Maxim Tint
New change in the way these rotors are gonna operate. The frontors are gonna get used to this idea of everything happening digitally. It’s almost like going from a steering wheel to a self driving car. It’s going from traditional front desk to a fully automated front desk where all you gotta do is eyeball the dashboard that is doing the AI check-in.
Sebastien Leitner
Welcome back to the turndown. Today, we’re diving head first into the future of travel with Maxime Tint, CEO of gTrip. Imagine skipping passport controls with just a face scan. Maxime reveals how it’s already happening in Singapore and might be coming to your hotel soon. But is AI taking over human interaction, or is there a way to balance tech with that personal touch? And what happens when AI decides that your hotel room should cost ten thousand dollars? Stay tuned to find out.
Welcome to the Turndown. I’m joined today by Maxim. He’s the co founder and CEO of Travel. I’m hoping I’m pronouncing that correct.
Maxim Tint
Yeah, you got it right.
Sebastien Leitner
Welcome to the program. Thank you for making it all the way from Singapore at a probably ungodly hour, but it’s a pleasure to have you on the program.
Maxim Tint
Thank you. It’s my four AM.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s crazy. That’s absolutely crazy. But you look fantastic. So why don’t we get started with a typical question of the program, which has to do with what is besides this podcast keeping you up at night these days?
Maxim Tint
This is technically stay at night, and I’m up, so I think this qualifies. I am making sure we’re doing the right kind of innovations and creating the right experiences for our customers and the clients of our customers.
Sebastien Leitner
Your business is in the, I guess, industry of making paper identification needless, if you will. Right? Using technology to manage check ins, to manage, guest registration, guest identification, if you will. Something that, you know, we’ve been all wanting to happen for some time, but it hasn’t yet been broadly adopted. What are, in your opinion, some of the biggest hurdles for this industry to move from, I guess, paper much paper check-in to paperless or even contactless check-in?
Maxim Tint
There is a handful. I think an easier way to put that will be we’re trying to bring the front desk to the cloud. It is happening. There is a process or history that is taking place as we speak, but we’re just trying to accelerate it one hotel at a time.
Sebastien Leitner
And you’re in a destination that has embraced technology more so than any other country. I mean, I’ve heard of Singapore being the first adopters of digital check-in and even boarding, if I’m not mistaken?
Maxim Tint
Yes. One of the very interesting experiences when I just came back from an overseas trip, actually just a few weeks back, flew back from LA to Singapore, and the immigration clearance did not need me to take out my passport from the backpack. Just came through. The gates scanned my face automatically, and boom, I’m in. And this is happening today. No longer Science Fiction.
Sebastien Leitner
Add the immigration, add the hotels if there are customers, digitally checking in, get into their rooms. So let’s talk about this in more details. So I’m a traveler. I’m arriving in Singapore. I can basically walk through immigration. Is that fair?
Maxim Tint
Yes. There’s no human officer to stamp or sign or verify as long as your data is in the database. You have a valid residency or you’re a Singaporean citizen. And, the official recognition verifies this and the gates open, you’re in. The whole process took three seconds tops.
Sebastien Leitner
That is amazing. And is it Changi Airport in Singapore? Which is one of the most amazing airports if you’ve ever been. I mean, I’ll I’ve had the fortunate, experience to to connect and arrive in Singapore. It’s mind blowing how big that airport is and how efficient it is. So it’s it’s a testament to, I guess, the airport wanting to become even more efficient. Three seconds sounds fantastic.
Maxim Tint
It is not just the airport. The contact is important. This is the society wanting to innovate. Having done that, could you imagine the hotel check inexperience next? You wouldn’t wanna queue up in a front desk lobby in a long queue having to fill up a registration cards, having to sign, having to stamp something. You would expect a similar kind of seamless, frictionless experience to get into the hotel as well. So that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Let’s say you’re taking a grab to the hotel from the airport. And on the journey of, say, twenty minutes to the hotel, you’re getting a check-in done on your phone. When you arrive, you could just walk straight to your room. And that’s what we mean by the online check-in for hotels.
Sebastien Leitner
And this is not future music. You have put this in place today, right? Like this was four countries, thirty thousand over rooms, sixty five over hotel groups. So this is happening as we speak. We we just went live some hotels this week in Singapore.
Maxim Tint
Which is amazing. So as a traveler, you provide your identification through your application. It captures your ID. The hotel validates that you are Maxim Tint. Right? You’re the person traveling. You provide your payment information, and that’s it. We’re done?
