The Modern Hotelier #243: Successful PMS Rollouts & A Strong Hotel Operations Platform | with Ryan King
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David Millili: Welcome to The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Don't forget to 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, I'm really excited for today's conversation We have on Ryan King, Senior Vice President of Americas from Shiji. Welcome to the show, Ryan. How are we doing today?
Ryan King: Hey, thanks Steve. Nice to be here. 
David Millili: All right, so Ryan, we're gonna jump in. We're gonna go through a quick lightning round. We're gonna get to know you better, learn about your career, and then jump into some industry topics. Sound good?
Ryan King: That sounds great.
David Millili: All right. What did you want to be when you were growing up? 
Ryan King: Well, when I was a little kid, I wanted to be the guy that drove the garbage truck.
David Millili: Alright, good. What's something you wish you were better at? 
Ryan King: Oh, sleeping. I'm a terrible sleeper.
David Millili: All right. Luxury you can't live without.
Ryan King: Earl Gray Tea, a nice Earl Gray tea.
David Millili: All right. Who's a person dead or alive would you'd like to take to lunch? 
Ryan King: Oh, well, that's a hard one. I would say right now, and I don't wanna be too emotional about it, but I'd love to still be able to take my mom to lunch as she passed about a month ago.
David Millili: Got it. What's a superpower you wish you. 
Ryan King: I guess my superpower would be, to be able to sleep better.
David Millili: And what's final one? What's on your bucket list?
Ryan King: I really want to get to Thailand in the next two years and do a full moon party. 
Steve Carran: Wow. All right. That's awesome. Good answer. I'm a terrible sleeper as well, so we're on the same page with that superpower. 
Ryan King: The occasional time that I get a lot of sleep, I'm like, I should go to the Middle East. I could solve peace today. 
Steve Carran: Exactly, exactly. You feel so refreshed once you get that one night. Good sleep. So that was great, Ryan. Now we're gonna dive into your background a little bit about what makes you tick. So you grew up in Seattle, Washington, is that correct? 
Ryan King: I did. A town of a Starbucks and Amazon. 
Steve Carran: Yeah, absolutely. So how did growing up in Seattle shape into who you are today outside of your love for Starbucks and Amazon? 
Ryan King: I think a lot of what you are as a person is formed when you're younger and I was in a culture of more of a West coast relaxed style and it's something that became the bedrock of who I am, but since I've moved to the east, it's an interesting mix of the two. 
Steve Carran: Did you have a tough transition moving from Seattle to Washington DC I came from Wisconsin to Washington DC Was that a tough transition for you? 
Ryan King: I think the hardest thing for me was when I moved to DC it was before we had all the Nav and Google maps and all that, so DC is not known for its well labeled streets, and I was navigating around with a map and I'd come to a four-way stop and there's no street signs anywhere, so it at times was difficult to get around the, the diagonal streets take you one way and the others take you another and you end up somewhere and you're like, how did I get here? That was probably my biggest challenge. 
Steve Carran: I just recently told a story of how I got lost on the Metro and was on there for a couple hours taking the metro, the bus. So I'm with you on that one. 
David Millili: Alright, so you went to American Intercontinental University. What led you to choose American Intercontinental and pursue a degree in marketing?
Ryan King: I think, you know, is more along the lines of where I was in my career and looking for something that would give me back. On some skills and things that I wanted. So at the time, that was the best choice that I had found. 
Steve Carran: And I found this kind of funny story about you, you and I worked together, but I didn't know this one. When you lived in DC you were actually the interim general manager for the Phoenix Park Hotel in Washington DC and you handled the first GM transition in almost 20 years. What were some of the challenges? That you remember from that and was there a moment where you're like, holy cow, I understand what they're going through, but it is really rewarding as well.
Ryan King: Yeah, I mean, you hit the key part there, Steve. This was the first time they'd switched general managers about 20 years. So imagine the things that shake out of a closet at that point in time. I remember Joe Zaza, who was the GM that had left. He was a great guy and it was a big challenge filling those shoes while the transition was being made. The interesting thing that kind of came up there is that Joe had a specific style and everybody was used to that, but as he left and that style started to change, it was a reorientation for every now one that was in the building, and so it affected everyday life. 
Steve Carran: I can imagine. I can imagine. Well, that's great. Now we're gonna move into your career, how you got to be the SVP of Americas at Shiji in your earlier days you did work in hotels in and around Washington, dc What did those days teach you that you still take with you in your career today, now that you're on the tech side?
Ryan King: Oh, well, yeah, I think the hotel days were invaluable for me. You know, I was able to understand so much of what goes on property and what the psyche of the different team members are. I've had the fortune of being able to work with almost every department in a hotel and understand how technology where I am now affects what those people do. So I really, when I'm talking to our customers and our clients right now, it is a lot of that history that I use to be able to relate to what they need. 
