KEY CONCEPT CASE STUDY

How was the conference, boss? The question came from Damario, the revenue manager at the Barcena Resort. Damario had been hired because Sofia Davidson, the resort's GM wanted to improve the hotel's revenuegenerating ability, and she wanted him to assist her in her ambitious plans to innovate how the hotel used technology to improve customer experiences. This desire to innovate was also the reason she went to a regional Technology and Hospitality Expo over the previous weekend. Sofia was visibly overjoyed, It was incredible! Amazing! I know you are just settling in, so we decided you didn't need to go this year. But you definitely need to go next year. I saw at least 10 new ideas that we need to implement right away! Sounds very exciting! What were some of the best things you saw that you think could help us? Damario asked. He felt a mixture of excitement but also a bit of nervousness about implementing new systems when he was just beginning to learn the standard way things were being done at the resort. First, said Sofia, there was a messaging system that allows guests in the restaurant to interact with kitchen staff directly. It's like how some oldfashioned diners used to have telephones at their tables, except these are tabletbased programs with images and animations. It would allow our customers to make literally hundreds of custom orders on even our basic menu! Like, for example, adding onions when they order a hamburger. Then, she continued, I saw a system that would help us manage our rewards program and send targeted messages at certain times that we choose, like sending promotions out by email or text just as schools go on break and families plan to travel. Also, I talked to a company that sells a room key with a tracker embedded in it, so that you can tell how much time guests are spending in each part of the hotel. If you send the company a floor plan, they'll even show you visualizations on their website of how people move around the property. And the guests don't even know! Sofia took a deep breath, That's just the beginning. I'm going to back to my office and write down all these ideas. You can help me pitch them for discussion at our next revenue management task force meeting. As Sofia marched back to her office, Fatima, the resort's Executive Chef, who reported directly to Sam, the hotels' F&B Director, walked up to Damario. Sofia was pretty excited there huh? She just gave you ninemonths' worth of changes to implement ASAP! Good luck with that! Well, I agree it would be a lot to consider and then write up implementation plans for all those ideas, Damario said. Fatima smiled, Oh you're not thinking you can implement all of them, are you? If Sam and I executed on every great new idea that floated across Sofia's desk, I'd never get around to actually feeding our guests. You don't think Sofia will be upset if I tell her that some of these ideas might not work well for us? asked Damario. She might be disappointed at first, Fatima said, but the way I see it, Sofia has big visions. That's part of her job. But we're the specialists in our areas. Sofia brings the ideas in and then she needs our expertise to help decide if they will work or not. I can tell you that I certainly wouldn't go for the tablets that send messages directly to the kitchen. I try to structure our kitchen and dining rooms service, so guests distract my cooks less, not more! Plus, I can tell you that our servers are 10 times better at taking orders than customers will be at operating a new app, especially if there are substitutions or special requests on an order. The onions, Sofia mentioned? We can add them to burgers, of course, but are they red, purple, or white? Deep fried? Sauteed? Raw? Chopped? Sliced? Some other way? Sofia said our customers could make hundreds of different requests. I'm thinking thousands of different requests, and sheer chaos! Damario sighed, Well, just off the top of my head, I think that keycard tracker, for example, might not even be legal unless we get guests to sign a big waiver at checkin and I don't think guests will like doing that. Plus we'd be sending very personal information to a thirdparty company. We'd be paying a separate company a lot of money and getting a huge potential liability. On the other hand, that rewards management program sounds like it might have a lot of potential. Fatima gave Damario a smile, See, there you go! That's important information to share with Sofia. The good and the bad! From the sounds of it, you've only got six or seven more ideas to consider. You're going to do great! They both looked down the hallway and they could see Sofia had never made it back to her office. She was talking eagerly to Adrian, the resort's rooms manager, about her experience at the conference.

1. When a brandnew technology is introduced on the market, there are no experts. How would you go about trying to decide if a technology is a good fit for your business or not? What are concrete steps you could take to guide your decision, regardless of what the specific tech tool was?