Sebastien Leitner
Yes. Just just to be very specific, it’s not our application, it’s a hotel’s branded application that’s powered by our platform. We’re kinda like Shopify for hotels. So it’s a white label hotel application that runs on the platform.
Maxim Tint
Let me ask you this. I mean, this sounds almost too good to be true. I’m curious, what are sort of the obstacles when you talk to hoteliers, and I’m sure you do quite frequently, almost every day, I’m I’m sure. What are some of the obstacles or maybe hesitations they have in adopting this new technology?
Sebastien Leitner
Well, there there are two parts to this. First is very behavioral and process oriented. I’ll start with that first.
Maxim Tint
Being a hotelier, and just yesterday, I was talking to a five star hotel team. They were saying that, look, all this is great, but this requires change, new change in the way these hotels are going to operate. The front desk are gonna get used to this idea of everything happening digitally. It’s almost like going from a steering wheel to a self driving car. It’s going from traditional front desk to a fully automated front desk where all you gotta do is eyeball the dashboard that is doing the AI check-in. So that requires a lot of training, a lot of motivation to change. And this is a slow and gradual process.
The other part is technology. And we look at three big areas. The first one is the hotel’s property management system. The PMS has got to be fully integrated, got to be cloud ready so that when we’re doing all this check-in, it goes in to the PMS quite seamlessly. When we pull the data out of the PMS to show the guest what has taken place with the check-in, it’s coming out. So the PMS gotta be integrated and on cloud.
The second part, payment gateways gotta be in place. Just the moment you skip the front desk, you gotta do the pre op security deposits for incidentals, all this online. Last but not least, if you want the full experience, you gotta try to automate the the access control as well. You wanna again do those rooms using your phone as a digital key. That’s one of the most preferred method. The second best is using a kiosk so that you will use your online check-in link, go to the kiosk, scan a QR code, and the keycard comes out. So all these three areas of PMS or data, the payment, and the access control gotta be fully integrated before the hotels get experiences.
Yes. We have customers that just does it with all the other two just based on a good PMS, checking is done, then that’s become a bit of a semi auto experience. So it is not fully automatic. It’s like a assisted AI trying to drive the front desk, but you still gotta pick up the keycard. You still gotta do the manual payments.
Sebastien Leitner
So there are two areas. One is the workflow, if I understood correctly. So hesitation around changing that workflow. And then two has to do with, I guess, their current setup on the property, meaning what door locks do they use, what payment system do they use, what PMS system, and that may impact, you know, their ability if they want to make that change to actually implement it. Is that correct?
Maxim Tint
That’s right.
Sebastien Leitner
What’s the role of governments? Right? Because here in the US, for instance, the government is actually advancing, from a security perspective, perspective, the use of digital facial recognition. I can enter the US based on my picture. I can board a plane based on my face, if you will. Right? Because the US government is supporting advancement when it comes to biometric controls from a safety and from a security perspective. So from your perspective, I’m curious how you see government helping drive some of that innovation.
Maxim Tint
Driving innovation is the important one. So when the governments lease by example and do certain things like immigration doing digitally, it sets the tone there. Look. This is okay, and this could be done for other industries as well. Some countries and geographies do it more aggressively than others.
I was in the US, and one phrase that got me pretty intrigued is that when I went through the border control, there’s a phrase that specifically says that you have the right to opt out of this. And a human officer will come and verify you instead if you’re not comfortable. So that means that, and that sets it tone, make no mistake. Every small little detail matters. That means that the government is saying that you should innovate, we are innovating. But if you don’t wanna innovate, that’s okay too. We fully respect your decision and the privacy.
That is how the pace is going to be. And in certain markets, I was seeing the other extreme where innovation is mandatory. And this is the only way to check-in. This is the only way to go through immigration. I always conclude that some countries drive it a little bit harder than the other countries, but, generally, innovation for the good reasons with the right kind of safety and security privacy is generally good.
Sebastien Leitner
Let’s talk about the ones that have adopted the technology. You mentioned, I think, earlier that thirty thousand rooms have chosen to adopt your product and are using your services. What benefits do they see?
Maxim Tint
Right off the bat, you got the entire digital guest journey in your pockets. Having that convenience in your phone provides a lot of convenience to the travelers, especially in the business travel segment. Yes. Experience is still king for hospitality. But if I just got off a a Redeye flight, the last thing I wanna do is queue up the sheer convenience of having the exact same experience as booking an Uber or a Grab and getting your room all in one to three clicks each without really having to do a whole lot of manual paperwork. That experience is superior.