David Millili: And from there you went to Travel Click as director of sales and then a sales consultant at informs. What made you decide to move over to the tech side? 
Ryan King: It's so funny when I'd first gotten approached by Travel Click, I was like, well, I don't even know what you guys do every day. Like, I work in a hotel, we have certain things and we do this, and what do you guys do? Just sit around or it was an eye-opening experience to make a transition. And I made that just about, you know, in the middle of your life. So for me it was like I started an entire new career still in hospitality, but it was entirely different on the perspective I had it was igniting excitement in me that I hadn't had since I was in my twenties. So I really, feel fortunate that I've been able to have that chance.
I don't know that everybody always gets it, and it really it was something that set me on the path to where I am today. And I'm very, uh, in some respects, very grateful for all the opportunities that got me here. I love what I do and every day I really am the word grateful, I think is great to use for the interactions that I have with my team members as well as our customers and clients.
Steve Carran: From there, you went to stay in touch in 2017 where you moved up from sales to the director of partnerships where we had the pleasure of working together. And then for, since then, you've been at Shiji and are now the SVP of Americas as SVP of Americas. Can you tell us a little bit more about what, what you do, and I'd also love for you to dive in a little bit, how the transition from stay in touch to Shiji kind of happened.
Ryan King: I would say that being. At a pivotal moment when Shiji took over full ownership of StayNTouch was really what I was looking for to be able to go to that next portion, and I was excited about what was there being able to kind of come into fold with a larger conglomerate allowed me to use some of my skills. I originally was, you know, coming in on the G side to bring all of the acquisitions together and help make it one homogenous unit. And then of course, COVID happened and things changed and we had to pivot and look at how we were doing business. And I spent a lot of time looking at what we did from a commercial strategy perspective.
Like how did we make money? What did we bring out? What did we do for clients that helps them solve problems? A few years ago. When we needed to look at evolving what was happening in Americas, uh, Kevin King, our CEO approached me and said, oh, I wanna offer you something. And I was like, oh, I dunno about this. I've come into the Americas and I look over all of our business interests. So one of the pivotal things that I saw is how we were doing is within the Americas, the US dominates the idea of where hospitality is. But it is not the only vein of the Americas. The first thing I had noticed before I even came in is that we hadn't been really concentrated on anything south of the United States, and I've spent the last, oh, I'd say 18 months executing on the vision of switching our focus to our hub in Mexico.
So we've taken our operations and kind of put it into the middle of the Americas. We've then been able to effectively start expanding into Latam and South America, where we're now starting to pick up more clients. We're still focusing on growing our client base in the US but we've switched the hub of our operations into literally the Amer middle of the Americas, better serving everybody north and south, and multilingual capabilities that we didn't have before. 
David Millili: For those who aren't familiar with Shiji, can you dive in a little bit more and just explain kind of the companies and the company as a whole? 
Ryan King: Yeah, Shiji was started back in the late nineties as a service provider and all it was at that point in time was a network provider for all the big brands that were coming into China. And our chairman, he had a driver and a guy that worked with him, a technician, and they just helped connect the systems. From there, really, we grew into a provider of different solutions to help hotels run. And when we evolved in the international space in 2017, we did so by taking the goodwill that we had gained with big brands, management companies, hoteliers, and we brought forward our info, Infosys, POS that was the product that helped us internationalize and it was really our partnership with Hyatt that helped establish that credence outside of China, and we've then grown those relationships. Today we're counted on by all the major brands around the world to provide them a variety of services, our big initiative that our chairman drove was really to create the next platform for the 21st century. And that was something that was a very ambitious project that we quietly rolled out beta and test pilots in Europe during the pandemic. And that's really the basis of the foundation where daylight our PMS sits on and we're putting more product onto that platform now.
We've put our new experiences platform on there that manages golf and spa. We're putting more of our other products, bringing them together for one cohesive experience to hotels. So our aim is to use the operational technology to allow hotels to service their guests, perform what they need to, and have the capability and flexibility that many hotels, um, are facing in the 21st century in order to truly provide that magic in hospitality.
Steve Carran: That's great, 'cause we hear so much about siloed technology and how the hotels have systems that just don't talk to each other, they can go to Shiji and you have the PMS, the POS, you kind of have those parts that all already talking together and almost under one roof. 
Ryan King: Yeah. It was always our aim to provide the core of what the operation would be and then to give the ability for a hotel who has imagination to add anything else they want. So we're a very open ecosystem. It's very easy to integrate. I go back to Steve, you know, a couple weeks ago you had a good podcast about it, too bad Sonder hadn't talked to us a year ago because we probably could have made that integration for them within a couple weeks and, uh, they wouldn't have had to fold, uh, not to get a jab with Sonder.
