#302: How the Best Hotel Operators Are Approaching Technology | with Jake Lewis

The Modern Hotelier #302: How the Best Hotel Operators Are Approaching Technology | with Jake Lewis === David Millili: Welcome to a special HITEC edition of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Please make sure to follow, like and subscribe, and let us know in the comments what you think about today's episode. Steve, who do we have on the program today? Steve Carran: Yeah, David, we have Jake Lewis, the president of Jonas Hospitality Property Systems.

Thanks for sitting down with us, Jake. Jake Lewis: Absolutely. Steve Carran: How are we doing today? Jake Lewis: Really good.

Excited to kick off HITEC. Steve Carran: Yeah. David Millili: Good. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into hospitality.

Jake Lewis: Yeah, so I've been in hospitality 25 years. I started in tech support for Remco Software 25 years ago while I was in college. After I finished school, I became a developer. I started leading development teams.

I've been the director of development teams. I've been a VP of products and services. I've led pretty much everything, maybe except sales teams directly. Steve Carran: That's great.

That's great. So you've been in the industry for a while. How are you seeing hospitality evolve, and what big shifts are you seeing, and how is Jonas helping hoteliers? Jake Lewis: Yeah, there are a couple of things that I would say about shifts that maybe aren't shifts.

These are things that have always existed, but I think what's changed now is we have the ability to capitalize on them. The first is we're starting to move from systems to platforms. What I mean by that is there are all kinds of companies with siloed systems out there. That's actually part of what we tell people.

Siloed systems aren't necessarily a bad thing, but they can be unless you can connect them through an integrated platform and an ecosystem. You're starting to see that become what everybody needs to have. If you don't connect all your systems, you don't have data. It becomes a problem.

The second is just a shift in guest experience. You guys have probably had 100 conversations about the guest experience, but it's really true. When you think about what Amazon did, Amazon took something like a bookstore, and now today I don't know how I'd live my life without Amazon. Steve Carran: Yeah.

Jake Lewis: My wife and I were talking last week, and I said, "It is just incredible that I can order something," and I live in Phoenix, so literally that day it can show up at my door, or maybe the next day. It's changed the game in terms of shopping. I think the same is true for what needs to happen in hospitality. Today it's still very disjointed when you want to book a trip.

I recently went on a golf trip, and it was a ton of fun, but the process of booking it wasn't super simple. I'm at a place where I like to just get online, book my stuff, and know it's going to happen. We're now at a place where we can build systems that allow a seamless experience across a stay where I'm going to golf, stay, book dining reservations, or book a spa. I don't have to call somebody.

I'm also one of those people who, when mobile check-in came out, didn't like it, and now I get mad when I don't have it. I'm getting that way with booking. I don't want to call anybody. I just want to get online and book my trip.

That's becoming the guest's expectation today, and we're now in a place where we can deliver that. That's part of why we launched Jonas Unify. We recognized in our portfolio that we have several different systems, whether it's PMS, spa, guest-facing mobile, or all of the other connected systems. They all operated in their own world.

Now we've built a platform that connects all of those systems. All your guest data and all your information are there, and that's really where we're moving forward. The booking experience is now seamless through our system. That's where we're headed, and we probably couldn't have done that 10 years ago.

David Millili: So as president of Jonas Hospitality's Property Systems Group, you have a unique view across both hotel operations and technology. What do you think the most successful hotel organizations are doing differently when it comes to their technology strategy? Jake Lewis: It's a really good question. What I would say is really good hotel operators aren't chasing technology.

They understand how to operate their business and then are aligning their technology to how they operate. So you can go and buy the system that does check-in or does these things, but how do you do check-ins? What does your flow look like? What do you want your guest experience to be when they show up to the hotel?

So really thinking through, how am I operating, and what systems do I want to have in place to ensure that guest experience is really positive? Beyond just check-in, if you think about the whole guest journey, what are you doing, and how are your systems working prior to them even booking? From the inception of me starting to think about going on a trip, what systems do you have in place all the way through to I've come, I've stayed, I've done my thing, and now I'm gone? How are you aligning those, and how have you connected your platforms?

Here's the other part of that. The really good ones are partnering with their vendors. They're not just buying software from them. The reality is my job as a vendor to hoteliers is to satisfy you and your guests.

The best way I can do that is simply by partnering with you, understanding your business, and having you help me build a solution that's going to do that. Steve Carran: Absolutely. So let's talk vision. Hospitality and technology have changed drastically over the past five to 10 years.

