Mercedes Blanco – 00:00:00: We should all be looking into owning more, controlling more on your website, on your tech partners, on your AI to try to be ahead of the game because we cannot say that things are not changing because they are.

Intro – 00:00:19: Welcome to The Hotel Moment Podcast presented by Revinate, the podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.

Karen Stephens- 00:00:36: Hello, and welcome to The Hotel Moment Podcast. I am your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And today we are thrilled to have Mercedes Blanco, the Chief Partnerships Officer at The Hotels Network, joining us. With almost 20 years of experience in hospitality tech and digital marketing, Mercedes has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in the industry. She has worked with hotel brands across the globe, helping them optimize their direct channels, leverage data-driven marketing strategies, and create personalized guest experiences. Mercedes also co-founded Women in Travel Thrive, a nonprofit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in our industry with a governing board of established and emerging leaders. If you enjoyed conversations like this, make sure you subscribe to The Hotel Moment so you never miss an episode. And what I think I love most about this episode is definitely focusing on, one, how to think about your tech stack and making sure that your partners play well together. And what I mean by that is that they understand how to integrate your data, one to the other. She also gives a great take on AI and how to help hoteliers think about approaching that. And then lastly, we definitely hit on this Women in Travel Thrive, which is the nonprofit, which just sounds really cool. So we’ve put the URL in the show notes and the next meeting that they’re going to have in person is actually the first night of HITEC, which is happening in Indianapolis in the United States on June 16th. So here you go. Enjoy Mercedes Blanco. Mercedes, welcome to the podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you here.

Mercedes Blanco – 00:02:20: Well, it’s my pleasure to be here with you, Karen Thank you.

Karen Stephens – 00:02:23: Well, you are certainly welcome. And I know that as we’re recording this, we are just coming off of ITB, which just happened in Berlin. So the first thing I would love to know was how was the show? How did it go this year?

Mercedes Blanco – 00:02:33: Sunny.

Karen Stephens – 00:02:35: Really?

Mercedes Blanco – 00:02:35: Yeah. It was the best ITB, both business and weather-wise, that I could remember. Everyone was complimentary of the weather. Actually, funny enough, I left Madrid and it was pouring. It was literally raining dogs and cats. And there we go to Berlin and it’s beautiful, sunny. And I’ve actually been riding a bike all week alone, just going to one place, another one.

Karen Stephens – 00:02:59: Amazing. Because usually, so anybody who’s been to Berlin to ITB, first of all, it’s a gigantic show. So the messy Berlin is huge. And it’s always freezing cold. We’re always standing outside in coats, freezing.

Mercedes Blanco – 00:03:12: Even snowing. I mean, I remember. So that’s why I say sunny, because it’s definitely not normal. But it was definitely a very good show. Obviously, we are all busy catching up after that week, but it was definitely worth it.

Karen Stephens – 00:03:25: Wonderful. Well, it’s so nice that that one’s back, just like everything else. So that’s great. So Mercedes, you’ve had a fascinating career across various leadership roles and hospitality tech. What initially sparked your passion for technology and innovation within the hospitality industry?

Mercedes Blanco – 00:03:40: That’s a very good one. Well, I always, all my life, have been an early adopted. Whenever there was a new social network or a new digital trend, even I remember when I was back in school, high school or college, I was trying all of those new things that obviously now they sound quite old. If I say IRC or MySpace and all of those. But back in the day, they were quite new. And I remember when I was still playing with the internet, I remember the sound of- So I guess that I was always interested in trying new things, technology and digital related. Obviously, my career has been in hospitality, but I kind of always had in the background of my head that given how big and how much the industry has changed, how interesting will it be to transition from traditional hospitality to technology in hospitality. So that was always on the back end of my mind. I had the opportunity to go work for Microsoft in 2008, if I’m not mistaken, which I took. Obviously, that was outside of hospitality, but that was my attempt of getting more involved with technology. The funny thing is that I missed hospitality, the hospitality component way too much. So I decided to go back to hospitality and then try really my way within hospitality till I got involved in technology and in hospitality, which I’ve been doing for almost a decade now.

