In this week’s episode of the Hotel Moment podcast, Robbert Manussen, Area General Manager Taiwan at IHG Hotels & Resorts, joins Karen Stephens, Revinate CMO, to share how he’s used technology to connect cultures and help hoteliers across three continents stay relevant in their respective markets. Robbert explains that facilitating a cohesive guest experience is like building bridges between guests and hotel teams, and it all starts with investing in the right technology that staff can train on.
Tune in for an international perspective on how to best support hotel and regional culture by prioritizing technology tools and training.
Meet your host
As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen Stephens is focused on driving long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. Her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships.
Karen is also the host of The Hotel Moment Podcast, where she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading Revinate’s global GTM teams. Her most recent transition was from Chief Revenue Officer, where she led the team in their highest booking quarter to date in Q4 2023.
Karen has more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution — including managing global accounts in travel and hospitality organizations such as Travelocity and lastminute.com
Connect with Karen
Transcript
Intro – 00:00:04: Welcome to The Hotel Moment Podcast presented by Revinate, the podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.
Karen Stephens – 00:37:00: Hello, and welcome to the Hotel Moment podcast. I am your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And on today’s episode, we’re delighted to welcome Robbert Manussen, Area Director at InterContinental Hotels and Resorts in Taiwan. With over 18 years of leadership experience across three continents, Robbert has an impressively varied and international career that includes pivotal roles at global brands like Hilton Worldwide, and of course, IHG. His expertise spans pre-openings, luxury resorts, and multi-brand operations. Notably, Robbert led the successful openings of IHG and Waldorf Astoria Hotels, and is recognized for his innovative approach to technology and hospitality. His current role in Taiwan showcases his commitment to integrating cutting-edge technology to enhance guest experience and operational efficiency. And I have to say the highlight of this discussion for me, as you can hear from the intro there, Robert really truly has traveled and lived in many different countries. He mentions Doha, Hanoi, and of course, he’s in Taiwan now. He’s Dutch by birth, so grew up in Europe and the Netherlands specifically. But what he really hits on is kind of how all of that experience comes together. And the heart of hospitality is really about celebrating different cultures within your staff and team, finding the similarities, celebrating the differences. And he really talks about how all of that comes together, particularly in markets where you have a very diverse workforce. So I think that that’s a good way to kick us off. And then, of course, we really talked about the technology adoption. The hotel, he manages a number of them in Taiwan, but kind of the InterContinental Hotel that is in that market, open during COVID. So it’s a newer hotel, but it is also in terms of technology, for lack of a better word, just equipped to the hilt with things you probably even haven’t imagined. So I really encourage you to listen closely, because if you’re a hotel operator, it’s really going to blow your mind. And then last but not least, he has some advice for other GMs who are going through the budgeting process and how to think about technology, how to think about not only setting aside money for that, but then once you have it in-house, how to make sure that your teams are trained on it. And then last but not least, how that technology really does attract the next Generation Zed, if you’re European, and Generation Z, if you are in the United States. So I hope you enjoy it. And I give you Robbert Manussen up next. Welcome to the podcast, Robbert. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Robbert Manussen – 00:03:05: Thank you very much. Excited to be here.
Karen Stephens – 00:03:07: We’re going to get into all of your experience. You’ve traveled quite extensively and lived in a lot of different markets. But I thought what would be interesting, just to get us warmed up a little bit here, because I do want everybody to know you’ve had a lot of very exciting openings, a lot of technology adoption. So you’ve had a lot of milestones that you’ve achieved, including leading several openings of prestigious hotels with the cutting-edge technology. So can you just share a moment of experience from your career that you consider particularly formative or inspiring, just to get us warmed up?
