Transcript
[00:00:00] Luka Berger: “Oh, there's no more calls anymore, or, oh, I can come to the hotel at seven instead of six.” All of a sudden, you're not running through a hallway with, like, 10 calls at the same time.
[00:00:21] Matt Welle: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another Matt Talks Hospitality. And this week, we wanted to talk about Flexkeeping. Flexkeeping is a company that joined Mews. We acquired them a couple of weeks ago, and we made the announcements. And I thought it was time to bring Luka into the picture. Luka is the CEO and founder of Flexkeeping. He actually started his career also in hotels, specifically in housekeeping. So I'm very keen to discover what he did in housekeeping, what was the pain that he felt, and then end up fixing with Flexkeeping. Luka, welcome.
[00:00:51] Luka Berger: Thank you. It's awesome to be here, Matt.
[00:00:53] Matt Welle: So, tell me what led you to a career in housekeeping. What was the first thing that happened that said, I'll go and work in cleaning rooms?
[00:01:00] Luka Berger: Yeah. It was nothing at all like that. So for me, hospitality was a coincidence. So we need to go back, like, to 2012. I was finishing my studies, and I had a big FOMO because, you know, I was, like, 24. I never travelled. All my friends travelled. I was like, Oh my God. You know? I need to go and soon find a job, but I was nowhere, and I had no experience. So my girlfriend told me that she once went to the U.S via a work and travel program as a student, and she had an awesome time. And I was like, I'm doing that. She was like, Okay, I'm going again with you. So we applied for this program and completely coincidentally landed a job as housekeepers in Yellowstone National Park in the U.S, and it was just amazing. It was how I got into operations. I always really loved hospitality for some reason, you know, that feeling that you get entering a hotel, seeing a hotel. And just that experience is where I got the pleasure of being in it. So during that summer, you know, working as a housekeeper there, the other part of me was, I always wanted to have a company. I always wanted to build a company. So, me and Aljaz, my cofounder, we always said, like, we wanna do something. We founded the company, but we didn't really know what to do. And that was just a few months before I went to the U.S being a housekeeper. And this is where really both of the worlds came together for me. And the story of how this got about, like, the Flexkeeping story was just simple, that kind of half of the summer, I started just realizing and looking around, like, my boss, Janet, that time, you know, she was just running around the hotel the whole day just to figure out what which rooms I've cleaned, what the others have done, came back to us to tell us what we need to fix, etcetera, etcetera. And I was, oh, just because there were system printouts from the PMS that we worked based on, you know, and she had a walkie-talkie, and that's exactly how the communication went. It was just such a loss of time. No one knew what needed to be done, like, things lasted a long time, check-ins lasted longer for guests. We made tons of mistakes with stuff like that. I recognize so much of that. Like, when I worked last in housekeeping, I was in South Africa, and this is when we were still the DOS systems, but it felt the same thing, like, in the morning, you do the shift allocation, everyone gets a list with 10, 12 rooms on it that they had to clean, and then throughout the day, the housekeeper's running around the floors to try and figure out which rooms have been cleaned, and then they call the reception on their walkie-talkie to kind of give the rooms back.
[00:03:24] Matt Welle: Exactly.
[00:03:25] Luka Berger: And for me, that was 2012, right? So I already had a smartphone as well. It's when smartphones really started to take off, like, globally speaking. I was like, well, if we have a smartphone, we should be able to build a super simple system that would enable us, first, the staff members, to really have our jobs easier, you know, just with a tap, communicate everything. There's be there would be no stress. It would be much faster. Just so many consequential benefits of it. And so that was really the core idea. And I remember that summer, we had a Skype call with Aljaz. I was like, hey, man, I think this is, you know, this is a good idea, like, we should probably look into that. And, yeah, that's how it started.
[00:04:02] Matt Welle: Alyash was your cofounder, right? Technical cofounder.
