In this week’s episode of the Hotel Moment podcast, Casper Overbeek, Chief Product Officer at citizenM, joins Revinate CMO Karen Stephens, detailing a seemingly obvious approach to guest loyalty for hotels looking to capitalize on brand affinity — a subscription model. Successful subscription models exist outside of the hospitality industry and drive revenue for brands that customers are willing to pay to use, and Casper explains why this works for hotels too, especially at citizenM.
Casper also details the intersection between AI and the guest experience — urging hoteliers to use AI as a tool for personalization that caters to guest preferences, delivers faster, and fosters loyal guests.
Tune in and find out how citizenM creates loyal guests who subscribe and pay for guaranteed room availability and how the hotel supports that program with the right technology.
Meet your host
As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen Stephens is focused on driving long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. Her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships.
Karen is also the host of The Hotel Moment Podcast, where she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading Revinate’s global GTM teams. Her most recent transition was from Chief Revenue Officer, where she led the team in their highest booking quarter to date in Q4 2023.
Karen has more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution — including managing global accounts in travel and hospitality organizations such as Travelocity and lastminute.com
Connect with Karen
Transcript
Casper Overbeek – 00:00:00: That’s what we call the European personalization. Because if you talk about Europeans, very often when you talk about personalization — we can just do some study there. They want to be recognized. The American side is more about customized personalization. It’s about how can I make it mine?
Intro – 00:00:20: Welcome to the Hotel Moment podcast presented by Revinate, the Podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting-edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.
Karen Stephens – 00:00:51: Hello, and welcome to the Hotel Moment podcast. I am your host, Karen Stephens, the Chief Marketing Officer of Revinate. And today we are thrilled to have Casper Overbeek, Chief Product Officer at citizenM joining us. Casper is at the forefront of blending innovation with the guest experience, leading citizenM’s digital transformation, and driving the development of products that truly enhance the guest journey. Having worked for over a decade in customer experience and digital strategy, Casper’s insights into how technology can elevate hospitality are invaluable. So I have to say, this has been such a fun conversation for me. And I think you’ll really hear that when you listen to the episode. So what is blowing my mind about Casper and his approach to innovation is that he and the team at citizenM started with the customer at the center of the journey. And we all talk about that from a high level, but really, really listening. And when he goes into the level of feedback he gets from his customers, his members of the loyalty program, and how that gets implemented across the brand, I mean, it’s really going to blow your mind. So that’s the first thing that I want to call out. The second thing that I want to call out about the loyalty program itself is the tenets of what it means for the customer, which basically means if you want a room, we’re going to find a room for you, and you can rest easy that you’re absolutely going to get the best price with us, hands down, no question. So I think those two things are really powerful in terms of a loyalty program. I mean, it is a subscription membership, which is also very interesting. So it’s really something to think about in the back of your mind while you’re listening here to Casper. So without further ado, here is Casper Overbeek.
Casper, welcome to the Podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Casper Overbeek – 00:02:31: Hi, Karen. How are you?
Karen Stephens – 00:02:32: I am wonderful. You know, I’ve admired citizenM for a while. So before we jump into the questions here, I would love it if you could just give our audience an overview of the brand itself, how many hotels, the locations, just the high-level view of what citizenM is.
Casper Overbeek – 00:02:46: Yeah, appreciate it. So citizenM, it was founded, I think, 15 years ago. And the whole idea was to disrupt hotel industry by solving some key customer problems or traveler problems like, “I want to stay at a great place, but how can I make it affordable? How can I avoid long check-in lines? How can I avoid having to pay for Wi-Fi? How can I avoid not finding light shifts, switches in the hotel room?” That was the start of the journey. The idea is that we have hotels in AAA locations with rooms that are not too big, but stocked up with the right tech, and that you have your whole live and play in our living rooms, where we are fantastic — for myy staff — to help you. We call them ambassadors. We have Vitra furniture. We have art on the wall, and we are just a friendly go-to place. So we like to call that your best place home where you can take off your shoes, and there is still someone that welcomes you. So that’s what we want to give as an experience to each of our guests. We now have 38 hotels mostly in Europe and in the U.S., so we are in cities like, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich, Geneva, Copenhagen, and we have multiple in most cities. But we’re also in New York. in Boston, in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Austin. So, I would say the western cities, we are one by one conquering, and we love to do that. I started at citizenM, when we had 10 hotels, now 38. so it’s quite a ride.
