In this episode, HiJiffy’s CEO Tiago Araújo sits down with Fabíola Pereira, board member at PortoBay Hotels & Resorts and one of HiJiffy’s longest-standing clients, going back nearly ten years. Fabíola recalls why PortoBay took a chance on chatbots when almost no Portuguese hotels had, why she has always treated technology as a partnership rather than a simple provider-client relationship, and the co-creation moment that moved the chatbot onto PortoBay’s website. Looking ahead, she gives a candid take on the risks of early adoption today, and why she believes AI’s real value is back of house, supporting staff and distribution rather than replacing the human experience guests travel for.
Tiago Araújo (00:00): Hi everyone, here we are again for one more episode of Virtual Coffees, with one of HiJiffy’s oldest clients, PortoBay, with us today. Thank you so much, Fabíola, for accepting our invitation. To kick things off, would you like to give a quick, brief intro about yourself?
Fabíola Pereira (00:25): Hello Tiago, thank you very much for your invitation, and it’s a pleasure to be here with you for this morning Virtual Coffee. I am Fabíola Pereira, also probably one of your oldest companions. I’ve been for about 22 years at PortoBay Hotels & Resorts, but previously I was in a brewery. I live in Madeira, which is a fantastic island, and I have a degree in sociology. That’s about me. What can I say?
Tiago Araújo (01:09): Amazing. As you mentioned, and I mentioned too, I’m super excited to have you here as one of our oldest clients. We go back to 2017, we’re all getting old, nearly 10 years working together. At that time, chatbot tech in Portuguese hotels was barely a thing, and PortoBay decided to bet on it very, very early. Looking back, what made you willing to take that leap of faith, when you actually saw few others moving ahead with chatbots?
Fabíola Pereira (01:49): Well Tiago, I think we have a nice story here. To be honest, I wasn’t convinced straight away, and you know that. You were very young at the time and you kept reaching out to me, and you were really persistent. I was busy, and probably I wasn’t giving you the attention you deserved at that time. But I remember you then convinced me to have a small meeting, which I accepted when I was in Lisbon, and you came to PortoBay Liberdade and we talked. I have to say, and I’ve said this many times to you, I was really impressed. You were so prepared about PortoBay, about what we do, about our product, that I was really impressed with your approach and your way of speaking.
In fact, I was curious about the technology, but I remember saying to myself, it’s too early for us. And then I was impressed with you as a person, and your enthusiasm and dedication to PortoBay, and that you were willing to work with us. But then I think I switched off for some months, I don’t remember how long. And then it was one of the first Web Summits in Portugal, the first or the second. All of a sudden I was in a presentation and they were talking about chatbots. Well, you probably made me a better presentation, but at the time what impacted me was probably the size of the screen. And it was an American technology, and I always had in my mind that what happens in America three years ago comes to Europe three years after, more or less like that. So I was enthusiastic about the fact that we could reach our guests seven days a week, 24 hours a day. I think immediately after that Web Summit, that same day, I called you, and you went to Barcelona. So that’s how we started, I think.
Tiago Araújo (04:22): Yeah, I remember who it was. It was the VP of Product of Facebook Messenger, who went to Web Summit to give a presentation about chatbots on Facebook Messenger.
Fabíola Pereira (04:33): Yeah.
Tiago Araújo (04:33): One thing, Fabíola, that you mentioned, and one thing I love about PortoBay, is that you referred to HiJiffy as a companion, a partnership. You always see your providers more as a partner than a provider-client relationship. Can you share a moment where working closely with HiJiffy actually changed the product, or changed how PortoBay does something day to day?
Fabíola Pereira (05:06): Yes, in fact. Well, I’m on the board now, but for all these years at PortoBay I was Marketing Director, so I was always responsible for it, and the more the years passed, the more technology was coming into marketing. So I started to understand that technology was not something I should move away from. And technology is very hard to implement, everybody knows that, which is why I look at it as a partnership. I can’t look at it as “let’s try and see how it goes and then I can change easily.” It’s not like that. Integrations are an issue, the people who have to adapt to the new technology. So I prefer to look at technology as a partnership, because not everything goes right, so to take part and co-create is something we like to do, and the technology solutions that work with us, I think, have that same sentiment about the partnership.
There was an example of co-creation I remember very clearly. When we started talking, I said, well, you have to come to Madeira to talk to some people at PortoBay, a team, about what HiJiffy is and what this solution is, because it was very innovative at that time and new for most of us. I remember you came and you were presenting for, I don’t know, 15 people, more or less. It was nice, and you were presenting, and all of a sudden you were on social media, Messenger and Facebook, it was Messenger basically, wasn’t it?
Tiago Araújo (07:26): Yeah, it was.