[00:04:06] Luka Berger: Alyash is my cofounder. Yeah. He was in charge. He is in charge of the product. I'm in charge; I was in charge of the business side. Yeah. That's how it started. That's how my housekeeping career came together with my entrepreneurial career, and here we are.
[00:04:18] Matt Welle: And was there nothing in the marketplace that could do what you ended up building? What was there no other housekeeping solutions?
[00:04:23] Luka Berger: Well, there definitely were, but there was not a lot of information, that's one. You know, the online world was a bit different, and two, whatever we found was not what we thought the system should look like, feel like what it should do as well.
[00:04:39] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:04:40] Luka Berger: And the first thing was that we, since the beginning, had our own philosophy. We didn't really go deeply researching what others do and how they did it because we felt we we wanna do it our way; the way we feel is the right way, the best way, and that's how we went and started building.
[00:04:56] Matt Welle: Sometimes it's the best thing to not look at what competition has done so that you don't end up copying what they do. You just look at the deep pain that you've like, when you design a product, I'm sure in your head, you're still going back to that hotel in the U.S, where you lived on the floor. So I'm like, well, would I go through these kinds of scenarios in that kind of job?
[00:05:15] Luka Berger: Exactly. Yeah. That was the thing. So I really based the kind of first product design of what it should do on the experience and, you know, just looking at all departments, all operations, what it should really do for us and the hotel. And that's how we started building it. And if I now go back and look at the first documentation that we wrote up, in its core, it's still the same. In its core, it still helps us, the operators, you know, in the same way. It just grew in all directions through the years.
[00:05:45] Matt Welle: What was the first product? Like, I remember our first iteration, and it was godawful. Was Flexkeeping the first time it went live in the first hotel? Was it great? And was it, like, you never touched it since then, or was it awful and you had to do a lot of rebuilding?
[00:06:01] Luka Berger: Yeah. Well, we had to do rebuilding, but I think it was quite good. It had a super funny angle, and it's a cool story, I think. So the first version of Flexkeeping was actually built on an e-paper system. So, like, much like Kindle, let's say, but there was a really good company back in Slovenia where we started off that started building e-paper tablets that were built for the industry. That meant that it should have, like, months of battery life. It meant that you couldn't break it. You could wash it, you know, and stuff like that, and it was touch-based. So, the idea was that housekeeping is a very tough operation, you know? You have cleaning substances, things can fall on the floor, etcetera. So it seems like the perfect fit, and that was the first version of Flexkeeping. Design was actually really cool. I think they're still, you know, you can get the screenshot still, but ultimately, it wasn't the right tech, right? So if you look at it from 2012 onwards, like, mobile homes and the way we interact with, the way just the philosophy of interaction with all the pictures, videos, messaging, all of that stuff. That was not, e-paper was not the right fit for that, so really quickly, we started…
[00:07:07] Matt Welle: How long ago did it take you from deploying that to then saying, “Right, we need to get to a different technology.”
[00:07:13] Luka Berger: Yeah. Within a year, like, we had a first few pilots, you know, properties, and in a few months, we were like, yeah, there's just too much hassle. And, yeah, within a year, we had the first mobile version ready as well, but it was a really cool kind of product philosophy, a bit sorry that it didn't work out, actually.
[00:07:31] Matt Welle: Like, the thing is, these are all moments in time in high, like in the moment, it feels like a very deep pain, but, actually, you end up with a better product because you've experienced what doesn't work and you pivoted. And I think as long as you keep pivoting when something doesn't work, like, look at the amazing company you've built in the end, like, it was probably worth that pivot.
