TCP086: AI, IoT and Bottom-Line Bliss with Fabio Zaniboni

You are listening to the Tech Chef Podcast. This is episode number 86, January 28, 2025. This show is powered by Growth Advisors International Network, where travel and hospitality companies come to grow. For more information, please visit gainadvisors.

com. This is Fabio Zaniboni, founder and CEO of Babinet, and you are listening to Skip on the Tech Chef Podcast. Off premise Strategy, Business continuity. How about a taste test of restaurant technology?

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Well, hello there and welcome back to another exciting episode of the Tech Chef Podcast. I'm your host, Skip Kimple, joining you from a surprisingly brisk and breezy Fort Lauderdale, Florida. For those of you shivering in colder climates, I know you might be rolling your eyes right about now, but hey, we Floridians aren't built for this kind of weather. Wherever you're tuning in from, whether it's over your morning coffee during your commute or winding down after a busy day, thank you for making us part of your routine.

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Today, Fabio Zanaboni, an expert in hospitality technology, discusses the transformative role of IoT in driving sustainability and energy efficiency within the hospitality sector. He shares insights from his extensive background in engineering and innovation highlighting how IoT devices can significantly reduce energy consumption and operational cost in hotels and restaurants. The conversation delves into the importance of edge computing, which minimizes data transmission to the cloud, thereby conserving energy and resources.

Fabio also emphasizes that a dual focus on sustainability and guest well being. Showcasing how IoT can enhance the guest experience through smart environmental controls. With practical examples and emerging trends, this episode illustrates how integrating IoT solutions can lead to substantial cost savings and a more immersive hospitality experience. Let's dive right in and hear what Fabio has to share with us.

Fabio, can you tell us a little. Bit about your background, how you ended. Up in the hospitality sector, why you started bubblynet, and your role in driving sustainable innovation in hospitality technology? Yes, Skip, I'm an engineer, but I always loved aesthetics and interiors and for 20 years I was in automotive, I was in robotics, and then I had the opportunity start a company into the cruise ships and high end yachting and there we were doing lighting, we were doing controls, we were pretty much taking care of everything experience inside of these luxury yachts.

And those luxury yachts have to be designed not only for their private owners, but also for their charting times that most of the time is the primary use of those yachts. So I came to understand how is important to address those minute details that make an amazing experience. We were doing lighting, we were doing controls. A few years later we start getting into land.

So architectural space and of course hotels was the most immediate target for our projects. And around 2010, 2012 we started Bubblenet as a wireless solution for hospitality and as well as also commercial real estate in general, healthcare and so on. But hospitality definitely is our main focus. Obviously I know your background a little bit and your company a little bit more, but we're really talking about IoT devices here in order to be able to monitor and control some of these systems.

For the sustainability piece, what inspired you to focus on sustainability through IoT and energy management systems? So as you get into the IoT space, you get into embedded systems. That means that you're putting intelligence at the edge. You're putting intelligence on the last few feet of your project.

So your lighting becomes intelligent, your sensor become intelligent. Pretty much anything that is electrical or electronic can be intelligent. And as you are able to get all those data points, you can do some incredible things. And the two major, I would say values are sustainability and well being.

On the sustainability side of course is how it can be energy efficient, but it's also how little energy I will need in order to process that information. So being able to process information at the edge level, not having to push all your information to the cloud, that reduce drastically the amount of energy that, as you know, right now we are getting kind of, we are starving for energy with all these new data centers that are coming that are being built right now across the country.

And so that is one piece of sustainability. The other piece of sustainability is in a hotel up to 10, 15 years ago, in order to have all that intelligence, you had to have panels and cabinets and equipment and pull Cat 6 cable across all your property. So it was very, very demanding in terms of labor, but also in terms of resources. By going edge, by going IoT and having most of the computing being done at the device level, we can save up to 94% on earth resources just because you're using less cables, you're using less copper, metal, silicon and so on.

So that is one sustainability. The next one is well being. So well being means not only health and happiness of your guest, but is everything that can be included on a guest experience. I will give you a few examples.

We can control and monitor of course your H Vac, so your temperature in your room, but we can also control your CO2 level. So CO2 level is determinant. In order to have your best sleep quality at night. We can also mask what could be noises and distractions, unfamiliar sounds on a corridor, for instance.

That is another reason your sleep can be of poor quality. Do you loop in lights there as well? Yes, absolutely. So what you do is lighting.

