← Experts of Experience
Experts of Experience
The World’s Most Customer-Obsessed Hotel Brand
01:03:54
How do you scale a hospitality brand without losing the human touch?
Loading summary
Transcript100 lines
- [00:00]
Casper Overbeck
When I started SITS&M, we had 10 hotels and now we are 37, 38.
- [00:05]
Lazy Peace
Your title is CDO, CPO and CXO. Right? Did I miss anything? Is there anything else to add to that?
- [00:13]
Casper Overbeck
If you book 48 hours before you arrive and you remember, we will always have a room for you, we have been able to live up to that promise.
- [00:22]
Lazy Peace
Literally taking technology to allow humans to connect in a more human way, those.
- [00:27]
Casper Overbeck
Are the moments of magic. You are trying to solve issues and trying to reduce complexity, but by solving them, you're actually adding more complexity. Using digital solutions to provide customer convenience and provide consistency in the customer journey. That is something that is there from the start.
- [00:45]
Lazy Peace
You want to serve humanity with technology, not replace it.
- [00:49]
Casper Overbeck
If you arrive in a hotel and someone is there really welcoming you, and that person only has one KPI, which is guest satisfaction. And that is the case in SITS and M. You really feel it from the moment you walk in.
- [01:01]
Lazy Peace
Oh, wow. That's amazing.
- [01:02]
Casper Overbeck
We actually answer this question and the success rate is fantastic. It's 95% and we have like a 4.5 out of 5 customer appreciation score. I was always skeptical because I thought, yeah, I think that AI can solve a lot, but can they also be empathetic? Can the tone of the voice be right? And now I find out that it actually is possible.
- [01:26]
Lazy Peace
Welcome back to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lazy Peace. I've got Rose here with me as well. And we just got off the mic with Casper Overbeck, who is the CxO, CPO and CDO of Citizen M Hotels, which was just acquired by Marriott. That's a mouthful. Those titles are insane. I don't think I've ever seen someone with so many.
- [01:49]
Rose
Chief XYZ officer is every person in the C suite.
- [01:53]
Lazy Peace
Yeah, like, there's actually no one else. It's just Casper running the whole company. Citizen M is awesome. They're a hotel brand that now has more than 30 locations around the world. They started 15 years ago, which is pretty young for a hotel brand when Casper's been there for the last seven, eight years now in this role, I mean, in these series of roles, I guess this convo was so much fun. I had a great time with him talking about hotels. I love diving deep with hospitality folks because I feel like there's so much to learn about the customer experience and customer journey from these people.
- [02:27]
Rose
I specifically love getting to talk to people in hospitality because it is, in my opinion, one of those industries you can't get away with. Not constantly thinking about your customer and their experience. Like, from walking from the parking lot into your. Into the lobby, going up to their hotel room, ordering room service. Every single step of the way feels so personal and at times, like, luxurious. They're. They're spending a certain amount of money. Maybe they're in town because they're traveling for a wedding or a funeral or even a work event. Like, there's just heightened emotion all the way around. And in a hospitality experience, so it. You can't get away with not being customer obsessed.
- [03:07]
Lazy Peace
Well, and I think that's super interesting point and something that, like, is a challenge that I find very intriguing is how do you serve this customer, this person that's traveling to you, that's probably could have any range of experience going on for them right now. Like, they could be super excited when they enter because they're on a family vacation. They could be really sad because they don't want to be where they are because something bad has happened. They could be maybe really serious or just annoyed because they're on a work trip again. And they're different.
- [03:36]
Rose
Their family, they were on a flight that was terrible. The airline that they just experienced sucked, which would be.
- [03:41]
Lazy Peace
No, the Uber ride was gross and dirty on the way there. Like, who knows how they're ending up here. And yeah, what I find fascinating, that Casper sort of mentioned a few times in this interview is that for them, the stay, this, you know, sleeping overnight there is the product. So the experience is the product. Whereas, like, we'll talk to some other companies that actually have tangible products, right? Like I make this thing or I offer insurance or whatever, but, like, in this case, the actual product is the experience. So how do you create a wonderful one and a really amazing one, especially when there are thousands of different options when it comes to hotel stays?
- [04:19]
Rose
I think the loyalty program that he mentioned, I'm not going to say what it is because I just really urge the listener to tune into the full episode, because when he talk, I've never heard about a loyalty program design the way they've designed it. And that alone makes me so badly want to become, like a recurring member with them. He goes in deep on how they're designing their digital experience to be seamless and how they're not overcorrecting to where it's purely digital. And you're not getting to interact with any humans. You're not getting to learn the personalities of an ambassador that works at that hotel.