Karen Stephens – 00:04:17: Wow, that’s fantastic. And as you mentioned, all really AAA locations. So you can go to these really fabulous cities and stay in a hotel that’s at a great price point, but also all the conveniences. I also note that you’re really into the big beds. And I think about when I go to a hotel room, I want a comfortable big bed, a nice shower, everything I need. I love that.
Casper Overbeek – 00:04:37: Yeah, and those were the starting points in the beginning, and we are still being recognized for that. So thank you for picking that up because one of our key USPs.
Karen Stephens – 00:04:45: Absolutely. Absolutely. So you’ve had a fascinating career. You know, I took a look at your LinkedIn and you mentioned you’ve been at citizenM for a while now. But before that, you worked in different industries and in customer experience and digital strategy. So what drew you to hospitality initially? And how do you think your experience kind of helped you along in your journey now that you’re in hospitality?
Casper Overbeek – 00:05:07: Yeah, well, I started my career as a typical corporate management trainee, one of the potentials at KLM — the airline — later on Air France-KLM. And while I was on my journey through the hierarchies, I found out that I actually developed a passion for anything that has to do with customer and digital. So my last role at KLM was being in charge of customer service and service recovery. And I found out, which was quite unusual in those days, that the way we treat our passengers when something goes wrong actually has a very high impact on their willingness to come back, and their comfort level, and their NPS. And basically, I developed a vision on that. We developed it and deployed it through social media, through lots of other ways of working that were quite new at that time. And that was a reason for Bol.com, which is the Amazon of the Netherlands, you can say, to pick me up. It was an online retailer. And there I had the opportunity to look at online retail, but also how you can bring customer mindset there. And I learned a lot about data and digital. And then when citizenM came, they said, “Well, Hey, listen, we’re looking for someone to lead a digital transformation, to set up a membership, and we think you are the right guy.” And I was saying, “Okay, let’s find out.” I’m intrigued because what I really loved about citizenM is that they took a white sheet of paper and they said, Well, what is the ideal customer journey that we would like settle. With choices do we make? And specifically, what don’t we do?” And that is something so obvious, but so new at that point, so that I was really immediately inspired by it. citizenM is truly a dream company. We really want to dream big, build great stuff. And that actually got me there. So that is now seven years ago. And I still enjoy it. Although the real life was a bit different from what I expected it to be. But I guess. A lot of folks will recognize that.
Karen Stephens – 00:07:02: Yeah, I think that’s always the way, isn’t it? Yeah. So now you’re the Chief Product Officer at citizenM. As Chief Product Officer, you’re at the helm of driving innovation. So as you mentioned, it started as an innovative company. Now you’re taking that forward. Can you tell us about the journey behind launching the paid subscription program for the guest loyalty? So that is really intriguing for us. So how has that program been received by the guests and what kind of impact has it had on loyalty and overall guest experience?
Casper Overbeek – 00:07:30: Yeah, happy to. Before I was the Chief Product, I was actually the Chief Customer Experience and the Chief Digital. I did all these kinds of roles. A lot was about connecting a successful front-end and guest experience to a back-end that actually avoided to get too much into legacy and complex problems. And the paid subscription is actually one of the best displays of that. Because at a certain point we said, “Hey, we recognize that our guests, they don’t want to go into these typical traditional loyalty programs. But they do want to be recognized for their loyalty and they want to have access to certain features or functionalities that we currently don’t offer.” And we started by listening. “Okay, like what is it then that you miss?” And there were two things mainly. First of all, there was the guaranteed availability because they said, “Well, I want to stay in London, and I can stay on Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday you’re a fool. Why can you not arrange it for me?” And then the other part was price security. They said, “Well, listen, we are willing to pay the price, but we don’t want to be fooled. We don’t want to discover later on that it’s cheaper somewhere else”. And we took those two, and that’s where we sort of built the first building blocks of our paid subscription, which was really emerging and on the rise during those days. But then when you are saying this is what we’d like our customers to experience, and then to organize that at the back end, that was then the second big challenge. And then we had to look into customer data, how to link it, how to be able to manage it, how to build an app, how to build a website to all be able to service it. And then when we were about to launch it, we were still in the middle of COVID. So we actually have very little opportunities to actually test this. That only came after.