[00:07:49] Luka Berger: Oh, absolutely. And maybe, you know, like, one of the things, like okay, that was the resilience of the technology. The other thing that we'd really focused on since day one was, how do people that work in hotels interact with the technology? And this really was where the firsthand experience came in well because, you know, understanding who people running operations are and their backgrounds and their language differences and culture differences, tech literacy differences, you know? We always had this philosophy that any software you use, especially if that's Flexkeeping, should be kind of shadowing you. It should never burden you. It should never stop you in your work process. It should be kind of, you know, integrated in your work process, and you should kind of love to use it, if not, just not even notice it, right? So, since they want this is where we invested. So the user interface, if we put it that way, really pays back in our experience, and I think this is also very in line with the user disengagement philosophy that Mews has as a broader system. And, yeah, it really works well. It's super important, especially if we're running operations.
[00:08:51] Matt Welle: So the other day, I did a cross-exposure at a hotel, and I sat down with the housekeeper as well, and she said, “Yeah, my staff don't really like to use technology. They want pen and paper.” What would you say to housekeepers to convince them that, actually, using smartphones is better than pen and paper, and that it is a good choice?
[00:09:10] Luka Berger: Yeah. My first thought is that if they say that, maybe they had a bad experience or maybe they're just afraid of a change, because, you know, like, housekeeping has been managed for centuries, probably with pen and paper, since pen and paper were invented. And so it works, you know? Why would you change something that works? Right? So that's one. And the other is technology. You know? Again, if you think about those people like, maybe predominantly they're not so tech-driven or a large part of it. So, it's the fear of change that usually drives this kind of feedback.
[00:09:42] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:09:43] Luka Berger: What's really cool is that the people who are the biggest pushbackers at the start are the biggest fans in, like, a day when we are implementing and we're rolling out Flexkeeping. And I think it's change management and it's fear management that really is the big thing that needs to be managed, just, and then, once they feel it, there's no way back, like, there's, like, rarely whoever wants to go back.
[00:10:07] Matt Welle: What's your favorite feature of a housekeeper? What gets them really excited to seeing that it is better than paper and pen?
[00:10:17] Luka Berger: Yeah. Well, I would, like, speak maybe one is the management part of housekeeping. The other is the, let's say, operational, like, housekeeping, cleaning rooms, part of this. Like, for managers, the consistent feedback we would get is, like, it's a huge relief for them. Like, the feedback that we've gotten is, like, you literally gave me my life back, and I'm not exaggerating here. It's because, you know, you need to understand, like, housekeeping management before that if you have, like, 100, 200, 500 rooms. Like, it takes an hour even more of organization. You need to come in early, like, at 6 AM. You stay late to organize everything, all the daily changes, all that stuff, many people, the staff management, like, the housekeeping managers, really have a tough job. Once Flexkeeping comes in, like, this is all taken away and automated for them, like, they’re just more to kind of make sure that everything is planned well, the way they do it, and just it's more of a control rather than doing all of it. So it really gives them a lot of time back to focus on training, quality assurance, you know, relationships with people, service, etcetera. So for them, it's a huge relief. On the operational part, like, if I remember, when I was a housekeeper, one of the biggest things was, like, the stress and surprise factor, you know? You walk in, like, at 2 PM, you think your job is done, and then you walk into a paper that says, yeah, you need to go three more rooms and five mistakes and stuff like that, you know? And just makes you not feel that great. The other thing is also, everything is a hassle, like, just communicating other stuff or getting feedback. There are so many things. If you're a foreign-speaking person, it's hard to integrate all that stuff. So I think transparency and just being able to focus on your work while having a transparent feedback and just super seamless communication with knowing what's coming, stuff like that, being rewarded for objective performance. All those things make it easier.
[00:12:10] Matt Welle: You talked about foreign-speaking people, and that's often in housekeeping. You do find that there are a lot of nationalities working in this department, that might not be the native language of the main housekeeper. How does Flexkeeping facilitate these different languages?
