Using Technology to Elevate Hospitality

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, as always, Ben Thomas. You know, we live in a world now where our community stretches across a number of different industries, everything from health care to, conferencing technologies, to construction and data centers. And one of those places that we really have found a nice little lane for our industry is in the hospitality world. Now what's been interesting about that transition is that we're really good as a technology community about manufacturing, installing, providing technology services, but we are all also sometimes very detached from what happens at the end of the line. Not only from an end user and functionality standpoint, but how our technology drives business outcomes. And I wanna talk a little bit more today about how that sits in the world of hospitality. So I had to bring on somebody today who's far smarter than I am, somebody who's been a CRO, who's led all sorts of different casino resorts and properties, someone really who knows the industry inside and out, and that's Radley Medina. Radley, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thank you, Ben. It was a pleasure being here. You know, Radley, I'm curious. Right? I I sorta hinted at it at the inter in the intro there. You know, there is some natural detachment from the the technology manufacturer service provider side of the industry and the end of the line. Right? You know? And I think it's important to to ask some questions today, really, that that frame that conversation, specifically in the world of hospitality. And, you know, the world of guest experience is changing. The demands from a service standpoint are changing. You know? And and that impacts hospitality in a lot of different ways. But but at a high level, I wanna ask, what are some of the things right now that are driving hospitality, not only maybe from a revenue standpoint, a a guest experience standpoint, but what are some of the things really that are most important to the world of hospitality right now? It's really about adapting to a new, what I call, psychographic segment of of guests or player in the casino world. Right? For the longest time, specifically in the casino business, marketing demographics kind of ruled, you know, the source data for analytics, looking cutting data along the lines of age and income and and gender and, you know, where they where people live. But in my opinion, that's been pretty limiting. And so, today, the best operators, the best marketers are gonna be those in at hotels and casinos who are able to segment guests, if you will, or potential guests along psychographic lines instead. And, you know, if they're able to do that, they can then provide and curate an experience that's most resonant and to, you know, to spur on some real loyalty. And I think also technology, today is helping, casinos and hotels deliver on kind of a a new age type of experience because today what guests want is what I call hyper effortless experiences. Right? Not all guests, mind you, but but a growing number of them are, even yours truly, want fast, personalized, ideally contactless experiences, where those such experiences make sense. You know? Think about how we live now. Right? Uber gets us from a to b, without any cash. Amazon predicts what we need. I have, my house is a smart house, Ben, and so I have Alexa talking to me all the time about what things that, that she thinks I should buy. It's all it's all about Amazon predicting, I guess, what what I'm gonna need or want. Netflix recommends what we wanna watch. Guests in the hotel and casino business expect the same intuitive frictionless interaction. The tech is there already, in many ways separately, you know, mobile check-in, digital keys, AI powered CRM. But what really makes, makes it work is where it's all connected. And, you know, the the guest doesn't care what system's doing what. What they care about is that it just works and feels personal, and that's where the real magic happens. You know, hotels and casinos that can integrate technology in that way are going to be able to put some space between them and the competition. Well, it's interesting because I think the easy example to point to is, like, the Vegas, the Atlantic cities, and things like that where you see these massive interconnected resorts. But, obviously, there's there's, you know, theme parks like Disney, Universe, and all sorts of different places and folks that fit into this conversation. But I think you're right. You know, there's not a distinction. Right? Say I'm I'm in Vegas for a conference. Right? Say I booked a a conference room. There's not a natural distinction in the guest mind between the room experience and the shades closing Right. And is my AV technology working in the conference room? Or, hey. Is my my app check-in working? Right? There there isn't a natural distinction from a guest perspective, but the reality is that there are a lot of different stakeholders and owners within the the the resort property, the casino itself, whether it's IT, whether it's gaming has their own, you know, area. You've got your your, your food service team in a lot of cases who manages that. What are some of those individual stakeholder groups that help kind of inform