Technology is the New Luxury

Alan Young Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening. Depending upon where you are and welcome to intelligences inside the industry video podcast. My name is Alan Young. I run a company called Puzzle partner and I’m ecstatic to join two people to the podcast today. Drew dutoit. Use the hotel manager at the Perry Lane. Hotel and Robert Stephenson, who is the CEO of Intellij. Today, we’re going to be talking about tablet automation and how it has a vast impact not only on the hotel ecosystem, but also on the guest ecosystem and how it’s going to be moving forward as we progress, you know from. Day-to-day. Drew, I’d like you to start first. It’s awesome to have a hotelier and all of these discussions. You guys are on the front lines and it’s incredibly important that we gain knowledge from you as an industry. So if you wouldn’t mind introducing yourself to the audience. Drew Dutoit Yes, good day. I’m I’m Trudy toy in the hotel manager at the Perry Lane Hotel, which is a luxury collection for Marriott. Background is. Basically been a lot of. Luxury. So it came from Ritz Carlton World for the past 8-10 years. And then I’ve been in the Marriott family for quite some time, so happy to be. On here today. Alan Young Thanks very. And Robert, I could go through your bio. It’s pretty extensive from back in the days of PlayStation, which is pretty cool. And then up to the the world of hospitality, if you wouldn’t. Wouldn’t mind introducing yourself to the folks that? Robert Stevenson Would be great. I’m happy to be here. Thanks, Alan. Thanks Drew for coming and having this. Yeah, this is awesome. Yeah, my background is a, you know, I was originally a game industry guy and moved into a sort of platform technologies and building a building platforms to help with all kinds of interesting, you know, tech challenges and and and help. In different gaps that they might have, you know, amongst all kinds of stuff that they go about day-to-day. And I I helped fund this company INTELITY a long time ago. And you know the mission really was to drive and improve the guest experience and and really help the hotel. They’re, you know, kind of engage with the guest and then automated and a seamless kind of way. And whether that’s mobile or in room and and wire it all up so that the staff can really operate successfully against that guest engagement. Alan Young Yeah, it’s it’s quite the challenge, Rob. You know it’s it’s it’s trying to trying to climb Mount Everest at times at least, it feels that way. I know trying. To figure out what the guests really, truly want. So let’s let’s start with that as as as go forward question drew, I think I’m going to ask you first because you’re. On the front lines, what? What do 2 guests? Today’s guests really want when it comes to communications service excellence, what are they looking for versus maybe 20-8 months ago? Drew Dutoit No, that’s great point. Comparing it between now and then, right, the convenience I think is the biggest thing, right, convenience. So you know the ease of communication right and being able to do it digitally or being able to do it face to face, right. But the option for us what we see in the on the. On the luxury side specifically, you know the being able to communicate to our guests directly through our tablets. You know specifically you know where you’re you’re you know you’re talking to somebody directly. So that you know from the service standpoint, you know, I think you know we can anticipate their needs. A little bit. Better because you can you can really focus on, you know delivering that product and that service through the tablets. Alan Young And and when you’re talking about that service element and and kind of? Preempting what they may want, I’ve worked at Four Seasons. Many years ago, we used to call it silent service, right where you go up and you’re you’re you’re dropping an extra knife on somebody’s table before they ask for it. Things like that when you’re talking about the utilization of technology in order to kind of gain that awareness, what type of? Do you need to put into it in order to get that knowledge out of it? Drew Dutoit No, I mean the you really, you know, you really gotta get obviously. The you know the buy in from. Your guests, right? So doing a lot of, you know, doing it in advance with the guests. So I would say our pre communication with the guests letting them know we have this technology, we’re able to provide this ahead of time is is a big piece. To us so that we can really deliver on that service and kind of find out their needs ahead of time. So we can really. Like I said. Execute on it when they are here on property. Alan Young Yeah, no kidding. My biggest myth is the fact that I’ve been a loyalty member of the company of a hotel for years, and I asked for two things, high floor and away from an elevator, and invariably I don’t get it. So you know, by having that capability to know that that’s what Alan really wants and it’s plugged in so to speak. That’s awesome. So Robert, we’re talking about tablet automation and you know where there are things out there, robotic process automation in today’s marketplace, trying to do things a little bit more efficiently, though obviously there’s digital automation. Tablet automation in itself is a is a fairly big topic. Can you go ahead and explain