Technology is the New Luxury

Ariela Kiradjian Hello everyone hope you are having a great good you know of your week. I’m Ariela Kiradjian. I’m the CEO and partner at the boutique Lifestyle Leaders Association. BLA, I’m so excited to be working with our Member Community today. I’m joined by Matthew. Branch of Intelli and von Davis of the Green Hollywood. We’re here to talk about how technology is the new luxury and if you have seen von you know that he gets into really. Raw and real conversations and we’ve been instructed that we can bring that to the webinar today. So I was very excited about that. Well, a big shout out to INTELITY. Thank you for putting this together and I’m really excited to be a part of it. I just want to give some brief BIOS so that we can understand who’s in the room today. So I feel like I can introduce myself in one sentence. I am all things independent and boutique hotels. Passionately and vehemently hoping that’s about it. We I own and operate along with my mother and Frank Gracian Boutique Hotel association. And then here we’re joined by von Davis. He’s a general manager over at the Dream Hollywood, popping into over a decade of experience earned at leading luxury. Lifestyle hotels in New York and Los Angeles. Von Davis is a proven leader in launching experiential, luxury hospitality brands in new markets. He is a forward thinking, modern day savant with exceptional vision and. Consistent attention to the. Has proven through multiple successful hotel openings in North America and large scale projects. Dream Hotel Group, hands of work group. Hyatt, through roads and a general manager of the Dream Hollywood on, is responsible for the day-to-day management operations of Dream Hotels. 178 room West Coast flagship and its six bustling dining and nightlife offerings located adjacent to the property. Welcome Bon, and I feel like you’re. You’re such a good friend of the association and so lively and probably like 1. Of the most. Knowledgeable people in tech I know so. Vaugh Davis Thank you. Thank you so much. Speaker Welcome. Vaugh Davis For having me it it’s an honor to be here. I’m really excited about this, this conversation today. Ariela Kiradjian Things fun and then we have Matt over here tuning in from Canada in Toronto. I hear it’s quite cold. Ron and I are in LA where cold is like 65 or 67 degrees. But so Matthew, he is the VP product of Red INTELITY. Matthew joined the INTELITY product team in 2019 and was promoted to VP of Product Management in 2020. He brings more than a decade of experience in hospitality, where he led mobile strategy for such brands as Four Seasons, Fairmont and Delta. Most recently, he. Spent four years with Marriott, where he oversaw the merger of Marriott and Starwood Loyalty products and digital platforms. Well, that must have been a huge project project that during his decade long Tenture at Accenture, he consulted internationally across industries to execute enterprise strategy. So welcome, Matt. Welcome to the conversation here. Matthew Lynch Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for thanks for hosting and thanks for coordinating. Ariela Kiradjian And shout out to the entire INTELITY team. Alexander and Dan are also being so organized. He’s been so helpful, yes. I think the best way to start this conversation, because everyone has a different definition of luxury. So if we’re talking about how technology really luxury, let’s just define that word because I think it’s very personal to each person. So Matt, I’ll just go back to you like what is luxury to you and what is a luxury? Tell in your definition. Matthew Lynch Yeah. I mean, I think. Luxury for me and luxury in a hotel is an interesting kind of comparison, because I think for a long time the definition of luxury that I’ve experienced, that I’ve always kind of like looked at is really focused around the ideas of like freedom and personalization. And like those two are almost interchangeably, they’re just a little bit of a different flavor, like luxury has very much been about freedom of choice. Things come to me. Things come to me on my time when I want them to show up. Things come to me that are bespoke and personalized for me rather than common and. That’s all really about. The freedom that things are about you, which is the personalization piece and rather rather than the things being just forced upon you and you have to take it, the lack of choice. So for me, that’s what luxury has always been, I think luxury hospitality has always really embodied that because it has been high amounts of touch, high amounts of staff. To cater for those needs to give you that freedom you wanna check in at this time, you know, that’s fine with us. You wanna like skip lines and come over here and go directly into your suite and be handled that way? That’s fine, right? VIP type, so. But this idea that luxury has to be delivered, you know, like, personally, I think within hospitality, something that we’ve held on to for a long time as like the last bastion of that. I’m not sure that that’s still what luxury is for many people. I think you know. Not to just paraphrase the name of the the the conversation. But like. Luxury like tech is luxury, right? The example that I give everyone is like Tesla is not really a luxury car, right? It’s not Rolls Royce. It is not Bentley. It is barely Mercedes quality of like interior refinement and those sorts of things. What it is is just gobs of tech that’s brand new and people love it, right? And so luxury is very much tech in 2022 and you know for the foreseeable future that’s where we are now. That’s my take on it. Ariela Kiradjian That’s a great point about Tesla. Speaker But actually that’s actually. Ariela Kiradjian Such a great analogy. Don’t you have a Tesla, don’t you? Vaugh Davis I knew you were. Gonna do this and you know. I have. Yeah, yeah, I have. We have three, we have 3 Teslas, one of which is my little sister has in New York. We sent that one over to her. It’s actually one of the signature Model S is from way back in. The day and and my wife and I both have Model X’s, and I’m not gonna refute. Anything Matt saying about them not being like. Great, but it is a wonderful vehicle and they do call it the the Faberge egg of cars. And you know, I have a P-100. D My wife has a 90 D and my car drives me from point A to point BI, don’t I? Whenever I hop on the highway it’s it’s driving me to work and allows me to gives me the luxury. To kind of shift my attention to other things as part of my Los Angeles 75 hour commute is. What it feels like. But yeah, no, that those and I get your point Matt, I. Get your point, it’s. Maybe the Model 3, the Model 3 and the model Y could be in that category. Matthew Lynch They, they, they, they. They’ve progressed themselves a long way. I’m being a little. You know, critical to make my point, but yeah. Vaugh Davis Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s been. It’s interesting. I my steering wheel was warm this morning. My seat, it was warm. The car knew the route that I was supposed to go to based on the calendar and my phone, so it just preemptively already programmed where it was going before I had to touch anything and I think. To your question, Ariella about luxury, it’s all about everything, feeling seams. Yes, right. We can tap into the to the five senses of the guest experience. We can go down that route when when we’re talking about hospitality and luxury, but it all boils down to one simple thing. It’s all seamless. You should never when you’re in a hotel, feel like you have to ask for something. The team should have this. 6th Sense to know that you’re gonna need assistance, you know, with your bags, or you’re gonna need a bottle of water while you’re headed to the gym, or you’re gonna need a a fresh towel or a new robe or anything in your room because you just went for a. Dog over the Manhattan Bridge, right. It’s all about being proactive in nature, listening, having