Name: Your Next Stay at Hyatt Hotel Could Be a Lot Different
Uploaded: 2016-07-27
Duration: 3 min 49 s
Description: CEO Mark Hoplamazian explains how Hyatt is going high tech

Mark, most people don't think of Hyatt hotels as a tech company, and yet you're doing this all out technology drive in your hotel chain. What are you doing differently? Well, I guess first and foremost, we're trying to have the technology be more and more powerful to enable our colleagues to be able to interact with our guests. But have it be invisible to the guest. So it's a lot of effort behind the scenes of making things more simple and really enhancing the colleague experience. That's really our major focus. You were one of the early adopters of using cell phones for key list To open up a hotel room and iPads for check- in, what has been the reaction from your hotel guests? So, I, you know, the keyless entry is welcomed by a lot of guests, but not really relevant to other guests, so we've taken to thinking about other technology solutions and other service sequence solutions. For example, in an airport hotel, providing the ability to provide a key with someone on the shuttle between the airport and the hotel has proven to be a tremendous enhancer of guest experience cuz when they show up at the hotel, they go straight to their room with their key as opposed to Necessarily using their telephone for the [ UNKNOWN ]. But it's not for everybody. It's not for everybody. So you have to really be thinking about which segment you're trying to serve. And then how to do that, not get too product focused, make sure you're still solving problems for guests. And it goes beyond these things that we've been talking about in terms of technology. You've added a lot of other innovations Behind the scenes, can you tell us a little bit about that? Well I think some of the things that we've done that really address friction and points of friction for our colleagues is our number one focus. So allowing people to schedule themselves through an app that we developed on time and attendance is a perfect example of putting control back in someones hands to Allow them to actually determine their own schedule. So that makes it more productive. More productive and more fulfilled. Like I, feeling like they have more control over their lives. As you go more and more down this technology pathway, are you finding that you have to hire different kinds of people, people that are a little bit more tech savvy? No question about it. So there's technology in building out systems and platforms. There's also the data center equation which is quite different, and it's more about data science and analytics. And I would say that's been the number one area of focus for us in terms of new talent, bringing new talent into the company. To take what we've got. We have a treasure trove of information. But information without insight is not really helpful, so getting people who can actually do that interpretation and the analytics around it and then really translate that into more compelling products and services for people, that translational piece That is really the essential skill set I think for our future. As you're making all of these changes, especially on the technology front, have you had to adjust the way that you lead the company, as the CEO? No question about it. The kinds of people that I'm spending time with are working on Huge data sets around healthcare and education and in business. And I'm seeing how they are approaching the problems that they're trying to solve. And these are areas that I really don't have any background in or experience in. But I'm drawn to it, because it's not dissimilar to what we're trying to solve. We're trying to help improve people's lives and Help them be their best. Well, the same is true in the healthcare industry and the same is true in education. These are huge data sets, and the way in which you can utilize that data, and the way in which you have to actually apply yourself to utilize it is really important to the outcome. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

CEO Mark Hoplamazian explains how Hyatt is going high tech

Your Next Stay at Hyatt Hotel Could Be a Lot Different

Tech

CEO Mark Hoplamazian explains how Hyatt is going high tech.