[00:12:24] Luka Berger: Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that we did since day one practically is the first frame was with the way we build the UI. So there's a certain philosophy of colors and symbols we are using since day one that should explain to everyone, regardless of the language, what needs to be done, what's the priority, what's dynamic, and what has been done already. So you should know at a glance what needs to be done, what was done. So that was the first thing we did, and it really works well. The other thing, obviously, was the language translations once tech got better. So today, everyone can use Flexkeeping in their own language, and everything gets translated. You see both languages. So you can also learn via that, so that's super easy. And now the third level is AI, right? So the Flexi AI system that we've deployed last year is the new kind of generation of that, where we want to have all the staff members to really express and communicate and collaborate in their own language with the system and consequently with the whole team, and that's definitely one of the future ways we see it.
[00:13:23] Matt Welle: Like, how does that work? Like, the AI?
[00:13:26] Luka Berger: Yeah. The AI, essentially, so what it does is instead of you needing to type in things into the system, which is the logical thing, you know, for operations to understand, like, you need to put many things in to make operational sense, like, what's the room? What's the category of a problem? Description, pictures, stuff like that. So, what it does for you instead of wasting that time, but also typing, which both can be a problem, is you can just speak to the system and say, “Hey, in Room 201, there's an AC problem. Please fix it by 4 PM. We have a new guest coming in”, and it will understand you, it will structure all of that thing. You can say that in your own language, it translates into any other language automatically, and you're just done, like, in literally 5 seconds…
[00:14:05] Matt Welle: I could say in Room 503, my shower is broken. The hot water doesn't seem to be working. And then that translates to the language of the hotel, or of the next person. You can then see that the task is allocated to the correct room number. Like, it automatically creates the task in that room number?
[00:14:22] Luka Berger: Exactly. Yeah. It picks up all those details and puts them in based on all the automation, all the analytics, all of it can happen. Yeah. And that's just the start to me, you know? Those are the most obvious operational things that you need to report on. I think, you know, like, in the future, we need to enable staff, generally speaking, in a hotel to collaborate that way and then expand that not just into task management that is repetitive, but into proactive hospitality, you know, like, personalization opportunities, for example, happen in operation everywhere, like at breakfast, in the spa, in the room, see things. This is where we should enable staff members to communicate practically with the hotel, and then the system should be smart enough to make use of that, right, in the right way, structure it, save it, automate it. And yeah, it's super exciting. I get super excited about that.
[00:15:16] Matt Welle: Why do you think housekeeping is often the last department to get innovation and technology given to them?
[00:15:22] Luka Berger: The biggest thing I did, I can't understand since day one. I mean, I can now understand how the business is run, but from a logical perspective, what's hospitality, what it's about, I cannot understand that because, personally, I think that housekeeping is actually the heart of hospitality. If you think, like the basic product of hospitality since forever is a room, and one of the biggest things is how the room feels, how clean the room is, you know, cleanliness is one of the top three factors for booking. Also, it's one of the biggest departments, like operations generally. I don't know. The housekeeping definitely accounts for the biggest cost of it as well. And then thirdly, maybe most importantly, I think housekeepers also have the most intimate relationship with the guest, you know? You're the only one that really walks into the personal sphere of a guest, you know, you see their behavior, you know, intimate things and stuff like that. All of those things are, like, why housekeeping is really the core of operations. Also, if you take everything away, probably the last thing that you can’t take away is housekeeping. So this is where under-investing in that doesn't make a lot of sense to me personally since day one, because I see it as a generator of the, you know, of loyalty, of satisfaction. I see a huge opportunity in asking housekeepers about what they know about guests to personalize more, for example. No one has staff number 4, right? So it's the biggest staff cost unit as well. So I'm not saying that, the point should not be to lower that cost, it should be to optimize it. You should always be right-staffed, not under- or over-staffed. It's the right amount of staff. Fifth thing, I think, is also not realized is that a lot of hotels might be able to sell more, maybe, of rules, generally speaking, if it's a big or a high turnover operation or upsell more or personalize more, you know, like, personalization within housekeeping is super untapped as well. And all of that goes back to not being able to manage that, you know, like, management usually is not like, they're not sure if they'll be able to handle it, especially if you're a bigger operation, that is, like, staff constraint and the resource constraint. But this is where unlocking it with automation is the key thing, and this is what we bring to the hotel. Like, you have it in front of you. All of those if this, then that's in any aspect are already laid out for you.
