#299: Adding the Human Back into Hospitality | with Noelani Shroy

The Modern Hotelier #299: Adding the Human Back into Hospitality | with Noelani Shroy === David Millili: Welcome to a special episode of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Make sure to subscribe, like, follow, and let us know in the comments what you think about today's episode. Steve, who do we have on the program? Steve Carran: Yeah, David, excited to have our good friend Noelani Schroy, VP of Global Sales from Onyx CenterSource back with us.

Noelani, how you doing today? Noelani Schroy: Awesome. Thank you. End of a long week.

Steve Carran: Yes. Noelani Schroy: Yes, but awesome. Yes, super pumped, very charged. Steve Carran: That's great.

So as you look around HITEC and what you've seen this week, what was it like, and where do you think we are on the road to implementing more technology in hospitality and kind of that journey? Noelani Schroy: I think we all know that the word or the phrase of the year is AI. That's clearly what's on everyone's lips. If nothing else, even if they're not implementing it, they have to sound like they're implementing it, because we know that's absolutely imperative to be relevant right now.

But what I'm hearing a lot of that I really think is important this year is that this emergence of AI has really brought back the importance of the human aspect in technology too. Because it's not just about what the ones and zeros do, because that's not hospitality. It is how can we actually inject more hospitality and use technology to allow that. David Millili: So you spent years working across the hotel side, also developing a deep insight into the travel agency world.

As a hotelier, why should understanding what's happening on the agency side of this equation matter? Noelani Schroy: I think it goes back to the importance in hospitality and really knowing who your customer is and really having that empathy for them. So one of the things that happens often is the travel agency world can be almost treated like another channel, and we forget about the human that's behind that channel. And so as a hotelier, we can many times just look at that payment of the commission as kind of a back office piece.

It's, again, accounting. I've got the relationship, but accounting is gonna deal with the commission. On the other hand, however, the travel agent, they look at that payment, at that commission coming to them quickly as being almost evidence of a strong relationship. So we look at it very differently, and so as a hotelier, sometimes just like we do with our guest experience, we'll search our web and pretend to be a guest trying to do it.

We will go and stay in our hotels and try to understand what the guest experience is. We need to do that same thing with the travel agent because they are humans, and we need to understand what their experience is and make sure that we nurture that. Steve Carran: I love that. And obviously AI is all the talk.

Where do you see it really providing value for hoteliers, and maybe is there a little fluff as well? Noelani Schroy: I love the fact that we've kind of reached almost this peak when it comes to technology. We've all wanted to be the tech leaders. Everybody wants to be the tech leader.

And more and more that we focus on becoming that tech leader, I don't want to say that we've forgotten, but maybe we have deprioritized hospitality as much, or we haven't talked about the importance of it. And what this is really allowing is that space for hoteliers to step back into that hospitality conversation and really identify, okay, how do I use AI to become, again, more human, more hospitable, really change the actual experience of our guests? And I love that. I love that that is becoming...

That's where technology is taking us, is to actually become more human when implemented correctly. I think that's a really important piece. David Millili: So Onyx CenterSource is described as the only B2B commission processing platform serving both hotels and travel agents. Help us understand what that actually means operationally for a hotel.

Noelani Schroy: Sure. As we were just talking about the importance of understanding both sides, when you have a technology provider that is accountable to both sides, that's gonna have a huge impact. So we can't build out a solution that only services the hotel and doesn't have, again, the user, or I guess the customer on the other side, the travel agent, in mind. Because that would, of course, not be the most optimal.

Same thing on the reverse. If all we were doing is serving the travel agent, then that could potentially not work with the hotel. Understanding that we are truly accountable to both sides, it makes us responsible to both. And again, what that really does is just make us work better for both sides.

Steve Carran: Yeah. So one thing we've been talking about a lot is fragmented systems in hotels. What is that actually costing hoteliers? Noelani Schroy: I think it's something we can easily count.

You know, time, we can count that. The thing I think we have the hardest time counting is just the opportunity that's missed out when we are diverted from all the other things, from our hospitality, from our guests, from all of those little pieces. We're missing out on different opportunities. And on top of that, we're missing out on the ability to really maximize the efficiency of each individual technology that we've invested in.

And so it's almost like that black swan. You don't even know what it is that you're missing out on. So that fragmentation is going to hinder our overall... And I love having conversations with tech providers.