that decision internally? Well, in the in the best, operating spaces, all of those stakeholder groups you just mentioned and then some are involved in the conversation. Right? Of course, you have IT. You know, if it's something that's developed in house and on prem, IT will be handling that. Otherwise, you might have a vendor, right, that's that's helping you develop a piece of software, a piece of technology that's a hardware based technology to get, you know, something done. But, ideally, in my opinion, the the best designers and developers are going to take not just the users', you know, end goal in mind, but maybe the users' stakeholders' end goals in mind. Right? One of the biggest things that I think operators need to focus on today in the future is reducing customer effort as well as reducing employee effort. So the easier you make it on someone to do what it is they want to do or what they need to do, the more loyal they're gonna be. And that's what I think operators need to be mindful of, whether it's an f and b, food and beverage, you know, guest in a restaurant or a player in a slot machine or a hotel guest. You know, the, operators in hospitality to focus on what those folks want to do and then inform their partners in in IT, partners on on the vendor side to develop the type of, capability that helps them accomplish that for those guests. Does that make sense? It does. Kind of a natural question that comes out of that, though. Obviously, different stakeholders want different outcomes. Right? Because your your operator facilities types are are looking for more of the ROI, then you've got your guest experience side of things, and then food and beverage speed, speed to market, things like that. You know, from a, I guess, an outcome standpoint, how do you help support that maybe as a as a say, think technology provider. Right? If I'm coming in and I'm I'm selling to a a hospitality organization, casino resort, whatever, My conversations have to look differently. Right? Because we may roll out a POS system in in a food court like Resorts World, which is is sort of a different outcome that's desired than maybe a security system at a at a hotel as well. Right? How do you start those conversations? And what are some of the key outcomes that each business unit or I mean, not necessarily business unit, but each operator is looking for individually in the resort. Yeah. So we can start with hotel operations. An important metric that a lot of folks might not even know exist is queue to key times. So how long does it take for a guest to get their key to a clean room, from the moment they actually enter the queue in a hotel lobby? Right? And so, right now, at least as far as I know, there isn't any technology, any good technology in place today that can help really measure that. Right? But you're gonna have to identify when somebody actually enters the queue. And so the technology, like facial recognition as an example, right, you know, proximity, you know, censoring, if you will, technically exists, but it's not being applied yet. So when we know somebody enters a queue and then, goes to the front desk to check-in and the moment that the key is cut, you know, for them to a clean room, that would be, immensely helpful to hotel operators. You know, I think when it comes to a restaurant experience, a lot of, leadership in in restaurants try to get order to delivery times of food, you know, in less than twenty minutes. Right? In fact, twenty minutes is on the on the low on the longer end. You really ideally wanna try to get get get food to the first course or the first dish of somebody within fifteen minutes. And, you know, these aren't just arbitrary standards. Right? The the queue to queue time for hotel, order delivery time for food and beverage, that's all based on, you know, hundreds of thousands of data points. In my past life, I had access to data points from, for a large commercial gaming enterprise, and I was able to see, you know, the times basically where the cliff of dissatisfaction was set against, like, longer than a certain time, then your shot as a as a hotel or casino operator getting a top box rating significantly falls off the cliff. And then, you know, loyalty diminishes, intent to return diminishes all those things. In the casino world, you know, Ben, you have something that is, again, tied to, you know, an event. So there's something called an outage in, you know, when when a player a slot player either hits the change the the call button, you know, to call slot attendant or they they strike a jackpot that requires a hand pay or something goes wrong with the actual machine itself. When an outage occurs, there is another another time based threshold. You know, you need to have somebody respond to that issue in less than a hundred and eighty seconds. You know? And if you don't do that, then all the same things that happen in food and beverage hotel happen. Your shot at getting that player to come back, you know, significantly diminishes. And so technology used to identify when moments happen and how long it takes for resolution to occur would be meaningfully, important to to these operators in that way. Does that answer your question? It it does. And and I like that you brought up the the cliff of dissatisfaction. Right? Because