Infusing Technology with Hospitality & Vise Versa

It’s impossible not to notice that, even in the face of 9 out of 10 restaurant operators employing the latest technology to transact business, there's still a huge niche that exists in the space right now.

And, as we've seen in the education sector, the pandemic has not only expedited the demand for more restaurant operators to adopt more technology in order to survive - but has altered the market's expectations in terms of how they interact with service providers as well.

But there’s a really good reason why so many hospitality-based businesses are slow to adopt technology at a faster pace…or at least at a pace that mirrors what we're seeing in other spheres; namely, these two industries often work at cross-purposes and are inevitably forced to overcome the friction caused from what appears to be an inherent diametric opposition.

While both industries seek to be "customer-centric", that can mean different things to those whose opinions re: how to best serve customers varies. The tech industry, where profitability often depends on the the speed, efficiency and substitution of human interaction can seem cold and calculating if not completely antithetical to Hospitality professionals who work in a world where success and bottom lines are driven by how warm, personal, engaging and memorable an experience is for their guests.

One industry values human interaction so much that the primary focus is on satisfying every sense and how their customers?feel?while the other identifies those same customers as “targets” or “users”.

I've now taken three meetings with parties from large, extremely well known tech companies, who've been interested in providing capital and access to more resources for our app: Paire that ended-up as ultimatums for us to leverage our member's personal data. But the differences run a lot deeper than just seeing and treating customers differently.

The very language of technology (and other industries like their common bedfellow: marketing) serves to widen the gap and normalize a very cold and technical approach to business. They use terms?that one might expect to more commonly hear on a battlefield or in war room rather than a dining room.

Terms like:

“In the field”

“Deploy”

“Execute”

“Base”

“Targeting”

“Re-targeting”

“Campaigns”

“Scrape”

“Hack”

“Altitude”

“Agency”

“Logistics”

“Bleeding edge”

“Escalate”

etc....

Each one serves to underscore the drastically different cultures and perspectives between the two industries.

I get it. Tech, like war, can be incredibly profitable. But a hospitality-based consumer-centric business that shifts it’s focus from a culture driven bottom line to bottom line driven culture (or more specifically, to the maximization of efficiency and profitability) - suddenly loses it’s identity…not to mention it’s appeal and loyal guests base.

Take for example the ubiquitous customer loyalty platforms that partner with both independent and corporate restaurants. Trying to convince guests that you value them while simultaneously sharing (or selling) their personal information to third parties who use it to spam, target and re-target them online, on the phone and in their mailbox…all for the purpose of intruding into their daily lives so that they can profit from pitching products and services is (to put it lightly) incongruent with the?basic tenets of hospitality. It might work now but the next generation of tech-savy consumers will most likely find it disingenuous at the very least and a gross intrusion at best.

Wifi is a modern amenity that is now as necessary as hot water - which is why I can’t quantify the level of cognitive dissonance I feel when I try to log on to a hotel‘s “free Wi-Fi" that asks for my email address and asks me to scroll down & "Agree to Terms" in exchange for providing this “free “service.… while the fine print explains how, when and why they “may” share my personal information. Or when a retailer tells me they value me as a regular guest / my frequent business and will therefore offer me a discount or special offer?only?if I’m willing to provide my personal phone number.

As a hospitality project manager and former operator with more than three decades of experience in restaurants and bars, I can’t help but associate clients who prioritize seeking out the latest and greatest CRM tools when they haven’t yet gotten their menu or guest service dialed in - to someone who’s watering the lawn when their roof is on fire.

Operators focused more on attracting new customers than they are on delivering a better experience for the guests they already have - exemplify the cross purpose that exists among tech and hospitality…while highlighting the opportunity that still exists between them.

Look, there's no denying that many products and services get better and produce better results as they become more efficient and more capable of producing greater profits...but there's a limit. A line in the sand that is drawn by core principles and ultimate purpose that two individuals working in these two different spaces may not share in common.

Sometimes focusing on maximizing profitability can be counterproductive…in any field especially when compromising the customer's identity. And I see the impacts of it in restaurants and restaurant technology firms a lot.

A great deal of enterprise focused hospitality tech firms and marketing agencies seem to share the same mission: make the lives of restaurant operators better by increasing their exposure and making it easier for them to do their job...but far too often, “their job” ends up becoming “maximum extraction of revenue" which causes the customer to be viewed less as a human being / guest and more as a "revenue source".

Collecting customer data and leveraging it (along with their privacy) as a revenue stream may seem like getting more milk from the cow - but before you know it, the vendor’s purpose is no longer in alignment with their clients’ ...or the client loses sight of the big picture in exchange for a short term win and the culture (along with guest satisfaction) suffers.

But there are those who don't take a profit-first or CRM approach to marrying technology and hospitality. From Sheraton introducing an automated reservation system in 1958 to Hyatt pioneering the use of Messenger to interact with guests in 2015; there are plenty of initiative that seem to indicate a clear focus on "what we're doing FOR the guest vs. what we're doing TO the guest".

Today, we see folks like?Steve Simoni of Bbot?whose practical approach began with figuring out a novel and entertaining way to better serve guests. He developed robots to deliver drinks tableside... or Alibaba who just last year opening "Fly Zoo Hotel" a few kilometers outside of Shanghai (within walking distance of Alibaba Headquarters) where, robots greet guests at check-in, deliver hot towels to the rooms and serve food in the restaurants. As Andy Wang, CEO of Alibaba Future Hotel Management puts it:?“[Hospitality Technology is] all about the efficiency of the service and the consistency of service."