to us, you know, from a high level and maybe from a from a a minute perspective what that truly means? Robert Stevenson Yeah, that’s a great question. And and there’s always a lot of jargon and buzzwords that float about in the industry and they seem to come in waves. Here’s the here’s the latest, and there’ll be a new thing. At two years. Three years from now, yeah, I I would say tablet automation certainly for the guest room. I think from a guest perspective to pick up on some of Drew’s comments is you know. If the guest is is. Made aware that this this capability exist. Then actually showing up in the room, the guest has to be able to use that tablet for a whole bunch of things, right? So your services and amenities pretty obvious, your capabilities of compendium and all the kinds of things that you might want to know about the hotel, but don’t really want to call down to the front desk. That’s kind of like you know, burdensome to just find out the pool. Hours or something like. That all of that stuff is is is the basics of what people do. Expect and you know, it doesn’t really even cross the threshold of automation. I say after that point it’s it’s the execution on those types of things, the services, amenities, the next level up. I would say it’s kind of your in room dining and making sure that all of the components of in room dining are properly set up and you know everything that you might, you, you, you might expect. Out of a. A phone order. If you were to call down. You know downstairs or or parallel path that like, let me let me let me call downstairs. Let me try it on the tablet and see see what my results are right. So you know, the ability to modify the the order in any way, special requests you know, making sure the complete menu is on there. You know, it’s always I think, frustrating for people. It’s like, well, there’s 22. Dessert options on the tablet. And I know that this. One has a great crime bullet, but I don’t see it right. And and that kind of thing. So really making sure that the the dining experience is really full-fledged and and well thought out. And then it goes up to, you know, to if there’s any retail options. You know, you can buy the bedding or buy the lamp or whatever from the room, that kind of stuff or maybe just a special whiskey, something like that. So kind of that extra layer now where the guest is kind of going beyond what they would think of are the basics automating the the telephone conversation, automating the compendium kind of review, now getting into sort of new territory and and then the next layer up I would say is really like room controls or those kinds of things where the automation. Is for everything from drapes to television controls to, you know, do not disturb or pet in room or whatever it might be for the particular property. And so that’s the guest facing component I think of tablet automation that’s expected like I’m picking this device up, it’s not an expensive device and it needs to be able to do things for me. To prevent me from having to, you know, go around and like piece meal. My experience that I’m trying to get by reading the Compendium or making a phone call or whatever, and so that that guest automation flow is is that component. I think the the back of the House and and staff facing components is the next layer, right? Like all of that’s great. You know, guests is like ordering a yoga, you know, buying a gift, special yoga mat from the hotel. And they’ve got an in room dining and all that doesn’t do any good if it shows up. And Drew’s e-mail and his staff can’t do anything with it. Right. Like it needs to be wired into, you know, a fairly robust set of integrations and or into the operational workflow if they’re using the direct sort of back end software like like we provide. And so you know everything that can be passed to actual human execution and track. Or anything that could potentially be automated, right? Like if there is a, A, you know, simple service request around, you know housekeeping that needs to go to housekeeping feedback probably just needs to. Go to the. Guest that hey Housekeeping’s received this request. We estimate you know it’s 20 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever. And and then once the request is closed. How like that feedback is provided to the guest but from the staff side they just saw hey, this is basically equivalent of of a work order and I just need to now execute. On it and you can get even even richer. You know, there’s definitely, you know, guest facing communication chat bots, things like that. I I would say you know that that on on a tablet basis, a lot of people don’t text that much on the tablets. They still tend to use their mobile phones for that. But all of the other components in terms of the the back end. As much as you can automate. And take away the workload from, you know, pretty busy staff, particularly, particularly now where we’re still struggling to get some service industry people back. And to to hotels, I would say that’s the you know, your front of house, your back of house. Those are the things that you’ve got to hit to effectively call it tablet automation. Alan Young Right. And those that’s a lot of stuff and and. And when you’re talking about the automation in back of house, which is really important, especially in times of of Labor pressure, you know that’s