Is Hotel Tech Losing the Human Touch?

What happens when a longtime hotel operator moves into the world of hospitality technology?

In this episode of Check-In with Bryan, Bryan Fish sits down with Nick Knight of Duetto to talk about the evolution of hotel tech, revenue management, AI, personalization, and why the future of hospitality still depends on human connection.

From old-school PMS systems and wake-up call printers to cloud-based platforms, machine learning, generative AI, and profit optimization, Nick breaks down how technology is reshaping hotel operations — and where the industry still needs to be careful.

They also discuss the disappearing role of the traditional concierge and maître d’, the importance of training, the rise of revenue and profit operating systems, and why hoteliers need to stay curious as the industry changes faster than ever.

In this episode:

• How hotel technology has changed over the last 20 years
• Why AI should support hoteliers, not replace them
• The future of revenue management and profit optimization
• How Duetto is approaching AI and machine learning
• Why hospitality still needs human connection
• The importance of training the next generation of hotel leaders

Subscribe to Check-In with Bryan for more conversations on hospitality, hotels, travel, technology, operations, and the future of the industry.

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#HotelIndustry
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#HotelTech

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:45

But here's the truth. Technology doesn't run hotels. People do. The hotelers who understand that? They're the ones who win what's next. Stay curious, stay sharp, and let's check in with the next one. This episode of Check In with Brian is brought to you by Reliance Hospitality. Hospitality consulting, project management, and business process outsourcing built exclusively for the owner's side of the table. PIPs, renovations, budgets, brand compliance. We manage it all so you don't have to. Learn more at reliancehospitality.com. I'm your host, Brian Fish, and this week we're coming to you from the Digital Transformation Summit in Arlington, Texas, at the gorgeous Lowe's Hotel. It's been a great two days. We got to catch up with some amazing people. And as a tradition here on the podcast, I guess we're gonna have to start it because we did this last season. I'm catching up with someone that I haven't seen in 10 plus years. 11 years ago, this person and I attended GM training together in Costa Mesa, California for IHG. Funny enough, both of our Crown Plazas were in the process of becoming four-point spike sheridans at the time. And those were successful. So we got to reminisce about that. But today our guest is Nick Knight. He's currently with Dueto North America. And we got to sit down and talk about what Duetto is doing. We also talked about how the business has changed. Well, uh, we've gone through the business the last 20 years and how things look dramatically different these days. Now, Nick's got 20 plus years in the business, 14 plus years as a general manager. He was the former corporate director of commercial strategy at Ash Hotels NYC. And he also has been at Crown Plaza, Holiday and Express, Access Hotels and Resorts. And then interestingly enough, his connection with Dueto was that during the pandemic, of all things, he led a full overhaul of their tech stack and he actually implemented the Dueto revenue management system while he was there. And then he decided to make the change and jump ship and head over to the vendor side and work at Duetto. So uh it was a great time catching up with them. He ate a lot of great information to share. Duetto is doing some amazing things with uh AI, which has been a big topic at this show this week. And I think everyone will enjoy this conversation. So, and if anything, it's a little reminds you the world is small, industry is small, and we uh never know when we're gonna run into each other again. So we'll be back right after this with Nick Knight. Well, welcome back, everybody. I am joined by Nick Knight, long time no C buddy. Yes. Um, we were just talking in the elevator. It's been 11 years. So February 20th, 2015, you and I both got our certificates to be certified general managers for IHG. Yeah, my number was 12, so I was only one year off. Yeah. Not bad. So see? I mean it round up, it's 12. And you've still kept you still run into some people from that show. From that conference or from that training, which is crazy. And then we're here right now at the digital um transformation and hospitality show, and there was a possibility that somebody else from that training was going to be at this show as well, which would have been wild.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Yeah, so we originally planned, he originally planned to attend, and um I said it kind of jokingly just to feel the room to you, but my my plan was to actually grab him and like force him to do this with so we could have all caught it. Would have been like a reunion. He couldn't make it last minute. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

