Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Each episode of GAIN Momentum focuses on timeless lessons to help grow and scale a business in hospitality, travel, and technology. Whether you’re a veteran industry leader looking for some inspiration to guide the next phase of growth or an aspiring executive looking to fast-track the learning process, this podcast is here with key lessons centered around four questions we ask each guest.
GAIN Momentum episode #107: Unlocking Time and Energy with Automated Communications | with David Thompson & Andy Dharmani
===
Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the GAIN Momentum podcast. We have another great episode here where I'm blessed by having the co-founders of Myma.ai, Andy Dharmani and David Thompson. How are you both doing?
Andy Dharmani: Doing great, Adam. Nice weather outside. I'm happy. I'm joining from Nashville, Tennessee.
Adam Mogelonsky: Stole the words right out of my mouth. And David, how are you?
David Thompson: Yeah, g'day, mate. all good from Australia and New Zealand, mate. So that's where I am today and from, yeah
Adam Mogelonsky: So I should have said, "How you going?" and "You reckon it's gonna be a good Saturday?"
David Thompson: Yeah, it's gonna be a great Saturday. So, r- rugby, this time of world, not the football, so. But you guys are leading into the World Cup, so that's gonna be interesting, so for soccer. So let's hopefully...
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, yeah, maybe at the end we can drill into the differences between, rugby league and rugby union and really get into it. But,
David Thompson: You are very educated
Adam Mogelonsky: yeah. well, no, people forget that I'm actually a dual citizen, Canada/Australia, so,
you know, I'm kind of a hidden delight that way. But, the focus today is technology and all the amazing things that you're doing with Myma.ai.
So, Andy, if you could start off, give us a elevator pitch for Myma.ai in terms of where you fit into this ever crazy world of hotel technology.
Andy Dharmani: Yeah, Adam. we've been at hotel technology and specifically AI in hospitality for the last kinda six to seven years. And, as we all know, right, AI and technology has evolved a lot in last few years, so that's, we have evolved with it. And today where we fit basically, we are a AI communication platforms for hospitality.
So basically anything to do with communication, we automate that for hospitality. We try to provide a great experience that guests expect from it, as well as help hotels, increase their revenue by not missing any opportunity. So if guest has a question, which they have always, before stay, in stay, post stay, we are there to take their question 24 by seven, multiple languages, and make sure we are always on brand, on revenue for the hotel, and we don't let hotel miss any opportunity
Adam Mogelonsky: And what I'm seeing now is in terms of missed opportunities, there's, of course, so many different channels, that our guests are coming in to communicate with hotels. There's the tracking of the conversations, and there's also the response time, because guests these days have the attention spans of canaries. Let's just, you know, say what it is. so within that, those are three incredible challenges to diagnose, on top of the fact that labor costs are rising and we can't just throw bodies at this problem anymore. We need to solve it through automation and now AI-driven automation. So, David, over to you. I've addressed three main problems. labor, time, everything in between. How does Mymaa really get down to helping tackle these challenges to increase guest service delivered faster and, also save teams time?
David Thompson: Oof, that's a great question, and not in order as well, Adam, so you, you've thrown a curve ball, but I love it. Basically, first of all, what makes Myma a little bit different is actually my background. I'm 30 years in hospitality like yourself and fallen into technology. So I was one of the anti-smart GMs on the other side saying no to technology, and probably one of the handbrakes, and now I'm on the dark side, pushing technology.
But your question's really interesting, Adam, and I think part of how we're helping is opening up where the business and opportunities are now coming from in the digital landscape. I've got a hotel in the Philippines that gets 90% of its business from Facebook. Not its webpage, not from an OTA, but how do they work in Facebook, you know?
A- and this is where our product, our communication tools, our integrations help with that and drive revenue there. I've got another hotel in Bali, Instagram. You know, we pay all these bloggers, to blog, but how do we measure the ROI, you know... H- how do we know the bloggers are actually m- driving business to your webpage?