Fabíola Pereira (07:27): Because Facebook was the social media at the time. And easily, I think we were presenting the customer journey or something like that, and we understood that our website is where we have the most guests every day, so at that time the website was the most natural path in the digital guest journey. So we said, why not have the chatbot you have in Messenger on the website? And I think I felt, at that time, that you were also surprised. So I think we co-created that. I’m very happy to see that, and that’s what we like to see, that we can also contribute to our partner. That’s how we strengthened the partnership, and the solution is always better when we do it like this. HiJiffy, another thing that’s very clear to me: every time we have a get-together, you listen to what we’re doing, to our difficulties and challenges, and then some time after you usually have a good solution. So you listen and you work based on that, and I appreciate that personally.
Tiago Araújo (08:58): Amazing. Thank you for those kind words, and for sure PortoBay has always had a massive impact on our product roadmap. One thing to wrap up, Fabíola: you mentioned things changed on your end, you now sit at board level, looking across the whole group. In your opinion, over the next few years, where do you think the real value of AI in hospitality lies, and where do you think the industry is getting a bit carried away and shouldn’t be paying as much attention?
Fabíola Pereira (09:34): Well, it’s not so easy to predict as it was back when we started, because the changes are so fast now. So when I think about being an early adopter now, I think twice. Probably it’s about the age now, okay. Back then I was younger and I liked to be creative, and I was in marketing, so I wanted to surprise them. It was not only HiJiffy, we did several things like that. It was about impacting the guests with innovation, something that would surprise them, and we did two or three things like that very successfully at the times they were applied. Now, it’s very easy to back out of a project, because there’s a solution that, in the meantime, between when you analysed it and when you started implementing it, will solve the problems you’re having with the one you chose to implement. Yesterday I just had to abort a project. So this is beginning to start like this, so I’m now with more doubts about early adoption. Probably this is a sentiment from this week. But I think it’s very present in our decisions.
Overall, I think AI has a lot of things that are fascinating and also threatening. But in general, it is so powerful, what AI can do for distribution, and how you as a guest can speak with AI as your travel agent, the specialist that knows you, not the person but the board that knows you, and that can give you a lot of advice in general for the itinerary, how to choose the hotel, even the place if you want. So it’s really powerful, and I’ve personally been experiencing it.
Now, on a hotel provider hat, it’s also challenging to understand how we can guarantee that we’re visible to the queries and the prompts being written, and that the PortoBay hotels appear. So I think this is even more challenging for the product itself, for the reputation, and also for distribution and your digital presence on the web, marketing-wise, distribution, search, gen AI, and so on. That is a really big challenge, for the guests and for our staff, for our team. We provide the service, and that service is physical. So far, people lie on a bed, people eat and have a massage, go to the swimming pool, and that is what we have. On that part, I think we can guarantee that we have the experience and the emotion, the physical emotion with the guests, and I’m very happy with that, because I think the interesting part of the future is that experience.
So AI can be a very good support to our staff, having an even more personal approach to each guest. What we see is AI in the back of the house, not in the front of the house. I don’t foresee that we’ll have a robot at reception. I can’t see that right now, and I hope I don’t see it later, it’s not my belief. I believe that AI, and machine learning, and Internet of Things, can also help our staff a lot, and also our guests, interacting with our guests with PortoBay branded content and curated content. I think that’s the other part, because guests want that, they’re used to that, and we have to do it with very good quality, curating our content to give to our guests every time they need it, or even if they don’t know they need it and we know we can give it to them. So that’s, in general, what I see about AI, not to go very deep, because there’s a lot unknown at this moment.
Tiago Araújo (15:19): Yeah, I think, in a nutshell, the way I see it is very in line with what you mentioned: AI will have an impact on distribution for sure, for hotels, and AI will help enhance guest experience, but it will never replace people wanting to go on holidays. People will continue wanting to go on holidays, continue wanting to travel, continue wanting to have true experiences. The truth is that for a hotel to continue being competitive, AI will have an impact on it, in distribution and in guest experience, making sure the staff knows more about the guests and is able to interact in a better way. But still with staff being present, as you mentioned, not having a robot at the front desk, but the staff being equipped with more information because of AI. That’s the way I see it.
Fabíola Pereira (16:18): That is something I’m really enthusiastic about, because I think it’s very powerful and very helpful. We had the opportunity to talk before about how important it is for our staff to be very well aware of all the things happening in the hotel, so they can help with all the questions being asked in a very fast and secure way, and the conversations, and even meeting the guests. We have a lot of repeat guests, and they do a very good exercise and remember the names, but we can also help them get even closer to the guest experience with us.
Tiago Araújo (17:12): Amazing, Fabíola. Thank you so much for joining us in this Virtual Coffee.
Fabíola Pereira (17:17): It was a pleasure. Thank you, Tiago, for inviting me. Thank you.