incredibly important. Drew, are you utilizing a lot of the back of house feed? Drew Dutoit And, you know, excuse me, I’ll say we call it heart of house actually. And the like. Alan Young I like that. Drew Dutoit That’s interesting. But yeah, no, we we are definitely using it right from a housekeeping perspective, you know it’s great the IT just you know you instead of picking up that phone call like Robert said or picking up that phone and being able to. Calm down. It takes, you know, 10 seconds. Click a button. I want some extra towels and you know, boom, it goes to a device and our housekeeping team and they. Can run it right upstairs, so it’s. Alan Young And then and then in the front of house. So there’s there’s a myriad of different personas and demographics in our industry, right? And and we’re, we all try to drive our businesses associated to them. We try to market to them. We try to sell them. We try to ensure that we offer them exactly what they want. Have you found demographically that there’s a higher usage? Of people that may be younger versus older or is is it kind of the same across the board? Drew Dutoit You know, on my side, we kind of see. Speaker It across the. Drew Dutoit Board seeing, you know. Alan Young Right. Drew Dutoit It’s like I said, I think the technology has come such a long way that you know it’s it’s it’s ease of use, right. You know, we our tablet sits right next to our phone, so it’s easier just to kind of grab that and say, hey, what does this? Do and you know and then. It it’s so much easier than dialing. Wait, you know, get trying to get somebody on the phone and then. And and we love. It on our side because it it alleviates that middleman. Right. Instead of having to take the call, then put the call in right, it just flows much easier. Alan Young So on that same vein, and I like the the the negating the middle man, that’s perfect. But at the same time. A luxury property. And this is I’m a high maintenance traveler. Like stupidly high maintenance. I shouldn’t be, but I am. And I like to travel nicely if I can. And when you think luxury hotel, you don’t necessarily think automation. You think service upon service upon service, but your luxury hotel property and the adoption rate of the tablet? Is incredibly high. Why do you think that is? From a luxury perspective. Drew Dutoit No, that and that’s a great point because we do have a lot of our guests who who want that luxury service, who want to call still, right. But I think the. Why we are so successful with that? Is is really because we give. Them the option, right? We’re able to still provide this service, but they have the option as well, so you can come down to the restaurant. And still receive that great service, or if you want to check in at the front desk, you still have that. Service component there. I think because we have the option and. The ease of. Use nowadays and especially you know from the COVID. You know, some of our guests, you know, do look at luxury of now being able to just. Click that button. Versus having the face to face interaction. I think that’s where we become so successful is because we have both options and we do see our guests, you know, utilizing both, there isn’t one guest that we can single out and say, oh, you know they. Just like it. Automated or they want to just service, right? We have the we have found the balance to be able to do both. Alan Young Right. That’s great. So, Robert, when you’re when you’re building out a company and trying to get, you know, Hotel Gates to to buy into your vision and make sure that they want to go ahead and produce the service that you can offer. When you partner with a company like the Perry Lane Hotel, what’s involved like we we talk about the vendor supplier relationship and and during my career vendors always been a bad word to me because I think we try to do more as technologists to than just become a vendor. So Rob, from your perspective, what’s the partnership look like? Between technologists and and partner. Robert Stevenson Yeah, it’s a great, great question and one one, we we probably try to answer re answer every day and every relationship and every property and you know we have it. We have a very large portfolio of hotels. So I I would like to think we’ve developed a a small amount of expertise and trying to trying to dissect. It and and and move. The answer to your question forward, it really does take, you know you’re trying to build a technology platform that is scalable but also flexible because every hotel. Well, is different, right? And that and the reality is they’re each brand is different the the physical layouts of the hotels are are different, but very importantly the operational processes in place. You know the way Drew manages his team is going to be different than the way the hotel that maybe one of his competitors, even locally, manages their team, right? What way do they want to do their workflows? What other software sort of situations you know are are present on the property they’re forcing? You know, this is the way we work. You know, this is where our ticketing works. Oh, we really lean into valet or, you know, or we really lean into the breakfast is really important to us or whatever the major items are at that particular hotel. It’s very important to to try to understand those things up front, right? So even in the sales