The Modern Hotelier #166: Boosting Revenue with Smarter Pricing | with Bobby Marhamat
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David M.: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged podcast. I'm David Millili. 
Steve Carran: I'm Steve Carran 
David M.: Steve, who do we have on the program? 
Steve Carran: David, today we have, I'm Bobby Marhamat, the CEO of TakeUp. Thanks for joining us, Bobby, how you doing? 
Bobby Marhamat: Absolutely. Thank you guys.
David M.: So Bobby, we're gonna go through a couple areas. We're gonna do a lightning round. We're gonna ask you some short questions, short answers, go through your background, your career, and then dive into some industry topics. Awesome. Good? Yeah, 
Bobby Marhamat: sounds good. Alright, 
David M.: Great. So what's something that you wish you were better at? 
Bobby Marhamat: Wish I was better at. Um, organization scheduling.
David M.: Got it. What is the most used app on your phone? Definitely DoorDash. Got it. What's a luxury you can't live without luxury?
Bobby Marhamat: I can't live without good food. 
David M.: Okay. If you could trade places with someone for a day, who would you trade places with? 
Bobby Marhamat: Definitely Richard Branson. 
David M.: Great. Best piece of advice you've ever received. Treat people like you wanna be treated. That's good. And what's your favorite city and why is it your favorite city? 
Bobby Marhamat: New York? You have that balance of good, fast, slow, you can do whatever you want.
Steve Carran: Alright. Yeah. Good. You're on this morning. I love it. So now we're gonna dive into your personal details, a little bit about you and your background.
Sure. So you grew up in Mountain View, California and also Nebraska. Yep. How did growing up in those two completely different areas of the country shape you into who you are today? Yeah, you come from Nebraska and 
Bobby Marhamat: you go to the Bay Area and things are super fast. They're super slow in Nebraska, and so you learn how you have to adapt and go fast and and change things up and be against the status quo.
David M.: So you went to San Jose State, got your bachelor's in Information systems, and then you got your master's there. What chose you to San Jose? What made you choose San Jose State and and why did you pick that, that, uh, degree. 
Bobby Marhamat: So starting doing the bachelor's there, it was just to get a degree. Yeah. Then it was like afterwards, you know, learning from all the folks that got their masters. It was like, it was a great experience and you know, San Jose had a good program with Santa Clara. Yep. So kinda you learn, you learn from kind of both types of schooling, if you will. And so it was a great balance.
Steve Carran: Great. So you are not only a hot pepper enthusiast, you're a hot sauce enthusiast two part question. What's the hottest pepper you've ever had? 
Bobby Marhamat: Well, hybrid, A hybrid pepper. Okay, 'cause yeah, ghost pepper, I mean there's, there's varying degrees of peppers, but a ghost pepper and a Thai pepper. Marrying together is, is the hottest I've ever had. Wow. Which is a really hot pepper. 
Steve Carran: Okay. And there's a measure of scale that people used to, yeah, 
Bobby Marhamat: I'd  give it like a 15.
Steve Carran: Woo. Alright. And also hot sauce enthusiasts. What's your favorite hot sauce out there for fellow hot sauce enthusiasts that they need to try? I mean, I feel like you gotta make your own hot sauce. Ooh, love it. But, 
Bobby Marhamat: but if you're, but if you're having hot sauce out, you know, I hate Tabasco. I think Tabasco's not a real hot sauce, Chou. I'd say Chou is good, but you should make your own. 
Steve Carran: Okay. From a hot pepper enthusiast. Makes sense. Makes sense. So that's great. Now we're gonna dive into your career, how you got to become the CEO of TakeUp. So you were on the sales side for most of your career, working at companies like Sprint, server, plex, verizon, limos.com, and then worked your way up to COO at Revel Systems, then CRO at High five. What did those early days in sales teach you that you still take with you today as CEO of TakeUp? 
Bobby Marhamat: Yeah, I think the thing, the big thing that you learn is like in focusing on sales and marketing go to market in particular, you need to touch a bunch of different departments for the sales and marketing world to work.