[00:17:45] Matt Welle: I always struggle with this. Like, when I arrive already at the hotel, they're like, yeah, come back at three. That's the official check-in time. I'm like, but surely, some rooms must be clean, like, can you not call housekeeping? And they're like, no, no, you know, come back at three. But if you give the housekeepers technology that immediately, when they clean the room they can give it back to the front desk, we can do the upsell with Mews, like we built on all of these great upsell solutions for early arrivals, and it's a great way to make revenue, but, yes, you do need to enable housekeepers with the right technology to kind of allow them to return those rooms.
[00:18:15] Luka Berger: And that's just the peak of the iceberg, you know, like, being able to know that a room is ready in time. It's just like you are one of the 150 individual guests. So the level of where we need to go is, like, understanding each of the guests separately and your dynamic, your preferences, your upsells, your guest journey, and then automate back into resource planning that can be, like, what needs cleaning when, who needs to do what when, stuff like that. This is where the bottom part of the iceberg that is under the water still sits in hospitality, and that's what makes it such a big opportunity down the road.
[00:18:51] Matt Welle: Because most hotels today still operate with pen and paper. Unfortunately, I wish it were different, but it just is the truth of it. So in the morning, this housekeeper gets a piece of paper with 12 room numbers on it, and then they start knocking on doors to find the first room where there is no guest, so they can start cleaning that room. It's a really awful kind of procedure, but the later in the day it gets, the more of the context has changed in the meantime because people have left and arrived, etcetera. Does Flexkeeping, that list of 12 rooms, does it change dynamically based on what's happening in the hotel, or does it remain the same static list of 12 rooms?
[00:19:25] Luka Berger: Yeah. No. What we do is that we have a real-time update on everything that's happening, all the dynamics, the check-ins, check-outs, room moves, cancellations, due bookings, all of that stuff, and we always give you an up-to-date forecast of the day of the situation right now and the future. So you can always make those changes, or those changes can always be made at any time.
[00:19:47] Matt Welle: If I just finished cleaning Room 101, will it tell me what the next best room is to clean to help operations of the hotel?
[00:19:55] Luka Berger: Yes. It can. It can also not. It depends on the philosophy of your operations as well, and who is really prioritizing. So this is a really good question because, like, the question is, should the system be telling you which is the next room, or should the team know how to prioritize better based on information? And it's a mix of both. The system can do both. It's really a question of what type of operation you're running and what's really the outcome you're driving, but, yeah, it's a combo of both. Absolutely.
[00:20:23] Matt Welle: I've noticed when we started looking at Flexkeeping that actually you're not just in one or two countries. You're all over the world. You go from relatively small hotels to very, very large hotels. You span from independent hotels to major chains. Some of our largest customers would use Flexkeeping. It's why we got so excited about it, but are there distinct differences between countries and types of hotels, or do they all operate the same everywhere around the world?
[00:20:47] Luka Berger: Yeah. It's all the same. That's one of the things that, like, especially in the beginning, in the first years when I was, like, traveling to other countries or, you know, having expectations that once I come into the more, let's say, developed countries or, I don't know, more West or however you wanna call it, the more developed countries like that, the systems would consequently be better also within housekeeping, and it's not that. So the whole world, in my experience, is really operating the same way. It's still predominantly run on pen and paper. The systems that were or are implemented are very basic; it just goes in line with underinvesting in housekeeping, generally speaking, and that's the same everywhere. So I haven't necessarily seen a country that we would say or a region that would say, well, they are way ahead. No. It's not the case.
[00:21:42] Matt Welle: And is there a starting point, like, only from 40 rooms upwards, it starts to make sense to have a housekeeping solution?
