In The Big Chair - Jason Bryant of Nor1

Jason Bryant, CEO

Founded in 2004, Nor1 provides data-driven pricing and merchandising products used by hotels and resorts in more than 100 countries. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices around the world. 

Prior to Nor1, Bryant founded DRCI, which provided high-volume transaction systems and internet technologies to the travel industry. Nor1 has raised more than $29 million in funding from investors such as Concur Technologies, Goldman Sachs and Accel Partners. 

It’s been almost 15 years now since you founded Nor1. How have upselling and merchandising in hospitality evolved over these years?

These days hoteliers know there’s money to be made in upselling, although they still don’t realize just how much demand there is. Our data scientists can quantify demand for inventory upgrades at about $25 per reservation. That’s a lot of money on the table that very few organizations are recognizing. Over the years, we have organized an approach to optimize and realize as much of that demand as possible while enhancing guest experiences.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that guests still want offers that specifically cater to their individual needs and preferences.

When Nor1 started out, we were only engaging the guest at one touch point in the booking cycle, which was during online booking. Now our system “touches the guest” with intelligent offers throughout the reservation life cycle including booking, pre-arrival, arrival and throughout the guest’s stay at the property.

Nowadays we hear so much about artificial intelligence and machine learning. How do these capabilities factor into your product?

AI is not just factored into our product, but it is our product. Machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, is the heart of our value proposition and how we are able to determine the optimal offer set, including pricing that will drive real-time revenue for each guest transaction. We cut our teeth on machine learning long before anybody else in this industry, and this technology continues to be a defining differentiator for Nor1.

Nor1’s decision platform, Prime, is based on two patents related to the unique process of simultaneous pricing and merchandising. Machine learning is the only way to generate real-time offer sets in this fashion. Along with operational efficiency and the ability to communicate with guests when and how they demand, AI is at the heart of our products.

Additionally, we believe the path to truly leveraging AI or machine learning is by recognizing that in order to engage guests at the highest level, a combination of both AI and human interaction is required. We focus AI on what machines are very good at and empower the ability of humans to efficiently do what they are good at.

How has being in Silicon Valley helped and/or hindered Nor1's growth in the travel industry?

Being located in Silicon Valley enabled us to do what we do, and we would have struggled to have done it anywhere else. Especially in the early days, this is where the necessary talent was. All of these platforms and open-source languages were invented by industry leaders such as Yahoo, Google and Facebook. They created the code to build their platforms and then they made it available on an open-source basis.

Silicon Valley is largely where machine learning tools and competencies have been forged and perfected in the consumer world. No place else in the world has the sheer volume of talent in this specific engineering area. Being located in Silicon Valley has been fundamental in our ability to harness machine learning and state of the art technology.

One of the things Amadeus has created as part of its new guest reservation system launching with IHG is attribute-based selling. What are your thoughts on this model that eliminates room types and uses a more à la carte shopping system?

That goes right to who we are. Nor1 products are based on upselling by attribute. Guests want to customize their stay by being able to select a room that matches their reason for travel—a view, an extra room, a bigger desk, access to a lounge, pre-paid parking—so their trip will be exactly what they want. Right now, Amadeus and IHG are creating that attribute-based reservation system, and an even more significant challenge will be building the pricing mechanism for attributes.

We have already built the mechanism to price by attribute. We give values to different amenities and different components of a room, whether it's the view or a high floor or something else. It allows hotels to drive incremental revenue while creating that perfect stay.

We know consumers are looking for personalization at every step of the journey - from research and booking, through their stay and at check out. What’s your advice to brands on how to be effective with personalization?

“Personalization” has become a buzzword with many definitions, some positive and some negative. In my mind the first step is for the brand to clearly define what they are trying to achieve and to recognize that the necessary starting point may be segmentation or customization. What we do - which we don’t see anyone else doing - is to follow the guest through the reservation life cycle and make decisions of what to offer them based on their past actions.