Robbert Manussen – 00:03:41: Yeah, again, exciting to be here. I’ve been one of those typical hotel professionals that where work takes you around the world. I’ve been able to work in nine different countries and places, and three different continents. Exciting experience where in every place you learn a lot of things. And over the last 20 years, moving around the globe has been insightful. A lot of changes in our industry, a lot of momentum in different places, whether it’s in Europe, Middle East, or now in Asia. And yeah, technology is going along with that. It’s great to see that technology is enabling people to do a better job or do a different job or to give a new guest experience. 20 years ago when I started, smartphones were not the norm or the way we do marketing or connect with our people, with our employees. Our investors was completely different than it is right now. So it’s exciting to see that that change. And now being here in Taiwan, which might be considered the center of the world when it comes to AI and the semiconductor development, you see a lot of startups, technology arising that gets accessible to our industry. Before, you had that threshold where technology investments were relatively high, and then hospitality used to be at the back end of implementing the solutions. And now we’re getting to an area where both guests and our employees and our investors have access to technology much, much faster. And it enables us to create really new workflows, new ways of thinking. And we’re very excited here in Kaohsiung to be at the forefront with that. We opened a hotel during the pandemic, which was very interesting in a way, being isolated on the island of Taiwan and opening a hotel where all the support was remote. Nobody was able to travel into Taiwan to support this opening. It gve us the opportunity to one hand really look at, “What does the domestic market here need. How can we encourage our people to work in a different way to set up a hotel in a way that we may be envisioned before and to start fresh from a different point?” And I think what we’ve done very well here at the InterContinental in Kaohsiung is exactly that starting for example a completely paperless back of house and a guest experience from day one so we’re open almost three years. It allows us to take a lot of big steps now. When we started we didn’t really anticipate this revolution of technology and AI and large language models to come along. But now it’s here you need the data. Guess what? We have the data for the last three years. So suddenly we’re that space where we can accelerate development and it’s very exciting for our teams, it’s exciting for guests, it’s exciting for our industry that we’re at that point where we can mix and match the things we’ve done in the past and bring it all together for new experiences
Karen Stephens – 00:06:31: Absolutely. And you know, I think you’re going to be the envy of a lot of our listeners in the United States because we’re just starting to talk about AI and how we adapt that in the hotel. And I think when we get to the meat of the conversation, we can really talk about how you’ve implemented technology at that property, which I encourage everybody to just Google InterContinental Hotels in Taiwan, and just take a look at this property because it’s absolutely gorgeous. I mean, I think we should also call out Asia Pacific is a region. When you think about luxury hotels. It’s really a whole nother standard, in my opinion. And of course, we have beautiful hotels in the United States and in Europe. But I do think in Asia Pacific, it’s kind of next level in terms of the beauty of the hotels, the service. And you really are at the forefront of that technology adoption. So we’re definitely going to come on to that. But one thing I wanted to pick up on — so, Robbert, you’ve had a career that has spanned three continents, as you mentioned. So you’ve worked in the Middle East, you’ve worked in Europe and now in Asia Pacific. So can you tell us how these diverse regional experiences have influenced your approach to leadership and to hotel management? What have you gained along the way?