[00:21:48] Luka Berger: Well, that's, no. The short answer is no. But the other thing is also, like, we need to expand, so housekeeping definitely is the heart of it. It's really the whole operation that shouldn't be looking at the system, how they are working together, and how they are delivering the services they are delivering. This is where any size of operation wants to run in a better way, in an automated way, in a better-trained way, transparent way, automated way, and this is where, that's why we have properties from, like, 5 rooms to, like, 500 rooms and groups and independence because it's like no one even if you have 20 rooms, you don't wanna be calling your colleagues if something was fixed, if something needs to be done. You don't wanna be writing down things, or you don't wanna be training in the same way and etc. So that's why we have such diversity. It's true that if you're looking at, I don't know, cash ROI per se, that's where a bigger operation, it's just a bigger ROI. It's just a mathematical thing more than anything else, but if you're looking at, like, we wanna deliver the best service we can based on our philosophy, that's where Flexkeeping is applicable, and you should invest in it.
[00:23:02] Matt Welle: Do you have a success story of a customer that deployed Flexkeeping where they've really seen the impact of it that you can share?
[00:23:08] Luka Berger: Yeah. I think Strawberry Hotels is one of the really good examples. They have a super big portfolio of super diverse properties as well. And they're looking to automate and optimize and just deliver on their promise. And this is where we really clicked well, and delivered really well. So, like, it goes from, ROI in terms of savings and resource savings, time savings, then over to a lot of automation happening, a huge volume of personalization as well happening on automated levels as well over to, like, staff satisfaction, signs of turnover lowering, team's periods decreasing, you know, all across the boards, like so that would be that would be one of a really, really good recent examples, but overall.
[00:23:59] Matt Welle: Were they using pen and paper before, or were they using a different solution that then switched to you?
[00:24:02] Luka Berger: Yeah. They were using a different solution and switched over to us in that case.
[00:24:06] Matt Welle: What was the driver for the change?
[00:24:09] Luka Berger: So now I'm kind of speaking a little bit secondhand, right? So, that needs to be noted here. But I think there were a few things: one of the stability of the system, stability of the integration with Mews, it's a Mews customer as well, and then the third factor and fourth and fifth was the way the system works, the amount of automation again. When I'm saying automation, I wanna dive deeper in a few minutes into that. But it's like, it's not just how you enable teams to communicate in a new way. It's not just going from pen, paper to digital. It's also, like, taking away a big part of what they need to do manually, like, for example, if we go within the Strawberry Group, there's one property called Villa Copenhagen, where we, which was one of the first deployments of our product called automated services, which is kind of like an “if this, then that” automation tool where you can say, hey, if Matt comes from The Netherlands, please schedule him a VIP package for whatever reason because you're a certain rate code, VIP guest, whatever. And that means that you can not just schedule tasks that need to be done, but also automate and go to a different level, you know, with it. And so in this case, the amount of automations is just crazy. They have about 340 rooms. And in three months, there were, like, 14,000 almost automated tasks. And that, imagine, like, the man-hours saved of just scheduling that, now imagine that…
[00:25:41] Matt Welle: Because that previously would have been a human who went through all the arrivals and manually went into all the systems to give tasks to people, right, if they've remembered to do all of that work.
[00:25:49] Luka Berger: Exactly. Yeah. So that's a lot of manual work. That’s, secondly, there will probably be way less of it because you can't handle that much. There's so much personalization that happens and delivery for the guests, like, you never want to underdeliver, so this is where you go overdelivering. And, yeah, it just drives a completely new level of personalization and collaboration. Oh, and thirdly, those 14,000 automated tasks were a bit over 60% of all the tasks. So there's, like, still, like, over 30% that was additionally manually communicated. So, like, it's not doubling or tripling the effect of, you know, going to the next level with your time, with your operations, with pressing staff, with all of that. So all of those things together were, I think, what made it really successful.
