CEO of QDI USA on OTA-to-Direct Booking Plays

We launched something that we began to do this using human interface, and we launched direct channels. So we began to send email markets to all our old customers. From Hotel Tech Report, it's Hotel Tech Insider, a show about the future of hotels and the technology that powers them. Today, we're speaking with Fabio Passas, the owner and CEO of QDI USA Developments.

Fabio describes experiences deploying a few impactful tech initiatives at his properties and an app that allows guests to handle check-in totally self-service. And he shares some of his favorite ways to use ChatGPT. This episode is packed with great ideas and tips you can try today, so let's dive in. Thank you so much for joining us today, Fabio.

I'm really looking forward to speaking with you. To get things started, I would love for you to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role and your business. My name is Fabi Pasos. I'm the owner and CEO of QDI USA Developments.

We basically own a few hotels here in The United States, five in Florida, And we also own a couple in Brazil where we originally came from. So we are in this business for fifteen years now, and that's it. Could you tell me a bit more about your properties? You mentioned you have five in The US.

Are they branded, independent? How many rooms? Would love to get some more context there. We have two that's actually not independent, but is what we call soft branded, which is something that we enjoy a lot to work because gives us a little bit more independence.

They are in destination markets. And we also have the others are branded. They are fully branded hotels, which is nice too, you know, as just a different shape and form to work. But they are mostly in Florida.

So we have one in Orlando, one in Wesley Chapel, a kind of north suburb of Tampa, Spring Hill, we have San Agustin, and we have another one going to Fort Pierce. So I'm curious from your perspective, having a few different hotels and hotels in different markets, What do you consider to be the most critical piece of technology that you use? I would say the way we think is how can we transform and make the stay as smooth and as efficient as possible. I was amazed when I moved.

I moved from Brazil to US about twelve years ago. And for me, you know, when you go to places like US, Japan, you know, you are basically talking to this is the most advanced countries in the world. So, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna face all this high-tech, all of this environment. And it was amazing to learn actually how hotels here are, you know, are still in the paper and pencil type of work.

So this was something that really puzzles me. So we at those points, you know, as we are talking just before the show begins, you know, when you are in a branded hotel environment, you are actually a little bit stuck at what the brand allows you to do, all the process and everything else. But with the events that we introduce a kind of our own brands in Orlando market in 2021, our first soft branded hotel, we have that freedom to work with certain things. So the first thing that became important to us was to introduce new door locks.

And this was a new construction. We partner with Entry Reds. They are a great partner of us. And the whole idea was how can I streamline the check-in and checkout process?

You know? And especially in Orlando, when you come out, basically, people spend all day in the park, and you are receiving thousand guests per night. Basically, that you have sometimes, you know, a thousand check ins going on in your property. And they all come at the same time because, you know, they go to the park.

It closes nine. Then they go to a restaurant. Then they come to to do the check-in. And then they form a big line in front of our front desk.

And there is our front desk agents scratching their heads, hey, can you sign this paperwork here? Can you sign this? Can you provide? So it's a nightmare.

So how could I transform this and become more efficient? I know that the event of the key lock, the electronic in your cell phone was something that brands like, Hilton, Marriott, they already provide. But they provide only if you are one of their members. We cannot forget that Orlando itself, it's not a brand market.

Here, the largest branded hotel will still have a majority of their guests come from OTAs like Expedia Booking. You know, Orlando is pretty much like markets like Tokyo, like LA, where you go to OTA no matter what, even if you're a loyal brand, because you want to see what experience I can get different there. So OTAs drives our market. In that regard, you know, to use their phone as a key is not something that you can do just with your loyal brands.

So Entry Red was a big part in that regard because they developed their locks. And we are able to download the keys on both Androids and Apple for a 100%. So basically, right now in advance, we have the guests, we have their emails, we are able to shoot an email and say, hey, when you come up here, just download your key, make the check-in, download your key, and you are able to skip the line. So that's something that it's really helping us a lot in the process.

And I had situations, you know, I remember one of our first hotel, we received a call like midnight. It was basically our front desk dropping off the work and say, hey, I'm leaving. I cannot handle this line here. So he basically resigned with 25 people to make the check-in.