With the back end of what Andy has built, because I said this is one of the problems hotel owners and GMs want to know what bloggers, build. We're able to track the URLs. We're able to s- from where it's come from. We can see IP addresses. We can see all these things. So, yeah, really interesting, where we're going here, Adam, sort of, what we can do.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. I, I love that you brought in ROI and attribution towards that ROI because, you know, being on the other side where I've sat in the room with GMs and owners to make these decisions, and of course they're getting lots of vendors trying to sell to them, but they're always asking, "Well, where's the ROI? How do we measure this? How do we track it?" Because they're obviously beholden to show directly to a P&L how that works. So, Andy, back to you, what attribution tools are you building into your omni-channel communication platform in order to really drill down and allow hotels to see that attribution, and also thereby deliver insights about which channels are growing and how best to reach guests?
Andy Dharmani: Yeah, absolutely, Adam. I think you're right on the spot there, right? Like this technology, when we started a while back, it was kind of new technology, but now the expectation is that every single thing is attributed, where traffic is coming from, where it is going, at what point customer makes a decision to buy, which channel they prefer. So that is one of the key differentiators for us, and I'm sure that is focus of many technologies these days, right, is insights. So we provide insights into-- We track each customer, which page on the website they started, or they started their journey from Instagram, right? That's where they started the journey. And then eventually all of this leads to making a booking or them dropping out.
So we actually record all of that. If it is voice call, we record voice call. And then the one big challenge, right, everybody has, there are so many phone calls that come in, there are so many emails that come into a hotel to different departments. It might be for a wedding inquiry, it might be for a conference inquiry, or might be for a room booking or cancellation modification. So there are so many questions coming in and so many inquiries from different channels. So what we do, actually one part of AI is doing a best conversation, but the second part of it is actually going through these hundreds and thousands of calls and messages and converting it into a one-page dashboard.
So for a general manager, they can see, you know, okay, my 20% of queries this month have been coming from Instagram, and that is my next channel to focus on. Or, you know, my 10% of the calls have been modifications or cancellations, and compared to last month, it is only 5%. They can measure sentiment of the calls. Okay, so you know, it's neutral, customers are more happy, or 90%, 80%. So we give insight, which they never had before. You know, a call is made, nobody knows what that call is for, but now they know. They know why customers are calling, they know what they have in mind, and they can do something about it. So absolutely. So insights end-to-end attribution is extremely important.
David Thompson: Adam, I'll give you an example here of that, of the data insights we're giving to owners or to GMs. A hotel in Australia about three or four years ago using our product, that hallway grow, Adam, 12, 13 room types. It's only a 100-room hotel. Why have you got so many room types? Anyway, he was one of the first movers, made himself pet-friendly in Australia. That's a new thing relative to post-COVID. Not like America where I've seen the big Alsatians in your hotel rooms, which is quite amazing. And he saw the data coming in, the requests for pet-friendly rooms. It was his second most asked room type.
Adam Mogelonsky: So David, to go back to one specific point here, we've talked about the ROI, and oftentimes the ROI, the way I've talked about it with senior decision-makers, is that it's seconds saved compounds into hours gained, and that is the core of a lot of the automations for omni-channel platforms. So I'm wondering if you could unpack some of the automation and generative AI tools that have really helped hotels to improve their communications and their service?
David Thompson: Probably one of the best questions I've been asked for a long time, Adam. And the reason I say that is why I started this company. Six years ago, seven years ago, I was running hotels for the largest hotel New Zealand owner. Had some hotels in America, just come back from being his asset manager. And he asked me about AI six, seven years ago, and AI was nothing then in hospitality. And I looked into it. There wasn't anything great. I looked at other industries, and that's normally how evolution happens. You look at how something else is happening in another industry, and you bring it to your industry.
I looked at the banking and finance industry. There's a great chatbot in New Zealand on a bank in here, and I tracked down the guy that built it. I got him into my office. I said, "We're a hotel company. We want a great digital experience for a chatbot. Can you do A, B, C, and D? Answer the question, multiple languages, lead to making a booking?"
And he said, "Yep, no problems." He built it in six weeks, came back, did a presentation. Within three minutes of me seeing this, I went, "Wow, if we put this on a webpage, we're going to reduce phone calls coming in, free up the receptionist so they can look the customer in the face while they're checking in and not be interrupted."
