The Modern Hotelier #232: One System to Capitalize on Data & Provide Better Guest Experiences | with Tim Hansen
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Steve Carran: Welcome to another episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are coming to you from the trade show floor at the Hospitality Show in Denver, Colorado. We're joined by Tim Hansen, the VP of Sales for hotels, resorts, and cruise ships as well. Thanks for sitting down with us. Tim, how you doing today? 
Tim Hansen: I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for having me. 
David M.: You bet, Tim. So we're gonna dive in. We're gonna do a real quick lightning round, ask you some quick questions, quick answers, learn about your personal background work, and then we're gonna dive into some industry questions. Sound good?
Tim Hansen: Sounds scary, but yes.
David M.: All right. So what's something you wish you were better at?
Tim Hansen: Guitar.
David M.: What's the most used emoji for you? 
Tim Hansen: Probably smiley face. Okay. Glass of red wine maybe.
David M.: What's a luxury you can't live without?
Tim Hansen: Probably my hair gel.
David M.: So if you had a time machine, are you going into the future or are you going into the past and which year you're going to? 
Tim Hansen: I'm going past for sure. I'd love to go see what my parents were doing, like early years of high school to college transition 'cause I think they're full of BS. 
David M.: What's the best piece of advice you've received? 
Tim Hansen: Oh, just be yourself. Be yourself. Treat others how you wish to be treated. Simple stuff, you know, Catholic school background that stuff comes very easy for us.
David M.: Alright, last one. What's your favorite city and why?
Tim Hansen: Favorite city is anything in the Florida Panhandle. I just absolutely can unwind, can get off the grid, the weather's amazing. The sand's amazing. The water's beautiful. That's kind of my happy place. It's cool.
David M.: Okay, good. 
Steve Carran: Alright Tim, so now we're gonna dive into your personal background a little bit more about what makes you tick. So you're a third generation Californian, is that correct?
Tim Hansen: That's true.
Steve Carran: How did that shape you into who you are today? 
Tim Hansen: That's a good question. California, to me, people ask this question all the time, would you leave? And I answer it quickly like, no, 'cause my parents were still around and they'd look at me like, that's a morbid comment, but they're still around. And so that's what we do. We host dinners and we do family things. And I see them a lot during the week but I think where it shaped me is, and I tell people all the time, I'm not leaving California 'cause Carmel is only 90 minutes from my house. And if you golf, great. If you like wine even better. And it's just an amazing beach and Lake Tahoe is probably one of my happy places. Could have answered that earlier too, maybe instead of the Florida panhandle. And I can get there in three hours and I can snow ski, I can boat, I can do all these great things. So what do those all mean? Like there's hospitality and all that, right?
You're staying at fun hotels on League Lakes and beaches and San Francisco I worked in for 14 years and it gets lumps in the media, but I still think it's one of the greatest cities in the world. A great city for hospitality, a great city for food and beverage. So I think that's kind of just shaped who I am. It's home. I love it. The weather's great. 
David M.: So you went to St. Mary's College of California. So what made you decide to go there and what did you study when you were there? 
Tim Hansen: So I did go to St. Mary's College in California, as the crow flies, 'cause a lot of folks don't know where it is. It's about 12 miles from the Berkeley campus, spent a lot of time in Berkeley, enjoying ourselves over the years. But my attraction to St. Mary's was sports related. So, my father was the high school basketball coach in the town I grew up in. We played basketball, it was life. We watched games. It was life. I was a ball boy. So my goal always was to play basketball at St. Mary's College Santa Clara University. There were a couple of other schools that I wanted to go to. And when Coach Williams, the coach at Santa Clara, was not offering me an opportunity to play at Santa Clara University, I ended up playing for a guy Larry Nance was his name, or Lynn Nance. Larry Nance played in the NBA.
Lynn Nance was the basketball coach at St. Mary's at the time. I went to go play for Lynn Nance. So basketball was the reason I went to St. Mary's while I was there, I studied business with an emphasis in sports management. The goal all along was for me to become an agent, a sports agent, and that just didn't work out for me, but that's what took me to St. Mary's. 
