The Modern Hotelier #249: A Life of Hospitality in Resorts & Technology | Ashley NeQuent
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David Millili: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier, you the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Don't forget to follow, like, subscribe, and let us know in the comments what you think about today's episode. Steve, who do we have on the program today?
Steve Carran: Yeah, David, buckle up. It's gonna be a good one. Today we have on Ashley NeQuent, the Director of Product Strategy at Jonas Hospitality. Thanks for joining us, Ashley. How are you doing today? 
Ashley NeQuent: I'm great. Thanks for having me here today. 
David Millili: All right, so we're gonna get started. So we're gonna go through a real quick lightning round. We're gonna get to know you a little bit better, learn about your career, and then dive into some industry topics. Sound good? 
Ashley NeQuent: Sounds great. 
David Millili: All right. So what did you want to be when you were growing up? 
Ashley NeQuent: Two things. I wanted to be a historian and an interior designer. 
David Millili: Ooh, okay. 
Ashley NeQuent: Yeah. 
David Millili: What's something that you wish you were better at?
Ashley NeQuent: Celebrating my wins. 
David Millili: Oh, that's a good one. What's a luxury you can't live without? 
Ashley NeQuent: Quiet Saturday mornings. 
David Millili: Okay. Who's a person dead or alive you'd like to take to lunch? 
Ashley NeQuent: Teddy Roosevelt. He did a lot of great things that are actually near and dear to my heart. So yeah, he's a good one for me. 
David Millili: Okay. If you could have a superpower, what would that superpower be?
Ashley NeQuent: I think the ability to mind read, especially to clients to make sure I'm, we're doing what they want us to be doing that'd be my first choice. 
David Millili: All right. And last one, what's something that's on your bucket list? 
Ashley NeQuent: A lot more travel this year and moving forward used to travel a lot for work. Not so much anymore, but time to do some things that are more for my family.
Steve Carran: Well said. You're quick on the gun today, Ashley. I love to see it. So now, now we're gonna go through your personal background a little bit more about what makes you tick. So you grew up in Old Forge, New York, is that correct? 
Ashley NeQuent: Yeah, that's right. Yep. It's the key to the Adirondack Park. So yeah, I've grown up there. We moved there when I was 11. 
Steve Carran: Awesome. How did growing up in Old Forge really shape you into who you are today? 
Ashley NeQuent: When I was growing up, I was, you know, kind of an introverted kid, but definitely like a, a go-getter. I wanted to do well in school and behave well and all those kinds of things. And when my parents gave us the opportunity to move to the middle of nowhere in the woods in the Adirondack Mountains, my dad said to me, Ashley, would you like to be the most fashionable girl in school?
And I said, yes. And what he meant by that was. This K through 12. Our school was 300 kids, all public, 50 mile radius of kids that we were getting from. I graduated with 26 kids in in my graduating class, so really tiny. But what that allowed me to do, number one, is to have a sense of place in this beautiful area that not a lot of people get to explore.
And number two, I had an amazing group of teachers and friends and a whole community who was really rooting for me. So that helped me to excel into, you know, hospitality tourism is a huge part of the Adirondacks, really, you know, it, your choices for living there are, you're in logging. You are in tourism or you have some sort of a business that supports both of those things.
So, you know, it just paved the way for me to be in the hospitality industry. So, yeah, it, it, it really, I think if we had not moved there when I was a kid, I would not be sitting and chatting with you all today. 
Steve Carran: Somebody twisted your arm to get outta logging and go into hospitality, huh? 
Ashley NeQuent: Yeah. That wasn't gonna happen, I don't think putting me on a ski steer is a good idea. So yeah. This is a good path. 
David Millili: So along those lines, you went to Paul Smith's college, you got your degree in hotel resort and tourism management. So you touched on it, but what really kind of was that thing that drove you to go into tourism and not logging?