I saw that as the Holy Grail six years ago. And that's, the Holy Grail moves every three months with us, with AI. And then from what that led from, we started as a chatbot company. We've led into a platform, and every other tool we've got now saves time. So we have an email reader because hotels are getting nailed by thousands of emails from booking.com or Expedia, "Please confirm this question, that question."
So our email reader reads the email, comes in, generates a reply. Doesn't send it because we still want humans to press that send button. But we make them read it and then send it. So it's generated. So you're typing out an email within a minute and a half. It's done it in three seconds. So add that up over 100 emails a day. We're saving two to three hours of productivity there. We can also automatically send that email over time if the hotel is comfortable with the AI's response. We've then moved into AI voice. AI voice, I think, is the new Holy Grail of the data we get from that. You imagine every single phone call a day is recorded, can be analyzed by the AI.
So you get 120 phone calls, of which 10 might be only for reservations. Do you think your team of six or seven reservationists is doing reservation calls? No, they're actually fielding questions about the hotel. Then it goes into a reservation. So we're saving time there again, Adam. We've then got another product, guest messaging, which we're going to launch soon, which Andy might talk about, is coming out, and that's the true automation of guests being sent a text message on the preferred platform they like.
Might be via text, might be email. An outbound message arrives, "You're arriving in two days' time. Any questions?" And the question the customer says, "Oh, we need an extra blanket or an extra pillow in the room," that then goes back to our platform and into the task management system of the hotel and is done.
So yeah.
Saw your eyebrows go up on that one. So we've always got innovation coming. That is why we built this company, to save time for staff, to give better customer service. And that old saying, Adam, if you solve a problem, your company's going to be successful. That's why we're still kicking and going six years later, seven years later.
We launched our company, by the way, six weeks before COVID, and me and Andy got locked in New Zealand for two years, so we couldn't get out. So we spent a lot of time thinking, having beers on how we build a robust product that's going to change the hospitality industry.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, to drill out one feature there and to go back to Andy, the whole idea of integrating to a task management system with any sort of intelligence or agentic workflows, which seems to be the buzz term of the day. Could you unpack how you've made that happen from a development standpoint? And I say this, the context there is it's very easy for me to say that and say, "Oh, wouldn't it be great if a guest mentions this in a text string and then it's automatically pushed through to housekeeping or to a runner, or to a restaurant." But having that semantic interpretation and the connection, the integrations, is mountains of work for a dev team to do. How have you made that happen?
Andy Dharmani: No, that's a great one, Adam. Yes. So I think the expectations from hoteliers as well is not just answering the questions, but doing something about it, right? So when we started or when anybody started, if somebody says, "What is the check-in time?" I can tell them what is the check-in time. They say, "What is the best room for family of four?"
We can answer that question. Next question they're gonna ask is, "Is the room available?" Now, to answer that question, we need to go to CRS or PMS, wherever the rate and availability is, and bring that back, right? To answer your question, like runner, if customer is in the hotel room. And the other thing is could be any channel, right? They could type that question or pick a phone and ask, "I want fresh towels delivered."
So you need to understand that intent. And then, yes, so we like to say AI is the brain, but you need hands to do the work. So to automate that, integrations is very important. So I think as a whole industry, in last six, seven years, one thing we have seen changing, maybe it was forced or it has definitely changed, is a lot of the systems do expose and open APIs for third parties to plug in.
So yes, integrations are key. We continue to build these integrations and the contextual layer because it's easy to fill a form. We know what is the check-in date in a particular format, but customer does not say that. Customer says, "Do you have room available this Sunday for two nights?" And we don't want to ask, "Oh, this Sunday is this date." So we pick those things up.
We know we need number of adults, so we just ask that question via the API, tell them back with the least latency possible. So there are many technical challenges on the way. You can't have latency, APIs take time, understanding, interpreting context takes time. Going a little bit technical, we all know about ChatGPT, OpenAI, how fast they are growing, you cannot expect a consistent and timely response from those APIs anymore.
It can be a second, two seconds is a lot of time to get a response back. So building layers, if we don't get a response within milliseconds from one AI platform, we're gonna go to second. So it's a multi-layered approach to have a robust system really that you can put in front of the customers. The expectations are very high, both from hotels as well as their guests, because they have had some great experiences with AI now.
