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[00:00:00] Ira Vouk: You can't just download an app from Marketplace and try it out for 30 days and then cancel if you don't like it. You're getting into a 3, 5-year contract with a PMS provider without really an ability to test it to see if it works for you.
[00:00:27] Matt Welle: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another Matt Talks Hospitality, and I have two guests today. And it's really exciting because it's the first time I've invited multiple people. But this is a topic that needs, you know, a lot of history and different opinions. Today, we're talking about something that is still at the core of every hotel, the Property Management System. The PMS is the worst acronym in the world, has been around for decades, but hotel operations have changed dramatically. Guest expectations have shifted, staffing looks different, and the tech stack has grown significantly more complex. So, today, we're going to dig into some of the history of the PMS and then also, maybe, looking forward. So, I'm joined today by two people who spent years, like, I make you sound very old with this intro, dissecting how hotels use technology. Ira Vouk is the hotel hospitality tech advisor, speaker, and author of Hospitality 2.0. She's led product strategy for PMS and revenue platforms with a focus on automation, pricing, and profitability. Simone Puorto is a consultant, author, and head of emerging trends and strategic innovation at Hospitality Net. He advises global tech companies and runs ventures like Travel Singularity and Elegia.
[00:01:34] Simone Puorto: Yeah. Pretty much.
[00:01:36] Matt Welle: Yeah. So, I want to just dig right in and actually learn. What was the first PMS both of you ever worked with? Ira, let's start with you.
[00:01:46] Ira Vouk: Oh, boy. It was MSI. Actually, I loved to tell this story. I started in housekeeping in the industry, so I went all the way from the bottom to somewhere near the top, I guess. But, yeah, after housekeeping, I did front desk for quite a few years, and night audit, graveyard shift. We were using MSI, which is DOS-based, so you actually had to, like, type your commands and, like, forward slash and stuff and those things, and it was not fun. And I remember the transition into Opera after that. That was also not fun. I think they're still using Opera. It's been years since then. I think they're still using premise-based Opera at that hotel.
[00:02:24] Matt Welle: And you mentioned you were a night auditor. Can you maybe explain to the listeners what that actually means? What's that job?
[00:02:30] Ira Vouk: That was my favorite job. So, it's essentially the front desk person who works overnight. We also call it the graveyard shift. I'm not sure why that name actually came to be, but it was the most fascinating time. First of all, I learned a lot because this is when you close the day, and you start running the numbers, and you start understanding how these numbers relate to each other. Like, that's actually how I fell in love with the data analysis and that branched into revenue management after that, because I saw how you post the day, how the revenues are flowing, you know, where the transactions are posted, and what stakeholders are in the picture who are receiving that information. So, the owners, the management company, the franchise, so the "three-legged stool" I became familiar with. But we had very, very interesting characters coming in. We were in the center of Downtown San Diego, so.
[00:03:27] Matt Welle: And when you started working on the first DOS system - DOS is this blue screen that sometimes, at an airport, you still see the blue screens in hotels. I don't think you really see it anymore. Do you remember that first week when someone showed you what the system looked like and you had to learn it?
[00:03:41] Ira Vouk: Yes. And I didn't really speak a lot of English back then, so that was the rough learning curve. I remember when it was the first week when we were learning the system, and they were teaching me. It was my first time in San Diego. First front desk job, they just threw me in there, and I couldn't really speak English a lot. And I had to learn all those things. It was stressful, but it was one of the most exciting times of my life.
[00:04:08] Matt Welle: And today, if I were to ask you, do you still remember the shortcuts that you learned? Do you still remember?
[00:04:14] Ira Vouk: No.
[00:04:15] Matt Welle: And I remember…
[00:04:16] Ira Vouk: One shortcut that I learned from that time, I still use it: Control-Z to go back to undo your last step. I use it number of years later still.
[00:04:27] Matt Welle: Simone, when did you start working with the PMS? What was your first experience?
[00:04:31] Simone Puorto: I think it was very similar. It was a DOS-based one. So, it was a painful, painful experience. But before that, the first experience I had was a pre-PMS one. So, it was '99. And Ira, I didn't know, but I started as a night manager as well. That was my first, yeah.
[00:04:52] Ira Vouk: Yeah. I said, "Brother from another mother." We're still alike.
