In The Big Chair - Michele Fitzpatrick of Eviivo

You’ve been with Eviivo for a decade. What would you say is the biggest change that you've witnessed - both at the company and the industry that you serve – in the past 10 years?

First, digitalization. Ten years ago, two thirds of accommodation providers we spoke to were using pen and paper! Today, well over two-thirds now have a website, and they’re also using an essential channel manager and sometimes other technologies, too.

Also, 10 years ago, travel agency APIs were in their infancy and barely handled photos, content, policies, extras and payments. Eviivo has been a leader in its modernization. In fact, we were the first company to introduce full content APIs as early as 2016 at Expedia’s Las Vegas show and the first to introduce card decline APIs with Booking.com a year or so later and now fully automated opt-ins with Airbnb. 

As our industry continues to evolve, we believe the main challenge for several accommodation providers is having to manage the many disparate apps they have purchased over time. That’s all very well if you are the only user, but if you are managing teams or multiple properties, it is often too much to handle. The lack of integration drives high levels of manual work, reconciliation issues and limits the speed at which accommodation providers are able to benefit from advances in technology. When an online booking platform evolves, it is one thing to have your channel manager keep up to date with these changes, and another to see them supported and carried through to your PMS, your accounting system and CRM of comms systems. Accommodation providers simply do not have the time and resources necessary to write software, manage all these APIs, or spend endless cycles rolling out, learning and updating different technologies, apps, payment systems and extranets.

A multi-property, multi-channel platform –including booking channels, advertising channels, communications channels and payment channels – where APIs are literally invisible and fully built-in, are the standard. Native integration allows accommodation providers to automate key repetitive workflows and ensure their guests and staff well-being. The less technology there is to learn and manage, the quicker they’ll reap its benefits. Ultimately, a unified all-in-one platform that seamlessly brings together all the tools that are most vital to your business is unarguably the future.

Another more recent change is the rising popularity of hybrid business models. Five or six years ago, B&Bs and boutique hotels would see Airbnbs as a “threat” and “competition” rather than an opportunity. COVID changed this structure: privacy and isolation have now become a desirable commodity, and domestic travel has been deemed a safer option. We have seen more and more guest houses, B&Bs and hotels convert their accommodation into vacation rentals, or deploy additional self-contained units on their estate, farm or ranch. We see more and more online booking platforms diversify to better service all accommodation segments. 

And the vacation rental space has changed too. Some property management companies have started to balance their portfolio between short-term and long-term tenancy in order to minimize risk, and vice-versa. At the same time, traditional realtors and letting agencies are developing online short-term rental activities, and some of the most successful individual Airbnb hosts have now started to offer their property management expertise to other hosts as a new full-time business. 

What is the biggest challenge or frustration you hear from your clients?

Many of our clients are small independent accommodation providers and boutique hotels. I believe they have felt ignored or disheartened during COVID. While large online booking platforms primarily focused on the consumer, governments were focused on saving jobs or saving bigger businesses. Mainstream media tended to give more airtime to retail, pubs and restaurants, and payment providers often blocked payments or required impossible deposits as the number of cancellations rose to proportions never seen before. 

As a result, small independent accommodation providers have been vocal about falling in the gap. Of course, everyone wanted guests to be safe and happy… but many accommodation providers felt that the pendulum had unfortunately swayed away. While COVID seems to be more under control, global uncertainty, especially in Europe, still weighs heavily on everyone’s mind. The challenge now is to learn to cater for domestic audiences, since business and international travel are likely to take a little longer to recover.

Another challenge is the introduction of 3DS2. 3DS2 is disrupting the flow of card payments among guests, agencies and the accommodation provider. Unfortunately, the financial industry has not fully thought through the impact of 3DS2 on hospitality. The great majority of bookings originate online on websites that are not necessarily the accommodation provider’s own website, such as travel agencies, tourism boards, local associations or airlines. 3DS2 requires real-time authentication, and a much larger number of payment transactions are now likely to fail when a card is authenticated via another site, and then transferred to and processed by the accommodation provider when the guest is no longer present to enter their passcode. Eviivo provides a comprehensive solution to this problem, but I believe more effort could be made across the payment industry generally. The tokenization of a guest’s authentication data provides an answer, though it will take some time before every merchant bank, PSP or travel participant is able to share and transfer such tokens safely.