- [04:55]
Lazy Peace
And speaking of digital, I mean, there's just a lot of different things that citizen M has started to embrace that. Casper has actually helped spearhead that. You guys will be surprised to hear. I mean, I think we probably also all had the experience too of going into a hotel lobby and like the person behind the desk has like a line of five people waiting to check in and all you need is your key. It would be super easy to like use tech to check in, use your phone to tap the key card onto the room that you need to go to. And you don't even need to deal with that line. I think like what Citizen M does beautifully is they talk a lot about this, like first and interaction you have as soon as you walk into the hotel to make it so that you feel seen that you know that they're like recognizing that you're here and whether or not you want to engage with them is sort of up to you and up to the atmosphere and up to the emotion that you're presenting. But at least you know that someone's there, they see you and they're willing to engage with you if you desire.
- [05:48]
Rose
And before we let you guys get to this interview, please hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, head to Lacy's LinkedIn and spam her comments. Let her know exactly what you want to hear, what questions you want us to ask. It's such a privilege to be able to sit down with these people every day. We get to talk about such high level visionary concepts, but then we also get into the weeds and we get this really great practical advice. So be sure to let us know what you want to hear about.
- [06:15]
Lazy Peace
I actually have a prompt for our listeners. I would love for you in the comments below or if you're listening on Apple and you can't comment because Apple Podcasts isn't up to date on the latest technology yet. Drop it on my LinkedIn. But I would love for the listeners to share the best experience they've had at a hotel. What was the brand, where were you traveling and what was the experience? Let me know. And with that, here's Casper Overbeck, CXO, CDO and CPO of CitizenM. Casper, welcome to the podcast.
- [06:42]
Casper Overbeck
Hi lazy, how are you?
- [06:44]
Lazy Peace
I'm well, how are you doing?
- [06:46]
Casper Overbeck
It's good. Exciting times.
- [06:47]
Lazy Peace
Where are you calling in from today? Let the audience know.
- [06:49]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah, we are in Amsterdam, so sits and M is a Dutch based company founded in amsterdam I think 15 years ago about so ever since we're there but we're now expanding everywhere across Europe and the US.
- [07:04]
Lazy Peace
Well, Casper, how long have you been at CitizenM? I would love to hear a little bit about your background there.
- [07:09]
Casper Overbeck
I'm seven and a half years at CitizenM. I started my career at KLM, the airlines very France KLM. We're partnering with Delta and I worked there for 40 years, did a lot of different stuff, really loved traveling, but also discovered that I have a passion for customer passion for digital. I was picked up by online retail company in the Netherlands, let's say the small tiny Amazon. And there I learned more about customer service and about data and about how digital can even increase the life and convenience of customers. And then CITs and then passed by and they invited me to set up a membership program to build on the digital strategy to roll it out. Yeah. And it's been a discovery. When I started SITS&M, we had 10 hotels and now we are 37, 38. So next to all the cool stuff, managing growth on itself has been a great challenge.
- [08:09]
Lazy Peace
Yeah. Oh wow, that's amazing. So I pointed this out last time we chatted and I think it's just super impressive. So I want to share it with the audience. Your title is cdo, CPO and cxo. Right. Did I miss anything? Is there anything else to add to that?
- [08:24]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah. When I started I was appointed being a membership director but I didn't even know myself because we didn't agree on job titles. I just said, yeah, we need you to do stuff. And I said okay, that's fine, I will come and join. One of the little mistakes that I made because sometimes it's good to be a bit more specific. So you could add membership as well to the job title.
- [08:46]
Lazy Peace
Oh wow. So what does your day to day look like with all of that? It just sounds like a lot. It sounds like you don't sleep. So how do you actually navigate all of that?
- [08:53]
Casper Overbeck
It's an interesting question. So I was looking after all customer interest and customer experience. And customer experience basically means like what does the customer journey look like from moment of getting traction and getting attention from our target audience to making them become a customer booking process. Yeah. And then when they arrive at the hotel and all the way when they come, come home and when there are service needs. And what we saw is that the integrality and the consistency of having one very clear customer journey, a very clear customer promise, a very consistent delivery on that promise. Yeah. That requires a day to day attention. So that's what I was basically doing. But then we were. Yeah, as I said, we were growing and growing and at certain point you see that you build up legacy in your your tech and your digital setup. And then at certain point you are trying to solve issues by and trying to reduce complexity, but by solving them you're actually adding more complexity. And that became really one of our big challenges. And that's when we said, well, hey, let's take a different approach to this. And that's why we set up the product organization that we know today. I think it's comparable to a lot of software companies. But since tech is such an important part of what we're doing, we said, okay, we are going to all the digital solutions and all products that we have, we're going to bundle them. We recognize basically the building the hotel domains, then we recognize the commercial or business domain and we recognize the operational domain. So making the hotel journey happen. And we're going to steer the digital product development. So what are the innovations that we see? Where do we see how we can get value? What does the data tell us? And then we develop it and we bring it into practice. So we also steer on performance. And I actually do that. I'm in some sort of enabler for these three main domains that I just mentioned. For them to be successful, it takes a full agenda to do it. I have a lovely team with lots of talents and all of them, they are flexible, they are thinking in solutions, they know how to deal with customer thinking, I would say. But they also know their fair digital share well.