For instance, we may make an offer to a guest at booking. Then later, we may have the opportunity to make a pre-arrival or arrival offer to that same guest. Part of our decisioning for the current offer is based on a host of data points, including the actions from the guest at the first interaction or offer. We use each successive interaction to increase and build our intelligence of that guest’s interest and intent.

Regarding ancillary services, would you say that hotels either have a lack of knowledge about the opportunity or have a lack of impetus to go all-in?

It’s not a problem with impetus. Everybody wants to generate more money. The big issue is coordinating across the enterprise. There must be a single strategy regarding ancillary services that is clearly communicated between the revenue management, sales, operations and e-commerce teams. Everybody needs to be rowing in the same direction.

We use each successive interaction to increase and build our intelligence of that guest’s interest and intent.

Jason Bryant

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What we sometimes see is that these different departments actually contradict each other with their strategies and approaches, which just confuses the guest. When your strategy isn’t applied and communicated consistently, you bring in less money, and your guest satisfaction is lower. That is something we work hard on at Nor1 - not only our services and products, but also communicating their value to the organizations we serve and helping them get their internal groups aligned.

Imagine you're a property manager running a hotel, what do you suspect would be your number-one digital challenge right now?

For most property managers the number-one digital challenge is, and always will be, revenue optimization via guest acquisition. But beyond that, it’s understanding your guests, their needs and what drives their satisfaction resulting in strong online reviews and return guests.

Who is that guest, how should you service that guest and what offers should you make that will drive revenue and guest satisfaction before they even arrive at the property? That, to me, is the number-one digital challenge.

In April, Nor1 acquired Stay Delightful, a guest messaging service and ancillary revenue generation platform. Do you have more acquisitions in the works?

The Stay Delightful acquisition was compelling because it gave us the ability to add an SMS-based feature to all our products. That was the missing piece in our platform - we didn’t have a text-based service that our clients could leverage and control. Now we offer omnichannel guest engagement. It allows them to send out specific and personalized offers, one-to-one communications, real time between the property and the guest.

Right now we have our heads down and are focusing on delivering value from this acquisition. Future acquisitions that drive additional value are always a possibility.

What is the biggest challenge for Nor1 right now?

Our biggest challenge is staying on top of technology advancements that evolve at a rapid pace and then converting them into hospitality industry benefits. The technology moves fast, and we are always working on harnessing it for the value of our customers.

If we talk again in five years, what do you envision you’ll be telling us about Nor1?

I hope that in five years we will have matured and evolved merchandising and ancillary revenue creation into its own enterprise discipline and platform. This would be an intersection of hospitality systems, guest engagement and decision science technologies forming the backbone of quantifiable and sustainable guest intelligence.

What are you personally wanting to learn more about in 2018?

At Nor1, we encourage lifelong learning. We offer an education allowance that employees can use however they want, on any type of learning. I’m using mine for an online MasterClass with Malcolm Gladwell. It’s about how to articulate your thoughts more clearly in writing.

Last year, I completed five online Coursera classes on data science management. I find it interesting how often the book I’m reading or course I’m taking unexpectedly intersects with other things in my personal and professional life. I am a firm believer in lifelong learning.

If we could talk to your employees, how would they describe you as a leader?

I hope the Nor1 team would describe me as passionate, intense and visionary. I love what I do and am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to lead Nor1’s strategy and team.

Thinking back on what you’ve learned since founding Nor1, what advice do you have for travel industry entrepreneurs?

It all starts with the entrepreneur who says, “There must be a better, cheaper, faster way to do this."

The advice I’d give to those individuals considering becoming an entrepreneur in the travel industry, is if you truly believe there is a better, cheaper, faster way, then go start it now! There will never be the perfect time, the right market conditions or the right number of contacts.

You’ll never be smart enough or have all the answers - the right time is now. The process of starting something creates an momentum that will carry you and your idea forward.