And I remember my wife, who is responsible for all the operations of the hotel, to drive to the hotel, you know, in the middle of the night and to finish the check ins. It was crazy. Wow. Well, can you walk me through the arrival experience in a little more detail?

So a guest shows up. They've never stayed at your hotel before. What do they do next? Basically, if you go to a normal routine, actually, and that's come a second part of the piece, which is another part that we have with Spirisa.

But if you go in a normal routine, you arrive at the front desk, so you have to confirm your payment methods. Usually, if you make a reservation, you already gave a credit card, which is we always say is if you don't have a guest credit card in your reservation, you don't have a reservation. So they confirm the credit card if this is the credit card. And as per Florida policy, we need to fill some guest information, you know, some base guest information, like address.

And this is required because sometimes at night, if you need if the Florida or the county police needs to subtract some information, we must give to the police authorities. So this is a process that is usually time consuming, and it gets way more burdensome if usually people come to Orlando, they come in a car. They need to, you know, to give license plates because, you know, you have to provide protection for insurance and all that stuff. What we try to do, you know, we also, in this meantime, we hired a company called Brisa.

It's one of our partners down there in Brazil. Because, again, when brands do their stuff, they do their stuff just for their loyal brands. So how can we do this for our entire hotel? So we developed an app, which is basically very similar to that, but where you can do your all your check-in and even your checkout.

Checkout is easier, but your check-in, when you are still going down the road here in you are driving here, you are in Ocala two hours from here, you can go and do your check-in in the app. So, basically, they go basically like everything else. Basically, provide your credit card information, confirm if it is the credit card information that is in your reservation, the one that you're gonna use. You also can process all your information, upload all your information, your card information, get your keys, and boom.

You already made your check-in, whether you are Expedia guest or a Booking guest. Does the guest need to download an app, or is this a web based system? You have to download. It's both for Apple and Androids.

And basically, we sent an email with a certain timeline, ten days before, five days, and the day before your trip. So once the guest did the check-in through the app, they can bypass the front desk completely. Is that correct? They have their keys, and they can just go to their room.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. One of our main concerns when this began is security.

I always tell the general audience. If you work in a hotel, you understand this quite well. But the general public does not have an idea, you know, how dangerous sometimes, you know, the situation. And I always tell, you know, in a 200 room hotel, let me tell you, there will be 10% which are very good people, 80% the normal, but 10%, you know, maybe they are not so good people.

And these are the ones that create buzz, and that's the one that, you know, our staff has to keep an eye on it. So when you lose this personal contact at the front desk, That's where, you know, sometimes you can begin to lose track of who is who in your hotel. But I would say that that comes another point that we invested not only in training our staff, you know, to try to keep a look, but also use smart cameras in our facility. You know, something that give an example.

Smart cameras that, you know, can it's a hotel, and by law, you have to keep the stairs. The stairs are for the fire fire department, for prot yeah. All this. And, technically, these are just open from inside.

You cannot access the hotel inside. And sometimes, you know, people, what they do, they come from the inside of your stairway, they open, they put like a rock, leave that door open, so other people can come. For the most diverse type of things that they can, you know, this is something that's, this type of behavior is now something that, you know, right now caught up our attention. It begins to blink in the monitor of our front desk.

Oh, that's something going on. That's the guest. So it helps. So this is another way that we are trying to, you know, do not lose grip of what our guests are doing.

This is pretty important to monitor. You mentioned Orlando is a very OTA heavy market, and there's not a lot of direct booking. Is it a goal for you to grow your direct share? And a follow-up question would be how do you approach distribution, and what software do you use to make sure your rooms are available on all the platforms they need to be?

Okay. Absolutely. We love to increase our direct channel. Actually, that's a part of a combination.

And glad you asked because this is something that we are launching experimentally right now for our international markets. But our distribution remember, we are soft brands. So as a soft brand, our sales distribution needs to be done by, you know, our hotel is called SpotX Hotel Orlando by Red Collection. So my whole distribution needs to be done by Red Collection.