- [11:21]
Lazy Peace
And what I think is so interesting about combining those three categories together is like a lot of companies really silo all this information. So you get your CX over here, CDO over here, CPO over here. And so it really creates this incohesive experience for the customer because you guys are all working on different things, three different visions, three different ideas of what needs to be executed. It's actually love that all this is kind of rolled up to you.
- [11:41]
Casper Overbeck
Well, let's. First of all, we are, although we have grown, we're still relatively small companies. So it is not unlogical that people have carry multiple hats. But what you're saying is exactly true. It took us a while before we found out that actually yeah, we are a physical. What we sell is a physical thing. We sell a room of sleep and then we try to do a lot of things to make that as convenient, as personalized, as human as possible. But it's very, very tempting to when you say, well hey, I am the product owner of some kind of digital tool that that becomes then sudd world and you're only focusing on optimizing that and you're forgetting about the position that it holds in the customer journey and bringing that together. And I'm not. And then I'm not even talking about the front end, like what does a user journey look like, but also like a back end. Like what, supporting data systems or reservations or anything do you need? Yeah, that is, that is the difficult part. And that actually is why I believe that my job really works. Especially also in this period where of course, we are now going to. Yeah, how should I say? Find a new route proof.
- [12:51]
Lazy Peace
Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, let's talk a little bit more about the acquisition. So tell me, what was it like two, no, three weeks ago that Marriott acquired you guys? What was the timeline?
- [13:00]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah, yeah, well, the truth is we were already talking for quite a while. At certain point we discovered that being a totally independent hotel company where we sort of combined ownership of the real estate, ownership of the brand and ownership of the hotel operation itself, that's a very unusual combination which we could hold for quite the size that we had. But at certain point you become too big and then at certain point if you want to continue growing, basically it becomes too expensive because acquiring yet another piece of land and build another hotel and then reach an audience to fill it. Yeah, that was basically too hard to do on our own. And then when we were sort of investigating what our options, Marriott came by and now suddenly you're talking about the biggest hotel group in the world. They are extremely successful. And also in all the work that we've done together so far, surprisingly enough, it is a real culture fit. And that made it quite easy from the start to say, okay, how are we going to do it? And what we believe, where the value sits for us is, first of all, we can be exposed to their bonvoy system of more than 200 million members, where today we did not know how to get access to it. Second of all, we believe that it allows for a new path of growth because now suddenly you can sort of go out to the market and say, hey, what is the next HNM going to be? And the third part, and that is that we are super strong about, is that they have indicated that they really want to do everything to preserve what makes our brand unique. And they have like a whole categorization, they have 30 plus brands and we're really talking about how do, how does it fit, where does it belong? And yeah, we are still in our honeymoon period, but there is so much enthusiasm on making that work. So yes, we are very excited.
- [15:11]
Lazy Peace
Well, congratulations. That's amazing. I'm Curious too from like Marriott's perspective. You've talked a little bit now about what makes CitizenM unique, but what do you think drew them in? What made you guys so attractive that they were like, yes, we definitely want to work with you.
- [15:24]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah, well, I think in the end it's up to Marriott to answer that question. But what we noticed is that they're building a portfolio of brands in which they really want to have a solution offering for any type of travel or audience. And yeah, they have like what they call select brands. And select brands are brands that don't offer a full, full service. So no room service or something like that or the restaurants or whatever. And then within that scope we are being positioned on the higher end and they had a gap to fill there. So that is one from a brand point of view. Then when we look from. If you look inside that brand. Yeah, the combination of locations which are always triple A combined with a very strong and distinct design. I always say whenever you walk, wherever in the world you walk into a Citizen M, you know that you're in a Citizen M. And that's very strong because it's still also very local. You also get a feeling, hey, I am on Times Square, I feel the vibes or I am in shortage right next in the hip and happening of London or whatever. So that combination is quite unique. And then of course the digital savviness that we. That's also very interesting. And I must honestly say while we are working with them and you also have another look at yourself like, okay, how good are you? Yeah, and actually there's a lot to be proud of. So I think that, that those three components are part of their consideration. And then if you look at our target audience, because we're very specific about that as well, we focus on the frequent travelers, the ones that have a taste of luxury, but it needs to be affordable. We call it affordable luxury. And people that are usually from the US and Europe and with an entrepreneurial mindset. Yeah, that really fits in also like okay, the market that they want to address.
