Hotel Revenue Managers Need Less Data Wrangling!

Glenn: [00:00:00] Everybody’s your hospitality friend, Glenn, with my favorite, Robert Matsuoka of Duetto. Why is he my favorite? Because he’s the only Robert that I know named Matsuoka. But I did think I fell in love with him when I was at their event in April. Because, dude, you, like, blew my mind. When we had the conversation, I said, I know you’re going to be at high tech. I gotta come back and I gotta learn more from you. I don’t care what the topic is because I know I’m gonna learn from you. Right? Yeah. So we’re here at High Tech. Yes. You’re starting to make some changes. Yes. How are you thinking about those changes and reflection to where the hospitality industry is going with technology? So first of all, it’s month five for me at Duetto. I’m having a great time, a great team. So many things are happening. In fact, I think the biggest thing is we are about to announce something new called Duetto Labs. Yep. And Duetto Labs is really going to consolidate a number of different tracks that we’ve had around some new technologies.

Robert: [00:00:57] And the new technology is really kind of go into three big tranches right on the bottom. That’s how we build. So we have this model, this idea of a factory model for both software and for data. So we have a software factory and a data factory. Okay. The idea is that our hypothesis is that there’s probably up to 50% of the work that a normal engineer does, or a data scientist does, or a data engineer does, can be actually done almost entirely automated, right? Using the new LMS, the new coding harnesses, new tools. So we are going to use that to showcase. We’re probably in the next month or two, start to actually roll out features based on the factory model. Now to be clear, it’s not AI just does it and goes. Ai is following a very prescribed model of how they develop. Right? That they are classifying the developments that at the end of the day, a human does review everything, but it’s only the most rote stuff that can be fully automated, but still will save a lot of time. Right. Okay.

Glenn: [00:01:55] So the in the news, we get all of these stuff about vibe coding and all this other kind of coding. And big companies are going, oh, how are you seeing it? And why do you think your approach is the right approach?

Robert: [00:02:09] So I think vibe coding is interesting. Yeah. In fact, I would put a different aspect on it, but I would say is vibe coding is best for business process automation, right?

Glenn: [00:02:19] So like something I might do in my business.

Robert: [00:02:22] And you’re not even really it’s not I, in fact, I have a different word. Okay. I like to talk about outcome coding, not vibe coding.

Glenn: [00:02:27] What does that mean to you?

Robert: [00:02:28] Outcome means that you’re trying to solve a problem, right? And so you don’t care about you’re not trying to build software, right. You’re not trying to build a product, right. You’re saying, I want to be able to do this report. I want to be able to draw these inferences. How can I make it happen? And you talk to your AI tool like coworker or something like that. It will do that for you, but you’re not really coding. You’re trying to get results right. At the end of the day, the most valuable thing is saving times, getting results, and having it done kind of automatically, right?

Glenn: [00:02:53] So I want it done. Obviously, hoteliers need it done as well, so they could do other stuff.

Robert: [00:02:58] In fact, actually I’ve hypothesized that up to 65% or more of a typical revenue manager’s time historically has been just managing all the data they get. Right? Right. And there’s a lot of cognitive you have to understand it. You have to figure out how to correlate it. Right? And most of that work now can be done with these new AI tools.

Glenn: [00:03:16] That’s really great because I would think looking at all those spreadsheets and documents and making all those connections is physically and emotionally draining. It doesn’t make you love your job as much.

Robert: [00:03:25] No. In fact, I actually had a revenue manager who came up to me after our last conference and said, I spent three hours every morning pulling different sources my Ms., my PMS, my reports, putting it together, generating a report for my manager, for my boss, which is like, okay, that’s fine. It’s an important function. Yeah.

Glenn: [00:03:44] But you’re paying for a professional, not for a file printer.

Robert: [00:03:47] Yes, that’s exactly right. And so my vision of AI is that it turns people from beta wranglers to strategic insight generators, which is why we hire people, smart people, to do smart things.

Glenn: [00:03:59] And, Well, I’m loving and the conversations that I’ve had in the last two years over AI, it’s every single person I talk to. It’s about productivity. It’s not about replacement. So you’re going to see the replacement stories in the widespread general news. But that’s not the reality of what’s happening in our world. And the fact of the matter is we’re still low unemployment anyway. You can’t fill those jobs, right?

Robert: [00:04:21] I think ideally, AI makes subject matter expertise more valuable than less.

Glenn: [00:04:25] Right? I agree, so you have these labs, you’re changing the way we’re doing things. What is the next step? Then once you start to get people more comfortable with not having to do that.

