For Peoplevine, Elevated Hospitality Starts With Removing The Friction
Co-founders Chris Lindsey and Jordan Gilman are working to personalize the hospitality experience
Perfect For: Hospitality operators, members, and guests seeking ease of use across hotels, restaurants, members clubs, and more
In the world of exclusive and high end hospitality, operators are always looking to elevate and streamline the guest experience. Whether that’s automated check in or a meal automatically being charged to the card on file, a smoother visit is better for all involved. But an easier experience doesn’t happen on its own. It’s a team effort, from a hotel’s GM and front desk staff to a restaurant’s front and back of house operators and everyone in between. So when a technology vendor can remove both staff and guests’ pain points and elevate the hospitality experience, that’s significant. Which is where CRM company PeopleVine comes in.
(Jordan Gilman, Co-Founder, CTO, and Software Architect at Peoplevine)
“I think the key here is we're taking out the friction within hospitality,” Jordan Gilman, Co-Founder, CTO, and Software Architect at Peoplevine tells A HOTEL PODCAST. “There's a lot of friction. You know, you make your reservation and you give all this information to OpenTable or SevenRooms or Resy. You show up to the restaurant and you wait in line to tell them your name and they look for you on a list. And sometimes they'll look at some of your preferences, but they just walk you to the table. Then you have someone comes up to you. ‘Do you have allergies? Are you sick? What's wrong with you? What do you like? What do you not like? Can I explain things to you?’ And it just creates this lot of friction. And then when you're done eating, you have an amazing meal. I gotta get going. I can't sit here for 20, 30 minutes, waving down the waitstaff to pay and tip them. I don't have time for that. And this is the case for many people. It's just, how do we take away that friction?”
The answer is Peoplevine, a “one app” solution where “you can book anything and everything,” as Gilman shares.
“So all of your preferences, payments, details are all there. How would you show up? Do people greet you before you have to tell them who you are? When you sit down at your table, how do we make sure that the staff knows that you have allergies? So that I don’t have to embarrass you in front of your coworkers or friends or colleagues, right? And then when you're done, we have your credit card on file. So we can…take out all this friction that's currently in the space of hospitality and we can remove it all. And as soon as you remove that friction, you start to feel, like I said, (like) the owner. You start to feel like you belong here. That this is your place. That everything we do is for you. And that's what hospitality really is about, right?”
As Gilman explains, a number of hospitality loyalty programs offer “some of these benefits, but it's never down on an individual basis.” Peoplevine, meanwhile, serves both hospitality operators and the members/guests on the receiving end of those services, as Co-Founder & Head of Product Marketing Chris Lindsey details.
(Peoplevine Co-Founder & Head of Product Marketing Chris Lindsey)
“You know, what Jordan was saying about frictionless experiences, we describe ourselves as a two sided platform. And that frictionless experience really is both for the member/guest, as well as for the operator. Our admin dashboard CRM is for the operational team of these properties. The member app is for the member experience, but it's also now being expanded into the guest experiences as we're trying to treat every guest like a member. And then we have other products within the ecosystem. Our check-in app, that's now part of the front of house experience. So it's not just your managers and your C-Suite of these properties. It's also for your front of line of these properties that are the ones that are actually interacting with the guests and the member even more so. So how can we bring technology to the things that they need to do so that they can continue to extend that elevated hospitality experience. So I think what Jordan said is spot on is like just continually using technology to remove the friction, but…also, it's from both sides of the experience. It's both from the members and guests that are experiencing that and consuming that, but it's also from the operators and staff that are the ones that are facilitating it.”
(Peoplevine’s member offerings)
Founded in 2014, Peoplevine offers a comprehensive dashboard, called Dash.5, that offers an expansive offering of management tools. Those include tools for managing accounts in the CRM tab, creating and overseeing applications and tiers in the Membership tab, building out listings and tracking attendance analytics in the Events tab, content management in the Marketing tab, and more. Guests and club members, meanwhile, can utilize Peoplevine to RSVP for events, book meeting rooms, and sign up for services like fitness training and spa sessions, among other offerings.