I do actually like them. It's too bad that they ran a foul. Yeah. But it's interesting, that's a great example of how you really have to take the seriousness of your core systems because it is what propels you into being able to deliver on that guest experience. And without that, you will run into problems. So we definitely wanna be that person that sits there and says, you know what? Imagine what you want, we'll help you accomplish it. 
Steve Carran: Kinda led right into the next section, which is focus more on thought leadership here. And it has been really fun to see you, you know, dive more into thought leadership with articles you've written, not only for Shiji but other publications as well. And one of them I came across was your article for Shiji Insights. You really emphasize that implementing a new property management system requires discipline planning strong leadership and open communication, which I think is key between corporate offices, property teams, and also the technology partner. So my question to you, when you're overseeing a PMS rollout, what is the the the biggest communication challenge that you've encountered, and how did you overcome that to have a successful implementation?
Ryan King: So I've benefited from my position in seeing rollouts in different parts of the world with different sizes and types of organizations, and I can tell you that there's a clear exact recipe for success. A lot of it comes down to corporate alignment and making sure that everybody at the corporate office is aligned on why this change is happening. When that is done well, it drives the change management process. It's not the technology that is the failure point. Here it is the change management process. It's the adoption that you need to get from everybody that uses it and to simplify it and it sounds stupid, but people that are operating through their daily life resist change.
One day, the check-in button's on the left, and all of a sudden they change the system and the check-in button's on the right. And I can tell you it's a complete meltdown. Oh my God, this is horrible. I don't know what to do. And you're like, okay, we'll push the button on the right and you're gonna be okay.
So when corporate office is aligned on why they're doing something and they take the ownership from the success of that, it truly makes a remarkable difference. I've seen some organizations that rely too much on us, they kind of just threw up their hands and said, great, go put it in and tell everybody what to do. We'll rely on you to do it. And we're like, no, this isn't gonna work. Well, because the noise that gets kicked back from the properties is massive and the confusion about what people want I can tell you, there was the simplest thing that caused the most chaos, and imagine that you actually had a meltdown because of this.
One property wanted to sell their external items, say like a Coke or a bag of chips with no tax included, and add the tax. The other property wanted to sell it with tax inclusive, and yet the corporate office said, well, Shaji will decide on what that is. We were like, well, you told us in the beginning you want tax inclusive on these. Do you wanna change that? And then when we started doing both, letting both properties do what they want, the finance had a meltdown. Why is this coming across this way? It's coming into the ERP system, the properties were upset because they kept changing their minds on things which was causing grief on the workers and that small little thing created enormous amount of friction for weeks. 
Steve Carran: Sure. 
Ryan King: And it was that lack of alignment and bringing discipline from the corporate office that said, this is our way and this is why we're doing this, and this is what you need to do to adopt it. On the flip side, I've seen different groups who just take it, wrangle it in and say we're gonna own it. And they take a strong arm and they say, look, this is the benefit for all of us. This is what we're doing. We just want you to get on it that do it this way. If that way doesn't work for you, we'll come back and discuss it. And in all instances, when we worked with a partner like that, what happened is the noise like went away after about three weeks and people just got on with it and then surprise people started coming back and said, oh, it's so much easier now. We just love this our life is so much better, and we're like, oh, wow, okay. You know? 
Steve Carran: Yeah, absolutely. Would you say communication is kind of that biggest challenge that you have to make sure you get right, or is there, is there something else?
Ryan King: No, it's a lot about a communication plan, and it's an understanding of who owns what. So when you have a clear idea of who owns what, if you sit there and think about my finance example, if there's a clear owner in finance that says, this is why we're doing this just get on with it. It automatically just takes away the uneasiness or what's going on. People just go fine that we're doing this, we had a group that rolled out on their own 74 properties in one year, they spent about just short of a full year, putting together their entire plan, their communication plan, their entire ethos, and they shared that with all the properties. And they made sure it was a cascade effect from leadership to management to the line level, and that everybody understood the same thing. Everybody knew what was happening. And with that it took away all of the unease and the fear, and when they started bringing properties live, like every day, people were just like, no, this is great. We already touched it. We've been in it, we're so excited, and it just made the adoption go so much faster.
When there's murkiness on the communication and it's not always right or there's change when somebody comes in and makes a change. Let's say that in the beginning we were doing things this way. We had a group that had a rate plan strategy that was set one way in the middle, they changed it. Didn't say why they were, and they didn't have their reasons.
And when we came up and said, Ooh, actually what you're doing is harmful. Like I don't know if you understood, like there's a whole ecosystem, it's not just us changing that rate structure. You've got partners, you've got an RMS, you've got a CRS, you've got various different things coming within the ecosystem to make that successful and they didn't think about that. And so all the workers started freaking out because reservations were coming in with the wrong rates. Finance was upset 'cause they had to touch the reservation. There was change with the partners that were saying, oh wait, this isn't right. We're getting the wrong rate types from you.