Karen Stephens – 00:05:12: That’s so great. You know, I think you hit on something really important there. Even if you like technology or different sectors of industries, the hospitality industry itself is so unique. And it’s just a wonderful people first kind of place to be. So I am exactly in that same boat. So now that you’re in the tech sector within hospitality and you’ve been there for a while, so in today’s crowded market, if I’m a hotelier, how should I think about choosing the right tech partners without overcomplicating my tech stack? Because I think that if there’s one challenge for hotels today, there is a lot of things out there. It’s moving really quickly. So what’s your advice to hoteliers when they’re thinking about putting that together?

Mercedes Blanco – 00:05:50: Well, the first thing is to understand what is your tech stack? What is the baseline of the things that you need, the absolute minimum, and then the things that would help you? And also understand who you are and who your customers are. Because obviously, depending on the product that you sell, you might be needing different partners. So to me, but maybe it’s unique to me, I don’t know, but to me, the very absolute base layer in hospitality is a PMS. And then everything else should be building on top of it. Because a PMS is the one piece that I don’t know if you work in a hotel, but if a PMS falls down on an integration or you have a big problem. So we all need to connect there. And then we have many, many, many things. Obviously, distribution, whomever that is in this industry understands that distribution now is digital. Of course, we have a lot of third parties, a lot of OTAs. But it pains me. Obviously, I’m in the direct channel. It’s a little bit tough is what I’m going to say. But it really pains me to see that we as an industry are failing at controlling our own channels. The ones that they should speak our voice, identity, who we are, and where we should have more control are the ones that we take less attention to. And I think that’s a big mistake. Especially, I know that over the past few years, we’ve been hearing cookies yes, cookies no. What is it going to happen? This and that. But I think that proactively, we should all be looking, into owning more, controlling more on your website, on your tech partners, on your AI to try to be ahead of the game. Because we cannot say that things are not changing because they are. And we might be facing something similar to what we face with the Internet erupted and we were too late in the game. I would really hate to see that we are too late in the game. So I know that I kind of went towards a different direction from your question, but understanding the tech stack, the base needs, that you have, and then taking control over your own channels and then build a relationship with your partners that will serve you long term. Another mistake that I see in the industry is that although we are hospitality people, we tend to believe that we are all technological. I am not. I do work in technology, but my background is not technology. Okay. I do need the help and support of my IT guys, of my AI guys, yada, yada. But the point is that, many hotel brands, they intend to develop things in-house without having the knowledge that the partners could have. So I always tell them, stop for a minute, use the knowledge that we as partners have acquired through the years. And then if you want to choose something and to build something of your own, do it. But first learn from us and with us.

Karen Stephens – 00:08:40: And I think that’s important because obviously when you’re a technology company, you have teams and focus. So we hit on something kind of interesting there. I think for the go-to-market team, salespeople, service support, partnerships. We have deep understandings of the hospitality industry as a whole. And then there’s a whole team of engineers working behind the scenes that are on the tech stack. And I know at least at Revinate, we spend not quite a bit of time, but we regularly update the engineers to let them know how our customers use our platforms. And certainly our Chief Technology Officer comes out of hospitality. But you have to be able to differentiate between the two, right, to help customers.

Mercedes Blanco – 00:09:16: And we have to understand one another because sometimes we are incapable of doing so. I always tell my tech teams, please don’t talk to me. Explain me the things. Because if I don’t understand how everything works in a way that I can really develop in my brain, there is no chance that I can think proactively on a business strategy perspective into how I can help my tech team do things better. Because I have the strategy and the business acumen. And while they are the tech people. So it’s very, very important that we connect and that we speak the same language.

Karen Stephens – 00:09:51: Absolutely. And as my boss, our CEO, likes to say, hoteliers are interested in outcomes. It’s not about how the sausage is made. It’s about the outcome. So that’s great. So Mercedes, you mentioned AI. How do you think technology is changing the travel landscape, particularly when it comes to AI? And what do you think the first step for hoteliers is when they’re approaching AI and considering how to integrate it within their operations?

