Simone Puorto: The hotel industry does not need more software

Speaker A: Lets get one thing straight. According to our guest today, making pizza is an art form and there is only one real masterpiece in the world. My guest argues that the only acceptable pizza is the purely simple, classic margherita, made of beautiful olive oil tomatoes from Naples and buffalo mozzarella from Caserta. To quote my guest, there is no topping or everything that is not a margarita is blasphemy. Just like a perfectly crafted pizza nourishes the soul, true hospitality is an art form. A warm human connection between a host and a guest. Both rely on simplicity to shine. But in our rush to modernize, the hotel industry has often buried that beautiful simplicity under mountains of unnecessary, chaotic technological toppings. Joining us today is Simone Puerto, a philosopher turned hotelier who now operates as an outspoken tech futurist. And he's not afraid to polarize an audience. In fact, he once received a death threat for predicting that human revenue managers will be the first jobs permanently replaced by automated digital workers. Yet despite his profound love for automation and AI, Simon's vision for travel is shockingly simple. He believes that to save the sacred nourishing relationship between the host and the guest, the hospitality of tomorrow must actually become tactless. So are we hurtling toward a dystopian nightmare of robotic, humanless check ins? Or will invisible technology finally liberate us to provide that warm connection and actual care for our guests? And more importantly, will we be eating a simple, properly sourced margarita when the dust settles? The answer might completely shatter your view of the industry. Welcome to the Turndown Simon. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Welcome to the Turndown.

Speaker B: Thank you so much.

Speaker A: I'd like to know what keeps you up at night these days, Simone. And you can go wherever you want to go.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, uh, first of all, thank you so much. Um, what keeps me up at night? So we were discussing a little uh, before off camera camera. So except for my kid. It's about, uh, you know, what is really interesting to me, what has been interesting for the, for the last few, couple of years, is how the industry is changing and what the industry might look like in just a few years with uh, you know, automation coming into the space at a higher speed, uh, AI, this new, you know, concept about, around digital workers and uh, agentic AI. And so my question is always the same. If we're getting all of this technology into the picture that, you know, I'm a fan of, you know, I'm a techno enthusiast, is it still hospitality or is something else? And it doesn't have to be something worse. But is it still hospitality? And, uh, so that is, that is kind of philosophical question that keeps me up at night very often. So welcome to my, to my world.

Speaker A: Well, and I think, uh, to level set this discussion, what is hospitality from your point of view in 2026? Because we can talk about the future and we can talk about the past, but if you, if you are very unfiltered, very honest in 2026, what is hospitality from your point of view today?

Speaker B: You know, I, I like words. Uh, it's one of my, my, my manifolds. Uh, and, uh, if you go back to the root, hospitality comes from hospice, and that's Latin. And the funny thing is that it means two things at the same time. It means host, but it also means guest. So you have this very interesting, like you often do with Latins, a dichotomy of two words defining different concepts under the same term.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And so I always like to play with. The idea is like, okay, let's say we go, we go to a more human, less kind of hospitality that to a certain extent already exists today. Right. The example I always make is Airbnb. We all had that kind of experience where you go, you know, you check in on an app, you check out on an app, maybe you talk to the host via WhatsApp, you got your key card on a PO box, you basically have no human interaction. Is that still a hospitality? Because if we look at the Latin term, that's not a hospitality, because you're removing the host out of the picture. It's only the guest. Right. So what is hospitality today? It's hard to say. I would say that if anything, it's more guest centric, but not in the way that we like to create, uh, the narrative around it. I would say that it's a little more self service in a way. Right. Um, and again, I think it's an interesting question that, uh, we should ask ourselves. What is the. What? You know, it's a double test. Uh, what are we giving away, what we're getting out of that. So I think that this is probably the first time since, I don't know, the first hotel was 2500 years ago. I think the first one is some. Somewhere like 700, uh, before Christ. This is really the first time in the history of hospitality that this question really means something and that we need to sit down and probably redefine the term itself. So I don't know. I don't think I have an answer for that. I think if anything, right now Hospitality is a moving target. And uh, what we could do is probably try to probably will always be a moving target from now on, but at least we need to make sure it's a moving target within a certain perimeter because otherwise it can mean pretty much anything. I didn't really answer though.

Speaker A: No. But let me rephrase in order to see where we're at from your perspective. Hospitality today is less about the host, is more about the guest.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: In that equation, in that sort of, I'm the host, I have a house, I'm opening my door to a guest. Right. Like hospital. In the traditional sense of host accommodating a guest today in 2026, it is less about the ghost, the host, or at least to the guest, he's less visible.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And it's more about who's the guest and let's accommodate the guest to the best of our capabilities, at least at this point in time. Is that a fair analysis?

Speaker B: Totally. And I can also say that the best of the capabilities of the host sometimes can also mean being invisible, not being there, you know, for some of these guests, the fact that there will be nobody on the other side, that will be ah, a totally humanless experience could actually be a plus. And that is really, you know, because I think up until a few years ago we always lived in a very black or white situation, right? You got um, the traditional hospitality on one side, you got people centric, high human touch. And then you got everything that is, you know, non traditional hospitality, uh, apartments, you know, even, even BnBs. For, for to a certain extent. Right. And it was very like uh, it was like a, like, like a fan club mentality. You know, you were either the hospitality fan or you were the non hospitality fan. And I think, and I think it all started during COVID It started the, it started to blur, you know. And now you got people that can pick up a human centric or a human less experience depending on whatever, you know, where they are with their life, what the reason for the travel is, whatever. Right. And now I think we are less black or white when it comes to picking up where to sleep. And uh, but this of course changes the dynamics because you know, when you say guest centric, when the industry says guest centric, we always think about hyper personalization that to me it's a myth but by, you know, we can pick it up later. But anyway, I think what is happening is it's more guest centric because the guest is taking the role of a host very, very often. Think about it again. You have, uh, an Airbnb experience. You will be the guest and the host. The fact that you're checking yourself in, you're acting as the guest and the host. So the responsibility of the check in experience is pretty much yours. It's a funny. I don't think we have any real, uh, history in the past to look for and to anticipate what is, what is really changing.

