Luka Berger
And that’s why robots, automation, ChatGPT, AI, everything is here and I look forward to it honestly. As long as you know what you’re building in the sense of your hospitality product and you’re deploying tech in the right way, it’s just empowering that pure offline experience for travelers.
Sebastien Leitner
Welcome to The Turndown. You have to meet Luka. Luka is CEO and founder of Flexkeeping, a housekeeping application that he came up with as he was working in housekeeping. Imagine that. His story is a bit more complex, of course, but he moved to the US for a summer or an exchange program, learned English alongside it. And as he was cleaning rooms, watching housekeeping operations, he realized there is technology needed in this very offline, paper and pen world lacking a lot of operational details. There is technology that can make this housekeeping operation much more efficient.
That was sort of the inception point of creating a brand new company. Extremely successful, fantastic product, and he’s got some really great insights and stories to share about being a founder and launching a business.
Welcome. I’m excited to welcome Luka Berger. He is the CEO and founder of Flexkeeping. Welcome, Luka. You’re joining us today from which city?
Luka Berger
Super excited to be here, and I’m joining from Ljubljana, which is in Slovenia, if you would happen to know where that is.
Sebastien Leitner
I do think I know where that is. I wanted to give justice to this turndown podcast, and my typical opening question has to do with what is keeping you up at night. So, as the CEO and founder of Flexkeeping, Luka, what is keeping you up at night these days?
Luka Berger
Well, on a personal level, it’s my kids. I have two very small boys, so they are actually literally keeping me up every night. Two and four. Not that small, but still quite intense. But on a business level, it’s the knowledge that most of the hospitality world still runs on pen and paper while their guests are using ChatGPT and similar tech. Those are the thoughts that go through my brain. That’s what we’re working on to optimize, to update the hospitality with better tools than pen and paper.
Sebastien Leitner
So in the middle of the night, you head to the fridge, get a glass of milk, and your thought is how do you bring technology into a hotel that is using pen and paper?
Luka Berger
Something like that, yeah. It’s just mind boggling. Me being in the industry now for eleven years and still knowing that so much is still run in very outdated ways, forms, not keeping up with the pace of the world in general. It is keeping me up because it’s not just that it’s not optimal, it’s also that we are sacrificing a lot of time, people are doing a harder job. That is something that I’m very passionate about.
Sebastien Leitner
So what’s the resistance? What’s holding people back in embracing technology in your opinion?
Luka Berger
That’s a good question. I think it changed a little bit with COVID. Before that, most of hospitality didn’t really realize the impact and the importance. But once extra costs, idle time, the problem of contact and so on became a huge problem, the industry shifted. In the last few years this changed, there is general realization that companies need to digitize, automate, become optimized. But still it’s happening at a very slow pace.
The resistance is probably a mix between priorities, where do you invest first. A lot of times hotels tend to invest more into revenue generating things or something that guests might feel sooner. The back of house operations is something that’s a lot of times intangible. You think that we handled it twenty years, so why wouldn’t we handle it now? But it’s changing, so I think it’s a mix of factors.
Sebastien Leitner
You brought up an interesting concept around idle times. Help me understand how your technology is helping cut that down.
Luka Berger
Maybe I would tell it from the story of how I even started the company. It’s now already eleven years ago when I spent the summer in the US and I worked as a housekeeper by coincidence completely.
Sebastien Leitner
Where was that?
Luka Berger
That was in Yellowstone National Park. Fantastic. It was an amazing summer, one of the best summers ever. It was a typical one hundred and three room hotel at the west entrance into the park. The thing that I saw is we had the typical type of organization where you get your piece of paper in the morning. Midpoint of me working there, I started realizing how much time my supervisor was losing just figuring out who’s done what, checking the rooms, coming back to us, telling what we did wrong.
All this time the front office never knew which rooms we’d already cleaned so guests had to wait. To fix problems, it always lasted just because of the communication, just to get information from one person to another. The idea of Flexkeeping was born simply because we already had smartphones in our pockets and why don’t we have a simple app that we could communicate everything instantly. We’d save so much time and have so much data upon which you can act. A guest would have a faster service, a better service. You can control quality, start measuring things, actually be data driven in how you run your operations.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s so interesting. You mentioned the smartphone as the device. Is there a minimum requirement to your software?
Luka Berger
Theoretically not, but practically yes. Smartphones today are not as expensive as they were ten years ago. We tend to suggest at least mid level, non-brand devices, and that’s it. It’s not anymore an item of discussion. Everyone has smartphones. It’s an investment, but something middle ground. Definitely not the cheapest because if the tech is not at a certain level and is not working as it should, you’re again losing time figuring out what’s wrong. You don’t want to have that kind of situation in operations.