Robert: [00:04:36] So three things. One is the data and the coding. The second level is our foundational models we were doing. We have a huge and amazing that has a very precise and talented data science team. And we are actually, we actually are rolling out now ML machine learning based models for forecasting and pricing. So that’s a big role of the labs is to showcase the work they’re doing. So we’re going to show the models. We’re going to show how they work, how they can improve forecasting, and actually write articles about how we develop these.

Glenn: [00:05:05] Okay. But you guys are really expert at what you do and you’ve been doing it for a long time. So how does this really.

Robert: [00:05:10] New the models.

Speaker 2: [00:05:11] Are new. That’s what I’m saying. How does this change things and move the technology of what you’ve been doing forward, to be more precise, I guess, is what we’re going to look at more.

Robert: [00:05:21] I think the bigger change is that it requires a lot more data, right? So I think the old way of kind of algorithmic, like regression pricing, fine. Anybody could do that, right? There are a lot of our competitors have these. They’re easy to do. Frankly, you can do them yourself. In fact, historically a lot of hoteliers have done these with spreadsheets. What we’re saying is, okay, we just acquired hot stats, huge amount of data. It’s not just revenue, its revenue and profit. And what we’re trying to do is show how we take this massive set of data. We have, build these models, plug all the data into it, and draw insights that would be very hard to do otherwise.

Glenn: [00:05:53] Right. So it’s kind of like the the difference between being on training wheels and a bicycle.

Robert: [00:05:59] Exactly right. All right. Now, now, now I’m starting to get it. All right, let’s level up. All right, so level.

Robert: [00:06:05] Three, last level is this one I’m actually really excited about. Okay. Which is I think, a general trend in software, but it’s kind of new to the hotel business, which is that revenue management is good. It’s very complicated. And the interface is very complicated. Right? What we’re trying to do is use AI to simplify it down. Now the data and the interfaces will still be there for the people who like to geek out on a big spreadsheet and, you know, highlighting colors, fine. But we’re saying is again, like the thing with the, you know, managing your data, wouldn’t it be great if you just go and the thing tells you, hey, these are the three things you need to focus on today.

Glenn: [00:06:37] Oh, wow, that’d be really great.

Robert: [00:06:38] Management by exception, right? So most of the time you’re running your business, it’s going along fine, right? Right. But then all of a sudden perfect storm, right? The, the the Mets are playing and, and there’s a convention in town and all of a sudden everything changes. Well, you want to know about that? That’s what you want to pay attention to, because now you have to figure out how to solve that problem.

Glenn: [00:06:58] I also think it’s amazing that the Mets are a draw, so that’s amazing. The amazing Mets. Hey.

Robert: [00:07:04] Now that you know, now that we are back on top with the Knicks.

Glenn: [00:07:07] Yeah I know. I well I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting since 86. Yeah yeah. So not.

Robert: [00:07:11] As long as Knicks.

Glenn: [00:07:11] Fans. No. Yeah. Thank goodness for them. I’m really happy about that. You really got me understanding about these next levels of where we could actually go about understanding data. There’s just so much of it. And the old way of doing things was really, even though it was deeper than we’d ever gone before, it was really just scratching the surface of what has become possible over the last few years. Right, exactly. So that’s the message I think we need to take away. The incredible thing about technology is no matter how great it is, and if you think it hits a ceiling, new things come along, burst through it, and you’re in at a brand new frontier. How exciting is this for you after being in technology for so many decades, is this what you thought we were going to get to, or is this beyond what you had dreamed?

Robert: [00:07:55] So this is I am I’ve had more fun in the past two years than I have had in maybe the last 1015 years of my career. That’s great. It is energizing. The potential is endless. A lot of work. But really it is opening up possibilities that never. And actually, I think especially in hospitality, hospitality has always kind of been the poor stepchild of technology. We’ve struggled. I think this is an era where hospitality kind of takes the lead and does things that haven’t been able to do in other areas before.

Glenn: [00:08:19] Right. And speaking of technology, before we wrap up, your three most important things of the day really reminds me of how Steve Jobs used to do business as well. Focus on those things right now, today. Make it happen. That way you can find more power and success. How do we learn more about Duetto?

Robert: [00:08:38] So we are. We’ll announce it. Check out our website Duetto labs.ai. Maybe I’ll have to find out. I know that you are all. But yeah.

Speaker 2: [00:08:44] Whatever that is, it’s down here for real. We will let Glenn.

Robert: [00:08:48] Know.

Speaker 2: [00:08:48] He will. Yeah, we’ll find out. Awesome. Thanks so much. I really appreciate you being here. I appreciate you being here. Like, share and subscribe. Be well. I’m Glenn, he’s Robert. Bye, everybody. Bye bye.