Mercedes Blanco – 00:10:15: Very interesting that you mentioned because literally 15 minutes before joining this call, I was sending an email to a lot of industry partners because we’ve been partnering together and I’ve been leading an initiative on AI and how AI is shifting the hotels industry. So basically for the past few months, we’ve been releasing like one minute video per week. That’s it on best practices, ideas, fears, trends that we are seeing related to AI. And the one common thread that I’ve seen across all speakers is that we all need to be trying AI and that AI is about enhancing and not about replacing. It is true that eventually it can replace, it can really change and shift how we do things. But why should we be fearful? Of course, I understand the fears, but we don’t have a crystal ball. It’s impossible to look ahead and predict what is going to happen. We may have ideas, but it’s impossible. However, we can always look backwards and see what we have done in the past. And of course we have the Internet eruption, but not only that, because I think that AI has the potential to really, really, really change things like industrialization. When we were replacing people with machines to help them do their job in a mass production way, there was a huge fear of advancement and people were really frightened about losing their jobs. But the reality is that whenever you lose something here, you win or you create something there. On the other hand, my job, for instance, if I ask my parents, probably they don’t even know what I do. And if they were to advise my young version of 18 years old into what is it that I could do in my life, no one could have ever said anything related or similar at all to what I end up doing today. So answering to your question or summarizing is to try AI. AI has been here, all around us for many years. It’s just that it’s the new kid of the block because now AI is not for a few, it’s for all of us. And we should be trying, playing responsibly, but trying things and being open because it can really, really help us minimize tasks, optimize results and be more efficient, which is at the end of the day what we all want. And if in hospitality we can get back at having more of this, of the human touch, that would be lovely because if AI can do a lot of repetitive tasks and then I can have like a really genuine experience, I’ll take it.

Karen Stephens – 00:12:50: So Mercedes, I’d like to pivot to the organization you co-founded, Women in Travel Thrive. Can you talk about why you started that organization, what it does and how it blends in with the work that you’re doing today?

Mercedes Blanco – 00:13:02: Absolutely. And thank you for asking, because that’s a very important part, although obviously it’s all non-paid and it’s just a passion of mine. The beginning of this happened thanks to Silvia Camarota. Which is an executive at Expedia. She reached out to me. I’ve known her for many years and she was like, Mercedes, this was 2020. So picture that, or July, but the summer 2020, she was Mercedes, we have to do something. We’ve only been few women in the industry and now we are being even less. So basically the association started as a one-time movement to help women get back into their roles or to support other women find new jobs. And of course, to even to secure more female executive leaders, because reality is that many people never, the industry to take care of their families and not all of them came back. So that was the beginning. That was a one time thing that we did. But the movement was so needed and so supported by the industry that we ended up funding a nonprofit, which it is the network that we’ve built today. We have thousands of members. Everything is free of charge. We don’t ask for anything. What we offer is training, coaching sessions, resume writings, networking opportunities. We do even events. And all of this is thanks to our sponsors, obviously, because as a nonprofit, we don’t have any way of funding ourselves. But thanks to our sponsors and the work of all of our volunteers that are making things happen. As a matter of fact, just yesterday I was over the phone with someone from San Francisco because we are finalizing the details of our key event of the year, which is called Day of Impact. And we host it in conjunction with HSMAI and HITEC. It’s going to be the Monday of that week. I believe that is the week of June 16. If I’m not mistaken, it’s in the evening. So that will give people time to get into Indianapolis. And it’s very short, very interactive. It’s 20 minutes of keynote, one hour of workshop and then fun and networking with other women in the industry. So the reason why we exist, is to offer our hands. I would like to consider myself a connector. I’m always happy to engage, connect, introduce people. And that’s what we do. And hopefully we will start seeing more and more women in hospitality and more and more in technology.

Karen Stephens – 00:15:27: I love that. So let’s make sure our listeners know where to find the information. So I’ll be at HITEC. I’m like, I’ll be there Monday night. So where do people find the Day of Impact information? What’s the website and how do we get there?