Sebastien Leitner
Reversely, what lets you sleep at night? What gives you comfort?
Luka Berger
This is such a vanilla type of answer, but it’s just true in my case. The two things that keep me comfortable, one is obviously my family because I am a family type of person. I realize it is everything that you can have in your life, in my opinion. And the other is the team. I have to say I’m super happy with our team. Whatever we have as a professional challenge, we’re handling it all the time. Those two things make me sleep really good when my sons let me sleep.
Sebastien Leitner
I’m curious, what is one of the funniest or most awkward things that happened to you while on the job?
Luka Berger
This is the type of question that, you know, you have some kind of a black book somewhere about what happens in hotel operations. There were many situations with coming to a hotel room that’s supposed to be empty and it was not, seeing your guests, disturbing them in various different situations, which is not a pleasant thing.
I was at a housekeeping conference today talking with some housekeeping managers and got this anecdote where every morning we always thought who is going to be first there so that you would get the best vacuum cleaner, the best trolley for laundry. Because it was just so much harder if you got the not working equipment. So many stories like that, that make me smile today and make me reflect on all those things that we are trying to make better.
Sebastien Leitner
I remember in one of the first hotels I worked in, the housekeepers had named their vacuum cleaners. They put their names on the vacuum cleaner, and I’m sure they maintained those as their own cars, as their own pride and joy.
Luka Berger
Absolutely, that is how it actually is. But the root of this is unfortunately when it is like that, it means that the culture is not really the best and the equipment is not maintained or invested in. Otherwise you wouldn’t fight over which vacuum cleaner you use.
Sebastien Leitner
Walk us through your morning routine. How did you start your day this morning?
Luka Berger
I always start very similarly. We wake up with the family, I always take enough time so that we have breakfast, get our sons ready for kindergarten. We drink our coffee and then bring them to kindergarten and I usually then go to the office. Sometimes we also work from home. But that’s how I start. It’s more or less every day the same. To me, it’s super important to have that morning routine, especially when I’m at home with my family.
Sebastien Leitner
What did you have for breakfast this morning?
Luka Berger
It was cereal. And that was one thing that I was hooked up on in the US, finally, cereal. It was oatmeal. A couple of things I brought back is oatmeal and coffee in such volumes that I never had before. Those are the two things that I brought back.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s fantastic. Luka, I want to talk about your career. You’ve done this for eleven years. You’re a founder and CEO. What’s a common myth about your job?
Luka Berger
The classical myths. Not doing a lot of things, having it nice, just having a great company that works for you, having the luxury of having your own company, which is so much better than working for someone. Unfortunately, none of it is true, of course. We work all the time. There’s practically not a day that you could really log off. It’s very relative if it’s easier to be your own boss than to have a boss. People should try, but I’m super happy in the position. I wouldn’t change it. But those are the myths, that you have it easy, that the company is working for you, that it’s all just milk and honey.
Sebastien Leitner
When was the last time you took a day off?
Luka Berger
I’m getting better at it. One thing that COVID did, on one side it crushed our world for that time, but on the other it gave us a month or two or three to reflect and stop. Everyone in the industry just had to stop. And I think that for me was also a breaking point that you need to take time for yourself. So I am practicing time off more and more. Not to say that I’m not thinking about the company at that time, that’s another thing to practice.
Sebastien Leitner
As a CEO and founder, what is the biggest challenge you’re facing in your role right now and how are you tackling it?
Luka Berger
My biggest challenge is how do we get the company to grow as fast as possible but as healthy as possible at the same time? What we’ve achieved is a very healthy culture, a very happy team, a very happy customer base, and currently very high growth. And we are aware that high growth might come at the cost of those previous two factors. So my biggest challenge is how do we grab that growth and maintain customer and team satisfaction?
Sebastien Leitner
Balancing all three: culture, customer satisfaction, and growth? How do you identify where to focus?
Luka Berger
I personally currently believe that it’s the team and the customers that fuel the growth. So those are the two things that we are focusing on kind of equally. Investing into the team and investing into customer satisfaction via product, via relationships, via stable product, via innovations. That’s how we are currently tackling that.
Sebastien Leitner
I want to do a lightning round. What comes to mind when you think of departures?
Luka Berger
General cleaning.
Sebastien Leitner
Luggage.
Luka Berger
Taking it to the room.
Sebastien Leitner
Distraction.
Luka Berger
All the time in hospitality and operations. If you don’t have a system like Flexkeeping.
Sebastien Leitner
Travel in two thousand and thirty.
Luka Berger
Same as today.