The second part is not so much on the guest. It’s more from the operator’s perspective. It’s that productivity and cost savings. Because you are now running a lot leaner operations, things are more self-service, you need less manpower. And in certain markets, that means a lot of cost savings, especially if manpower is expensive.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s amazing. Are properties deciding or managers and owners, are they deciding to use the freed up resources to do other things, or are they just direct cost selling? I imagine you must have customers that are in the five star segment where, you know, the administration could be converted into up upselling or could be converted in CRM related activities, it actually increase or improve the guest experience. Is that happening? Do you see that happening?
Maxim Tint
It comes in phases. If you buy a self driving car, there’s still a steering wheel, and you’ll stay there, although obsolete in terms of driving capacity. And that happens at the first initial beginning phases of implementations. So you’d suddenly have so much free time at the front desk and say, oh, okay, no more data entry. So what do I do? Well, you say hi to the guest Instead of being hiding behind a desk and doing play with your keyboard, doing data entry into the PMS, now you got a lot more bandwidth to engage with a guest. So that takes place. It does improve the experience. Yes. You can do a lot more upselling.
The funny thing is we also do digital upselling as well. So you got now even more free time to to do other kind of small talk. But over time, it solves a bigger problem of manpower crunch. The reality today is a majority of our clients do not have enough manpower to even meet the requirements. That is already a pain point. And once the system start to automate a lot of the mundane task, there is less and less of manpower needed to fill those shortages.
Sebastien Leitner
Interesting. Interesting. I wanna talk about a very specific use case, and I’m curious whether biometric and ultimately your technology can help address some of these issues. Hoteliers often face the situation that every time a guest stays with them, a new profile is being created. And we’re talking about, you know, because guests use different platforms, use maybe Booking dot com, maybe use the Expedia, maybe they book directly on the property’s website, ideally. But in all three cases, chances are a new guest profile is being created. And a lot of the responsibility of the front office agent is to identify, is this a match? Is this, are these two guests that are actually the same? And I have a history of that guest, and I know his preferences, etcetera, etcetera. How will your tool or how will biometrics help reduce, I guess, the number of duplicate profiles and allow us to provide a better guest experience?
Maxim Tint
It’s a little harder for us to go back in time and fix the historical problem. So in my past life before hospitality, I used to do data warehouse. Either deduplication is a huge topic. So that is a lot of cleanup process. And, it is a problem pretty big in Asia because, people tend to use first name, last name, last name, first name, or just just a nickname that is not even on the IDs. So all this create a lot of duplicated records.
But other than that garbage in, garbage out problem, at least from this timestamp today, we can start doing the right thing so that you have less of such duplicate records. One way is to really keep that information on file. So if you have a phone and your profile’s already set up, that name shouldn’t change between one’s day to the next. It’s a lot more accurate than scribbling something on a red card and just signing off because that could be anything. But if you have a profile name set up, that is always going to be the same.
And secondly, we always recommend the best practice, to follow exactly what is on the photo ID. I know it could be long. I know it might not be your preferred way of being addressed, but you cannot go wrong with that. And in fact, instead of your registration, you are required to provide the true legal name on the photo ID, on the government issue ID that matches the immigration records. So if you set that up correctly with a photo ID scan automatically linked to your biometrics, it is going to be accurate every time, at least from today onwards, once you have done the implementation.
So it’s going to be a gradual process. But just just looking very far ahead, maybe ten, twenty years from now, I think it’s going to be, like, one hundred percent accuracy because once everyone is digital linked to a biometric token, they always pull out the true legal name, then you have less of that duplicated wrong records issue.
Sebastien Leitner
In the area of data security at, you know, potentially even fraud, is the responsibility in your opinion for the hotel to safe keep that biometric data? Or is this always going to be validated by a government entity? Or help us understand where this is going in your perspective. I’m trying to sort of fast forward five to ten years from now. Like, how will we ensure that Maxim Tint is actually Maxim Tint, even though I’ve never met you? Right?
Maxim Tint
This is a whole topic altogether. I think it got to be a balanced approach. What is working out pretty well today is why hotels do not really keep this biometric data. So you’re doing a lot of device level verification. Giving an example, it is kinda like using the face ID on your phone to unlock your payment. So the biometric didn’t really leave the phone. You’re just scanning on your own device. And once the phone unlocks, your payment gets information gets tokenized, the payment gets completed.
Taking a very similar approach with the ID verification so far is working pretty well. So you do very local verification. Your face matches a passport, but you’re just trying to unlock your wallet, if it makes sense, to get that first name and last name out to the hotel. You’re not really trying to send that biometric data to the hotel because that will be a huge responsibility.