Robbert Manussen – 00:07:40: I gained a lot. It’s very interesting because obviously any continent, any place has its unique approach and unique culture when it comes to living and working. I remember in the Netherlands, we’re quite straightforward. We like to be sometimes to the point or too direct. And me starting as a small management training. I had no problem telling our general manager, “I think we should do it different”, even though he had 30 years more experience in the business. Where in Asia or Middle East, that’s completely different. What it really taught me is that I have to adapt. I need to be more like that chameleon where I am the guest in a country or territory. I need to understand the culture, a bit of the language, and then start to identify where can I add value. I will be here for two, three years, sometimes a bit longer, depending on the role. How can I build a meaningful relationship with the people I work with? Where I balance on learning from them, and driving the business the way that they know, but at the same time, create innovation and create added values. And in every continent, that’s different. Europe being already, for many more years, leaner in terms of manning and maybe more developed as a whole, is interesting. You have access to a lot of tools. You have access to culture. However, there you reach the point where hospitality as a whole is maybe not always considered a career anymore. It’s difficult to find the people. It’s difficult sometimes to motivate people that there’s great career opportunities and you don’t have to think like, “I’m going to be a waiter for 20 years.” And you can move to finance, to marketing, to commercial, to corporate offices. And then being in Europe, able to also work on a corporate level for Hilton for two times and taking a more strategic approach, whether we go with 200 hotels when it comes to food and beverage or development, was very insightful for me to move then to the next stage, which I remember my boss at the time, a great Vice President for Food and Beverage, James Glover. He told me when I moved to the Middle East, “Finally, you’re moving abroad.” I’ve been abroad for many years. “You’re going to feel it and you’re going to experience how it is.” And indeed, me arriving in the Middle East, where the culture is completely different, where you work mainly actually people from Asia. The main workforce is from India, Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan. It gives you a different culture. And remember in Doha, I think we had more than 40 different nationalities in one property, and you have to work different with people to approach our Indian colleagues or our Philippine colleagues or Egyptian colleagues. You had to flex your style there to be able to get the most out of the team, to help them as well, to complement each other. When we had, let’s say, two new starters from two different parts of the world, “How do I bring them together as a more senior leader, and let them see how they can add value while they don’t have that experience yet?” It’s extremely interesting. And then to go through every national day being celebrated, properly celebrated, right? Where you go to Canteen and today’s Indian food and it looks like you’re in India. You hear the national song, you see the people proud on their culture and it’s sharing where it comes from. And at the same time, you see all the similarities. It’s building bridges, I think, that helps you. And how do we then, again, use technology now to ease the process, to create a new guest experience, a new workflow? So it’s experience, I think, that we bring along, add value to the community where we’re at, try to bring them to the next level and knowing when to move on.
Karen Stephens – 00:11:24: Absolutely. So I think, first of all, I definitely want to pick up on something you said, which is just to acknowledge the career trajectory that you’ve had. And I speak to a lot of people on the podcast, a lot of C-level, a lot of general managers, a lot of folks who are very high up in their career right now, and I would say that at least 85 to 90% of them started at the front desk or in food and beverage. So I think it is one of those careers that once you get in it and you see the possibility, I mean, it’s taken you all over the world, which is such a blessing. But I definitely want to talk about the innovation that you’ve employed at the hotel, at the InterContinental there in Taiwan. So can you talk to us about, I mean, you started at the top saying, hey, we opened during COVID. You’re in a market that is the center of the world for semiconductors, center of the world for AI. So the people that are coming to that hotel, I imagine, are the highest tech of the tech. So what have you employed within your hotel to attract the guests and also to enhance the guest experience? And I would even, say, you probably want to wow them because these are the people to be wowed. So can you give me, like, what are your top three innovations?
Robbert Manussen – 00:12:30: I guess from a guest experience perspective, we always look at relevance. Where are we in the world? How can we add value to our guest experience? How can we embrace being InterContinental? And opening in pandemic came with different concerns. In a room, do you touch every button? Is it maintained properly? Is it clean? Is it hygienic, for example? So something we implemented here from the beginning is voice control. So we have our alarm clock that we continue the development with. It’s a local startup company. We were the first big hotel that incorporated this solution as a whole, meaning the alarm clock can help you. You can voice activate it. It’s a Hello AI. It activates and you can give the command. Your room controls are inside there. So you can control your air conditioning, your TV, your lights, the blinds. One of the commands is you wake up in the morning saying, “Hello AI, good morning.” The blinds go up, the lights go on. Or my favorite, when you wake up in the morning in a hotel somewhere around the world, especially if you travel a lot. And it’s too hot or too cold, how do you find the air conditioning? Which button, if you wear glasses or contact lenses, figuring out that in the middle of the night could be a nightmare. And in fact, the core experience you should have in a hotel, which is great sleep. So with that, you just change the air conditioning. “Hello AI, can I have two degrees less, please?” And it will change.
Karen Stephens – 00:14:01: So does it pick up multiple languages? If I’m French and I say, bonjour, is that going to work?