And so just naturally as I started to kind of work with different departments, I. Started to really, really realize and, and love that love of like working with different product leaders and engineering leaders and sales leaders. So it really kinda shapes you to be a better sales leader, better go-to market leader, and then eventually of course a better CEO.
David M.: Absolutely. Great. So I hope I get this right, you're CEO of, is it Leon E sold Tequila Leonna. So you got it right. Yeah. All right. So how did you decide to start a tequila company and what makes you. Your tequila unique? What's different? 
Bobby Marhamat: So it all started, uh, during COVID days. Uh, actually there's a place in San Francisco called the Battery, met the founder of Zu, which is that, for those that, I don't know, it's that balloon, you know, white bottle, if you will.
That's super famous. Exactly. And you know, he, during COVID days, encouraged me to say, Hey, your love for hospitality. I grew up around restaurants. My parents had a bunch of restaurants, best times were around tequila. So he encouraged me to say, Hey, this is the best time during COVID. You can go buy some cheap land, you know, uh, grow your agave, be able to kind of build up your, your tequila world, if you will.
David M.: Great. Yeah. 
Steve Carran: Very good. I'm a tequila lover myself. Oh, great. Okay, good. So I will have to check it out. So now you're the CEO of Takeup and you know, you were followed, you were with in hospitality with your family growing up, but this is kind of more your first time on the hotel side. Yes. And kinda hospitality, running your own company. What's your first impression of running your own company in hospitality? 
Bobby Marhamat: Stuck. My career has always been around brick and mortar, you know, owners, if you will, operators, et cetera. So the last company, uh, was a company called Radiant. We focused on restaurant retail and hospitality, but it was a smaller slice.
And so coming into this world really had a love for hospitality, hospitality operators, and thought we really could change the game for them. What, what we do from a take perspective is we built really enterprise level software that's, that's, that's approachable for that SMB operator. And so that was kind of our goal and focus and I love.
I love helping people and we love helping people in the hospitality world. So it's kind of a natural evolution. 
David M.: So those who are watching or listening, tell us more about take up so they understand what, what you do. 
Bobby Marhamat: What we do is, I know AI is a buzzword, right? But we use causal AI technology to be able to help optimize revenue. So sim simple terms, we help you make more money, and we do it by pri pricing courageously helping folks really get to the point where they're pricing in a way where it really, it emerges with the demand that's out there in the market. 
Steve Carran: So now we're gonna dive into the thought leadership industry topics for this. So there's a lot of tools out there that, uh, in dynamic pricing space that throw around the term ai. Yep. Without really delivering true intelligence, can you kind of give us an overview of fake AI versus real ai? Yeah, absolutely. 
Bobby Marhamat: We're doing a huge campaign around fake AI versus real ai, but the difference here being like everyone's using, of course, ai.
And whatever they're doing and whatever technology they're providing. The big difference from, from a pricing standpoint is when you look at ai, machine learning and AI being used from a high level perspective, to be able to really optimize, what you really are looking for is a system that uses machine learning that's constantly learning.
As we know, AI gets better with age. It's like fine wine, and so you know, as it knows more and more about your property and what's happening in the environment, et cetera. It's able to make those adjustments. So real AI being, you have to be context aware. So knowing, knowing what's going on from like an event perspective, seasonality perspective, you have to be predictive.
So thinking about future demand and you gotta be adaptable. And so our system is constantly looking every second, looking at what's happening from a demand perspective, what's happening in the market, what's happening from a future booking perspective, what events are coming into town, and constantly changing those rates. So, our operators can make the most amount of money. 
David M.: Nice. And so talk a little bit more about, right now AI seems to be like this black box and there's no real transparency as to what it's doing or why is it doing that? And maybe tell us a little bit more how your platform's different. 