a a level of of empathy and understanding. When you’re connecting with guests and pretty much being an an an empath, right, and knowing and feeling what the guest wants and needs. That to me is is the definition of luxury of course. Touch is extremely important, right? And that that goes down to your design team and. And and what FF and E furniture, fixtures and equipments you put in your properties and and that also lends a hand to luxury, but to the the the Tesla kind of comparison there, I think that those are things that they embedded in their cars and and that’s why you’re seeing such a a major shift from your traditional luxury vehicles. Into that, that new new frontier of of cars and technology. Matthew Lynch And everyone’s copying them now, right? Like I’m a big car guy, right? So, like, The funny thing is, is you have these like. Old guard of like, well, we thought luxury was, you know, fine Conley leather and rich carpets and all this sort of stuff. And then Tesla came through, took all of the market share in terms of new luxury because it’s about the technology and now all of the other car companies are just massively trying to back themselves into, like, well, how do we, how do we tackle those same challenges and problems? And how do we? Conquer that, given how far behind they were on the actual technical achievements, I think there are parallels to that within the hospitality industry as there was a group of. Like, I’ll call it old guard luxury that were like, well, we we don’t want a device because that’s not personal. And then there’s people that adopt the technology early, really kind of understood how to use it appropriately within a luxury environment. And now you see some of these like these, these kind of more like stage chains and groups be like, Oh my God, we gotta get into this. How do we do it? The technology investments huge because they haven’t learned like the. So they’re way forward. So again, a lot of parallels between those two kind of paths of industries. Ariela Kiradjian I think it’s subjective though, because it’s like honestly my like van. I think what you think of laundry and what I think of, like, you’re also too somewhat similar but also different. That’s why it’s when it comes to a hotel, happens is that we’re trying to beat everything for everybody and then. We like we’re going in. On the competition side, instead of just focusing on who you are and what you value, you know you are not for everyone. Especially when we look at the boutique or the lifestyle space and hospitality, we pass the focus on that because we’re not for one. I feel like if I sometimes that old world luxury, some of the aspects, not all of them, I really want, because that to me is where I would pay a higher price. But I want to get to. Something that I don’t think we’ve had a hard time honing in on what the correct process is and I think across hospitality in general. I don’t know how we’re doing in the check in process. I think we’re getting better, but I don’t think our industry has really understood it. So, Vaughn, with what you’re doing at Dream Hollywood and. Even if you’re. Just a traveler. What would be the most ideal? Check in process. Could you walk us to it step by step? And how technology? Plays a part. Vaugh Davis Yeah, I think everyone at this point should be familiar with my take on on the antiquated checking process. You know, I started from the ground up in this industry. So this is a a first hand experience in connecting with guests and having multiple hotels that were number one on TripAdvisor in in multiple different markets. And one of the things that I. That I. Identified with the check in process that I never understood was the the friction point in the business transaction that occurs towards the end of check in right and then I’ll walk you through like my ideal check in in in a second. But so you you you greet a guest, everything’s warm, everything’s friendly, everything’s exciting. Telling you about the hotel or going through an introduction and all of the fun things you can do, food and beverage outlets, everything is great. Now give me your credit card, yeah. And then I want you to read this. Contract here, OK. And this line says if you misbehave I’m. Gonna kick you out. Of the hotel. Alright, good. And I’m also gonna charge you an additional X amount of dollars for incidentals per night. Yep, you probably didn’t read that on the website. Cause Yep, we put a lot of information there and no one reads it anyway, and there’s now this new thing. Call the facility fee OK. I need you to pay that as well. So then. Ariela Kiradjian You know what Biden did, right? What Biden’s doing with? You heard about the facility resort fees or I didn’t show them. Make them illegal now. Vaugh Davis Yeah, I know. No, I’m not. I’m not gonna speak on that topic. I think I’m. I’m gonna dodge that question like this. Like Neo in. The matrix? Yeah, get back to the arrival experience. Speaker I can experience. Vaugh Davis But yeah, so then it it kind of leaves a a bitter taste in the mouth of the guests. Right, like think for example if something goes wrong with their card because they’re. Traveling and they’re not able. To authorize their card, then they’re not gonna be able to check into the hotel. And now you know the peak end theory. It’s gonna prove itself, and that guest experience is already altered from the start, right? And even if everything goes well with the card, they start to sign something that makes them feel very uncomfortable. And now it leaves this kind of impact, this negative impact in their mind with that team member, right, they’re responsible for taking, you know, $2000. Of my money and making me go through this process that I didn’t really know was gonna. Happened so I am not a fan of it. I think it’s something that we as an industry need to evaluate and that’s what we did here at dream. We decided that it would be most beneficial given peak end theory, that the guests should handle the majority of the business transaction before they arrive. The property. So you can, you know, book your reservation in New York, you know, for tomorrow. And you’re gonna hop on a plane and you’re gonna get an e-mail from us early in the morning. And a text message that’s gonna say we’re so excited to have you stay with us. Feel free to check in now through your mobile device. You’ll utilize your mobile device. We partner with a company called Canary Technologies and what it then does, the registration card is built into the the the platform that they use. So you’ll get all of your rules and regulations. You’ll get an introduction to. Hotel you will be asked to upload your picture ID and your credit card information, which then integrates into opera for us, which is our PMS that we utilize and then our team can go ahead and authorize your card. They have some kind of AI built into that. I don’t think I can really speak too much on, but it it also has a fraud detection. Process that I think is revolutionary and very helpful for hotels and then so. When our hotel guest arrives, there is a mobile key that we push to them through INTELITY. INTELITY has a process now that that actually automates that for us, which is really cool. So instead of us having to then check the guests and physically on our desktops and then send or push the mobile key to their device and tell it he does that for us automatically. Once the guest passes the process of the pre arrival check in checkpoints and then the room is inspected in opera and then it automatically sends it to them. So for me, that’s the perfect arrival experience because that frees my team up now to greet you curbside. And everything is rosy and. Perfect, right? Because. Speaker Yeah. Yep. Vaugh Davis You’ve already done the business transaction your card has already been authorized. Your rooms already been checked in. You already have your keys, and that’s going back to being seamless, right? And being