Ashley NeQuent: So I started as a kid, 14 years old, working at a campground. So it's a family owned and operated campground that's attached to a very large waterpark right there in Old Forge, started there really at 13 babysitting. Everyone's kids so that they could go to work and then went into the front desk and reservations and things like hat happened because everybody worked right in high school. Everybody's families owned a business or they were working somewhere, and my parents did the same thing. They said, you know, you're not gonna just sit at home all summer long. Go to work. So I did, and I was lucky because I had some very influential female mentors that molded me there.
So I had a wonderful general manager that. Like really showed me the ropes and took me under her wing. She owned a separate, camp herself, right? Like a kind of a cottage colony. So if there was overflow or we overbooked or something, she always had something in her back pocket, in her own spot. So she kind of, you know, always had an opportunity to smooth something over and I really, I really listened to her and there were other leaders there as well. 
So again, from 13 or 14 to 20 years old, I worked there 40 hours a week every summer and into the fall. So when we started talking, my parents and I about. School, going to school. My dad told me, okay, you're going to either go to community college to figure out what you wanna do in life, join the military to essentially go to college free after the fact. Or you're going to a four year institution and you're going to declare your major early and you are going for four years, period. Right. We're not on the five year plan. And really, you know, for me I thought, gosh, what do I wanna do? And of course I wanted to go to FIT in Manhattan and do the interior design thing.
And my parents were like, you're gonna go from teeny tiny. Adirondack town where literally you can't do anything wrong 'cause everybody knows who you are to middle of Manhattan. That's not a good adjustment. And so we really got talking about it and said, you know what? I do like this world of guest relations and lodging management and inventory. And I was good at it.
And again, with the leadership that supported me, I said, you know what, hospitality might be something interesting. So then we started touring schools, mostly New York State, some in Vermont, and when we got down to it, Paul Smith's to me, felt like home. It's the only four year institution in the Adirondack Park. It's highly accredited. At one point we owned our own hotel. So when you were a hospitality major, you drove into Saranac like New York and you worked at the hotel. So, for me that gave me a lot of opportunity to have the same kind of feeling I had in high school, but in the college setting.
And I mean, it was great fun too. And again, the premise of that property, it was owned by one of the first Adirondack Guides in the Adirondack Park. Wow. And he married into a hotel your family in New York City. So the property itself in the twenties was a lodging facility. Guiding facility casino where people from New York City would take the trains that were built by the Vanderbilt up to the Adirondack Park, and they would stay there for the full summer.
The whole thing burned down in the early thirties, I think, and then in 1946, they decided to open it at. Back up as a place of higher education and the first graduating class was soldiers from the GI Bill. They all went into our Boreal culture. So yeah, it's pretty cool because the majors, they've kept right along with the whole use case for that property. But again, it felt like home to me. I knew a bunch of people from there. I got along with the professors really easily. So it was a natural transition for me and really loved it. So that's your long-winded answer for. Why I am who I am. I kind of got suckered into it. 
Steve Carran: No good story. Yeah. That's great. That's great. And not only you got in hospitality, but you traveled quite extensively. Where do you have like a secret place that kind of blew your mind away or if not a favorite place that you've gone? 
Ashley NeQuent: Ooh, that's a good question. I've traveled to almost every state. Hong Kong for sure, 'cause it's so different from where I'm from and the people are kind and wonderful. I've stayed there for about a month in 2015. So that, and you know, that's a place that I would love to get back to someday. 
Steve Carran: Do you have a favorite state that you've been to since you've been to almost most of them. That's one of my bucket lists. So like, there's a couple states that really blew me away when I went to them. Did you have any of those? 
Ashley NeQuent: Definitely Kauai, Hawaii, Kauai for a while. I love Western North Carolina, 
Steve Carran: Yes.
Ashley NeQuent: To total separate ends of the spectrum, but, you know, love Western North Carolina as well. I spent some time there too. So I think those would be the two. Kauai specifically for it's nature. I mean, Jurassic Park was filmed there, right? So, just the flora and the fauna and again, people are wonderful and the food is wonderful too. 