it's one of the places really that technology can help enable us, not even just from response times. Right? But imagine I'm a slot player. Let's say I'm in Vegas. Right? I'm a big Dallas Cowboys fan. Unfortunately, not a great time to be a Cowboys fan. But say I'm I'm at the sports book. Right? And, you know, I'm playing video poker on the machine, waiting for my bet to cash in, which it won't, which we all know, you know, or I've got my drink going. So I've got several different things happening at one time to sort of keep me from hitting that cliff of dissatisfaction. Right? Where maybe it's I've got my my digital signage and my my game going up here. I've got my video poker going here. You know, I've got my bartender serving me a drink over here. What are some of those things from a technological standpoint that you've seen help kind of extend that cycle? Is it TVs? Is it audio? Is it soundscapes? I mean, what are some of those things that help can help push that that timeline out? Yeah. So, I mean, I'll I'll talk about them a couple different ways. Right? So something that's been in place for a little while now, although I think it can be improved, is using technology to identify moments when, you know, a person to person or analog solution needs to be applied. Disney does it well. You mentioned Disney earlier. Right? So at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, and I I believe this is also now in place at Disneyland Resort in California. The use of Magic Bands was used not just for guests to make payments at restaurants, buy things at gift shops, and to enter used to be used as a key for their hotel rooms. It was actually a way for Disney to understand when there were long waits at certain attractions, when peep in different places. And so they were able to then dispatch cast members to those areas to help kind of alleviate the the pressures, if you will, that those guests were experiencing. In the hotel and casino business, it's the same thing. So when we when when we understand that, you know, there's a long wait in the lobby as an example or there's long wait getting into, you know, a nightclub at at your favorite casino in Las Vegas, you can dispatch people at cocktail servers to bring, like, food not food, but rather, you know, balls of water or coffee, that that kind of thing to try to try to diminish the the relative feeling of time passing. But more specific to technology, incidentally, I was recently at IGA, the Indian Gaming Association's annual trade show and convention in San Diego this year. They trade between San Diego and Anaheim. This year was in San Diego, my hometown. That's why I'm a chargers fan, Ben, even though they're in. Sorry. Right. You know? We're we're both out of luck. Well, at least your boys have actually won a few championships here and there. The chargers have won, so it's gonna be quite painful. But there, I was introduced to technology. I'm not gonna name the companies, but technology that I think could be pretty, you know, game changing, simply because this technology allowed people to, you know, you know, experience entertainment on their little digital screen in every slot machine, basically decide on and make, make, reservations for restaurants, you know, looking at, available offers in real time that they could potentially redeem. There's even one company. Again, I'm I'm really excited for this particular firm. K. I'm not gonna mention who they are, but the I think they're on the cutting edge of of of developing essentially the circuit necessary to allow players to take their winnings or take the money that they've inserted into a slot machine once they've decided they're they're finished playing and then essentially getting that money transferred directly to their bank account. You know, that's the thing that can be done right now, and, you know, that's that's a game changing piece of tech. But going back to your question really quickly, so, you know, at IGA, you know, I saw these digital screens that that that, again, fed either, you know, a little mini games or or entertainment, you know, content for people to to pursue or to, you know, peruse the resort's offerings. And I think, you know, that'll help, reduce the relative passing of time. You know, I I love that you've even mentioned sort of the the slot itself. Right? I know that this isn't specifically just about casinos and gaming, but it it's interesting to see how what I would call traditional physical technology has has overtaken hotel casinos. Right? Everything from digital displays to you look at places like Resorts World with a giant little dome area, and everybody's got a technology centric installation. But it was it was kinda partitioned to the, hey. We've got the TVs, and then we've got all the nice little eye candy stuff. But now you've got everything that you need at your literal fingertips when you sit down at a slot machine or a casino. Part of that's here. Right? Right. Which we all know. But part of that is the, hey. I've got this fully customizable interface here where I could not only manage my free play and and and, you know, account information. I could play the game here. I could play two games here. You know, it's become sort of this full personalized integration of, like, AV and screens and, you know, IT