What questions do you get and what answers do you give with regards to distribution through third parties?

The supremacy of online travel agencies and the commissions they charge has always been a controversial topic. No one likes to pay commission — but paying a commission on a booking is better than not getting the booking in the first place, and many accommodation providers are actually OK with that. 

For many, a commission can often prove to be the most cost-effective form of advertising, and the route to increasing revenues. It will often be cheaper than attempting to manage your own online presence, at least at the beginning, until you build your own reputation with regular guests. 

The real elephant in the room, when it comes to distribution, is the question of control. How does an accommodation provider keep control of their brand and their policies? Travel agencies can impose their own policies at the outset, or ignore or override the accommodation provider’s policies, payment terms or prices.

Also, there have been many instances where online platforms have redirected traffic from small accounts toward larger, more profitable accounts, or toward businesses that convert better. This impacts both players: the properties whose booking was redirected, and the successful property who sees more of its direct business being cannibalized. Some travel agencies are listening and taking steps to ensure they cater better for the needs of the hosts, and fortunately, platforms like Eviivo provide a multitude of tools and advice to help you mitigate and keep in control. 

Ultimately, education remains the biggest challenge, and to help accommodation providers, we offer comprehensive advice and guidance in our resource section, Trade Secrets. Many hosts have a love-hate relationship with the tier 1 channel partners, yet they do not spend enough time to best learn how to leverage these tools into becoming steady providers of first-time guests because all they see are the front-end costs. An easy solution is utilizing best practices in communications, creating memorable guest experience, and then inviting these guests to return via less expensive channels. This can literally be automated to the point that it is as simple as lather, rinse and repeat while freeing up the host’s time to provide the warm and inviting environment that seals the deal! 

Where do you see the biggest opportunities for independent properties to drive more revenue?

To grow your business, ensure that guests are delighted with their stay, and encourage word of mouth. It’s an eternal truth. Accommodation providers need to think about the “human” element; they need to have “a story to tell.”

I recently spoke to a provider who had just taken over an inn in the U.K. – the White Horse. There are some 30 or so White Horse B&Bs who work with Eviivo alone, and probably a lot more across the U.K. But when you realize that this particular White Horse Inn is managed by the film studio director who hosted scenes of The Matrix, when you are invited to combine your stay with a tour of the studio, all of a sudden, that White Horse becomes a little more interesting - and everyone likes a good story. If you can get your guests to tell their story to others — whether online, on social media and to friends and family — everything will start to take care of itself. An accommodation provider’s first asset is its location. The second: their story. The more guests leave with a good story to tell, the better.

The second lever is to adopt a flexible hybrid business model and give potential guests the ability to “self-service” and engage with you directly, as often as possible.

Every accommodation provider’s website should provide a “build-your-own stay” feature, just as you would choose toppings for a pizza. And small accommodation providers in particular should work with their local business community and find ways of packaging other services in addition to their own. This has always happened in the offline world: How often have taxi drivers recommended places to tourists? This is still relatively new online. Think of it as a virtual concierge service for various communities. Eviivo has launched a lot of functionality in the past two years to assist with this, including the ability to merchandise all sorts of extras and packages, or the ability to join forces with other local providers at no extra cost.

Lastly, due to COVID, we’re seeing a lot more customers utilizing outdoor space now since there’s a demand from travelers.

Do you sense that other forms of third-party and direct distribution will emerge in the near-future, or is the ecosystem fairly set in place for the moment?

Yes, the industry is vast and there will always be new entrants. The question is: Will there be new dominant players? Or will we see more fragmentation? It is hard to say.

I think the winners will be those who learn how to “go local” and harness the knowledge and expertise of these local communities to underpin their offer. I mentioned earlier that more and more traditional brick & mortar realtors are starting short-term rental activities. They are local, they know the area and they know where and how to find the right local manpower. They are ideally placed to combine rental activity with other services such as meet and greets, cleaning, maintenance and repairs.