proactive, obviously, you’re here to check into a hotel. Know that. So why are we asking you at front at the front desk? When you arrive checking in by the way, one of my biggest peppys if you didn’t know, now you know, please don’t say that to people. Checking this, uh. Ariela Kiradjian What? Say what? Vaugh Davis Checking in that should never be the the way you greet someone, right? Ariela Kiradjian It should be welcome, right? Vaugh Davis It should be welcome. Welcome to you know the name of the hotel. We’re so excited to have you. Anything along the lines of, you know, just a welcoming greeting and not checking in. Speaker Yeah, yeah. Ariela Kiradjian We know you’re here checking. Matthew Lynch No, it’s interesting. Right, because. You know, check in the check in process is my most hated process as well, right? And it’s and it’s the the piece that’s like right for technology sort of stuff and so you know similar to the the Canary guys we have like a a similar product for check in and we’re reworking it right now on our next version of the platform. Originally, when we built it like five years ago, along with mobile key, we really like kind of like really, really, really early out there on mobile check in like the industry just wasn’t ready for it in general and we kind of copied the paper process, right. So we looked at all the activities that happen at the front desk, like, OK, you gotta do this. You gotta do this. You gotta do this. You gotta do. This and the win is what Vaughn kind of said, right? The luxury there is well, let’s get the user to do that. Let’s get the guests to do that. They get to now do it on their own time so they can do it when they’re in the cab, they can do it when they’re in the airport lounge, they can do these things when. They have spare. Time and that’s a better experience than them getting to the hotel and waiting in line. Right? So like, there’s winds there for sure. I think on our next round that we’re kind of doing our our designs for right now. We’re like really trying to move away from the paper process and not even talk about check-in and really now say well, the goal is just to get to your room, right? So actually we don’t need to do all of these things. Yes, we still need to collect some of the information, but let’s look at gathering that along the way. Let’s store that data for future use so we don’t have to ask it like twice from you and really remove the friction of that experience all the way to things like, you know, we’re playing with certain ideas and. I’m like. Vaughn, you said it perfectly like we know you have a reservation for today. We know you’re checking in, right? This is not like a a complicated like idea. You paid for the room. You know, we could do geofences so that we know that as you move from one ring to the next, say from the airport. To the downtown core, into the smaller neighborhood. It’s like there’s a high likelihood this guy’s on his way. It’s not about tracking the. User, but we can. Gate through. Vaugh Davis Geofence right. Matthew Lynch Like this guy’s on his way. If he’s on his way, let’s inform the hotel that he’s on his way so that they know that he’s coming right now. Vaugh Davis Right. Matthew Lynch You can get all your prep work done. Let’s make sure that there’s a clean room available to actually check the guests into and start managing that expectation of whether there’s a room available or not, so that we can do better. Real time management of room inventory and that’s that seamless. Frictionless stuff that you couldn’t do physically at the property, because the only time you know what the property that someone wants to check in is too late because they’re already there and they’re already frustrated that the room’s not available and that sort of stuff. So moving that stuff into the. Digital realm gives. Us access to technologies that allow us to create. Create better experiences. Draw insight out that just wasn’t available before, right? And that’s that’s kind of our job as technologists right in the industry. We look at hospitality problems and then we look at the pool of technology and say, hey, you know what, you could use this piece of technology to solve that problem in a unique way, right? That’s not your guys’s jobs. Your guys’s jobs are running a fantastic hotel, right? We’ll solve the technology problem, and we’ll enable you to take advantage of that technology, and the hope is. That we make it as seamless for the guests as it is for you guys as operators, but that’s my, that’s my check, my big kind of my team hears it every week. Like, stop using the word check in, just give the guest a key to the room and tell them that it’s ready, because that’s what you want, right? Bing bong. Speaker Right. Matthew Lynch Your room is ready. Here’s your key. Walk right up. Vaugh Davis Yeah, yeah. And and it allows the team members to engage with the guests throughout the arrival experience in more of a friendly and natural way. So they don’t feel like there’s there’s this uncomfortable business transaction that’s about to transpire right from arrival all the way up to the room throughout, you know, the mid stay interaction. Everything has been smooth and seamless and I think that’s really important for hoteliers to understand. That is why we’re reinventing the arrival and check in process. Speaker OK. Ariela Kiradjian I think what I’m hearing from both of you it’s like. Anything that’s like a business transaction is way before they arrive. So when when they arrive, it’s purely the hospitality experience. Vaugh Davis Right. Ariela Kiradjian I think that’s. Yeah, that’s what I’m hearing. I do want to get your take though. Do you use kiosks? Uh, drink? Vaugh Davis No, we don’t. We don’t. Ariela Kiradjian What do you think of those? Vaugh Davis I’m I’m not a I’m not a fan of kiosks. Personally, I believe it’s it’s just doing the same process that I just discussed, but in person, right? So there’s this, no, this it’s not really accomplishing the seamless experience or rival. Experience that we’re looking to create for our guests. I would much rather that personal touch if it’s gonna happen in person, at the front desk, I’d much rather someone check them in, otherwise I’d rather it be the way that I had originally described it, where it’s seamless, and then there’s another way to some companies are starting to play around with QR codes. Where you won’t need to utilize the the kiosk that’s there, you can just scan a QR code and then you can do the same check and process on your mobile device. So to Matt’s point, if there’s companies out there with kiosks and they don’t and and have any intention to to remove themselves from that process. If you add a geofence, it should be able to automatically go right to the guests phone and they could do the same process that they would do in the kiosk, but on their mobile device right there in the in the lobby. Matthew Lynch Yeah, I think I think kiosks were like a transitionary technology mostly. Speaker Yeah, they were. Matthew Lynch Until you know like. ID verification is like a good example, right? Like there wasn’t advanced ID verification available on mobile like until relatively recently within the last like three years. We piloted it right before, at the beginning of the pandemic, and then we’ve rolled it out since 7th and so like kiosk was still like reasonable because I was like, oh, you just have to finish the kiosk and then just go. Waive your ID at the front desk so you still have to kind of be present, but where mobile technology is nowadays, there’s no reason for it. It’s just going to clutter the law. I think there’s a bad taste in people’s mouths. Unfortunately, from airports, right? Like even if they like, there’s lots of companies that do a great kiosk. Don’t get me wrong. Ariela Kiradjian Just going to say that. Matthew Lynch And unfortunately, every time someone sees a kiosk, everyone’s. Like oh God. Right. It’s just like flashback to baldness and, you