Speaker A: All right, lots to dive into. But before we get into many of the areas that you just mentioned, I want to sort of introduce you, Simone, to the audience. Who are you? What do you do? And why should people care about your opinion? I mean, you clearly have an opinion, right? Oh, yeah. So give me your elevator pitch. Give me your dating profile. Sorry, too much information.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Uh, so you want, you want the Tinder version of it? Uh, so that is. So the short story is this. Um, I didn't want to do this. You know, when I started, uh, 27 years ago, I was studying philosophy. I wanted to be a philosopher teacher. Philosophy teacher or a philosopher, even better. So. And, um, so. And I was 19. I said, what is the dumbest job I can get? And I knew how to speak a little English. I knew how to speak a little French. I said, look, I'm going to work in a hotel and I'm going to take the night shift. There will be nothing to do when I can study, you know, my, my, uh, beloved philosophers. And, um, somehow I fell in love with the, uh, with the industry. And I started working more and more into, into hotels to the point that, uh, When I was 28, 27, 28, I was general manager for a small group of beauty, uh, hotels in Rome. Right. But I'm also a misanthrope, so I don't really like people too much, you know, I like people in very small, uh, doses. And that doesn't fly well with the hospitality narrative. So I said, okay, maybe what I can do is I can take a step back and take a look at what is happening behind the curtains of hospitality. So I started working more into the consulting space. And I worked for several years with a, with a consulting firm that has been recently acquired by Sendine. I got bored with that as well, so I just. I opened my own consulting firm, uh, around eight years ago, uh, and it's called, uh, Travel Singularity. And the main idea was that I was kind of expecting that things were about to change. That is, that is why the name. And I fell in love with the whole, you know, this whole idea that keeps me up night. And that is how you integrate technology in an industry that is so traditional and it's so human centric and it's so anthropocentric in a, in a way. And from there I started uh, doing what I do most, what most people know me for, and that is writing probably too many articles. Um, I publish eight books. Uh, I've done, I don't know, probably thousands of hours of mba guest lecturer at this point. Uh, I'm on the board of a dozen, uh, uh, travel tech companies. And uh, yeah, that's uh, that's pretty much it.

Speaker A: So you're keeping busy, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, keep the blood thin.

Speaker A: That's amazing. You, you, you started uh, the introduction with you. You were looking for the dumbest job that you could find and yet you fell in love with, with that industry very quickly.

Speaker B: Because I'm dumb. Because I'm dumb myself. So I found my industry.

Speaker A: That's the philosopher's perspective. What made you fall in love with hospitality?

Speaker B: So basically when I was, uh. Let me give you a little extended version of it because when I was uh. So I was working in this very bizarre environment, it was uh, basically two hotels with one single booking and reception office. And it was, it was managed and owned by Trappist monks. You know, if you're not familiar, they're very famous to, for, for making beer. And um, so this was Rome in 98, 99. So you can imagine it was like uh, you know, uh, Stone Age when it comes to technology. So they didn't even have a pms what they were doing, honest to God, they were taking big, big pieces of paper, uh, taping it with, with, with tape. And they were like, if you had to change a room, it was, it was, it was a nightmare. You know, you had to, to delete everything and so forth. So it was so frustrating and it took so much of my time that I, that I wanted to, to do it in a little more clean way. And I came up with a, I was always a nerd, so I came up with like a proto pms. And that was the, you know, that was the beginning of it. And um, to me it was so interesting that you had such an amazing industry working on such broken, uh, infrastructure. And I said, look, if you can fix the infrastructure and you can liberate the people, actually this is going to be amazing. And you know, and it was amazing for a long time. I got a lot of my, my, my best friends, I know them during, during this, this years. So it was to me, I Fell in love with the people and I fell in love with uh, this connection from technology, believe it or not. And I always thought that if you could fix one of the problems, these people could actually give the best of them to a certain extent. Right. Funny thing is that 27 years passed and I don't think we are there yet. If anything, probably here we are in a worse position than we were before. Uh, but that was what uh, was very interesting for me.

Speaker A: So we didn't fix any of the problems you identified 27 years ago. That sounds frustrating.

Speaker B: Uh, look, I think on paper, yes, I uh, think the main problem we have is the fragmentation of technology, right? And um, our industry, it's complicated, you know, because to be fair, we always complain about the fact that we are not a very tech savvy industry industry. But I always make the same example, compare it. Like let's say tomorrow you want to open a little, a little shop and you want to sell shoes. Uh, okay, you can probably operate with no software at all. You know, you just need a POS to get credit card charges. And that's pretty much it. If tomorrow you want to open even a small boutique hotel, like I know 10 rooms, you will need at least, I would say six, seven different software, right? You will need a PMS, you will need a channel manager, you will need a booking engine, you will need a payment gateway and so forth. So the fact, I think that we were in a situation where we had to implement a lot of technology very early on when technology was still, this was of course pre cloud, pre API, pre everything in a very monolithical way. And uh, we kind of inherited that. So now we got a lot of technologies that in silos they work perfectly, but when combined together they kind of create this overkilling of technology, right? So, and on top of that, you know, the funny thing about hospitality is that if you're running a, uh, shop, you can close the shop at some point, you go home and you go to sleep and that's finito, you know, start again the next day. That's not the case with hotels. You never close. So there's never a time where you can sit down and think and maybe reassess your tech stack. So you're always running on an emergency, a continuous emergency, and you're. The last thing you want to do is to change your tech stack while you're doing that. Right? So, and I think this create like, like the perfect storm and uh, and the situation where we are in the situation we are, we are right now So I wouldn't say it's, it's the vendor's responsibility. It's just that we did the technology before technology was really ready to help us in a way.