- [17:23]
Lazy Peace
I'm curious about your guys loyalty program because you have. Citizen M has put together a loyalty program that is pretty well established and loved. Can you tell a little like take us back a little bit to the beginning of that loyalty program. What it is so the audience can hear and how it is, how it works. But I also would like to talk about how you're carrying that through moving forward. Especially with this Marriott acquisition.
- [17:44]
Casper Overbeck
The whole idea of a paid subscription is, was one of the Reasons why I was hired. So that was in, what is it, 2018, 2019. And I was working on making it happen. I was setting it all up. I was getting in all kinds of traps, all kinds of things. And we found out that the customer data was not working. And we found a lot of hurdles and we got them all solved. And then it was Covid. And what we did, we actually started the first subscription pilot in the middle of COVID which was. Could consider quite stupid, but it gave us a lot of learnings. And we offered a very easy, affordable way of spending a month at one of our hotels. And it worked. We had some corporate subscriptions, like we talked to some companies, hey, are you interested? But this was all just playground. Then in 2022, we launched it officially. And basically what we said, we listened to the customer needs that we, yeah, we identified. And they were actually quite simple. They said, we want to have price security and we want to have availability security. So price security is, yeah, I know that a hotel room costs what it costs, but I don't want to find out later that it's cheaper somewhere else. So that we then when we said this is the cheapest, cheapest price that you can get and we take 15% off and that is our promise. So that was one. And then the second part was that this guaranteed availability, which of course is a very hard promise to make. But we said, well, if you book 48 hours before you arrive and you remember we will always have a room for you, even if there's a big sports event or anything, we will make sure we have it. And, and up to today we have been able to live up to that promise. And then next to those two key components, we also added a number of perks that we knew that frequent travelers really, like for instance, late checkout, some F and B options, that you can rent a meeting room with a discount. So this is how we built up that proposition in 22 and basically we started running with it. We had 10k members the first year and then we had, I think 25 the next year. And last year we are now at 50. So apparently this appetite was there. And I think what is the major difference with traditional loyalty programs is that you get it instantly. You don't need to stay with us, I don't know how many times or whatever. You just get it in exchange of a fee. And in that sense it made it very logical and very easy to explain. And I think those are the components of the success that we are rolling out all the way up Till today, what I see is now at the major things that the major next things that are coming is not so much about more transactional stuff. It's actually more about engagement, about community. People want to be part of something. People want to know who else is a member when they arrive at the hotel. People want to be recognized in a better way. So those are the things that we're working on today. And then it actually the moment of getting connected to Marriott is a very. Yeah, we did. It was not by choice, but it's a very logical one because this is also exactly what the Bonvoy program aims to do. So yeah, I cannot go into details yet about what it's going to look like because we are actually figuring it out. But we have quite a clear idea of how we're going to do it. But the idea is that the My Citizen plus program will continue to exist also in the new setup with Marriott.
- [21:24]
Lazy Peace
That's amazing. So as you guys rolled out this loyalty program, you did it during COVID which is crazy. Like honestly, I think that's wild that hospitality, tourism, everything is down during that time and you're testing out this new idea that's really new for the market in general. What were some lessons that you guys learned during that process and maybe even after Covid passed and you guys are rolling this out more officially that maybe other people who are thinking about starting a loyalty program could learn from you?
- [21:50]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah, I think it was pretty crazy to do it then it also really thanks to our shareholders. The shareholders said, well guys, basically you're almost bankrupt or you are bankrupt, but we keep you alive because we believe in the brand and the concept. But then they said we keep you alive provided that you continue developing and innovating on customer digital. So it was really thanks to their support that we could take those steps. What we learned is actually was actually I think you can read in every book, startup book dips to book start simple. We had a design, a vision that had like was all encompassing. It was so big and we wanted to co work and we wanted to build a community. We wanted to be this one membership for everything. We learned a lot from the Amazon model. Like okay, what is the first thing you want to solve? Like free shipping. What is our free shipping? And we found out that our free shipping was what I said, the price, security and the availability and that we found out already very, very early stage that that was the appetite and that we needed to focus that on that and was not only the reason, not only because of how you would bring it to market. But also because we found out that technically, and when I say technically, I'm not only talking about the tech, but also how you integrate it into your financial systems, what you do with payments, what you do with all kinds of allocation of the revenue to different hotels, different countries. So I say, yeah, okay. We cannot make it complicated at the start. Why it was such a lesson, why it was not something that we thought of before is because when, when you look at our brand, our brand is actually not so focused on this transactional piece. And we are not an e commerce company where you have a package brought to your door. No, we are, we are all about experience and we wanted to make you want to make something special. So it was very logical and very in our DNA to also when we were thinking about our subscription, that we wanted to make it special and vibrant and I don't know and social media influence and a of lot. But then yeah, that was all too difficult and too complicated to organize. So we just went back to the core. That's also one of the reasons why Marriott is also interested in it. Because we found out that core, how that works.
