Stuart Greif – 00:00:00: As a leader, you can always find a way to cut a little cost. But the question is, are you death by a thousand cuts denigrating the guest experience so much that, especially for a lot of your hotels that are independent or lifestyle, that essentially you’re taking away what makes you unique and differentiated in the guest experience that creates memories or wants them to stay?

Intro – 00:00:26: Welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast presented by Revinate, the podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting-edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.

Karen Stephens – 00:00:55: Hello and welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast. I am your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And today we are thrilled to have Stuart Greif, Chief Strategy, Innovation, and Operating Officer at Forbes Travel Guide. Stuart has been at the forefront of shaping luxury travel experience, bringing over two decades of leadership, expertise, in both operational strategy and innovation. His passion for shaping the future of hospitality extends to mentoring and supporting startups, helping them scale and create a lasting impact. He’s also joined us this year in Texas for NAVIGATE conference to discuss the balancing act that hoteliers face between technology, guest experience, and profitability. So without further ado, welcome, Stuart.

Hello, Stuart. Welcome to the Hotel Moment Podcast. It’s great to see you.

Stuart Greif – 00:01:41: Thank you. It’s wonderful to see you again, Karen. Thanks for the opportunity.

Karen Stephens – 00:01:44: Absolutely. So the last time that we saw each other was live and in person in Austin at our NAVIGATE conference, where we actually got to do a kind of a podcast. We did a panel. So it’s wonderful to have you on the podcast where we can do a little bit more of a deeper dive into that conversation.

Stuart Greif – 00:01:59: Yeah, it was such an incredible event too. I think the overall programming and the experientially, it was a fun time. So I don’t know if anybody that’s listening to this, that’s a client, you definitely want to be there next year if you haven’t been there. One of the best events that I’ve been a part of. So thank you for that opportunity as well.

Karen Stephens – 00:02:16: Thanks, Stuart. We really, really appreciate all of the participation from Forbes. Obviously, we have a lot of customers in the luxury space that really take their Forbes rating very seriously. So we had you, and then we had another person from your team who was able to give some insights to our voice customers.

Stuart Greif – 00:02:33: Stacey Veden. Yeah, Stacey is wonderful. I love one of the quotes Stacey shared. And I think she had a lot of folks and clients that work in contact centers, and the notion of hospitality is what you do and how you treat the guests while you’re doing your work. And your job isn’t to take the booking. It’s to understand why they’re interested in staying and then find ways to match their needs to things on the property. That may include upsells. And again, a testament to the event. There were so many good areas and different parts of the business as well as just a whole lot of fun. Mechanical bulls, people. You got to be there next year, whether it’s Austin or somewhere else.

Karen Stephens – 00:03:11: That’s so great. So fun fact, I found the picture. We have a photo booth at our event, and I have an awesome picture of you and me and Agnelo from COTE Hospitality, and Anisha. So you might be seeing that on the LinkedIn post, just saying.

Stuart Greif – 00:03:24: And shout out to Agnelo and also Tom Luersen, who were part of our panel. It’s wonderful.

Karen Stephens – 00:03:29: Yes, that was a great time. Okay, so Stuart, let’s dive in. You’ve had a fascinating journey in the hospitality sector, specifically with luxury, from shaping standards at Forbes Travel Guide to Leading Innovation in the Field. Can you share with us how your career path evolved and what moments or experiences along the way have shaped your approach to hospitality?

