The Modern Hotelier #176: Inside Hospitality's Virtual Technician | with Will Gilbert
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Steve Carran: Welcome to a special episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are coming from you from the Dallara IndyCar Factory in Indianapolis, Indiana. We are joined by Will Gilbert, co-founder of Bodhi. Thanks for joining us, Will. Thanks for having me, how are you doing today? Doing great. It's been a long day. Yeah, I bet so. Well, how many HITEC have you been to? I've been to seven, wanna say six or seven. So not your first rodeo? 
David M.: No. Yep. So take us through Bodhi, some of the problems that you're solving with hotels. 
Will Gilbert: Sure. So first and foremost, you know, think of Bodhi as that virtual technician that's living at the property 24 7 going around, testing every single device, making sure that when the guest shows up, everything's gonna work.
Steve Carran: That's great. So how are you at Bode leveraging AI automation and data? To help bring more value to hotels in 2025? Yep. 
Will Gilbert: So, step one is, you know, our platform, unlike anybody else, we're a hundred percent manufacturer agnostic, meaning that we tie in with every piece of technology that the property either already owns or they're investing in.
Today, we can do any device and also any software platform with all that data coming in. Amazing things that we're doing with that. So, first we have our amazing dashboard. The hotels right now work off many, many different dashboards where a single pane of glass rollout data comes into. Audio, video, lighting control, HVAC, motorized shades, door locks, every single aspect of that property comes into there.
And so from an AI point of view, we're processing tons and tons of data and we're actually, uh, showing off some really cool stuff here, uh, this week. But from the AI side of things, number one, we have our super agent. Our super agent is always watching everything coming in. We're processing hundreds of thousands of messages of second right now from all the properties we're installed in.
Whether that's the light turning on the ac, running cooling and heating, it's to guest requests coming in from their phone. So with that data, we're able to be, uh, be very proactive, predicting what's gonna happen next, letting the hotel know that, hey, there's an upcoming problem. And then from the guest point of view, first off, we're the only ones that can do what we're doing with the guest app upon check-in, we send you a text and email to your phone. Welcome to this hotel. Nothing to install, nothing to download. Click the link, open your door, order feeding, beverage, and off and running. And from there, obviously we have a fantastic chat bot, but it's not just a chat bot that asks, where can I get something for, you know, for dinner tonight?
Where's the best bar to go to? You can use it. We say my room is hot. We get that information. Our super agent then goes in and changes the temperature in the room, no matter the manufacturer of those systems and reports back to the hotel that the guests complained about a problem. Because it's very important.
Most guests don't say anything till they leave the hotel After this stay. Next thing you know, there's a negative review. We could solve that in the very beginning before it even happens. 
David M.: Wow. Right. So every year it feels like the hotel tech stack gets deeper and deeper. Wider and wider. Yep. One of the biggest challenges, integration. So talk a little bit about BO and integration. 
Will Gilbert: Yeah, so first off, you know the, the people behind this company, we have 25 years in systems integrations. That's where we started this software from. So we know really well how these things work. Number two, in our, in our lab in Fort Lauderdale, we have every manufacture piece of equipment up and running live on the system.
So if there is updates to those systems, something that could break, we're always one step ahead of that. And then, you know, tech hotels are always adding more and more tech to the property. We integrate with every single thing, the property management system, their door locking system, valet systems, every single part of it.
So, you know, there is a challenge there. But first off, we're Cloud native. We started Cloud Cloud first with everybody. I think we had the first Oracle OHIP certification for, uh, uh, for, for opera. But, uh, you know, there's always new things every day. But we, we stay ahead of that by all, everything we be invested in.
Steve Carran: So it's a big year for Bodhi at HITEC. There are some big announcements coming out. Can you tell us about what's happening? Yeah, sure. 
Will Gilbert: I mean, so, you know, AI is a very over promise thing right now. Uh, I'm, I'm proud to say that we're not showing off as one AI facet. We're, we're showing off three. Wow. Uh, we spent a lot of time, uh, uh, the past year or so, really working on any of the problem that we have is we have so much data.
You can't just take that data and throw it into a, a chat window and ask the questions because we, we blow those things up. So we gotta spend a lot of time on the backend. Getting that data ready, making it work for those natural language interactions to the point. Now you can walk up, you can ask, you can ask Bodhi, how's my building doing?
And you'll get an answer depending on your role in that property of what's going on. All these rooms are cooling efficiency, uh, efficiently. There might be one or two rooms that are having an issue. Not a big problem right now, but it's going to be, you can ask the questions about occupancy and, and saying, how many guests checked into this room? Last site? Since we're integrated with all these different systems, we bring all of that data to one spot. Got it. 
David M.: That's great. Well, we really wanna thank you for sitting down with us. Have a great HITEC, and more importantly, have a great night.
Will Gilbert: Awesome. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. 
Steve Carran: Thank you so much.