In April, Duetto, a revenue management platform, acquired HotStats, which provides profit and loss data benchmarking for the hotel industry. On its face, it may sound like an odd pairing, but to hear it from HotStats CEO, Michael Grove, the two companies complement each other, enhancing each others’ core businesses. It comes with a change in ledership: Duetto recently hired a new CEO in Alex Zoghlin, a founder of Orbitz, taking over for David Woolenberg.
HOTELS caught up with Grove, who gave further insight on the combination, why it matters and how it can help hotels not only improve their bottom lines, but their guests’ experience.
HOTELS:Â HotStats was recently acquired by Duetto, a revenue management software company. HotStats is a P&L data benchmarking company. Why do you think Duetto made the acquisition? What was attractive about the business and how does it complement what Duetto traditionally does?
Grove: At its core, this acquisition was about shared vision. Both Duetto and HotStats are committed to giving hoteliers smarter, more connected data to make better decisions so they can focus on delivering exceptional guest experiences. Traditionally, Duetto helped optimize top-line revenue. With HotStats, we now bring operational costs and profitability into the picture. That’s a game-changer. No other revenue management provider in the market can offer the same depth of insight across both revenue and profit. It’s a natural evolution and one that positions us to help hoteliers drive better outcomes across the entire P&L.
HOTELS: David Woolenberg in June stepped down as CEO of Duetto, with Alex Zoghlin taking over the role. Zoghlin has deep experience in the travel sector, having founded Orbitz. What does he bring to the table and how will it impact HotStats?
Grove: Alex brings incredible experience and perspective. As the founder of Orbitz and former global head of technology, strategy and innovation at Hyatt, he understands the hospitality world from both sides. That is great for HotStats and our customers. He’s a techy at heart who understands great products and the power of AI. His focus on innovation will help shape how Duetto and HotStats evolve together, creating tools that empower hoteliers to make smarter, faster, and more profitable decisions.
HOTELS: How does HotStats fit into a hotel’s overall tech stack and why is consulting profitability data so vital for an operation—even more so than traditional top-line data?
Grove: Operational benchmarking sits in multiple layers of the hotel operation and also in the planning, strategy setting and analysis of hotel development. At the hotel level, hoteliers utilize data to understand market and compare trends across the various revenue streams, cost lines and ultimately profitability, in the continual pursuit of performance improvements. At a higher level in the industry, franchise portfolios utilize that same data to make decisions on brand performance, strategic positioning and owner relations, as the data provides a scientific and impartial view to make decisions on. The interaction with technology is then often relating to the operationalization of the data, whether driving demand and revenues, efficiency or customer satisfaction. We like to say that the data will not tell you what to do, but where to look!
HOTELS: What new types of tools and functionality can we expect from HotStats? Any previews?
Grove: Our latest tool is ProfitFinder. As there is often an overwhelming amount of data to review, ProfitFinder identifies, quantifies and allows for target setting and tracking of performance all in the same place. Companies in the pilot stage found millions in uncovered opportunities through use of the tool as well as, through the enterprise features, finally having a place to set index improvement targets for hotels, regions and brands and track in real-time throughout the year. Other features include an upgraded suite of reporting functions such as ranking, customizable dashboards and grouping of P&L items, all of which had been in demand for a while. For our investor community, we are also launching our updated market insight reports, helping with feasibility, planning and underwriting of hotel real-estate transactions
HOTELS: What should hotel operators be most anxious about going through 2025 and beyond; what should they be most excited about?
Grove: Clearly, the geo-political situation is precarious and may possibly impact travel and tourism. It’s naive to ignore it. However, we do have some incredible tailwinds. There is a significant shift in percentage of annual spend that populations are allocating to travel and tourism. This has been clear and post-covid, hotels have certainly felt that. There is also a challenge to high street shopping chains and offices as demand continues to shift online, which has moved hotel real estate into the premium class, as well as possibly positioning hotels as more of community hubs over the coming years. Hotels should be excited about what modern technology can do to alleviate the various service and operational pain points, as well as what it enables us to do from a personalization, demand generation and revenue optimization point of view.