In terms of lighting, nowadays, LEDs can have different kind of spectrums throughout the day. So in the morning you want to feel energized. Well, you can have a light that is brighter and more, let's say, bluish, we call it melanopic frequencies is the technical term. But now that lighting will make you feel more alive.

But if you use the same kind of light at night, well, you are going to have a poor quality of sleep because your body thinks that is day, just because it's getting that input from your guest room. So lighting, sound and so on are all aspects of what you can do with IoT. Another aspect, for instance, is I remember once reading some reviews and people complaining about in the morning having cleaning services, knocking on doors and waking up people and so on. Now you can have your button that is a do not disturb button.

And not only you have a more calm user experience, but then if somebody wants to have a room that is cleaned now your button can change color and all those statuses when you're saying, I want my room to be clean, I don't want to be disturbed, and so on. All those statuses can also be pushed to the cloud and then talk to your property management system so that then you can optimize the service of your cleaning crew. While you just gave me the scenario of the entire IoT architecture within the hotel area, let's concentrate for a second on the energy piece of it.

What are some of the most significant. Energy challenges that hotels, restaurants and other hospitality businesses face today and how can IoT help solve for them? Yes, good question. So hospitality is one of the primary users of energy.

It's incredible how much a hotel, for instance, or a restaurant requires in terms of energy. So the first, first thing is, well, like on a guest room, if we consider that, for instance, your two main loads are going to be your H Vac and your lighting. Now it's very simple. You can have a couple of motion sensors, you can have a sensor on the door, and whenever you open the door, the sensors are going to detect if there is motion or motion.

And this is called smart occupancy. So in the middle of the night, if you don't move, it's not that the sensor will think that there is nobody in the room. But with these solutions, we can know at every given time if a room is occupied or not occupied. So for instance, we've been doing properties where, like right now we're doing a property here in Florida facing west.

Big energy, challenging because of course, everybody wants to have big glass panels and be able to see the sea and so on, but that room most of the day is empty. So when the room is vacated after 20 minutes, the shades of motorized shades automatically go down. And that is a big factor because all that sun, that Florida sun, is not going to get into the room. Your H Vac is going to go to what is called a setback temperature.

So your H Vac is going to be using less and all the powers. So your lighting as well as all your, your outlets are going to be disconnected from, from the grid. So the savings, like I've seen statistics, I've seen savings up to 70%. That is huge.

Typically we say, we say, well, you know, you could be saving about 30% of, of your NHBL. So the return of investment on technology, particularly when you go wireless, so very little labor and very easy to install, is typically 12 to 18 months. That is amazing because after 12, 18 months, you know, all those savings go back to you. So are there any emerging trends in energy management that you believe will kind.

Of shape the future of hospitality? Yes, for sure. AI, it's a big trend. So what we are doing right now is we take all these data points, we push them to the cloud and then we, we have different user interfaces allowing you to see how much energy you're using, you're not using.

When you start correlating energy consumption with occupancy, energy consumption with your different loads, the dimming levels and so on, now you are able to see, well, where you could address your energy consumption. The next thing is now that you have multiple properties, or we can compare your property with other similar properties in the same geographical area. We can immediately start seeing what are the outliers during the day or the weekend of the operation of your hotel and your restaurant.

All these right now is done by our energy consultants. What we're doing right now is we are training AI agents. So right now we have an AI agent that's fully trained on everything, customer service. We are training an AI agent for anything that is a, let's say, energy consultancy.

So the idea is that by plugging IoT and AI together on your property now, you're going to have proactive emails where there will be recommendations. If you go with this strategy, you could do this and you could do that. We could even get to a point in which if a client says, well, just get me full AI, like let's go fully AI agentic now, it's going to be automatic. So the sequence of operation in your property will automatically adjust to the best in class in that geographical area for the type of property.

So you brought up data points and that brings up a really important question that I hear quite a bit from IT executives. IoT devices spit out a lot of data. They're capturing tons of data and spitting. It out constantly back to a database or a data lake.

How do you handle all that data coming in? Skip, that is a very important point. What we do is we try to have as much computing being done at the edge as possible. And this has two benefits.

First, of course, is the amount of data that you're pushing to the cloud is a small fraction than what really you would have. If, let's say, your sensors every second will be sending out a message saying, the room is busy, the room is busy, the room is busy. So what we do at the edge is if the room is busy until the room is not vacated, we're not going to send another signal. So those data points are reduced by 99%.