When the tech providers are able to really understand where the gaps are, then we can start stepping in, developing, and building. But when it's really more along the lines of the fragmentation and the implementation and how the hotels are using things, it's harder to understand where the gaps are. So it's really just a loss of opportunity that we see. David Millili: So you've been in the industry a while now, and you've seen multiple technology cycles.

So what is the biggest mistake that you think is made when adopting new technology? Noelani Schroy: Yeah, it's a great question. I think a lot of times we can be so focused on getting to this almost start line that we forget that there's not an end line. So we spend a lot of time and a lot of resources and project manage the implementation, and we need to get it all set up just right, and we do that, and we treat that as the finish line.

The truth is that that's the start line. That is really where everything begins. And so when we're implementing new technology, it's how does this become part of our regular operations, and not just using what we implemented in the beginning, but how do we continue to evaluate what are we doing? Are we maximizing the use of that technology?

Have there been new releases? Because technology's always coming out with new releases. It doesn't matter what you purchase. Have we taken those in?

Have we learned how to implement those changes and maximize all of those pieces? So I think that's really one of the big misses, is how do we implement and add this technology into everyday life ongoing, not just from the start. Steve Carran: That's great. That's it.

And there's a lot of anxiety in the industry about AI and automation displacing jobs. You take technology pretty seriously and know the industry well. How do you have that honest conversation with hoteliers and I guess your team as well? Noelani Schroy: Yeah.

There can be fear around it. I will say there is, and I understand that. I understand it's what jobs are these going to take. And we've heard the saying that AI's not gonna take your job, but somebody who knows AI will take your job.

Right? That's, I think, a common statement. I think what AI's going to be doing a lot of is consolidation of jobs and changing what jobs look like. So instead of needing to have multiple people doing all these different administratives, those can kind of be consolidated, and I can't say this enough, we can add human back into hospitality.

It really is making the space for that. And so what we need to start doing in this hospitality world, regardless of what our role is, is understanding how to have some of those soft skills, bringing those back in, and how do we bring value outside of the repetitive and automatable. I don't think that's a real word, but we'll go with it. How do we start using it?

What can we do to bring those to the next level that only humans can do? This is huge for leaders. Leaders are going to have an opportunity. As a leader myself, how much do we spend running reports and doing all these administrative things that take away from us actually getting to lead and pour into our people?

And in front desk, again, running those reports and doing that data entry, that takes us away from being able to spend extra time in the lobby actually connecting with our guests. All of those pieces really add up, and so I'm just excited to see more and more of the human come back into hospitality. David Millili: If you could give advice to someone who's here at HITEC walking the floor, what advice would you give them? Noelani Schroy: So I actually had a really interesting experience.

I was walking around with a hotelier, a leading hotelier, and he's got a bunch of really cool resorts. And I watched the interaction from some of the booths. Some booths came out and started telling that person all about their product and what they do for hotels, these economy hotels, and he started naming all of these different things that were not part of his... What he didn't do is ask.

He didn't ask anything about who this person is, didn't ask what's important to them, didn't ask anything about the hotels. And what that reminds me of is just the importance of us not relying strictly on AI. It was a very, very interesting real-life experience of it's not just having people in hospitality at the hotel level, we have to have people in hospitality at a technology level as well. We can build the best piece of technology in the world.

No technology is going to be perfect forever, so we need to have real people behind the technology in hospitality, which means our people on the trade room floors, they are the first person that's going to show that hotelier what kind of human is behind the technology, making that connection and actually caring about them. Because a lot of us, most of us that are in hotel technology, we're hoteliers at heart too, and we really want to be able to care and show that we have the same heart and mind as these hoteliers.

And so what I would say to the hotel technology providers out here, make sure you show that. Make sure that you don't get so AI that you're not human. And then on the hotel side, look for those companies that are going to care about who it is that they're actually serving, not just all the different integrations, not all the other technologies that they're going to be working with. Truly understand the people behind the technology.

David Millili: That's great. Well said. Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. This is where you get to tell people where they can find out about Onyx CenterSource and how they can get in touch with you.

Noelani Schroy: Absolutely. So onyxcentersource.com. You can find all of our information there.

And, of course, sales@onyxcentersource is a nice and easy email that you can always hit up. You don't have to spell Noelani Schroy. But yes, thank you very much. Really appreciate this.

David Millili: You're welcome. So that does it for this special HITEC episode of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. If you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thank you.