know, Vons plays like, why do you want to create these negative experiences? That’s not what you’re trying to associate your brands with. That’s not what you’re trying to associate the vacation with, and that’s that’s just the the fallout of the technology at the time wasn’t as mature and wasn’t as ready. I mean, that being said, I you know, I was, I was shopping recently, you know, some places didn’t have self checkout and we all hate self checkout and it’s Christmas time and I’m like, oh, I remember what it was like before self. So I’m waiting in line for 35 minutes, so I think we also tend to forget what life was like before the technology. And you know, it’s not perfect, but it is miles better in terms of, again, like the luxury of convenience, not wasting 30 minutes standing in line. But yeah, I think I think kiosks are probably going to transition out in place of just mobile universal. Ariela Kiradjian Yeah, I think so too. I mean, my favorite kiosk is by far Verdi, but they just partnered with clear, which I thought was really interesting because they’re using the facial recognition. But I’m sure that they’re going to be having innovations going past the kiosk because they have. All that technology but but it’s it’s so it’s interesting using like faces maybe we’ll be. Walking through the doors. They suffer your face. Wait, do you? Think that’s coming where you go to? Your room and you got. Speaker You’re ready getting ready. Vaugh Davis Yes, I have. Ariela Kiradjian Yeah, it’s yeah. Matthew Lynch It’s like almost there. Like, yeah, we were we we we know the clear guys we were just chatting. I was just chatting with him about two weeks ago. They got an interesting business model because, like, they’re all about getting subscription for their clear membership. And so they look for like all these avenues, right? It’s like, well, you know, clear can make things easier. So we’re talking with them about the the next version of the platform. And you know, if you’re a clear member, yeah, you just show your your your. Yeah, you just show your your face and like boom walk right in sort of thing at one point in time we were working. In Singapore. And we were working with the hotel there and the Singapore government and we were having conversations about using the CCTV cameras to do real time facial recognition so that you don’t even need to like. It’s like you’ve done your like. Kind of pre work on your app. The second you kind of walk on Prem, the CCTV can pick up your face, recognize who you are, deliver your key, select the elevator floor for you, unlock your door for you. All this sort of. Stuff works in some markets where, like people are a little bit more comfortable with it and that’s was kind of like five years ago, when like facial recognition was kind of cool. Since then markets kind of chilled out. On Big Brother facial recognition. And and so like, maybe still relevant in certain like Asian countries, but within the North American market, people will just get creeped out by the over. Security part of it. So yeah, sometimes we got great technology. Like we could. Do cool stuff and then we’re like no one’s gonna. No one’s gonna feel comfortable like the world. The world’s not ready, right? Or technologists haven’t built it. Secure and trusted enough in order to make people ready. But you know things like there’s a big pile of stuff. That’s like we piloted or we played around with and then it never made it to. Speaker Right. Matthew Lynch To air right? Vaugh Davis Yeah, I think a lot of times hoteliers look at the guest journey is starting when a guest walks into the through the front door of the hotel. I think we need to reevaluate that. I think we need to look at it from the moment they booked their reservation and they’re headed towards the hotel. So if you work with a a partner like Claire, you know they should be a part of that. Check in process for you, especially utilizing their facial recognition, and there’s a tremendous amount of data that they have on their guests, right or their their their patrons that can also be beneficial to hotels. The big thing for me with your with your comment Ariella is trying not to give away too much. What we’re working on over here. It’s like a little little miniature Google X here at Dream Hollywood. We have a little bit too much fun with with technology. Ariela Kiradjian It’s a laboratory. Vaugh Davis Yeah, it’s a little bit too much. It’s fun for us, but you know, one of the things so it does, it does already exist and and I could I guess I. Could speak this publicly, it’s. There is a there is a technology out there that utilizes facial recognition and has a a dashboard that will then send any information that you have on this guest to the team. So let’s say for example. This is someone that has and we don’t have this in place. By the way, let’s just be clear. We’re just. Looking at it, but if you dine at our restaurants, you know in in New York or in in Miami or here in LA and we know you like to sit at a certain table and you like to order a certain cocktail or you order the same entree at any type of specific restaurant and whatever your favorite things are this, this software. Has the ability to then. King the team and say Ohh von Davis is 2 blocks away or von Davis is standing outside of ex restaurant and is looking for a reservation and it then gives you highlights of his favorite things. So now your team is. Automatically ready. OK, they know the table. OK, we have Table 7 for you. Ready to go? And here’s your favorite cocktail. And that goes back to luxury and technology, right? It’s all about that seamless integration. And we all understand that there’s been challenges with the workforce and and hotels. So with the challenge with workforce, then comes the inability to. Right. Pain as much of that intrinsic knowledge of the guests that stay at your properties that we had right team members. Matthew Lynch Yeah, the institutional memory, that’s all. Like well, James knows cause James been here for 25 years and he knows everything, right. Vaugh Davis Right. But James is not here, so. Speaker How are we going to get? Vaugh Davis That information, how are we going to get? That information to. Jane, right, without having to spend. Matthew Lynch Yeah. Yes. Vaugh Davis An exorbitant amount of time training her. And as we all know, even now as the training process has changed now with technology, you have to find a way to train team members faster to get them on board. Matthew Lynch Yeah, yeah, yeah, that. And that’s the that’s the. Like quote UN quote old luxury right and hospitality is like the the I think it’s the the last remaining version of that right. Everyone else has kind of figured out how to do personalization databases for their customer right? And it’s easy in like the airline industry or it’s easy. If you were like marry it because like you’re huge and all this sort of stuff, it’s very hard. When you’re smaller, right? But. You know my anecdote for this is way back when I was working at Four Seasons, we were looking at a personalization project and you know. Step one and I was like, OK, well, how do we do it now? Like ohh well, every hotel just has notes on all the important guests and they fax. They fax the notes between hotels. So because they know oh. Next week, so and so. Staying in Abu Abu Dhabi. And then the week after that, they’re gonna be in Silicon Valley. And they fax the notes around the. Well, and like, that’s how Four Seasons luxury, right delivered that incredible personalization experience. It took them ten years to build out a digitized version of that and get that kind of mature. It was like an incredibly complex project that they did, like Marriott doesn’t really have, that Marriott does really great personalization. On the sales side, but they don’t actually know me as a guest. They know me as a buyer of an of a hotel room, but they don’t know that. I always I always order a burger. For my