So without that communication on what they wanted to do and how they wanted it to get it executed, it caused friction and chaos that went into the organization and caused massive angst about everybody in the organization about the change that was happening that that hotel group that nailed the implementation.
Steve Carran: We've both have sat through implementations of PMS and you know, it can go one of two ways and that sounds like one of the best scenarios I've heard so need to hear more about that from them. 
David Millili: And before the next question, not the pile on, but what you said about planning was exactly in our hospitality hot topics for November. What I said about Sonder and how did they not plan out the integrations and to make sure, I mean, it doesn't make any sense. You know, it's not like this was one hotel with 150 rooms and somebody just, you know, got sick or somebody quit at the last minute. So anyway, so I agree with you. There's a lot of talk in the industry about the benefit of an all-in-one or best of breed. So as Steve mentioned earlier, you guys are really kind of moving towards that all-in-one and I'm not gonna mention them, but some of your competitors are, are focused on the same thing. So maybe talk a little bit about the philosophy of Shiji and that kind of more all-in-one or that concept of all-in-one with best in breed being in that all in one. 
Ryan King: Yeah. I'll share some of my opinions, which the basis of this is where your data resides, and that's why when we talk about operational core, say your PMS or your POS or your core software for the spa, it's about how you get those data flows all together. Because you can't deliver the magic for hospitality without that. You need to be able to have those tools for the team members to really deliver to the guest.
If you have all of that together, let's say Steve's arriving at the hotel, the front desk can say, oh, Steve, welcome back, because they already see that Steve last week was at another property of theirs. And then they also see that Steve has a reservation for dinner at seven, and that Steve's Fiance has I just engaged you, by the way, Steve I'm married, but that's okay. Don't tell her has a spa appointment the next day. So all of these things come together. Now that you can say, is this all in one? But where the flexibility needs to come in is that the all-in-one is good at bringing certain things together. Now when you want to get othered pieces, maybe you wanna sit there and say, you know what I really want, I really want this kick-ass app that everybody's going to be able to talk to, uh, our hotel staff, be able to do things, be able to book that spot that you really have to go out and look for best in breed.
But what you need is a partner that can help accomplish that 'cause they need to integrate. They need to be able to get those core systems together. And when you have one entity with the core systems to integrate that customer facing application becomes so easy because you go to that one company and say, okay, I need these 18 data points. And for us, because we built everything on an API first mentality, we don't have to say, well, you get a string and there's A-J-S-O-N string of 28 things that you're gonna get, and you'll have to digest it. Instead, we say, oh, okay, we can give you all these data points. They'll come from here, here, here, here, and we'll support you on that.
Build out of everything that you need to get from us and anything that you need to push back. And I can tell you time and time again, we've worked with some of these peripheral partners. The comment that they always give to us is, wow, this was so much easier. We were braced for this like nine month grueling, like terrible experience, and we accomplished this together in three months. And we're like, that's, you know what we wanna hear that's what we wanna do. When we as partners are able to do that our joined clients look at us and go, oh my God, thank you. You're, you're helping me. So to me, you use your core as one to allow that best in breed on the peripheral to help establish what's gonna go on.
Today we see certain things happening, to be honest, we didn't know 10 years ago how important certain applications we use are now. So we don't know what 2035 is gonna look like being able to future-proof that a lot and say, okay, best in breed, something else is gonna come up that we need. So that's my thought and that that is closely aligned to what we've built here at Shiji.
Steve Carran: So I'm curious on this because when, back in the day when we worked together, cloud PMSs were kind of the big thing moving away from that server based PMSs. Now I'm hearing, which kind of goes with cloud computing is I'm hearing more about mobility with PMSs. How does that not only change the workflow for the staff, but also change that guest experience as well?
Ryan King: So I'm gonna go back in time all the way to the late nineties when there was a visionary project be done at Hyatt with their Andaz brand. They really wanted the Andaz brand to have this. Feel an ethos of what a luxury retail experience is like when you walk into Louis Vuitton or Cartier or Gucci. And with that, they wanted people walking up with like mobile tablets or something like that and saying hi and walking them to elevators to do that at the time, because of where technology was.
It was a miserable failure and they rapidly had to go back and build desks in every hotel and put stationary like computers and put people again behind furniture, because that was just how the technology operated that is now finally getting to a point that we're able to put the tools in hand of the hoteliers to provide an entirely different perspective. I cannot wait until the check-in experience changes so much that I don't have to walk up and somebody goes, are you checking in? I'm like, well, I just walked up with my suitcase and I'm handing you my ID. I would instead rather have somebody standing there, oh, hi, welcome. How are you doing? Oh, okay.