[00:26:33] Matt Welle: And in that story, you talked about the integration with Mews. We've been working together far longer than since since a couple of weeks. What makes the integration with Mews so strong?
[00:26:42] Luka Berger: Yeah. I think before I go into the technical integration, I think the first principle thing that makes it so successful is that the philosophy of the products and also the companies is very much aligned since day one, like, it's just a pure wish and drive to make hospitality better, and it's just from two different aspects that that now come together. So that's one. So you could always see that coming into mutual customers, like Strawberry’s or other bigger groups. It just felt like it's just a natural flow, you know? There's the continuation of the same quality. And so when we look at the integration, just because of the philosophy of the products and how we should do things is so well. It's also the integration is set up so well, so it's very open. It's very proactive. It's very enabling. And so the power of Flexi is really the new way of operations, the automation of operations, being able to do more, to upsell more, to plan better. And this was very well enabled for the integration of Mews, you know, we could really touch any data that we needed for that and really naturally extend the philosophy of Mews into operations, because I would say, like, hospitality really happens in operations, right? So before that, you only sell it; in operations is where you execute it.
[00:27:57] Matt Welle: You make it untrue.
[00:27:58] Luka Berger: Yeah. And then you have the same philosophy with Flexkeeping continuing into the operations part. And this is what makes it so strong and so unique on the market. And I think that's what drives the success.
[00:28:10] Matt Welle: Thank you. I really enjoy your passion for operations and housekeeping. I think it's a very unique skill set. Like, I love hospitality. I think it's so special, but we have made them struggle with bad technology for so long that we're on this mission to liberate hoteliers, and it's really exciting to see that passion in you.
[00:28:28] Luka Berger: Yeah. I love it. I just absolutely love it. I love you know, it's like enabling people and hoteliers to really deliver the hospitality they want to deliver. It’s a great thing. It's very fulfilling, and, yeah, it's just amazing to be able to do that.
[00:28:40] Matt Welle: For a founder, it's a really hard thing to join a much larger organization. What made you feel that it was the right time to team up with Mews at this point in your career?
[00:28:49] Luka Berger: Yeah. So one of the parts is, like, that past partnership is one of the big reasons, where you see that, you know, the collaboration was very good. The dynamic was very good. The cultural fit was very good between all levels of people, you know, that's one of the very important things because it's like, you know that that would make sense from a cultural and type of philosophical operational standpoint. The other part is that we had and have a huge vision for operations in hospitality, for hospitality at large, and that's very similar to Mews, you know. In some parts, it's completely aligned. And so if you combine both of those things, it's like a little bit of that story, you know, you can't build big things yourself, right? Maybe that's one of the parts where it felt natural, like, okay, so, there's a pure alignment on the technological, philosophical, cultural thinking, vision levels. So why not build the big story together? And this is what was kind of the decision factor. Yeah.
[00:29:51] Matt Welle: Great. For Mews customers, what's the first visible change that they can expect in the coming months?
[00:29:58] Luka Berger: I think even more of that automation and delivery that happened before in operations. I think there are a few low-hanging things, in terms of extra value that we can drive, low-hanging in terms of that's very easy, technically, but a huge impact on the operational side, you know, bringing just more of that guest journey automation, more of personalization engines into it, more of forecasting capacity, more of staffing, you know, planning capacity, like, there's there's just so many things, and I think customers should feel that in a few months, for sure. Yeah.
[00:30:35] Matt Welle: If a customer moves from pen and paper or from another solution to Flexkeeping, what would that first kind of three-month period, we always talk about the first ninety days when an employee joins Mews, what's the impact they can have, but what's the impact of Flexkeeping on a hotel once they start deploying it, and where can they see the impact most clearly?