Speaker A: You make me, uh, remind myself of COVID when I hear, you know, that the hospitality ever stopped. There were, depending on the country, there were probably a few weeks during COVID where hotels stopped operating. They were closed. Right. They had to send stuff away and, you know, we weren't really there, um, I guess operating a hotel at that moment in time. But otherwise, uh, the way I describe it, it's, you're driving a car and you're trying to change the engine, you're trying to change the wheels, you're trying to change while you're driving. Right. Um, and it's extremely hard. Is that, is that what you're, what you're observing? Is that the total experience?

Speaker B: Totally. The way I put it, I put it, uh, probably, uh, less poetically than you. And the way I put it is I would, if I was an otlier today, I would rather go through a divorce than to change my PMS because of all of the pain that it goes with that, you know, because first of all, as you said, you're driving a car and you still need to change the engine and the wheel while you're driving. And, you know, best case scenario, now you need to ride with two engines, so one needs to be the backup of the other. So it's not uncommon that you're changing one piece of tech and now you need to run with two different pieces of tech up until the moment you can run with the last one. You know, with PMS implementation, that's pretty much always the case. Right. You run them in parallel. I don't know of any other industry that needs to go through this. You know, again, you close, you review your tech stack, you move on. That is not the case for, that's not the case for us. So on one side, there's the operational side of things. It's very hard to do it while you're, you're, you know, always, uh, putting off fires. And on the other side, I would also say, and this is probably part of the vendor's responsibility, it is very hard for a hotelier to understand what piece of technology to buy. Right. It's very hard to compare, uh, even websites that I'm not going to mention are trying to go a little more meta and trying to compare different software, but still it's very hard unless you get a proper demo and maybe you've got an implementation and you got the system for six months and then you can see if that is the right fit for you. It doesn't work. So it's a lot of word of mouth that it's never a good thing. And um, so I would say these are hospitality typical situations that are unique to our industry. I cannot find another industry with the same, with the same problems. Really?

Speaker A: Yeah. What's your take in Rome? You're in Rome right now. What's your take? The average hotel uses how many systems today?

Speaker B: Too many? I would say. No more than that. I would say that on average, like anything, if you're not considering really small, really small properties, I would say that on average, at least you got 15, 15 different software. Look, I'm working on uh, a tech stack project for a client of mine and it's uh, an average property in Switzerland, Italian. Switzerland. We're talking 85 rooms. So it's not super small, but it's not even a, ah, thousand rooms. And we're talking about 27 different software. 20 freaking seven different software. And on top of that, you know, again, the general manager just signed contract after contract because he needs to solve some problems. Now we had the time to sit down and look at the cost of these technologies and it's crazily high. You know, it's only the technology is probably 10% of the overall revenue, you know, so it's uh, it is what it is.

Speaker A: So out of the 27, give me two where hotels should invest more in and two that you think should disappear.

Speaker B: Uh, you want me to get so many enemies now?

Speaker A: Um, no, that's okay. This is a safe space. Nobody's listening right now.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, I know. For the moment, um, uh, look, I think there are some technologies that whatever you pick will make no difference at all. Okay. And that is pretty much everything that is invisible to the guest and it's pretty much non operation centric. Typical example could be a channel manager. Okay, you will not touch it anyway. You will work on a pms. The guests will not see it. You know, you can probably save some money and go with an okay channel manager. You don't need to get best of the breed pms, that's a different story. For the better of the words is still a very PMS centric industry, you know, so it's probably where you need to sit down and do your research. And I would say that what you need to do is not only look at it from an operational point of view, meaning is this going to solve my problems? But Also from a um, uh, future proof point of view. Meaning is the system open enough? Because I don't, especially now, I don't know if I need to integrate like uh, I don't know, an agent in two years for example. Right. Can I do that with, with the infrastructure of MyPMS? Is it cloud native? What are the APIs? Do they even know what an MCP is? You know, all of these questions that I imagine the typical hotelier, uh, cannot and should not ask to the vendor. Right? That's not the job of the hotelier. So I would say the PMS is again, as I told you, it's probably better to go through a divorce. So I would say PMS if you want to spend a little more, spend on pms, you know, and um, then that I think there is a lot of ancillary stuff out there that doesn't really make a big difference that you

Speaker A: could get rid of or I think

Speaker B: that to a certain extent you can get rid of or probably you will not need it below a certain number of rooms. And I would say that other software are probably. We put too much faith on this software so we overestimate what this software can do for us.

Speaker A: Give me an example. I know you don't want to name anyone, but you don't need to name a brand, but give me at least a category.