process of interacting with the hotel. You’ve got to have the flexible platform. But at the. At time of sale and time of interaction. Sales sales team and the hotel has tried to understand exactly what’s important to the property right? Can can we actually kind of meet their need or are we are we going down a path that’s not going to be, you know, super successful other than checking some boxes. And so which we have that it’s it’s part of our turnover process and part of our engagement. Tiles is, you know. Hey, here’s all the things we heard along the way. Here’s the things that our priorities for this hotel. And therefore, you know, we’re going to try to incorporate them in the platform install and then it really comes down to the implementation and working with the operations team typically on the other side of IT, team on the other side and making sure that those things are executed upon, you know and and the tricky part is frankly like you can’t do everything, you can’t be everything to everybody. And so you. They come up to things of like maybe a workflow situation. It’s like well. This is how our. Platform works. This is how you guys work. Where do we? Where do we go? You know, where are we going to, you know, train the staff to. Adapt to the platform. Or maybe there’s a custom piece of code that we can write that will, you know, enable an extra button or something. You know, as part of an integration that will actually match the hotels you know operational needs. And so you kind of have to. Do that pretty much on each install, right? You know, we call them as we as we look at it, we have these kind of stock installs on one end where it’s like it’s very standard you know like this happens a lot for mobile and they just want to get a mobile app going and it’s kind of you know simple mobile key and compendium type stuff, but something where you’re talking about a luxury high touch guest and and a staff that’s really attuned around servicing that guest. You know you need to have a lot of care going in and installing with that hotel to make sure you’ve got all the. Things that are are done properly to match the hotels brand and expectation. Speaker And then I. Robert Stevenson It it doesn’t stop really there. You still have to kind of, you know, there’s there’s a hotel in a in a major city in the South. I was just staying at. I tried to stay at our our hotel customers when I can and I was there and it and I, you know, I I went to actually the restaurants. This, this this high end hotel and I was like our in room dining offering doesn’t I was mentioned early, doesn’t really. Match kind of what the restaurant like some of these restaurants are really good and, you know, even the breakfast options were kind of weird. And it was like, well, you know and and so, you know, you have to have your, your CS team, our customer success team working with the hotel, the hotel changes too, right. You get a new general manager in on a hotel and they’re they’re going to be like, you know, this is what’s important and that’s what’s important so. It doesn’t stop you. Have to kind of readapt every so often. And and and that just has to be part of. You can’t think of yourself as a technologist. You have to think of yourself as as kind of a service company in that regard to really keep refreshing and working with the hotel to make sure that the that the product actually matches the the expectations of the operations and the and the guests. Alan Young For sure. And so true over to you. What’s what’s INTELITY been like to work with? Drew Dutoit No, it’s great. Like as you said, we definitely refer to them more as partners. So we’ve had great success with it. We’ve, you know, I agree with Robert completely. We both we had to you know fully automate it ourselves, right. We got to get the buy in from the employees and and really fully use it to its. The capabilities and once we really found that sweet spot, it’s been, it’s been great, nothing but success. Alan Young And do you look to them as? As as a trusted resource, like if you’re having an issue, not not an operational issue with the product, because not everything works perfectly IE Microsoft, I you know the list goes. On and on. And every technology has its good and bad. But do you look at them? From a consultative standpoint, if you want to do something funky that’s maybe not inherent within the platform today, if you want to do something in the next 12 months, do you look to them as that kind of consultative partner? Drew Dutoit No, I definitely. There’s definitely a good balance there when we, you know, that’s really kind of the consultant I want to go as far as consultant, but we definitely look to them, you know, as the as we’re changing you know the the world’s changing the hospitality industry is changing so much, right, we they are very adaptive. So if we do have an idea, we say, you know. This would be really helpful to add. To the tablet. You know, it’s very responsive where they, you know, they look to find an answer or you know try to create a different you know. App or platform that we could use added to, you know, the tablets that have been helpful for us for sure, right? Alan Young And and that’s that’s really interesting when you talk about you know the change that’s going on in our world and it’s it is every single day something new is happening. There’s no