Karen Stephens – 00:09:15: Right. Well, you hit on two really interesting things. So I’ve talked to a lot of people about loyalty programs, even subscription loyalty programs. This is the first time that I’ve heard something around guaranteed availability, guaranteed rate. So that’s something or guaranteed best — really, truly best available rate — rate parity, across all channels. So that I mean, I’m just sitting here, and I’m sure anybody listening on the podcast, we have a lot of professionals in revenue management distribution. Those are terms typically when you have a high OTA presence. Those are the things you got to give them. You got to give them parity and availability. I think it’s so interesting that you’ve kind of flipped that model, and you’re guaranteeing that to your most loyal guests. So first of all, kudos. Wow. That’s amazing. Second of all, how does that work with other distribution partners? I’m really curious about that. If you can share.
Casper Overbeek – 00:10:03: I think there’s three things to say about this. The first one is that we made it a paid subscription, and the paid subscription made that as we asked for a commitment, but you get instant access. And we are not the only ones with some kind of guaranteed or semi-guaranteed formula. But we say, “If you’re willing to pay, we will give it to you.” The second part has to do with the availability itself. That was one of the biggest discussions because we didn’t know what we would say yes to. So we said 48 hours in advance, we can still manage it with our reservations, demand, and revenue management gain, so to speak. And up till now, I think we had one day on an event in San Francisco that we had to say no, but for the rest, we always found a way. So we proved it worked, and we now have like 45,000 members that are very, very active. So that we solved. Then the rate parity, the revenue management, on the OTA. Yeah. That’s interesting, but we already left that a while before. So we already said to OTAs, we no longer guarantee, and we are sort of accepting the consequences of that. And actually the OTAs were not so concerned. Well, I cannot speak on their behalf, but because we had it in a closed environment and where you had like a paid setup, like real subscription model. Yeah. Basically it was a little bit less threatening for the game, the day play. So I think we’ve sort of found the sweet spot that has been stress-tested over time. And that is now something that definitely works for us.
Karen Stephens – 00:11:35: Wow. So that, I think, you hit on a lot there that I hope our listeners are really key in on. Fenced environment. So you can still work and play the game. Obviously, distribution is a complex game, and there’s a lot of different markets, a lot of different demand. But if you’re interacting with your guests directly, either that’s through a loyalty program or communicating with them through they’ve signed up for communications, newsletters, you know who they are, you’re marketing to them, then you’re able to maintain certain offers for your most loyal guests. I mean, is that a good way to encapsulate that?
Casper Overbeek – 00:12:05: We basically say 15% of the best rate that is out there. So that’s basically what we guarantee. We make it very simple and very visible in the booking flow that you can have a look. Ah, you can compare the rates. We also track, once you’re a member, we track how much you saved. You can see that on a monthly or yearly basis just for your own satisfaction. Usually that changes like, ah, yes. And then when the rest of the rates are concerned, yeah, that’s where we are still in line with some of the OTAs. So yeah, it’s working well.
Karen Stephens – 00:12:37: That’s wonderful. Publicly available rates. That’s great. So do your loyalty members have a portal or how do they look and see how much they’ve saved over time? How do you communicate that?
