How AI Frees Up Hotel GMs and Sales Teams to Execute

Glenn: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. It’s your hospitality friend Glenn here at the Hunter conference, where I found my friend Justin Jabara of Mayera Jabara hotels. But first I want to thank our friends over at Actabl. Actabl, they give you the power to profit. Please check them out actabl.com. So I just heard that you guys just had your leadership conference. I don’t know where I might have heard that from you before we turned on the microphone, but I just came from a couple myself. I’m going to another right after this event. And one of the themes is trying to give your teams better chances to be successful, right? How are you thinking about that and how, how did you share that with your team at your big event?

Justin: [00:00:34] Yeah, so this year marked our 20th anniversary of our executive and sales session. Awesome. Which is amazing. It is says Maya joie hits 49 years and you’ve been there six years running stuff now. It’s six years. Yeah, it’s six years right before Covid. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s the only way I was able to defend it. Yeah. Oh, well obviously the content has has evolved greatly. Our focus on our sessions is a lot about leadership, right? And what are the the tools that we can use to become better leaders and ultimately better operators? We spent four days together talking and learning about AI. Everybody sees AI being implemented in their day to day life. But has it pertained to business and how does that pertain to hotel operations at the property level? And then the above property level.

Glenn: [00:01:21] All right. So the question that I have for I know you guys are thinking this too. We’ve been talking a whole lot, a lot, a lot about AI, AI, but without actually defining its actual uses. So how are you drilling down to change your associates lives on a day to day basis without them feeling like they’re going to be turned over to Skynet 100%?

Justin: [00:01:40] So at the property level, it’s how do we augment the day to day role so that we can be more effective? I’ll just give you a simple example. Great. There are great softwares out there that can help organize a general manager’s day to day. So it’s not two hours of reading reports. Everything is on a plate for them When they walk in, they know what needs their attention. They have the day to day statistics of what’s going on and then they can react to it. So really making their lives more efficient. The same thing goes for sales managers. Think of how much time is spent doing prospecting. We can cut that time in half by utilizing AI. And net result is they’re much more effective. Yeah. That’s great. So I think that’s really wonderful because what we’re talking about and you know, I’ve said this a thousand times before, it’s about empowering teams to do more and help create more opportunities for people working with people.

Glenn: [00:02:33] Because at the end of the day, really, that’s what it comes down to, right? 100%. So with all this extra time back in the day, how are we going to be able to improve everything around the property? So, so the hope is, you know, day to day, there’s a lot of things vying for their time. Yeah. But if we can free them up, they’re spending more time with a our customer and also our associates, right? Getting them out of the office, they’re no longer doing all that administrative work and they’re focusing on what really matters, our guests and our associates. It sure does. Now that’s great at the property level, but you with the management company, you always out there having to get new deals, worry about development. What is the state of being for you today as you’re here at an investment conference?

Justin: [00:03:14] Well, it’s been a busy year over the last 12 months. We sold a handful of properties, but we’ve also been able to grow through acquisition and also growing in the third party space. So just in the next 90 days, we have three properties coming into the system.

Glenn: [00:03:29] Congratulations. That is wonderful. How are you feeling about new builds versus conversions?

Justin: [00:03:34] New builds are tough. So so this is the least amount of new builds we’ve ever done in 49 years. It’s really a product of where the market is not a ton is pricing. So our focus really has shifted over to the acquisition side.

Justin: [00:03:49] And it’s a lot of those more difficult deals. They take longer, it’s a lot more work, but it’s just very hard to get the yields that we need.

Glenn: [00:03:57] Yeah. And you knew I set him up because I really just wanted to validate what I already know and what I’ve already been telling you. Interestingly enough, I spoke to Ryan Bosch of Arriba Capital this morning. He was saying the banks are coming back, at least on the regional side, and that might help move new development. But you working in the existing hotel universe, I think makes a whole lot of sense for where we are right now. We’ve seen the big brands shift their strategies towards that as well. 100%. What’s interesting is during our executive session, I surveyed the 120 managers and directors of sales in the room, and two thirds of them were very bullish on this year, which I think is a wonderful indicator of where we are. Yeah. Excellent. Anything else that you want to add?

Justin: [00:04:40] No. It’s just great to see you and great to be here.

Glenn: [00:04:42] It’s great to see you. Hey, great to see you folks out there. Thanks so much for watching. Please like, share, subscribe all of that stuff. Text the word hotel to 66866. Check out my friends at Activa for Justin and myself. Glenn, thanks for watching. And check out that nice football stadium. See you later. Bye.