So now you have taken quite the journey from that Crown Plaza, which unlike my Crown Plaza, became a four point space Sheridan with we just remembered. Um, but from managing hotels, running commercial strategy with Ash NYC, you made a complete flip two years ago, and now you're working in tech with Duetto. How in the world did that happen? And number two, did you ever anticipate that you were gonna die from hotel operations to being in tech sales?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Honestly, no. I obviously there's a clear path there. I I don't know if I was just naive or I was just so rooted in the operations background that I never even connected those dots, I never even thought of it. I just always saw it as a separate world. And um, quite honestly, just from I mean, I had my first GM job when I was 21 years old. So talk about faking it till you make it. Um, I was the king of that. And um, I think I I did it for so long that I did start to get a little burnt out. And I mean, I made it through, I worked all throughout the pandemic, right? Um, managed several assets through it, got them out on the other end healthy. And I just hit a point where I just I needed something different. I didn't even know what that was. So I said, you know what, let me just start with education. I went back to school, got my MBA, and towards the end of that, I remember, I distinctly remember, it was about one week left before my last final. And I had a lot of friends that worked at Dueto. Um, I'd been using Dueto the whole time I was at Ash, so I was very familiar with it. And I had a call with um one of my friends that still works at the company, and I just basically told her the backstory. I think I'm ready for her change. I don't even know what. And she literally just said, We just posted this job. I think it would be perfect for you. I will put in, you know, all the praises, it'll be yours to lose type thing. And she described the job to me, and I was just like, I was in love. I was head over heels. I was like, I think this is literally what I need. And is that the role you're still in today? It is. And so what is that role? So it's director of hospitality solutions for North America, okay. Which is a very fancy way of saying the tech person. So essentially, I uh connect the dots between departments, being the person who has all the use case experience of the product, right? So I sit somewhere in between um sales, product, and engineering. And in a very short summary, basically connect the dots for everything to make sure that we're representing the people that are actually using the product and make sure that we're innovating it to the level of you know what they need, whether they know that they know what it yet or not. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

See, that sounds like an exciting. I always wanted to do that with well, it was micros back in the day, but I always wanted to have a job like that with like when opera was rolling out because I always thought it could do so much more. Now it's shit. But um, you know, they didn't update a little bit, but I think that's a great thing. And a lot of companies need to adopt the strategy, right? Because you have to have somebody that knows how it works on the inside, right? So what do you feel like was your biggest like thing that you brought to them from the hotel side that was like a wow thing for them?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah, I think you know, the nice thing about Dueto is it's founded by hotel years, it's for hotel years. Uh the majority of the team are all ex-hoteliers or current hotel years. Um, but they didn't have a lot of operations representation. So I think having a GM come to the table. And, you know, I met them because I was overseeing commercials, so you know, sales, marketing, and revenue for a portfolio. And that's why I did the last handful of years before joining. So that's how the dots connected, but I'm always going to be an operator first. That's where the brunch of my experience is, where it's where I met you. So I think bringing that perspective of operations is, you know, just as important to this product and helping it grow to that light has been probably the biggest impact.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

And holistically, your ops people need to understand the revenue side of it as well. So I mean, having it all work hand in hand. Yeah. Systems and people is critical. It's interesting. What year would you have started in hotels then if you were 20?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

I mean, that's when I was a GM. I started in hotels um probably about 18. Okay. So geez, I don't know, over 20 years ago. Okay. So back like so it was like the opera 2.6 days. Um, what was your first hotel job? I mean, it was still on-prem, that's for sure. My first hotel job ever actually was an internship at the JW Marriott in Grand Rapids. Shout out.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Oh, okay. So yeah. I've been to Grand Rapids, Michigan once. I have no reason to go back. Maybe. Maybe something will take me back. Okay, so you like me, then have seen we've taken like the weirdest, strangest twists and turns from a technological standpoint, especially if you started at a merit. If that was your first hotel job. At least mine was IHG, which, well, we had Encore at the time, because it was Holiday Inn, yeah, um, which was later replaced by Opera. But um, when you think back to the early days and you look at where the industry is today from a technology standpoint, would you ever imagine 20 years ago that we'd be sitting where we are right now?

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Absolutely not. I mean, even the smaller, like we could sit here and talk about the big rocks of that all day. Yeah. But some of those small things, like just inputting wake-up calls and then printing out from that that printer, you know, clicking the dot matrix, like all that type of stuff. I mean, no, it's uh the level of adoption that has come with technology is mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah. And I remember, like, I remember like Wi-Fi used to be the big thing back when I first started. We had these boxes because people didn't have why like a Wi-Fi router in their computer. So they would have to come get this like bridge from us that they'd plug into their laptop, and they never worked. There was always some sort of issue with it.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Yeah, that and I feel like the early days of modernizing the TV experience were really big around that point. Yeah. Like I remember bringing in digital service for the first time, and there was also those adaption boxes that everyone had before the product actually had it built in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