Sebastien Leitner
Social media.
Luka Berger
Don’t like it.
Sebastien Leitner
Bleisure.
Luka Berger
I like that. There has to be a line between business and leisure, but I like the mix that we can do both. Combined, extended. That’s a great thing.
Sebastien Leitner
Housekeeping.
Luka Berger
Very important. Turndown service.
Sebastien Leitner
What technology do you think will disrupt the travel industry the most in the upcoming years?
Luka Berger
There’s the guest perspective and the operational perspective. Travel, in my opinion, will stay the same because you go traveling for experiences, lasting experiences, and that’s still based on personal experience. It’s fueled, powered, made easy by tech, but essentially you’re there for experience.
On the traveler side, I’m a big enthusiast and supporter of tech, automation, having it easy to check-in, check out, book experiences, get information, board planes, everything. It really depends on why you’re traveling. Is it business? Is it leisure? Then your expectations differ.
On the operational side, I think we need to digitize everything so that essentially staff can be analog with guests. The real experience is instead of asking those obsolete questions like how was your trip, is this your first time, you should be talking to the guests, suggesting what they should do, suggesting what they should see, what drink they should have. Something that’s an actual experience to the place where they just arrived.
And that’s why robots, automation, ChatGPT, AI, everything is here and I look forward to it honestly. As long as you know what you’re building in the sense of your hospitality product and you’re deploying tech in the right way, it’s just empowering that pure offline experience for travelers.
Sebastien Leitner
Do you see the standard operating questions being replaced by technology and automation?
Luka Berger
Not at all. First of all, if we’re replacing humans, in hospitality that’s going to be tough because there’s no one to replace. There’s no staff here to be replaced in the first place. Sure, there are some segments that might be completely automated and that’s fine. But in general, it’s not about replacing. It’s about taking away the repetitive tasks, taking away the hard job, taking all those processes where you’re losing time and adding zero value to the guest experience.
Sebastien Leitner
When you travel, do you check-in online or go to the reception?
Luka Berger
I do check-in online if it’s possible. I have different experiences that make you feel different. Just recently at Ruby Hotels, for example, I like their philosophy. It’s kind of a more middle to upper level product. The reception is the bar desk. You have a pleasant natural conversation with the person there. It’s not forced, not scripted. You feel good.
The other side, if it’s a luxury property like Four Seasons, you might want to have a conversation. But still you do not want to wait in a queue or just wait to get a card. That’s not what hospitality is all about anymore. I don’t think it even ever was. So that’s for sure something that will change, and it’s for the good.
Sebastien Leitner
What’s your favorite travel destination in the world?
Luka Berger
There’s so much I haven’t seen. I haven’t traveled that much for leisure, unfortunately. More for business. But I have to say one of my favorites is the Croatian coast. This is a place where we go every season. It’s just a wonderful place. I suggest this to everyone at some point in their lives.
Sebastien Leitner
If there’s any place in the world that you could live, where would it be?
Luka Berger
I was taken by the Australians a few months ago when I was there. I was just taken by their culture, their friendliness, the general energy in the air. I just loved the atmosphere. So Australia is something that I actually started thinking, maybe I should go live there for a while.
Sebastien Leitner
Luka, one topic that is super interesting right now is the changing standard in housekeeping. Hotels are now either canceling daily cleanings or upselling and charging. What’s your perspective?
Luka Berger
This is a big debate now. It was triggered on mass with COVID. My opinion is it’s all fueled in general by the lack of staff. The job is not attractive and it’s very underpaid and not as respected as it should be, so that’s the root cause.
There are two aspects. If we’re just going to start upselling the service and skipping it, it’s not going to really resolve the problem long term. The industry will need to invest more in the housekeeping segment. The other side, the change of standard is not a problem if it’s executed skillfully. One of the best examples I’ve seen in Amsterdam is if you decide to skip housekeeping, the hotel would plant a tree. You feel good, you’ve done something positive for the environment, they save the resources, and there is a win-win situation.
The standard is definitely changing. It’s just that the industry shouldn’t get carried away only from the revenue and profit perspective. What I absolutely dislike is the greenwashing, all those green initiatives about skip daily cleaning and save the environment. A lot of it in reality was greenwashing. Transparency is an absolute key. Turn it positive, make it transparent. We understand as guests.
Sebastien Leitner
Luka, this has been a great conversation. Really appreciate your time and insights. Thank you for joining me today, and I look forward to seeing you in person soon.
Luka Berger
Thank you, Sebastien.
Sebastien Leitner
Thank you for listening to The Turndown. Don’t forget to subscribe and tune in next week as we discover new exciting guests.