capabilities. You could probably, at some point, I don't know, you'd probably check-in from a slot machine whenever they figure that out. I think we'll all be good. But we've seen sort of this convergence. Right? Now that we talked about those stakeholders earlier, obviously, IT, cybersecurity, folks like that sit in that intersection technologies, maybe the the screens and the entertainment things like that, find its way to sort of this centralized, I guess, unit is a good way to to put it? Yeah. Well, I think screens and just, certain AV tech in general are silent salespeople now. Right? They they might not even be silent. They can make noise and things of that nature as well. But but a well placed display can nudge behavior in powerful ways, whether it's guiding traffic to a lounge, to a restaurant, promoting a spa deal maybe, or showing real time casino offers based on someone's loyalty tier or their current day's play. Those are all ways that screens can can help now or displays. Now smartest operators are using AV like dynamic storytelling tools, tailoring content to the time of day, you know, the demo of, the the the plurality about the majority of the people on the casino floor or in the hotel tower at any given time, even weather. And it's not just about looking good. Right? It's about guiding action at the end of the day, not just providing information, but but inspiring behavior. And so, again, I would like I mentioned, I was recently at IGA, and that new technology was meant to do that, to try to inspire people while they're playing to book a restaurant reservation so that they can, you know, capture some incremental revenue that way through food and beverage. And so, and it's not just, so going back to slot machines, I don't think that they're just ambient tech because there was a time in the past when it was. You'd have a screen on your slot machine. You'd have a monitor nearby, and it just happened to provide noise, visual noise, so to speak. Right? You know, add added some flare to the casino floor. It's not that way anymore. They're really strategic tools that allow guests or in the or in the case of casinos, players to do everything we already talked about, you know, to include receiving real time promotions and, you know, it's it's, I think that's way I am hoping I'm answering your question there, but that's that's Yeah. Screens and displays can best be used, I think, as silent salespeople. Yeah. But you you talked about iGUIDE, and, obviously, a show in that same realm too is the g two e's of the world. I know a lot of folks who who maybe listen right now, they may they may not have not ever been shows, that showed up on their radar, but it's important for us to to ask those questions and go to shows like that and learn because, you know, that that was g two e was the first place I really got to see how, you know, Nevada Gaming Association really work with the technology, what requirements were were here, and how you had to collaborate with this technological provider, and access to this, and real time gaming, and and and, you know, how much do you have to have, from a bandwidth standpoint to bet in real time? There's a lot of those different things that that we haven't considered. But, you know, I'm curious too, Radley. Obviously, it's very easy to sort of focus on the new and the cool and all that. Right? And and and I'll use Resorts World again because they've done a really good job of building a tech centric property recently. But that only works for so long. Right? You can't just have technology and new and cool for technology. So there's gotta be, there's gotta be outcomes. Right? There's gotta be data that comes from that. There's gotta be revenue that comes from that. So if you were, you know, say you're a a hotelier or an operator or whoever, what are some of the technologies that you would say just to kinda start with? Right? Is it guest experience? Is it food and beverage? I mean, what are some of those technologies that are most important to you from an experience standpoint that'll sort of test the stand the test of time? Well, you know, I think, there's one company, one hotel, large, you know, global hotel company that whose name I won't mention, but they do it really, really well. So as you know, for the last three years, Ben, I've been a frequent business traveler. In fact, pretty much weekly. And, this one hotel company, through their app alone allows me not just to book reservations, redeem offers, you know, redeem points, check-in. I can order in room dining. I can I can check out, you know, download my folio? I can do a whole bunch of different things seamlessly. And, you know, I think that's something that, you know, an app is not as oh, let me back up a little bit. So there are other there are competitors to this to this company that don't do it as well. Right? And that that's they're they're leaving a lot of the table because of that. They need to be able to really, provide a piece of technology that a guest can accomplish essentially anything they want through without having to go to a disparate system or, you know, or or talk to somebody as a as a, you know, as an example. Now if I were to design, like, I guess, a tech for property from scratch, you know, I guess, what what I would do is I would