And then some hotels put in those like A V boxes to let people bring their own devices and hook them up. Yeah. And like that wouldn't work, or half the time the cable later.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Like the cables were not connected correctly. Um, I'm trying to think that first holiday in I worked at, I want to say we still had VCRs that you could rent.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

I don't think I had that, but my first my first GM job ever was at Holiday In. Yeah. Um, but I don't remember the VCRs. I do remember the the video rental services that never worked. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

And then everybody showed up at the front desk to tell you that they didn't watch that movie. Yes. And then if depending upon if you had on command or LodgeNet, we actually could find out what you watched. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Loginet, I remember well now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yeah. So we could very we could embarrass you all very quickly. But um no, but it like literally, like for me, it's been crazy to watch how things have changed so quickly. And I feel like we're in a generation where it's been good because even I think of like in school, like I started like when kindergarten, we didn't really have computers. Like there were like the Apple IIEs, and then like the Macs came along, and then like Dell, like Windows computers came when I was in high school. I feel like the hospitality space has been kind of the same thing. Where, you know, even 10 years ago or 12 years ago, we would have it was still an odd thing to be able to remote into the PMS system. Because they were still on-prem, it required a VPN, there were all sorts of hoops that you had to jump to to get to it. And then here we are today, and almost everything we use is already in the cloud, right? And it's accessible globally. Do you feel like through the change with the technology, is there anything that you're seeing kind of float away or erode away in the hospitality space because of technology that you're kind of missing that you wish would come back?

SPEAKER_00 11:55

That's actually a really good question. Um concierge is probably a big one that comes to mind. Um more importantly, you know, take that another step to more of the food and beverage side, the the traditional like Matre D is just a role that I to this day still put a lot of value in. And I think it's pretty much for the most part disappeared. But having that one person who was connected to the inner fabric of the entire city and everything happening, and just knew everybody in the restaurant or the bar at any given time, and just they were like these master curators. And I think, you know, no matter how advanced technology will get, you'll you'll never have that Matre D in your restaurant that has been in that market for 30 years and knows everything inside. And I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Or at least they won't be able to, the technology won't be able to deliver it with that same level of personality that the Matre D did.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

No. And if anything, it's just here's some text on a screen, and then you're depending on somebody that has no emotional connection to it. To no, I actually that's a good, I would have never actually guessed that position as being something to miss, but you're absolutely right. Because it does make such a huge difference. And I feel like some cities, like you can go to Newark or to New York, you'll still see that. LA in some areas, you'll still see that, but in a lot of places it's just gone.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Yeah, and I wish more. I mean, you can still see it here and there, but it's it's funny as like the new generation comes up and is toting this, you know, experience-driven mentality, which I love and I'm totally on board with. I'm sure you're in the same boat. Yeah. It's like, can we bring some of those things back? Right. And, you know, all this advancement in technology kind of alleviate a lot of the uh back-of-house things that it was originally all designed to do, and we can actually bring that experience-driven personality back. Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Well, it's interesting. I'm doing a round well for lunch tomorrow, because today's Tuesday, in case you're watching. Um I'm my round table is technology, tech with heart, bringing like keeping the human and the hospital in hospitality. I think I got that title right, maybe not. Um, but as I have been digging into it and thinking about it, because it's been on my mind a lot. It's like hospitality, the whole art of like hospitality is about like welcoming people and it's human connection. Whereas with all these technical tools that everybody's rolling out, I think people are putting the technology way far in ahead of where it needs to be. Like, we need to get back to the whole, like, there's a human involved because the tech isn't gonna solve all the problems. And I think that some people are rolling. I actually told somebody this morning that I'm like, I think the issue is that people are buying things thinking it's gonna solve their problem. Like this is an issue, so I'm gonna go buy this product, it'll fix it. Because AI, well, somebody's got to program the AI agent to do it, and maintain it, and maintain it ever. Right. Like there's still a person involved. And uh, you know, to your point with the experience, it that's an interesting point because everybody really wants to have a good experience. They're all about experiences these days, and that's the thing we've lost the most. You know, I think back to like the Starwood days with SPG, with Stargast, like I'd have a guest check in. I knew that they liked Diet Coke, I knew they you know wanted down pillows, I knew that they like had a daughter named such and such, because another hotel would have made the note on their profile, and we knew that. And you know, then you know, post-merger, that was the one brand that I know did it very well from a personalization standpoint. Then post-merger, that all that information went away. And then I still to this day don't like I feel like the personalization's getting worse too. So, like the actual experience you're getting is not as good. And we're living in the age of AI where I can probably scrub the internet to get the information about you.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