[00:04:57] Simone Puorto: Right. The story goes, look, I wanted to do something completely different, right? And I was studying philosophy at the time, and that's what I wanted to do. Right? That kind of, I do it now, you know. But so I said, "What is the dumbest job I can get?" And I spoke a little English, and I said, "I'm going to work in a hotel. It's going to be super easy. We do night shifts, you know, graveyard shifts. And I will have all the time in the world to sit down and study. You know, there will not be so much to do." But this was like '99, Rome, and it was a hotel managed by Trappist monks, believe it or not. So, it's a crazy story. And they were not the most tech-savvy bunch, as you can imagine. So, they were taping together 4 A3, big sheets of paper, and that was the PMS, basically. And every time you had to change, like, a room from, you know, 204 to 205, it was so painful because you had to just cancel everything, delete, and just rewrite everything. So, my first experience was on paper, and the second one was on a DOS system on a, I think, now-defunct Italian PMS. And I think that overall, maybe the paper was better than the DOS system.
[00:06:19] Matt Welle: Really?
[00:06:20] Simone Puorto: I think so.
[00:06:22] Matt Welle: Like, I think the generation today in hotels can't imagine running a hotel on paper because they have only ever experienced systems. Like, what does that paper look like? How do you run a hotel just on a paper book?
[00:06:36] Simone Puorto: With headaches. Quite a lot. It's just, look, this was the late 90s. And, again, it was Italy. It was a completely different time, and…
[00:06:48] Ira Vouk: Probably a small hotel too. Right? It wasn't, like, a 100-room property.
[00:06:52] Simone Puorto: It was. Believe it or not, it was a 200-room property.
[00:06:54] Matt Welle: Whoa.
[00:06:55] Ira Vouk: Wow.
[00:06:56] Simone Puorto: Because they had, it was a MICE hotel, and it was big, in a very commercial part of Rome. So, it was like 200 rooms. It was 2 properties managed by one, so it was painful. Okay? Because on top of managing 200 rooms, it was in two different buildings. So, if you had to change a room, something as easy as changing a room today was really a challenge. You know? It was horrible. And at the end, I said, "Okay. I'm wasting all of my time because my idea was, you know, I get in at 11, and I will be done by midnight, and I would have 7 hours to study now." But, like, at 5:00 AM in the morning, it was still just, you know, scrabbling around pieces of paper. It was painful. So, I say, "Okay. This is not going to fly." But, yes, how do you do that? First of all, we were not asking too much from our PMS back then. Okay? So, it was not like today. You know? The PMS was not the backbone of operations. It was just, you know, we used it to check people in, check people out. That was pretty much it. You know? I remember at the very beginning, we were not even using it to invoice clients. It was just, you know, logistics. So, it would be impossible to do it today. You know, even for a 10-room property, it would be totally impossible.
[00:08:18] Matt Welle: And it sounds like both of you have started on the DOS, and then you migrated into Windows at some point of your career. Did you feel that Windows was a real significant upgrade in terms of functionality?
[00:08:28] Ira Vouk: Yeah. I mean, it had an interface where you can use a mouse to move things around, click on things and actually type in a window. So, yeah, I would say that was quite an upgrade. It came with a lot of issues, of course, and a lot of complexities because the training, the learning curve, was very, very significant. And, you know, Opera and all other legacy systems are very convoluted, I would say. And they have so much functionality that was built over time because those systems are quite old. And a lot of things were built because one client asks for one thing, and another client asks for something else, and they just keep building on top of each other. And it's like a whole spaghetti-type of situation, like a Frankenstein. And you end up with a very heavy piece of software that needs a lot of, you know, again, very, very steep learning, very long learning cycle.
[00:09:25] Matt Welle: But was it just a slightly better user interface for the employees, or did it actually change the way that hotels operated?
[00:09:32] Ira Vouk: No. I don't think it changed the way hotels operate. I think that normally, hotels try to adapt the software to how they operate based on my experience. You know, I've consulted a lot of hotel companies over the years, and normally, they try to kind of bend the technology towards how they do business. And there is not a single property that does things similarly to another. It's like every single hotel company I've worked with. They have their own quirks. They have their own type of portfolio. They do things differently, and they always try to, and that's why our technology landscape right now is pretty fragmented because all of these different companies that have different use cases and different ways to run business have to find solutions that fit their specific needs, and there is no, like, there's no such thing as one-size-fits-all in our industry. They're all different. That's why that fragmentation drives the fragmentation in our tech space. So, yeah, we just had to adapt. We just didn't use 90% of the features in our PMS system.
[00:10:39] Matt Welle: Like, does it not give customers more choice if you have lots and lots of systems to choose from?