prioritize infrastructure because no one wants to talk about, you know, I guess, the stability of a system or the the power of Wi Fi. But if your backbone, you know, your infrastructure isn't solid, then nothing else really matters. You know, from a from the end user perspective, from a guest perspective, you know, think about when you travel, Ben, if if Wi Fi is slow or always disconnects, you know, you're not you're not a happy camper. You know, if your if your keys which are all, you know, either digital or at the very least electronic nowadays, if they continue to fail, you know, you're not you're not you're not very happy either. Right? So your infrastructure needs to be solid. After that, I'd focus on more open systems, right, tech that plays nicely with others and evolves easily. So one of the problems today that I see that I don't think has been resolved or, you know, a solution hasn't been found yet or designed yet, Ben, is that in the in a hotel or a casino space, you have all these different stakeholders that we've referred to, whether it's casino operators, food and beverage, hotel, retail, you know, marketing. Everyone uses their own system, but it's very rare for these systems to talk to each other in any meaningful way. Yeah. You'd have to get a data architect, right, to kinda build a view in the data warehouse for disparate systems to get have data pulled into, and then maybe a BI savvy person can then give an operator information they need. And even then, that that's pretty slow. So, building basically a conduit or circuit through which the disparate systems can communicate with each other so that operators can know what's happening. Like, casino host might know what's going on in housekeeping. Housekeeping will know whether or not, you know, there's a delay, during a lunch service period for a couple of restaurants. They don't know how much time they might have before they need to turn a room. All this information, you know, once it can be shared in in across an entire organization will be exceptionally helpful. And, you know, I think, one other thing too is, it's interesting. I really came I recently came across a new venture based out of, Atlanta, I believe. And it's it's an at least to me, it's new. I'm calling it a tech hotel. That's not what they call it. But, it's really based on you think about AI, the Internet of things, you know, automation, crypto settlement methods, using NFTs as part of, like, our programming and more. That's what this organization wants to do. And I think that, you know, that's that's intrigued well, I not I think. I know that's intriguing. Right? And so I would I would do that. I would look at, taking the best that technology has to offer that might not have a use case or application in hotels today and then try to incorporate that into the experience. And I think that helps future proof hotels as, like, my kids. I have a kid with Gen z. I have a kid with Gen Alpha. As those, two kind of become functioning productive adults and they start to travel the world, they're gonna want to experience the world and consume, you know, entertainment and and hospitality in a different way than than I've grown accustomed to. And so I think, you know, finding the right tech, not even the back end kind of tech that helps, hotels operate, but the kind of tech that, guests will want to consume and interact with will be, vitally important to any any hotel organization that wants to be relevant humans in mind. I think you kinda touched on that earlier. Right? Because, you know, tech just to be, you know, whether advanced or not, just existing is really useless unless people use it. You know? And so I think center, central piece of any design initiative needs to be how do people, not just users, but, again, in the case of serving the hospitality industry, what the operators or users, guests feel, like, how they feel about using a thing, what do they wanna accomplish, what do they wanna experience, what helps the staff shine. So beyond the guest with the hotel operators, team members, you know, I love tech, but only when it's, for the better, more memorable, more connected experiences. You know, it's interesting. I love that you spotlighted the sort of the infrastructure side of things as as being the main building block because look. We need to have flexibility as an industry. And and, hey, in three years, this may look different than than another thing. I'm I'm even reminded of of the the link built a sportsbook. It was, like, one of the the the coolest sportsbooks ever, and then, like, three years later, just tore it down. But now granted, there's there's, you know, elements to that and, you know, gaming space and data points, and how can we cram as much in there. Right? But they they built an ecosystem that allowed them to to do that. Right? And now they probably didn't, you know, necessarily get their money back from it, but they said, hey. We have the infrastructure to pivot and and do so wisely. So, I mean, even building on top of the infrastructure conversation, how how important is having an ecosystem that can adapt quickly? Or maybe you need to say, hey. You know what? The Super Bowl's coming or f one's coming. We need to be able to totally repurpose this space here. Yeah. I mean, flexibility, adaptability, scalability, all