The Modern Hotelier #119: Hotel Tech Challenges and Opportunities | with Jeff Kessinger
===

Steve Carran: Welcome to another episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are coming to you from the trade show floor at the Hospitality Show. We are joined by Jeff Kessinger from Jonas Hospitality. Jeff, how are you doing today?

Jeff Kessinger: Good, how's the show going so far?

Steve Carran: It's great.

Jeff Kessinger: It's not quite as busy from a prospect standpoint, but all the bells and whistles and tools are in place to have it be successful as it—great networking, great connections with the other vendors. Been good.

Steve Carran: Great.

David Millili: So tell us, how did you get involved in hotel technology?

Jeff Kessinger: Gosh, as far back as I can remember working, I was in hospitality when I went to school. I was looking for a job. I was a young guy. I started off as a night audit, night auditor, and a bellman on the night shift, and then started working operationally within the hotel while I was in school. Got out of that, moved to Chicago right during the downturn of the financial market, which was what I was majoring in, so that didn't provide a lot of job opportunities. I ended up hooking up with a hotel group, Stouffer Hotels, way back in the day.

That's a flashback, right? Went through their training program and then, you know, worked in operations for many years and realized that I would rather work for companies working with those hotels than working in the hotels. Because that's a lot of work and it's a lot of grind. So I segued into the technology sector. I was in training for a little while, then ended up in management, and then into sales. And in sales, I've been in sales for the last 20 years.

David Millili: Wow, 20 years. Wow, awesome. So 2024 is coming to an end. You know, 2025 is approaching. What do you think are going to be some of the largest challenges facing hoteliers over the next three to five years?

Jeff Kessinger: Yeah, I mean, probably nothing different than what they are today, which is labor shortages. Labor shortages are a killer right now. Cost of labor, cost of operations are making things very difficult. And I think there's so much technology—look around this room, I mean, there's so much technology and so many different specialized nuances of technology. It’s too much. It's too much to absorb, there's too much to do.

Honestly, I think disparate systems that are trying to work together, but don't necessarily work together, are making operators' jobs challenging. Just finding the technology is a challenge. And then not having those integrated—not having a one-stop view of who that guest is that you're trying to service—are pieces that, when you have all these disparate systems, you really don't have much of an opportunity to consolidate. And I think that is a definite challenge everyone's trying to fix right now, which we think we're doing.

David Millili: Yeah, you guys do a great job. What do you think some of the advantages and disadvantages are of having an all-in-one technology?

Jeff Kessinger: Another good question. I think disadvantages are the obvious, right? A mile wide and an inch deep, right? The development resources, when you are an all-in-one shop where you're trying to build it from the single platform, really create a situation where your developers may not know the depth of the product that you're trying to build to compete with the bolt-ons, or there's no funding, right? Or you don't have the development dollars to really put the energy into what you need to grow to make the system work across the board.

The advantage of having an all-in-one is that you got one throat to choke. That's the obvious one. But then you also are in a situation where you have connectivity between the systems that are all within the one platform. So I think there’s some good and bad, but I think the real challenge is: Can you do what you need to do? Are you getting the data that you need to get to be able to service the guests in a way that they are demanding? Because they are a very different traveller than they were even ten years ago, you know?

Steve Carran: One thing you mentioned is there are a lot of technology companies here. It seems like companies are popping up every day. Between that and the economic trends, how do you see guest expectations evolving?

Jeff Kessinger: I mean, just the advent of the phone and technology in general has made responsiveness and an understanding of what they know they can get... The complexities of travel are no longer complex. It's like, I know what I want, I know where I want to go, I know what they do, you know, as a vendor or as a hotelier that's trying to establish themselves as a brand. So they're more sophisticated, and because of that, they require a lot—they expect a lot from the suppliers and the hoteliers.

If you don't have the tools to deal with that or to exceed what they're expecting you to do, you're really going to be in a jeopardy situation, and you're never going to meet what the expectations are. So, I think their expectations are very high, and you need to have the tools in place to support that.

David Millili: That’s great. So how can hoteliers help increase guest loyalty and guest loyalty program enrolment?

Jeff Kessinger: You do need to have a tech stack, you know. I know this is an industry conversation, not necessarily a Jonas conversation, but in our world, we specialise in the idea of bringing businesses on. We acquire—that’s what we do. We acquire, we grow, and then we develop when we need to develop.