my food and dining, right. Because they don’t have that analysis coming out of their point of. Sale systems so. There has been a long standing belief that it has to be James, and James has to be the guy that knows everything about every customer and has to be James. That says Ohh, how are the wife and kids? Susie turned 6 the other day, right? Yeah, that’s great. And and what Vaughn’s like playing into is no, no, technology is not going to replace that technology, is there? To augment that memory, right so that you don’t have to be the guy that remembers every single detail, you now have something that can bring up relevant information about a guest that you can then use. To personalize their experience, to reduce the training time so that you know when your favorite bartender is, like out sick, the backup bartender is able to deliver some of the same personalization right now. How do you make that genuine? That’s for you guys, right? That’s the people side. The technology won’t guarantee a personalized delivery. That’s where you work the people to be like, hey, this is how you deliver that genuinely, this is how you might not have met this guy before, but bring up a fact that feels weird that you would know. And you can, you know, be transparent about some of how, you know this sort of stuff, right, like. That’s the that’s the magic of luxury. I think technology is there to support that. Speaker Right. Hmm. Ariela Kiradjian I love that. So what I’m hearing is. So it’s seamlessness. It’s freedom and it’s personalization is this are these are these three words, do you think that that’s kind of definitive with lettering, technology, seamlessness, freedom, personalization? Vaugh Davis I think. Matthew Lynch Yeah, I think you know. Ariela Kiradjian So it’s like, yeah, Matt, that you. Matthew Lynch Ohh, go ahead. Well, one of the other. Things I was just going to say is. Not a definition of the luxury side, but more just talking about the benefit of technology for luxury. And this this might sound a little strange, but you know, luxury luxury has always been also defined by scarcity, right? In many, you know it’s a a scarce commodity, gold, diamonds, etcetera. It’s a scarce product. Only a few like luxury hotel rooms, right, it’s a scarce location. Whatever, right, so scarce. As a part of that. What technology allows us to do is democratize luxury a little bit more, right? You know, Vaughn gave the example earlier on in his Tesla, where he’s like, well, I get in my Tesla knows where I’m going, right, that’s that’s personalization, right? The Tesla knows where it’s going. That’s now been democratized down to Vaughn because he bought, you know, he’s he invested in the Tesla. Instead of having a chauffeur that knows what his. Schedule is right. Because 50 years ago, 100 years ago would have been the chauffeur. That’s like, well, I know, I know. Davis is scheduled and I know where the hell we’re going, right? We don’t have to. We don’t have to pay the the chauffeur to do that. We paid the car to do that, but now more people have that luxury available and so that’s the other piece of this is that you’re going to see what was the privilege of higher end exclusivity. Push down and become more common, which will then challenge. What is the? The true luxury to invent new definitions of that it’s it’s gonna increase competition in the luxury market is what it will do because technology is gonna make that personalization more available to a more discount hotel. So then the question is? Within your businesses, how do you leverage the technology quicker, smarter, better? And where do you invest some of those cost savings that you’re getting from technology into whatever the next version of luxury is that can’t be duplicated with technology, right, like? You’re not fooling myself thinking that technology solves all the world’s problems. It’s not. That’s not the case, right? But that is something that you need to be cognizant of. Is it this weird challenge of like if I don’t adopt, I’m gonna get left behind and at the same time? Upstarts are going to take what was my luxury and do it as table stakes, and now I’m not going to be seen as luxury like that is a challenging environment to be operating in. I’m not sure that that registers as as vocally as I as I see it as a technologist. Ariela Kiradjian Well, and I feel like you’d have commentary on that. Vaugh Davis I I I. No, I agree with you. I agree with you, Matt. It’s unfortunately I think there needs to be a shift in our industry where we change the mindset of technology is more of a hindrance. Right. And it it moves more towards it’s here to help. Or here to make life a lot easier for your team members, it’s here to deliver a seamless experience for your hotel guests and the the big challenge that I find in our industry is that it’s not embraced as such. Maybe because we don’t understand it as much as we would like to or we just don’t have the time or the energy. Best into working alongside our our partners to help improve the product. I mean you know first hand and so is Dan and Alexandra, I I will. And Matt, I’ll pick up Matt Bacha that is. I’ll pick up. The phone and I will call or. I’ll send an e-mail or I’ll send the text and I’ll say, hey, I love the product. I love everything about it. Here’s an idea. What do you think? Right. And you and your team, you’ll immediately say, whoa, love that idea. Let’s try to work on implementation and improve the product. So we do that with all of our partners. It is never all the technology doesn’t work. We give up, we work with everyone. We give real time feedback because we’re here boots on the ground and we we are, you know, in the day-to-day operations connecting with the guests. And we see the potential behind how the technology can be utilized to improve the guest experience. And that’s for the. General guests, right. Which is our team members as well as the external guest experience. And there’s a lot of technology out there that can can really assist with a lot of the back end work right from revenue management to accounting, right to even housekeeping for your engineering team. Everything that you do within hotels, there is some technology or some form of technology. Out there that can assist with either better decision making or kind of cut down on all of the laborious tasks to help with your productivity and delivering a better product. So I think there just needs to be that that overall shift within our industry. And to let’s embrace it, let’s figure out how we can make it work right and give real time feedback to improve the product. Matthew Lynch Yeah, I think. Ariela Kiradjian What you said? Matthew Lynch Do do you? Have you noticed an uptick since the pandemic of, like technology like embracing technology? Cause like we have right? Like the pandemic was just like? An interesting like challenge for us like technology wise, but it was also one of our strongest sales years. And since then we’ve just like the the attitude has changed too. It’s like, well, we must, right? Regardless of what the technology is, it’s not all about intelligent, specific like solutions, but like, oh, we need to adopt this technology to get like, you know, to labor shortages contactless. Whatever it is, and now that people are kind of on that boat, we kind of feel that there’s a like an opening, an opportunity where there’s a lot more like embracing of that technology. Speaker There is. Matthew Lynch Are you gonna noticing that amongst your peers as well or what’s the kind of sentiment on the ground? Vaugh Davis Right. I do see that I do see that, unfortunately I still. See this reluctance to. Partner with the technology providers, right? I I don’t see this working hand in hand mentality. I see more so. OK, I need this technology to do X. OK, it’s not doing it. I need another one that does X. No, no. Let’s work together here. So it’s not doing what you need it to do. This is why we have programmers. What is