So yeah, we have spent a lot of time integrating with lots of hotel platforms. And I'll just add one last thing to that, Adam too. If I say a hotel thing is gonna take six months because you have five systems, it's just too long and too expensive. So we invest a lot in these integrations, testing them, integrating with our tools so that they can click a few buttons and get it up and running.
So yeah, one of the very important things is actually having hands with the brain.
David Thompson: Yeah, Andy said a great thing, expectations. I've spent the last five and a half, six years educating the hospitality industry on what AI is and the opportunity. In the last six months, everyone's an AI expert. They go to ChatGPT. I've done demonstrations where the general manager's asked me a technical question on coding and ML, blah, blah, blah, are you using in your platform.
I actually outed him on the call and said, "You've just gone to ChatGPT." I said, "You're a general manager of a hotel. You're not a computer person." And I said, "Why are you asking me these questions? This is what the product can do." But where I'm going with this conversation, Adam, is that everyone's become an expert.
And what I tell everyone, in the last 20 years, name one booking engine that can cancel a booking. There isn't. Because I'm getting asked now, can AI make reservations into PMS? Can they change dates? Can they do all this replacing human and cancel booking? And the answer is not at the moment.
Maybe in 18 months' time, two years. And then I say this. In two years' time in AI, the equivalent is, and there's a saying now, AI years. So it took Facebook 20 years to get to 700 million users. It took ChatGPT three years. So one year is equivalent to seven. So in two years in AI years, it'll have the ability to make cancellations because all the PMSs, all the players have opened the APIs up. We're all playing together. But all it takes is one player not to in the ecosystem, and it can't be done, like the payment gateway or the PMS or something.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, before virtual credit cards and all the authorization protocols and all that.
David Thompson: Yeah.
Adam Mogelonsky: Fun times!
David Thompson: I tell owners and all this, "Okay, payments can be done." There was actually a test done by Mastercard in New Zealand from end to end, the agent, the AI agent actually charged a credit card without any human. Well, wow, that's amazing. Taking the money, but what about refunding it? Are you comfortable with an AI robot going to your hotel bank account and just taking out $500? And it's like, whoa, okay. We don't think of that side of the problem.
Well, yeah, taking the money is easy, but what about refunding it and the legislation there? So I'm all for the Wild West of AI, but we're getting to a point now, actually, we might need some real hard guardrails, and payments is one I'm sort of advocating for.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. I mean, the guardrails, as it relates to payments and refunds or cancellations, the chain of custody problem is part of the reason why the LLMs, Claude, ChatGPT, have backed away from doing bookings and have stayed within their lane as discovery and planning tools, with link-outs to the OTAs or direct.
And part of where Myma fits in is saying, we know people are using these tools, but it's our job, no matter where the guest is coming from, to do the best job to demonstrate service and to ensure that their stay is as great as possible. And then as well, scrape data along the way so that way we can improve the product, do more channel shift, as Andy said earlier, all those things that come from really driving that point home of communications as commercialization.
David, I wanted to add one more point to all this, going back to what you said that you're 30 years in the industry and you're originally on the hotel ops side. And this speaks to one of the other issues behind that time-saving is the saving of emotional strain or mental energy, because every time you have to write an email, it's not only time, but it's mental stress.
So the tool you mentioned where it can write the emails for you but still keep a human in the loop so that way they can review and then click send or make modifications and then click send. That is not only time saved, but that's mental energy saved, so that same person can be more frontline and even better with their guests.
So can you name any other tools that can help in this way with regards to saving emotional toll of hospitality to thereby allow our frontline teams to be even better when guest facing?
David Thompson: So, Andy's Mr. AI. He's across all sort of techy stuff. So I'm thinking AI voice is a big one. It just relieving that pressure of your reservationist concealer lights flashing up, there's five people on hold.
That's a mental saving. Wow. You know, just relief there. Being a-- Actually, what makes our platform unique, I mean, not unique, others can do it, is you can turn it on and off. So like, you know, you've got maximum staff between 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM, so you don't need the AI going there, or it can just take overflow when calls are at 10, you know, 10 rings.
But when there's no staff, it's down to it answers it straight away. So if you had a staff member call in sick tomorrow, sweet. Actually, we've got a client, energy industry using our product for call center, big player in New Zealand and they haven't replaced anyone in a call center.