[00:10:44] Ira Vouk: And that's like, we can have a 2-hour conversation just on that topic. It's not a bad or a good thing. Of course, for the consumer, it's convenient for a specific type of consumer. It's convenient, I would say, mainly in mid-scale and upper-scale tier, not mid-market, and then also the large franchise global brands. The larger the companies, the more flexibility they need in their solutions that they are using to run their operations. They need customizations. They need to assemble their Frankenstein. I call it a Tetris game when you take, let's say, Mews, and you start plugging things in, right? But that comes with a lot of issues because now we're running into integration dependencies. We're also running into situations where, if you and I've been in that situation, you start a company, an RMS company, for example, and you want to sell it, but you can't sell anything because you now have an integration dependency on the PMS system that your client has. So, you need to build integrations. And there’s 1,200 PMS systems in the world, and, of course, they have different market shares. So, in order to tap into the entire, you know, TAM of the world, you need to build 1,200 integrations, right? That's not fun. The fragmentation for tech suppliers is a huge issue, and that's why there have been a lot of initiatives to standardize these things. But, also, if you're in the long tail of hospitality, you're not going to try to understand how to plug, how to take one PMS and another booking engine and a channel manager and an RMS and a CRM and this and that, and you don't have the budget or the brains for it. You just want one thing for everything, one login, one bill. That's all you want. And so they're not happy with the fragmentation. They're looking for end-to-end solutions. So, it's really the question of what segment of the industry you're in and whether you're a vendor and whether you're a hotelier and what your needs are, and everybody is very different.
[00:12:47] Matt Welle: Simone, you came from paper. You said you went to DOS. It got worse. When you went into Windows, did it get better, or do you want to go back to paper?
[00:12:56] Simone Puorto: No. I would probably agree with Ira that it didn't change the way we used to operate. If anything, it just removed the cool aspect about the fact that now we knew all of these shortcuts on DOS, and you look like a freaking wizard. You remember, like, "WarGames"? It was like in "WarGames." So, whenever we were training a new guy coming in, we had all these shortcuts in our minds, and it was super cool, you know, you looked like super intelligent that I was not, and I'm not even now. And with Windows, everybody could do that. So, I would say that operation-wise, nothing really changed. What changed is now, it was way easier to train new people when they came on board, but that was pretty much it.
[00:13:42] Matt Welle: Yeah. Like, it's painful. But, like, I remember when I stepped into the front desk, and I saw the people with their shortcuts because when you get a guest early arrival, and you had to sort of swap rooms, but yet VIPs were blocked on certain rooms, the way they went about those profiles was mind-boggling. But then we hired for system skills. We didn't hire for hospitality skills. And I love that we're moving away from these social skills shortcuts. Yeah.
[00:14:06] Ira Vouk: Yeah. We didn't hire for the right skill, and that also caused a big issue in our industry.
[00:14:13] Simone Puorto: I think it's still to a certain extent the same because, you know, the way I see it is we're asking our guys, you know, to the new blood to come into an industry where we do need a lot of soft skills, right? We need to be accustomed to working with people, you know, working with team members and working with guests. But on top of that, we ask them to know so many different software, you know, to Ira’s point. And now you have this, like, schizophrenic kind of hiring process where you're looking for very tech-oriented people, but they also need to be very "people people." And that's not, you know, it's very hard to find that combination. You know? And you will always have somebody that's a little more techie than a people person, and that is creating another layer of complexity. So, yeah, I think that's a big problem.
[00:15:06] Matt Welle: And you think we'll be shifting towards hiring a very different caliber person now that systems have got even easier?
[00:15:12] Ira Vouk: Yeah. I work with students because I teach at San Diego State here. And when I show them, I always have this analog. I have a class where I show them a modern PMS system. I'm not going to mention any names, but anything that was born within the last, you know, five years, let's say, cloud-based PMS system, and I call on whatever student who has never even had any experience at the front desk. Not all our students are hoteliers. We have some meetings and events, students. So, I call them, and I just ask them, "Look at the screen, figure out how to create a reservation." Within 30 seconds, they figure out how to create a reservation. And I say, "Okay. Now, try to figure out how to check a person in." They look at the screen, and they check a person in within 30 seconds, or change the rate, or create a group booking, right? So, the thing is that right now, if you compare legacy solutions like Opera, and they have, you know, I have to also say that they have been doing great with trying to transition everything into their cloud solution; it's going very painfully and slowly, but at least they're investing in it. But there are a lot of solutions that have never decided to invest in, and they're premise-based, old, clunky, and are really hard to master, to learn. And I have students who have experience with those solutions, and they look at what I show them from a modern PMS perspective, and they're like, "Whoa. This is night and day." And the example I always use: you create an Instagram or Facebook account for your grandma. You don't need to teach your grandma, really, how to use it. The grandma will figure it out because it's so modern software. It's really right now so easy, so intuitive, and this is how hospitality technology should feel. It shouldn't come with a 300-page manual or 3-month training. It should not. It should be very intuitive that you can just, of course, there should be some knowledge base that you can turn to if you have questions, but you should be able to open it and figure out all the basic functions without any training. This is how it should be. And thankfully, the majority of technology solutions that are cloud-native and modern, and contemporary are built that way, including Mews and other solutions that exist in the market. And I think that allows us to concentrate on hiring. And this is the approach that we have in our school. Even though I teach technology, our school pays a lot of attention to building soft skills and leadership skills and teaching our students how to be hospitality people, not, you know, data analysts or IT people. They'll learn the systems. My goal is to explain to them what our landscape looks like, what the concepts are in the tech space, what the ecosystem looks like, and what types of technology exist. We never teach any specific type of software solution. I know they used to teach Opera in schools, hotel schools. There's no need. We're not trying to teach them technical skills because they can acquire that. And there are so many different solutions that they have to learn new ones anyway when they get a job.