you have developed? Is you have a whole. Team that’s dedicated to improving the product, right. And that’s the beauty of it that I think hoteliers need to understand is behind that app that you’re using is a massive team that’s beyond. Speaker Right. Vaugh Davis Capable of pretty much creating whatever they want to create with that product. Because of this beautiful thing called. Speaker And and. Matthew Lynch Well, I think I think also the hotel like we on our side like the technology side. I don’t think we’re doing the right things to serve the market yet. I think our industry is still getting better at serving hospitality because you’ve been. Need to be very careful. Vaugh Davis So, OK, I’ll say it if. You want me to match? Matthew Lynch Yeah, Miss served by some large legacy players where that relationship really isn’t available to you to have that conversation in a meaningful way, right? The, you know, legacy players, large stagnant products that. Don’t have updates. It’s very 1998, you know, like trying to like change Microsoft Word and call it Microsoft. Right. Like that’s not a thing. And then at the same time, like we’re finally getting some like, you know, more independent players, startups etcetera, semi mature companies like INTELITY which is halfway between start up halfway between enterprise. But we’re still not. We still don’t have a great cadence within the industry of being the Super nimble innovation driven kind of bilateral development strategy. We’re not great at it. You guys are hesitant on it. We’re slowly making roads, but honestly, the industry is probably. 10 years behind what the rest of corporate is, right. Vaugh Davis Agreed, agreed. Matthew Lynch Yeah, yeah, yeah. Vaugh Davis And I think if I think here’s how I sum it up. If your UX looks like an Atari game. We need to. OK, we need to talk because that it it. That alone, to me, is telling in your focus of developing the product and you know innovation and what you’re doing with your R&D departments. And look, there’s, I, I was trying not to to say this, but here here’s what. Here’s what I would do. There is a tremendous amount of data that a lot of these legacy players have collected. Overtime and operating hotels that is just in the the Wasteland, it’s not being utilized, it’s not aggregated there isn’t this AI approach towards utilizing that data to offer predictive models or to offer some kind of revolutionary. Service upgrade. It’s just sitting in the wasteland. And I mean, I can literally run through the list of that hotels have to me, probably the most useful data out of any other other industry, because this is someone that’s essentially living at your property depending on your length of stay. For you know, you know two to four, to five to seven nights and is voluntarily giving you here. This is the favorite temperature that I like in the mornings when I wake up. Here’s a temperature if I’m in the room during the middays, here’s the temperature that I. Like to sleep. Alright, here’s my heart rate when I sleep. Here is what gives me the most peaceful right in the night’s rest at a hotel. Here’s what I like to eat. Here’s what I like to drink when I like to eat it. When I like to drink it. Here’s where I like to wear when I like to wear it, where I’m going for a formal event or for a sporting event. Hotels have everything, and I mean, that’s just like a small sample set. The data that we’ve been collecting as team members from guests right by connecting with them. So when I was a a bellman manager in training, I would start to process information as a human being about the guests that I was interacting with. And then with that. Information then be able to deliver exceptional service and proactive service. Because I saw Mr. Jones every morning, he liked his newspaper and he liked to smoke his cigar, so I. Would be waiting. With the newspaper and his cigar. And he liked matches, not a lighter. So when Mr. Jones walked down, it was ohh. Morning, Mr. It’s a newspaper. You really need to check out page 7. Ohh, right this way. We’re going upstairs. I found you a new location with a better view for you to smoke your cigar and read your newspaper. By the way. Matt is right. Like that’s what that’s the power that technology has the capabilities of offering within the hospitality sector. And I think once we embrace it and we aggregate the data and we we add a little more ML and AI to it can be a very powerful tool that’s not too intrusive, right? This is about an experience this is about. They stay. This is a. Out removing the guests from whatever it is happens in their regular day-to-day life. People come to hotels for a multitude of reasons. The biggest one for me, understanding that there might be some challenging times in their personal life that they want to escape from, that’s always like the thing that really motivated me. And my purpose my the reason I’m here today is to ensure that you have the best experience ever, that you forget about whatever it is is going on in your life and you leave this hotel after interacting with me and my team with a new take on life. So whatever it is is going on outside of the doors before you arrive. As bad as it was. When you came in here, your life changed. Ariela Kiradjian Then escape. It’s an escape. Vaugh Davis But then your life changed. Your mind changed. Matthew Lynch Man, I’m going to the dream. Like I’m getting the flight. Going I’m sold. Vaugh Davis Come, come on down, Matt. Speaker We’re ready. We’re ready. Yeah. Ariela Kiradjian Yeah. Thanks. Matthew Lynch Goodbye winter. Hello, Hollywood. Vaugh Davis Come on down, man. I’m telling you, it’s it’s about shifting the perspective because when I used to connect with guests and of course, I can’t say names, but this would be from anyone, anyone. And you just use. Your wildest imagination. Some of the guests I’ve interacted with. And it’s like free. It’s like free therapy, right? Matthew Lynch What I I yeah, I think that’s interesting. Right? Cause like one of the notes that I have is and I struggle with it as a as a, you know product person. We’re all about experience, right? We talk. What’s the what’s the? What’s the user experience? What’s the guest experience really trying to create? You know, we say frictionless we we like refined. Beautiful UX surprise and delight. These are all the terms that. We use, right? Something von said earlier was empathy, and he’s kind of talking about that right now. Yeah, that’s the technology gap. That is like. The constant struggle right, and we’ll get better, slowly and surely at. It but like. How do you do? Put put, how do you put some of that into the technology and not that you have to right? I don’t. I don’t want to remove the human empathy part of it. That’s about human connection. I think that’s incredibly important. But if your app can deliver just a a bit of that, then you got something very special and very interesting. Right. And that connects meaningfully with the with the rest of the brand that that’s able to follow through on that. Once you arrive on property. I don’t I don’t have like that is not. But an easy answer to give, I don’t know. I don’t have it right, but it’s like something that we just spend so much time like scratching. Our heads and. You know, getting things into market and then like is that is that does that touch someone? No, no one feels anymore. Let’s pull it back. Right. Like, no, no, that’s Clippy. That’s no good, right. That’s that’s not what we’re looking for. We’re looking for something else. But yeah, the empathy piece is kind of where technology falls down a little bit, and I think that’s the big challenge for us. Vaugh Davis Yeah, I think it’s changing though, Matt. I think as we see. GPT 3 get developed further. And then some of these, these hyper realistic humans that are being created and with the AI that’s continuing to learn, I think there’s going to be a shift. I don’t know. I think maybe 10. I feel like we’re 10 years