doubt about it when you’re looking at the tablet and what it can do for you. A lot of companies. In today’s marketplace state, the fact that, yes, you need it from a guest service perspective. You need it from a expectation perspective. You need all these things in order to be able to deliver what your promise is. But you also. Need to make money at this technology is no longer something that just sits there, hums along and maybe does some. Accounting process. For you. So when you’re looking at the tablet from a revenue generating perspective, drew, what what can it do for you? Drew Dutoit No, that’s great. I mean, I’ll first speak to kind of the cost, the cost savings, right, we talked about, Roberts talked about the companion him a couple of times, right. Believe it or not, but those companions you know. Cost, you know. The cost on those were $55. Plus, you know, just per room, right, you have a we have 167 rooms. So right do the math there and and and it’s and it’s easy for you know a you know a child or somebody to come through and you know look as a coloring book right then you’re constantly switching those out changing them right. So from the. Paper standpoint and right, we talked about sustainability. A little bit right? You can completely cut out that cost, right? Which is, which has been significant. Reduction in cost, but from a revenue generator, right, us hotel years, really look to guest service, right. So if our guest service and our guest satisfaction is higher, the revenue is higher, we we generate higher revenue, right? So we see that the impact from having this service and being able to provide. This service you know in so many different ways, it correlates directly to being able to hire revenue. Alan Young Right. And so Robert from that perspective, there is companies out there doing upsell stuff, a lot of them now all of a sudden there’s ways for companies to merchandise their product offerings etcetera, etcetera. From intelligence, perspective and vision moving forward, what do you see the the ecosystem looking like from a, a, a purchase perspective of of what people can actually acquire? Utilizing the tablet. Robert Stevenson Yeah, that’s a great question and one that we we we do spend some time road map wise reviewing we we we we categorize it all as you know the sort of non room revenue and non non booking revenue and how can we improve that for the hotel here obviously in room dining we talked about that earlier is is a major component of that and making. You know the optimization path there, making sure all of the. Options force modifiers. We call them, you know. Hey, you ordered a a steak and we suggest then a glass of wine. Right. That can be really a, you know, a major driver and in terms of non room revenue, as I also mentioned retail earlier, you know if the hotel has the propensity or or inventory. Sell other things you do get uptake on that surprising uptake and a lot of it is pretty high margin. Types of things and it really can make your guest also. Feel special? Hey, I. Got the the cool whiskey from you? Know, the hotel in Tennessee or something, right? And and so those things I think are kind of foundational, I I do. I do think there’s more future stuff. One of the things that we’ve talked about obviously of course is doing, you know more upsell. In our in our sort of mobile portion of our platform, but could you drive a rebooking and and or rebooking in an upsell through the tablet? We we haven’t really dallied. In like live experimentation with that yet, but it’s certainly been on our road map of like, hey, you know, as the as the guest is checking out or maybe before checking out, you know 24 hours ahead, you know the tablet prompts them, hey, did you enjoy your stay? Would you like to rebook again or would you like to explore more options within this brand? That kind of thing? You know, particularly in and and we actually have done a little bit of work on this is you we can kind of get a get a sense of the guest sentiment based on that you know how the hotel has the platform set up, right, you know, did they did they use the tablet right? First of all, like the foundational thing, did they do an actual transaction on the? Tablet, you know, how long did they spend on the tablet? You know, if they had a a dining order, we can set it up where we can query. If they, you know, enjoyed that dining order, or frankly any services, they get their their towels on time kind of thing and they give a bunch of bad ratings, right? I guess probably didn’t have a good stay. So you might not want to pop up a rebooking. Of them, but for somebody who you suspect has had a had a decent stay. You know, that could be a great revenue driver. You know, as part of the the guest life cycle as they interact with the tablet. So certainly there’s a lot of opportunities. You know, I think the the obvious things are the transactional elements of the hotel that that we can drive. The last thing I’ll say is you know the tablets themselves. You talked a lot about automation, but they are a good kind of marketing engine as well. You’ve got a a guest captive in a room, you know you can. You’ve got a couple of we we try not to make it feel like a Las Vegas Strip with advertising all around. Try to make it feel like the hotel and very, very nice and and and and pleasant to look. That, but it is an opportunity