The first of its kind, The Hospitality Show is a bold new event for the entire hospitality ecosystem with one shared goal: operating hotels efficiently and profitably. Brought to you by The American Hotel & Lodging Association and Hotel Management, the event will bring together top industry leaders, senior executives of hotel brands, owners, operators, management companies and procurement specialists—and their teams—to discover, network and drive profitability.
Business accelerates when the right people are in the room, and this new weekly series of speaker interviews goes 1:1 with the industry’s best and brightest as they build the inaugural event to be held June 27-29, 2023 at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas.
In this installment, we catch up with The Hospitality Show Speaker Larry Birnbaum, principal, Xenios Group.
What issues are currently causing headaches for the industry?
Birnbaum: Technology has become an integral solution for many issues in this industry, from staffing shortages to environmental issues. In the past, operators would use people to perform repetitive tasks for monitoring and management with manual checklists and inspections. Solutions had not yet evolved to assist hoteliers in a cost efficient manner. In the last few years, we have seen an influx of new products which are readily available, reasonably priced and offering solutions to very specific needs. While this is great news for the industry, now operators have an overflowing market of technology solutions. Selecting the right solution, to match real needs with fewer internal technical resources has become quite the challenge.
What new trends do you see affecting the hospitality industry the most in 2023?
Birnbaum: Before 9/11, business travel was considered a corporate luxury and stratified by roles and responsibilities. Travel was expensive and relegated to a small percentage of employees. Following 9/11, the travel industry had collapsed. In response, we saw budget fares, stays and incentive pricing. Travel in general became very inexpensive. Thus began the quantum leap in the number of corporate business travelers. Following ‘Too Big to Fail’ in 2009, the industry saw tremendous growth with new properties and the industry rebuilt itself largely on the business traveler, points/rewards programs and catering to the large population of frequent traveler’s needs. Now with travel becoming more expensive and distributed workplaces [where exactly is the HQ office these days] the transient business traveler has been the last of market segments to return.
As we see a decrease in the traditional corporate frequent traveler, there is an increase in travel from other and new market segments. More and more first-time and less brand loyal guests are filling capacity who say they value experiences over loyalty programs. Guests today come with a new set of needs and completely different expectations for how these needs are met. We are also seeing a sense of entitlement and a harder to please attitude with some travelers. This is becoming more obvious as we see demand in the industry for a National ‘No-Fly’ list. Successful hoteliers are now tasked with evolving again to meet differing customers' needs with less available staff.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity for the industry as we make our way through 2023?
Birnbaum: Technology has advanced exponentially in a short amount of time, and it will continue to progress. Now is the time to think holistically about all technology in hotels and stop using legacy siloed models. The challenge is not the evolving technology. It is time for updated infrastructure and a redesign of how we support the needs of the customer.
You should not drive a car on a road built before the car was made. Operators are struggling to deploy and manage new solutions through outdated modes of operation. A great example of this type of change is the convergence of ‘Front of House’ and Back of House’. Customers used to have to interact with the person standing behind the Front Desk. Now the front desk lives in their pocket on an app and can be reached anywhere on the property. The person behind the Front Desk is no longer tethered. I think this year presents a big opportunity for creative changes like this to effectively take advantage of the new solutions which are becoming available.
Share one key takeaway Show attendees can expect to gain from your session.
Birnbaum: IT is not a department. IT is part of the fabric of operations. Yes, historically there was a separate department for IT. Then Netflix shows up on the TVs in hotel rooms. The engineering and IT departments had to collaborate. Then mobile applications were incorporated into guest services as part of general operations. In many cases, inefficiency and incompatibility has been the result of departmental decisions operating in a vacuum. This is just not how things operate anymore. IT has become a necessity in all sectors of hotel operations for security, compatibility, cost containment and cannot be treated as just a separate department.