Stuart Greif – 00:03:49: Yeah, I think I’ll start with the second one. I think empathy and growing up, I had the opportunity to see life from a lot of different perspectives. I got a scholarship to do a homestay in Japan, which just exploded my aperture on life and seeing common experience through a different lens, and one that was very culturally different than my own. I went to a school where I was a scholarship kid, where I saw people from all walks of life, including some people that were very affluent while I was working in an ironworks and on a manufacturing floor, putting screws and boards that literally in cubicles for work. So I think when you understand beyond headlines or politics that we’re all people and human beings and everybody has their own things going on and trying to make a better way for themselves and their family, I think that helps, I think, really understand that when we’re in an industry, I say, like, we’re not curing cancer. We’re in the experiences, and joy, and creating memories. And so for me, it’s always that sense of things in hotels and hospitality and experiences are always changing, and there’s these wonderful opportunities to do good. So I get inspired by that. And my career was a little different than most. I didn’t grow up in hotel operations or in a corporate brand. I actually was client, a guest, living out of a hotel in Midtown Manhattan in my early 20s, five, six days a week for 18 out of 21 months. And I became fast friends with the folks working in the hotel. So I think I had a stronger affinity with their experience. And we used to hang out in my 20s, probably in ways that corporate would have frowned upon, probably did back then. But I really, in my DNA, just kept mapping back. And then I had the opportunity to lead, many years later, J.D. Power’s global hospitality practice. And while I took over eight other industries and did other things, that led me to different ways in the industry going really deep, including serving as Microsoft’s Global Travel and hospitality, where I worked on Pre-ChatGPT, before it came out about five years, and then went to a startup as their travel lead. And now five plus years at Forbes Travel Guide, which I love, even if you’re not in luxury of your boutique lifestyle, the same principles apply. The degree to which they may be at luxury, much more significantly human connection, and many more touch points in the experience, doesn’t change that you can have an amazing experience in the way somebody welcomes you with a warm smile, even in an economy, budget, hotel. I also am amazed at for as big and global as an industry, we’re like 10, 11% of global GDP. One in four or five new jobs is going to be in travel and hospitality in the years. And the industry, despite economic cycles, continues to grow. It’s extremely small. Being able, you mentioned Agnello, and ironically, a couple of years ago, I met the general secretary for Claydor, the concierge society with the famous gold keys. And it turns out the guy, Barack, was the concierge I used to hang out with at Hilton in Midtown Manhattan 25 years before. So I really love our industry and supporting people in it. And I think whatever you’re doing, the question is, how are you learning? How are you stretching and growing between constant change and challenge to where you’re stressed and tearing muscle? That doesn’t work. But where you’re not being challenged, doing the same thing. So I think when I look back on my career, my advice is periodically, it’s those bigger risks or taking on a new role, moving to new geography, doing something where I wasn’t the expert, where I was kind of a beginner again, that when I look back professionally and also personally in my life, those fewer but bigger kind of risks, if you will, were the ones that were much more defining and led me closer to a happier path and more to the center of the essence of who I am and what I want to do in our industry.

Karen Stephens – 00:07:32: Absolutely. That resonates with me so much, Stuart. Some of my favorite guests on this podcast are the ones who have really taken the big risk, jumped off a cliff, gone into the unknown, and then over time and a lot of grit and hard work, they become wildly successful off the back of that. But it’s really that spirit of taking the risk and maybe not being as comfortable as you are in something else that really leads to that growth.

Stuart Greif – 00:07:54: You’re CMO of Revinate, so you must have had similar leaps in your career too to kind of come here. So I don’t know if anybody’s turned the table on you, but I’d love to know for myself, I imagine your clients in the audience would too. What were those big things for you in hospitality?

Karen Stephens – 00:08:09: Well, I have a crazy background. So I have a master’s degree in French literature. So I was a teacher. I was a teacher for – I taught college French. I didn’t make any money. So I got into sales for a travel agency in Silicon Valley. And then from there, I went to a tech startup. We got into hospitality there. I went to Travelocity. And then with Travelocity, I got the opportunity to go live and work in London. Where I did contract negotiations with big chains. So I’ve always had this path of using my career to go get the next adventure. And then just fortuitously got hired at Revinate as a salesperson selling into big chains 12 years ago. And then through that progression, moved up through the sales cycle. I was CRO for a while and then moved over to marketing. So it has definitely been a windy path. Thanks for asking, not many people do. But I would say that this job resonates with me more than any other because I love to talk to people. I love to sell our product and our value proposition. But most of all, I love to interact with people in this industry because everybody loves it so much. So that’s very cool. So thanks for asking, Stuart.

Stuart Greif – 00:09:11: Love it. East Asian Studies major here, so not for a teacher, but close.