Steve Carran: Twisted my arm. I'll put it on my bucket list. 
Ashley NeQuent: Yeah. 
Steve Carran: Well that was great. So now we'll dive into your career a little bit more. How you got to come to Jonas. So you started your career at the front desk at Old Forge Camping Resort, like you mentioned, and the guest service agent at the Whiteface Lodge, what did those early days teach you that you kind of still take with you, even though you're on the tech side?
Ashley NeQuent: I think the first thing it taught me, all of those taught me is teamwork. Certainly those operations can't survive without a team that it, it knows each other well enough to know each other's behaviors. So, that was the biggest thing. We kind of had on both of those locations, we had a flow, we all had an understanding of the expectation throughout the day.
I feel like in my experience now, you know, post COVID, we try to have systems train our teams to a degree, and back then. We trained our teams and we were like a well-oiled machine, I'd say, right? And, and you knew based on the day, based on the heartbeat of that day, what was going to happen, right? So if it was 1130 and valet is on lunch, right at the resort, well maybe I'm on the shuffle and I'm bringing people into downtown Lake Placid instead of, you know, somebody else, or I know that housekeeping's gonna call me at X time to tell me a flood of rooms are ready to go and things like that. But I think for me, the teamwork piece was huge in the kind of early days of being in the hotel world for sure. 
David Millili: From there you went on to Springer Miller. Yeah. You worked your way up to senior trainer. What made you decide to explore the tech side of the business? 
Ashley NeQuent: We had trainers come to the Whiteface Lodge to just do some kind of, you know, just general systems training and I thought it was interesting. And this one woman really said, you know, showed me the perks. You know, I was again from this really small town in upstate New York.
I had not traveled extensively at that time. And she explained how she gets to go to all of these great hotels and all of these different areas and train people on software. And originally when I got my hospitality degree. My first part of my brain said, I'm going to stay in Lake Placid, New York, and I'm going to be the general manager of a row Chateau Hotel. Right? Like that was my goal at 22 years old. And then I got into it. I thought, you know, I need to get out there. One of my professors at Paul Smith, Joe Canto, he always told us, we love all of you. You do need to leave and see something else to really escape being here. So he was kind of like the, we love you, but please go.
So yeah, I had gotten inspired. I had graduated from college and I sent an email to Springer Miller, you know, infosspringermiller.com and said, Hey, do you have any openings? And they said, yes. So, yeah, that's a good story. 
Pretty quick to do that. I think labor Day weekend, I think the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, I moved to Stover, Vermont from Lake Placid, and God bless those people because you know how a resort town is on Labor Day weekend to allow me to go, that day was amazing. But again, I had a great general manager there too, who really supported. 
Steve Carran: That's awesome. That's great. You then went to Old Edwards Inn and Spa and then Boomeranged back to Jonas Hospitality. What made you come back to Jonas? 
Ashley NeQuent: Great question. And it was really situational. I was working at Old Edwards Hospitality Group. Wonderful experience there. Great people, but I just got to a point where. I needed to move home. I needed to go back to New York. And so, my boyfriend at the time, now husband, we decided together that we were going to pack up our whole lives, move back to upstate New York, where my family's from.
And really, we thought we would just figure it out that was our plan was, we would figure it out when we got home and really Rob Salwa, who at the time was the president of Springer Miller Systems, he saw that I was selling furniture on Facebook. He said, hi, what are you doing? And I said, you know, great ship moving. Assnd he said, you know, once you are settled in. Let us know. And they needed trainers, you know, implementations professionals to come back and help do remote implementations of the Springer Miller SMS host property management system at that time. I worked on a contractor about six months and really liked that. I don't know that I was expecting to come back full time at that point in time. I think it was just an opportunity to do something that was comfortable for me. And I was doing implementations for a, a group that I knew very well. So it was, instead of just being on site with them, we were just on phone calls. So again, people I've known forever. And then, you know, the opportunity came about to get into the sales world, so I took it and, you know, here we are almost five years later. 