[00:18:23] Matt Welle: Love that.
[00:18:24] Simone Puorto: The way I put it, there is a beautiful movie, and I think it's a movie everybody should see if they're working in the hospitality industry, and that is "The Grand Budapest Hotel." Okay? And there is..
[00:18:34] Ira Vouk: Oh yeah. Yeah.
[00:18:35] Simone Puorto: It's an amazing, amazing movie. Amazing one. And there is a passage that I love, and it says something in the lines of, it's talking about the lobby boy, right? And he said, "What is a lobby boy? It's somebody that is invisible, yet is always in sight, and he can predict the needs of your guests." And I think good technology should be exactly like the "Grand Budapest Hotel" lobby boy. It should be there, but it should be totally invisible, meaning that I should not create my processes around the limitation of technology, like Ira was saying. I don't have to go through a crazy learning curve. By the way, in Italy, they still teach Opera quite a lot in schools. And I find it crazy. You know? You need to go through, like, a week of training on a PMS just to operate. That's crazy. You know? You want to kill yourself before you get into the hospitality space. So, I would say that the industry that I hope to see one day is an industry where people do not have to learn any software, right? It's so easy. And, you know, to a certain level, it could also be automated. There's some level of orchestration behind it that is just in the background. You know, it's background noise. It doesn't really affect the way you operate. And it could be just a wish, but I think we are getting better and better and better and better. You know? There's a lot of bad reputation about our industry, but I think we are way better. You know? We are outside of that DOS nightmare. That's already something.
[00:20:09] Matt Welle: Are there still hotels running on DOS, you think?
[00:20:12] Ira Vouk: Some. Some hotels are still running on paper, especially in Europe, I mean, nothing against Europe, but there's a lot of independent, smaller operators. Yeah. And I think I've seen statistics. I think if we take between premise-based and cloud-based solutions, I think it's just a little bit over 50% right now in terms of cloud-based PMSs, but then some are still running on DOS systems. Well, a lot of large hotels, not a lot, but quite a few large hotel companies still running on DOS systems on the backend?
[00:20:44] Matt Welle: The biggest brands have the most amount of IT budget. Why are they holding on to their on-premise?
[00:20:49] Ira Vouk: Oh, let's talk about that. Okay. So, yeah, quickly. The "three-legged stool" issue in our industry, and I have a whole chapter on it in both my books, I think, "Hotel Tech 101" and "Hospitality 2.0." The franchisor is the brand. They don't own and operate their assets, right? It's a financial company that is not really a hospitality company. So, they're in conflict, there is a conflict of interest between the franchisor, the manager, and the owner; the management company and the owner, so the three stakeholders. And the thing is that it's not always an incentive for these franchisors for large brands to invest in technology because it doesn't really positively, directly affect their stock prices, because that's what their main incentive is. And there are specific parameters that they can leverage to affect the stock price and the contribution of their direct channel. That's why they throw millions and millions of dollars into marketing and their loyalty programs. But the tech stack, especially what happens on the property level, is not really their priority, has never been. But then also, even if they decided that it would be a priority, they still need to get an agreement with the management company and the owner. And the owner probably doesn't always want to spend a lot of money on upgrading the system. So, there is this three-legged stool. That's why the franchise business model is, in my opinion, dragging everything behind. And because they are also trendsetters, then everybody else is also behind. The mid-market is probably the most evolved right now. The mid-market is the brands that are not the franchise brands, and smaller, normally. Some of them are also global, but they own and operate, or at least operate, all of their properties. And it's much easier for them to, there are less barriers for them to adopt new technology and innovate within the company. That's why they're the most impressive right now. Those are the companies that I normally work with, and they take risks.
[00:22:59] Matt Welle: The greatest technology will help drive the biggest impact. That's what I think as a technologist. However, the big brands are still growing faster than anything at this moment. So, why are they still thriving if they're actually forcing their hoteliers not to have the best tech?