Karen Stephens – 00:09:17: Yeah. So kids, if you’re listening out there and people are telling you that your degree is useless, it’s not. I think it’s about, you know what it’s about? It’s about having the guts to kind of stretch your brain and get different experiences and all of that hard work. I mean, now I think about a degree in French literature. I mean, I had to look up everything. There was no Internet when I was doing my degree. I mean, not to date myself, but I think everybody knows. And now, I mean, that degree, you would have written that paper in two seconds with AI. So anyway, but I diverge. Okay, so getting back to the topic again. So we talked about NAVIGATE at the start of this, and part of what you discussed there was how hoteliers can balance technology, guest experience, and profitability. So how do you see these elements coming together in hospitality today?

Stuart Greif – 00:10:06: Yeah, I think the guest has to be the true north, and profitability is also, if you’re running the business, it’s still a requirement, it’s still a business. So you have these, sometimes I think, competing tensions where there’s a risk of, as a leader, you can always find a way to cut a little cost. But the question is, are you death by a thousand cuts denigrating the guest experience so much that, especially for a lot of your hotels that are independent or lifestyle, that essentially you’re taking away what makes you unique and differentiated in the guest experience that creates memories or wants them to stay?. And so, yeah, you can cut a bunch of things to save money and look great for 12 months, but gradually it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that kind of circles the drain and ironically undermines the ROI and the investment, the asset for real estate to begin with. So I think while the two sometimes seem opposite or this tension, the reality is, if you give somebody a great experience, they’re gonna come more often, they’re gonna pay more, they’re gonna recommend you more, and that hotel is gonna feel that energy, and your employees are gonna feel that when they’re given the tools and support to do it. So I think it’s always gonna be a balance of tension. What I get excited about, I see solutions, including Revinate, and this latest opportunity, I think, with generative AI in the years ahead to free us up from as much as the imagination of like, hey, it’s gonna have the custom itinerary, and then my agentic AI agent’s gonna prompt me in January to say, “Stuart, I know you go to the Bahamas every year, and here’s a couple of deals at some properties, and your kids are the same.” Like, I think that’s something that happens over a 5 to 10-year arc of time that captures the imagination of the press. But the real, I think, benefits in the big AI is going on ways that Revinate’s applying it or that I see on the productivity side, which is how do we free up our folks in the properties from the very labor-intensive, repetitive, heavy-lifting, non-value-added activities? I don’t mean that what your folks are working on has no value, it has utility, it has value because it’s necessary, but 20 hours a week of having pull numbers from different places for us saying, “Hey, can you show me, for example, all of my marketing contacts in the Northeast region and properties of this size or my client base of this size, and can you output that in a spreadsheet, and we’re gonna put that into an email campaign for just those clients because we’ve got a really great value proposition for them.” Like that, I think we’re at a stage where there’s still a human in the loop, but there are productivity use cases. And the best place to start, I think, is actually with your current partners in technology and the vendors because whether it’s you with Revinate, I know some of the things in your product roadmap that are along these lines, or Salesforce, ask them, challenge them to say, at what point, for example, that use case I gave in Salesforce, instead of having to go three or four clicks down or create a custom report, a generalist, somebody that doesn’t have to require it, who’s already familiar with Salesforce being able to get that data quickly, or in a hotel operation, whether it’s revenue management, whether it’s one of the operations, whether it’s stuff for the ownership, provide reports, freeing up that bandwidth should both free up capacity for more time spent focusing on the guest and personalizing, making the experience better and the creativity. Because just taking a number from one place to another, we have somebody, and I consider this a micro use case of AI, she’s not a senior executive, but she said, look, every week we’re taking data from PDFs and Excel on five different sources and formats, and she basically was able to get, in this case, we use ChatGPT, to be able to reformat that. So every time, the first time she went through, there were a couple of fields that didn’t come over right, where she said, no, that’s a date field, and now every time it’s correct, that saved hours of her week and freed that up. And we had five other people in different areas saying, that’s great, can you show me how to use it? So I think it’s much more on the productivity side where it’s going to help us, I think, as a whole. And some of those jobs will go away. You know, we have time. I think it’s important that everyone gets familiar, but this isn’t going to be an overnight thing, just like the Internet and apps, while the technology is advancing quickly. In other industries, we’re seeing this coming. If you’re an independent hotel, over time, there’s going to be turnkey players, the same way you can set up a website now or get an app. Whereas at first, it was very esoteric. There was a small number of people. It was super expensive. Only like the Marriott’s of this world had the resources to do it. And there wasn’t really standardization. Now my airline app even knows when I’m like in a connecting airport, where to route me and show me a map of the gates. But the first airline apps just had too much in it. So I think it’s one of those things where you take a deep breath and say, how do we learn every week? Agnelo had a great example how every Friday he and his team, when most of the stuff is behind them from the week, gets together. And I often say to people longer term, AI may not replace you, but you might be replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI. But it’s no different from when you had to know, for example, if you’re in marketing, what’s Instagram? How do I use it? Or Facebook? They become just tools, as my friend Gilad, who’s on the board of Virtuoso, says, AI is just a tool, and it’s meant to augment you. And for the foreseeable future, for many things, we’re going to need a human in the loop to make sure we review it and that it’s done correctly. But if I can start with a 90 or 95% solution, for example, on a contract or supplier agreement, and then send that to my attorney, make it look like these three, add this clause, take this out, let me do one review, make some tweaks, and then do it. I can spend a lot less or have that same attorney be able to do a lot more without adding as much resource.