At first they thought, "Okay, we can save 10, 15%, make them redundant." They actually haven't because then the call center people have been able to then get on top of the actual issue problems that are coming in and do their job of customer service, not answer the calls, then pick up the stuff.
And then the AI is smart enough, it puts it through, and that's how we're doing voice at the moment.
That we're saying you're not gonna replace your voice, I mean, your reservations team. We're gonna filter the calls out, all the noise that happened beforehand, and put the revenue generating calls through.
Adam Mogelonsky: Right. So I mean, what, from what you're saying about the, the it isn't necessarily time saved in a lot of cases, but the automation will then be reflected in terms of increased customer satisfaction or even NPS for a hotel.
David Thompson: You understand Australian and my rubbish. Good, good translation, Adam. Thank you.
Andy Dharmani: I will add also employee satisfaction and their score, right? Like you said, like just take an example of email and take it bit further. So how you reply to an email from a hotel? You need to stay on brand's voice, right? Email comes from-- especially emails will come from all over the countries in different languages.
Imagine the stress a trainer has to go through to make sure we hear this. We actually do hear this from hotels, like writing every time on brand is not easy. And now they are telling, okay, you know, take help from ChatGPT to write your email. But ChatGPT gonna talk about anything. If it is a restaurant, it gonna say, okay, you know, these are the best Italian restaurant.
So when we write an email for a trainer marketing per people, all of their inputs are gathered at one place, and email is always on brand in the same language that it came in through. It is on brand on your own data, so it's not answering a standard question, and it is also integrated into your system.
So you know, if an email is, "Do you have rooms available?" The response will be, "Yes, rooms are available. These are the rates. If you add these dining offers and parking, this is the best offer for you." And all of this will be written in the brand tone that you need.
So saves a lot of time. We call it human in the loop to make sure everything is right, but everything is done for you as everybody in the organization wants it to be. So saves a lot of stress.
David Thompson: Yeah, really interesting, Adam, on wellness. And I heard you speak in Singapore a couple months ago. Really fascinating, your keynote speaker on, and as an industry and a market segment, I don't think hoteliers realize it is massive and it's upon us now. And I think it's worth just talking about that for a quick 10 minutes.
And why I say that there's method to my madness, because AI does tap into how does AI work with people who are 85 years old, 80, you know, the older aging generation. At first people thought technology, you know, they're the last ones to use it. They're some of our best users, believe it or not, because they ask indicative questions, they ask detailed stuff.
And you had a word for this population, I forgot what it was like
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, I mean, it's a little bit derogatory, but it's the silver tsunami
David Thompson: was a tsunami yeah, so the whole idea is silver, graying hair,
Adam Mogelonsky: And a tsunami being that, you know, we're on the cusp of a great lifespan and healthspan extension with the combination of medical advances and the democratization of those medical advances, things like peptides, more adoption of supplements, and just people living a wellness-based lifestyle. Gym, staying active, getting back to eating whole foods, smoking less, drinking less, et cetera. And not to steal your thunder in this, but to tie it back to communications is just because people are getting older, they may still have some creeping in disabilities, right?
Like macular degeneration comes in, joint problems, they can't move around as well, things where they want to keep traveling. They want to experience the world. They have the money to experience the world, but they have concerns about the hotel. And now with AI, they have the tools to ask very detailed questions, as you said, about the hotel, and now that is on you guys, like Myma, to create a platform that can really help assuage these fears and give peace of mind to this really powerful group of travelers.
David Thompson: Yeah, I think it's, yeah, silver tsunami, mate. It's the big thing we need to adapt and change. And even to build a hotel. So a simple question, traditionally hotel doors open in or out? They need to be sliding doors now so robots can actually come in. They don't-- because a robot can't actually open a door.
And we see it in the chat, you know, will a wet wheelchair get into the car park? Or people are asking about that. Or is your bed only 30 inches off the ground? And we don't understand why they've actually got a prosthetic leg that they need to actually put it on. And it's quite fascinating, the data we see that... And then if we show that on our webpage, and we've got one hotel that started putting pictures of their disabled room or their ADA room on their webpage and made it their hero photo. They charge that as a premium, and people are prepared to pay for it. So again, data is king.