The other thing that is very important is that we limit the bandwidth of that information to what is vital for the analytics. That means at least I have a mic on my room because we are detecting from gunshot or whatever may be. Well, that mic is just an open, close kind of signal. So is there a spike on your decibels?

That is a gunshot. So we send an alarm, but we're not recording the content or what's going on in the room. Similarly, all these sensors, we just extract the information that is needed for the purpose of a client. So the client can also filter at the device level on the configuration of the devices.

What kind of information or how granular or how intense needs to be this data flow to not only minimize the data usage at the cloud, but also you need to consider all that information needs to go through WI Fi. So it's not that now properties need to readdress all their WI fi system just because now they want to go IOT and they want to have all this monitoring. So you really want to have a data band that is minimal comparing to what is going to be the use from your guest for streaming video and so on.

Fabio, you bring up a very good point about implementation. We are going to take a little. Bit of a break, but I think. That'S a perfect segue.

After the break, we're going to come. Back and talk more about implementation, the ROI of IoT and some of the challenges and opportunities that exist out there within hospitality. So everybody hold on. We'll be right back.

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Fabio, before the break, we are talking. About implementation and you touched on it with WI FI and infrastructure. How do IoT solutions integrate with existing infrastructure in hotels or resorts to improve energy efficiency? Well, our systems are primarily wireless and our commitment to the industry is we're going to have the most vast surface in terms of integration.

So we integrate pretty much with any of the standard wide protocols like BACNET that are typically used for BMSS. We have APIs, either local APIs and cloud APIs, and then we use a lot of other products protocols from Rs232 to MQTT and so on. So what is very important is many properties are not in the position in which they can remove their legacy controls and put brand new controls that would be really too disrupting for the operations. So being able to either adapt or or complement a legacy system with these new technologies is vital.

That's why we've been developing all these capabilities in terms of integration. So we integrate with AV systems without mentioning brands and names. But most of the AV companies integrate fully with our system as well as most of the bms. We can work with property management systems that are either local or PMSS, that are cloud based because we have APIs for both sides.

So the beauty here is that without touching your walls, without having to pull Cat 6 all over the place, you can start adding these elements in order to get more information or deliver a better experience with a minimal impact. There's many projects where we go in and out of a guest room in two hours. So in two hours is what you need to remodel here and there. There could be a few scratches or a few smears to clear, but it's not that you need to open the walls and put extra cabinets and so on.

So it's very, very important whenever you decide, yes, I want to start implementing IoT. I want to start implementing all the things that we discussed, defining and determining which technology to use in order not to have a physical impact in your operations and an impact on your current infrastructure. What you do with wireless is you have a parallel infrastructure that is a totally wireless infrastructure and you use that highway instead of having to go through your routers and your wi fi and your legacy infrastructure on your premises.

When we were talking before the show, I was explaining or telling you. I was at CES recently in Vegas and the amount of IoT exposure there was pretty impressive, probably a more significant presence than I've seen in the past. And I know we've been talking about energy savings here most of the conversation, but my question to you is, how are IoT devices contributing to like a broader sustainability goal within hospitality, for instance, waste reduction or maybe water conservation?

I would say that IoT is getting a new life for two aspects. One, of course, is the advent of AI that will decouplicate the power of IoT. And the other is the continuous reduction of the cost of an IoT device, of a tag, of a beacon, and so on. So we're getting to a point in which you can start controlling.

For instance, you were mentioning about reducing waste. You can control the temperature at which certain supplies are being stored. And that allows you also to know what kind of life you have on the shelf of different products or different producers and so on. But you can also start controlling your water flow, your waste, your sewer.

You can really control all aspects of inputs and outputs of your property with IoT and it really costs a fraction. Nowadays you can have a Silicon Labs or a Nordic chip that 10 years ago was a full computer in terms of computing power for $5, $6. And that shows you how economically it's becoming implementing IoT into a hotel or a restaurant. So we've talked about some of the more common aspects of ROI within hospitality, using IoT devices and monitoring.

Obviously, energy savings is certainly impactful. I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything. How are these systems translating into tangible cost savings or ROI for hotel operators? Yes.

So of course the most immediate is that power bill or those different bills that are going to go down. But it's not a secondary effect of IoT. The type of operational cost savings that you can have, like by monitoring, we were mentioning earlier, the status of different guest rooms or the status of different equipment and supplies and so on. The amount of time that can be saved on personal is extraordinary.