Karen Stephens – 00:15:53: Absolutely. You know, I think one thing that as you’re talking there, when we think about this at Revinate, what is key, whether you’re an independent hotel or a major brand, is that all of your data is in one central location. I think that’s the biggest challenge for hoteliers is that you’ve got siloed data. So AI can only access what you tell it to access, right? So that’s what we’ve certainly been working on, not only with connecting, obviously, PMS data is the heartbeat, it’s the core, but you also have all of the ancillary data. What’s going on in your spa? What are they ordering in the restaurant? What are the other feeds of data that need to go into a central location? And then AI can become very impactful. Right?

Stuart Greif – 00:16:33: That’s right. And I love your focuses on your data. I mean, it’s easy to get caught up and say like, “Hey, we’re not a LLM. We’re not one of these big tech companies that has, or a big hotel global company.” I’m using Marriott in a neutral way, just as an example, Hilton, IHG, right? Any of the core, any of the big players. So here’s the thing is you can focus on your own data, and you should. And that’s where I think, again, you’re going to get more advantage sooner. And I think also if you’re less technically a droid or you have fewer technical people, that’s okay. You can see in other industries, in retail, a lot of the stuff gets adopted first, but I would say you still should play with it as even if you don’t put anything into production. So we say like, we don’t want to put anything in front of the guest experience or anything that’s going to muck up revenue directly yet. We want to kind of learn and do things on the productivity side and use narrow use cases of like, hey, I can use it for reformatting these emails or this save me, the example of reformatting data a whole bunch of time. We had somebody, we often think about text-based or data-based, but the marketing area with visual, the ability to create, I think about images and now video. So I think about things in a couple of buckets. And the way I think one of the areas that I think you’ll see this within products like Revinate or Salesforce, I talked about was like a search thing. So when the Internet came up, there was search in like these three buckets. It’s like, “Hey, how do I search the Internet? Yeah, but I want to be able to take Google Search and I want to put it into my intranet so my employees can search and find information”. And then the second thing is, well, on my e-commerce site or my website, I want my clients and prospects and other people that are interested to search my site with Google Search on my site, just my data. And then the third one is, hey, we’ve got this custom platform, maybe our clients log in. I want them instead of clicking into five different places to be able to search on it. So instead of Google Search, imagine GenAI capabilities are bubbling up in those same three buckets in the custom platform. Hey, I want to know what my performance in Forbes Travel Guide, for example, we have a partner site to get to a point where a client could say, what were my three strongest areas and weakest areas over the last three years? And how did they trend? And not have to click in five different places to get at that, but just ask a question as a generalist instead of somebody that has esoteric knowledge of the system. So I think you’re going to see that with GenAI, that kind of search-like capability come up in existing parts of the tech stack. And then I think there are some new solutions. People say native AI, all that means is it’s a company that was born using AI from the start to solve a problem that complements like Revinate and Salesforce and Adobe, and other parts of your stack, depending who and what you use for your PMS and other systems. That kind of native stuff, you don’t have to jump with the first startups. There’s going to be companies that rise and fall. It’s okay to step back and have conversations and learn and see which players are emerging over time to say, okay, now