Steve Carran: Very cool. 
David Millili: So for those who may not be familiar with Jonas, can you tell us more about Jonas and tell people more about what you're doing at Jonas today?
Ashley NeQuent: So, Jonas Hospitality is a group of essentially complimentary companies, and our whole goal is to allow hoteliers to have options for best in breed solutions and all in one solutions, kind of all at the same time. Our philosophy within Jonas is to acquire companies and hold them forever. So there's really no concern, you know, from an employment standpoint as well, from a Hotelier standpoint of, you know, losing this software, having to merge with another software solution because we are truly a buy and hold forever team.
So, Springer Miller Systems that I started out with in 2013 was acquired by Jonah Software in 2016. And then over time, you know, Jonas has acquired other complementary software solutions and the goal for us is, like I said, you know, to have an opportunity to fill every cog in the wheel of a tech stack for a hotel.
The philosophy there is, you know, first we would like to own a company that solves a need. So we have a couple of property management solutions, spawn Activity Management solutions, budgetary and financial solutions that kind of runs the gamut. And I have a whole slide deck all about that, you know, content management for online web design, all kinds of things.
And again, the goal is to really, you know traverse across every element of the hospitality cycle here. So we know that's kind of our preference is to have a sister company. So if someone calls Ashley and says, Hey, X CRM system isn't really working for us anymore, and we're six months away from the end of our contract, what's your suggestion? I have suggestions for you, and again, it might be a sister company, it might be someone that we integrate with, right? We have great partnerships with integrators too that, you know, we don't own, but we've got those kinds of connections. And then lastly, if we have to build something ourselves, we'll do that too.
So those are kind of the, the three levels of Jonas hospitality from that sector. And I'll be honest with you, you know, Jonas is part of verus software, which is owned by Constellation Software. So we kind of have the three levels of backing there. So we can kind of operate in our decentralized model where every company can operate on its own. But we have the financial backing of this such a larger company that again, we've got that financial security and we've got that trust that we're held forever. So it is a kind of interesting and different from other solutions out there on the market, but I really, I really have enjoyed my time with this group. About three years ago, decided to change from solely decentralized within the hospitality part of the vertical. So in the past, again, we were rsecommended to run our own organizations. Right. So, you know, for myself, I would solely be working for Springer Miller. I was an application consultant, went to a solutions engineer, so I was doing the demos for solely Springer Miller based products.
Well, okay. Well now, we have a cloud-based PMS system that's been out for a long time now, they have similar features that they need to have done and integrations that need to be worked on and problems and solutions that they've solved that maybe we've not, why don't we work closely together? So over time, these 11 or 12 businesses, we've all kind of made up this, um, hospitality segment where, you know, we share resources from a sales perspective.
So now again, you call my coworker and you say, Hey, I'm interested in Spa Soft, for example. She doesn't have to connect you with anyone. She can get you into a demo right away. Right? So we're kind of taking away all of those friction points that makes, sometimes makes companies hard to buy from, right? Where we're taking those, those barriers away. So it is kind of an interesting strategy. My role I came into January 1st is the Director of Product Strategy, and that's a lot of what I'm doing is again taking away the friction points and the barriers to be successful within our, with our, within our brand and our organization.
So I've kind of picked up products over time as a solutions engineer where, you know, I used to demo again just for Miller, then it was Soff, now Quorum and all of our other solutions to a point where I've got the product knowledge in the backing. We know where these products need to go for future growth and I can help us get there.
Steve Carran: And we talk about silo technology so much on this podcast. So having that ecosystem of technology partners and sister companies that you can recommend to make sure you know those hotels are gonna get a good, good service is. I love that business model. So I. Kind of goes into our next section here, the thought leadership section. And you know, what you're just talking about is a great follow up to this question. So like you just were talking about, Jonas Hospitality has assembled a family of complimentary brands from the PMS to spa marketing and distribution, what's the strategy behind bringing kind of these best of breed solutions together under one umbrella? And what are some of the most beneficial reasons for hoteliers to work with you? 
