Beyond the Booth: GBTA 2025 with HRS's Tobias Bittner

Speaker A: Welcome to Doja Live, the place where top minds in travel and hospitality check in to share insights and breakthroughs shaping the industry. Brought to you by Ankora, your trusted partner for AI, cloud and data driven innovation. Enjoy your stay.

Speaker B: Hello everyone. Welcome to Dojo. Take it from the top again. Hello everyone and welcome to Dojo Live, GBTA 2025 in Denver, Colorado. I am here at the HRS with none other than Tobias Bittner.

Speaker C: Correct?

Speaker B: That's right. I had a little bit of a brain warp there for a second. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker C: Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: My pleasure. You know, to kick it off a little bit, let's share with those who might not be familiar with HRS or yourself, you know, kind of what your role and that sort of two minute kind of elevator pitch of what it is that you're doing to support the industry.

Speaker C: Okay, let's start with myself. I'm Tobias Bittner. Um, I'm the VP of Marketing at hrs who is hrs. HRS is a global provider for end to end solutions for lodging and meetings management. This is a big topic, um, but to dive a bit deeper, I think we are kind of like uniquely positioned, uh, for enterprise customers to manage everything from procurement to booking to payment within one platform.

Speaker B: Wow. All right, that was a great elevator pitch. You know, let's talk a little bit about what you're spotlighting here at GBT this year. Uh, any new innovations, announcements that you're kind of particularly excited about.

Speaker C: I'm, um, super excited about the, uh, launch of our Ahrefs Copilot. Copilot. And you might have heard that name from other providers a bit, but it's so spot on because it helps you as a travel manager or meeting spanner, to navigate the fragmented ecosystem of lodging and meetings management. What it does is it brings together all your data from the different sources of procurement, booking, behavioral data and payment expense data to give you the best possible visibility on your entire spend. And with that infused with AI. That's the co pilot part. It actually recommends to you how to optimize your program on your predefined dimensions of, uh, savings, security and traveler satisfaction. So that you can basically, with your copilot, ask him where to optimize.

Speaker B: I was going to say, is this all conversational?

Speaker C: It is conversational in any language and it eats all country that you want where your program is happening and it not only recommends it to you, but it also orchestrates for you with a single click.

Speaker B: Um, amazing, huh? It is, it is quite amazing. You know, and, and I was, you know, the, the AI side. Let's talk a little bit about, okay, the ease, the wow factor. But what does this mean in real terms? Like, can you, you have any numbers data that you want to attach to that or, or is it being used right now? What are people saying about it?

Speaker C: So we just introduced it, um, to our existing customers, so we're phasing it into the market, uh, because what it needs obviously is data. Data is the source of it and our, what we call lodging as a service, customers that use our existing platform. Because the platform as such has been built over the past years already to create the foundation for the AI to take, gone to and work. Um, they are piloting it right now. It's working. And uh, because, uh, we already have experiences, um, in the results we see, uh, savings of up to 20% and we have a high degree of automation of up to 90% of the entire process. So that exceptional results.

Speaker B: So about 90% of, uh, you know, automation. What are folks doing with the time they're getting back?

Speaker C: Well, they can focus on what really matters are travelers. And I'm sure they have still a lot of other stuff to do. And let's face it, I mean, trouble departments are not getting bigger, but there was still a lot of manual work that needs to be done. And now they can basically automate much more and provide a better service to the internal stakeholders too.

Speaker B: I love it. You know, lgbta, no surprise here, AI is a big word. Another word which overlaps with what I was hearing last year a lot is sustainability. I think the new travel buyer, the traveler themselves, this is kind of their expectation. I read that HRS is now one of only, I believe, 313 global companies to join the climate pledge, which means you're committing to a net zero by 2040, which is 10 years ahead of the Paris, uh, the Paris agreement. So how is this also impacting maybe some of your strategy, your product innovation? Is AI helping with that too?