we can engage them. The benefit of being a big company with a lot of resources is you can play around and you can afford to kind of, it’s not wasted, but spend money when like the variation, like the wide range of who succeeds and fails versus being a fast follower saying, okay, these companies are now doing it. So whether it was texting with your guests or your own app or going back to your website, the same thing happened is there became lots of companies and a lot of opportunities and options to have software players that provided that capability. So you don’t, and probably shouldn’t be building most of it from scratch, especially if you’re not yourself, tech enhanced, but you should be learning and playing with the technology where you can save money. The image generation I mentioned, we had again, junior employee. And I think about imagery, like marketing technology, that ability to say you have a guest from, let’s say a Chinese family, an Indian romantic couple, and a solo Australian traveler. Let’s say those were three high personas that are your guests that are from your source markets. Imagine being able to see the same imagery and videos of your property, but them seeing actually a Chinese family or an Indian romantic couple or solo female traveler experiencing it without having to custom create that. And that technology, it’s not at scale deployed today, but I can tell you privately, I work with a lot of startups. There are a number of them doing that. We even had an employee who was able in use cases where, again, it’s not in front of the guests, so we might have a product that does training and we need generic imagery of luxury hotels, or we needed a generic imagery that wasn’t specific to one of our client properties. We saved hundreds of thousand dollars and speed to market because she was able to generate images using the current tools that looked real. They weren’t kind of hokey and they weren’t critical path to revenue where they weren’t like part of an outside marketing campaign where you’re like, oh my gosh, that looks like just a little bit different. So what are those safe use cases where you can play and learn within brand safety, within your current tech stacks? And that’s why I think asking like the Revinate and the Salesforce’s, your current partners that are doing tremendous things, because people already know how to use a system. When are you going to have what kinds of capabilities over the next year or two years? So as soon as it’s available, you can start taking advantage of it with systems you already know that are serving your business extremely well.

Karen Stephens – 00:22:05: Yeah, absolutely. We just actually put an enhancement in our email editor that does just that. It generates AI images if you need them in generic, and then it also helps edit your email, right? So I could say it this way. So it’s just kind of, as you said, the vendors need to continue to iterate and make sure that they have a platform that is flexible and scalable as you go. Another thing I wanted to pick up on there, I think it is important, like the hospitality industry is always a very attractive industry for any tech startup to get into. There’s a lot of money here. The hotels don’t typically have the expertise in-house to be able to do these things. So I think your advice is well taken. It’s a good idea to let people kind of play it out, because I will say that hotel data and the way that we think about data and the way we use data in hospitality is very specific. We’re not like a Starbucks. We’re not like a consumer brand. There’s this concept of check-in, check-out, stay dates, what’s happening on property, all of the guest journey experiences. The way that you think about that data, how you segment that data is a little bit different. So just a cautionary. There’s a lot of, I think, vendors that come in and kind of hit the rocks in hospitality, and then a few that’s — but it’s really interesting to see what everybody’s doing. And it’s moving faster than I think we’ve ever seen it before. Would you agree with that?