Speaker B: So an RMS for a boutique hotel. Okay. This is something that. How much is it going to change your revenue and how much you're going to get the same results without that piece of technology? Uh, I think it's a fair question. Right? And again I think it comes from the inability to compare exactly the different technologies because you got, you got, I don't know, uh, a 200, uh, room, uh, property in Paris, right. Uh, with like a very leisure centric distribution, very uh, US centric in that case that the, every room will count, you know, uh, like a small 1% extra profit will make all the difference in the world. And I can understand, okay, sure, we need system to back us up, you know, or even a system to, to take decision for us. Great. 20 room boutique hotel in I don't know, the south of, of Sicily. Will that make a big difference? I don't know, I'm not sure. Okay, the problem is that maybe uh, the hotelier goes to a trade show, you know, it goes to the, whatever, you know, your local version of ITB or, or wtm and some vendor is talking about the fact that now you can increase your revenue and your rev bar by uh, a Billion percent. And uh, with no context whatsoever, now you go back and you say okay, we need an RMS and you sign an rms, right. And then you go to the next thing. So now we need a semantic analysis tool. Great. The problem is that you got two reviews a day, so the volume is never going to be there. Or we need now I don't know, like ah, like ah. I'm trying hardly not to name drop, but um, it can be like, like a platform aggregating data from other destinations. Great. Uh, but, but still, you know, only five properties in my destination signed up with that vendor. So the numbers I have are completely relevant. So I think a lot of these technologies looks, look great on paper, but when you put it into the reality of the single, the single, the single property or the single destination, you need to give a closer look and really, really see if, if that, if that makes a difference or not. Not to mention CRMs or whatever we put under the name of CRMs. You know, so it's um, I think, I think if you basically got two extremes here. You got on one side you got the hotel that will stuck with a PMS and a channel manager and a booking engine, end of story. And on the other side you will have the hotel that will sign everything that looks new and at some point this will pile up and you get, you get to the example of this client I told you about with 27 different software and I would say that probably 17 needs to go because they will not only they make no difference, they cannot be integrated between each other. So now you have this, this nightmare of tech silos everywhere. And just to understand where is the single source of truth for your guest, it's pretty much impossible. Right? And you know, that's completely different story with data and data warehouse, but it's. I um, would say that the problem is that this is not a decision that, that a hotelier can, can take by himself or herself. This is not a decision that I could take when I was a hotelier myself because you've got more urgent things to deal with. You know, I was a hotelier for a long time. You know, I've seen them all. You know, you have guests dying in the room, you know, like a room getting on fire. Whatever you deal with that, you know, if you uh, uh, somebody locked in the elevator for three hours, that's your emergency. You know, you cannot think too much about what kind of PMS you need to, you need to buy. And this is where the consultant get into the space. The problem is that a Lot of these consultants are taking quite a lot of um, commissions from vendors. So you never know if what they're suggesting you is exactly the tool for you and you create this, you know, quite liminal nightmare, dystopian effect.

Speaker A: That sounds terrible. I know. Okay, hold on. There's a lot to unwind here. Be um, critical about which systems you use is what I'm reading between the lines. Not every RMS will deliver the value it actually promises to deliver. So you may be using a lot of system for its intended purpose, but the value it creates is not worth the effort. Is, is what I understand from, you know, in this. I asked you, um, uh, before we go into the consultant area, I asked you is there a system or is there a solution out there that you think in 2026 hotels should invest more in? Because you know, it is something that is exciting, exciting from your point of view, that is unlocking value that you know will be the hottest commodity in the future.

Speaker B: I don't think it's, I don't think it's a piece of software but uh, it's a shift in mentality and I think what we really need today is to make sure 100% that we got the single reliable source of truth. And that is something you never find, right? So typical example is there's a lot of talking about, you know, I don't even want to go into agents but think about, I don't know, conversational reporting or integrating some conversational booking engine and so forth. That's all great on paper, but in order to do that you need to make sure that these systems are trained on the right, right data. And often you don't even know where these data are, you know, because part of this data will be on a pms part of this data will be on your food and beverage system, part of this data will be under your CRM M and so forth. So it's, it's very hard just to even, just to understand where the source data is coming from. Right. And I'm pretty sure if you go to a hotel you've been like many, many times, there will be so many different version of your and each version will say a different story, right? Or just a little piece of the story. So I think what is really exciting for, for us right now is trying to find a way to find an agnostic. So it's, it doesn't even need to be vendor centric, single uh, source of truth, you know, like a data warehouse. You can put it like that. You know, I'm oversimplifying but because again, first of all you don't know what you will need in a few years. Probably you don't know what you will need a few months. And let's say that at some point I will need to uh, to, to get to a level of hyper personalized marketing automation that is only possible if I really understand who Sebastian is. And to understand who Sebastian is I need to get all the pieces. It cannot be all, all around. Otherwise I will get just a, like a small part of the story. Right? Let me give you an example. I go to the same hotel, uh, over and over again and you know, they got a lot of information on the PMS about what I, you know, what time I check in and what time I check out, for example, but the PMS is not recording data from the, from the FMB system, for example, and I'm a vegetarian. And now you're sending me on Easter, you're sending me this menu and the first thing I read is that you know, you're, you're, you're offering me uh, uh, like uh, like an yellow, an Italian agnello, a baby lamp. And I said okay, fine, but you should know that I don't need this stuff. Right? Right. And the problem is that there are so many different versions of Simone. You know, there's the PMS version, there's the food and beverage version and so forth. So I would say that it's what you, the shift needs to be. Do you know exactly where your data lies? You know, and let's say that tomorrow you want to integrate like something as simple as a chatbot on, on your website or like a digital worker picking up the phone. You know, it's all very much doable. Where do you plug and play this system? You know, where is the source and this is where the problem starts. Not to mention that maybe you want again, maybe you want to make sure because now you got this fear of missing out and you start signing more and more contracts. But again you will work even in more silos now because maybe you sign up, uh, uh, um, you sign up a contract with a, with a chap or, or, or an automatic email platform and when you decide to move to another software, you understand that all the training has been done internally and proprietarily by that platform. Right? So to me it's more about make sure that the ownership of data is under control. It's more about the governance of your data right now rather than the single pieces of technology. This is something we can discuss later. But if I know that I got an agnostic single source of truth that I can plug and play to whatever system I use. I'm already in a very, very, um, good position.

Speaker A: Now a hotelier may say, isn't that my pms? And why is it not my pms, Isn't that the single source of truth?

Speaker B: I would say that first of all, I would say this again, it could be an unpopular opinion, but I think um, it's a dangerous situation to be so PMS reliant and so PMS centric when it comes to the industry. So that's the first part. Uh, the second one is.

