The Modern Hotelier #113: Seamless Hotel Software Integrations & Scalability | with Josh Graham
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Steve Carran: Welcome to another episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are coming to you from the trade show floor of the Hospitality Show. We are joined by Josh Graham, the head of market development at CloudBeds. Josh, how you doing? How's the show going for

Josh Graham: It's been a great show. It's actually my first time in San Antonio, so I got a chance to get out last night, see a few things. And I always love these shows because I've been in the business for a while, and so part of it is meeting with great new customers, but a lot of it is just seeing old friends, and that's always

Steve Carran: Absolutely. You've been in the industry for 20 years. How did you find your way to Cloudbeds

Josh Graham: Oh, great question. So when I was looking for a new role, I actually sat down with a mentor of mine, came up with a list of things that I was looking for in a new role, which by the way, if anybody's ever looking for a new role, highly recommend going through that exercise, right? And so a couple of things I identified were personal, but one of the things that was important to me was Joining a company that was in growth mode, but specifically looking to grow through innovation, not just acquisition, right? Because I've seen the effect that has on hoteliers in the past. And so when I met Adam and the team, I was just incredibly impressed. And I think CloudBeds is really in that mode, right? We're looking to redefine what it means to be a PMS, moving beyond a lot of the sort of traditional functionality of a PMS, and I just got really excited about the potential of that, to solve a lot of problems that I know hoteliers have.

David Millili: You've seen it all, made a good choice joining CloudBeds. What sets CloudBeds apart?

Josh Graham: Yeah. So one of the things that I felt really strongly about, and you know CloudBeds, we talk about giving our partners power, flexibility, and ease of use, right? And it's not just that we do one of those things really well. It's that we're able to bring them together and do all of them. That's where the magic happens, right? And there's not a lot of companies out there I think that have as much magic as CloudBeds when it comes to bringing all those things together. So look, I've seen hoteliers be forced to make the choice between features and functionality and then have to sacrifice the user experience. And when you sacrifice the user experience, that often leads to poor guest experiences. And I've also seen a lot of hoteliers say, all right, I'm going to go with a more modern solution, something that works more smoothly, and then get stymied because that solution doesn't have critical business functionality. So I think at CloudBeds, we're all about freeing as many hoteliers as possible from making that false choice. And that's really kind of where we stand apart.

Steve Carran: So you unveiled CloudBed Intelligence. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Josh Graham: Yeah, for sure. First, I think we should acknowledge there's been a lot of AI washing over the last year or so. A friend of mine says, "Is it AI or ay yi yi?" It causes a lot of pain, right? Adam committed a while back to never just building AI for the sake of AI. If it doesn't drive efficiency, if it's not insightful, if it isn't actionable, we're not interested in it here at Cloudbeds. So what we did was build AI and machine learning into our platform in a way that supercharges a lot of the existing functionalities and helps break down silos. Our point of view is that AI shouldn't just be something that benefits marketers or revenue managers but has an impact on regional teams, GMs, the operations, housekeeping—right?—should all be able to benefit. So when we sat down, we built CloudBeds Intelligence, multi-modal and causal AI. I'd love to do another podcast sometime and talk about how those two are a little different than generative or predictive AI. If any of your listeners go to cloudbeds.com backslash AI, they can get a deep dive into what those are and the use cases we're applying them to. Clouded Intelligence really drives actions and brings those things together in a meaningful way. I think that's going to be a huge differentiator for

Steve Carran: So Josh, you mentioned actionable, insightful, and efficient AI. How is Cloudbeds in a good position to deliver those?

Josh Graham: Yeah, great question again. I mentioned earlier one of the things that sets us apart is the fact that we're not just focused on core PMS functionality, right? And so on platform, we have capabilities not just in operations and finance, but in distribution and marketing, in revenue and intelligence, and in guest experience. Because of that, we have a vast volume of data in our platform. Both causal and multi-modal AI require huge amounts of data. So when you take all of those different data points that we have in our system that a lot of other more traditional PMSs don't have, as well as our ability to bring in meaningful data like market data, market demand data, that puts us in a position to deliver on that promise of actionable, efficient, and insightful AI.

David Millili: So CloudBed's got its start with smaller properties. You guys have made the move to go after larger properties now, 100 plus rooms, let's call it. How's that going so far?

Josh Graham: Oh, great. So, it's important to note that we didn't start off just to service small hotels, right? Our goal was to have an all-in-one that worked for everyone. If you think about our guiding principles, more reservations, happier guests—that's something every hotelier should want, right? But as we launched, we realized the most addressable market for this all-in-one were smaller properties because they don't have the time, the talent pool, or the treasure to manage large tech stacks. So we found that we could deliver on that because we had built a system that was so easy to use. Larger hotels were coming to us, and we realized that the key to unlocking larger hotels was doing integrations but doing integrations right. So as we started expanding our partner marketplace, it unlocked larger hotels for us. If someone asks me today, "Is CloudBeds just an all-in-one?" I would say we're a hybrid platform, which can work equally well for both smaller properties and larger

David Millili: Continuing with that, how does CloudBeds approach integration? What makes it innovative?

Josh Graham: Great. Integrations—or rather, bad integrations—are probably the bane of hospitality technology, right? We've all been doing this for a while. I'm not going to say it's the original sin of hospitality tech, but it's definitely one of the deadly sins. So when we started thinking about how we do this differently, it's our perspective that partners integrated with us should feel like a seamless experience. Integrations are where we start, not where we end. As we've built out our partner ecosystem, we've expanded categories of partnerships, even partnering with companies that provide technology we have on stack. A couple of great examples are channel managers and booking engines. CloudBeds is the only PMS with a fully integrated channel manager, over 400 channels. But some hotels need that long tail of distribution, so we partner with SiteMinder. The same goes for CRS and booking engines. We've evolved into this hybrid platform, providing options whether hoteliers want an all-in-one or prefer to bring in other tech. It's a differentiated approach.

David Millili: That's really

Steve Carran: awesome. 2024, we're almost to the end. What’s coming up for CloudBeds?

Josh Graham: CloudBeds Intelligence wasn’t enough? It’s an absolute game-changer, but you’re right, there’s always more. A couple of other things coming down the pike are CloudBeds Insights, bringing enterprise-grade business intelligence to every CloudBeds customer, and a new housekeeping app. The housekeeping app will have customizable checklists, preventative maintenance tracking, labor force optimization, and request tracking. We’re also expanding CRM capabilities, digital marketing capabilities, and launching a new payments portal.

Steve Carran: More than CloudBeds Intelligence?

Josh Graham: Yeah, more than CloudBeds Intelligence. Look, if you’re not already #CloudBedsCurious, I think you should be. I mean, I’m CloudBeds convinced, but hope to get everybody on board for sure.

Steve Carran: Love that.

David Millili: That was a lot of great things coming up. Tell people how they can get in touch with you and find CloudBeds.

Josh Graham: Cloudbeds.com. You can reach out to us there. We have a great sales team on the ground, so if you don’t reach out to us, we’ll reach out to you.

Steve Carran: That's awesome. This has been another episode of The Modern Hotelier, coming to you from the trade show floor of The Hospitality Show. Thank you, and have a great day.