Hotel ÜJA CEO on Buying and Digitizing Boomer Hotels

So when you came into the business, what did the tech stack look like? What were your perceptions about technology and hotels coming from the outside?

Well, coming from the outside, I mean, the former owner, he didn't have a lot of tech.

He just had a local booking engine, I would say, and email.

Like lots of his bookings were done by a phone, by email.

People didn't really buy on his site because it was very easy to buy there.

His website really didn't look nice and he didn't do a good job in digital marketing.

So a lot came in from booking as well in OTA, right? If you don't have a good booking funnel yourself.

you're more dependent on OTA.

But for me coming in, to be honest, I thought the selection of software and the capabilities is amazing because we all have the same problem.

It's not that complex of a problem.

And if you compare it to other industries, I did something in health.

And it needed to be super specific to the customer journey and to each test you could take.

And it was preventative health.

So we had to build.

I helped a lot of customers design, like buy or build.

What do you want to do yourself? And here, of course, we didn't have the money to build.

With 11 rooms, you don't want to build, but you

don't have to, in my opinion.

There are so many great solutions because we all have the same kind of problems.

The customer wants to make a booking.

Then you want to contact the customer and inform them.

You want to guide them through the journey.

Maybe you want to do some upsell.

You need to do the check-in.

You need to maybe provide a digital key or a physical one.