The control over the vendor and guest experience is utilized across Peoplevine’s client portfolio, which ranges from hotels to restaurants to private members clubs and other high end operators. The latter is an area of focus for the hospitality tech firm, as the membership model continues to expand from social clubs to high end hotels, residential, restaurants, and more.
“We started to go deep in private social clubs. Private social clubs have a few unique characteristics, but I think it's one of the lightweight, complex environments,” Gilman explains. “And what I mean by that is, what we do is like the end-to-end process. So first off, you have people that need to apply to become a member of your space. We provide all the process to get all their details, get their payment information, get everything ready. So all you have to do is hit ‘Approve.’ Once you hit ‘Approve,’ they now have access to not only your digital ecosystem, but also your physical ecosystem, because we'll give them access to their app, where they can log in and start to book amenities and manage their preferences and data. And then we give them a key card, a membership card, that they can now access the space and show up and be identified by staff as a member.”
The ease of use model is central to Peoplevine’s mission, not just for the members of the high end and exclusive social clubs and hospitality operators, but also simplifying the experience for visiting guests.
“What we then realized is that a lot of these clubs have hotel, spa, and other amenities,” Gilman shares. “And so, while we are treating these members with amazing experiences, have all their preferences, when they're showing up, their itineraries and things like that for this private social club…our clients are like, ‘Well, why don't we just make every guest feel like a member?’ Making sure that they also have this detailed information about people that are coming to their space for a hotel stay or for spa service or for dining or all the above at the same time. And so we've really expanded our product to not only focus on that member, but to also focus on the guest, the temporary member that has access to your space. And that's where we expanded our product to not only focus on dining reservations and (connecting) to the POS, but we also do spa bookings. We also connect to your PMS for hotel reservations, where we're working with golf courses to…book tee times directly through the app and get all that data directly into your itinerary. And so these journeys now become more in depth for these individuals. Whereas I don't have five different products I have to log into. I don't have five different preferences in different systems. I have one app, I have one profile, and people recognize me as the same person, regardless of where I am on your property.”
An elevated experience for guests and members alike isn’t just about technology, however. There’s also the human side of hospitality, as Lindsey states.
(Peoplevine’s product ecosystem)
“The places that you frequent the most are ones that you're known the best, where you're taken care of. It's a personalized experience. And I think that membership, and technology coupled with membership, really enables these properties to do that at scale, right? Like sure, you had one maître d' that knew everybody. But if he leaves, there goes that rapport that you have with your customers. So, how do you move that and leverage technology to be able to do that? And then I think the way that marketing is changing, with privacy and cookies and things of that nature, how can you build that retention? It's through community and it's through providing something more than just a great dish, right? It starts there. That's like the starting point. But then it's everything else that happens around that great dish and how you feel when you come there and not just being known by the staff, but seeing similar people or someone that you met a week ago there again, and picking up that conversation. So, I think as humans, we crave community, probably even more so coming out of COVID, where we didn't get to have community. So we have a kind of like a visceral appreciation for not having it. And wanting it. So, I think that hospitality properties, and just industries in general, are looking to their left and to their right and saying, ‘What can we learn from the people that are doing it at a high level,’ right?”
Ultimately, Peoplevine’s mission is for anyone using their services to feel like a VIP, regardless of whether they’re a full fledged member of the most exclusive members club or just a guest visiting their favorite hotel or restaurant for a night.
“I think that's what's so key to hospitality,” Gilman details. “Because, unless you have properly trained staff and people with amazing memories, you don't know everybody. You can know two to four people, but you're not going to know everybody. And so, I really try to tell people, why we built this tech is, we want everyone to feel like they're an owner. Feel like what the owner does, right? They come to the space, people know why they're there. They get walked to their table, they get brought their favorite drink. As soon as they're done, the waitstaff knows all their preferences. And as soon as they're done, they get up and leave, card on file, right? We want everyone to feel that same amazing experience because it really is a different way of hospitality.”
For more from Lindsey and Gilman, check out the co-founders’ joint interview on A HOTEL PODCAST below.
Find more via Peoplevine. And subscribe for more from A Hotel Podcast on LinkedIn, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Words by Jaime Black. Graphics via Peoplevine.
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