And in fact, even if you do send, it is just for temporary matching to prove to the hotel that this order ID and this phase are a good match. And now you may save this first name and last name in your PMS. And after that, you should, and we usually configure to discuss that biometric information right after the guest has checked out. So it’s usually just meeting the bare minimum regulatory compliance is the best practice. If the government requires these hotels to have that biometric information of the guest face during the check-in and checkout duration, you should keep only that. So we advise the hotel, never keep more than what you’re legally required to do.
Sebastien Leitner
I wish I could get rid of my passport for travel, you know. I I’ve never mis misplaced an actual passport, but, I think, in my in my numerous travels, I’ve had a gate agent destroy my passport. I don’t know if you you remember the part time when they were actually scanning the passport in the keyboard, and they were basically swiping it from left to right. And at one of the occasion, it basically tore the passport apart. And I couldn’t continue travel, which was because I was in a foreign country, and they wouldn’t let me travel without a valid ID.
It reminds me how much I’d like to actually get rid of this passport, right? Because it’s
Maxim Tint
Hundred percent. In fact, I I I could even go as far to say, when I started this business ten years ago, what was keeping me up up at night? I was thinking we, as such a civilized species, are still so reliant on this piece of document and papers. So what is the technology doing not digitalizing all this?
So baby steps today, here we are, is getting very real. I think we start we would probably settle with a a generation of travelers that are keeping in the backpack just in case you end up in a location that hasn’t quite caught up yet. But eventually, ten, twenty, thirty years later, you’re gonna realize that it’s never getting out of your backpack. It’s it’s just staying there. And you’re just keeping it as a a relic. It’s kinda like those banking tokens. It is a relic today. Recently moved house. I look at this bag of banking token. I’m like, wow, I now no longer use this. It’s now all on my smartphone OTP. And this has become relic. I think physical documents and physical IDs will go that that way of physical relics eventually. Some countries and some locations already started to do that.
So do you know that in Singapore, your driving license doesn’t have to be a physical card? It can be on your Singpass app. And you can you if you get pullover or anything, you can literally show your smartphone and say this is my digital driving license. It is it is accepted.
Sebastien Leitner
The other challenge with digital devices or digital IDs is I’m always afraid that my battery won’t last long enough for me to make it to my destination or to so if you were to ask me, I’m the kind of person that still wants a physical key that I know will work no matter what. Right? Because my phone is always, you know, especially after two Zoom calls and three, you know, phone conversation, my battery is gone. It just doesn’t work unless I have a charger with me, which is crazy, but, you know.
Maxim Tint
Well, at least you can be pretty sure you will have your face with you all the time. So if you’re not that worried about the data privacy, you can imagine an experience where they just scan your face and you’re good to go.
Sebastien Leitner
I wanna talk a little bit about your life as a cofounder. Right? I mean, you you you started this company, what, ten years ago, eleven years ago roughly?
Maxim Tint
Yeah. I mean, life has gone through a lot of changes. Originally, we we started as gTrip, ten years ago. But today, after going through quite a lot of changes, brandings, is known as Trampo today. And, it’s been a pretty interesting journey to say the least.
Sebastien Leitner
It must have been. What I mean, I’m curious. What what have been some of the biggest challenges for you as, you know, as founders, if you will?
Maxim Tint
Yeah. You’re never quite quite sure if this is the right way to go for both the company and the industry. Imagine the first customer. You have no reference customer. You have no Metro product. And, the customer also, which other hotel is using this? Basically, the brand says, well, this you’re gonna be a guinea pig. And, we’re kind of testing out. We’re not even sure if this is even legal. So so so so having all the uncertainty and just just trying it out was the probably the most difficult part of that that that founding journey.
Sebastien Leitner
So getting that first customer was, in your perspective, the hardest part?
Maxim Tint
And the second hardest is probably scaling that. So getting that from one to ten to a hundred customers, that that is hard because you can’t just well, you you could copy paste the same process, but that is not scalable. So then you gotta get to a point where you are building a team, a process, an organization to do this at scale. That is hard because I I thought building a product is hard, but building an organization is even harder.
Sebastien Leitner
Let’s go back to that initial customer. Clearly, that initial customer has to take a leap of faith. Right? I’m not sure if you remember it, but I’m curious what convinced that initial first customer to take that leap of faith.