Casper Overbeek – 00:12:46: A good question. Well, in parallel of the subscription, we also launched our guest app. And we launched the guest app basically to enhance our customer experience. So you can control your entire customer journey from booking, check-in, check-out, but also doing the curtains and the lights in your room, the costing of your favorite stuff or watch TV. You can do everything with our app, the invoices. We also now have an SMB version of it. So that was there and we had both of them running in parallel. But what we now find out is that this top tier of loyal guests are also the ones that are using the app most. And that made us realize, “Okay, listen, the members are our top tier. So we need to have a managed section and all the things.” But what I think is one of the again, like a flip thinking, we started by the guest experience. Like what does the guest or the customer need? And then we build the app instead of like, “Hey, we have an app.” And most probably want to have people made their bookings through it because it’s like a commercial drive. Or we started by the guest experience. This for us is still a discovery, I’ll be completely honest. Because how do you know what kind of features or things our members would like to see? So we look at other apps that we know. We have a lot of webinars and contact with members. And then we just test and learn and we use A/B testing and all kinds of other methodologies to make that better.
Karen Stephens – 00:14:14: Wow, I think I love that starting from a guest experience lens. And I think that’s so important because all of us think about, “Okay, I want people to adopt this, or adopt that because it’s good for me commercially.” But you absolutely hit on it. If it’s not delivering value to the customer, they’re not going to use it.
Casper Overbeek – 00:14:32: And they tell us. And what I like about it, because we call it reverse thinking. The reverse thinking —- it’s also one of the key principles in citizenM, that we start by the guest experience, the desired guest experience, and then we take everything to make it happen. And it’s so obvious, but to make it in practice is not always easy because you need to make choices, you need to make sacrifices. But what I like about it is that if we look at customer engagement, we have it in multiple levels. We have some micro-feedback tools. So basically at every step of the journey, we ask, “How do you like it? Give us a thumbs up. Give us a thumbs down.” They do it a lot. We are actually through Slack. We are connected to that feedback directly. So I get like, I think about 100 messages a day of guests wanting to tell me something. Then we have a number of webinars and we try to organize at least 10 events a year to go into a dialogue to also use, bring back that feedback. “Hey, this is what we observe. What do you think about it?” And we get people wanting about ironing, about laundry services, about the FMB menu, but also about this many section or anything. And then the third option is that there is even a number of members that got my phone number, and then they set up a WhatsApp group and they say, “Hey, I want to stay in London, Victoria next week. Can you book it for me? Or can you help me? Or we could be there.” or, “Hey, we have that.” And that’s actually fantastic because if there’s anything new, I can text them and they respond instantly.
Karen Stephens – 00:16:01: That is incredible. That is a level of customer feedback. I don’t think I’ve ever — and I’ve been in the customer feedback game for a long time. So I think that is incredible. Great. So I really want to talk a little bit more about innovation, but also how, you know, operational efficiency. So I hear you think there’s a softer side to innovation. So what does that mean to you? And how do you ensure that technology isn’t just streamlining operations, but also enriching the guest experience? So I think, as you mentioned, you know, people can get excited about all these things, but then you need to take that feedback and actually operationalize it. So you can talk a little bit about that.
Casper Overbeek – 00:16:39: And when you say operationalize it, you mean how we do it in practice? Let’s say in the hotels, or how do we operationalize our innovation tracks? Just that I understand.
Karen Stephens – 00:16:49: Let’s first talk about the hotels, because I think for a lot of operators out there, it’s like, “Wow, this is great.” Like, okay, you have an app and you have all this feedback coming in. But then at some point, you have to roll that out across. So, yeah, let’s talk about that piece of it.