And then when they take my info, they're staying there. It's more personable, you know, it's very different. It how we respond to things when we're traveling for business versus when we're traveling for leisure. Because on a business, I wanna be efficient on leisure, I wanna soak it in. So standing in a line at a front desk and waiting to check in when I am trying to get on vacation mode is not what I wanna do.
I love it when somebody comes up and say, in Mexico, 'cause they do this well and they walk up and they, Hey, do you want a pina colada? They're like, yes. So why can't somebody now walk up to me and say, Hey, I wanna take your info. Let's check you in and get you going. Great. So this idea about mobility is starting to catch on and it's, it's not just in one way, which I think is really important to note. It's about giving the guest a choice. Do I wanna check in on my mobile phone? So what does that mean? Okay. I check in my mobile phone, but you know, I'm still not a fan of the mobile keys because we haven't fully gotten everything to an Apple wallet. So I wanna pick up a card key so it works easier. So it defeats my mobile check-in.
If you make me stand in line with someone that's behind a piece of wood that asks if I'm checking in, but if instead I can walk in and I see there's a kiosk for kick pickup, that's part of that mobility thing that also failed many years ago. In addition, I was at a hotel in Houston. They've changed names, so I won't say their name anymore 'cause I'm not sure if they still do it. But we were in line and somebody walked out of a door and starts walking through the line with an iPad and starts saying, oh, lemme go ahead, I'll check you in here. And they did everything and they walked that person over the elevator. That's brilliant. That's hospitality magic. So those are the things that we're seeing.
It was originally kind of started as this idea that, let's do this with VIPs, but it's trickling into how do we treat people better? And it's starting at the top. We're seeing it in luxury, but it's quickly coming into the mass areas. This is where a vision and I'll talk about one of the big global brands when I sat in their planning session on how they're looking to transform their technology and the what they want to happen in the next three years, they really want their front office team to be able to stand there with what they call, you know, a single pane of glass and see everything about that guest and be able to help that guest without making those people wait. Remove that barrier that's been in there, change that guest experience, bring that hospitality magic back in. And use the fact that we're no longer tethered to a specific spot in a hotel. 
Steve Carran: Absolutely love that. I've had that happen a few times where somebody comes with an iPad and it's a great feeling like, walk me to my room. The bellman has my bags. I mean, it's, it's a great experience. So I'm all about, I'm excited to see more of that.
Ryan King: When we introduced it, one of our very first pilot customers in Europe, I remember being there. Let's call 'em the gray hair front office agents we're just like. No, I've gotta stand here 'cause this is how it happened. The younger people that just started, they, they were running around the desk and they're running up to people, hi, welcome. How are you doing? Can I help you? And they loved the experience to change it. And it was really something interesting to see as people adopted stuff that we had built. And it gives you a certain amount of excitement when you see how the guest responds and you go, this is gonna really change things. And I can tell you when we talked about that and it was a global luxury chain who had those initial conversations with us when we were imagining all this back in 2016 and they said, we wanna be able to do this. And we're like, yeah, we should. This hasn't really happened at scale before. Let's make it happen. And I gotta tell you, when you do that stuff, and this, this is something that is not sexy, but nobody thinks about this until you try to do it. You gotta understand how all that works with security. 
David Millili: So that's a good lead. And so data security has become a critical concern across hospitality. Yeah. So how does Shiji approach protecting guest information within the PMS specifically.
Ryan King: As we said, cloud systems, by their nature, take information and compile them into essential repository where it makes it easier. For hackers and nefarious bad actors to do things. So the idea is in the past, hotels never thought about security because they had stuff on premise. Nobody tried to do it because the payoff for hackers was too low, but now it's not. And we've seen security breaches in the global brands on different areas, and it is a really, really important part now the amount of information that hotels gather that have personal identification information on a guest is quite massive. So the protection of that is really important to gain the trust. And hotels now have to understand that it's a partnership level. You've got to know who's locking down that data. When we first started building our platform and before we ever rolled out daylight, we understood that the only way this was gonna be good is if we had security as good as governments, right? We had to be able to really give confidence to people that their security was protected and that there is nothing gonna be there. We've taken a lot of time and how we design this through, how we host it, through how it's protected, and even through the fact that much of what is in the system is tokenized. So we've kind of taken it to that next level, which is like the bank grade level where all of that personal identifiable information, even if a hacker got through, it's just scrambled data at this point in time. Right. That's quite complicated. And to be very honest, it was. Very expensive and the way it's built is extremely expensive. But at the end of the day, it's worth it because that is the baseline of trust. 