I was just gonna say that's the most ironic thing about it, right? There are a ton of great CRM tools out there that literally accomplish that. And they're brand agnostic and they deliver that to your fingertips. And it's I think we're almost too focused sometime on automating what we do with that, to your point, right? It's like, okay, I have all this great intel now and it's organized from around the world. Now, how do I structure that into three different pre-arrival emails? And then once they're on site, into the curated discounts of where they're spending their money, and then the post-arrival experience to make sure that they're booking direct. And like these are all valuable things. I get every single one of those ideas, I get the setup, but I'm just saying there always has to be room for actual real interaction and personality, or else we're just we're losing what hospitality is then.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Right. Like then just go check in at a kiosk, get a token on your phone and go to your room. I it's interesting how things are going to keep moving. I'm hoping that there's going to be a realization here soon that you know, and I said this for a long time. The front office was never getting replaced. If anything, it'll become more of a tech support hub for the poor people that can't figure out how to use the, you know, the brand app or if it's an independent hotel, whatever they're using for digital key. But people still want that. And they still want to have somebody there to help them when something goes wrong. So it's it's been an interesting landscape. But I feel like do you think it's so in your role at Duetter, you see both independent and franchised properties, right? So do you feel like independent or franchise is getting the tech right right now? Who do you think which segment do you think is actually like making the right investment steps? How much time do we have?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Well, not a lot. So keep it short. I don't know. I think that they both have inherently different focuses and different drives. So they're ruling things out differently. Um, you know, I think that the brands, as they historically always have, handle standardization better. So they can utilize the enhancements in these tools to accomplish that. I think the independents are more known for being the more, I don't want to say interesting, right? But like the more locale, adapted, the more unique offering. Um obviously there's a blending of that with the soft brands and everything in between now. It's getting very cloudy. So, no, honestly, I think that they're they're both doing a good job. I think they just both have different focuses.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

It'll be interesting to see how the large brands implement things and owners buy into that implementation along the way. Because I think that's always the trade-off on the franchise side is how do they get the owners on board?

SPEAKER_00 18:07

And that's a big shift I'm personally seeing right now, right? Because it used to always be the big brand, whatever it may be, right? They mandate here's the tech stack you have to have. And historically, owners or franchisees or investors, asset managers, whatever, right, they appreciated that because they didn't know how to build a tech stack then because it was very fragmented and it was uh, you know, only a couple options. It wasn't as smooth as it is now. So I think now that the owners and the people running these hotels are more savvy, they want their say. So now you're starting to see instead of the big brand saying, you know, here's the X product you're gonna use for your PMS or whatever it is, right across the board, they're giving you approved vendor lists and you can pick and choose what makes most sense for you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Which I think makes so much more sense because 100%. And I think it's generational too. I think owners and asset managers, you know, 20 years ago, they didn't understand what like Power BI or Tableau or any of those tools were. Whereas now people that are in those positions, they know how they know what they are and how to use them. Right. They want things to connect so that they can pull data on their own. They don't want to have to ask an analyst to go pull the information for themselves. Yeah, it's gonna be intra. I I do see that, especially PMS systems too. It's now the brands are starting to say, okay, well, you can either do option A, B, or C, and not you have to do, which does make a lot of sense because in some of these brands, you've got hotels that are, you know, 1,500 rooms where the $100,000 system is required essentially, but that same brand can have a 90-room hotel with no food and beverage, and it does not need the $100,000 system.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Yeah, and I think, you know, what the soft brands also did over the last five, 10 years now, right, is they introduced the concept of like standardizing the key points, but leaving the individuality there, right? So you're seeing a lot of these hotels who maybe PMS one and PMS two or CRS and RMS, whatever it is, right? Whatever tool option one and two are, maybe they're they're probably both applicable and both would do just fine. But one may have a slightly customized different feature that makes more sense to what they're trying to accomplish. You know, why not let them do that if you've already vetted it and says that it does everything that I need on my you know franchise level, for example.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Right. Yeah, no a hundred percent. So getting to your time at Duetto. So to the average guy on the street, what is Dueto?

