Hotel Tech Insider

What if the biggest mistake hotels make with technology isn’t adopting it too slowly—but using it to reinforce outdated assumptions about how guests want to interact with your property? In this episode, Matt Dybing, Co-Founder and COO of Nuvho, shares a candid look at how leading operators are using automation, revenue systems, and smarter distribution strategies to outperform competitors.
Nuvho advises nearly 200 hotels across Australia and the UK, ranging from small regional properties to world-class luxury boutiques. With a unique vantage point across hundreds of tech stacks and revenue strategies, Matt brings a practical operator’s perspective on what actually drives performance - not just what vendors promise.
Why “luxury equals human interaction” is often wrong: Matt challenges a common hospitality assumption: that removing friction with automation hurts the guest experience. Instead, he argues that luxury today is about choice—letting guests decide whether they want a frictionless mobile check-in or a high-touch arrival.
How top hotels use OTAs strategically instead of fighting them: Rather than avoiding OTAs, Matt explains how smart operators optimize listings to rank on page one, where nearly all bookings occur—then convert that visibility into direct bookings using better booking engines and websites.
A real example of technology-driven turnaround: Hear how a struggling luxury lodge increased revenue by 50% and returned to profitability after implementing automated revenue management, proactive marketing, and improved financial visibility—demonstrating how technology works best when paired with the right operational philosophy.

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What if 70% of your guests are willing to upgrade—but your pricing strategy is leaving that revenue on the table? In this episode, Erik Tengen, President of Hospitality at Plusgrade and former co-founder of Oaky, explains why the future of hotel profitability isn’t RevPAR—it’s total revenue, frictionless upselling, and becoming “agent-ready."
Experienced hotel operators, GMs, commercial leaders, and ownership groups focused on driving profit—not just topline revenue—in an increasingly AI-driven distribution landscape.
Erik brings a rare combination of entrepreneurial grit and global scale. After building Oaky into one of hospitality’s leading upsell platforms and selling it to Plusgrade—a global leader in ancillary revenue across airlines, cruise, and rail—he now oversees hospitality strategy for one of the most advanced ancillary monetization engines in travel. His vantage point spans independent hotels to major global brands actively modernizing their tech stacks.
• Why TrevPAR Beats RevPAR in 2026 and Beyond
Erik breaks down the industry’s post-COVID shift toward total revenue management and explains why pairing a Revenue Management System with dynamic upselling technology unlocks meaningful profit growth across parking, F&B, spa, upgrades, and more.
• Dynamic Pricing Isn’t Just for Rooms
Flat pricing for parking, late checkout, or room upgrades? That’s profit leakage. Learn the core data inputs required to dynamically price ancillaries—inventory, forecasted occupancy, and scarcity—and how to operationalize this without overwhelming your team.
• “Commercial Empathy” as a Competitive Moat
A surprising insight: personalization isn’t about more data—it’s about small, meaningful actions that remove friction at micro-moments across the guest journey. Erik explains why “big data is useless without small actions” and shares real-world examples of hotels training frontline staff to turn service moments into revenue opportunities.
• What It Means to Be Agent-Ready
With agentic AI poised to transform how travelers search and book, Erik outlines why structured data and open APIs will matter more than flashy AI features. Vendors—not hotels—must become agent-ready, but operators need to choose partners that are.
• Scaling Upselling Without Nickel-and-Diming Guests
The episode dives into seamless fulfillment—from PMS integrations to housekeeping workflows—and how top-performing brands debundle strategically without eroding guest trust.
If you’re serious about driving profitable travel and future-proofing your hotel’s tech strategy, subscribe to Hotel Tech Insider, share this episode with your commercial team, and follow along for more operator-level insights from the leaders shaping hospitality’s next chapter.

What if your busiest check-in nights didn’t require a front-desk line at all—even when most guests booked through OTAs? In this episode, Fabio Passos, Owner & CEO of QDI USA Developments (a multi-property operator with hotels across Florida and Brazil) breaks down the practical playbook he’s used to modernize arrivals, improve security, and squeeze more signal out of property data—without waiting for a brand to catch up.

