I’m delighted and proud to share with our community that Optii has been selected by MCR to join their portfolio of companies. I wanted to reflect on some of the key elements that have brought us together and what makes this such an exciting milestone for our company.
As we continue to navigate the complexities of the pandemic, no hotel can afford to be complacent with their approach to either cleaning or operational accountability. As this industry survey from Hospitality Technology shows, keeping guests and staff safe now ranks as one of the highest priority technology investment areas for hotels across the US.
Smooth hotel operations and cleaning assurances give guests essential comfort to venture out of the safety of their homes, and confidence in the hotel's processes keep them coming back. It is also crucial that hotels have a clear understanding of who has been where to keep both staff and guests safe, as well as having the right systems in place to meet the needs of very unpredictable and surging guest numbers. Managers that have previously relied upon a pen and paper or have stretched other technologies to organize their staff have struggled.
And after a tumultuous 18 months, every penny spent counts. Hotel operations are the single biggest expense on the balance sheet so being able to improve productivity has a huge impact on controlling costs.
Optii has developed a suite of tools that hoteliers need to succeed in the market today and what makes us stand out from our competitors is our heritage. We live and breathe operations - it is our specialty and we are good at it. Our Founder, Soenke Weiss, was a former revenue manager who saw first-hand how demotivating, complex and inefficient an operations department can be. From the beginning, we have taken a people first approach, making sure it is the needs of the staff and the guests that are driving our product set. We apply revenue management principles to optimizing operations teams, and we have built 360 workflows to connect front and back of house to simplify operations.
Guest and reservation data holds the key to understanding what precisely will be required to maintain high standards on any given day. We are the market leader in applying AI to utilize this data in predicting variations in clean times to make our room attendant routes more precise and to continuously evolve our effectiveness. In these times, when labor is short and teams are running lean, never has there been a more important time to deploy people efficiently.
We are excited to bring our unique solution to the 140 hotels in the MCR portfolio. We will work closely with them to test new products and understand challenges that impact hotel owners and operators to fast-track our product development.
Optii will remain an independent company and continue our global expansion. From our beginnings in Asia, where we are the market leader for hotel operations technology, this acquisition will be a catalyst for our future growth around the world. As we significantly expand our teams, with the support of MCR, our ambition now is to accelerate our growth across the United States and Europe.
Being acquired by the fourth largest hotel owner-operator in the US speaks volumes for the shift in importance of hotel operations. And to match this shift in focus, operational technology is no longer the back office tool that was nice to have, it is now essential. Hotels that were hesitant to make changes or make further investment in the current climate are realizing that the right technology can quickly become one of their most valuable assets.
I’m so proud of our team and the brand and product we have created, without them this wouldn’t be possible, and I am excited to continue this journey with them and lead Optii to even greater success.
- Katherine Grass, CEO of Optii