Robbert Manussen – 00:14:07: It is working. We’re operating at the moment in three main languages. It is Mandarin, which is the core language here, English, and Japanese. And it is powered by a language module, so it is learning on its own as well. So the more people are using it, the better it is being answered. And the whole guest information is inside. So I want to know where the swimming pool is. And services. Can I have another bottle of water? It will send a message through our system directly to FCS, which is a task deployment system, to housekeeping to deliver the bottle of water to your room. So we build automation in the back of it. We make it also very user-friendly for our team. Because in our belief, we’re an InterContinental. We strive on service and providing people with great experiences and inspiring and incredible, which also means we need to be able to tailor it. And some of our guests love technology and like to engage with it. Others don’t, which is perfectly fine. We don’t want to force technology upon them. Interesting enough, the biggest user group of that piece of advice is actually the senior citizens because it is technology. But I don’t need to know how it works. As long as I know the activation word, I can just say what I’m looking for and I get a response back. I don’t have to figure out which button and how and is it connecting, is not connecting. It’s all ready for me to experience if I want to. And we have to facilitate. We do a lot of guest room check-ins, where we bring people to their room and show them around and explain them how this works and try it for yourself. And then we get people excited to embrace the technology piece. So it’s interesting innovation, I think, that we started. And because we started it so early and then AI and language models are developing, we can take next steps. It can be integrated with your line account, which is, let’s say, the WhatsApp of this part of the world. It can do marketing. It can support guests with their entire experience or not. And that’s, I think, the beauty about it, that the guests can choose if they want to engage with technology or not.
Karen Stephens – 00:16:14: So going back to what you’ve got in the guest room, I’m very curious because obviously data, data, data. That’s what Revinate does. That’s what you need to drive. Anytime you’re trying to drive personalization, be that for marketing, guest experience, etc., you have to be able to collect that data with consent, of course. So are you collecting that data with the voice control? So if I’m like, I would like a bottle of water, obviously you’re looking at it in aggregate. What are people requesting? But do you know specifically, Karen Stephens, she likes red wine and chocolate, and that’s what she’s ordering because that’s all I would order. Just kidding. Can you get that level of specificity?
Robbert Manussen – 00:16:49: Oh, yeah.
Karen Stephens – 00:16:50: Okay.
Robbert Manussen – 00:16:50: And then there’s also data privacy challenge.
Karen Stephens – 00:16:53: Sure, yeah, of course, with permission, I would understand. But I assume you have the permission. So this is more looking in aggregate at what the guests are requesting.
Robbert Manussen – 00:17:00: We do get insight in generic data, and it is connected with profiling. So theoretically, the next steps in the future would be to create this kind of profiles. For us as an industry, we see the bigger the company, the more challenge we have with that personalization and data transfer across.
Karen Stephens – 00:17:20: Yes. Hotels, countries.
Robbert Manussen – 00:17:22: Yeah, exactly. Either we take care of one of our diamond members in the US, and then in Europe, and in Asia with the same type of profiling goes to a certain extent right now. And that runs for a loyalty system. I actually want rewards where people are able to put some things in their own profile, like, “I like running”, or “I like swimming”, that we can see. But does he or she like a cappuccino? Not yet. We see smaller companies like Peninsula, for example, with 12 hotels. They are getting to that level. Four Seasons is on a more advanced level there, for example. InterContinental may be bigger as well. One level below when it comes to service delivery. Positioning in the world is not there yet. But we are going there. And I think AI and technology will help us there. But you need the data, as you said. How do we collect that data from guests? Traditionally, you have people calling for that service. And most of the PABXs are still old computer systems on property, not reporting most of that. And we started with a cloud-based telephone operating system, which is also interfaced with, for example, the voice control system in the room. So we can collect the data. We created an ecosystem where, with consent of the guests, we can collect certain data and get to the point now where we can start to combine them and build those new workflows that we were talking about earlier. So hand in hand with technology and innovation, we also want to be a responsible business partner. We want to do the right thing. And in Asia, plastic bottles are still the norm in the [inaudible]. And slowly it’s changing, and we see those requests coming through our systems. We had the data. We knew how much people were requesting for extra water on top of that. And that’s where we built another solution. Well, I’m actually going to take a bit of water. We replaced the plastic bottles in all the rooms with individual water taps, every room has one, because it’s still an InterContinental. I don’t want you to run to the corridor and figure out where to get a bottle of water. So we did that, but then we incorporated as well, bamboo thermos flask for hot and cold water. And we have available in the room for guests to buy in case they want to take the water out. So we can encourage guests to drink as much water as you want. It’s healthy. It’s locally produced. It’s more sustainable. You can take it home if you want to, which is also a great marketing tool.