Speaker C: Absolutely. It does. The foundation, again, surprise, is data. So three years ago, HRS has launched the Green Stay initiative, which is a quite unique program because it collects on, um, property data of the hotels. So not working with averages, which is quite common to get proxies. So we are really reaching out to our supplier base to collect that on property data so that you can have, um, the most precise, uh, metrics to see your program and infuse the data in the platform so you can actually use it in your procurement exercise and also bring it into the booking platform. So that your travelers can see and make an educated decision at the point of sale, which property to choose from. Our recommendation engine, that's the. I also in it will recommend depending on how high you prioritize sustainability in the program and the relevance of your program, the prioritize properties that have a uh, lower carbon footprint. So ultimately allows you to steer the entire program towards the target and by that continuously year over year reduce it. And we are working also with the supply side to help them to reduce their footprint. So it's a really awesome end to end system that we provide to the lodging and meetings industry.

Speaker B: Wow. You know, and it's day two at uh, gbta, I can, I can't believe it's only day two. I'm like, are we done yet? I'm having a blast. But at the same time I'm like, so day two, you know, AI sustainability, you've been here on the floor, lots of partners and uh, you know, buyers coming in. What are you hearing? Anything else that you kind of want, like a common thread that's coming to mind for you? Surprising takeaways or things that you think, you know, aside from what you're hearing, that people should kind of be keeping their eye on, you know, in terms of what's going on?

Speaker C: Well, I mean AI is all over the place. Um, so I think it's really important for the buyers and everyone who is dealing with travel to understand how AI is really working and how are you benefiting on it. And there's a lot of almost like buzzwords around it to understand what's really behind and what really makes a big difference. Um, I think sustainability has been around for a bit. Um, given the current situation, it has probably a bit of a lower share of voice currently, even though it remains important. So we still push for it. And I think a trend that we see that is connected to AI is the, and especially agentic AI is the orchestration. So how can you not only read the data, interpret it, but how can you actually activate it in the system? And this is where the whole topic about connectivity, ecosystems, um, is evolving. Right. And we at hs, for example, we bring it together for, I said lodging and meetings management, which is also a trend of converging, really, uh, maximizing your buying power, looking at data holistically across the entire lodging program. And um, so that's something that we see evolving and that can be interesting and something to watch.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And evolving so quickly because you use the word buzzword. And I, I get the sense that last year at events Like GPTA and others. AI was kind of still just that like, oh, it's coming but now we're actually seeing the applications. Right.

Speaker C: Happens.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, like, oh, it's being used now.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Any what are you personally super excited about or like, are you using in your own. Whether it's work related or not? 100 what excites you? How are you doing these tangible applications?

Speaker C: I mean like every one of us, I think everyone has already like done um, their trials on ChatGPT and especially as in marketing, I mean it's like it opens just a new dimension of scalability, how to create content, how to scale content, how to adapt to different channels. So I'm super excited about it. And um, I think what is also exciting about it is to now find applications in very specific industries like the travel industry, where it actually helps and delivers real world results.

Speaker B: I love it. I love it. Now, perhaps one of the most important questions of today, aisle or window?

Speaker C: And why in the evenings? Window. Because leaning on something. Uh, and during the day? Aisle.

Speaker B: All right.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And why the aisle during the day?

Speaker C: Because I want to escape faster.

Speaker B: That's the second one. I don't want to wait. I need to get out. All right. I love it, you know, to be. It's been such a pleasure.

Speaker C: Thank you so much.

Speaker B: Here at gbta, Getting to know hrs, Getting to know you. If any members of our audience want to get to know you, our hrs, everything that you're building a bit better. What's the best way to go about doing that?

Speaker C: Um, Visit our website, hrs, uh.com enterprise or on LinkedIn. Um, to be as bitter as my name. Reach out. Happy to help.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: And also stick around because they're going to be a 90 second video here that you're going to be able to watch. And uh, we got that for you here as well.

Speaker C: Thank you everyone.

Speaker B: Bye.