to to push, you know, whatever link card it is you want or. Even a raw ad. You know, our casino resort type partners, they do a lot of this because where do they make their money, they make their money down on the on the gaming floor. And so, you know, promoting, you know, you know, free chips for blackjack or whatever can actually be a needle. Over for them, more than anything else. So so the tablets can also help in that area. I I think as the intelligent platform, we cannot, there’s more we can do, right, like there’s you know, hey, making sure that those advertising opportunities are well communicated to. You know the Drews of the world and his team to so that they can take maximum advantage of it, that that kind of thing. Alan Young So I want to stick with you, Robert, because part of the whole ecosystem getting this stuff done is integrations. You know our industry is is full of integrations. So how is INTELITY handle integrations? Some you know, you talked about opening up curtains and, you know, maybe something from. You know AC through anything else, turning on TV’s, etcetera? How do you handle the integrations world from an intelligent perspective? Robert Stevenson Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s it’s, it’s also like some of the other questions. When we we wrestle with every day we we have a very large integration stack and we’ve kind of taken the view of, you know, if if it a new property comes along and they’ve got a need for an integration, we will definitely dig in and and you know see if it’s it’s technically. Global you do find some vendors specific stuff, maybe very nuanced software where. The vendor on the other side doesn’t have the capability or it’s not in a road map or perhaps for competitive reasons they don’t want to integrate, right? They just they want to do their own thing and you know, and that’s fine. So we do take the the the point of view that you know if it’s an integration. That makes sense. For the hotel, we will definitely investigate it the the next question really is about the scalability and support of the integration, right? That’s that. The next piece, you know, a hotel that that’s got a particular thing. Maybe it’s we’ll just use like a ski resort. They’ve got a particular ski valet software. It’s sold only in this local community where other ski resorts are, you know, is that really a scalable solution outside of the adjacent 2025 other ski resorts, maybe? Maybe not. Right. And so you need to take a point of view. On that, because the the long term challenge is the maintenance of that integration, right? So once you commit to an integral. And the the software vendor, the technical vendor on the other. Side doesn’t doesn’t. They they don’t stop their company waiting around for INTELITY, and we don’t either for them. Right. So over time, you know, they’re going to change something. We’re going to change something and eventually there’s going to be a break. Right. And of course the breaks always at the wrong moment. Right, Steve? You know, software isn’t working and nobody. All the skis are up on the top of. The mountain and. Everybody’s down, you know, drinking their hot toddies. And we’ve got a problem. Right and and. And so you know, you have to take that as a point of view too, which is the durability survivability of the integration over time. And the third thing I think you know and and and drew it’s you know having his long career in luxury hotels, it’s like what are the real operational needs of the property, right? So Ski Valley thought there probably is a bad example because that’s that’s a very like, critical need. But could you operate that ski valet software in a way where it’s a, you know a? The service request that’s just passed to our back end dashboard and it’s not integrated right. It’s like look for somebody who was on the tablets and they wanted to do something with Steve Ballet click. I want ski ballet today at least goes to a Dropbox where somebody from an operational perspective can. Make it up and the actual technical integration doesn’t make that much sense, because it’s going to break. You know, it doesn’t do everything that everybody wants. Maybe the other vendor is is like, you know, like their ability to support the integration isn’t that great. And so you got to have to really kind of have a holistic view on whether it makes sense to proceed or not with an integration across all of those factors. We we like to think of ourselves as pretty highly integrated. And we continue to add, we’ve got a team that that’s what they do. You know sub sub part of the intelligent engineering team. But we do take a long view on it on, you know whether integration makes sense or. Not. And then last. Comment I’ll make as you talked about in room controls and and you know controlling the grape grapes and HVAC those those tend to be pretty. The challenge with those typically is they’re difficult to set up. They’re, you know, like it’s very, very specific. A suite operates this way, and the more complex the room is, the suites like one room, a multi room, multi bedroom suite is another way versus the base room. You know, controlling we’ve got some, you know, some some places have, like, free televisions, right? When the tablet you’re touching the tablet in the living room. Can you control the lights in the bathroom? You know, like it