Steve Carran: Very cool. And you come from a family of teachers. Your siblings are teachers. What made you kinda go a different route? 
Tim Hansen: I answer this question this way. I still think I teach, I just teach sales folks how to sell software. At least at this point in my life. As I was carrying a bag and I was a salesperson, it was different. But the preparation learning the market, understanding what you were doing, I just watched that over the years. The education was important knowing the market, knowing your product, but I tell people all the time, you know, my mom, my parents went into administration. My mom was the principal at the middle school in Danville, California for 30 plus years. She was running a team, and that's basically what I've been doing for years. My father was the high school basketball coach. As I alluded to earlier. He was running a team. My brother is the high school basketball coach now in San Ramon, California. He's running a team. So it's what I'm doing today. I run a team. 
Steve Carran: Well, that's great. Now we're gonna get to your career, how you got to where you are today. So you came to Agilysys in 2014 as a director of sales. What did you do before that and how did you get interested in hotel technology? 
Tim Hansen: Yeah. Prior to that, I was with a company for almost 13 years premier Global Services, prior to Premier Global Services, they were called American Teleconferencing Services. So it was conferencing like audio conferencing, like we all can just do it easily today. Everybody's got a dial in number and a passcode. We have teams, we have Zoom, all these meetings, but back then, that was a relatively new technology. In fact, American Teleconferencing, which became Premier Global, was the first to come out with a reservationless conferencing platform.
So I was a sales guy there, and years later, 12, 13 years later into that career, there was a gentleman that left that company to join this company called Agilysys, who I'd never heard of. And he asked one day, you want to build something new? And I was all up for the challenge. So I started in 2014 with Agilysys director of sales role building something new, and at the time is wasn't really playing in the restaurant space and they wanted us to build out a restaurant team in the major NFL markets.
So a gentleman, Michael Buckham White is his name. He was a guy that was running sales and marketing worldwide here, Foris. And that was my connection into this opportunity that I've been with. And I left for a little bit, two years in between, but I started in 14 and I've been back now for about two and a half years. It's probably on your note cards. 
David M.: That's a great segue. So you went to Beachy, then you came back to Agilysys. And as you said earlier, now, the Vice President of Sales, hotels, resorts, and cruises. What really drew you back into hospitality into Agilysys? 
Tim Hansen: Beachy was a great experience and I knew of the Beachy guys 'cause they were former Agilysys employees, or at least some of them were. And their technology had to sit on top of Agilysys platform in most cases in order to work others as well, it was a great experience that was my Florida panhandle, love developed with that group and they did other things, but I just came back because of the people to be honest. Right. I knew they were redeveloping all these products or rewriting and modernizing these products.
I would run into Ramesh, the CEOI would run into Don de Marinas who was, uh, the SVP of sales at the time, sales marketing. And I really enjoyed those guys and I missed it. And I knew these guys were about to make a run, hotel resort and cruise ship that that vertical market was in need of leadership. And I thought that was always when I wasn't here, was the role that I would like to come back to if it was ever offered to me. So that's what brought me back, was the people and just the company, the technology and things that they were doing at the time I thought were really resonating in the market, something good to sell. Yeah, it's a good story. 
Steve Carran: That's great, that's great. So for those that might not be as familiar Agilysys, can you tell us a little bit more about what you do? 
Tim Hansen: Yeah, it's hospitality software, a hundred percent hospitality software. That's all Agilysys does and we're not a big company. We are publicly traded, we're in 108 countries, so people think that's big. We're massive. We have a lot of momentum in core technology in the hotel industry. So you think property management software, I break it down into layman's terms. It's the software at the front desk when you're checking in.
We're in food and beverage, which again, broken down is the systems that, you know, your food and beverage operation, your point of sale, everything else that they do are just add-on modules, enhancements to creating really cool experiences for the guests and the operators. But today, Angelis has 30 plus pieces of modern technology that I think are kind of changing the game and the actually even the, the way in which we kind of sell and, and the deals that we're doing. But yeah, Agilysys is hospitality software through and through. 