How are you looking at the next five to 10 years, and how do you want Jonas to be involved with the shaping of technology? Jake Lewis: It's kind of crazy, right? Five to 10 years seems like it's changing every month right now. To think about what five years looks like is really difficult.

For me, the classic problem that we've had is all-in-one versus best-of-breed. I don't think we're going to be in a world where best-of-breed is the right solution, and I also don't think that an all-in-one is the right solution. I think it's a combination of the two because, in the end, our customers need to be able to pick the systems that allow them to operate their business best. They need to be able to select a system and connect it to a platform that synchronizes data across all of those systems and then unifies that guest experience.

Steve Carran: Sure. Data's becoming so much more important with AI. Having that transparency between systems is key. Jake Lewis: Over the next five years, I think what you'll see is hoteliers are starting to get smarter about their data and understanding how critical it is to have not only data, but good data, clean data.

If they want the opportunity to take advantage of AI and everything it can do, and to better understand their guests, they've got to have clean data across all of their systems. Steve Carran: Agree 100%. David Millili: Yeah. So what role should technology play in helping hotel operations efficiency without hurting the guest experience?

Jake Lewis: Technology needs to be somewhat invisible. When you think about AI in general, AI should be something that augments processes. Our technology should do the same thing for our customers. It should augment their ability to be hoteliers.

They want to spend time doing things that are valuable, and that's with the guest, not in front of their screens or phones. It's giving them the ability to get access to data faster, to get accurate data faster, and to make decisions about how to satisfy their guests better. Steve Carran: We talk about AI pretty much on every podcast. A lot of hype around it.

But beyond the hype, where do you think are the most meaningful opportunities for AI to really create value for hoteliers? Jake Lewis: This, to me, honestly, is a tough question because I've had a lot of conversations. We're doing a lot of stuff with AI, and there's a lot of really cool stuff out there. The winners aren't going to be the ones who have the most AI.

The winners are going to be the people who use AI the most effectively. AI can do all kinds of stuff, but if it's not augmenting your processes and allowing you to serve your guests better, it doesn't really matter. There are some real practical things we'll be able to do right away, and you're starting to see this with access to data, decision-making, revenue management, and all those things. But how are you really using AI to understand your guest?

When a guest calls and books, I think we're in a really great place where there's potential to truly personalize that conversation with that guest. Or when they show up to the club or the resort, you've already got their itinerary ready for them. You know everything about them, and you can offer things based on their past. That exists today, but I think AI really augments that process and makes it so you don't have to think about it.

It's just there. David Millili: All right, so when you talk to hotel operators, what challenges come up again and again? And how do those everyday frustrations shape the way you think about building technology? Jake Lewis: I've had lots of conversations over the last two years as we launched Unify.

The number one thing that I hear is fragmented systems. It really is the problem of, "I've got seven different solutions, and I need to use all of them for each different outlet." But when Jake shows up at this property and goes into the spa, or goes and plays golf, or whatever I do, whatever I book, it's a different Jake. Or when I go to change my spa appointment, they don't even know that I have a tee time.

They don't understand that. That is probably the thing that I talk about the most. The second is for the guest. Going back to my example about booking my golf trip, I just wanted to get online and book my entire stay, all my reservations, and all my restaurant bookings, and I couldn't do that in one seamless flow.

It was very painful. I actually had to make some phone calls. Then if I wanted to change my tee time, change my restaurant, or do something different, I had to make another phone call. Going back to the very first question you asked me about guest expectations, that's what I'm hearing the most.

When I think about what we're trying to do at Jonas Hospitality, it's to solve those problems. Our customers have a lot of different systems. They have the same challenges, and we've been talking about them for a long time. Now we're in a place where we can actually solve them.

I think Jonas is uniquely positioned compared to others because of our model for acquisitions and building software. AI has changed the game in terms of our ability to build new solutions on our platforms. It's just a different world out there. David Millili: That's great.

Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Jake, this is where you can let people know how they can get in touch with you and how they can find out more about Jonas. Jake Lewis: Yeah, of course. You can always get ahold of us.

Go to jonashospitality.com. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to get ahold of us.

David Millili: That's great. That does it for this special HITEC episode of The Modern Hotelier, the most engaged podcast in hospitality. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to be with you again soon. Thank you for joining us, Jake.

Jake Lewis: Thanks. Steve Carran: Thank you, Jake. Jake Lewis: Appreciate it, guys.