- [24:10]
Lazy Peace
Yeah. Oh, that's great. I love that start simple message because I think so many people do get overloaded, especially entrepreneurs. We get overloaded with this vision of we got the whiteboard with a million different places we want to go, a million different things we want to build. But what I do think is valuable about that brainstorming process is it does you kind of get to the crazy spot where you're like, oh, there's all these things we could do. We could be, you know, citizen M everywhere. No one needs a gym anymore, no one needs this anymore. Right. But it helps you get to this sort of like, okay, that's beyond what's maybe feasible right now. But this thing that's midway across our timeline of crazy is actually pretty feasible. So I think it helps people sort of picture like, oh, we don't need to start super small here, but we can find these like really cool, interesting things along this path as we start to continue to brainstorm. And then as you guys like expand and roll this out now, you've got all these ideas already ready for you. You've already got the vision somewhere sort of stored in the DNA of the company of what you want. But breaking it down to that bite sized pieces makes total sense.
- [25:07]
Casper Overbeck
Correct. And what is also nice, and I think that is also any entrepreneur or startup will recognize that you also bluff a little bit around so you get in touch with partners that are actually far too big for. For your play. She and because you have it like for instance airlines we have a partnership with KLM and we worked along really, really well. Yeah. And that it starts the first time you say yeah, we are starting this membership. Hey, are you interested? And they say hey yeah, yeah, that's quite cool. But come back when you're a grown up. But then those that seeds that are planted at the very, very beginning later on they do get value. So I must agree with you. Without having big dreams or without like also allowing yourself a little bit to explore things that you know that are not realistic at that stage, you also don get there. And what I want to say is that also this is actually our third proposition that we tested. So the first proposition was what we recalled the. The. The corporate subscription and that basically was that we allowed a corporate to. To have a bundle of memberships and you would get a few rooms for free and you would get some working spaces. And that was really in the middle. Middle of co. Co work co that no one was traveling. And they all said yeah, it's actually really nice concept but yeah, we don't travel today and said okay, we'll come back. And then we had this option where you could for one month you could have like a subscription. You would have a guaranteed $100 per room per night in days where there was all hotels were empty. Yeah, that was fine. But now I'm not sure if you have been in New York or in US City lately but it's like crazy prices. So. Yeah, but that was the next learning that there was actually a lot of people liked that concept but then they also started users use our rooms for hotel rooms for storage because actually $1 was cheaper than the storage. So that was also not the idea. So this is how we evolve. Yeah, it was just a lot of fun. And that is something about company culture is that if you can onboard something with the inspiration of totally new products and you get all these teams, whether it was tech, whether it was legal, whether it was marketing, whether it was a branding everyone and they all get engaged on this. This same goal. Yeah. That also creates energy what you can also use for your. Your mainstream work.
- [27:36]
Lazy Peace
Yeah, well and it also makes the. The team want to work together. Right. Like the passion, the light the fire that everyone has and we're like working towards this really cool new interesting thing. Yeah, I think that's awesome. Well Casper, I want to switch gears a little bit to digital. You mentioned whenever we were talking about Marriott, the Marriott acquisition that digital was something that was alluring to them, that you were sort of impressed with. Are you guys sort of compare to these other brands that you're now working alongside? Tell me a little bit about your guys's digital transformation. Has it been so integrated in Citizen M's culture, philosophy, plan for the future that they've, that you guys have been at the cutting edge of digital since day one? Or was this something that sort of started maybe when you came on seven.
