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Shane Pierce has seen the inner workings of hundreds of hotels around the world. As an IT guy turned business dev expert, he’s combined his diverse experiences to help hoteliers create better guest experiences.
Now, as the Sales Director at Hoteza, an industry-leading guest experience and staff technology platform, Shane has led its successful charge in the Americas, delivering on all the things guests and hotels really seek from a digital partner.
We sat down with him to hear all about the evolution of the hospitality industry, how Hoteza’s tech is paving the way, and what they’re doing to help hotelier marketing teams take full advantage.
Tell us about your experiences in hospitality and your journey to your current role at Hoteza.
I’ve basically been in TV my entire career. It started with roles at Tier 2 and Tier 3 telecom companies, building some of the very first IPTV applications ever. Over the years, my heavy tech background evolved into the business side too. I was able to function as my own sales engineer, from the initial outreach to the actual install.
In 2011, I got a request to help a hospitality company with an IT plug-in issue they were experiencing, and they told me they could really use someone like me to push IPTV in their world. So I did, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.
I’ve continued to straddle the tech and business side of things, which has enabled me to be a facilitator between these CEOs and their technical teams. I spent the last seven years as VP of Business Development at Allbridge, one of the largest IPTV distributors in the hospitality space, and during that time, Nick Beloshitsky, the CEO of Hoteza, approached us about their product. The timing was right at that first engagement, but we kept in touch. Eventually, they were ready to make a run at the US market, and he asked me to come lead the charge.
Hoteza had great partners but hadn’t tapped into the Americas yet. I had the relationships and technical knowledge to facilitate a seamless execution of the platform in a brand new market. Today, Hoteza is in 90 different countries.
How has the hospitality industry evolved in recent years?
In hospitality, it’s as simple as this: we want the guest to have what they have access to in their own homes at the very minimum.
After COVID, everyone has become more reliant and trusting of technology in ways it never had been before. The local relationships these concierges used to build with their guests in-person had to be done virtually. Everything had to come from a tech perspective out of necessity, and from there, it evolved into opportunity once those limitations were lifted. We can now book a catamaran cruise by scanning a QR code. What you used to do by calling the front desk or walking down to concierges, you can now do through your TV or mobile app. It all ties together.
High-end hotels are creating digital experiences that make all the logistics throughout a guest’s stay as simple and convenient as possible. But with Hoteza, there’s such a big monetization aspect for the hotels itself too. They used to spend this same money on technology without the ROI. It’s one of the gaps we’ve helped fill. (We’ll get more into that later!)
What is Hoteza? What are its capabilities / features?
What truly sets our platform apart is that it embodies the entire guest journey, from pre-travel to post travel. It goes beyond what you see at the hotel itself, allowing the property to be able to touch the guest through the whole life cycle, putting their needs and preferences front and center.
That starts with communication. Concierge can send personalized reminders and messages to guests before they arrive, during their stay, and afterward. If they book a spa experience, they can follow up to see how it was and/or ask for feedback. If there’s inclement weather, they can notify guests of closures or emergencies.
If one of your restaurants runs out of filet mignon that night, the staff can update the menu through the app in real-time during the dinner rush — so customers aren’t frustrated when trying to order an item you don’t have. From an IT perspective, the app is connected to their TV boxes to ensure their tech is functioning properly. If there is an issue, they can address it directly through the dashboard versus sending a technician to their room. This ease-of-use for the business translates to a better customer experience as well. They go hand-in-hand.
And the convenience for the guest benefits the hotel as well. With full transparency of the PMS, they can check-in and check-out without ever going to the lobby. For guests that don’t carry cash with them, they can leave gratuities through the app.
Lastly, with extensive analytics tracking, we can see the channels guests are watching, the services they're signing up for and customize their experiences to match their interests. If they’re celebrating a birthday or anniversary, all that data is stored, so the hotel can do something special to recognize that.
This also makes this marketing aspect that much more valuable. The goal down the line will be full-service advertising, and the more analytics we can provide, the more valuable these ads will become for hotels.
It’s truly a complete solution. From IPTV in-room solutions and streaming, tablet solutions which are common outside the US, high speed internet, and more, our integrations really ties everything together to offer all the small things that lead to big advantages. Again, putting the guest front and center from a hotelier point of view.
What are some keys to success in creating elevated guest experiences?
Hoteliers really have to be friendly from a business point of view. We have hotels all over the map in our platform, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all. All of our features and functionality won’t fit equally for every hotel. We try to be as knowledgeable as we can about how our capabilities can accommodate the specific needs of each hotel’s unique guests and services.
Listen to your guests. With Hoteza, we’ll get started with a hotel partner by rolling out a specific set of options, and as they grow and become more comfortable, we can turn on new features and adjust. We spend a lot of time internally working on specific packages by understanding the hotel's pain points and the services they offer to ensure these hotels each have the functionality they need without charging them every time they make a change. That’s part of the growth process.
Casinos are a great example. They want really good technology to improve the guest experience, but they also never want the guest in the room. If they’re able to do everything from there, they’re not down on the casino floor spending money. It’s about understanding and finding this balance and only giving them the functionality they really need.
I personally worked with over 800,000 rooms throughout my time at Allbridge, so I have a good gauge of what certain guests are looking for. But I advise hotels to really sit down and have that discussion about what their goals are and what pain points they’re struggling with to better understand the path forward.
What do you think the future of hospitality looks like?
We truly believe the future is within our core services, bringing in much more sophisticated marketing prowess as these capabilities evolve. As more and more guests bring their own content with them, it minimizes the need for hotels to provide it — so we have to find new ways to provide more advertising options.
Hoteza can really put advertising anywhere within the guest experience, but we want to take that even further. It started during COVID when events were limited to a certain number of attendees. When we would live stream these sessions, we’d look for ways to incorporate sponsors into the experience. Then we started infiltrating these ads on TV screens, apps, and more, allowing the hotels to promote their own services, but also take care of their marketing partners as well.
This is where the world is headed from an advertising standpoint — touching our target audiences at all times, making it easier to monetize our platforms and generate better ROIs.
And it will continue to be all about the ease of use — from the guest being able to lock their door from anywhere to being a complete CMS solution for hotels to manage their property from anywhere. A lot of companies today can provide these core technologies, so we’re always looking for ways to differentiate ourselves, focusing on what this future will look like. We’ve built an aggressive AI roadmap to elevate the personalization aspect, balancing emerging technologies and the human touch that’s so important. There’s so much potential at the convergence of the two, and we plan to take full advantage.