Steve Carran: So, Ryan, I remember, you know, in my PMS days when you're talking to a hotel about potentially, you know, working with your PMS, the one thing that always came up was how they worked with another PMS and the support was terrible, how when something went wrong, they could never ever get in touch with their PMSI even coined a term PTSD, PMS, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But can you tell me a little bit about, first of all, I wanna know a little bit more about Shiji support, you know, when things do go wrong. And then, actually I'll start with that one. Can you tell me a little bit about Shiji support? 
Ryan King: Yeah. I think for everybody to understand this is, as we talked about, there's an ecosystem behind the PMS and there's many partners, but when somebody at the property is doing something, all they see is the PMS. So when something doesn't work. Who do they call? They call the PMS. We've really tried to make a difference in the support that we do, and part of that comes from who we are. When you look at the basis of our company, we call ourselves a hospitality company, yet we sell technology. So we understand that hotels are serving guests and when they call for support on something else, they wanna feel like they get the same treatment that they do to their guests.
And that's been an ethos that was cemented by our CEO way back in Shiji’s very beginning, I mean, go all the way back to the early two thousands. So we try to not point fingers, not assign blame, and to really dig into what the problem is. I will tell you that right now 50% of almost all of the tickets that we get are all related to trade. And it's all related to just understanding what you're doing. Ah, we see that you didn't understand what you're doing and that's why this is it. We had someone call us and they made a huge deal 'cause they called every day. It was the night auditor and they kept saying there's a problem with the platform.
Every time I run night audit. It's releasing all these rooms, but we have a full sold out situation with a group lock, whether we sell or not. And that raised up to the corporate office and they said, your problem, your system, you guys gotta fix this and your technology's breaking. Well, it took a little while 'cause we had to talk through the emotion. So it took almost four days for us to get down to the. They had this sellout in this hotel where all the hotel was sold out, that they hadn't put all the reservation rooms in there and they had a room block cutoff that, let's say today's the 19th, well, let's say the room block cutoff was on the 12th, so every time the night auditor ran, it would release the room block. And we finally went back and said, why don't you just take the cutoff date and make it the simple. Right? Like, but this caused chaos for a while. And there was a lot of blame and emotion that it was our fault. It was a failure in what we were doing. And so they had a hard time listening to us to say, okay, can we go through this? What we try to do is disarm and say, okay, let us just help you. We understand this is frustrating, and the empathy that's needed to get folks to calm down is what's really important there. 
Steve Carran: Hundred percent. 
Ryan King: And I think that's a telling part about who we are, because I can tell you that not everybody does that other people would've just said a link and said, you're doing it wrong. Don't call us again. Yep. 
Steve Carran: Yep. It all comes back to communication, right? Yeah. So the PMS, like you just said, like hoteliers, that's the system that they're in a lot of the day, and it affects their daily lives. But how does the PMS also affect the guest experience? Not only like check in, like you talked about with the kiosk, but throughout the whole guest experience till they check out?
Ryan King: The important thing is to realize there's certain pivotal moments in a guest experience that. Are basically understood from the guests that this just needs to happen. And when there's a system failure, that causes a breakdown in the guest's experience. So let's say that when somebody's coming through, there was supposed to be a trigger to an external system, and that external system didn't pick it up. And I'll give you an example of a hotel that was having a problem with an integration from the wifi provider, these guests would get up to the room and because there was problems with their integration and it had exactly to do with this provider, the guest couldn't get on the wifi sounds like it's just a little integrate.
It's a little thing about how they get checked in the, the technical part was that the wifi system kept failing, like their integration wouldn't accept the message from us. And the guests started complaining up and down to them. Well, then they got mad because they just blame Shaji, right? This is a PMs problem. We checked the guest in. What we ended up finding out and that the wifi provider came back and apologized, is that, ah, we're sorry. Actually, we found that this was a bug and something that we did that caused the communication to be blocked. And what was happening is the previous guest wasn't getting cleared, so it wasn't accepting that new guest's last name.
So they would go in and like me, they would put in King, and I'm in 1112, and it wouldn't give me internet because it would say, Nope, that's wrong. You're not king. Right. But of course, they blamed us and we went, well, it's not us, you know? But this is where that guest experience becomes frustrating. 'cause I can tell you as a business traveler, if I get into a room and I can't get wifi, my entire experience, like there's two things. Wifi and a good bed. You don't gimme those. And I'm like, this hotel sucks.
Steve Carran: That's great. That's great. So Ryan, I got one last question. It's been really cool to see you advance in your career and to now be the SVP of Americas at Shiji. What advice do you have for somebody who might be interested in getting into hospitality technology and eventually moving up in their career to a leadership role?
Ryan King: I would say stay curious. Even if you know something, always ask questions and always be open to other answers. And the other big part of that is remain humble. The best path for growth is when you consistently look to improve yourself and understand how you can contribute more. Stop asking how the company can help you. Stop looking for validation that you're amazing and instead try to contribute something back. 