- [28:15]
Casper Overbeck
Years ago using digital solutions to provide customer convenience and provide consistency in a customer journey. That is something that is there from the start, but the way it was deployed has changed and evolved a lot over time. Because when you're just one hotel, you make use of all kinds of suppliers and tools and things that. So we were basically depending on a lot of partners that would do good for us and we hope for the best. And most of them proved to be quite loyal and reliable. So that's how we could grow. But of course, when a certain point you reach a certain size, you need to have also capabilities in house and consistency and reliable backend becomes more and more important because you get more and more tools and solutions and functions all linked to it. And when I came actually we discovered that the backend that we were building everything on, actually the building became too high from the foundation. So the foundation was not good. I'm living in a three or four story apartment. If we would now build 10 floors on top of those, then at certain point the foundation could not hold it. And that's what we discovered. That's where I came on board. But also our CIO came on board and basically the CIO focused on remodeling and rebuilding a lot of the core functions. So I'm talking about the customer data platform, talking about reservation system. We talk about middleware that would allow us to connect all kinds of tools without having to connect them themselves, but connected to one middleware system. So that was the foundational part. And in the meantime, this allowed me first in the customer experience role and later in the product role to also, hey, what is then how do we then make sure that when you make a booking that is very. That the whole look and feel, but also the technical functionalities are the same, whether you book it on the app or whether you book it on the website, you are able that you're being recognized, that when it comes to, let's say your membership, that you are casper overbake everywhere and that they know who you are. And these are very basic functionalities. In, for instance, in E commerce or anything. But for hospitality, they're relatively new because very often the centralized systems, like a loyalty program like Bonvoy is totally disconnected from what happens actually in the hotels. And that's where we got into the hotels. We don't have check in desks, we don't have front desk employees, we have kiosks we now recently launched, we have iPads, big iPads. And that's the only way to check in. And if you cannot do it yourself, you need a little bit of help. Then we have an employee that can do that and that person is still has now a laptop, but we are now also deploying an employee app. We call it Mamba. And with that Mamba service, you can do everything on your device. So we really try to take the next step over and over again to make, to provide digital solutions that make your journey or arrival easier. However, that's not the only goal. Actually that's not the goal at all. The main thing that we in the end, it's about the guest journey and what we want. For instance, when you arrive in a hotel, we want you to have a warm welcome. We want an ambassador. So we call our frontline staff, we call them ambassadors, we want them to not be bothered by all kinds of administrative tasks, but really be able to welcome you and say, hey, Lacy, how great that you're here. And if you have a smile on your face and you're open for conversation, that you can have a little bit of chitty chat, but that if you had like a long day and you think, hey, all I want to is just run to my room and get a shower, that we also see that. So no scripts, nothing. And yeah, what you see is that in order to allow an ambassador to play that role, you actually need to do a lot of work at the back end. You need to take a lot of friction away. Everything that has to do with forms or everything that has to do with things that can break or anything, we want to really have that solved in the backend. So that's a little bit how seriously we take digital, but also how not seriously we take digital. And then the last part is that how this all then connects in the end, it's basically the commercial or the business journey that we have and the hotel journey, that's where it starts. So we want to first have the customer journey. Right. And then we see what the digital and tech stack is needed to support that. That is always the order, never the other way around.
- [33:05]
Lazy Peace
Yep, I love that. So you're taking these digital solutions and you're not just replacing all the people in the lobby. Right. It's not like I'm walking into a citizen M hotel. There's no one there, there's just an iPad. And I'm immediately like, oh, this is dead and cold and awful. Right. So you're. But what you're doing is you're taking these digital solutions and allowing your ambassadors, your team to be able to be more human. Right. So it's literally taking technology to allow humans to connect, connect in a more human way. And I love that. There was something you said last time we chatted and I might get this wrong, so correct me if I'm wrong. You said that you want to serve humanity with technology, not replace it. Is that correct?
- [33:44]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah, correct. Yeah. So we have in our customer ambition or customer strategy with three ambitions. The first one is we want to be number one in the human connection. If you look any TripAdvisor, booking.com, expedia review, you will always see the staff being mentioned as one of our key assets. So that is the number one thing. Then the second ambition is that we want to be among the leaders on convenience because, yeah, there's many other convenience and especially around hospitality, not only in hospital, but also outside. And then the third one is that we want to be leading in personalization, that we recognize who you are and as we allow you to customize your stay as you want it, but it is in that order. That human component is the most important part. And that also means that when we think about digital tools, we don't think about efficiency. Of course, we don't want to leave anything on the table and of course we want to take friction out, but never at the expense of this, this warm welcome, never. Because it is so decisive, so determining on how you start your stay. If you arrive in a hotel and someone is there really welcoming you, and that person only has one KPI, which is guest satisfaction. And that is the case in the synam, no other, nothing else. You really feel it from the moment you walk in. And that feeling, that is what we believe is a key part of what the CitizenM experience should be. And only after that. It's nice that when you go into your room and there is an iPad waiting for you and you can put your lights or you can cast your media or anything, we can also all do all that and it works. But that human component is the one thing that motivates us most.
- [35:35]
Lazy Peace
Just as an aside, thank you for solving that because I am so over going into a hotel and not being able to watch the show I want to watch on the tv. It's so frustrating.