Ashley NeQuent: We want to make sure, like I said before that, that the operations of a resort or hotel don't have friction points, and that might be just in integration. But I feel like the customers that I talk to every day or every week, sometimes they need more than just a point of sale integration that shows data on a folio. Right? You know, they need a deeper level of data aggregation to a point. They need to know their customers better and they need to know how to get, bring with their existing operations to the next level. And a lot of the time. That means the tech stack has to change.
Right? I feel like a lot of the time you are sold into your primary product, which a lot of the time we focus on PMS so much right now. Now you've kind of siloed yourself in a way. So now you have, uh, what are the systems at this PMS. Can connect to what can it do well and what can it not do well?
And then you, you know, all of your other opportunities for ancillary revenue could be hindered potentially because of the selection made with this one choice. Right. Then that's a challenge that I'm sure you've talked about over and over again. It's not new news. And our goal of bringing these best in breed solutions together is to break down that barrier. So we will go out and evaluate what kinds of systems or what kinds of integrations and what kinds of data aggregation work the best for our solution set. Now, I will also kind of put a caveat to that to say if you really love. Some system again, like if you chose to not use, uh, one of our solutions and you wanna bring in your own.
Absolutely. Again, we don't want you to have a friction point within your operation. So our goal is always to, yeah, bring the best of breed solutions together, whether again, something we own, something we integrate to another trusted partner, but you know, for me, I would prefer to really talk through all of your tech stack.
If I'm going into a discussion and we're talking primarily about PMS, you really need to know. What the value strategy is for you, but also where are the issue points that are kind of come through and really know that clearly before you make a tech stack decision? 'cause generally, you're at least making that decision for three years. If not, maybe that's an eight or 10 year decision. So for me that, that's the benefit is you are not just getting someone who's just gonna sell you this transactional piece of software. Now we're really kind of thinking about the, the whole, not just the part. 
David Millili: So while you're replacing systems and coming into a hotel, what are some of the common mistakes you see that they've made with their current vendor that leads them to switch to Jonas?
Ashley NeQuent: I think a lot of the time the mistakes that are made are two things. Number one, maybe you thought you heard a yes, we can do X thing that may not, might not happen. That's one. In my opinion, we're becoming more and more transactional in terms of a property management solution and stuff, especially in like the limited service and the Midscale, right?
Where it's a subscription, it's something that you're gonna use for X number of years or X number of months, and then you're gonna rip it out and try something new or something else comes on the market. And again, because the solutions are fast to develop, they may, you know, claim they have something today and maybe they don't. Or again, maybe you heard it, you know, in the proverbial you, maybe you made an assumption and that's no longer true. So that's one thing that, that we hear occasionally where maybe we just didn't make a decision. We didn't make a decision based on the function, we made that decision based on the price. There's a very big difference between price and value, and usually that doesn't become clear until you're too far down the road. 
David Millili: Makes sense. 
Ashley NeQuent: And then I think the secondary is understanding that. Solutions and technology affects many more people than just the primary stakeholders. A lot of the time in the resorts, there's a trickle out effect that generally happens when your tech stack doesn't talk to each other well enough for the resort experience, and we do so much administrative work to rectify that problem, if the choices of the tech stack might not have been the right choice that you kill your staff.
You know, I've gone to properties where they'll have some sort of standard operating procedure and all they're really doing is copying, pasting data from one system to another system and it's hours of labor that we could be utilizing in a much better way, and I'm not saying taking away hours from people. I'm saying let's use those hours to bring our resorts and our guest satisfaction to a different level. You know, I think a lot of the time when I see that people are just exhausted and bogged down with this administrative work and how and how can we resolve that, I think technology can help a lot of that.