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Maybe not the average guy, but the average hotel nerd on the street. To the average hotel nerd, it is a revenue management system. Um, I mean, historically, I think it's been looked at as, you know, the choice for the independence of the world. It's just full of customization and it has a lot of features that a lot of the legacy tech doesn't have out there. Um and I think now more and more they're seeing that it's, you know, um uh growing into a much, much bigger offering, right? Because when you think of an RMS, right, you think of what, optimizing your room revenue. Maybe there's a feature here or there that do something else, right? But the main crux of it has always been optimizing room revenue. And I think Dueto now is kind of growing into like a new category of one with the uh revenue and profit operating system, right? So now we take in all your ancillary revenue, we can optimize all spaces in your hotel. We actually uh acquired a company called HotStats, which is if you're not familiar with them.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

I am very familiar with them, and I did not realize that you just acquired them. So Did you just acquire them?

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Last year.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Okay. A little behind the time.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

So now, um, and for those of you who are not familiar with HotSats, obviously you are, but right, the easy way to describe it is think of you know using star to benchmark your revenue. Well, obviously, Hotstats benchmarks every single line item in your PML. So, you know, we are really focusing on optimizing your top line revenue all the way to your bottom line. So the fact that we're now taking in all that expense level data, it's gonna be a really exciting year for us.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah. I was just gonna say like that makes the tool even more powerful. So is that something It's an add-on. If you had Duado before, or is it being integrated into the core product?

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Still exploring that. Right now, there's still two separate tools. And we're just basically explaining to people how to use them together. But um we are rapidly probably a month or two away from having the expense data in the reporting side.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

And then the next step from there is actually feeding that into the algorithms to see how it can actually optimize your top line based on how your expenses are trending. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

That's incredible. That's a good purchase. Because HotStats actually the data that they collected has been, I always found it more accurate than if you do like the buy the PL benchmarking through CoStar. 100%. Um because CoStar, you're typically only getting the large, the large management companies that did a data dump at the end of the year. Yeah. So you have, yeah, because on CoStar, you kind of have to guess on some categories. And it's because they like write it for the whole globe as opposed to each joke.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Yeah, so Hotstats has a nice spread of you know the big brands and the independence. And it was a nice, you know, strategic move for Dueto because Dueto had, you know, a corner on the market with the independence, and we were just getting into all the big brands. Yeah. So it was a nice yin and yang, not only from like a technology innovation standpoint, but also just like a brand exposure and prospect standpoint. You know.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

So do you are there any I don't think you're gonna break the news here, but are there any prospects of trying to get the product into any of the of the big flags?

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Yeah, I mean, we've recently gotten a couple. Um we now work with Best Western, we work with Sinesta, uh, we work with Design Hotels by Marriott. Awesome. Um there's several other that are in the process that I won't break the news on. There's one really big one that we will break the news probably within the next month. So exciting.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

That's awesome. Um let's have to be exciting for you then. That's very exciting. I mean, you get to sleep at night now, not having to take those late night calls, and there's exciting things that are happening every day. So, right now, the hot word on the street is AI. Now, I'm a big believer that a lot of people out there are sticking the words AI on their sales collateral because it really does move product. Like it's a buzzword. Yeah, it's a buzzword. It skews our selling with this, but obviously we know that not everything that is labeled AI is actually AI. How much is Duetto implementing actual artificial intelligence into the system these days? And how far do you think you see it going in the next couple of years?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Yeah, great question. Um, I mean, the machine learning side of an RMS, right? It's kind of the AI that's existed for quite a while. I mean, at least for the like the top-tier RMSs all have some level of machine learning, right? Um, what factors into that is kind of used to be the unique selling differences between them. I think it's evolved a lot more since then. Um now the big one with Dueto in particular is we're not just using the machine learning side that an RMS typically uses, but we've stepped into the generative side of AI as well. So we actually have a tool that we call Dueto Advance. Um, and it does a lot of things like pulling in an extensive level of third-party market data like predict HQ for your events and market uh demand generating things. Um, we work with um uh Demand360 from Amadeus. So you can pull in that forward-looking occupancies and rates from your comp set. You can develop custom strategies around all that data. Um we have a dynamic optimization as well, too. So instead of optimizing, you know, every traditional eight hours or whatever it is, um, the system will optimize any time uh up to 20 minutes where it notices a variation in your expected pickup versus your actual pickup of 1% or higher. So you're literally never leaving money on the table. But the most AI-centric portion of it, I would say, is we have this new uh dashboard that comes with it. And it's essentially modeling uh the workflow of a revenue manager. So when you go to it, the top screen will show you, you know, key feet, you know, key pickup or cancellation patterns or like key alerts, if you will. It'll scroll down and show you all the third-party data from whatever day you've selected. And then it has basically uh the coolest part, the generative side, is where it creates the actual narrative around that data. So historically, when we use an RMS and a PMS, right? We go in, we say, you know, these are where my rates are at, these are what my restrictions are. And then it was up to us to write the narrative. This is why it is that right, right? This does it for you. So there you'll get a lengthy description of here's what's happening in your market, here's why this is different than your historical performance, here's why we're recommending this, this is the web traffic we're seeing from your data, this is this and that. And then at the very bottom, it actually gives you commercial level recommendations as well. So not just we recommend this rate or this restriction, but you'll see things that say like, you know, your last four Thursdays had 37% higher level of demand than what we've historically seen at your hotel. We recommend you building an extended weekend package to capitalize on that or something around a holiday coming up. So like it's basically um, it's kind of what we talked about earlier. It's that nice combination of, you know, machine and human. It's not replacing human, but it's giving us the foresight from all this intel that a human couldn't ingest on their own.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