- [35:45]
Casper Overbeck
Citizen was founded on the premise of customer frustrations. I think this is maybe a nice side story is that Ratan Chadha, he's our founder and he was owning a big fashion brand called Max. He sold it to Liz Claiborne at certain point and he had all these designers traveling the world. They were so frustrated because they had to pay for WI fi. They had to tip left, right, center. They had to stand in, in, in line for I don't know how long. They could not even get a bottle of water if they wanted. So there was all these things like why? Why? So that's where citinem tried to make it very simple. No waiting at check in, free WI fi, free movies. We had all the things at the start. But if you would look at the customer frustrations today, they're still there. I mean there's. Now what we see a lot is that people are forced to use digital solutions but then they don't work. That's like the worst nightmare. You know, you recognize it from, from anywhere. Yeah, yeah, but I need to, who do I call? Yeah, there's no one to call you just sort it out. So that's what, what we see. We also see that safety has become more and more important, especially also for, for anyone traveling alone, but especially also women. How do you accommod environment in which you really feel safe? But also how do you make sure that you, you don't get hacked or anything? So all these kind, there's new frustrations coming up and we try to solve them now and then one of them is the casting. Indeed watching your favorite TV series. At certain point we had some legal restrictions. Streaming Spotify. Yeah. And then people say yeah, but I want, I want Spotify. I say okay, okay, we solve it. We solve it. And that's also how we try to listen to do what customers and guests tell us. We have a lot of micro feedback loops to do that. We also have a survey. But what we also have is we call it mini feedback loops. Whenever you use or one of our digital devices we have a small pop up screen to say hey, tell us what you think. You can just give one star, five stars and we leave you alone if you don't want that. But we also allow you to do some comments. And all these comments and all these ratings, they come directly into the slack of lots of employees. So also my. All day long, literally all day long I get slack messages by people telling me and what is very interesting is that is there's also an immediate follow up. And this I've actually, I don't know many companies that do that. That if you would say how do the room controls work? And then you say I give a score, a one and why do you give one out of five that's a negative score. Why is that? Yeah, because the echo is not working. Okay. Now the question is, is the room control not working, is the device not working or is simply your echo broke? And that's what we follow up immediately because we want to know and not that we can solve it for that particular guest at that time, but this feedback is so serious to us. And then I sent to my maintenance guy, he said hey guys, is it correct that the air condition is broken or do we really need to look into whether the digital system is not functioning well?
- [38:51]
Lazy Peace
That means so much because I've left feedback countless times for companies and usually it's like from a good place like hey, genuinely loved this stay but this would make it even better, right?
- [39:00]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah.
- [39:00]
Lazy Peace
I don't ever see follow up or a note that says hey, we addressed that or thank you so much. Never ever do I get anything back from anyone that's like oh yeah, we heard your feedback and we're incorporating it or thank you at least for taking the time to leave a note. And it's actually turned me off to leaving feedback or filling out these forms because I'm like, ugh, they don't do anything with it anyway. Like they're not going to change anything. It's just going to go to some, some person's inbox never get addressed. But it sounds like here that's really cool that like now I know when I send this someone's going to get a slack notification and they're going to deal with it right away.
- [39:29]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah, yeah. The only thing is and, and I recognize like you say, we don't cannot tell you yet that we are doing something with it. I only can tell that we do something because the power of it. I know because I went to Portugal with, with the family. I think I missed some tea. I wanted to boil some water and I said well it was fantastic, stay. But I didn't get that and I thought okay, never mind. And then I think three or four months later I got a note in true email and this person said, well hey, just you complained about this and we just wanted to let you know that as a result of not only your complaint but many. Yeah we decided to as of next summer do it. And I thought, wow, taken so seriously. And that's why when we think about this kind of feedback, we also want to take that, that next step. So that's still on our backlog somewhere.
- [40:17]
Lazy Peace
I want to talk a little bit more about AI too. So we talked a lot about digital, which encompasses everything from, you know, putting an iPad in the lobby to the back end to the app to the website. But specifically I'm curious how you guys are using AI or planning to, since I know it's still kind of early with like AI agents. What sort of things are you guys looking at doing? Is it mostly internal, you know, releasing friction for employees or is there also like external AI agents that you're putting together for your guys customers? What's that look like for you?
- [40:46]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah, it's interesting that you note you mentioned agents because that is the agentic AI. I think that's quite new and quite specific, but it's definitely the sort of AI that we look into most. I think. Last year we decided that we dedicated quite a lot of time to incorporating AI in our strategy. Not so much like what are the use cases, but also like how do we incorporate it in the thinking? Because AI is basically everywhere. Then what we did, we indeed developed the use case that we're working on and we have quite a few now. So we have like a lot of finance AI, like doing credit card settlements, doing invoice settlements, doing what we say, swivel chair work. Like it needs to go from one system to another and then you need to do some checks. So that's one thing what we do. The other thing that we do is any question coming to an online credible agent like booking.com or Expedia that is forwarded to us. We used to have don't spam us reaction like a no reply message. Thank you for your email, but please go to to booking.com or Expedia. But now we actually answer these questions and the success rate is in. It's fantastic. It's like think 95% or something. And we have like a four and a half out of five customer appreciation score. And that made me think because I was always skeptical because I thought, yeah, I think that AI can solve a lot, but can they also be empathetic? Can the tone of the voice be right? And now I find out that it actually is possible. So that I see is only the beginning. So these are only two use cases. We use it also in our content creation or at least to help us with it although we do see there that tone of voice, brand distinction there. We believe that AI can sort of give suggestions, but we still rely on the teams. Right? Yeah. And then what we also see is in one of the opportunities is in incident management. So we have an incident management. Something is wrong in your room. Well, I was giving the example about the air conditioning that the not is working and is it or the TV that is not working, is it a problem of the TV or is it a problem of the connection or is it a problem of wires or anything? Well, what happens now is that if a customer or a guest, in this case a guest calls us, then basically the ambassador who picks up the phone needs to identify what is the problem here and he or she does her best. And then it lands on the desk of someone. But it can be that it lands on the desk of the maintenance guy where it actually is a tech issue. This maintenance guy needs to think, oh no, no, this is not mine. I put it back and then it puts it back on the queue. And then the ambassador looks at it again and then, oh, apparently I need to bring it to tech and then brings it to tech. That time is like could be two days, three days.