But again, we have to understand what are they doing right now and why are they doing it? Some people will say, you know, oh, I've been doing this copy and paste for 12 years and this is my standard operating procedure, and it's kind of like, this is my golden egg and don't take it away from me. And we have to help educate to, to tell them it's okay to let a system once you trust it because I think trust is hard for folks when it comes to technology sometimes. Once you trust it, the let a system do all that work for you, you understand? You need to understand how it works, so you get, gain that trust. But once you do, again, let's take that time and, and allow your, your team to do something valuable with it.
Steve Carran: Agree a hundred percent. And I want to dig a little bit deeper on that. How do you build almost a single source of truth? 
Ashley NeQuent: I'll say, when you have these systems that don't really talk to each other you have to layer up, you have to go a level above all these operational systems. Think about it. I mean, I think about I came from a resorts world, right? I came from these properties that have a really high a DR and a really high rev pack. And the lodging portion, which again, every, you can book a hotel room online anywhere, but can you book other things online? Not necessarily. And same with the data, right?
I have to call to make a spa appointment, but I make a lodging booking online and they don't have my information and maybe they do a lookup and they can verify my email address because their integration between the two systems is smart enough. But you still have to tokenize my credit card data. Why? Same with, you know, again, all of these departments. Have all of these systems that don't talk to each other and they, and you don't really paint a full picture of that guest, their spend, their loyalty to you. So you have to bring, you have to kind of aggregate the data on a higher level. Right. And you know, we talk a lot about customer data platforms.
I don't know if that's something that you all are, are talking about often now, but the customer data platform is becoming more and more important. And to me it's even revealing itself more and more to me, things like the standard data, right name, phone number, email address, those kinds of things, that's kind of bar the standard bar across the board. And yes, most of the CRM solutions are getting those things, but how do you then pull in an allergy that's appropriate for housekeeping and for. What we call GPR as guest problem resolutions and get them to a higher level so people are not doomed to repeat things and there's much deeper demographic tools and things of that. But the other piece to it is, yes, we can aggregate that data into a customer data platform, a CDP, but if it just sits there in a data lake and doesn't do anything, what's the value to that? It has to talk through each of these systems too, right? Has to push the data back down to those systems so we're all on the same page.
Steve Carran: I've had a few experiences recently where I went to a spa in a hotel that was connected part of the hotel, but just like you said, fragmented systems. It didn't seem like a hotel experience. It seemed like two completely different experiences. Another one I just had that had a restaurant connected to the hotel, but I couldn't order room service and I couldn't get food delivered to my room, I had to go down. It's two completely separate experiences that don't really, in my brain, correlate to the hotel experience. 
Ashley NeQuent: Right. And in that way, either, again, you're doing a lot of administrative work to make the magic happen or you have that kind of experience and that's the reverse of what we're all trying to do.
Steve Carran: Exactly. Exactly. 
Ashley NeQuent: Yeah. So de definitely that's, that's kind of, you know, always been in my head too, the amount of labor hours I would sit with heads of departments reviewing arrivals reports, you know, you got that, all that administrative work that you're doing to hopefully prevent anything from going wrong. And really what we should be doing is you, we all have that information and now we can take go the extra mile, that's the goal, obviously a hundred percent. 
David Millili: Yeah. So digging deeper, so how does that unified data change marketing performance beyond just the vanity personalization? 
Ashley NeQuent: Yeah. I think when your tech stack is connected on the higher level, you have much more data to segment. So that's number one and you can really drill down into, again, not just the lodging portion that I think we get, we play into for most of the CRMs today. Now we can drill into why are people coming specifically, right? Yes, there's group business versus leisure visits, and all of the other elements that traverse around a resort experience when you are trying to advertise to everyone. You hit unsubscribes. Right? You know, for me, I'm not a golfer. Wish I was that'll be a goal for 2027 probably. But if one of my clients says to me, Hey, Ashley, we have this tournament coming up. I'll say, well, we're glad to sponsor. I'm not gonna be there. You know, like, I'm not gonna be on the green, maybe I'll be in the wine tent or something. Right. So, how do you go from when you have this kind of increase of the data that you can help to segment that's directly with a guest messaging solution or a CRM solution, you're more likely to attract people to the things that you want them to come to, right.
