Harman Singh Narula co-founded the hotel guest management technology company Canary Technologies with SJ Sawhney in 2017, aiming to rework the hotel technology stack.
Now well established and having received significant funding, Canary has navigated shifts in its near-decade long existence. Today, the CEO is contending with—and leaning into—the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
As the technology landscape evolves, orchestration is Canary's moat, Narula said.
Canary can continue helping hoteliers coordinate the various systems across properties, even as intelligence and inference layers become more widely available.
“Folks like ourselves that have a lot of breadth in terms of the different areas of the hotel that we touch, lots of different hotels that we work with, different brands, different geographies, the different types of travelers—I think that's still significant value that we're able to bring,” Narula told PhocusWire during a CEO Spotlight interview.
There’s technology and then there’s execution, he said.
“If intelligence and inference is something that is widespread, there continues to be a level of the ability to do deployment, implementation, maintenance, working with hoteliers to actually do large-scale rollouts across portfolios,” he said.
That’s a key piece of the equation to extract value from AI, as opposed to “technology for technology's sake.”
Something tech vendors selling to hoteliers don’t always understand is that technology has to bring real ROI, he said.
The key is to identify a problem that needs solving or a gap that needs to be filled with specific technology. And, post sales, vendors need to help hoteliers implement technology properly and ensure that they’re correctly set up to succeed with it, he said.
“I think that execution deployment activation layer is really important and something that folks oftentimes downplay or don't think about as much when they're just focused on just the product and the tech,” Narula said.
During the interview, Narula touched on the company’s funding journey, how he sees Canary Technologies progressing, what he’s learned as a leader, the future of travel (including the potential of robotics) and more.
Watch the full interview with PhocusWire senior reporter Morgan Hines below:
CEO Spotlight: Harman Singh Narula of Canary Technologies