away. I might be. I might be greatly mistaken. We might be much closer, but I think we’re we’re getting to a point where we’re gonna be able to see that. Empathy piece play out with technology. Because that has been one of the biggest challenges for for hotel operators, right is how do you get the technology to marry with your in person, connectivity and experience with your guests, right? It should never be a fall off. The tech shouldn’t be cold and your teammates are the warmest, kindest people. Speaker Yeah, it should. Vaugh Davis Feel like it’s all connected as from tech to human and back to tech back to human right throughout the entire guest journey. Ariela Kiradjian Yeah, yeah, and it doesn’t exist yet. Like you said, like. Think that. Matthew Lynch Not really. Ariela Kiradjian Yeah, that’s I think that’s it’s not only what you said about when hotels are looking to. Innovate. They’re like. Not just the money, but I think more than that it’s the time. Like I even think, you know from an admin standpoint like ohh Lord like this again and especially with Ultra Boutique where it’s like smaller teams. But I think it’s what you said it’s I think when it comes to technology companies, it’s myth and that empathy part which hotels are like, this isn’t adding up. Why would I do this? Because it’s not part of that hospitality experience, but I do think it’s coming because I think technology companies. Are starting to realize that missing part of it. But I also. I do want to we don’t have a few minutes left here and I. There’s two things I want to talk about. Speaker One is. Ariela Kiradjian Honestly, and I talk about this with design, you know, I think we start focusing on design so much and that’s what makes it like a cool hotel. And I think design is like 150th. It makes it a cool hotel. It’s a big part of it, but it’s not everything but with technology. If you’re wanting to have a true hospitality experience, not like, well, this is just business transaction. No one really cares. We don’t care about the welcome, but when have you gone too far? But when do you cross the line where it’s like you start questioning inside wherever. What would you say when? When is? Because I think that there’s a fine line where where would you say you can cross the line when there’s too much technology? Matthew Lynch Like I’ll. I’ll jump on it first. Maybe I think it depends on what your brand is, right? If if you were the Tesla. Then there’s no such thing as. Too much, right? And there are brands that are that they kind of like position themselves as such, right? Like, not not quite that that extreme, but they they position themselves as very technology forward and that’s very much what they’re about and they set the right tone in their marketing to be able to say like. Hey, we’re going. To do a a cool prototype thing. Check out this robot or oh, we’re going to do a cool thing over here and they they they generate tons of buzz and PR. Starwood was pretty good at that for a large brand back in the day. They were very pushy about what? Was basically just like a marketing headline, right? Was like, oh, we’re doing this. They did it at one hotel, right? But they got crazy, crazy press on it, right? Yeah. So like that’s. That’s the extreme. I don’t know. I’ll let Vaughn jump in on on. The on the. Rest of it, but I think there it just depends on how you wanted to position. Technology within your brand itself. Vaugh Davis Yeah, you here’s. Our inboxes, I can give you from a GM’s perspective, our inboxes are laden every day with some new technology. Hey, right, check us out. Try us out. I think what that has caused is. Ariela Kiradjian .2, by the way. Vaugh Davis Operators not really taking a deep look. At the tech. And how it actually aligns with the guest journey and the service culture of your brand and just saying ohh that sounds cool. We need it, we need it. We need it. We need it. So you have a tech stack that is not refined. It is just a bunch of stuff. That you threw in. There and I think that is when you cross the line, everything we’ve added, everything we’ve added I can. Guarantee you aligns with our service culture, our guest joy. I would there’s most of the times where I say no to things respectfully or maybe not. Right now. We will do it later and that’s because it just does not fit with what we’re trying to accomplish for the guest experience and that’s what it boils down to, right? We are in the hospitality industry. Our primary focus is a peaceful night’s rest and delivering. An exceptional guest experience. So if your tech stack doesn’t align with that and it’s just a hodgepodge of different technology you just threw in there because you thought it’d be cool, you use it for a marketing push. That’s not. That’s not gonna work in the best interest of you and your company. So my recommendation is. You need to really carefully audit your current text stack and see if it fits and if it might be a duplication of efforts too, right? Cause a lot of companies offers now some of the same things. So why are you using four companies to do one thing? Alright, so audit your tech stack. Take a look at it. Does it work? Does it fit your brand? Does it fit your your guest journey? Your service culture, internal guest experience and external guest experience and and if it doesn’t, then you need to start making some adjustments and refining it so that it fits. Matthew Lynch Yeah, we saw we saw a lot of that in, in the coming out of the pandemic or in the pandemic where the audit was financial, right. Ariela Kiradjian I love. Matthew Lynch But then the observations were like, what’s the difference between this and this? Can’t these two things do the same? Right. That was the first thing. So a lot of that happened and we got we had a lot of phone. Calls of people saying like. Hey, could could you guys do this part? Can we get really this guy in, in, in some cases, we’re like, you’re like that that’s supported in the product in another case like that’s. Not really our specialty definitely there you are there and you know we’re always happy to consult on where we think there’s opportunity there. At the same time, I think we also get a lot of calls. You know, kind of around that, that that in general tech stack where people just like, Oh my God, there’s too much how like, like how much can we consolidate down? We’re in the kind of lucky position that we have like integration into all these different like property systems, right, the PMS POS door lock systems, you know like we’ve got integrations for like everything. And so a lot of data that we were talking about before funnels into our system. We expose and express a lot of that not not all of it yet, but a lot of it. And so a lot. Of companies have. Said like, hey, we really want INTELITY or or someone, right. But we really like it if INTELITY just like. Was the central place. Can you be that for us? Right. And so that’s certainly like on our road map, we’re really aggressively trying to push ourselves on the back of house side to be more of a centralized guest centric view of what’s happening without having to send you to 15 different places. And we’ll handle that interconnectedness of the tech stack. And I think the industry is in need of that again because of. Where we are on the maturity level, which is like 1000 things that have popped up, but none of them really interact well together. None of them kind of connect and and and provide a universal view, so that’s another, like maturation thing that we’ll get to eventually. The other answer is from from technology is like. You know, we use this. Within product. Don’t you don’t have to answer that question yourself. Go talk to your guests. Your guests will tell you, right? I mean you all. You all know your guests. There are vocal, vocal people out there that will tell you exactly what their expectations are. We’re seeing more and more guests now as like demographics change as people got more comfortable