And really target them and set unsubscribe, and then the other kind of piece to that is how do you become easier to buy from? Well, you have this data, so why don't we curate an ideal itinerary for a guest? And all they have to do is say yes. So that's kind of the powerful things that we can do when you are aggregating your data above your standard operational systems and your transactional systems, where we're, you know, all of these large language models and the ai, they're already aggregating that data for us to a degree.
Well, chatGPT can go online with booking.com and say, Hey, I wanna stay in Washington DC next weekend. And that, you know, this is what the price point I'm looking for and it'll shoot that out for you. Shouldn't we at a resort be able to say, Hey, I wanna come to this resort or this property for four nights and here and I'm coming with my family and here's the things that we want to do during our stay, and just have that shoot on an itinerary for you. Those are the kind of things that we need to progress to and we're getting within Jonas Hospitality. So it's an exciting time over here, the things that our development teams have been able to do, even just over the last six months have been incredible.
Steve Carran: That's awesome. Great. And I have a question for you because we've been talking about tech this whole time. Our team recently went to San Diego less than a month ago, and we were having dinner at the bar. And I was sitting next to this woman, Miriam, and she was telling me how she is not into technology. She was an older woman and the reason she comes back to hotels is because of the people. And the people, how they make her feel. And when she walks in, she's been going there for 30 years, they still know her name, things like that. So from your perspective on the tech side, what are low tech moments that you just still love to deliver for guests?
Ashley NeQuent: I think you hit it on the head, Steve. We should be using the technology to make our jobs easier to create experiences like that, right? Like I, I've worked, um, in resorts where these guests are coming 50 and 60 times over 10 years, right? 
Steve Carran: Amazing.
Ashley NeQuent: We should know their dogs names and we should have relationship with them much more closely than just a, hi, are you checking in today? Or, hi, what can I get for you? We should know their drink, their cocktail like that's an expectation. And again, like, you know, I grew up in this kind of high competition world of high touch, service that's everybody should know everything, right? From a housekeeper all the way up to the general manager, we pretty much should know how to do everything from an operational perspective, right?
I probably am not gonna make you the greatest stake versus, you know, the, you know, someone on the line. But generally speaking, we should be able to do these things. For these guests if the technology is giving it all to you. Well now it's up to us with our emotional intelligence to be able to provide those kinds of moments for guests. And I think the other thing that you know specifically, me personally, when you are going to stay somewhere. It's the people that are the reason that are coming, but it's also your sense of place. So to provide value in the resort, right? From that historical perspective, or maybe it's the area that you are and how special that is to you, will transition to that guest. You are connecting with them to that point. And again, those kinds of things that are, might not be data that we hold onto, but the connections that we make with these people and offering that sets of place that'll get them to come back. 
Steve Carran: Absolutely. A hundred percent. Well said Ashley. Well, Ashley, this has been a ton of fun. We've enjoyed asking you questions, this whole time. Now we're gonna turn the tables and let you ask David and I a question. 
Ashley NeQuent: Ooh, okay. That's good. I think I have a couple. We'll start with one. I think you know, for 2026 we're in quarter one, or early quarter 1, 2026, do you all have projections or outlooks in hotel technology that we can kind of mingle on and bring back to our teams to help better our services? For the world, right? For the world of hotels, especially North America. 
David Millili: Go ahead, Steve. I always go first. You go first. 
Steve Carran: Oh, thanks. That's a really good question and the first thing that popped into my head, kind of, we kind of touched on this already, but really enhancing the guest experience through personalization. I had one situation that has still baffled me and really stuck out to me as I pulled up to a hotel in my car and I stepped outta my car and the valet said, welcome to the hotel, Mr. Carran. We're happy to have you. I was having a meeting with the GM and he's like, GM X, Y, Z is waiting for you inside.