David M.: Yeah. So I was fortunate enough in the last 60 days to see a demo of several. Of your systems, and I thought it was just blown away how now a lot of your hotels are using up to five plus products per property. So what sets Agilysys aside from other tech companies?
Tim Hansen: So it's a great question and I just left a meeting and I asked this question as we were starting to talk about a guest profile. What do you know about your guest when they arrive on your property? And this was an operator that has 20 something hotels. And it's, it's an experienced hospitality hotel operator. They have golf, they have spa, they have dining, and when their guests arrive on property, they have no idea what that guest is there to do. They don't know that they have a spa reservation. They don't know that they have dined at their restaurants before or that they have reservations booked. They don't even know a single thing about this guest other than they have a king room, and they may be a repeat customer. And that's about it. And the reason why, and this is what makes Agilysys unique in my opinion, is that because all those systems are disparate, right? You have one hospitality solution that's running your spa. You have another hospitality solution that's running your, your front desk or your PMS. You have another system that's running all your food and beverage operation.
They're not talking to each other and they're not doing it very well. And the front desk software, your PMS is not showing you that profile. It doesn't tell you that Tim's been here before, that Tim has spent this much money. So I think when we've built out this software suite that we talk about today, we can tell and, and the deals are changing because operators are seeing that I can give you a better perspective of your guest if you put more of your eggs into Agilysys software basket because it will tell you that I'm here with a reservation to dine, to play golf, to do the spa, and I booked an activity.
And so those are some of the fun things that I think if you have systems that are. Not ours or disparate systems, you're not gonna get that visibility. 
Steve Carran: And you guys obviously are doing something right, you grew 19%, was it this year that you grew 19% or year over year.
Tim Hansen: So into this year. So last year this team, had a really good booking year. And we grew 19% over the previous year. And, you know, we have some nice momentum into this year as well.
Steve Carran: What do you think was the cause of that growth?
Tim Hansen: Modernized products. It goes back to what I just kind of answered before the deals that my team was doing years back, you were selling a point-of-sale system, right? And you may have sold them a couple of the add-on modules and maybe you sold a PMS system that went with it. But the likelihood of you selling 14 pieces of software, 15, 16 pieces of software and experience software package just wasn't there. And, and the reality was is because we were still building it.
If you rewind back to 2017 when Ramesh joined, Ramesh had this goal of, of really building this ecosystem of solutions for the hospitality industry. And that's I think why our sales continue to go, is we've had a lot of success selling these modernized products that speak to each other. You gotta also throw in the fact that it's public information that the brands are starting to make, they're aware of who we are. So in December of 2022, a Marriott announced, that we would become their preferred vendor for PMS. So starting this year and into next, there's gonna be six to 7,000 properties that are gonna roll out on our PMS project. That put a pretty big spotlight on us. Like, wow, Marriott made this decision to use Gilis for PMS.
We have now fast forward; we're also their POS provider with a preferred status, not exclusive, but we have the ability to go hunt and use that. So, for the longest time we've had very good relationships with the Hilton brand as well, where over where today I think we have over 1200 Hilton. So our story just continues to improve. I think we have strong sales organization, but I would tie this all back into just modernized products that really have resonated in the market. 
Steve Carran: That's great. That's great. So now we're gonna move on to the industry thought section of the podcast. One thing, one question you said earlier was, when guests arrives at the property, do you know why they're there?
Why is that question so powerful, first of all? And do you think that question kind of almost reimagines a guest experience for hotels? 
Tim Hansen: Well, I mean, that comment is, we talk about this in shows like this, everybody wants to understand the guest. Guest experience, guest experience. Guest experience. We talk about it, but can you create it? How do you create it? Everybody's worried that AI is gonna mess it all up, right? People are still the, the magic of hospitality, that experience at the front desk is the magic of hospitality. The greeter at the restaurant is still the magic of hospitality. But if you had technology that was gonna give you better information about Tim and his wife Liz, why they're here, what they're here to do. What reservations they have. Are they a repeat guest? What preferences do they have? Then you're truly creating a guest experience, and your staff is then catering to that, having better conversations. They're not trying to upsell 'em at the front desk. They're not trying to just quickly check them into the room.