[00:23:13] Ira Vouk: Yeah. I love the question. So, first of all, if you look at how they're growing, they're growing either through acquisitions of other brands or they try to become very sophisticated and creative in the way that they drive revenue. They have credit cards now. Like, they're in the credit card business. They're in this business. They're in that business. It's not from providing better hospitality or improving operating efficiencies. Like, they don't really care about operating efficiencies on the property level, on the franchisee level, because that’s like, what is it? It doesn't do anything to them. That's the profit, bottom-line profit for the owner. It doesn't affect the stock price in any way. So, if you look at the numbers, if you drill deeper into how they're growing, that's not from improving operations in any way. Like, they're not even looking at those numbers. Why would they? They have so many different franchisees who represent thousands of different entities. It's not the business they're in. So, yeah, it's a whole different conversation that I can talk about for hours. But it's a big problem in our industry, and I think that's one of the reasons why technology adoption rates have been slow, because those largest companies, they were cool 50, 70 years ago when they built their own tech stack because they had the budget, but their tech stack is still 50, 70 years old now. Well, in many cases, it's starting to hurt their business, so they're starting to invest. And many of them have switched to third-party solutions because they realize that they don't really know very well how to maintain software, because they're not in the software business. So, yes, they are turning to third-party providers, you know, for CRSs, PMSs, RMSs, but many of them have such an old tech stack that it's so hard to transition. Very hard. It requires a lot of investment, but they are in a situation where they can't not invest in it. Otherwise, everything is just going to fall apart, especially with AI. AI cannot use, like, they can't hook up analytics to their old databases. Like, they're not going to be able to do anything with their data and understand that this is a competitive advantage now. Data is. So, yeah, they're starting to think about it finally.
[00:25:35] Matt Welle: So, like, they watch this space.
[00:25:37] Simone Puorto: If I can add something, like a different perspective on that. Because I think there is a similar issue with independent properties, and I mainly work in Europe, right, where it's a completely different market. You know? To a certain extent, I always say that it's not even the same industry. American hospitality and European hospitality are just two different industries. And I would say the problems that we do have over here are more about availability bias. So, a lot of companies, a lot of independent properties, they went through that process at some point, you know, changing a PMS. And it was painful for them. You know? I always joke about it, and I say that, as a hotelier, I would prefer to go through a divorce than change a PMS. And I do believe that. Just the lack of data, retraining people, and for a lot of these companies, they would do anything not to go through that pain again. So, they're stuck with systems that kind of work, but you know, they cannot innovate. Their processes are broken because of that. But they would do anything in their power just not to go through that process again. And we all know that process is better now. It's easier now, but it's still not perfect. You know that you will lose some data. You know that you will have to retrain people. You know that this will be a painful process. So, on one side, even for companies that do have the ability to change, they could actually change. There is this big fear, and that is again, Matt, I think it's your responsibility as a vendor to explain that it's way better than it used to be. But so they are kind of blocked, and they are stuck in this technological limbo where they would like to do something, but they don't want to go through that process again.
[00:27:27] Matt Welle: One of the big challenges has also been integrations. So, historically, these vendors, especially the legacy ones, they kept their APIs very closed because they didn't have an open API at the time. And it would cost tens of thousands of euros to get an integration built for your hotel, so you wouldn't really want to change your system. Has that significantly shifted in the last decade, you think?
[00:27:50] Ira Vouk: I believe so. And thanks to you guys. Also, the new wave of PMS providers that includes Mews the trend has been, or I would say emerged from that issue as a result of the problem that third-party vendors started facing and hoteliers together with them because hoteliers want to sign up for an RMS which they prefer, for example, but they don't want to pay a $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 license fee just to connect it to a legacy PMS system. So, that became a huge problem in the industry, and that's how many of the modern PMS companies were born with this notion of API-first, the value proposition of API-first, an open-source kind of approach, and that solved a lot of issues. And after that, a lot of even legacy PMS providers kind of went away from their license fees to a more open marketplace approach. Legacy PMS providers are still sticking to theirs, and that's probably because, if you're a premise-based PMS solution, it requires much more work. So, they just want to cover their expenses, and that's why they're still sticking to them. But if you're a PMS company, you don't have many years to live. We all realize that. So, in the cloud world, these things are much easier and seamless, and that's why the only way to do it is not to charge for integrations, because a PMS alone is not enough to run hotel operations anymore. And right now, you need all of those other different add-ons to hook up and to play the Tetris game to be able to assemble the tech stack that will allow you to be successful as a hotel company, and that's just how it is. And so the integrations are, actually, the amount of integration and the selection of integration is the primary parameter for hoteliers now to select their PMS provider, not the functionality. In terms of the functionality, they are all, not to offend anybody, but it's pretty straightforward. The core PMS functionality is pretty straightforward. It's all about being able to assemble the tech stack from that core that allows you to run the business the way you want to run it.