I was blown away, like, how did you know my car that I was pulling in? And then the personalization there. So I think like utilizing technology, kind of like we saw. Spoke about where you're adding that wow factor or that surprise and delight that we say so often in the hospitality industry of really blowing away the guests and making that stay extra special while utilizing technology. So that's one thing. I know we've been talking about personalization for a couple years now, but I think we're finally to this point where we can utilize technology to, to really help with that. 
David Millili: Yeah, the only thing I'll add is that I think we're gonna see the, the continued leaning in on AI, but the shying away from it being to AI, meaning you can feel it's not real. So AI can really, as you were just saying, you can really, it can learn a lot, it can actually, a second, we all use it now, can come up with a LinkedIn post or an email for you. But there's still that human element that you can definitely see it when you're reading something from AI or something from AI is being delivered. So I think to your point, AI might deliver, Hey, this is what we think you and your family would enjoy, but you can't just let, let it up to that and just kind of spit it out to the guest, you're gonna have to look at make sure it's tailored right, and, and really put that human element on it.
Ashley NeQuent: Yeah. Makes sense to me. And it falls exactly kind of along with our strategies for this year. So kind of grateful to you all for saying those things that we're thinking about too. So happy to hear it. 
Steve Carran: Well, when hotels ask now, you can just send them that recording and be like, Jonas can help you with both of those things.
Ashley NeQuent: Exactly. Listen to this. And we'll get you some more followers from our side too, so that'll be good. 
Steve Carran: There we go. There we go. Well, this has been great, Ashley. We've been asking you questions this whole time, so now we're gonna turn it over to our producer, Jon. He's gonna ask you one more question before we get you outta here.
Ashley NeQuent: Okay. 
Jon Bumhoffer: You said something earlier on in the episode that really hit me because it's something I felt but didn't really have the words for. You said we now. Try to have our systems train our team, meaning like maybe there's a less hands-on approach or person to person approach to training on property and things like that and we've lost some elements of the level of hospitality because of that, and we're only moving towards more systemization or trying to with AI and technology and all of these things. As somebody who has trained people a lot and worked on property, how do you see these two things working hand in hand? Hand in hand to like, yes, lean on our systems, use the technology, but like we still need to be in the trenches with somebody that we're working with and training up to make sure they get the proper training. 
Ashley NeQuent: I think it's twofold. I think number one, leaders have to have the heart of a teacher, that's my number one.
When you're sitting behind a computer desk all day and your job is to aggregate data. We have tools for a lot of that now, right? There's a lot of BI tools and things like that. You don't have to run so many reports, right? You should free yourself up to promoting your staff. The other thing too is, you know, I think a lot of us talk about hiring for emotional intelligence. We can train the systems, right? If we dedicate the time, we can train any system. But I think it, it is the responsibility of the leader to do those two things right? Identify those who have the emotional intelligence to support the goals of the operation and to have the heart to train as if you know you, you're representing that property.
Right? And I think the other thing too is the intrinsic empowerment to not be so bogged down by standard operating procedures that we're allowing the staff. To do the surprise and the delight. Right. And yes. You know, I think a lot of the time we get into the minutia of the standard operating procedures and the pieces that we have to sign and you'll get written up or those things.
But if you break down a lot of those barriers and allow people to have a little free thought, I think it goes a long way. Yes. I think nowadays, I, I hear a lot of calls where people will have requirements from us that are basically systemizing their SOPs within a technology stack and sometimes they're valid. But again, I think thinking about how does your operation work well and what are your guests expecting and how can you empower your staff to do just that, that's huge in this day and age. 
David Millili: That's great. Well said. Well that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Ashley. This is where you get to let people know how they can get in touch with you, how they can learn more about Jonas Plug Away.
Ashley NeQuent: Great, thanks. So, we are on LinkedIn, Jonas Hospitality, jonashospitality.com My name Ashley Nequent, I'm on LinkedIn as well. So feel free to follow any or all of us, and reach out to me for anything that you need. 
David Millili: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged Podcast. So whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thank you, Ashley. 
Ashley NeQuent: Thanks everyone. 
Steve Carran: Thank you.