Stuart Greif – 00:23:18: Yeah, absolutely. I think both in terms of the tech capability, I think the degree to which the adoption curve is happening more quickly. And there’s a lot happening under the hood. And that said, I think it’s also okay to breathe, especially if you’re in an event hotel. I’m like, I’m going to be out of business. But there are, for example, I think on the stage, we talked about what’s the most important thing you could do, your hotel. And I think there’s an element that the same way Google has search engine optimization, there are going to be some expertise around as these players that drive, whether it’s OpenAI, Google, all the different systems of what is it that gets my hotel to be surfaced or to make sure that I’m in the consideration set, for example, when it comes to things like distribution or marketing. But that said, at some point, I think three to five years out, it’s like somebody on CNBC talked about freezers. You’d be like, why are you talking about freezers? Let me explain. The first time somebody came up with a freezer, right? It was novel. Nobody else had a freezer. Eventually, more players got in. And the freezers started to the point where you can get something very cheap or something very high-end. Today, it’s not so much the freezer. It’s like selling ice cream and what you put in it. There will be a point where there’s not much difference in terms of which model you use and the commoditization of AI capabilities. But in the meantime, certain models may be better, worse than others. And if you’re in the tech area, you probably want to be looking across all of them as a layer because as they change, different things will change. But ultimately, the most important thing you can do as a hotel, in my opinion, is deliver a tremendous guest experience and differentiate yourself. What makes you unique? Somebody said recently, I wish I could remember the attribution, but he or she said something to the fact of the point is not to mean something to everyone. It’s to be special, someone to have a point of view to stick out, that if you’re trying to appeal to everyone, you’re appealing to no one. You’re not differentiating. And it’s okay for people to say, that hotel is not for me. And I think especially where Revinate plays and the folks who are on this call, that if you give a great experience, that’s what’s going to stand out because people are going to review, they’re going to talk about you, they’re going to refer you, they’re going to want to come back. The extent to which GenAI, if I have only five or six things where I’m like, hey, I’m looking at this price point and I’m going to be in this area. And you know, I like, let’s say, boutique lifestyle hotels or something that is more contemporary vibe. Give me the best recommendations. And by the way, I’m part of this loyalty program. So even if it’s not in those parameters, bring these back. If I only have five or seven hotels instead of pages of lengths or paid placement, how are you going to stand out? How are you going to differentiate? And the way I think about as a strategist, in a lot of markets, there aren’t too many places to be the low cost player and that’s not differentiated. So whether you’re in Amazon, Walmart, and other industries, there’s only so many low cost players. And I think the GenAI longer term from a consumer perspective, when you get five or seven returns, it’s going to squash a bit like a pancake. It doesn’t mean you won’t have a business if you’re a Courtyard by Marriott and off a highway exit in middle America. Well, you’re part of Bond Boys, so that’s a differentiation point where people will seek you out. But you want to be able to have something that distinguishes you. And the best way you can do that is have a guest. The worst thing you could do is be just kind of not much different in terms of what you offer, how you stand out, or have anybody rave about you, because there’s going to be hundreds of hotels like that. So I think the talent you hire, the training you do, the tech partners you choose that are going to evolve and help free your people up to be able to give great experience, because ultimately, it’s about human connection. There’s plenty of place, and there will be Marriott bought CitizenM for tech-enabled, or I call it a bifurcation in the industry, where there’s nothing wrong with saying something’s accommodation. You might be staying at a hotel where for a business trip or even a personal trip, hey, it’s just a clean room, nice bed, and clean, good breakfast and coffee, but you’re not really going there to receive hospitality or do a lot of experiences. Maybe there’s a wedding at on site, but chances are it’s kind of a place. And so I think like the airline industry, because there is a real estate, to your point about profit, it still has to work as an investment vehicle. There’s going to be more pressure on tech and other things to be more like the airline industry, where economy budget is not like a great human experience. If you want to have that, you’re going to go to these differentiated hotels, these independents, these boutiques, luxury. And there are some players that don’t have to be high-end to have personality and have people give you a great experience. But a lot of the other things are going to be more commoditized, and AI is commoditizing in ways that I think mean you need to stand out and stand for something and deliver. And it’s okay if there’s some experiences that it’s just a place to stay. And it’s self-service or opt-in housekeeping. It’s like the hospitable is being taken out of hospitality in a lot of areas, which I don’t love, but there’s still going to be a market for that. There are times when I’m going to be like, hey, my family’s coming in late. We just need a cheap place to crash close enough to this event. We’re not going to be in the hotel other than to crash out at night. I don’t need to be spending a thousand bucks a night on experiences that I don’t have time to actually experience.