And which the machine model before, which typically just ran like the price optimization couldn't do because real uh reality is before all it could do is it just knew that the way all these things in this formula. That's impressive. Because I think, well, I would actually be very curious to see what its explanation is of potentially like a revenue decline being versus what somebody would actually write when they're reviewing a course around because I think the data like it is probably much more accurate. Um it's like yeah, I'm sure you see, and I don't know what the accuracy percentages with Duetto, but hotels that use the price optimization tools that they have in their RMS typically perform significantly better than the hotels that are still manually setting rates because 100%. And you have people that they're like, no, I know it better than the system, but it's been proven time and time again that all of these algorithms that have been created do actually work.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Gut Intel is very different than Intel. And I also think though that the data's the data. It is, but I also think you know there there is value in that, you know, I've been in this market forever, I know better than the machine. I think that the ego has to come down and then there's value in there, and I think you can find ways, right? And that's why, so like a cool thing about Dueto, for example, if you know it's recommending $4.99 for next Saturday or whatever the rate is, if I go in as a user and I say, you know, you know what, I know better, and I think it's supposed to be $599. So most of the legacy tools out there, right, will just stop optimizing that day because the user overwrote it. So this goes back to the machine learning side of the tool. If I go in and I say it should be $599, not $4.99, the system every minute is measuring my expected pickup versus my actual. So if my user engagement knocks that pace below or above, the system learns from it and gives you a new recommendation. It doesn't stop optimizing, it works with you.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

That's nice. So it's still like it can nudge you to the right spot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

So if I say this isn't working and it's, you know, I was supposed to pick up 16 rooms in the next two hours, and I picked up 12. You're just like, great, how about you know we try you know 549, see if we can get the pace back to where it needs to be. So it like works with you.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Instead of just saying, okay, you're it's you're on your own now. Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

You're the local figure it out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Yeah. That's crazy. But I like that though, because but also that is a good, I would say a good case use or use case on AI as well, and understanding it. Like the system only knows what you put in it, right? So it's probably, I would assume it's remembering that in its learning model that okay, like this guy's probably gonna try to push the rate.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Well, it's it's really I see what you're saying. I'm saying in a very blunt way. I mean, there's probably a much more technical way that it happens, but yeah, it's basically focusing on that override that you did, right? That engagement. Did it did it move the bar forward in driving Rev apart or not? And then it it'll adjust with you. So yes, and if it, you know, regardless whether it worked or not to your point, it'll store that for that day of week pattern in that season. And next year, when that day comes around, right, it has a different starting point because you've interacted with it. So if maybe it wanted to start at you know 599 next year, but it saw how you overrode higher and it was successful, then it would might pick it up a little.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

I was just gonna say it probably works the other way too. If I if I think I can get $599 and I change, I override it and I the pickup remains strong, the system's probably then gonna make a recommendation to keep pushing the other direction. Yeah, exactly. So you so you actually that's what you really want to have happen. I mean, you want the system to tell you to charge more.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

But um, no, because I think I we've all been in those situations where you have somebody that's like, oh no, we can get you know this much more money for the room, and then you change the rate and like you never see yeah, and I think from personal practice, the best recommendation I always have is like uh, you know, manage by exception type thing. So if you think that that day is priced wrong because you're gut feeling and historically you want to override it, nine times out of ten, I would say don't. But a very uh very tangible example, right, might be maybe your sales team just booked a massive group for next Saturday last minute because that's the world we live in. Right. But they're too busy to enter it today, they're gonna enter it tomorrow. You know you can go raise that rate now. And then when you enter the block, the system will catch up. But why wouldn't you go manually do that right now? So that's like the manage by exception instead of just saying, I have a feeling I should change this, you know?