Karen Stephens – 00:19:42: They look nice.
Robbert Manussen – 00:19:44: Yeah, they’re beautiful, yeah. And the uptake is gigantic. In like less than two months, we sold more than a thousand pieces of those thermos flask. But this is something that we realized through data as well, that there is a bigger need for us to step into ESG. And we reduced more than 1,200 requests per month in just a 250-room hotel of delivering extra water to the room. So we can track our data now through the analysis of the voice control systems and our sales delivery system to see if the solution that we implemented is actually making sense. And it does. We see the data changing and we see that that solution that we built is taken on board by the guests, is taken on board by the team and generated a win-win-win situation for everybody. And that encourages, on that sense, again, the team to think, wait, we can do other stuff now.
Karen Stephens – 00:20:36: Yeah, I got to say, I’m sure your guests appreciate, I certainly would, just the sustainability angle on that. So you do think about all the water, all the plastic bottles that are out there. And certainly when you’re traveling, you might be able to handle that at home. But when you’re traveling, you see that and you shudder. So I absolutely love that. So I think it’s definitely budget season in the US. I don’t know in Asia, do you run on a budget same deal, budget season. We’re in the, I like to call it the bougie, the bougie season. It’s happening.
Robbert Manussen – 00:21:04: Actually left last night to send it off.
Karen Stephens – 00:21:07: Okay, so you’re in the throes of it. Here we go. Round one. So what strategies? So you obviously, I mean, as we mentioned, this is a newer hotel. You were able to kind of get a lot of the stuff in at the ground floor, but what would you recommend to other hoteliers out there right now looking to leverage technology to enhance operations and improve guest experience? How do you tee that up in a budget so that you get owners and management companies to say, yes, we’ll invest in that? What’s your approach?
Robbert Manussen – 00:21:35: Through time, we’ve gone through several revolutions, and the technology revolution is there. It is here. It’s moving. Better get on board, because it’s more like a high-speed rail train. If you don’t get on board, then you’re far, far behind. Don’t get in front of it because you get run over, which means we need to adapt our business. We need to adapt our mentality and indeed have that conversation with our teams or with our owners, with investors, with our corporate offices about what is technology going to look like in the future. And any bigger evolution, we have to invest in it. We have to be ready to put some money aside and to think like automation and technology is not there to take over roles. It’s there to create a certain efficiency that allows our people to do a different job, to add value in a certain way. And that doesn’t come free of charge. So when it comes to budgeting, I think it’s about slowly starting to put part of the investments that we do, whether it’s in our people or our product development, into technology consciously. Same like a couple of years ago, where people still talking, “Oh, we do digital marketing. We spend $50 per month on Facebook.” That’s not a digital marketing approach. We have to be realistic that we need funds for that. But you need an ecosystem too. So my recommendation to my other general managers that I also oversee in Taiwan is look at your total IT ecosystem. How does it interface with each other? Where do you have opportunities to start merging systems or developing new ways of operating? Does that free up maybe funds because you have three systems that actually one system can do? Then don’t save the money on those two systems. Reinvest that money into something new that you can develop. And put time aside to really work on all the different aspects of technology. We use Excel sometimes as an example. How many people are using Excel to the full extent? 1%, half a percent of the world that are using Excel. Most of us probably use 4% to 5% of what it actually can do. ChatGPT is the same. So we should spend more time with our people. We should facilitate training, development for them to understand what the new technology is, how it works, how it really can enhance their job, not take over their job. How can you work smarter and not harder? So as a general manager, when you look at your budget, look at, “Where am I investing in terms of hardware and software? Am I able to create an added value through technology for my guests, for my employees? Am I training these two groups on how to use the technology?” Because if we have our voice control in the room, but nobody knows how to work it, it’s a waste of space. So really understand where you’re operating, what market are you in. Are you in a business hotel? Are you in where efficiencies maybe might be very important for