A large number of local associations, visitor bureaus and other communities are also starting to convert to a full online business model. They were slow to do so in the past, and many upgraded their website, but often, they did not manage any transactional flows effectively. These associations are now coming to market in greater numbers, or acquiring better suited destination management or booking solutions. Once a community is able to get properly organized through their local association, once they are able to secure a significant online presence for a given area, things start to improve, and we typically see an increase in direct bookings, usually for domestic audiences, especially since COVID. This type of initiative can also be encouraged by states or local governments. During COVID, the EU provided a large number of digitalization grants during the lockdown or helped sponsor local marketplaces. Given the usual conflicts between private and public sourcing, this may take some time — but the signs are here.

What more can hospitality technology do to facilitate and simplify customer needs such as longer stays, combining work and leisure, etc?

In the near-term, I believe it is about being flexible and offering options – what I described earlier as “build your own stay.” It is also about being able to service your service your guests anywhere, at any time, and this means being able to mobilize your teams instantly! For vendors like ourselves, this means delivering a high-performance mobile app that is multi-user, multi-property and multi-channel to all our accommodation providers. We recently launched a new version of Eviivo Mobile as the first step in a continuous program of works that will deliver even more exciting capabilities moving forward. 

Where do you turn for inspiration outside travel?

History and epistemology! I’m fascinated by what mankind has accomplished. I’m fascinated by past, present and future inventions.

What emerging technology has the most potential to impact the hospitality industry?

Today: mobile and payment technologies. Tomorrow: voice and VR bots.

Mobility and automation really are the two technologies that are allowing our hosts to do more with less. Responding to a booking inquiry, followed by communicating with a staff member question and completing a month-end report, all while being on vacation yourself will continue to become more and more of a reality.

Prior to joining Eviivo, you held executive positions with a variety of companies that include Oracle, McAfee, IBM, Lotus and others. What have you learned from those experiences that have helped you in leading Eviivo?

Making sure that Eviivo operates first and foremost as a software company, leading the way, inventing and resolving all the time. The largest part of our budget is spent on research and development. 

Software is about automating and solving everyday problems, without sacrificing optionality for the user. It is sometimes hard to do both and keep things simple at the same time. The simpler the software, the harder the work that went behind it — and this is exactly what keeps us all going.

It’s also personally important for me to have Eviivo connect with the independent accommodation sector on a “human” level. We may be a software company, but we truly and deeply care about our industry and the faces behind it. We continually make great effort to support and recognize property owners, hosts and hoteliers in hospitality, such as our upcoming Eviivo Awards and International Week of the Host, because we love to see accommodation providers thrive in doing what they love — which is providing unforgettable guest experiences. 

During your career, you’ve held executive and board positions as well as served as an advisor to private equity groups. What advice do you have for women in travel – and what will it take for there to be more diversity in the C-suite of travel companies?

If we are talking C-suite, women need to think about the hospitality sector as “travel tech” really, and they should arm themselves with a strong technical or financial background. But above all, the travel industry needs to provide greater incentives and more pay equality — and also make room for women in more senior positions.

If we are talking about small independent accommodation providers, many of the owners, if not the majority, are wonderful, self-made women who are very agile at running these businesses.

What are your priorities for Eviivo in the next decade?

Our objective is to deliver a platform that will completely transform the work-life balance of the accommodation providers who use it. 

What we know about our customers is that their work is relentless, they tend to be on their feet most of the time, and they’re running the floors or moving from one rental to the next. Part of our mission is to ease this burden by ensuring that our platform automates the tasks they love to hate — such as tax management, reconciliations and invoicing and so on — and accelerate the tasks they love, such as the packaging of extras to make a stay more memorable, managing their brand, or engaging in conversations with their guests or with the owners of the properties they manage. 

One of our customers recently told us that he considered Eviivo as an invisible staff member. He loved that he did not need to spend much time at all behind a computer! Indeed, being stuck behind a computer is not the place to be if you are in the hospitality business.

Last December, Eviivo released a new version of Eviivo Mobile that includes multi-property, multi-channel features and the ability to mobilize housekeeping, cleaning or maintenance teams. We will continue to build more and more functionality for mobile and find more ways to integrate voice and virtual reality bots in what we do. Our goal is to free our customers from their computers, and make it really easy for them and their teams to perform and share, wherever they are.