There are a lot of excellent CRM tools and tech stacks out there that more than pay for themselves and free-up operators and managers enough (or provide them with data) to better serve their guests. I acknowledge the fact that many products and services get better and produce better results as they become more efficient and more capable of producing greater profits...But it's a delicate balance when trying to infuse hospitality with technology and vice versa. It requires first knowing where the disconnects exist, respecting the needs of both parties and then defining a mutual benefit.

Very often - as can be seen in present day?attempts to integrate automation and robotics?into the fast casual and full-service segments; the attempt to maximize efficiency and profitability can be counterproductive...particularly in an industry so deeply rooted in human interaction.

far too often, the ulterior motive is (or ends up becoming) the ownership of customer data in order to leverage it (along with their privacy) as an ancillary revenue stream.         

Many of the restaurant tech and restaurant marketing firms I've encountered are definitely more enterprise focused and share the same mission: "to make the lives of restaurant operators better by making it easier for them to do their job"...but far too often, the ulterior motive is (or ends up becoming) the ownership of customer data in order to leverage it (along with their privacy) as an ancillary revenue stream.

And suddenly the vendors' purpose is no longer in alignment with their clients’. I can't tell you how many times "hospitality tech" founders and executives who claim to be in the hospitality business and offer to impart "wisdom" have told me that "spamming the sh@t out of your customers is the best way to get conversions and the only proven way to build your business". But 30 years in hospitality has taught me something different.

Replacing the long-term vision and purpose with short-term rapid growth and scaling can lead to a significant negative impact on the associated industries and an entire ecosystem of consumers. Especially when we're talking about the hospitality industry.

In farming, it’s what's known as “monoculture” or “monocropping”: The aggressive farming of one type of crop that, over time, depletes the soil of beneficial nutrients which makes the soil less productive over time and negatively impacts the entire ecosystem by creating significant erosion.

A colleague recently asked me: “Our restaurants are going to have to start spending some more time working with the tech industry. How does that type of dialogue begin ?”

And I wish more people would ask that question!?

I’ve found that the best way to begin bridging the delta of understanding between the tech industry and the hospitality industry - is to walk halfway across the bridge and then ask the other side to do the same. What I mean to say is that, if you want technologists to understand what we as hospitality professionals do and how we think; then there’s a lot to gain by first learning about some of what they do...whether it’s by research, hiring or socially interacting with developers. Make no mistake, it's going to take time and money. But not doing this, IMHO, is akin to going to a foreign country and refusing to learn the culture or even attempting to learn a few phrases in the native language - and then getting annoyed or thinking they’re rude when they're put off by your behavior or very presence.

The problem is that “learning what they do” and “trying to understand their perspective” takes time - something in extremely short supply for most people and especially for hospitalitarians.?

I've spent the last 7 years working closely with software developers and while that may not be a viable option for most of us - I think we’ll see more and more cross-pollination of technology and software development in years to come ...especially as larger corp chains, (who can afford the human collateral and capital resources needed to invest deeply in cross-training) gradually strain out the less user-friendly and less advantageous platforms from the stockpile. And while that happens, independent operators will either be one of the few anomalies or one of many that are playing an exhausting (and expensive) game of catch-up.

When educating my clients on technology I often find myself breaking the ice by drawing analogies for both sides in order to really drive the point home that A.) there IS common ground between us that’s important to appreciate and B.) although we both rely heavily on marketing to sustain our business, neither one of us is a “marketer”.?

Technology (and code in general) is a lot like food. The more you know about it, the better you are at recognizing quality and value....or lack thereof.?

Take Indian food for example: In many ways Indian food can be a lot like third party delivery services stacks. If you’re not really familiar with the full breadth of Indian cuisine and your first few experiences with a limited number of dishes are negative - there’s often a tendency to assume you simply don’t like Indian food.

Whereas, if you’re very familiar (as most Americans are) with Italian food and you have a negative experience at an Italian restaurant...you say or think "That was a terrible Italian restaurant." Because you have a much broader frame of reference you don't come to the conclusion that you no longer like Italian food. Because of your increased familiarity with the product, you realize that not all product or providers are created equal.

The nub of it is that bridging experience gaps usually requires two things:?

1.) Knowing why each side does what they do and each side valuing why they do what they do more than they value how they do what they do. This begins with open and honest dialogue.

&?

2.) Each side making it a priority to learn (and teach the other) about why they've chosen to adopt a particular method (or their "how") during the orientation phase.

I don’t want our AI restaurant recommendation engine (Paire) to be “just another great idea that nobody’s ever heard of” - and yet I realize the challenge in getting people to see us as a technology company that employs genuine hospitality when the two fields are often diametrically opposed to one another.

Our hope is that we can leverage the position of like minded individuals within the hospitality industry, to get us the exposure we need through thoughtful positioning instead of brute advertising force. But when faced with the reality of what our failure to do so means....it becomes easier to understand the tendency to use technology in an overly aggressive fashion rather than humanely.

So we keep moving forward tirelessly with effort, hope and optimism that the guest-facing nature of our platform can be enough fuel and sustain our "guest-first" business model... or that we'll discover a capital source who values meaningful impact over unicorn status.

I’ve seen more than a few inequitably structured investment deals to know that venture backed businesses typically pressure start-ups to speed ramp up and increase profitability at all costs... the only problem, for us, is that one of the things that makes the?Paire?app so unique is that it’s NOT built to be as profitable as possible. It’s built to be as practical as possible because people... and their enjoyment of warm, personal and engaging experiences is way more important to us - and we believe in culture driven bottom lines.

At the end of the day, my partners and I would rather grow slower and risk obscurity with our purpose and values still intact, than to have more money in our bank accounts and less to be proud of.

I'll let you know whether or not our personal values end up having any significant street value - because we're pretty much "all in" on being a hospitality company that uses technology as opposed to the other way around.

Paire.io: Beta Launch End of Summer 2021

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