SPEAKER_01 31:36

And I would say manage by convenience because you don't want to have to put the block in today for whatever reason. So um so when you look at the broader hotel technology landscape today, and not just revenue management, but the whole ecosystem, what still like well, not what still excites you, but what does keep you excited about the future in the space and what do you wish to see in the future?

SPEAKER_00 32:00

You know, I think going back to what we opened with um coming from the operation heavy side of the industry and then you know, landing on the commercial side and now being somewhere in between, it's really exciting for me because I think that's what's happening with technology. And I think Dweddle's leading it. I think everybody will be there in a couple of years. But I think having, you know, technology be able to look at driving top, optimizing the middle, making sure that your bottom is going in the right direction. I mean, that's it's powerful and it's exciting, right? I just think historically all these departments were so siloed and everybody focusing on their own goal, not realizing that they're all cannibalizing each other's business and creating so many inefficiencies, right? So I think the fact that everything is kind of blended into one, you know, it started, we heard it a lot over the last like three years with commercials, right? Like sales, marketing, a revenue all blended together, right? And now I think I did the and the ironic thing is I think that the revenue managers are actually leading this because now revenue managers are blending with finance, right? And they're starting to drive a lot of that. And now you're starting to see more workload on revenue and less on them. And so I just feel like now ops is getting in the mix. Like it's kind of the expectation is gonna be hoteliers need to be a jack of all, at least the lead the leaders. Yeah. And to me, that is actually exciting. I could see how that would scare some people, but I think it just allows an environment where everybody has a say in what's affecting everything.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

100%. I think they have a view because I feel like that's what a lot of us have been missing over the years, is we didn't have a way to view it.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Like all this information was out there, but there was no central place to go find it. And you couldn't really tell if you were cannibalizing each other or um, you know, I remember when I was in the front office, I didn't care if I gave out free breakfast to everybody that had a problem, it didn't affect me at all.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Um, well, when you become the GM, you all of a sudden care because you're responsible for the whole thing. But um if you're working together cohesively, you understand where like these promo items, it really does affect us as an overall group. Of course. And you can actually visually see it because I think when somebody visually sees what's happening, it changes the dynamic. Right. But um, I also think training curve, we've had a lot of managers that have come and gone that don't this wasn't their first job pick. This is just they landed in a position, they probably weren't prepared for it. And with the tools we have now, you can kind of pick up from a different industry, come into this one. And because the technology is finally caught up, you can kind of learn pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

Yeah, but I do think there's I I honestly wish there was more technology focus specifically on training because of what we were just talking about. Like I just feel like there's just you have to be more well-rounded than you historically had to. You used to just have this focus in this, you know, little area of this is what I need to be an expert of. And now you have to know a little bit about everything. And I feel like since we lost so many strong industry leaders in the pandemic and been trying to build them back up, but it's just it's a different world now. And I think that there should be a little bit more focus on utilizing AI and technology to, you know, how do we instead of how do we take these tasks away from people, it's also just how do we actually train them better, right stronger, and continually do the training because that's the one thing I feel like hasn't been re-established since the pandemic is the ongoing training of it, regardless of what it is.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

I think in the past, like we would do a a lot of the ongoing training focused around like guest service and tough things like that. But I think one of the things that, to your point, is the ongoing training of, and any hotel can do it. Like you don't have to have the brand, you don't need the brand to tell you to do it, even with your vendors. So, like with Duetto, I'm assuming you guys would love it if somebody comes, a client comes and says, What training plan can we put in place for our team? Of course. Because I think a lot of these products, and yours is probably no exception, you have all these new features that come out all the time when there's upgrades, which is a different world, also, because you know, back in the day you had to wait until you actually upgrade it. A lot of times now things are just real time, it's cloud-based, it all rolls out. And people can be complaining about something not working or not understanding how something works in reality. They just need to be told that it can do this, right? And then this is how you do it. So it's kind of like having Excel but never knowing how to use it. Right. And then once you figure out how to use it, you're like, wow, like wow, it does more than just a bunch of grids. So I yeah, training's definitely the I it's an issue across the board. But do you think we fix it anytime soon? Or do you think it's gonna linger continually?