starts getting pretty nuanced and pretty scripted and pretty, pretty, pretty detailed for us as a company. We do that. For sure we do. You know, we do try to do it in a situation where it’s like, hey, this really makes a lot of sense. And it’s going to be durable for, you know, the next 5-10 years, right? Because it’s an, it’s an expensive exercise for us. It’s expensive for the hotel, but it’s amazing when it’s done, right, like it’s a. Speaker Right. Alan Young Well, let’s see. I I started skiing when I was 3. Excuse me. I taught skiing and I raced for a while, but I’ve never heard of a ski valet and and and now rob, I want to hang with you so we can figure out so I can get somebody to take. My skis around. Robert Stevenson Yes, it’s just your skis out, I. Know I’m kind of. I’m from the same sort of generation of like, yeah. Don’t you carry your skis? Alan Young What’s going on? So Drew back to you. We, Robert alluded to competitors earlier on and and we we always want to think that we’re better than everybody else and we get it. But there’s always a. Competitive landscape, do you? See the tablet as a competitive differentiator period. Drew Dutoit 100% and I think it’s really just because it’s that it’s that again for us on the luxury side, it’s that added touch, right. So as simple as it may be, but you walk in, you walk into. Your room, right, the. First thing you see is the tablet but. It already says welcome. You know, drew, do toy on your on your tablet, right? It’s just that little extra wow factor and that extra little touch of I just walked up. You know, I just checked in 2 minutes ago. I walked upstairs and I’m already being kind of welcomed, you know, by this by this component and then, you know, again from from the competitor side is right we don’t have. To flip through. Papers and. More right, it’s all done there. If you want to order your in room dining, like Robert said, you can do it right from the tablet. So the the ease of use of it is it’s really what I think is also makes it so much better than our competitors because you know there is no more picking up that phone or having to deal with you know any of the. You know, like from the guest side, right? You don’t have to deal with having to really. You know the biggest things you know is and also from the upgrades, you know we we do use it from the upgraded technology. So, you know, like like Robert said before becoming a partner with them has been helpful because we, you know, we noticed that our technology from when we brought the tablets back here three years ago in 2019. Right. We just recently upgraded them five months ago. And so the technology from then to now is even better, right? So we’re staying competitive against our other hotels and always looking for that better technology, which they’ve continued to. Come out with. Alan Young Right and. And when you talk about the competitive world, I think it’s also getting from a a local perspective, you know what we’re hearing a lot about now is when a hotel guest arrives, they also want to know what’s going on locally and if they want to know what’s going on locally, obviously you can deliver that via the tablet. But some people actually want to utilize the tablet. From just a booking your utilizing OpenTable or something like that. You know, I think the more information that we can give guests the better because number one, it educates them on what’s going on around the the physical property. But #2 just shows them that we care, that it’s it’s delivered right there and the old Wear magazine that I used to get every time I sat in a hotel room. It’s a monthly rag. It doesn’t get updated and if if if I want to to eat steak tartar, which you can’t do in a lot of places anymore, I can’t find that in a where magazine, but an updated environment such as available on a tablet lets that guest do some pretty cool things moving forward, so I think. It’s definitely a win win across the across the entire landscape. One thing that I wanted to ask you both and it’s a fairly big question and Robert, I’m going. To start with you. This we talk about change and change is part of our lives. We see change at a macro level. We see change at a micro level. We see change in what guests expect. We see change on how guests react. All of these things. What do you see for INTELITY 12 to 18 to 24 months down the road moving forward? Robert Stevenson Yeah, it’s a great question and and and the industry is always evolving. And as we I think talked. At the top. Of the top of the show here, you know the the you know the new jargon, the new buzzword, those kinds of things come and go. And I think that you you kind of have to maintain a little bit of a steady course in terms of. Hey, this is our road map. Here’s where we’re going. You know, we are continuing to sort of push that forward. So while it’s changed, it’s also kind of on a trajectory that is a a sort of known product road map and and for us, we, we, we see the world really around the guest engagement points chiefly in room in terms of tablets and tablet automation, those kinds of components. We do do some casting elements. As well, interacting with the. But we also have a mobile side of the platform and continuing to. Progress there, you know the. Features for us and and and you know the sign kind of elements that are coming. And as we look out are largely