Introduction
In this episode, Tiago Araújo talks with Christoph Peppers, Head of Online Marketing at JF Hospitality, about one of hospitality’s most stubborn challenges: technology integrations. Drawing on a decade across e-commerce, CRM, and online revenue, Christoph explains what “tech that talks” really means beyond APIs, why a fragmented landscape holds back innovation, and how hoteliers can separate a genuine capability from a slick sales demo. His core advice: test everything, and get the whole team on board before you buy.
Transcript
Tiago Araújo (00:01): Hi, everyone. We’re here on my next Virtual Coffee, with Chris, Christoph Peppers, one of my guests today. He’s Head of Online Marketing at JF Hospitality, and his expertise is around e-commerce and digital marketing in the hospitality industry. Like many of the guests I’ll have, Chris already has a ton of experience: a decade working within the hospitality industry, in various relevant hotels such as H-Hotels, with a big focus on distribution, CRM, and online revenue optimisation. And he’s been very, very passionate, since I’ve met him, about automation and process efficiency. I don’t know, Chris, if I presented you well, or if there’s anything I missed.
Christoph Peppers (01:00): Actually, I really like that. You can just go ahead with that. Keep on going.
Tiago Araújo (01:05): Chris, one of the topics that brings us here today is one I’m super passionate about but, to be honest, it brings us a lot of headaches at HiJiffy: integrations. Sometimes it looks so easy to solve, and at the same time, as a tech vendor…
Christoph Peppers (01:30): It’s the hardest thing to solve.
Tiago Araújo (01:32): …or as the hospitality industry, you go up against it, you hit a wall every day. It seems so easy and at the same time so difficult. So the topic today is “integrations, not islands: implementing tech that actually talks.” This seems simple. When I talk with other people, friends of mine, family members from other industries, for them it seems very straightforward. Unfortunately, for us within the industry, it doesn’t. So, when we talk about hotel integrations, what does that mean to you, beyond just connecting systems with an API?
Christoph Peppers (02:14): Well, I was thinking about a good word for it, what would describe it in a perfect way, and I think it means imperceptible, seamless, smooth-working tech. I think those should be the features that good, well-implemented tech should have, because you, as a hotelier, should not have to worry about data flows or hiccups the tech might have. It’s actually about the ease of use of a system, of tech, for the guests staying at your hotel, but also for your employees. It has to go both ways. All of them, the guests and your staff, need to be able to work with the tech in a fast and easy way, whatever it is you implement. And it also means having an infrastructure that gives you the ability to really focus on what’s most important in hospitality, which is hospitality. That’s the thing.
Tiago Araújo (03:11): Definitely.
Christoph Peppers (03:11): Most of the time, we get caught up in stuff behind the doors, trying to figure out things that aren’t working, instead of really taking care of the guests. And especially when you look at the private side of things: you work for a tech provider, yes, but in your private life you probably have a pretty good digital setup, right? At home, for example, you maybe have a smart TV, an Alexa, Wi-Fi light bulbs, that’s at least what we have here. And you want to take that with you as soon as you leave the house. When you stay at another place, maybe a hostel, maybe a hotel, whatever, you want to have that convenience or benefit that you’ve built up in your own private surroundings. You want to have that in a hotel too, and to really feature and provide that service is hard.
You said at the beginning it should be so easy, and I’d be very interested in all the comments and feedback your friends have from other industries. But especially in hospitality, we have so many different areas, so many different providers where you can integrate tech in your property, and all of these solutions need to speak to each other. You really need to take care of the data flows and so on. People always seem to say it should be easy, or it is easy. Yes, from a tech provider’s perspective, or maybe from an IT perspective. But operationally, it’s way harder than a lot of people would acknowledge.
Tiago Araújo (04:57): Definitely. But when I say it should be easy, my vision, my idea, is, I don’t know if you know Zapier as a major API. Basically what Zapier does is you plug and play with them and then you’re connected to various software. That’s my idea of something that should exist in the hospitality industry. It’s a big barrier to innovation. For small startups to show up in the industry, the barrier, in my opinion, is around connecting and integrating with a space that is very fragmented, with a lot of PMSs, a lot of booking engines, a lot of CRMs. That makes a lot of startups die in the initial phase, because it’s a chicken-and-egg problem. When you start tackling a prospect, a potential client, the client says, “Yeah, I love your product, but are you integrated with A, B, C, and D?” And your answer is normally, “No, I’m not.” And then it doesn’t accelerate. It’s all about execution. It’s not about innovation, it’s all about execution. And that makes a very big barrier.
