Re-imagining the hospitality sector with tech

You long for a tall glass of refreshing lemonade, and you get on the phone, look for room service, and place your order. Yes, it is a five- or even seven-star hotel, but you still have to go through the motions.

But Harshvardhan Amle, a hotel management graduate, thought of the what-ifs. What if one could book a room and do away with the time-consuming and tedious check-in task? What if it was done via his phone, before arriving at the property? What if you reach the hotel and get straight to your room with a digital key sent to you by the hotel the minute you arrive? What if his phone could have room service, housekeeping, and travel desk of that hotel for him to use with a click on his handset?

These what-ifs stayed in his mind while he worked as a partner with RMS Cloud Services, an Australian company that provided Property Management Services to hotels.

Says Harsh, “Basically, it was like a reservation management system that recorded arrivals and departures and made bills for the guests. It was a SaaS product for this industry. I worked hard to get them a lot of customers in India, Sri Lanka, Dubai and Singapore.” This was in 2008.

In his 12 years with RMS, he saw the issues that affected the hospitality industry.

“I knew what the pain points in this industry were. I thought a lot about what if we could have some tool to deliver a better system that would work for the guest and the hotel as well?”

In 2020, after spending a large part of his work years with RMS, Harsh became rather obsessed with his what-ifs.

He says, “The hospitality industry, unlike, say, the financial sector, is quite slow in adopting new technologies. So, if the BFSI sector has adapted to AI and other such data tools in the hotel industry, it was largely restricted to Property Management Systems. I quit RMS and decided to dedicate my time and energies to building a tech tool that would work on both sides of the hotel business – the guest as well as the company.”

But Harsh was not a tech person. He had a degree in hotel management. However, he knew what was needed and knew that it was technology that could help develop a solution.

“In those days, I used to go to a lot of tech events for startups in and around Pune. At these events, I got an idea of all that tech could do to help me build a solution to my ‘what-ifs’.”

At one such event in Pune, Harsh met Harsh Mathur, who was at the time working with L&T Infotech.

“Harsh and I immediately hit it off. I told him about my idea, and he said that as a coding expert, he could develop whatever I envisage it to be.” They both joined up and Harsh registered his company, Upswing Cognitive Hospitality Solutions, as a partnership firm that year.

The making of the solution

They began by building the core product architecture, focusing on integrating with existing Property Management Systems (PMS) like RMS, a widely used software in major hotel chains.

“This software worked on the hotel side, helping them manage operations. I wanted our solution to work on both sides of the coin of hospitality, the property as well as the guest.”

Both of them worked to build a tool that would do both.

And while they were ready with an initial version, they had to use it in the real world to see how it worked. But unfortunately, Covid struck, and instead of whining about this pandemic, Harsh looked for a solution in Dubai.

“I asked RMS to help me. They connected us to a vacation rental centre in Dubai. It was not a typical hotel with a lobby, but we offered them the use of our data platform – Aura, which studied the details of customers and could provide several insights such as how many cancellations happened, the different causes, what the popular vacation stays and so on. They loved these insights. Though we offered to them for free we got a better understanding of our app. We needed to work on making it integrate with all the different software that different hotels used. These were about 14 to 15. We went back to our development and built it with the capability of integrating with all the different software that hotels used. We were now ready to launch it in the market.”

The real test

The marketplace can be brutal or useful, Harsh was aware of that. Using his network, he approached a five-star hotel with 400 rooms in Dubai.

“Theoretically, they agreed but had some reservations. So I told them, let’s try this with just one room. For two months, we gave them a free trial with that one room. They were confident that this app would not just reduce the workload of their employees but also be invaluable to the guests as well as get great insights from our data tool, Aura. In February of 2022, we had our first paying customer.”

What Upswing does

Harsh explains how his app works. “When a guest books a room at the hotel, he gets an email confirming the room and the dates for which it is booked. In that email, he receives our Guest Application App that he has to download onto his phone. Besides age and gender, he fills in details like his age, whether he is travelling for business or leisure. Then it asks for his food preferences if he’s travelling solo or with family and any other miscellaneous preferences such as a higher room, smoking, etc. After he gets his reservation confirmation, he submits his ID proof and signs the declaration that all hotels need. Now the pre-check-in is done.

“Once the guest reaches the hotel, the check-in button will get activated on the app. This we know as his arrival time has been noted, and we have back-end integration with geo-tagging. The front desk will hand him the key or a code if it’s a digital key. The guest does not have to wait at all.”

The app is connected to the room service as well as housekeeping, and travel desk. If a guest needs to order food or a beverage, he has to simply order it from his phone. He can book a taxi, get extra towels or whatever he needs here. All of it is integrated with the hotel’s services.

What does this do for the hotel?

Harsh says, “It frees the reception desk from check-in procedures that are time-consuming and tedious. The staff can use this to connect with the guests and build rapport instead of checking ID, payments, etc. The same process happens for check-out. Billing and other details are all done seamlessly.”

But there’s more than just this. Harsh has included Aura, which collects data and provides invaluable insights to the hotel. “Hotels don’t just run on rooms, often, it’s their other add-ons that increase their revenue. So Aura can tell them whether it’s the pub or the spa that’s selling more. Besides that, Aura can also inform the hotel that Guest A generally travels in the summer months and in winter checks in with his family. With such insights, hotels can tailor their offerings to suit a particular guest’s needs.”

The future:

Both Amle and Mathur put in ₹35 lakh of their own money initially. Later, they raised ₹1 Cr from friends and family. In 2021, they raised a seed round of USD 150,000 via foreign direct investment (FDI) from Framed Venture Capital, an Australian private investment company.

Currently, they are not looking to raise funds. “We are already profitable. We are EBITDA positive, and hence, we don’t need to raise any funds. However, whatever funds we have, will be deployed in building the next-gen AI or agent-powered solutions for hospitality. This is one area where we are deploying the maximum of our capital. So I would say about 70% of our capital will be deployed in making AI-powered or agent-driven solutions for hospitality. Finally, Harsh’s what-ifs have now become a happy reality.