Casper Overbeek – 00:17:03: So we have a bottom line and a cost management. We also have a CFO. So I recognize that pressure in full. And what I think we developed or try to develop is also to make it logical also from a cost sense and also from an implementation sense. One of the best examples, I think, is our housekeeping policy. So we basically, in the corona period, we discovered, yeah, okay, a guest don’t want typically someone in their room, and they want to have control of their housekeeping. So we developed some tech features that would allow guests to sort of say, “I want my room cleaned on these days, and not on these days.” And then that eventually led to that guest to tell us, like, “Okay, but listen, we like that by default.” So it’s actually something that was a service to our guests. So to let us know, “Do you want your room cleaned or not?” It became actually a cost-efficiency driver. It became essentially like the door hangers with like the tons of detergent or anything that everybody recognizes. But what is the big difference is here? Is that we connected it to our housekeeping systems of my housekeeping partner. So now it’s not that the housekeeper discovers it the moment that she is already or he is already in front of the door. No, they can already cater on it. And we develop algorithms on how we can predict how many of our guests need actually in the service. And that is something that started. We want to stay away from the, let’s say, imposes? So we really say is the choice is at our guests. And this is one way we make it very easy for our guests to let us know what they want, but we can also operationalize it in the most efficient way. And these examples, they happen everywhere. We have it in F&B. We have it in the check-in. I could talk about our employee app that we now have that allow ambassadors, as we call our frontline staff, for very typical to record incidents. So something is happening. Like what a damage in a room or an elevator is broken. The time that it takes for someone to go there, and then go back to some kind of front desk to fill out all kinds of forms and everything. We took it away by the employee app that basically is. And we call it Mamba, that basically to allow to fill out incident management forms on the spot. But not only that, also triaging it. Like, is this a maintenance issue or is it actually a tech issue? Or is it actually just a guest that needs a little bit of extra comfort? So that’s how we are also able to bring in these kinds of smaller efficiencies. And we measure that by even by minutes per day that we win because of that.
Karen Stephens – 00:19:40: Wow. That’s fantastic. And I think that that really resonates. You know, it’s operational efficiency means that you can save on staffing costs. You can be more efficient with how you use your team. And also, I think it also lends to staff satisfaction. I imagine for your ambassadors, it’s easy for them to do their jobs and they feel like they have the right amount of people. Can you talk just a little bit about employee impact there? Or is this a fair statement?
Casper Overbeek – 00:20:03: Yeah, I find that one of my own key learnings this year, because if you look at any review or trip advice or anything, and you type in citizenM, and you ask, like, why do people like citizenM? Very often our frontline staff. The ambassadors come back. So it’s something that we need to cherish. And it’s really part of our what we call secret sauce on what makes citizenM a citizenM. And for a while we were focusing on it, and not so much in the hotels, but when we were defining innovation, we were looking a lot like, Okay, the customer experience is empowered by, an ambassador experience.” So we knew that, but we didn’t really know yet in practice what it means. And also we already had an employee app before, but we launched it with some features that we thought were nice for them. But we thought about it for more support of us, and we didn’t really go into it. Now we launched it really going into the hotels, trying to find out what drives them, and really to see if we can provide solutions for that. So to give an example, we have iPads in a room, to control your room. If you go into your room and your iPad is broken, you call the front desk and you say, “Hey, my iPad is broken” But very often, it’s just a reset of the iPad, that is needed. And then it’s certain, of restart the iPad. And for them, it was like, “Wow, this is so nice.” Another thing was another example is that if you look at our F&B menu, we have like casual food for folks that just want to have a bite. That’s how we also position it. So you look on your app or on our website to see what the menu is. And then you say, “Ha, I would like to have a pizza.” And then the ambassador has to say, “Oh, sorry, we are sold out.” So we gave the option to control the F&B menu. And for them, that gave a level of autonomy, like, okay, I’m in charge of what’s going on. And if I would, I’m sitting here at a desk, I would never imagine that these were the things that were bothering them most. But by actually listening to them, we find out these funny, fun stuff. And then we also see it back in all the surveys that we do on employee digital engagement, for instance.
Karen Stephens – 00:22:21: Yeah, I think basically what you’re talking about is sitting on one of my favorite things, which is technology and innovation exists to make our lives easier. And you’re allowing your ambassadors to spend more time in front of guests doing what they love to do, why they took the job instead of running up and resetting an iPad or telling somebody, bumming somebody out because we’re out of pizza. They can just remove it from the menu. So they spend more time doing what they love.