Mercedes Blanco – 00:15:39: Right now, we only have a safe date, a registration will open soon. You can go to the womenintravelthrive.com site, and also it will be available under HSMAI Commercial Strategy Week content.

Karen Stephens – 00:15:51: Fantastic. And let’s talk a little bit more about how do you do leadership training? Can you just talk a little bit more about the content and programs? I’m sure people can go to the website and check it out, but maybe if you want to tell me what’s your favorite track or program that you’ve seen really make an impact out of that organization.

Mercedes Blanco – 00:16:07: Well, it’s very personal because what it may work for me, it might not work for others. It really depends on your experience and where you are in your professional and personal career and personal life. But we have given many empowerment bundles. That’s how we call them. We offer applications for anybody to apply for those. And they have like either career growth and then you have like the executive coaching, resume writing and such. Then we have other programs that are more related to leadership and struggles and biases that we all see in our daily lives. For instance, we are hoping that this year, this workshop that we’re going to do is going to teach us a little bit more about financials because we women, of course, I’m generalizing. So excuse me if this doesn’t cover everyone, but we women tend to be very empathetic, very organized and very good at multitasking. But we are not as driven as our male counterparts when it’s related to our own personal finance and situation. So we want to open the door to teach the basics so we can do better. Because at the end of the day, we live in a different era and we all need to be independent regardless if you have a family or not. We all have to be smart.

Karen Stephens – 00:17:24: Yeah. You know what? I’m going to underline that statement 10 times over because I often think obviously there’s a big pay gap. We know that there’s a pay gap, a gender pay gap. But I often think to myself, some of it is obviously bias. How much of it is just women not asking for their worth and not knowing how to negotiate when it comes to negotiating your salary, when it comes to really making sure that people understand the value you deliver? And I think you’re right. There’s something deep in our programming that tells us that that is not a feminine… You know, that you should be more organized and show that you can do it. And of course, like you said, generalization. But I think teaching women how to be confident and ask for what their worth is important. So I’m very excited, about this organization.

Mercedes Blanco – 00:18:06: Please join us. One thing that is super fun is that, like I said, we are an open community and we have Slack channel. Most of our companies, they use Slack. So whenever I’m, for instance, going to ITB in Berlin, I go on Slack and I ask, hey, who’s going to be there? Right? And try to make new connections. There are always job opportunities, questions, because perhaps I don’t want to ask something to my colleagues at my firm, but I wouldn’t mind asking to, I don’t know, a group of trust.

Karen Stephens – 00:18:33: Yeah. Women in leadership who are trusted. I love that. Okay, Mercedes. So in closing, I have one more question for you. It’s kind of a big one. So what has been the most significant change in hospitality tech over the last few years? And what are you most excited about for the future?

Mercedes Blanco – 00:18:49: Well, I have to say, and I know that is repetitive and everyone is tired of that, but definitely AI. I think that AI, it is really changing my day-to-day, just to start with that. I’m definitely opening a huge universe of opportunities for all of us. I believe that we will see many, many more integrations. I think that is the time for consolidation in technology. We saw in the past few years consolidation among hoteliers. I think that we will see consolidation among tech partners. And we need to see more open collaboration. I think that we as an industry, I actually wrote an article related to this particular matter because sometimes we don’t help each other that much. We are very hard to connect to in some instances, even when we have the same clients. So I think that we should consider that and think that if a client has chosen two partners or three or four, whatever they are, to work with them, we need to do what is best for the client. Full stop.

Karen Stephens – 00:19:56: Absolutely. The client’s at the center. And at the end of the day, they’re the ones that own the data. So let’s make sure we can all connect and do what’s best for the customer. So thank you so much, Mercedes. It’s been a great conversation. And I will see you at HITEC.

Mercedes Blanco – 00:20:08: I will see you at HITEC and Women In Travel Thrive.

Karen Stephens – 00:20:11: That’s right. Monday night. Check the URL. Thanks so much.

Mercedes Blanco – 00:20:14: Thank you, Karen. Bye-bye.

Karen Stephens – 00:20:16: Bye

Outro – 00:20:17: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to revinate.com/hotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.