Steve Carran: So, Ryan, we've been asking you questions this whole time. This is where we turn the tables and let you ask David and I a question. 
Ryan King: Oh gosh. I guess from you guys' perspective, you've been involved and listened to so much and, you know, to your point, Steve, I've actually admired the path that you've been on and we've known each other for a while and, and you've gotten the things, you're really making a difference in hospitality right now by, I would say turning a spotlight on conversations and helping others understand what's going on. What would you say this year? Has been one of the most eye-opening things that you've heard from someone that you've kind of just aha moment in your light bulb and you had to sit there and not go, wow. I'd love to hear from you. Having all of your experiences, what that number one thing would've been this year?
Steve Carran: Woo. David, you wanna go first on this one or you want me to take this one? 
David Millili: I'll take it. So we had a guest on, and I think this is kind of, I unfortunately use the term captain obvious stuff, but I think times in, sometimes in hospitality, we just forget. What is hospitality? We get caught up in the technology and the problems and the mergers and the acquisitions and AI and all this stuff, and one of our guests, Scott, Eddie, just talked about the people. Like the people like in a destination and you're probably experience experiencing it in Mexico City. And to me that was just kind of, you know, you get caught up in all this noise and about the problems, the challenges, staffing, and essentially you just forget that at the end of the day, it is just about people in our or our business. And so for me, it was just kind of more of a kind of a like, Hey, don't forget about the people versus all the problems and the technology. And that was kind of one moment I felt kind of stood out to me this year. 
Steve Carran: David, you kind of took my answer on that one. It was, we've talked to so many different people from different sides of hospitality, and it all comes back to the people. I think one thing that's really stood out to me, I'll shift mine a little bit, is the people that we've talked to this year that came from outside the industry. And kind of the ideas and methodologies that they have brought in, but really how they have made hospitality their own and talking about just how great of an industry. It is like our job is to make people happy. So David kind of still trailing on yours, but I think that's really what it comes down to is how lucky we are to be in an industry like this where it is, it does come all down to the people and making sure that people have a great experience, whether you're going on a cruise. Like we had virgin voyages or staying at a five star hotel or even a select service hotel. It all comes down to the people. So I'm just very grateful, uh, for the conversations we've had this year. That's great. Thanks. So, our producer, Jon has been listening this whole time, so he has one more question to ask you before we get you outta here.
Jon Bumhoffer: It was cool to hear about how you guys are, you know, pro You talked about providing that core platform that allows hoteliers to deliver the magic of hospitality. And, and as somebody who started working in hotels, what technology are you excited about? Like if you were a Hotelier, like what are you excited about that you guys are doing or that you're seeing out there that you think is gonna make a big impact for hoteliers and operators? And then what do you think are like the biggest or the quickest wins for people adopting new technology? 
Ryan King: Oh, that's a hard one. I hate to say, you know, AI because we're all. But it really is something that's gonna help, I think, understand data. It's gonna help get these mundane tasks outta the way that are gonna open things up for people. I think there's a lot of fear that AI is gonna replace people, but in my opinion, what's gonna happen is we'll find the equilibrium and the guest experience will become so much better because AI will help. The hotel teams understand the guests better and understand how to execute with them.
They'll help the hotel team know that I'm on business travel, what Ryan wants on business travel is a quick hello. When he checks in, he wants a quick follow up that everything's cool, and then he appreciates a departing note. But when I'm on vacation, I wanna sit and chat and I wanna hear about, oh, what it's like and what it's going.
So I think some of those things are gonna be able to put people closer in line with that without some of the tools, let's say it that luxury hotels have had for years. I mean, when I was at the Phoenix Park and we were a small boutique luxury hotel, we had an army of staff that helped putting manual stuff together.
So AI will help do that for everybody. Uh, and to me, that's gonna be one of the coolest things that I think we're gonna evolve tip of it right now. Nobody knows how this is all gonna come about in the hospitality industry. There's already been some missteps. I will tell you the idea that the AI chatbots would be universal in hospitality. I think that is slowly coming to an understanding that that is a disaster if not implemented. Well, nobody in hospitality wants to be calling like they're at the credit card. Oh, no. One agent, I hear you telling me that something's wrong. Yes, agent. Well, how can I, no agent. So there's gonna be a lot in that that comes out and it will be pretty cool. I think that's gonna be an interesting road. 
Jon Bumhoffer: What do you think are like the quickest wins for hoteliers right now that can really help them level up their operational efficiency? 