[00:30:55] Luka Berger: Yeah. I think the impact happens really, really fast because, like, usually, now, different sizes of customers, of course, need to be here, taking into account. But let's say, if that was a big hotel, usually, the rollout would be when I'm saying big, it's like 2, 3, 400 rooms. The rollout would maybe take two days or so. And it's an immediate switch, like, in the two days, it goes a bit gradually, you know. We kind of have a soft approach to training that is very, like, based on trust and, you know, that people are not afraid of it. But then it's kind of a cutoff phase. So you immediately start working with the new system. And I think immediately, the ops site feels that relief of, oh, there's no more calls anymore, or, oh, I can come to the hotel at seven instead of six and stuff like that, you know. There's like, all of a sudden, you're not running through a hallway with, like, 10 calls at the same time, but you're just making sure that you're just following up on quality, having more time to train, having more time to spend, like, imagine 60% of guest services being scheduled already means, like, being up front office as well, stuff like that. So I think the first fact that you see is, like, a huge relief probably across all departments. It should be more calm, more silent, more like, okay, let's put this on the job. And that's it. And then you start seeing, you know, the time savings, the resource savings, etcetera. The second thing I think that that then happens after sixty to ninety days or whatever period, when the system has been running for some time, is that you can now start getting into the data part. And I think this is really where it gets interesting. So one of the things that why also having customers, sorry, users, employees use the system really well important is, and this goes back to why they need to really like to use the system, because otherwise, it just won't, yeah, is that then you get data as well. And when I'm talking about data, is like, you know, there are so many tests that need to be done anyway, there are so many maintenance problems, so many service requests, so many complaints, etcetera, etcetera. And usually, it's always, like, looks like, okay, so what are the five problems that we had in maintenance? And let's go fix them, and then our problems are over. And that's okay, but that's not where the opportunity lies. It's like, okay, what's the dynamic in the day? When in the day are individual problems occurring being fixed? Then you see it for maintenance, for example, there's always, like, the main hump is, like, 10 to 2, but then there's another, like, 5 to 7 hump in problems, which is logical because guests come back, but then they're reporting the same problems that in the morning. So, how do you become preventive? What are the really big issues? How do you embed back in operations to rearrange those humps? You know what I'm saying? Like, it's like you become way smarter, way more proactive, way more predictive to some extent. This is where the magic really lies. So I think that is the big change that you can drive later on, once the system is rolling, like, it's the smart strategic changes to drive the value you wanna drive. And when I say that someone will drive profitability, cost savings, someone will increase quality, someone will do all of it, but it's like really when you start looking into data points the way you want for your outcome that you wanna drive for your guests.
[00:34:07] Matt Welle: Great. My last question. What do you envision the world of housekeeping will look like in five years' time?
[00:34:13] Luka Berger: Yeah. On one end, very similar, but way more tech-driven, obviously, with all the tech that we've been talking about. On the other hand, I'm not necessarily eager to see that happen, but I think robots will enter the game. There was a thing that, like, since day one, like, everyone says, like, “you can all only optimize so much, but you cannot clean a room instead of us.” That's exactly what's coming into operations as well, I think, down the road. I do like it from an aspect of, you know, increasing profitability, taking away the hard jobs, like making beds, vacuuming, stuff like that. And I think that's gonna change in five years. If it doesn't, I think the tag for development is too slow again.
[00:34:53] Matt Welle: I agree it's coming, like, the humanoids are getting really good now, but they're very expensive to replace humans, unfortunately, at this point. But once volume happens, then prices come down. I've started seeing some of them. You know, it goes far beyond the Roomba kind of cleaner of the floors to actually being able to do the bed because that's one of the hardest tasks, like, making up the bed, but they're getting close to actually being able to do that now.
[00:35:19] Luka Berger: Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, like, the part of me that doesn't like it is just that hospitality is about people, right? But part of me that does like it is that they will be there, are there to just take away that hard stuff, that repetitive stuff, and let people do the hospitality. And why I do look forward to that, and I definitely see them in five years for sure.
[00:35:41] Matt Welle: Luka, thank you very much for joining me today.
[00:35:42] Luka Berger: Likewise. Thank you.