Bobby Marhamat: Absolutely. Like a lot of systems out there, they're just giving you a price. This is the price that you should price The Reas. The reason that doesn't work is a lot of operators wanna know the whys. And so like in our system, you can look at it. We have a sys, we have a section called Why this Rate. So it tells you, I priced you at 2 49 and this is what you got.
If I would've priced you at 2 29, this is what would've happened. If I priced you at 2 69, this is what would've happened. And so it gives you that transparency of like, this is what we priced you at. This is how you optimize the most amount of revenue. This is what would've happened if we priced you differently.
Steve Carran: Got it. That's great. That's great. So AI is a powerful tool. Absolutely. No doubt about that. But it's even more effective when humans are utilizing ai. Absolutely. Can you share why, why that is why when humans are looped in, there's a more of an advantage. 
Bobby Marhamat: Absolutely. In our belief AI technology is great. It helps you get to a place where you're getting a lot of that repetition out of the way. But you still want that human context to be able to really put, pull that in, to be able to make the best decisions for your business. As an example here, like if you're, if you're crunching all these different numbers, an AI system's not gonna know that two weeks from now, all of a sudden there's a concert in town, or, you know, all of this demand came into this area because there's a fire in this area, or whatever the case may be.
And so with that, we're able to really take the, the learnings that we get from ai. We only employ revenue managers. Um, and those revenue managers then help, whether it's an operator that doesn't have a revenue manager or it's a hotel group that does have revenue managers, really we are in sync with them and we bring in that real life context. Use AI plus that real life context to be able to price the best way. 
David M.: That's great. Alright, so we were talking before we, we we got on about how you're new to the industry and it's funny because. You know, back in the day, people would drive to their competitors' motels and count the cars. That was their revenue management.
Yeah. So it still seems like there's a little bit of a reactive kind of way, rather than being proactive in the industry. So maybe talk a little bit more about your thoughts on that. 
Bobby Marhamat: Absolutely, absolutely. I think a lot of systems, uh, whether, you know, you right now you're doing a couple different things.
If you're doing any sort of revenue management, either you're doing yield management, you're doing kinda manual pricing in an Excel sheet. You're using an RMS system or you're using true AI in our belief, and so no matter what you're doing from that perspective, I think the real thing you need to think about is using the context to be able to not only see what's happening from a market perspective.
Again, real AI plus being able to tie that into a person to be able to really have a strategy against things. Because one of the things that's happening is I can price based on rules today, but if I'm pricing based on rules today. So I'm not anticipating what's gonna happen three weeks from now. Four weeks from now, I'm gonna get to a place in three weeks, four weeks from now, my occupancy level is at 20% versus a 50% it should be at.
So one of the beliefs that we have is we're constantly looking at the future, tying in, again, market dynamics, what's happening in this space, using AI technology to crunch the numbers, and you're using a real life human to be able to say, this is the strategy you should have.
Steve Carran: Awesome. That's great. And revenue management just isn't about changing the price, right? Yeah. It's about filling the top of the funnel. Hundred percent. So can you talk about how you can unlock that more demand? 
Bobby Marhamat: Absolutely. One of the biggest things that our operators have asked us is, Hey, listen, you're optimizing. You know, for me, I'm making on average 22% more revenue, et cetera, but how can you help me fill up more of that top of the funnel, like you just said, Steve, and like.
At a high level, one of the things that we're adding to our, our platform is the ability to be able to help with bookings. So not only can you optimize the bookings that are coming in, but how can I help you bring more bookings in so you know, a perfect world, bring more in, get more money out of it, and everyone's making more money and happy. 
David M.: Great. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is where Bobby, you get to let people know about TakeUp and how they can get in touch with you and learn more about the company. 
Bobby Marhamat: Absolutely, absolutely. Uh, please reach out to us, uh, uh, by email. I'll give you my email as well, bobby@takeup.ai or check out our website. There's a lot of information on there. We'd love to take you through a demo and, and, and talk about real AI.
David M.: That's good. Great. 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 hope to see you again soon. Thanks, Bobby. 
Bobby Marhamat: Awesome. Thank you guys. Thank you. Appreciate it.