Key Takeaways:
How to eliminate peak-arrival bottlenecks with mobile keys + self-service check-in (including the exact pre-arrival cadence: timed emails, app adoption, and how to handle ID/vehicle info requirements without clogging the desk).
How to keep security tight when guests bypass the front desk: Fabio shares the operational counterweights—staff training plus “smart camera” monitoring for common loopholes (like propped stairwell doors) so automation doesn’t mean losing control.
How to turn messaging into a direct channel—then scale it with AI: A surprisingly simple WhatsApp-led approach starts human-first, captures demand, and then gets trained into an AI agent to handle volume without needing staff online 24/7.
Fabio’s operator mindset spans two very different markets (Florida + Brazil), and he brings a distribution-aware view of tech—specifically solving for OTA-heavy demand where brand-only mobile keys don’t help. He also shares a practical “aha” moment using ChatGPT to consolidate multi-hotel financials and dashboards from CSV exports—an unusually pragmatic, owner-level use case that goes beyond the typical “AI for marketing” talk.
If you’re looking for tactics you can test this quarter—share this episode with your ops lead or GM, and subscribe to Hotel Tech Insider for more operator-grade playbooks on using technology to run leaner, safer, higher-performing hotels.

What if the fastest way to improve service, upsells, and loyalty isn’t adding staff—but redesigning how guests communicate with your hotel?
In this episode, Greg Nawrocki, Director of Online Marketing at Linchris Hotel Corporation (30+ hotels across urban, resort, branded, and independent properties), delivers a rare, operator-level breakdown of how modern hotel marketing actually works in the wild—where technology has to prove ROI and still feel human.
Key Takeaways:
How to operationalize SMS at scale without losing hospitality: Greg shares how some Linchris properties see 50–80% guest adoption of text messaging, and exactly where SMS outperforms email before, during, and after the stay.
Turning “old-school” marketing into measurable channels: Learn how Linchris tracks ROI on billboards, newspapers, and drive-market advertising using Google Analytics, geo lift, and direct URL behavior.
Smarter segmentation using PMS-connected data: Practical examples of how email + PMS data enables targeting top spenders, low-value guests, OTA bookers, and drive markets—with real tactics to increase direct bookings and repeat stays.

 Greg doesn’t talk in abstractions. He explains how to phrase messages differently by property type, why influencer marketing often fails (and when it works), and how independent hotels can compete with global brands by orchestrating tech vendors—not stacking them.
If you’re rethinking how technology fits into hospitality—not replacing it—this episode is a must-listen. Subscribe to Hotel Tech Insider, share this episode with your leadership team, and explore more operator-led insights at HotelTechReport.com

How do you scale hotel operations across brands, countries, and systems - without losing control or culture?
 In this episode of Hotel Tech Insider, we sit down with Øyvind Bøhm Frisak, Chief Commercial Officer at CIC Hospitality, to unpack how a fast-growing Nordic hotel operator is using AI, data, and unconventional guest-facing tech to drive efficiency, improve service, and prepare teams for the future.
 This conversation is especially relevant for hotel owners, operators, GMs, and commercial leaders managing multi-property portfolios, complex tech stacks, or brand-franchise environments—and anyone navigating the real-world impact of AI on hotel operations and staffing.
Key takeaways from this episode:
How CIC Hospitality standardizes performance across 30+ hotels using multiple PMS platforms, a centralized data lake, and consistent KPIs to enable scalable growth.
Where AI actually delivers value today—from cutting guest response times from 24 hours to minutes, to freeing revenue managers to focus on strategy instead of manual pricing.
Why guest-facing innovation doesn’t have to mean less human service, including lessons learned from deploying hologram reception and centralized service teams.
Along the way, Øyvind shares candid insights on AI adoption, tech stack integration, revenue management evolution, guest communication automation, and preparing hotel teams for change—without fear-mongering or hype.
👉 Subscribe to Hotel Tech Insider for more conversations with hotel leaders shaping the future of hospitality technology. If you found this episode useful, share it with a colleague or visit HotelTechReport.com for deeper research, reviews, and industry insights.