In The Big Chair - Charles Deyo of Cendyn

Charles Deyo, president and CEO

Cendyn provides integrated technology platforms to drive sales and marketing performance in the travel and hospitality industry. Based in Florida, Cendyn has offices around the United States and Canada and in London, Munich and Singapore. 

Charles Deyo founded Cendyn in 1996 with his wife Robin. Since then it has grown to have more than 30,000 clients in 143 countries. 

What are some of the most notable changes you’ve seen in the hospitality industry since you and your wife founded Cendyn in 1996?

From a technology perspective, the big waves of mobile, computing power and artificial intelligence have enabled the major shifts in hospitality. As we began generating massive amounts of data, networks grew, and computing power sped up to process and learn from it, the whole industry turned on its head in how it approached everything from business intelligence to guest service.

Today, the wind of change is centered around integration and personalization at scale. We’ve got all this great data and smart technology, but what’s needed to make hospitality even better is how we will connect information in a meaningful way and distill it to help hotels make smarter business decisions and create more meaningful relationships with guests.

In the 20+ years since you created Cendyn, many other travel technology companies have come and gone. What has been the secret to Cendyn’s success?  

Cendyn started out as former hoteliers building technology to address the pains we felt on that side of the table and have always stayed true to that mission. Hotel staff are often left out of the conversations around hotel tech, but we see their role as pivotal to the delivery of our solutions. I think that’s the main reason we’ve stayed successful. We know hotels – it’s in our DNA; we speak their language and solve their problems with technology as a change enabler.

How do you continue to drive innovation within Cendyn?

Our whole business model is built around integration, so we are continuously talking to both the technology companies and hotels, who often carry legacy systems and complex structures to the table. We learn a lot from that juxtaposition. Because of that, we are innovating with a clear vision of what happens in the “real world” of hospitality with an open, welcoming framework embracing both the old and new. For us, technology innovation is nothing without usability.

Travelers have many, many more choices of accommodations nowadays and much more power to share their hotel experiences on social media. How does that impact customer relationship management strategies?

It’s everything. There are so many digital touch points in the guest journey and platforms for opinions to be shared, positive or negative. Hotels are understaffed and unprepared without technology that operationalizes outreach and response. CRM must enable hotels with a single version of truth for communications and action by staff for every channel imaginable.

With this strategy, hotels can ensure they’re reaching guests in the channels where they’re shopping with a targeted offer and engaging with the right message, whether that’s thanks for the great review or apology when they missed the mark– it’s all aggregated and distilled based on data intelligence.

One of the issues we’ve been hearing a lot about is the limitations of connectivity to PMS systems. How would you like to see that change?

In my view, it’s about getting more formal APIs. If we can do that, we can query all the different types of PMS databases. Proper libraries and frameworks with documentation for partner use would greatly improve compatibility.

Voice communication is becoming more prominent in the industry with the announcement of Alexa for Hospitality. How will this impact CRM strategies?

The information it collects fits easily into the central data warehouse of Cendyn’s CRM strategy. It will up the game for hotels to “remember” guests preferences in more detail. It’s another move towards guests gravitating towards hotels who use artificial interfaces like it to show them they matter by adjusting service and offers. As an industry, we’ll need to build in and standardize even more data fields to capture and act on more potential guest preference information to further personalize the hotel experience. But at Cendyn, we’re ready for it and welcome Alexa.

Broadly, much has been said regarding Amazon and its potential in the industry. Do you agree and what other companies from outside of the sector could be ones to watch?

Amazon built fanatical customer loyalty by personalizing shopping experiences and making it friction-free. With Amazon for Hospitality and technologies like CRM offered by Cendyn, hotels can build in operational technology models to deliver the same kind of personalized experience at scale across hotels. Customers are willing to pay more for a personalized experience and there’s an ROI for it.

Other great companies the hospitality industry should look at for this model are Lyft and Uber. Both take in data from both the user and the driver and integrate with a lot of other companies and apps, to personalize the ride. If customers are coming to expect extremely personalized service for a $7 car ride, why are we as the hotel industry not able to deliver the same or even better for a $300 to $1000 a night purchase on-site for example?

If you took over management of a hotel today, what would be your first priority?

I actually do own a few hotels myself! My first priority was to create a first-class hotel and then of course, personalizing the experience for my guests on site and managing my reputation and feedback. They’re smaller hotels, B&Bs, but we use our own Guestfolio solution for independent hotels and it works perfectly.

You know the online travel agency versus direct booking debate - but what kind of conversations do you have with hotels about the subject and what advice do you give them?

When it comes to luring new guests away from an OTA booking, we tell hotels to take control of their data with strategies like look-alike modeling based off CRM data and the importance of bidding for key brand terms in search. You can’t boil the ocean, but you can focus on targeting your most valuable guests who are looking for hotels that fit their search parameters. 

So much of leadership is trusting the people you hired to take your vision and run towards it through new paths.

Charles Deyo - Cendyn

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For existing guests, we work with hotels to show those customers the value that comes with a direct booking with perks, special offers and personalized service that rewards their loyalty. We also provide tools like eNgage that help hotels capture email addresses from generic OTA-booked stays at check-in. Guests who provide consent are opted into the hotel's database and are then available for personalized marketing. This allows hotels to incentivize OTA customers to book direct moving forward.

What is the biggest challenge for Cendyn right now?

The biggest challenges are the standardization of data structures and integration with some of the older technologies that are hesitant to open up their frameworks. The more we speak in common languages technically speaking and play well with each other will be imperative for us to innovate faster at scale.

Technology is evolving at such a rapid pace. What’s your prediction of what CRM and loyalty programs will look like in five years?

We’re in the process of breaking new ground with CRM technology and loyalty with AI. In five years, it will all evolve around the model of a central global profile for guests that references a sophisticated rolodex of data to help serve the customer’s desire for personalization at every touchpoint.

Bots will make recommendations, personalize communications and adjust service algorithms in real-time based on data points. CRM will no longer be seen as a marketing function, but rather an operational tool that intelligently orchestrates how everyone interacts with a guest.

Loyalty programs will be less about generic points and more about hotel brands showing guests they “get them” with personalized offers and experiences not possible without being a member.

Cendyn now has more than 300 employees. How have your leadership skills evolved as the company has grown?

When I started Cendyn with Robin, I did it all, from being the programmer to the accountant and everything in between. We were a small, family-run tech firm. Over the years, as we grew, I’ve had to learn how to step back and let some of the great people I’ve brought on take the reins in their areas of expertise. That really amplified with the investment from Accel-KKR two years ago that gave us opportunities to open new locations, acquire companies and accelerate product innovation. It’s hard sometimes, but so much of leadership is trusting the people you hired to take your vision and run towards it through new paths.

Everyone has a secret "I wish I'd thought of that!" lurking in them when it comes to other brands or services in the industry - so, what's yours?

Uber is a great example of re-engineering an existing business process to achieve a favorable outcome.

Thinking back on what you’ve learned since founding Cendyn, what advice do you have for travel industry entrepreneurs?

Identify and recruit the best people. That’s the philosophy I had when I started Cendyn, and many of my early Cendyn hires are still on staff today. Great people make great companies.