Robert
Vogt caught up with Charles Cowley co-founder of Impala earlier this week to
discuss the new connectivity partnership and look into what this means for
customers across the globe. In a world of connections and, with new
technologies emerging on a daily basis, it is key for us at Guestline, to offer
a quick and easy (although always secure!) integration for the solutions our
hoteliers want and need.
Hi
Charles, what is you role within Impala, in a nutshell?
I’m the Chief Commercial Officer at Impala,
which in practice means I spend my time travelling the world meeting everyone
who currently works in the hospitality tech space. It’s my job to get out
there, bang the drum and tell everyone that the days of difficult, expensive,
time-consuming integrations are coming to an end.
Why did
you want to collaborate with Guestline?
Our core business is connecting developers and
hospitality tech companies with hotel data by helping them integrate with PMS.
So linking-up with Guestline was a no-brainer for us as they are one of
Europe’s leading Property Management Systems. We’ve been very impressed by the
big moves the Guestline team have been making outside of the UK for some time
and want to help them grow into new regions like Germany, Benelux and beyond.
How
will this connectivity partnership benefit mutual clients?
Our service will allow Guestline to connect to
multiple hotel tech vendors through one simple, secure integration. In essence,
this will provide Guestline clients with full use of a much larger range of
technology services, without having to wait an outrageous amount of time for
individual integrations to be completed or pay a premium for each one.
How
long has Impala been in the industry?
We started the business in early 2017 and
launched the service officially in February this year. We released Impala
Version 2 earlier this week and are really excited to see how our partnership
with Guestline can help take our user offering to the next level.
Are
you global player? ... Or which markets do you work in?
Going by the amount of new stamps in my
passport over the last 18 months, I’d say we were an international company! In
all seriousness though, while our team is primarily based in the UK, the very
nature of what we do means that ours is very much a global product because
hotels and tech are such ubiquitous industries. It’s very much one of the
things that drew us to the hotel tech space to begin with. We want to be
facilitators for the industry. We think UK businesses like Guestline should be
free and able to sell their products to hotels in Germany or integrate with
third party services in the States, Sweden or Swaziland. A global industry
should be globally connected. We think that sounds pretty cool.
What
does your typical customer look like?
There’s actually no straightforward answer to
that because we have always made a point of engaging with hotel brands of all
shapes and sizes. The problem we are trying to solve is felt just as acutely by
family-run B&Bs as massive hotel chains. We want to make it incredibly easy
for any brand of hotel to reap the benefits of the software and hardware available
to them, without having to worry about how they connect with it all.
What
sets Impala apart from the rest?
I’d probably have to say ‘focus’. Our team
build hospitality PMS integrations and help hoteliers connect with third party
apps and services. That’s basically it. We haven’t spent the last two years
building a million different things and taking on a whole laundry list of
challenges, nor do we really plan on ever doing so. We identified a problem in
the PMS integration sector that we believe that, as infrastructure engineers,
we could deliver an effective, secure solution to. So we went for it and that
is what we’ll continue to do.
What
challenges/ common issues does your solution resolve for hoteliers?
At the risk of sounding a bit like a broken
record, our business is all about greater, more effective connectivity.
Hoteliers have been well aware of the benefits of third-party integration for
years, the problem has always been that integrations have previously been
expensive, complicated and time-consuming. Impala negates the need for manual
data transfer on the part of hotels and seeks to identify and eliminate any
friction points within the integration process. We want hoteliers to be able to
use any service that can make their lives easier through greater connectivity.
What
should hoteliers be focusing on for the next 12 months?
I’m a big believer in learning from your peers
and staying abreast of the up-and-comers in your chosen field, hotels and hotel
tech, more specifically, is no different. There are too many companies making
strides in this sector to name, but I guess my advice would be to check Hotel
Tech Report regularly and stay on top of the movers and shakers. It could end
up saving you a huge amount of time and money in the long run. I would also
definitely suggest updating and expanding their software use around their PMS.
Mind you, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Other
than Impala of course, What is the most exciting technology within the industry
at the moment?
One of the areas which we’re noticing a lot of
movement in right now is guest experience, which has seen a huge number of new
entrants in the last 12 months alone. Of course, it would be optimistic to
claim that all of them will definitely succeed, but I think the current surge
in interest will reveal much about how guests will be interacting with the
hotel in years to come.
Any
future tech trend predictions?
That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?
I think it’s really interesting to look at the rest of travel and to see where
hotel tech is maybe a step behind. For me, upselling will be the next niche
that really takes hold of the industry and we are already seeing the first
shoots of it. If you take airlines as an example, and you see how effective
Ryanair/easyjet are in their upselling strategies, just imagine that being
deployed in hotels across the world. I dread to think how much of my
hard-earned cash would be coming their way.
One
piece of advice for newcomers to the hospitality industry?
Honestly? Don’t build PMS integrations! It’s
damn hard work, but we love it.
Impala and Guestline announce connectivity partnership - Full article
