers, right?
You create these stories, you create these experiences, and everyone is different from the other one. And, and it's just so fascinating to work with hotels, to, to empower them to tell these stories in a better way. Like a certain hotel is all about disconnection. Another one might, might wanna attract, you know, biohackers that are used to.
Uh, measuring everything around their health, and it's just so interesting to see these branded experiences and also help hotels to, to increase that brand messaging, right.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: Yeah. I mean that's, uh, I, as A, biohacker myself, um, you know, I love to track, but also just
know that a hotel
is actually looking out for me in terms of I, having identifying who I am and understanding that your breakfast offer is meaningless for me because I'm intermittent fasting, right?
Dawid Dawod: Yeah.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: You know, let's master the basis.
Dawid Dawod: A, a fully protein loaded breakfast and.
Adam Mogelonsky_2: yeah. yeah. You know? Yes. The whole idea of integrating the smart Bed, as you said earlier, bringing that all into one platform so I can program that easily to say like, listen, I want my betting microenvironment to be 19 degrees Celsius instead of 21. Something as simple as that, but making that as effortless as possible by bringing it all into one centralized platform, that would be incredible to see.
Well, Anne and.
uh, Dawid, Thank you, so much. It's been a delightful, uh, conversation to really learn about, uh, where things are and where they're going for the digital guest journey. Thank you both so much.
Anne Frye: Thank you, Adam.
Dawid Dawod: Thanks.