Speaker A: And why is that? Sorry, I need to double click on that. Why is it dangerous to be reliant on a modern cloud based PMS system? I would say I'm talking about the database that is underneath your reception sitting.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, oh sure, you know, sure. I think it's just a question of, again I think it's more a question of mentality because now you over rely on your PMS for, for whatever reason, right? And um, and it kind of creates, even in the industry, kind of create this, this fun club mentality where you got, you know, the best of the breed versus the all in one. You know, that's the, the conversation we all listen to and it creates even more confusion, right? So now you got, and you know, you have this all the time. You got on one side you got the hotelier that are all for the big O. Uh, and you know, the only one system and the other one is I'm going to go super agnostic with this, you know, best of breed and still it's, wouldn't it be better that the data is somewhere else and this is agnostic and I can just plug the PMS on top of this data and I will free myself from this dependency. And I can, I could be, I could be overthinking this but I, but I think it's um. This is problem number one. The problem number two is that the problem is that PMS is not always the most reliable source because it's not always the entry point. You know, sometimes the entry point is something else. And uh, are we sure that this data is coming back correctly into the bms? So you got for example, the first example is the data entry, uh, errors, human data entry errors. Again, my name is Porto. Nobody can pronounce it right, not even my mother. Okay? Like it's, I go to hotel, I got like 20 different spelling of my name. That's already one problem, right? So it's so that's one or the other one is what is the level of. Because there's a lot of talking about, you know, open system, open API, that's all great, but we never really think about the quality of this API, of this documentation. So what kind of data are we sending or giving it back? Let me give you a typical example. Uh, so you get an RMS and uh, you're seeing that the pickup for a specific date is growing and growing and growing. So the RMS will tell you, look, you need to increase your price. But now you see that the information that is coming from the PMS to the RMS is not the availability for each room type, but it's the availability in general. So for example, instead of telling you, look, we're selling a lot of rooms, but it's only double single use rooms because there is a uh, pharma, uh, meeting in town, okay? So that's the only kind of room they're going to buy. Now the information that is coming via uh, the API is look, we're selling a lot of rooms, so you need to increase all of your prices and now you start increasing your prices for a triple room or family room. But nobody is buying these rooms, right? This is like a beautiful system, a beautiful RMS that is being trained on data that are not correct. So that is another thing. Okay? So it's, it's also about the quality of the interaction with the different software and that can create another, another issue.

Speaker A: And the depth of the APIs or the, the current, the frequency of data.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. Especially, you know, I was discussing the other day, again an unpopular opinion, but I was discussing about the fact that uh, you know, Google launched this umcp, uh, uh, protocol, right? And that is to standardize the uh, purchases directly into generative uh, engines, you know. And I said look, this is pretty much the same thing we used to have with Book with Google. I don't know if you remember at some point with MetaSearch I said look, you can book, you can finalize your reservation directly inside the search engine result page. Never worked out because the volatile for us, it's way higher than it's that we retail, right? So there are so many different things at stake at the same time that the quality of the API needs to be something you should be concerned about. But again, is it something I can ask to a hotelier that the main focus is to care about guests? Because I don't want developers to check me in. I want you know, uh, people with soft skill to check me in so they need to rely on somebody else to first of all understand what they do, but also give them the best, um, the best solution. So um, it's like we are um, at our core we are a very soft skill industry, but we are requested to have such a degree of high skill, of hard skills that it's not even funny. Again, open a typical LinkedIn job position posting, right? We're looking for a receptionist. Fine. Uh, it needs to be uh, able to work in a team. Fine needs to be very human centric, you know, and uh, soft skilled. But now it needs to know 25 different software. It needs to understand how to get this commission out of Expedia. And it needs to understand how this integrates into that booking engine. And this is where you got, you do not get the best of the breed because now you got this mythological creature that are half developers and after receptionist that are not good at it at uh, either, you know, you see my point? So it's, we cannot ask the hospitality people to understand the technology. Uh, we should guide them how we guide them. That's a whole different story.

Speaker A: What's the solution?

Speaker B: I, uh, don't know. It's, it would be great to have a proper system at least to filter out which technology is not correct for you. And um, it's not even what is correct for you, but just you go into the market now and I live in Italy right now as I told you, and we are bombarded with local vendors, right? Um, especially there is one company that is buying everything right now. So now you go there and say, okay, I uh, need a booking engine. Great. I start googling booking engines and I got like a uh, thousand different results. So which one is the best for me? It's pretty impossible now to understand that. So if we can find a way just to filter out the noise, that will already be something. In order to do that though, the vendors should be open to give the information about their systems. So now the system can be actually compared. And usually there's a lot of secrecy behind that. You know, it's like where is this PMS making money because it looks too much too good of a deal. And then you understand that maybe they're getting at zero point, whatever percent on top of your uh, transactions. And that is, you know, something probably you didn't realize at first. And um, again it's something that maybe you will realize after a year you're utilizing that um, software. So it's, I um, would say it's more about trying at least to remove the noise when it Comes to, to picking up the right tech stack.

Speaker A: Isn't that what our chatgpts and large language models promise us to do? I mean to cut through the noise, replace, you know, google.com. right. Um, I'm right now shopping for a I'm kid you not pizza oven. Right. And I have, I have three criteria, right. I want it to heat up so I can make Napoleon pizza.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: So it needs to be hot enough, it needs to have the right size, right? And I think that's about it, right? Like it needs to be the right size and it needs to be hot enough. That's. Those are the two criteria.

Speaker B: And of course, but, but you're not, look, you're not Italian because otherwise you will have another 25 criteria. So, so I can guide you into that after, you know, off camera. But

Speaker A: so, but if I go on Google, I see 2000 results. That's crazy. I don't want 2000 results. I want a short list of four or five that are available in my country that I can pick up that I can actually find in a store that I can actually look at before I purchase it. And it brings us to the change of travel, if you will. But isn't that what. I guess the promise of the solutions like ChatGPT make it so attractive that, you know, suddenly I no longer have 200 booking engines to choose for. I have three.

Speaker B: Yes, but let me, let me, let me, uh, let's do a little game. Okay?

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: How do you ask this question to ChatGPT?

Speaker A: I've write.

Speaker B: What do you, what do you write? Give me the prompt.

Speaker A: I give you. Who am I first. I usually start with who am I? Um, here's where I'm located. This is what I care for. This is how much, uh, I mean in this particular context, like this is how often I use the pizza oven. I provide some context around who am I as a person, right?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And this is who I'm, what I'm looking for. And this is what I care for. At least, you know, heats up quickly. I only have three criteria because clearly I'm not Italian. Right. I'm still, you know, um, and that's it. So, but it's maybe a paragraph. It's a mayor, maybe a paragraph.