[00:30:15] Matt Welle: Can I jump onto something you said? You just said the PMS is no longer enough to run your hotel on. You need more systems. So, do you think that the classical expectation of PMS has changed? And then what's the minimum expectation of this, whatever the new name of it is, but let's call it a PMS. But what is a PMS from 2026? What's the minimum stack that it should have?
[00:30:36] Ira Vouk: The answer would be on my side, and I'll let Simone also add, but my side is that it depends on what segment of the industry you're in. If you are, and there's at least three that are very distinct, if you're an independent long-tail type of operator, 50 rooms, and you're just one property and you're probably the GM and the owner and everything of your hotel, it's a whole SWAN situation. Probably bare bones, but also, you're looking for an end-to-end solution that has everything in it. As soon as you start tapping into higher levels of the segments, and if you have a portfolio of 50 or 30-plus companies, like CitizenM, for example, or any company, you name it, in the mid-market, then it's a different situation. You want to be able to be flexibly assembling your tech stack, starting from whatever is the key component. In my opinion, again, it's not a PMS; it's an RMS, because I think that's the brains behind the operations. And then you pick the PMS that works with your favorite RMS provider. And then from there, you keep building on top of it. And, of course, CRM is important, but this tech stack and the components will depend on the type of portfolio you have, obviously. Is it limited services? Is it a full-scale type of operation? Is it global? Is it regional? And so there is, again, no one-size-fits-all. And then if you're in the franchise space, that's a whole different story. I'm not even going to go there because every single franchise company is very different.
[00:32:14] Matt Welle: Yeah. Simone, what do you think the minimum expectation of a modern PMS is?
[00:32:19] Simone Puorto: So, I think this is the philosopher in me answering this question. But I'm with Wittgenstein when it comes to that. I think the limits of our world are the limits of our language. Right? So, from a semantic point of view, when we talk about a PMS, the acronym is Property Management System. So, it's a system that can manage a property. So, I would say that no PMS is a real PMS, because to be a PMS, you should manage every single aspect of the property. So, I think we need to get rid of that name. You know? And I think, Matt, we had this conversation at some point. I think this is the worst misunderstanding that we have, and that is why I don't even agree with the premise of that question, is that we do not have to call it PMS, you know. Even if we are using a housekeeping app on top of that, that's not a PMS anymore, because I need something else on top of the PMS. So, I'm a big believer of calling them "hubs" or "connectors" or "orchestrators," whatever you want, but not a PMS. So, I do not accept the premise of that question.
[00:33:21] Ira Vouk: The core functionality, I would say, of the traditional PMS would be the ability to check a guest in and out and to charge for the transactions, like to charge transactions in the folio. And I think that's about it. So, the revenue flow, the recording of the revenue flow, and the recording of guest stays: those are the two main features that I think you would expect to see in any what we call Property Management System, which I agree with Simone is probably not really a valid name anymore. But then from there, it's like the limit is only our imagination.
[00:33:59] Matt Welle: Like, one of the hardest things for me is what customers want. And, you know, some customers want all-in-one. They want me to do everything from the website booking engine all the way to an online check-in, to a kiosk, to literally everything. And then there's the other category, which is probably the upper scale, where it's "best of breed."
[00:34:17] Ira Vouk: Absolutely.
[00:34:18] Matt Welle: Who do you think will win? Like, will "best of breed" be the one, or "all-in-one," or will companies actually have to learn to straddle both sides of the argument?
[00:34:28] Ira Vouk: It's going to be both. It's going to be three different ways. It's not going to be somebody who's going to win, because our industry is very complex and fragmented and because there is no one-size-fits-all on the consumer side, your consumers, which are hoteliers, right? Again, there are at least three different segments that we can identify that are very different. There are three different industries in one. So, in the long-tail independent space, yes, they want one-size-fits-all because they don't have the brains, the budget, they can't hire me or Simone to help them assemble the tech stack. So, they just want something that's going to be all-in-one without, you know, losing brain cells over it. And then in the mid-market and then the other segment, the higher you go in the food chain, the larger the company, the more desire there is to select best of breed because they want to be able to match their unique way of running business, which they're all unique. Every single company I've worked with is like no other, very different. So, that's kind of what it is driven by, and there will always be different segments in our industry, and our industry will always be complex. And this just depends on what segment you want to target as a vendor.