There is the fact that having a clear picture of what's going on on your property reduces stress on management and operators big time. Because you know exactly what's going on. You have a grasp of what is happening most of the time you have prediction of what could happen right or wrong in the near future or long term future. You can have predictive maintenance, for instance.

So imagine having now a property down just because your Chile is down, or what could be the effect on the brand just because now you have an elevator that is down. So a lot of what IoT can deliver is that the prediction of what can happen on this equipment based on the sensors, are we getting more vibrations on elevator shaft? Are we getting more temperature on a specific valve? And by monitoring these and by using AI, you can determine there is a 99% chance that valve is going to go down.

And that valve has to do with the West Wing hot water and now being able to preventively correct that valve and not having to do it after the fact. Where now you have gas without hot water, well, that is a big. It's still a saving, but it's definitely a plus in terms of reduced stress, a better operation, better customer service and less disruption to the operation of a property. We've talked a lot about this technology.

I mean, it used to be a little bit cost prohibitive in the past for smaller properties. How can smaller boutique hotels or smaller properties leverage IoT solutions without large budgets? Yes, going wireless, definitely the best solution. Nowadays on a guest room you can start with a few hundred dollars a key up to of course, $1,000, $2,000 a key.

On common areas you could have an investment of a dollar a square foot. Those are really minimal cost comparing to the savings that we've been discussing. The increase in productivity of employees, improve in customer experience and yes, I would say five, ten years ago, going iot, going full integration on a property will be cost prohibitive for a lot of particularly like historical buildings or buildings that need to be just remodeled and so on. Nowadays it makes absolutely sense and the return of investment is, is totally there.

Before we finish up here, I got a two part question. What's the most unique implementation of IoT devices you've seen? And number two, what is the most successful use case of implementing an IoT device? So very interesting topic.

The ownership wanted to have a different experience throughout the day. What they did is they, they used the lighting, but they used also the music that they were streaming on the property. So the designer was able to correlate the intensity of the light and the brightness of the light with the beats per minute of the music streamed through the property. So you will have a high bits per minute music in the morning just to get energized and then you will have a lower bits per minute of a music in the evening and warmer colors, more ambery lights in the common areas just to create that coziness and relaxing kind of experience.

So these are very interesting aspects where the property is no longer your typical light and a few other. But you start having different components like fragrances being different or increase or decrease music beat per minute or type types of music throughout the day. So you are, you are really having an approach to the guest experience that is a holy experience. And I love that level of commitment from the leadership at those properties because I think back to, I was recently in Vegas and I'm always amazed when I go through these amazing properties out there because they take what you just described to a whole different level.

And the beautiful part is that you have this feeling but you're not really paying attention to the technology around it. It's transparent, but it really provides a complete immersive experience in that property's environment. So that's a fantastic best use case scenario. How about the most successful use case?

Well, the most successful definitely is energy monitoring. That is, it's huge in terms of operational cost, but also impact on on, on the environment. So huge. So to boil that down, that really should be the driving force with the initial decision to move into iot.

Yes, absolutely. There is also because connected to energy monitoring, there is a rebates, there is code compliance, there is a lot of state level and federal level incentives to do that. So when, when you are able to write those incentives, everything else, everything else that we've been talking during the podcast comes for free because it's really paid by the energy side of the equation. Fabio, our time is up, unfortunately.

Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to speak with you and to kind of sponge some of that information in that head of yours to figure out all these amazing things that are going out there in the hospitality space. So thank you once again for coming on the show. Skip.

It was my pleasure. Thank you so much. Well, there you go. If you haven't implemented IoT devices on your property or in your restaurant, what are you waiting for?

You will experience significant cost savings. Let's continue this conversation online. You can always reach out to me via everything social, Skip Kimple or everything Magic 8 Tech. This includes X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

You can always go to the website@Skip Kimble.com for all of the archived shows and you can also hear all of these new episodes on the Magic gate website@magicgate.com and of course you can email me skip magic8.com next week is a surprise guest.

We actually recorded him over a year ago and due to some logistic issues, it took this long to get him on the show. Now, much has happened since we first recorded our session, so we decided to do it all over again just for you. So make sure you tune in for the next episode. That's it for this week and I am so glad you took the time to join us.

And until next Tuesday, stay safe, stay healthy and stay hungry, my friends.