But, we tried to put a technology stack together. That was very, well, it is very specific to hospitality and it is very diverse in what segment of the hospitality it actually supports. With that, we created, um, our unified platform, which is what you need to be able to expand the loyalty environment of your, and, um, really to answer your question is, you need to have a tech stack in place, you need to have integration in place, and then you need to have visibility to what that information provides you.

And if you don't have that, you're not going to be able to do anything with loyalty, and then you certainly aren't going to be able to capitalize on that loyalty, on what the guest is expecting of you. You can't exceed it if you don't even know who they are.

And most PMS's and most solutions out there, they support one element of it, right? I can get the data, I can hold the data, but then what do I do with that data? So how can you have a loyalty program if you don't really have the tools around it and really understand who that guest is?

David Millili: Absolutely.

Steve Carran: One thing that we talk about on our podcast a lot is how hotels are losing money to OTAs. You know, what are some opportunities for hotels to captivate direct bookings that some hoteliers might not be taking advantage of?

Jeff Kessinger: Well, knowing who your guests are, that's key. Um, having a GMS or a guest management solution in place so that you can communicate with them, you know, before, during, and after, and then capitalize on that data you get to communicate again after they've left to help build that brand loyalty.

Doing that, obviously, the booking engine, you know, is part of that guest management because if they don't know, they can go directly to the site to do the booking to save the cost of the OTAs. That's your first mistake, right? And then if you have that direct booking engine, you need to get them to that, right? And how do you get them to that booking engine is by creating a loyalty program that communicates so they can say, "Hey, you know, come stay with us. We'll save you 10 percent that you're, that we're giving away to the OTAs anyway."

Price guarantees, direct bookings, and then having dynamic, um, web content on those booking engines. The ancillary revenue is a critical piece that a lot of folks hoteliers want to do, but don't know how to do, because they don't have the hooks in place to be able to support the pushing of that ancillary revenue, and the direct engine is the source that allows that to happen.

A lot of the CRS providers that, you know, obviously integrate with the PMS's, they have certainly ancillary revenue tools within it, but you're gonna then pay again, so. You know, um, knowing your guests, and creating the loyalty is how you're going to get them to a direct booking environment. And the booking engine needs to be dynamic and attractive.

You know, and a lot of them that are out there that are not direct, that are not controlled by you, the development of that, you really get what you get. And it's, you know, they all look, there might be some folks out there that say, "No, that's not true, Jeff. We do things differently than the next CRS provider." But the reality is that they all kind of function and flow the same way, and you have no control over that. You just can piecemeal the content and the imagery, but if you have a direct booking engine that you can actually build and scope to the way you operate as a hotelier, you can change that quite a bit.

David Millili: So one of the biggest topics we always talk about is the guest experience. And it seems like everyone we talk to wants to talk about, you know, what guests are expecting. So how can hotels do a better job of leveraging technology to improve the guest experience?

Jeff Kessinger: Yeah, I think that's our secret sauce. Um, when we talk about that because we have this, we have this, uh, flyer that we often give to people and it's like the family circus.

You know, if you remember that cartoon way back in the day where you had little bubbles and then you got little Jeffrey going from one part of the house to the yard to where the dog house is, you know, and it's like you see the journey of the dog and Jeffrey, right? But in our world, for it to be successful, for that to become valuable to you, you gotta know what that guest journey is, and you gotta follow it from the very first communication all the way through to the exit and then the rebooking.

And if you don't know, again, we go back to the, who is your guest and what do you actually know about them, right? And with all these disparate systems that are in play today, how is it possible that I can know what's in that PMS and what's in that sales and catering, what's in the spa solution and what's in the CDP or the CRM?

How do you know if they're not connected and they're not communicating? And then how do you build the loyalty with these guests if you can't manage that flow from that inception call all the way through and deliver exceptional service?

So in our world where we take our unified platform, which is our CDP, and we have our own solutions that are part of our native, that are native to our world.

That, um, are obviously morally tightly integrated with our CDP, which is data, which we can use to create that loyalty and keep them coming back. But then we also connect to disparate systems. You know, like let's say you're a hotelier that has multiple hotels and some of them may be flags that have a requirement to use a certain PMS. And maybe they've got some luxury independent hotels that, um, they have more flexibility in what they do with their technology. But you're the hotelier. Why am I forced to have to focus on two systems and get data out of this one and get data out of that one? And then try to do something with that data.