All the agreements with OTAs and everything is done by the franchisor. I have the freedom to do whatever I do in terms of the operation of the hotel. But the sales side, the distribution sides need to be done by the the brand. However, unfortunately, I cannot hire a third party.

I I have even my website, which is something that outlines different from the brands. I cannot make bookings there. I need to route everything through their channel. This is the point of the soft brand.

However, when you go to markets, and we came from Brazil, it's amazing how direct messaging there, you know, is done for every single part of the business. For instance, down there, they are huge users of WhatsApp. I know that's not as big as here in US, And it's amazing. Every time you come there, you know, you don't go to a drugstore.

You go to the WhatsApp, you ask for your pharmacist, boom, the guy brings your your drug to your medicines to your apartment. It's crazy. So we launched something that we began to do this using human interface, and we launched direct channel. So we began to send email markets to all our old customers.

And fortunately, because we have very good reviews and very good ratings, we have a lot of repetitive customers. So next time, you know, book with us, access us through WhatsApp, and please book with us directly. So we began to use that. We have one person that, you know, used to respond this.

Funny thing is, okay. It begins slowly, you know, one person at a time, one person per day asking for reservations. Then we begin to use more marketing towards micro influencers. You know, we begin to bring those influencers, use YouTube, you know, to do this kind of stuff.

And and sometimes, you know, you don't know when it happens, but all of a sudden, there was one of those informers that came. And one day, you know, she began to receive, like, 400 messages, you know, asking for the hotel per day. And the funny thing, she's not a very tech savvy person. She's a great salesman, but not a very tech savvy person.

So what happens is, okay, let's calm down. First of all, move from your cell phone to a desktop where I can answer this. You have more of those. And now we have our team responsible for marketing.

We are actually have all these conversations. She almost swelled that for, you know, working like this for a month. We are picking up all this base of information. And now we are feeding into an AI agent.

So we can have most of the interaction done through AI. So we are training an AI agent at this point, so we can, you know, begin to have an interface. It will be a kind of a mix. Certain situations will go through AI, certain it will require their attention.

And the good thing is with the advent of AI, you have to be fast, but the person does not require to be online. So when you are in a text message environment, you don't need to be the same second. One or two minutes, it's fine. I'm curious if there's anything on your wish list.

If there's any software or type of technology that you've seen on the market that you're considering implementing. Well, there are a few, you know. Again, I think that's something that is still very premature. I've seen some samples doing this.

And as you know, we probably struggle with the labor force. The labor force is a big deal all the way. And with everything going on in the country right now, it's even worse, you know, for you to get the labor force. And so sometimes, you know, you go to the hotels and after COVID, you know, people saw situations where, oh, you are not doing the daily cleaning or the the daily cleanup.

And the reason is we don't have that labor force available to hire at whatever price it is. So one of the things that I as you mentioned, a wishing list, I think this is something that's in your home, you'll have your room by. You'll have your, you know, vacuum doing your so certain facets, I don't think we can never get rid because the tailing is something that is important when you are doing the housekeeping. But the general, the more, you know, the more hard cleaning, cleaning floors and all that same mopping, I think this is something that we all may I don't think we are that far enough to, you know, change for, you know, robots and all that kind of thing.

The limitations right now is you cannot leave a Roomba in every room. If you do so, probably, you know, we have to replace it 10 per week of those. This is something that's, you know we always joke people. This is just a curious fact for audience.

We have TV sets stolen from our TV sets, 55 TV in interior corridor hotel, try to match our Roomba. But I've seen some others that say, you know, some robots more humanoid robot, but this is still very expensive technology, which is does not provide the payoff we need. But I I think we're gonna get there. So how are you handling the data piece with your five hotels?

Like, if you wanted to see high level metrics at a glance right now, would you need to pull five different reports and print them out and look at them side by side? My background is finance. So when I I used to, you know, when I began to work, you know, I'm in the fifties. Right?

I just turned 50. In my twenties, early twenties, I worked for Citibank, so in multiple areas down there. So I basically grew up doing financial modeling. That's pretty much it.

And at the time, you know, you need to work at Excel. So basically what I do, I download all the database, run my macros. And with AI right now, it's becoming easier. But it's still it's it's still a manual process, not something I I need to create my own dashboard.