on mobile that are like. Why can’t I do this on my phone, right? And then we get calls from GM’s that are like my guest wants to do this on their phone. And sometimes it’s stuff that we haven’t thought of. Right. You know, electronic tipping, right. Our guests don’t have cash anymore. They still want to leave a tip. What are you guys doing about electronic tipping? Right. And so three years ago, you might have said electron tipping. That’s that’s A bridge too far. It’s another system. It’s another tech stack piece that we have to monitor. It’s not integrated. All this sort of stuff, but now maybe that is a requirement and you do need to like you know layer that into the tech stack smartly. But your guests will be vocal and tell you and more and more now that guest is a digital 1st guest who’s going to going to be, you know, either speak with their wallet or speak with their their voice, right. Ariela Kiradjian When I when I go into the hotel and I don’t see the QR code for tipping, I get really upset because I I just. If I’m in the US, always carry cash if it’s international. But in the US. I I don’t have cash on me. I don’t. It’s like maybe in my glove box. But like that’s it. And then my cards like. That like. So I don’t have it. And it’s like such a missed opportunity for the people that work the hardest. On the entire property management about that topic, we all need a QR code or whatever is for digital tipping. Speaker All right. Ariela Kiradjian But we have 3 minutes left here and I kind of just want to round out what we’re hearing, Ron, back to what you were saying, what I love. How you were describing everything? Was, I think. Competition is great. But please to the hotels, I urge you focus on your brand ethos. What what value, what values you have just for your hotel and your collection, and then what you were saying about. How does technology enhance what kind of guest experience do you want your guests to have? And then you look at how technology can only enhance that and I think that’s such a beautiful way to view this. I also do think. That is just inevitable when it comes to a tech stock. It’s overwhelming, and it’s like the most daunting task. I feel like after you open, it’s probably, I would say one of the most daunting things. So just something I think. We need to keep having conversations with. But yes, with the new technology, every day I get the 500 emails that I really don’t want and they’re like telling me to like, well, all my members and everyone I know about it and it’s like. But I just got 10 emails about the same thing and I was just talking to Fran about this. They think when it comes to tech entrepreneurship as well. Can we please? Stop copying each other, right? And just like be like what is actually missing and then how can I innovate? Because I’m getting honestly sick and everyone just copying each other because I just want innovation in the industry. So that was my two cents. Any last thoughts before we close out this conversation? Matt urban. Vaugh Davis Yeah, I I’m. I’m pretty excited for the future of the hospitality industry and technology. I think we’ve seen the impact, the positive impact that that tech can have on hotels as operators and and for our hotel guests. And I think the biggest thing I want to encourage everyone to do is work with your partners. Really, just pick up the wrong work with them. Schedule biweekly calls with them monthly calls, whatever it is, right, have an open line of communication and work on enhancing the product, which will then in turn enhance your internal and external guest experience. And one last thing. Think of your team members when you are building and it’s very serious when you’re building your tech stack. The last thing a front desk agent or a bellman or a room attendant house person. Any job classification wants is 20 different pop-ups or 20 different. Apps to do their job on a daily basis try to consolidate that as much as you can to ensure you know maximum productivity on their end. They’ll appreciate it. Ariela Kiradjian Thank you, von. Matt, any final words? Matthew Lynch Yeah, I think you know, I think Vaughn really summed up the operations side rightfully. So I’ll try to maybe speak a little bit on the the technology side. You know, I made this comment in a previous webinar that I did with one of the in four guys. Pick pick your vendor smartly, right? Pick people with experience, right experience means tech tech experience, but it also means hospitality. Experience as much as you know, the technology is universal, right? I could take the same technology and I could go implement it for any other industry in the world. It’s about adapting it to the hospitality. It’s important that, that, that team understands what a hospitality. The use case is it is important they understand how hotels operate and it’s important. Obviously they’ve got good routes in the technology side of. With that said, you know I’m I’m in this industry after spending time on my consulting career pretty much in every other industry on a technology basis. And I love it. We’re a little bit behind, but we’ve got incredible Rd. maps ahead and most of my peers that I talked to. We all say the same things. We’re just like, we’re just waiting for, you know, GM’s and Rev managers to come to us and be like we want it. We want it. We want. In it, and I think we’re there, there’s a lot of great stuff that’s kind of stuck in the sideline that we’ve been waiting to push out waiting for the the technology to to, to, to be ready. Think there’s a really bright future? That’s very much a, you know, human plus technology pieced together and and I don’t like that. That’s that’s for me. Like, I get very excited about technology. And I like that in. I really enjoy the industry because it’s about helping people. At the end of the. It’s very, very easy to. Deliver great experiences to someone that’s hopefully you know going on vacation or being transported away to somewhere else as compared to reconciling interbank financial remediations you know, like that’s not, like, interesting and fun. This is a fun, cool business that we’re in and it’s important that we don’t lose sight of that, right? We’re we’re trying to make people like happy. Dreams come true. Speaker Right. Ariela Kiradjian Yeah, I love that it’s. It’s so true. It’s we are a people business and we are in the hospitality industry like I always say like I feel like we forgot that over the last decade like ohh wait, this is who we are. And I think from the pandemic not only technology, but I think people. From a personal standpoint, not to ask who am I? Why am I here? And like, what brings me joy and what are my values? We all every human on the planet. The same time have those questions in their minds when from there things are changing and I think our industry is I just see such a bright future when everyone was writing letters in 2020 saying Goodbye hospitality. You’re irrelevant. I was like, Nope, because things. Ohh, we’re going to. We’re not from a revenue standpoint. We’re going to see numbers. We’ve never seen before like we’re trying to go back to 2019. No, we’re trying to double 2019 #1 and #2. It’s just. It’s innovating and my. Last words for this session with hotels embrace the technology and the advanced. But don’t lose sight of who you are and that. You’re in the. Hospitality industry. You are a hotel, a lodging experience. Just don’t lose that nature in that sense. So I think it’s a balance and it’s an art. It’s truly an art. So with that, I want to thank you both and a big shout out to. Kelly for giving us a platform to have these conversations and for everyone for tuning in today. I wish you all an amazing holiday season with your family and your friends and your animals. And I’m wishing you all a really pleasant and December month. Ahead. Thank you everyone. Vaugh Davis Thanks everybody. Matthew Lynch Thanks for moderating. Take care, guys. Vaugh Davis Take care.