those things. Right? They're sometimes used interchangeably. I think they're they're vitally important to any to any, backbone, technology backbone that a company wants to, wants to build upon, simply because as you know, advancements in tech, advancements in in, pretty much everything nowadays, that slope is getting steeper and steeper and steeper. So you're gonna have a shorter amount of time to make an idea a reality. Otherwise, you're not gonna be irrelevant. Your competition is leaving the dust. So I think you're you know, the the importance of having, you know, a, kind of an infrastructure that is flexible and scalable is it has to be prioritized, because you're you're going to be limited by that if you don't prioritize it. Well, Bradley, I'm gonna give you the last word here. I'm gonna ask you to pull out your your crystal ball a little bit. When you think about technologies that will continue to impact the industry, and and maybe it's like you mentioned, maybe something that really isn't hasn't found its way in. Maybe the next five, ten years, what are a couple of things that really excites you the most about how technology and hospitality are gonna continue to intersect? Well, for me, and this might seem a little bit big brotherly, but remember, you know, this idea of mine is actually something that was seeded in my brain in two thousand eleven. So it's been around for a while, but it hasn't become no one's been able to make it a reality yet. You know, ideally, I think, you know, as society becomes more open to more of a big brother approach to, like, not surveillance, right, but rather just knowing what you're doing and kinda anticipating what your needs are. You know, the type of technology that really monitors what every guest or player is doing when they're on-site, like, the moment let me back up a little bit. So here's my here's my ideal. Here in Las Vegas, if somebody lands at Harry Reid International Airport, you know, and, a casino operator will know that they've landed. They will know when they're five minutes out. You know, there's gonna be a a, a curbside, greeting for for that guest when they arrive. They come into the property. And from that point forward, everything they do, the casino or the hotel will know about. Right? Everything from new how much they've spent here or there at this restaurant, which you can get nowadays, but I'm talking more along the lines of, you know, taking that information and, trying to predict what they're gonna do next so that the the tech, if you will, can then prescribe to the operator how to approach that. That's that kind of technology, I think, needs to be there to help usher in this age of prescriptive analytics and not just, historical or predictive analytics. Does that make any sense? It does. And and, really, that's sort of the benefit, and we can talk all day about things like AI and technology and all that. But, really, the the the key point to all this is getting better and more actionable and meaningful data. Yeah. You know, whether that's player habits, you know, transaction habits, things like that, being able to take that, interpret that, and turning into a meaningful guest experience, really, I guess, is sort of the golden goose of the entire industry. Yeah. One hundred percent. Oh, the one other thing too is the type of technology that, you know, again, leads us to this prescriptive era needs to also be mindful of the fact that I think guests in general, players in general today, are less likely to view gaming as a primary source of entertainment. And in a lot of cases, people come to Vegas or Atlantic City or even a regional outfit somewhere in the Midwest. They're not even considering gaming as as a secondary form of entertainment. It's very tertiary. They might engage in it. So the best operators out there will be able to benefit, from knowing how to inspire those folks, you know, to play slots or table games or whatever the new game might be in the gaming space because that's where all the flow through is. You know what I mean? And so, whoever on the tech side can help an operator get there will be viewed as a savior. Yeah. Well, hey, you talk about new gaming, shameless plug, by the way, for Double Down Madness. It's the newest game that I like. But, you know, I'll tell you what, Radley. It it it's incredible to hear your perspective. Right? Because when we when we when we don't have conversations like this, sometimes we keep ourselves detached and we become manufacturers and providers of speeds and feeds, and we don't always know, how it's driving business outcomes. And the more that we can understand as a community, how we continue to serve folks like you guys and operators and folks within that industry, I think the the better, the technology will continue to become. But I'll I'll tell you what, I appreciate you coming on the show today. We're gonna find a way to get you back on for sure. You got too much, too much knowledge in that mind that you're still only trying to dump it out at one show. But, Bradley, I appreciate you coming on the show and, giving us your thoughts today. Thanks, Ben. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Alright. Thank you all for tuning in. Be sure to like and subscribe. Check us out next time on the show.