They're talking about their last experience here. We had Tomahawks on the menu. One of our sales guys says this, we had tomahawks on the menu. The last time you were here and you guys had several, um, we can get that to you again because the intellect of this system now will tell you that this is in the house. So it's just kind of creating something that's unique and AI's gonna help them do, doing all this for sure, but you're just really getting a better profile of that guest when they, when they come in, that guest profile is key.
David M.: Yeah. So elaborate a little bit more on that. So not only how you're leveraging technology to know who the guest is, but also leverage. And find out why they're visiting the property. What's their intent? 
Tim Hansen: Yeah. What the intent is really tells you in it, it backs up for a second, right. We we're talking about their arrival, but when they start this process of saying, I'm going to the Florida Panhandle, I'm gonna go stay at the Hotel Effie in, in Sandestin, it's when they decide to make that decision right then and there, they're gonna book a reservation. And historically, what did we do in hotels? We booked a room, then we showed up on property. Now you can book a room. You can book a spa. You can book a dining reservation. But you send in that information or you press click and you pay for it. But now they know some information about me, they can start to market a little bit more towards me.
So that pre-arrival email, what else can we get out of Tim? We've talked about it for years. In our industry, it's a revenue per available room. That's how we were being judged in the hotel industry, it's now revenue per available guest, right? How about do we get more wallet share? How do we get them to book more things in advance? Or how do we market to them before they actually arrive so that you're doing less upsell at the front desk and more of its already contributed to the reservation or the pre-arrival? So then you could do staffing better. You can have more meaningful conversations at the front desk. So that's what I think is kind of happening with the use of technology. But a lot of that starts at the front end when I decide, hey, I'm going to the panhandle and I want to get this, this, and this done it's experience. Now, the business travelers way different, but we're talking about this, this full-service property, obviously in this example. 
Steve Carran: So one thing Agilysys talks a lot about is going beyond the transactions to create high return hospitality. What does that look like in action when you think about operations staff and also the guest intent? 
Tim Hansen: Yeah, I mean, it's a little repetitive, 'cause I think some of those things I just kind of alluded to, if, if you know what's happening before they arrive, you can staff for it, right? You could staff appropriately for it. If you know more, you're gonna be better at it when they get to the front desk, you're gonna have a better conversation. So I think it's something we're working on, but it's all built into the software. But if you talk about the intelligent guest profile. You can start to build it up from the front end. And then they arrive and then they leave and you market to, and the goal is to get them back. And the more information we get over time, data, data, data. I like to repeat things in threes when I think it's super important, but the data component is you're learning more and more about this guest. This guy spends money; he likes to drink wine. He goes to our restaurants. He's a spa guy, his wife likes to play nine. Like there's a lot of really good data at. The hands of these hoteliers, these operators that can help you with staffing, that can help you with marketing, uh, that can help you with selling. So these are really crucial things that I think the hospitality industry.
When I started back in 2014, none of this exist. It was old and I think we're in this really cool time, AI and others. But this process of just gathering more information to help you better serve your guest and to better prepare your staff for their arrival. And for your hotel then for your staff is, is all key, I think, to where we're headed in really exciting times for our industry.
David M.: Yeah. So you've hit on it, but let's hit on it some more. So personalization starts with good data and getting that data, and how are hotels, or how should they be doing a better job of knowing their guests and actually acting on that data while they're on property, or to your point, post-day, pre-day, things of that nature.
Tim Hansen: Well, and this goes back to another part, what we were talking about, if you have multiple systems, I'm dealing with a resort in Florida that has over a hundred pieces of software to run their property, right? So think about the data piece there. I guess you could dump it into a BI tool and try to scrub this thing, right?