Casper Overbeek – 00:22:46: Yeah, Karen, you could work with us, because this is exactly the way we also look at digital. I think the days of like, Hey, look at this cool tech feature stuff”, Blah, blah, blah, oh, and that’s gone. It’s so quickly, everything is hygiene. But if we can discover what is truly moving, and making lives of either our guests, or our members, or our employees better, and take that as a starting point, and then draft whatever roadmap we have to make it happen, then we are much closer to success. And then if we even on top of that, find a way to have like continuous feedback loop to iterate on it and not to be afraid to make a mistake here and there, because we do that a lot. I mean, yeah, you try out and sometimes it doesn’t work or yeah, it works for us at least.
Karen Stephens – 00:23:29: That’s fantastic. Okay, I have one last question for you. So looking to the future, how do you see the intersection of digital innovation and personalization continuing to evolve in hospitality?
Casper Overbeek – 00:23:41: I would like to know that as well. Yeah, automatically you think AI. What I observe, I would say,. I think that the need for personalization is, it becomes bigger and bigger. And I think hospitality is only touching the surface of it. If you come to your favorite place, very often you’re recognized, let’s say, the fifth or the sixth or the tenth time that you’re coming there. But not if you’ve already been at somewhere in another chain or the same chain in another branch. So I think that that kind of personalization, when it comes to recognition, we can really take the next step. So for us, for instance, I was talking about the employee app. If a member comes into the hotel, we are able to identify, let’s say, through Wi-Fi ID. Well, I won’t go into details there. And then the ambassador gets a small buzz on the employee app, like, “Hey, a member is coming in.” And then you don’t need to script. We don’t want to script, but just be aware, someone coming in. And that can already be a first step on it. And if we are taking a number of steps throughout the customer journey, we believe that we can take the next step in personalization. That’s what we call the European personalization. Because if you talk about Europeans, very often when you talk about personalization, we can just do some study there. They want to be recognized. The American side is more about customized personalization. It’s about how can I make it mine? It’s not for nothing that Starbucks invented the whole, like, I don’t know how many flavors. And then that’s what you like. And so in the US, it’s much more about, can I select my room number? Can I already pre-assign, a certain services? Can I make sure that when I order F&B or order a beverage or food that I have it exactly the way I like it? And that’s where, can I organize that I’m being picked up at the airport? That’s what we’re looking at. So that kind of personalization we are bringing in. And then you might ask, like, what is the role of AI in that? What we’re looking into is, like, how can we learn faster? So the algorithms that sort of trigger this kind of behavior that we can iterate on it. Because then we can sort of make sure that it all goes to the right systems to deploy it. Because I started by saying that the backend was a challenge at the start when I was starting at CitizenM. I think we got a lot of it solved. But if we really want to deploy AI to help us there, that’s first definitely the next step.
Karen Stephens – 00:26:06: Okay, wow, that is absolutely fascinating. And I love the distinction of American personalization, which is customization versus European, which is more recognition, which really resonates with me. It’s like, just say welcome back, but don’t get too much in my program. Which I love.
Casper Overbeek – 00:26:24: Yeah, just a funny anecdote, because also we have on the ESG and on the sustainability. And so at the point we thought, Okay, most probably everybody wants to know how long they can take a shower.” So we thought, what if we would put an indicator like the shower turns red or something like, “Hey, now you’re too long under it.” And we did a survey, and we got 12,000 responses, but this was not a good idea because what do people think when I’m in different city, when I’m on holiday or after busy working day, I want to indulge myself a little bit in my room. So I don’t want to have some kind of rationalizing, like, “Hey, watch out, you’re standing too long in the shower.” So yeah, indeed, you’re right in this one as well.
Karen Stephens – 00:27:04: That’s great. Well, Casper, it has been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for being my guest. It’s been really great.
Casper Overbeek – 00:27:10: Yes, thank you very much. It was great to talk to you.
Outro – 00:27:17: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to revenate.com/hotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.