Karen Stephens – 00:28:45: I love it that you mentioned CitizenM. We actually had Casper Overbeek because their CPO who was on this podcast and we just did a recast of that. And they really encourage our listeners to go back and listen to how they use technology actually for guest experience, but also for their employee experience. And how do you make your employees super happy to be there and bring that personality? Because as you said, you know, guest experience is not necessarily price point driven or category driven. It’s about having people that are excited to have you there when you get on property and facilitate. They actually deliver the experience that you’re expecting.

Stuart Greif – 00:29:20: That’s right. There’s service and there’s hospitality. I think that service is that kind of delivery. And if service is broken, experience breaks down, and hospitality is how you treat people. It’s that engagement you and I talked about at the beginning. And I think you need both and they don’t have to be at the five-star level in order to have a great human connection. And in fact, I think many people would argue that they want to make sure they get the DNA of hospitality right first because service are skills that can be taught. Whereas the hospitality and caring and how somebody feels, there aren’t like intuitively, like, you know, if somebody is like kind of negative, neutral, or really warm and gracious, like welcome or welcome or welcome. Like we see it in body language. We feel it’s almost like you can hear, even if you don’t see somebody’s face, them smiling like through kind of voice. And so I think that to me, the hospitality is something that is really critical. Horst Schulze famously said something, a famed Ritz-Carlton, who really was seminal in making that brand what it is. I can teach somebody to carry a bag across the lobby. I can’t teach him or her to want to, or to do it kind of with that enthusiasm. So I think there is an element of giving your colleagues, and I think that’s AI, and the productivity and technology. You want to invest in ways that your folks don’t feel like they’re struggling to deliver that hospitality. Nobody wants to feel like they’re struggling. They want the tools, the training, the systems, the support in order to do a job well and feel good because they see the guests enjoying that verse thing. So I also think that’s really critical. I’m glad you brought up the notion of colleagues and on the guest side.

Karen Stephens – 00:31:05: So. That’s great. So, Stuart, I’ve got one more question for you. So, as a thought leader in this industry, you’ve worked with a number of startups, front-end of innovation, what message do you hope to leave with our audience about how hoteliers can thrive in this rapidly evolving landscape? So, we’ve talked about a number of different things, but if I’m a leader at a hotel, what’s your one piece of advice to kind of get your arms around this so that you stay on the cutting edge?

Stuart Greif – 00:31:30: The best advice I think I’ve gotten in recent years that I think is relevant that I’m going to repurpose is when I was Microsoft’s global exec in travel and hospitality, the CEO said to all of us, be a learn it all, not a know it all. And I think that’s a philosophy in life, and it seemed to work well for Satya and Microsoft. This notion of being curious about your guests, about what is it, why are they staying, about how to help, about understanding new technology and not being afraid of it and being willing to kind of gradually taste. But I also think just from a pure hospitality standpoint is the fundamentals are still true. Like there’s these eternal truths, which is ultimately it’s about how you make people feel. And if you keep that as your true North Star for your colleagues, which I’m glad you brought that up again, because how they feel is how they’re going to deliver service. The energy you create as leaders and the GMs, we’re all going to have hard days. There are always things that are going to break as part of it. How do we learn and apply that from the first advice? And more importantly, how do we lead with the heart of hospitality in that? Because ultimately that’s going to translate to the guest and the environment. We all walk into a hotel, and you can kind of feel a vibe, and you get a sense right away from how you’re welcomed and treated. And that doesn’t matter, not just in hotels, it could be a coffee house, it could be a restaurant, it could be a retail establishment. How you make somebody feel is so important. I will tell you all of those little arrival points within a hotel, whether you’re like the first time checking in or I’m going to the restaurant, sets the table. If you treat somebody well at that first point, it primes them for that warmth and feeling coming in. If you don’t, it makes them see all the things that are absent. And that’s from my years at J.D. Power. So I feel like as leaders, be a learn-it-all, lead with a heart of hospitality internally and externally, and understand all of those touch points when those first contacts help set the stage are critically important.

Karen Stephens – 00:33:30: Fantastic. Great advice. Stuart from Forbes Travel Guide. Really appreciate the time today. Thank you.

Stuart Greif – 00:33:35: My pleasure. Thank you so much, Karen.

Outro – 00:33:41: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to revinate.com/hotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.