guests? Or in a leisure hotel? In a resort where animation and maybe entertainment is more important? So you might want to look at the latest entertainment opportunities, the game consoles with the headsets and so on. Maybe that’s something that fits as a technology solution for your hotel. Because at the end of the day, we need to be relevant to our guests. We need to be relevant to our teams. So don’t invest in technology because of the sake of investing. Search for something that you can see really adds value. Put the money aside. Put the time aside as a general manager to understand these things. Go on YouTube, go on the internet, try new tools yourself, rather than just giving a tool to your team and saying, “Good luck with it.” You need to develop yourself. You need to really grow. And that’s something that I think is very important. The core to the success here at The InterContinental is not the technology. It’s the fact that we created a culture where innovation and technology go hand in hand with what we try to achieve. My housekeeping team, if they run into a problem, think about the technology solution. They go to my IT manager, they say, “Can we do it in a different way?” Then when we develop it for them and we give it back, they actually use it a lot more. The adaptation rate is very high, because they ask for the solution, they embrace their technology. And that’s probably why we now can really accelerate with any technology solutions. Talking about housekeeping, we built RFP chips into our linen now. We’re working actually with a company in the US, in San Diego, that developed an app for tracing this. So our housekeeping doesn’t have to count the linen anymore. We go through our stores, scanner, and the app shows you how many king, how many twin, how many you have here, how many are circulation. When we send our linen to a laundry supplier, it’s just a scanning process now. And the team came up with, can we find technology around the world that helps us with that? Traditionally in our industry, we’re not very tech driven. So build relationships with people around you, companies around you. See if you can maybe get guest speakers from certain industries or tech industries to help training about the tool you want to implement. And not just the person that’s using it, the people around it. So they understand what we’re trying to do. And with that, create the momentum within your team. The technology is being facilitated as an aid for development, an aid for efficiency, an aid for having a great work environment. Because if I may make the bridge back to that back-of-house system, originally, it started just to track training. By now, it took over all back of house processes that a general manager can think of. I have no more paper, everything, from a complimentary limousine request to performance reviews to approval process for purchasing that needs to follow the international standard of accounts and has the approval levels inside. Everything has been built into the system. So we created an entire back of house workflow environment, which is great for efficiency. It’s great for filing and storing and collecting the right data. But it also created an environment where now I’m attracting more Generation Z than any ever before because we’re the only hotel in Taiwan that has it fully adopted. As a general manager, see how you add value with technology, put the right funds on the site, and get to know it yourself.
Karen Stephens – 00:28:19: Right. Well, Robbert, this has been such a cool conversation. Thanks for that. I think it’s a great place to leave it without there so that the general managers know how to approach this. And I think being able to attract the next generation who’s used to smartphones and not a lot of paperwork and cut out some of that monotony, I’m sure there’s huge cost savings there as well, just in terms of people hours. So fantastic. Thank you so much. My guest has been Robbert Manussen, who is the Area General Manager at The InterContinental Hotel Group in Taiwan. Thank you so much for the conversation.
Robbert Manussen – 00:28:51: Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Great to connect, great conversation. Looking forward to seeing the space where we’re moving as an industry. And I also would like to call out to any of the listeners, please engage with me if you want to know more. If you have great ideas anywhere around the world, we’ve shown that us as a business, as an industry, we’re evolving and the better we connect with each other, the more we can evolve and add value to all stakeholders in the industry. So I’m looking forward to engage with people and take this to the next level. Thank you for having me.
Karen Stephens – 00:29:22: Thanks, Robbert
Outro – 00:29:25: Thanks, Robbert. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to revinate.com/hotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.
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