Understanding your customers in an omni-channel like Myma and other platforms. And we've got some great competition out there doing it, and we love our competition because it makes us run faster. We're the fastest AI guys in hospitality, so we're the smallest, but we're the fastest. Nimble and fast, so yeah.
Andy Dharmani: And Adam, just gonna add one thing to it. Images is a huge thing, right? Showing the right image at the right time. So if a customer is asking a question on accessibility, anything related to that, we not only produce text. We also search through all the images and show the most relevant image.
So customer is also seeing the answer, and they are also seeing the images which are very appropriate for that question, which gives them confidence to make a booking. And second part of this is also proactiveness. We did speak about guest messaging, so we do actively reach out to customers as well, like three days before they are arriving, which is quite important, right? Based on what channel is important to them, like WhatsApp, wherever they are comfortable, to say, "Hey, you are checking in. If you have any specific needs, let us know." And then those needs are fed into the PMS system, housekeeping, all the systems so that things are ready. So lot of layers to it, which help a person make a booking with confidence as well as feel that all their needs are covered when they reach.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. I mean, I love that phrase, booking with confidence, 'cause that's the main thing is, because you're tapping into direct bookings, you can control that information and really give people the detailed answers they may not be able to get through a third party. as well, you know, data is the new oil.
Are you seeing it whereby an increased amount of questions related to disabilities could infer operational improvements, either, you know, changing doors to be sliding, improving ramps, or even configuring rooms?
David Thompson: Oh, definitely.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah
David Thompson: and we actually thank America, like the ADA Association for piloting and putting their head above the parrot line and making a lot of noise the last 20 years, 'cause it's actually gonna help the silver fox generation a-adapt to it. 'Cause hotels know that a certain percent of the inventory need to be, you know, ADA compliant or disability in Australia compliant. I see that growing, to be honest. And yeah, there's gonna be more requirement for it, so yeah
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, and that's all based on the data, the questions people are asking, and then associating those, those answers with that, that intelligence layer
David Thompson: And I think it's like seeing is believing. You know, my receptionist says we've got a lot of people asking us about wheelchairs. Yeah, sure. Owner thinks that, "Oh, that's, that's money." But when you actually see the data, the, a real conversation that's been in tech script, whether it's got timestamp on it, it, it's not lying. It, it's-- your customers are asking for it. So... A- and also hotels are putting, you know, AI into their P&L lines.
General managers are asking, they start sweating, "David, where's the Myma report? We need it for the owner's report." And it's like, "Okay, finally."
Yeah. Yeah. So to, just 'cause the owner wants to know, well, what's chatbot finding out about our business? You know, what, what's everyone asking about us?
So yeah
Adam Mogelonsky: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it, and it has, as we've discussed, repercussions on, booking confidence straight through to, how to find more guests through to operational improvements to keep your CSAT scores high and everything else. Um, so besides, the growing need for appealing to people of advanced age that have specific concerns, have you picked up any other emerging segments, just via what people are asking and, and the conversations that are happening through the data that's flowing on your system?
David Thompson: not segments, channels. Like I reckonu, I know this is a controversial one, TikTok. I still haven't got my head around it 'cause I don't use it.
But my daughter, So funny story. I own an AI company, a chatbot company. My two daughters, 19, 17, but they were 13 and 12 six years ago, not interested in this company.
Three years into owning it, my daughter comes to me, "Dad, TikTok's doing this, this, and this, and they got a chatbot. Is that what you do?" She finally got it, like, 'cause TikTok's chatbot company. So,
um, but that generation, that's how they communicate, with short 10-second, you know, videos and I don't know. Again, that's a new opportunity for markets, for marketing, for hotels.
Somehow we gotta get into that. So, you know, the disabled market I think is a big market. The aging population's a big one. Health, like what you said. We've sort of seen it up and down with retreats over the years. There's some early health resorts that specialize, but I can see that coming back around medical, again, I think that's gonna grow with, there's medical tourism, but it's gonna become really apparent. So yeah. But Andy, what do you see anything sort of you've coming
Andy Dharmani: Yeah, I think it's definitely gives a lot of data to like, related to events. If it is event-related questions coming up, we can tell them in advance. And, our reports do show, okay, this suddenly this has changed. So, you know, they don't need to be looking to get a notification that you need to tell a lot of event questions.