Speaker B: What is the difference though? It's a pizza oven can work in isolation, right? The only thing you need is do I have enough power in my house to light up? Do you have enough fuel in space? That's it. So fine, you know, um, that's going to be relatively easy to to make a comparison. Now let's say I want to get ah, an rms. So the kind of question, if I follow your logic, I'm a hotelier and I can say, look, I'm, I'm a 40 key uh, property in Paris, you know, and I need, uh, my prices are pretty dynamic and I just want to make sure that I have a system that back my human revenue manager up so he can help me out, right? And I start doing this and I got a list of results. Fine. And I see that the best solution for me is Mickey Mouse, rms, whatever, right? But as a hotelier, I don't know what is the right question to ask. And the right question to ask, for example is this is the PMS I'm using. On top of that I'm um, in Italy. So um, I'm the only country in the entire world where invoicing is different from all the other countries, places in the world. So you need to take into consideration that aspect as well. On top of that my accounting is living in the 70s and he keeps using this stupid account system from 1980. And uh, I cannot get rid of that because otherwise I need to fire that guy. You see, there are so many different variables here that it's impossible to create an answer to get an answer. It's like the dream of ABS.

Speaker A: So the prompt is 200 variable, so 3.

Speaker B: Exactly. And it's impossible because first of all, even if you can get the right prompt, you need to have the first of all the technical understanding of the, of the technology. But you also need to have a pretty good understanding of the SOPs, what you're actually doing in your properties, what are the operations in your properties, what are the process in your properties. A vendor will not have that. So you need to have like a savant, somebody that knows technology know exactly your operation now can tell you this is the right way to go. Okay, Even for us. You know, if a client comes to me and said look, I need to change my rms. So look, I got like a billion question before we even start coming up with a, with a, with a short list, that is the main problem, you know, and uh, it would be great. And I think that there is at least one company that can do that to have something that is a little more proactive. So instead of you going into charge and looking for an oven is know the system coming to you say look, okay, you need an oven. Now reply to all of this question. And after all of this question, I will give you the best oven for you. Uh, it's a slight, it's a different, it's a different angle. You see, it needs to be proactive. That is the problem. Again, I've seen many, many clients just going with a piece of technology that looked amazing on paper, except that it didn't connect to that specific software that for whatever reason could not be changed. And so it's not about finding the best solution for you, it's finding the best solution for you within the perimeter that this solution will work and connect to all the other technology stack not last but not least is the human aspect. You know how it is, you know we got. Let me give you another example and I'm sorry, I'm talking too much probably but you know, a typical example could be something like that. Um, so m. I'm um, helping another client with the tech stack. Uh, so we're changing like PMS booking energy and channel manager. Painful experience to go through. And I got my own idea of what I wanted for them. But he told me something that I didn't think about and that is I do outsource a lot of my staff. So it could be that I got, especially for night managers, I take somebody from an external company, I outsource it, right? And these guys, they are trained on this specific pms. They only know this pms. So if I don't take this PMS and they come and work for me, they don't know what to do with these other PMS that is way better than the one I'm going to pick. But the constraint for me is my operations. So again this is something else that I think vendors never really question is that on paper it looks great and it is great, but they're not taking into consideration the human aspect, the SOP aspect, the reality of the different interactions. And it's a fragile ecosystem, especially with independent hotels. This is think this is where I think it's very hard to make a comparison. And this is why I think chat, GPT or whatever, LLM cannot really help us out if we do ah, in a passive way.

Speaker A: Okay, let's move from pizza search to tribal search. Right. Like in the last 20 years the number one demand channel have been OTAs. I mean I used to work for one OT myself. Um, since I think 2001 or 2000 it was basically the revolution moving to online travel agents. Yeah, A lot of hoteliers that we speak to are wondering these days that travel search will change again, moving potentially from OTAs to agents. What's your point of view? Is that going to happen?

Speaker B: I think The UI is going to change but the infrastructure is not going to change. And this is um, you know I think there are two schools of thought when it comes to that. There are people that will tell you that this will become a renaissance of Bren.com reservation direct reservations. Unfortunately I'm not a very big believer in that because I still think that OTAs right now are in a very good, and you know, you work for one of them in a very good position when it comes to super structured data. You know they speak the language of the LLMs, they speak the language of the agents. So if an agent needs to peak, this is probably where it's going to get the information from from. So um, I can see maybe in a little more far away future hotels adding on top of the brand.com website a brand.com agent. And now it's a slightly different story. My problem though is always the same that agent to agent communication between uh, an agent and uh, a uh, brand.com agent will only start after the user or an agent. It can be human or not, it doesn't really matter. Will make a selection of properties and selection still needs different sources. So different sources, what is the best platform to get this kind of data? It's an ota, so I still get it. Maybe for the. Let me phrase it differently, I think this is the first time I think about it in these terms but I think it makes sense. I think agentic in the future could be similar to what search brand protection is right now. It's last mile. So I decided to go to hotel whatever and I'm going to talk with the agent of the hotel whatever and I'm going to get all the information. Okay. And this will be a beautiful conversation between human to agents or agent to agent doesn't matter. But for everything that is top and mid funnel, that conversation will never be agent to brand.com. agent will be more agent to whoever has the best structured data. So I don't think it's going to change any balance in terms of distribution. It's more going to change balance in terms of UI. So we use ChatGPT or we use Perplexity, we use Gemini or whatever. Uh, what is on the background is pretty much irrelevant. Uh, it's just we're using this UI and that's pretty much end of story. Right. So um, I'm not a firm believer that it's going to change for the best when it comes to more direct revenue because of agents.

Speaker A: So you don't think Google will I guess answer any Agents with their own data, you think they will still rely on OTA data?