Maxim Tint
It was a perfect storm. There was a good government grant going on for innovations. They just had the right timing to do a huge upgrade of the property to change all the door locks with smart locks. We did a very strategic bundle deal. So all the upgrades were taking place as part of the one big project that’s doing the renovations, new PMS, new doll offs, new everything. So the owners were like, you know what? Let’s try the new guest experience as well, you know, brand new. And we we realized that stars do not align that that easily. So subsequent scaling was very hard because there are not that many hotel with such perfect stars aligned to keep going after.
Sebastien Leitner
But you needed that for that initial win. Right?
Maxim Tint
Yes. That’s why it took it took so long for us to even even get to the scale we have today because each project, each implementation is like pulling teeth.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s so exciting. I mean, congratulation. That is, I mean, finally, timing is a big component to success, right, at least in my opinion. Right? So to your point, the stars did align and that helped you that initial, you know, first win, important critical win from which you can work on scaling.
Maxime, I wanna talk a little bit about AI. Right? Like, a lot of people use AI left and right, and it’s promising a lot of things in some areas delivering and some other areas maybe under delivering, if you will. I’d love your opinion around what it will do to your product to guest experience maybe in five to ten years. But, you know, maybe let’s start with how you’re using it today in your product.
Maxim Tint
I’ve started to see that this is a little overhyped at this point. The past year, I haven’t got gone to a conference that did not mention about AI. And that’s ironic because we have been doing computer vision verification since ten years ago before AI was cool.
What is real is a lot of non generative AI use is already happening, such as computer vision, voice recognition, verification using AI. That is very real and ingrained as a core part of the processes today. The newer stuff is more on the generative side of things. So when we say generative, the AI is creating something for you, maybe new content, new messages. And think of a guest experience where you’re doing digital concierge, and this generative AI is crafting the reply. So it could be something like a ChatGPT. And this is newer than a decision tree based concierge. So the concierge is not giving you three choices where you pick one. It is giving you a very natural conversation as if you are talking to a human. So that is real, thanks to ChatGPT, OpenAI and a whole lot of other generative AI.
But we think that it’s bigger than just one company. What is really, starting to take place is a whole lot of generative AI, like video bots, generative videos, generative images are already starting to take place. In fact, today, there are some advertisements that are based on AI generated digital designs and that are being used. So it is not too far. We are already seeing in some countries that the use of digital avatars that are not real human or a real human but clone to use the likeness of the same voice and the physical appearances to make a livestream, to make a TikTok video, to just engage with a customer or a guest.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s fascinating. Is that where you see the future of AI going, like in advertising, in scaling and personalizing ads and marketing?
Maxim Tint
That’s a huge part of it. There’s a lot of a huge part of guest communications. One thing that we think is very noticeable is that AI is becoming kind of like a tool. It is kind of like Wi Fi in a hotel today. Internet connection and Wi Fi is a infrastructure, a tool that every hotel needs. What you do with that internet, you could be watching Netflix, you could be streaming a show. That content and other things is on top of that.
And the same thing is happening with generative AI. There’s this engine for you to create a very natural language, generative content. How you use it is is up to the business. And today, a lot of the usages around digital concierge, around upselling, around identifying guest patterns, sometimes optimizing the perfect room rate for a hotel based on historical data and a little bit of prediction. So so the use case might vary, but it has become almost like electricity.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s fascinating electricity. Yeah. It it sounds like it’s all consuming, and we need it everywhere in order to run the lights, in order to see, in order to what’s the risk here? Right? Because, I mean, I I’m traveling next month to Asia. Right? I’m looking forward to spending time in Japan in three different cities. Right? I’m doing sort of back to back, Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo. And as much as I look forward, I guess, speaking to my phone, I also kinda wanna speak to people. Right? Like, is is there a risk that we are, you know, missing what is making travel special about meeting people?
Maxim Tint
That is a very interesting perspective. That’s why in the early part of the conversation, I did emphasize business travel is where efficiency is king. But when we talk about holidaymakers, experience is still king. You want interaction. You wanna probably talk to the front office.
Sebastien Leitner
That brings us to the end of yet another episode of The Turndown. Huge thanks for all of you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. Of course, this podcast wouldn’t be possible without the amazing team behind the scenes. A massive shout out to the producers, Talak Kahheirao, Linda Pejai, Lana Cook, Ricky Sherman, and Eilifakuhasen for the incredible research and preproduction work always keeping us on track. To Paulo Sanchez, thank you for your stellar audio editing and for making us sound so good. And finally, thank you to Ying Liu for her organizational talents and keeping the season on schedule literally. Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow us for updates and bonus content. Until then, take care and stay curious.