But if you had systems like what I'm promoting today and I am promoting it, if you have that capability of, of getting all that information into the database, you know, from the initial onset to once they've left to when, and then they come back and you're marketing to them, it's really valuable. It's really valuable information. So I think the way you use data today is, is a topic that a lot of folks are looking at. But if you have disparate systems, which we talked about earlier, it's hard to get all that information. It takes human glue. Human glue, not people, not the software piece. And it takes human glue to pull it all together and it takes a lot of people and it's expensive to do it. So we believe software is the way to kind of make this a lot easier and a lot more efficient. And I think it all ties back into a better, a better guest experience for sure. 
Steve Carran: Yeah, makes sense. You bet. And you spend a lot of time with operators. Yes. Whether that's for hotels, cruises, resorts, gaming. Are you seeing almost a shift in the mindset how they're thinking about increasing profitability through the guest experience? 
Tim Hansen: I'm not seeing it. I'm watching it happen every single day. Like, the deals, the deals are changing, right? The deals are changing. It's competitive. The hotel industry's competitive and you want repeat guest.
So the best way to do that, and again, it's the adage of guest experience, but a lot of people will, you know, that'll roll off the tip of their tongue. But what are you doing to create it? And I think that. The operators that are creating it. And you could think about the high-end properties that are out there today. There's one that everybody knows, it's called Four Seasons.
Four Seasons has created, has created these years and years ago, but with, with, with glue, right? With people trying to pull it all together. So I think software now is, is the key to pulling this all together, to creating that experience to creating guest, repeat guest, to getting more money out of their wallets, to creating better experiences. And I think a lot of that's been, we've seen it before, but we've seen it with a lot of high touch. And I think nowadays what we're trying to do is make it more efficient. And with more efficiencies through software than what I said earlier about that magic of hospitality really lies in people interaction. Then you get that people interaction kind of going because I think that's what the Four Seasons has been doing for a long time. 
David M.: Yeah. So as we talked earlier, more and more hotels that you guys are signing up are using more and more of your products, not just one or two, they're using several. So looking ahead, what's the next frontier in hospitality technology, and how are you guys helping operators anticipate what guests want and not just respond to what they've already done?
Tim Hansen: So I'll say this, we've come a long ways with the modernization of our, of our platform. I think you've caught that today in this conversation. Like there's so much information you can pull outta these systems that they're all speaking to each other and you can create that really great guest experiences.
I think this leans to something that we're working on as we continue to modernize these products and it's this intelligent guest profile. So if you're in my PMS system, I can see that you have a spa reservation. If you're in my PMS system, I can see that you have, uh, a dining reservation. If you're in my dining reservation system, I can see that you have food allergies. And across all of these things, I can see that. So if you go over to the golf shop, but you're ordering food and beverage from the golf cart 'cause you're playing golf and she's using the same system or he's using the same system, it's gonna provide you that level of information about the guest.
So the technology's pretty crazy that they know that much information about you, they're listening. It's like our phones are listening. But this technology is kind of doing some of that same interaction. Right? It's not listening per se, although I think some of that's coming as well. I think you'll be able to make a menu item change to a point of sale system by speaking to it, 86 an item from a chef by speaking to it. But I just think the technology that's out there today is, is really cool. And we're just kind of at the tip of the iceberg, but this guest experience thing intelligent guest profile where you know all these things about your guests. If I'm operating a spa or I'm operating the front desk, or I'm in the golf shop and I know everything about Mr. Hanson, 'cause he comes to this property all the time, it's because those systems are talking to each other.
David M.: That's a great point. So this is where you get to tell people how they can get in touch with you. Find out more information on Agilysys?
Tim Hansen: It's simple. I'm a LinkedIn guy, so I'm out there. You guys said it earlier. I'm Tim Hansen. I'm the VP of sales. My sales organization, we have 22 folks out there between our east and our west team. We're active, you know, we're doing really, really cool things, I think in the marketplace, but if anybody's trying to get ahold of me, you know, they're are LinkedIn connections that I respond to on a regular basis and I am tim.hansen@agilysys.com as well, and I would love the opportunity to continue to tell this story with anybody who's in earshot or is just learning to, wanting to learn anything more about the things we talked about today.
David M.: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged Podcast. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and thank you for joining us. 
Tim Hansen: Pleasure. Thank you, guys.
Steve Carran: Thank you, Tim.