So are you ready for this? So yes, a lot of insights based on what's happening. There's a fire in California, and, you know, you suddenly start seeing 95% of questions are around death. So straight thing is, have you even communicated to the guests of this impact? So everybody's asking, I have my booking in six weeks, four weeks, tomorrow or next week, what's happening? So a lot of operational efficiencies with this. And, channel is very important, right? Like with all the ages, like TikTok is important probably for a 22-year-old, but 85-year-old who is used to SMS or phoning, they do not download TikTok or even go to a website. So supporting this, all these channels also means we are able to meet needs of all these people without forcing on them, okay, you need to have to go to website, click on these buttons. They might not want to do it. And that's why being in front of customers where they're most comfortable is very important too
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah.
David Thompson: I've got a question for you, actually for you, Adam. I wouldn't mind your opinion. I know we're going the other way now. We're going to dark territory, dangerous where this could go. And he hasn't prepared for this. One of the things that keeps me, myself awake as a CEO is the actual current infrastructure below us.
AI, we can do anything, but can the PMSs, can the CRSs, the CRMs handle AI? Like, and when you think about it, you imagine AI voice and a chatbot all pinging these systems, this old infrastructure. What's your view? Or I mean, there's no right and wrong answer on this one. I don't know.
Adam Mogelonsky: You know, my overall view is that we're moving away from a solely PMS-centric architecture to one that is more horizontal in terms of having best-in-breed systems that are still capable of doing a ton. So they're a combination of best-in-breed and all-in-one, and it means that we're not beholden to just this one system of record.
And that allows us to be very scrupulous with how we maintain legacy systems and legacy partners because if Myma or other systems are able to give so much peace of mind and so much harmonization of the data to offer such great operational improvements, but there's another outdated system that was central that isn't keeping up, well, nowadays it's much easier to make that decision about doing open heart surgery and changing PMS providers. Particularly if players like Myma have built robust integrations that allow you to flexibly and easily reconfigure with something else in sandbox and then flip the switch during an overnight process. So that's my overall view on it is, dare I use the term for these legacy players, but nut up or shut up, right? I use the phrase, things happen slow until they happen very fast. I think, okay, so dare I quote Stalin, but Stalin said, "There are decades when nothing happens, and then there are hours when decades happen," or something of that nature when he was describing the Bolshevik Revolution and then of course the Great Purge and all that stuff.
But that's sort of where we are right now is system and leaders are moving so quickly ahead of others in terms of really embracing AI and new coding techniques and new forms of structuring relational databases that it's creating this giant leap forward. And then eventually, however reluctantly, hotel decision-makers will say, "Well, this is really holding us back, and now it's costing us millions of dollars per year."
And they can point to a specific line item on their P&L for where it's costing them by not maintaining best-of-breed systems. So that's my view there. It's been great having you. To sunset here, I'm wondering if you could look to the future. We've talked about it in general terms, but what features are you looking forward to? Either you're developing them and you can state them publicly, or things that really get you excited about the future hotel technology.
Andy Dharmani: Yeah, I think it's very interesting, right? With how things have evolved in last two, three years, it's hard to predict the future. We didn't know there was going to be something called ChatGPT. And I think it's not about what in the next four, five years, it's about how and how fast you can do it.
There's going to be an app, right? A mobile app. A mobile app will take you one year to build. Now you can build it in two days. So things have evolved so quickly. So technology players like us need to build the infrastructure so that we can adapt quickly to the needs. We need to focus on the architecture so that we can build on these things.
We can build, we cannot say to a hotel like, "This will take one year." That's not the world. It has to be months, weeks, and coming down to hours. So to me, speed is key, how quickly you're able to adapt new technologies and move with it. I won't predict what, but I will say it has to be really quick.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, that's a great way to finish off. So there's so much to look forward to in hotel technology, and it's great to have leaders come on to really talk about some of the features and where it's all headed. So Andy and David, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Andy Dharmani: 100%, Adam. Thank you for having us.
Adam Mogelonsky: Thanks.