Ryan King: This is where I think the idea of technology and people have to come together. Where adoption is challenging is that the hotels will take something that's given to 'em and they'll be like, let me try to use this feature somewhere and figure it out. Then there's friction with that because they're trying to use it. They don't really understand. They don't have a great use case on how they're gonna use it. They just see it and they wanna try it. And instead, where I see the adoption work better is when you go and say, this is what I wanna do. And you collaborate with the partner that's providing you the technology solutions and you say can you help me get to what I wanna do? Don't ask about the feature. Don't say, I want it to go that way. Don't look at the workflow like in how the feature's going. Say this is what I'm doing. And for us, where I've seen the most success is we sit and we look at current workflows and we say, show us how you do this now. What are you trying to accomplish? Where do you wanna get to? Well, I wanna get to this. Don't tell me how you're doing it. Don't tell me how to chew gum, walk and give me direction, step by step. Tell me that you wanna get there. Then let me show you a better way to get there and I'll help explain the workflow.
And I've seen it two ways. We had a group we were working with, that was just creating a lot of friction with us and with them, and it was painful. And I equate it to walking directions, they were telling us if we were going down, okay, when you get up to the trashcan, take a left, but quickly take a right and watch that broken stone and then go up to the next like intersection, but take a slight left. And I'm like, stop, stop telling us that just tell us you wanna go here. Because when we worked with others and we did that and we, they said, look, we wanna do this. Okay, great. We came back and we proposed a workflow. We said, how does that work? And they said, that's good. One little friction. We adjusted that workflow. After those weeks of talking about that and getting it, we put it in, and I can tell you within three days everybody in the hotel was hummed through with the new workflow and they loved it. They were like, this is so much better on how we used to do things. So adoption comes with understanding what you wanna accomplish, not what the feature is.
Jon Bumhoffer: Are we seeing less standardization of operations because of the different brands or number of independents out there than ever before or I'd say that there are core pieces that need to be accomplished.
Ryan King: You know, people need to pay for a room that is a given. How that happens can change. So for example, some people may say no. When you get there, you have to insert your credit card and pay other people can say, Nope, I got your token. You're okay. Others say, I'm gonna collect that money up front. And then when you walk in, it's okay. So it's being able to have that flexibility to accomplish that. And I don't know that, you know, any hotel would ever sit there and say, oh, everything can be the same. When we have certain groups and there's a group we're working with right now, and they're more of an extended stay, they want every workflow standardized. Every hotel is gonna follow the same thing. And in essence, the brands want that in some things. But then as to your point, John, you look at, and I'll take my, um, favorite, uh, soft brand that Marriott really fold first rolled this out on the brand level, this autograph collection idea, they use so much in their systems to standardize things across Marriott, but when they come to autograph, they're like, you know what? We're gonna give you the flexibility to do what want. Payment. Do you wanna pay in advance? Do you wanna pay at the hotel? Do you wanna have a total, we've got it all. So that allows the individual hotel to decide how is their customer journey and what's the branding of that individual property.
So you've gotta be able to have the flexibility to do that. We see that in everything that we do. Even with customers that we're rolling out, they may have. An idea of what their standardization is, and maybe there's some strict rules in place for half of that journey. But then the other half you have elasticity to allow the individual hotel to make a workflow that's going to give that experience to the guest that is unique to that property.
David Millili: Alright, Ryan, well, I've got one last one before we wrap things up. What does Shiji mean? How did the name come about? 
Ryan King: You know, everybody asks about that. It's really back to when our chairman started that it is about the foundation and it's about providing service in the foundation. So it's a pretty simple explanation in Chinese. But it is something that everybody always asks about and it kind of comes with our ethos. 
David Millili: Okay, so cool. Got it. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Ryan. This is where you get to let people know how they can connect with you and find out more about Shiji.
Ryan King: Okay. Shiji, a forward-thinking technology company that is truly changing how hospitality works, and I truly believe in this. We are bringing out the most innovative technology to allow hotels to truly think about how they're gonna change that guest experience. And we're at the forefront of that change.
And it's not just the fact that we've come out and built something from the ground up that nobody else really has. It's really about imagining the possibilities of what you can do when technology enables you to free the boundaries of what you used to have. Our commitment is to support hotels like they support their guests, and that sets us apart.
It is a different experience and it oftentimes is argued because it cost more. And perhaps we could be a more profitable company. Perhaps we could, um, do things like some of the other competitors in order to boost our stock price. But at the core of it, we believe that treating our clients like they treat their guests is what sets us apart. So we believe in that partnership and the people that come into the Shiji ethos and believe in that, they get the most out of our relationship. When we do things in collaboration together, really amazing things happen on what we can do to develop technology that enable, that enables the imagination to come to fruition on an actual execution, that is Shiji, and that's really about what we put forward to our customers every day. 
David Millili: 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 be with you again soon. Thank you for joining us, Ryan.
Ryan King: Great. Thanks. It was great to be with y'all. Have a great day. 
Steve Carran: Thank you