[00:35:41] Simone Puorto: Yeah. I would totally agree. And I think picking up the perfect tech stack is not only a technology issue, right? Because, you know, my problem is, you talk to a CIO and to a CTO, they will have their point of view, but it's not necessarily the right point of view. They can see one part of the equation. It's a small part, right? So, the IT people will see one part of the problem. The operation people will see another part of the problem. The executive will see another part of the problem. The consultant will see another part of the problem. So, I would say that you have to have so many different people at the same table to pick up the right tech stack. And I really believe that we are living in a world where the level of acceleration in tech is going exponential. So, it's impossible for somebody that needs to focus more on the quality of pillows and mattresses to also focus on the quality of the tech stack, right? And that's my thinking, and I was there, you know. I was a GM for a long time, so I know operations. And I know that when I was a GM, my main problem was the guy who was stuck in the elevator, and now I had to go with an ax and try to open it up, true story, by the way. Or somebody that was dying in Room 204, true story again, by the way. I didn't have any time to manage a tech stack. So, this is a multidisciplinary kind of thing that needs to be done by multiple people. And that's why you have people like Ira, because she can actually see all of the different angles of that. Also, remember that I think there is also a less logical reason for that, and sometimes it's the perceived value of something with no value at all. The main thing that I do see, and I see this especially in Southern Europe: Italy, Greece, quite a lot, Spain to a certain extent, is people that want to get somebody local. You know? And I do understand the "zero kilometers" mentality when it comes to food. I'm Italian. I'm actually Roman, that is better than Italian. And I lived in Paris for a long time. So, you know, I am very picky with my food. I want my food to be zero kilometers. But I cannot do that with tech, right? The fact that I can call the guy because he lives two blocks away from me is not a guarantee that it's a good system. But for a lot of people, they feel a little more safe in that environment, right? So, sometimes you've got this amazing product, and I'm pretty sure you had that problem before, Matt, you have this amazing product, you're trying to break into a market, and now you're fighting not only with other products, but you're fighting with the perception of these products that sometimes has nothing to do with the reality of the tech.
[00:38:42] Ira Vouk: And, also, an issue, one of the issues in our industry is that you can't just download an app from Marketplace and try it out for 30 days and then cancel if you don't like it. Right? You're getting into a 3, 5-year contract with a PMS provider without really an ability to test it to see if it works for you. So, you're essentially relying on how good your sales team is, and you know, you're dealing with, you're looking at demos and, hopefully, you're asking the right questions as a hotelier, as a client, to figure out whether it's a good fit for you or not. In many cases, you get into a 5-year deal just to realize 3 months later that it doesn't really work for you. And that also has been an issue, and that's why I think the app marketplace is one of the solutions that might solve it. And if we can get to the situation where it's like an iPhone app marketplace where you can try, install, and cancel a subscription if you don't like it, it's going to be a much healthier situation for hoteliers.
[00:39:47] Matt Welle: Yeah. Like, what we've noticed is that hoteliers are just not very sophisticated in running an RFP. But like you said, I can't just switch it on and switch it off, like, you have to deploy. You have to import reservations.
[00:39:57] Ira Vouk: You have a lot of expenses on your side.
[00:39:59] Matt Welle: Massive decision. So, like, that flexibility is really critical. So, always look for a marketplace that has a thriving number of apps in all of the different categories before you commit. Because if you buy a legacy PMS, you're not going to have that. So, you will be stuck with what you have, so you need to run a really diligent kind of RFP process and ask the questions. And we often see customers who are like, "Well, I wasn't aware that you didn't have this." It's like, "No. But we give you a demo account." Like before you buy the thing, you should spend time on it. But a lot of our hoteliers are busy because they're with an ax opening up the elevator on the other side of the building.
[00:40:32] Ira Vouk: Right. Right. And that's why, and you know, not trying to promote specific services, but that's why consultants are very important when you're making a technology decision, especially when it comes to a heavy solution or core solution like the PMS, the CRS, the RMS, the CRM. Those solutions are critical to your operations. So, I mean, when I do these projects, we normally assemble a list of 70 to 100 different parameters that we compare vendors across to make sure that you're asking the right questions and you are actually finding the partner that is going to work out for you, instead of signing up for something that you're going to regret later. Right? So, it's a decision that is not going to be, it shouldn't be taken lightly. The PMS transition or any piece of technology transition, especially in this distribution and core operations, is a long-term project that requires a lot of research, and it's probably also one of the reasons why there are low technology adoption problems in our industry, because there's fear that, you know, "I don't want to get into that." But, again, this is why Simone and me are here, and a lot of other consultants who are willing to help do all the hard work for hoteliers who have a budget for that to help them find the right solution and ask the right questions during the demos.
[00:42:00] Matt Welle: So, my last question, actually, to both of you is from that perspective of a consultant. There are hoteliers listening today who are thinking they're on an on-prem or they're on a cloud solution, doesn't do what it needs to do. How should they think about transforming their system? How should they go about buying a PMS? Is it a pure IT decision? Is it an operational decision? Is it a commercial decision? Like, how should they think about this?