SPEAKER_00 36:34

I think we can fix some of the motions of it. Yeah. Um, the deliveries, the the format, you know what I mean? But I think um the reality is uh we talked about this earlier, right? We we've seen in our lifetime a huge jump in technology, you know, 20 years ago, give or take. And you know, industry aside, just in in the world, right? We're we're starting the second one of our generation now, right now. Yeah. Um, or a year or two years, two years ago, right? So I do think by the time you get everything, everybody fully trained the right way you want it to, you have to reset to because it's I think six months right now are gonna be five years in advance, but so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Well, and too, I think people learn like it's also I think figuring out how best people will learn these days. Because I don't know, like we used to have those full day training sessions that they would have us like do the train the trainer, and then you'd have to go like train your staff. I don't think I could keep a bunch of front desk agents in a room for a whole day.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

And they take anything away from it. Where it's like you need to have like TikTok videos on this is how you change the rate.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Uh well, it has to it it you need an interactive format now. Obviously, the attention spans have dwindled to nothing. So it has to be like a show for five minutes, due for 10. If you're just literally up there preaching how to do something for eight hours, no one's gonna remember anything at all.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

Yeah. Now, having been on the operator side, now you're on the vendor side with Duetto, you know, anybody in operations, or maybe even on the vendor side, but in the hotel industry altogether, what would be your number one piece of advice right now for them to prepare them for the future?

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Stay curious. Um, you know, as we were just talking about, everything is evolving so quickly. And I think I think we're literally at a point of winners and losers in the industry and really in the world right now. I think people who are going to adapt and chase things and experiment and see what works and fail gracefully are gonna do very well. And I think don't be afraid to fall. Exactly. I think people that are just stuck in their ways and gonna do things the way that they were doing it five years ago are not gonna be relevant in the year. Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

I know that's the funny thing, like AI replacing somebody has to control the AI. Always. So you're like learn how to use the AI to your benefit. Which I funny enough, I do think there's a part of me that thinks that some people will learn how to use the AI that they're really mediocre performers, but they've figured out how to use the AI really well. So they're actually really not mediocre at that point. I was just gonna say, does that keep them in the performer? Like you're not really mediocre anymore. Um yeah, no, that's so true. So where obviously people should people connect with you about Duetto? Yes. And who is your perfect client right now?

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Who like who is your target audit or target market right now? I would say, you know, the the independents are always gonna be our bread and butter. Um they're who got us to where we are. I think we have a big focus now on expanding into the big brands. Um, and we will continue to do so for the years ahead. So honestly, I think my my perfect audience is a blend of both. So think of it as the big asset management firm, right? Or the big REIT or the big management company that has a thousand hotels and 300 of them are really cool, unique independent hotels, and 700 are various big brand properties. That to me is the ideal customer because they get the full exposure and they get to see the best of both worlds.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

That's awesome. They get to feel the whole impact at once. Awesome. So, where can people find and connect with you online?

SPEAKER_00 40:08

So you can certainly go to Dueto's website. Um, you can reach out to us at any and every single technology conference. Uh we are we already conference.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Okay. You will be everywhere this year. Awesome. And then um if anybody wants to connect with you personally, where what's the best place? Instagram, LinkedIn?

SPEAKER_00 40:27

Uh either LinkedIn or you can always just send me an email. Uh it's a pretty easy one to remember. It's nick.night at duetoresearch.com.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

It doesn't get easier than that. Awesome. Well, Nick, thank you for sitting down with me. I'm glad that we were able to uh meet up here in Dallas. And uh hopefully we'll I'm sure if you're doing the conference circle, we'll see each other again this year. Yeah, maybe it won't be another uh 11 years. It won't be, yeah. I'll probably be at the lodging conference this year. I think I can show my face again. So yeah, awesome. We'll be right back. An incredible guy, and it was so great to catch up with Nick after I cannot believe it's been 11 years and to hear of everything he's doing over at Dueto really proves the point to me that it's always good for these vendors on the tech space. Bring in operators that have actually been on the other side, implemented these things, and know where the roadmap really needs to go. But uh Nick Knight, fantastic. Duetto, also fantastic. So be sure to connect with them. And I look forward to welcoming you back next week for another episode of Checking with Brian. And until then, we'll see you next time. Check in with Brian is a production of RH Media Productions, executive produced by Tyler Alexander. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Reliance Hospitality Global, Limited Co., its affiliates, or subsidiaries. All content is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as professional legal, financial, or investment advice. Always consult a qualified professional before making decisions regarding your business.