Speaker B: Again, let's say you. Okay. Again, let's do a game. Uh, you need a hotel in Barcelona for tomorrow, right. You don't know where you want to go. So Google is talking to which agent. Best case scenario is the destination agent. But it's still an aggregator of data. Right. So it's okay, I'm m looking for and these are my criterias. I wanted to be close to La Rambla and I wanted to pay less than 250 a night. I wanted to breakfast included, whatever. Right. And um, still the agents need to do some comparison now and comparison, you know, it's in the name. It needs to compare different things. So different hotels, but even different prices for the same hotel. That's the main concept of mega search if you think about that. Right. So in that case, why should the, the agent talk to uh, to the hotel agent itself? It's more likely that it will come up with a, uh, with a selection, with a filter and then the conversation will be with uh, the brand uh.com agent. So I see it more as um, a last mile application, if anything.

Speaker A: Okay, so no change basically is that fair or not? Big changes.

Speaker B: I think it's going to be cosmetic changes, changes again, UI changes. It doesn't mean no changes because we see that, you know, like for example for my clients, uh, I've seen at least a uh, 20% drop in organic traffic. And this is all going to gu, you know, it's chatgpt perplexity and so forth. It's great. The problem is that when they get on the website nothing really changes. You know, you got the top funnel is never on the website anyway. So in terms of what is happening after, nothing really is changing. You know, it's changing probably the top funnel, but again it's mainly changing in the way you interact with the interface rather than with the content. So instead of going into 20 different websites to compare, maybe you go into one single interface and this single interface is talking to 20 different websites. So uh, uh, of course it's an easier experience for the guest. But is it changing anything in the dynamics of distribution for the hotel? I don't see that. And probably I'm sure you, you, you've seen a few of these experiments with um, chatgpt apps. You know, m, uh, Marriott has got one, uh, um, a Core has one. You know, a couple of vendors came up with these, with these apps. But it's still a clunky thing. You know, you need to connect an app. It's, it's still um, it's not there yet, you know, and the reason why I want to go to ChatGPT is because I want to. And on top of that, there's something else I think that is interesting is that um, when you look at the results from Google Analytics, so the keywords that trigger uh, the visit to your website and when you compare it to the prompts that trigger the mention of ChatGPT on SEMrush, for example, it's completely different. The search is very much, it's very much um, transactional keywords, mainly branded keywords. It's funny how you show up in mentions for people that started the conversation somewhere else entirely. Right to your case. Let me give you an example. You start looking into a, uh, pizza oven, said, okay, I want to know more, but what is the criteria I need to check out? Okay, I'm going to send a message to Simone. You write to me and I write you back on WhatsApp with 25 rents about why that would never work, you know, and now you said, okay, it's probably right. And I said, look, because the best pizza in the world is from this little pizza place in Naples, blah, blah. And you go, okay, let me check. So maybe I can understand how they do pizza. And now you get exposed to the destination. And now that you're exposed to the destination said, you know what, maybe I'm going to go do a weekend there. You know, it's more intentional and conversational. It's part of a very long story. So the intent is completely different when it, to comes comes to. When it comes to that. And it's funny, you know, I, over the last few months I've been really spending a lot of time just reading to the prompts that, that trigger dimensions. And it's so funny because most of them are not even hospitality related. You show up from conversation that maybe started weeks ago about something completely different. And that's to me it's very interesting. Is it changing anything in terms of the, the, the distribution dynamics? Not that I see.

Speaker A: I want to um, give um, me a lot to thought about. I want to do a quick rapid fire with you before we talk about sort of the future outlook. So rapid fire is very simple. I throw things at you and you give me a short answer with, you know, anything that comes to mind. Let's start with what's one thing that will disappear from a guest hotel room?

Speaker B: That's a good one. Um, uh, TVs in the way. We think of TVs. So they will become screens.

Speaker A: They will come screens. And you bring your own account or do you bring. Do you watch local tv?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's going to be screens like, uh, that you simply, uh, just doubled your screen on whatever you're watching on your Netflix account. You're going to double it on your. Mirror it on your screen.

Speaker A: Okay. Uh, all in One. PMS or Best in Breed?

Speaker B: Uh, you are really a nasty one. Uh, that is. I cannot answer. It's not gonna.

Speaker A: That's okay. That's an answer.

Speaker B: No, no. Look, um, I don't want to be politically correct, but it depends. Uh, uh, some properties will never be able to do the best in breed. You know, some properties will need to go to the. To the all in one. Like, I'm thinking more resorts. I mean, good luck with a beautiful Best in one, and I got a couple in mind, but good luck just making sure that they can manage like, uh, the golf tee time or the casino or whatever, you know, stuff that we don't always think about is going to probably be more like a big a, uh, big thing. But, uh, for the average independent property, if you really want an answer out of me, uh, it's going to be Best of Breeding.

Speaker A: Okay. MCP or APIs?

Speaker B: APIs. You thought I was going with MCP, but it's still early. Too many. Too many, uh, hidden things.

Speaker A: AI centric or human? Centric.

Speaker B: Uh, the humans as luxury, as I always put it. So it's AI in the background, humans in the front.

Speaker A: Okay, favorite, uh, pizza topping. We gotta go there.

Speaker B: There's no topping. There's no topping, my friend. It's all. It's only margherita. There's no amitani. There's no other pizza. I don't even know why you have menus. It's everything. Everything that is not a margarita is blasphemy.

Speaker A: Okay? Okay, so. But there's. There's cheese on the pizza, right?

Speaker B: You got beautiful olive oil, you got a beautiful toma tomato from. From, uh, Naples or close to Naples, and a beautiful mozzarella from very specific place in Caserta. And that's it. That's it. That's it.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. What's one question you wish more people ask you but don't?

Speaker B: Um, I think a lot of people is obsessed, and again, I'm a futurist, so it's counterintuitive coming from me, but I think a lot of people, uh, ask me about the future. They don't really ask about what they need to Fix now to make sure that they are future proof. So I think this whole last mile mentality of pragmatism, of just implementing something, it's going to be dangerous. So I would like to. The question that I don't get, uh, asked very often is what should I do now, not what I should do tomorrow.