[00:42:23] Ira Vouk: Many hotels don't have an IT department. Again, the answer depends on which segment of the industry you're in. If you're an independent operator and if you're just one property, you probably just need to go to hoteltechreport.com and pick one that you think is going to work and do the due diligence. If you don't have a budget for a consultant, make sure you do research, make a list of parameters or "use cases" as we call it in the tech space, of how you run your business. What is important for you in your PMS? Let's say if you're switching a PMS provider, what type of functionality is important for you to have in your PMS system? Make a list, and you might come up with 50, 70, or 100. Take that list, schedule demos with the top 5, let's say, and go through that list with them. Ask for a demo environment. Make sure to check all those things. Make sure you're asking the right questions. If you are a brand that has more than 30 properties in the portfolio, 30-plus, 30-up, or maybe even 20, hire a consultant. There are so many different things you need to consider, including your payment system integration and all the integration dependencies, and how all of these different things are going to pan out and how the data is going to be flowing, and this and that. There are so many nuances that you probably want to think about investing or budgeting for a consultant that will walk you through and hold your hand and go to demos with you and help you ask the right questions, make sure that you're not making a big mistake.
[00:44:02] Matt Welle: And who is dedicated, who has the time, who is not bothered by the check-in that's happening at the reception desk, who's actually dedicated to help.
[00:44:08] Ira Vouk: Of course. Yeah. And we do that for a living, and it's not something that, again, it does require experience and understanding of the entire ecosystem to be able to pick the best. Because there are many different vendors. Like I said, there are 1,200 PMSs out there, and, obviously, only a handful of them make sense to look at, obviously, including Mews. I do respect your company a lot. But it's not the only company out there, so you have to make the right choice. You have to look at the right systems.
[00:44:38] Matt Welle: Totally agree. And I think once you've looked at multiple PMSs, you learn so much more from what others do, and then looking at yourself and what you need. And one of the questions we often tell customers is, "Here's a bunch of things you didn't ask about, but we think you should ask about when you speak to the others as well," because it's evolved so much since the last time they probably ran an RFP in this space.
[00:45:03] Ira Vouk: Yeah. And there's AI also, that confuses everybody.
[00:45:07] Matt Welle: Simone, what would you recommend?
[00:45:09] Simone Puorto: You know, choosing is difficult. There is a beautiful book by Barry Schwartz that kind of puts a theory on that. It says, “Look, every time we make a choice, we get the regret for the choice that we didn't take.” Right? It's called the "Paradox of Choice." Now, the problem is if we only had 5 PMSs, you know, it’s not a big choice. But now we've got hundreds, thousands of different software. So, I would say that the first thing you need to do is just try to narrow it down. And, you know, platforms such as Hotel Tech Report are great, but still, sometimes, it's very hard to compare because it's very often just apples to oranges. Especially when it comes to PMSs, you get a lot of hidden costs, transaction costs. Sometimes it looks great on paper. And when you implement the system, it will be super expensive because you're not taking into consideration a lot of things. It's very hard to do it from a platform like Hotel Tech Report. So, I think there's a lot of word-of-mouth, too. You can just trust, if you do not have the budget to hire somebody like Ira or myself, you can still talk to your other competitors, but they are still in the same business, right? So, you can understand what's going on. I know that they don't like to talk to each other, but sometimes it can actually help. There are a few basic questions that I would ask, even if I had no basic understanding of tech. The first one would be, is the system cloud-native? Because we talk a lot about cloud, but being transferred to the cloud, migrated to the cloud, and having a system that never spent one single day on a server in a basement, it's a big difference, right? So, the first one is, is it really cloud-native? The second one is, what about APIs? Are they open? Are they well-documented? Another thing that I will ask, but it's probably hard to get an honest answer to, is, do you have any technical debt? And that's a problem with all of these systems, right? And probably the fourth one would be, do you have a clear AI roadmap? And this could be anything from MCP, for example, agent integration. If you can get a proper answer, you don't have to be a super expert. But if you can have a proper answer to these questions, I think you are already in a good position to make a first choice.
[00:47:50] Matt Welle: Thank you. I think that's a good…
[00:47:51] Ira Vouk: Very, very nice list.
[00:47:52] Matt Welle: Yeah. I really enjoyed that.
[00:47:53] Ira Vouk: Yeah.
[00:47:54] Matt Welle: Ira, Simone, thank you so much for joining me today. It was really insightful.
[00:47:59] Simone Puorto: Thank you.
[00:47:59] Ira Vouk: Thank you.