That's the point. I would like to skip that and have everything centralized. Can you tell me a bit more about how you're using AI in that analysis? I think that might be something our audience would be interested to know.

Is there a tool that you use most frequently or a couple of prompts that you use? To be very frank, and this is something that is still new to me, which is something that I use to download and do the macros before. Now I'm using more, you know, Chet DPT. And I was amazed.

First thing that puzzles me is to do consolidated financial statement. This is, I think it was like two months ago. We began to work with this. And I know a friend of mine say, do you know that the Shed CPT can consolidate all your five hotel financial statements?

I said, no worry. It's impossible. They can do this because, you know, I remember when, and people think that it's pretty much, you know, when you consolidate a financial statement, it's pretty much some five statements. It's not.

There is the intercompany, you know, you have to skip those. There is a lot of things going on down there. It's like, it's impossible. You'll never know the what is the intercom.

And no. No. Do that. I'll be like, and all of a sudden, boom.

I said, oh my god. You know, it's like 99 percent accurate. So I say, with that insight, I say, hey, now you're gonna do, you know, all this dashboard for me. So I basically have everything downloaded in CSV, and I ask them to, you know, to provide me all this information.

It's been great, actually. With that in mind, what would you say are one or two skills or characteristics that a person should have to be successful in today's world? I would say that I'm still making my mind about all this AI revolution we are seeing right in front of our eyes. But I would say to you that there are some works.

I still don't see how the AI or the technology will replace. They are pretty physical works that require effort or something in that regard. But if you are not in a job like this, it seems to me that, or you'll be in the command of AI, or it will be AI. Or you know how to handle this, or you'll be the AI agent doing the work.

I've seen another day, I've seen another day people asking for, you know, what about AI CEOs? I say, what? You know, they are trying to, you know, get a sense of command through, you know, that's a little steep to me. Well, my last question, which is always a favorite of my guests here.

What is one thing that you believe about technology in the hotel space that your peers or competitors might disagree with? That's a good point. I would say that it's pretty much what we just implemented. The key system, the key lock keys that we implemented with the Entry Reds.

I know that, you know, and speaking to the guys in entry red where they explain me the technology and say, hey, guys, I need to do some work internally. From a technology standpoint, say, woah, woah, this is well, because this is something that I know that internally, I will face some challenges, you know, because not only because people feel scared to lose their job, but, again, it's not does not make sense because, you know, I still need a front desk agent down there. I'm trying to alleviate the burdensome.

But the most important point for Hoteli is they love the personal contact. So they love the personal contact, which is, you know, that's the spirit of being in a hotel business, you know, you are talking to people, you are provide. And I try to explain to them is, hey, first of all, there will be times when you can do this. Actually, way better times.

Not the when the person is in a stress mode. They are in the line, you know, trying to get the car completely tired from, you know, to be in other lines in the theme parks. Do this in the breakfast. Change your routine.

Go go. When they are in the breakfast, they are, you know, ask them how's their stay? You know, what is there something that we can do to improve your stay in that regard? Doing a way better, nicer environment, like the breakfast.

So we change that a little bit. But every time you propose something that where they're gonna lose that touch, that interaction with the guests, It's really something that we feel a little of opposition to the ideas. And it's something that you can certainly do other forms. Well, thank you so much for sharing.

It was great having you on the podcast today, Fabio. Really appreciate you taking the time and sharing all of your experiences with us. Thank you for having episode. Thanks for listening to Hotel Tech Insider produced by hoteltechreport.

com. Our goal with this podcast is to show you how the best in the business are leveraging technology to grow their properties and outperform the concept by using innovative digital tools and strategies. I I encourage all of our listeners to go try at least one of these strategies or tools that you learned from today's episode. Successful digital transformation is all about consistent small experiments over a long period of time, so don't wait until tomorrow to try something new.

Do you know a hotelier who would be great to feature on this show, or do you think that your story would bring a lot of value to our audience? Reach out to me directly on LinkedIn by searching for Jordan Hollander. For more episodes like this, follow Hotel Tech Insider on all major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.