Speaker A: Okay, so what's the answer?

Speaker B: Uh, do a proper due diligence of three things. Tech stack, due diligence, SOP due diligence people, due diligence. Make sure you understand how these interact with each other. And you already did 90% of the work.

Speaker A: Okay. Um, you publish in a constantly new things, right? You're very active on hospitality net. What's one topic that I guess polarizes most people that you're publishing? Um,

Speaker B: uh, digital workers. Uh, automation. Uh, look, I, I was talking to a friend today. Look, I, uh, remember it's not, I'm not joking. I received a debt threat once because I said I, I was talking about the specific, I said, look, the, the way human revenue managers, the way we think about the human revenue managers today, it will disappear. They will be the first one to go. Okay, to my students I always say, look, if you want to go into revenue management, be very careful what you mean with that, right? Because the way our assumption of what a revenue manager is, is going to disappear. And every time I talk about automation and I try to be as really balanced as possible, you know, if you, you know, a little bit my, my work, I'm, I'm very uh, ethic centric. You know, to me it's very important that, that if, whenever we implement some level of automation, this will not, uh, disrupt the human workers. But every time I do mention that, you got huge and polarized reaction on one side. You got the transhumanist way of people say, look, humans are crap. You know, we're going to automate everything. And this would be a beautiful society. And that's a dystopian nightmare for me. Uh, on the other side it was a. Look, this is hospitality. We never get technology into our processes. It will always be human centric. And um, my take on that is always the same. And I said, look, I think we're, we're experiencing what I call, uh, reverse uncanny valley, uh, effect. And that is, you know, the typical uncanny valley is when, when you've got a robot that is looking to human. Right? Uh, and I think what we're seeing now is humans, uh, looking a little too robotic. And you see quite a lot of that in hospitality. We all experience that you check in and you got somebody just typing on a screen. That's not really hospitality. So my take is always the same is, is this really the human kind of interaction I want in a hospitality experience or can this be automated so that this guy, instead of typing on a keyboard, can have a real interaction with me? And I never found, I'm not able to find the sweet spot of how I can talk about this topic without getting very heated reactions. I m think it's the fact that we tend to see ourselves, myself included, uh, through the lens of what we do professionally, you know, to the mop. To the point that, that the only thing that we. Like we had this conversation today, you know, but uh, the majority of the conversation is what we do for work. You know, uh, it's. We know each other so it's a little easier, but it's even in conversation, it's. It's hard that you see two people talking about who they are, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So if you remove what you do for a lot of people, this is also means that you're removing who you are. So it's an identity problem, you know. And that is my thing. When you talk about automation, you're talking about the identity. And you need to be super careful.

Speaker A: You make it existential.

Speaker B: It is totally existential, my friend. Totally existential. I can see that. You know, it's a trigger for most people. It would be a trigger for me as well. A few months ago I was contacted by this guy. They said, look, I uh, what about you train this model? You train an agent with everything you know, and this agent will give consulting to clients and you get 25% all of the. Out of all the contracts. And I said, okay, this is kind of cool. But then I thought about it, said look, this is really just. It's a personal attack to a certain extent, you know. So I fell into my own trap. And um, so it's um. I don't know how you can talk about that without getting crazy reaction. And I think probably it's, it's healthy that you get reactions when it comes to that. It means that we, we haven't given up yet.

Speaker A: All right. I want to close the, the program with I, uh, guess referring back to something you shared at the beginning, which is you have a six year old

Speaker B: son at six years almost. Yeah.

Speaker A: So fast forward. He is, you know, a teenager, he's finishing school, he wants to pursue your career. M. What are you going to tell him when he says I want to work in hospitality?

Speaker B: Um, so I hope the, the hospitality industry he will inherit will be different from the ones from the one we have now. And I always say that this hospitality is, is a, uh, is a liminal space between what it used to be and what it will be. And again, it can sound counterintuitive, but I think that the future of hospitality will be completely tackless. And follow me up on that right again, as I told you now let's say my kid is 20 now and he wants to go and work in hotel, ah, today. What I would say to my son is, look, you need to understand how to work with people, how to work under stress, but you need to have a decent understanding of technology. When my kid will be 20, it will not need to have any understanding of technology. Technology will be just on the background. It will be an afterthought. Okay. And uh, and I think we could, if we make it right, we could go back to the, to the real core of what hospitality is all about. And this is what I told you at the very beginning, because remember, hospice host and guest at the same time, but the same word is also the sacred relationship between the guest and the host. And I think because we are now so caught up with trying to make operations better and better and better and better and better, make everything more scalable, we're forgetting about that. So if my kid wants to get into hospitality, I would say, look, focus on the soft skill, care about people and always remember that hospitality is about being the guest and being the host at the same time. It doesn't mean, it doesn't have to be anything that has to do with putting data into a pms. If we can get to that, where technology is just something on the background, we uh, can focus back to the hospitality that I knew, you know, because when I was in the late 90s, I fell in love with hospitality because it was so human centric, you know, and technology was, was, was broken. But it was a lot of fun. You know, I got so many friends out of that. Just because we know technology, we had the time just to, you know, to, to, to spend some time with guests. Um, and I think we can go back there, uh, with a better infrastructure.

Speaker A: So we have what, 10, 12 years to make technology disappear.

Speaker B: I don't think we'll make it in time, but 20, maybe 20.

Speaker A: All right, Simon, thank you so much for joining the program. It was a pleasure talking to you. I hope to have a chance to have pizza with you at some point whenever you want. Uh, but thank you so much for joining the podcast and the program.

Speaker B: Thank you so much. Bye bye.

Speaker A: Bye bye. Thank you for listening. If you like what you're hearing, make sure you subscribe to avoid missing the next episode. It helps us produce better shows and get the most interesting guests. Thank you for your support.