Another question I had for you: even now, more as an advisor to hospitality, or in the past when you were working in a hotel chain, when you evaluated new tech, what advice would you give to hoteliers, or are you actually giving to hoteliers, to ensure it integrates well into their existing stack? And on the flip side, what’s a common mistake you see hotels make when trying to connect systems?
Christoph Peppers (06:49): I think I might answer the second question with the answer to the first one. So let’s see. I think, and I’ve experienced this myself as a person, but also within the companies I’ve worked for, that you kind of get lulled in by the nice presentations, or the new functionalities, and maybe even some competitor bashing. I’ve heard that as well: “Yeah, competitor XYZ is shitty, blah, blah, work with us.”
Tiago Araújo (06:53): Yeah, “we’re the first one.” Sure, sure.
Christoph Peppers (07:17): And so on and so forth. Or you have a fancy discount offering, oh my god. That’s actually always a thing, because that’s what people, hoteliers, expect nowadays: “Okay, when I go with you, what’s the discount?” and stuff. That’s super strange and stupid, because tech has a price and has worth to it, and this discount thinking is super, super annoying. But besides that, I think hoteliers might really get into all of these things instead of just trying to get a clear picture and think, what would be the benefit of that new tech, of that solution I might be implementing?
You really need to challenge the tech provider. You have to ask a million questions. You have to do testing, testing, testing. There’s no way around it. Make people give you test accounts, make some test implementations, maybe for one property, to really see how it looks and how it works. Or maybe just use test data and stuff.
But also, when talking about new tech and trying to implement things, there’s usually one person contacted by a provider. Maybe it’s the IT department, the distribution guy, the e-commerce manager, whatever. And if that person thinks, “Well, that might be very beneficial tech for our hotel, for our company, it might be super interesting,” right at that point you need to make sure you get the whole team on board that might be influenced in the slightest way. Maybe we’re talking about an e-commerce solution, but you maybe need to take the website team, the IT team, the distribution team, bring them on board, make them aware of the idea you have, or this new fancy tool that’s popping up on the landscape, and make them have a closer look at it, collect all the questions that might pop up, and use their perspective. Because I’m just a single person, I only have my way of thinking and my way of working. But having all these other people in your team aware of what it would mean, or what it would look like, if company XYZ were implemented in a certain area, maybe operations, maybe the back office, whatever, then you get a really big catalogue of questions the provider really needs to answer.
That would be the first step, really, to get some clear feedback. And then you can just have tick-boxes: “Okay, yes, they’re capable, they’re capable, they’re capable.” And when tech providers say, “Well, we’re capable of doing that,” or “We have that functionality,” make them prove it. Because sometimes it’s just, “Okay, we have that,” and that means they have it on the roadmap, which might not be the right approach. Just get the team on board, get everyone on board. Even though it’s hard, and I really know about that, it’s really hard to get everybody into all these conversations, because sometimes we’re not just talking about two or three people, it’s maybe seven or eight, and not everyone is available at the right time. But still, that’s the main thing. That’s also the answer to your second question. If you don’t do that, that’s probably a really common mistake: somebody thinks, “That’s a cool feature, we need that,” may it be on the booking engine, may it be the website in general, may it be in operations. But get everybody on board.
Tiago Araújo (11:19): Yeah, that’s a great insight you gave there. First of all, in my opinion, and I think yours too, on the part of integrations and having new providers, it’s really important that people go in with a scope or a specific goal. I feel that sometimes, because we’re also a bit traumatised in the hospitality industry around integrations, we ask for integrations just for the sake of integrations. We don’t even know what the scope or the end goal for that integration is. It’s just, “Is it integrated, yes or no?” And then you came up with another thing we already know, the truth of life and the world: you can have a sales rep in front of you who’s overselling. So having that validation you mentioned, having someone more technical from the vendor try to explain how that integration and that product work, and showing real examples, I find super, super useful. Chris, thank you so much for your insights. It was lovely speaking with you.
Christoph Peppers (12:29): Thank you very much for having me. See you, Tiago.