driven by by by, Drew and and other hoteliers, right, which is like, hey, here’s the functionality. That we need. Here’s the functionality that we. The like put the jargon to the side, put the buzzwords to the side. What is operationally going to be. Able to help. The hotel here around the dimensions that provide value against the platform. So we talked about some of them here frankly. Which is you. Know how can we drive more revenue? How can we drive more? Of that non. Room revenue so you know upsell capabilities. Better CMS capabilities in terms of being able to drive this kind of marketing and promotion better. You know, for us we do collect a lot of dashboard data, a lot of guest data, tremendous amount like we have it right and we don’t necessarily do a great job of exposing all of it, right. And so, you know, there’s there’s some very logical conclusions when you kind of look at the intelligent platform. Hey, there’s a lot of strengths. It’s very broad. It’s very, very flexible. But there’s there’s gaps, right? There’s things that we can do that we know will drive more value for for hoteliers, particularly around revenue driving and particularly around. I would say largely around data and and. You know the kinds of things that may not be revenue driving, but give the hotel here the advantage of having that data so that they can drive the revenue themselves. Say we saw you know this particular guest, you know, valet. They use these service requests they booked. Our our multiple multiple. Party tables at our restaurant every night. This is a business. Yes, we weren’t really probably want them to come back. Maybe they’ve got a nice expense account or whatever like we have that data right, like but it’s distilling it down and making it operationally easy for people to understand and not digging through a spreadsheet and and that kind of thing, right. So those are kind of some some areas that we really you know look at in terms of let’s drive. Value and let’s not get caught up in, you know, buzzword, you know, robotics or VR or anything like that, that, that, that really is a little bit more science fiction than actual, like benefits to the hotel, day-to-day. Alan Young Perfect. True. Over to you. What do you think’s going to happen in the hotel industry and maybe the Perry lane over? The next 12 to 24 months. Drew Dutoit Great question because you know, like I said earlier, it’s always evolving. So, but you know from the shifts of COVID you know from the tablet automation standpoint, right, people want to have that. Option right? I talked about that a little bit earlier. They really want that. Option and you know down here in the in the South, right they want that Southern hospitality. So we do have to find that balance of where we can do both and we’re able to execute on on both sides of it. And like I said, I think we found that sweet spot right now with this upgraded technology that we’ve had. You know, really driving it home with our guests, really getting our our teams buy in as well, right with this. You know, when we have we talked about labor all go into that in a second, but you know getting the buy into from our team is obviously important and being able to to drive that and you know showing our guests right we keep our tablets right there on the. Front desk so. Kind of the first thing our guys see when they come in and we’re we’re able to kind of walk them through it. You know, some guests get it right off the bat. You know, some others need a little bit of time working, working on it. You know, but but. Overall, that balance I think is going to continue to be our strength is being able to offer both. That’s that, that Southern hospitality, but also being able to give them where, you know the the option to go fully automated and back to the labor labor. You know world and you know, we go on on and on, but from the labor side of things, I think the biggest thing too it’s, you know, it helps. From our, from our employees to see that we’re also staying relevant with the world, right? We’re not stuck in the old Southern hospitality or even luxury hospitality way of not, you know, that kind of won’t say the stuff you feel but right. But you have that that that low drift service it can come a different way. It can come through, you know, the the tablets and it can come through. Using that. So I think that’s the big piece. It’s getting the buy in and using our team and and it helps, right. We talked about the middleman, right? We don’t have to stop that position anymore because we have the technology that’s able to, you know, kind of cut that piece out and help us execute better and more efficiently. Alan Young Perfect. Well, gentlemen, we’ve come. To the end of our time and and drew and Robert, I want to thank you very, very much for your time today. It’s it’s been an awesome discussion and and from my perspective I’ve been doing this for a while, having a technology and service companies such as INTELITY in partnership with the hotel and talking. Think about it. Is one of the things we need to do more of in this industry. People will learn on how to do things better if they view sessions like this, drew from Perry Lane, Robert from INTELITY. Thank you both very, very much. Appreciate it. Robert Stevenson Thank you, Alan. Drew Dutoit Thank you, Alan. Thank you, Robert. Robert Stevenson Thank you, Drew.