So we make it very usable. The data is very usable and it is, um, real-time seamless. And then again, from a journey standpoint, going back to the family circus, um, being able to control that flow of that guest all the way through the booking to the, um, the ancillary revenue that you're pushing because you know so much about them that you only collect because all these systems are filtering up for you.

To manage the booking process, so like, take PMS A that is not your PMS. Like we have PMSs we connect to that don't belong to us, but that data is that data in that PMS. We can get that data, and then we still can book, even though that PMS has a whole booking process in their own reservation process. We can support that within our CDP, so we can actually do frontline bookings for all these disparate systems and then manage that reservation, manage that guest, and then the guests can do that too.

And the guests can add value by, you know, ancillary booking opportunities, um. Um, so, uh, you gotta know the guests and you gotta have the tools to be able to extract and then do something with.

David Millili: That's great. 100%.

Steve Carran: Jeff, for those that might not be familiar with Jonas Hospitality, can you give us an overview of what you all do?

Jeff Kessinger: Yeah, sure. So we're a tech, we're a tech company, right? And we, it's really interesting because that question is multifold. So we've got Jonas Hospitality, which is a grouping of technology companies that are best at what they do within the hospitality space. Tightly integrated, a core component, um, of our solution.

And within Jonas Hospitality, we are, uh, really a, a division within Jonas Software, which is software across all vertical platforms that maybe hospitality may not be, but they are still part of our ecosystem, right. And we leverage them—the best of breed. We leverage their skills, what they know, what their best practices are.

Um, all of these companies within that Jonas world share those practices, and our intent as a company is not to buy and sell or buy and dismantle or kill something so we can take the customer base. Our role, or our desire as a company, is to acquire, um, acquire an under, uh, an undervalued and over-performing company so that we get the most value out of it. Because ideally, you don't want to have to develop, you want to be able to grow something that's already established. And it's faster, and then you have more control, and then you have the expertise within that silo of what they do really well. And that best practice can flow over to the next company.

But, at the end of the day, it's a large grouping. Jonas Software is a grouping of 150 companies. And then, within the Jonas Software world, we're, um, that's a, um, a component of Constellation Software, which is a global company that has, you know, um, uh, a very good performance—a public company that has a very good performance that outperforms most funds. Um, um, but then it gives us, you know, a solid financial base to be able to continue to grow and establish.

And I think what Jonas does exceptionally well is they, they know how to pick out the right technology that supports the industry that they want to grow within. And in the hospitality world, you know, I love the fact that I'm within Jonas Hospitality because I can go, you know, I can work here, I can go, you know, nine different ways within the same company, or I can even go outside of the industry and go into another vertical industry within Jonas.

So it's almost like you've got a world of opportunity professionally, but you have, um, a world of opportunity that's a solution for everybody. So it's like you don't have to leave. You come here and you're, you've got a path for the rest of your life if you want to do that. So it's a, it's a great.

Steve Carran: Like its own little universe.

Jeff Kessinger: Yeah, and a little, a little, um, nugget, I have only been with the company nine months. So, um, so yeah, so, um, you know, I've been around. I have a lot of hospitality experience and a lot of industry experience with different providers. Um, I think, you know, we worked for the same company at one point, another company, um, and, uh, pleasantly surprised at the complexity that we have, that we've created, that we, you know, and all of our solutions are not the same either, you know. And I guess, getting back to who are we, we support so many different elements within hospitality, but not all of them are equal.

Some of them do things better than others, but at the end of the day, they all do something very well, and then they all roll up and create an ecosystem that is, um, getting a lot of traction.

David Millili: That's great. Well, this was great learning more about Jonas Hospitality. Thanks for inviting us. Can you tell those—no, yeah, we loved having you. Can you let folks know how they could either get in touch with you, get in touch with Jonas Hospitality? What's the best way for people to do that?

Jeff Kessinger: Go. Jay Kessinger at jonashospitality.com.

Steve Carran: Perfect. Well, this was great, Jeff. Thank you for joining us. This has been another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Jeff Kessinger, VP of Sales at Jonas Hospitality. Thanks for letting us stop by, and if you're watching or listening, have a great day.