Glenn: Hey, everybody. Thanks so much. I’m your hospitality friend, Glenn, here at High Tech with Ben Jamieson of Sonesta, a company that’s growing on the move. We’re going to talk to him in a second. But first I want to thank our friends over at uniguest. Uniguest. Hotel hub solution connects the customer journey to your messaging and branding. Visit uni. Com. Ben, so good to see you. You’re in an enviable position. You you’ve made a couple acquisitions, the company is growing quickly and you’re in the unenviable position because you’ve got to build a new foundation for a rapidly expanding company. How do you deal with that without completely panicking? Yeah, thanks for having me. Oh, look, it’s.

Ben: It’s really exciting, right? I think you can you can overlay the panic with excitement and the opportunity that we have as a as a business. Sonesta has grown really quickly over the last several years.

Glenn: Going from one of the smallest companies to the seventh or eighth largest company in the hospitality.

Ben: Correct, correct. You know, roughly 1200 hotels now between managed and franchise and, you know, really getting the messaging out there with our franchisees and how we’re aiming to support them going forward and build a competitive model in the industry particularly.

Glenn: And they’ve introduced several new brands over the last couple of years. So you have to think about the legacy brands you inherited, the newer brands that you’re going to nurture. So how do you think about building a foundation when you have brands from, you know, more the economy side up to like the Benjamin for example?

Ben: Yeah, it’s you know, again, back to the excitement. We have an opportunity to set a new foundation and a new standard from a technology perspective about the right service model to support different brands. And they all have unique requirements, but we have to roll that up in a uniform format so that it can be supported holistically. As an operation, you need to be able to have access to data. We need to look forward to how we’re going to leverage AI to operate the business and provide value to our franchisees. So it’s a it’s an overarching lens that we have to view our roadmap through to think both short term wins or how we can stabilize and update as well as where we need to be down the road.

Glenn: Right. So that makes sense. You got to get the ship straight, and then you got to make sure that it’s power to go forward for for the, the future. Exactly. So what does that foundation start to look at? What are the main components of that, that then you could build upon. And I guess the real question is are you looking at a tech stack from a lot of different companies doing stuff in-house or, you know, working with one organization that has a lot of different features? How do you figure that stuff?

Ben: Well, you know, I think you’ve got two, two different buckets. You’ve got you’ve got commoditized solutions and some instances where where you have a lot of different partners who provide, you know, the same similar flavors or the same solution. Right? And there you have flexibility to work with best in class partners and give franchisees optionality. In other instances, you have best in class service providers who are providing overarching services that you need continuity to operate with a single part. Right. And those are kind of you’ve got to kind of parse out those situations and pick solutions based on, on what that looks like.

Glenn: How are you thinking about technology in terms of getting closer to the guests so you could get them to spend more with you?

Ben: You know, mobility and and really putting the power and the and the features and services of a hotel in the guest hand. Yeah. Right. Right. I think, you know, point of sale is a huge component of where you see real actionable data in terms of, you know, self-watering capabilities. Right. And I think hospitality as a whole has historically been a bit behind the technology curve. And we’ve really got to lean in and embrace modern solutions to get there. And that’s just, you know, those are quick wins we should be able to achieve as of driving revenue and providing a positive guest experience.

Glenn: So two letter story AI. How are you processing it? How are you thinking about it? Or do you just ask ChatGPT to solve the problem for you?

Ben: Exactly. You plug it in. You get all the answers you need. You know, you have to you have to pursue this thoughtfully. There’s a lot of shiny objects right now.

Glenn: That’s that’s what I’m trying to cut through during this event. You know.

Ben: Yep. You know Sonesta is establishing a steering committee. You know, number one. And this group evaluates solutions that are brought up by the business. Say, hey, does this work? How do we do this? You’ve got the compliance and the governance associated with AI that we have to be mindful of. And then you’ve got to be able to incubate these solutions. You can’t you can’t get analysis paralysis as you go through these things. You got to create an ecosystem where you can actually put them in play and evaluate their effectiveness. You know, you can’t be afraid to fail fast. Right.

Glenn: Well, I think sailing fast, if you’re going to fail, fail fast, learn those lessons, and then you can move on to something else. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That’s. That’s beautiful. Anything else you want to add?

Ben: No. Thanks for having me. It’s good.

Glenn: It’s a great show.

Ben: Great high tech.

Glenn: How about here? Hey, now, it’s a great show because I finally got Ben Jamieson here. I’m Glenn. Check out you guys. Thanks so much. We’ll see you next time. Bye bye.