- [43:52]
Lazy Peace
Yeah.
- [43:52]
Casper Overbeck
Plus it requires a lot of manual handlings that are actually unnecessary because all we want is that it lands on the desk of the tech guy who can solve, solve it. And that triaging is now also something that we are doing with, with AI. So what you hear me say is that a lot of the backend work that we actually have no direct customer facing impact that we try a lot. This ota, this online travel agent, agents, that's the first step that we say, hey, it actually works. So now we might also do a few other experience experiments, but that is where we are. When we look at the Marriott integration, we will have more of these challenges because then you have talk about a whole new system landscape that needs to connect to a landscape and then all functionalities that will go or they will be different. And that's where we also expect AI to do a lot for us.
- [44:44]
Lazy Peace
How do you foresee customer expectations or customer behavior changing as AI starts to become more common for actual customer use? So I'm thinking about how I hope, hope that in the next year, two years, I'll have my own little personal AI assistant that goes and does all the booking for me for my trips, maybe orders my groceries, make sure there's like some food there for me at the hotel when I get there, whatever it is. Right. Like I'm, I'M hoping, dreaming of this, like, AI system that has all those little things for me so I don't have to think about it. How, how else do you think customer behavior is going to be changing? And like, how are you guys kind of preparing for that?
- [45:17]
Casper Overbeck
How important is it? Whether it's like a friend of yours or don't you mind so much what that system? Is it purely functional or do you also have an additional.
- [45:26]
Lazy Peace
So I love this, I love this question because I've talked to several people about this and I have friends that they love. Like the way GPT talks to them. Right? They love that. It's like, you know, their ego's being struck. Like, you're just so smart and brilliant for asking such a phenomenal question. I don't care about that. Personally, I don't think it matters. I just want it to be functional. I want it to be super effective at what it needs to do. I want to be able to put into it. I prefer these types of locations, these types of rooms. I have a toddler. I need my two dogs to be kenneled. Like, I want you to plant all of that. That and I just want it done. But I do think there is a market and there's a place for all these other people that I talk to that are maybe a little bit more empathetic or sensitive than I am, that actually want to feel like that's their friend. Right? Like they love it. They love the way GPT talks to them. They love going into Claude and having it like, remember something from six months ago that they said? So I personally don't like it, but I can see that there's people that do.
- [46:16]
Casper Overbeck
I could be a bit in your court, but I didn't figure it out yet. The answer to this question will actually determine whether this is going to be in the longer term, integral part of, of a citizen brand, or any brand that you want to connect to, or whether you consider it, hey, this is my personal assistant that just takes care of the stuff that is relevant for me and my journey. Well, in this case, let's say Citizen M, but can also be, I don't know, your favorite coffee place or your gym. It starts the moment you enter the gym. So. So whose territory is it? I think it's very personal, but I also. But I think it's not yet clear here. Let's assume that your brand experience starts the moment you talk to your. Your personal assistant. Well, then when, if that is a SYNAM assistant, the empathic part becomes relevant from the moment you connect with us because it's key part of our brand. Let's say half a year, a year ago, I was thinking, yeah, you first need to prove that you can provide the solution. But I'm convinced about that now. Now especially because of the agentic AI. So yes, that box has been ticked. Then the second part is, can you provide a customer journey like it? And this is where I believe the fact. And I've been talking about customer journey, like I think I've mentioned that word now for the 50th time. But the fact that we have such a strong focus on that backbone that we want it to be consistent everywhere at every step of the journey is actually a strength that will allow us to deploy personalization at every step of the journey. And why is that? It's because it's the front end. It's all the things you just described, but it's also the back end that allows us to very quickly iterate. And let's say you always go to London and we would like you to go to Paris. So we try to seduce you with an offer. Hey, you're always staying in London. Come to Paris next time. And then you don't respond to that offer. Offer. Well, probably you don't like Paris or you don't need to be there. Well, then how quickly can we adapt it and go back to our initial say, okay, but then we got your next best action for London. And then not only making an offer, but then also make sure that when you arrive at the hotel, you're being recognized or something like that. So I think that that AI savviness on really understanding customer needs, I think that's will allow. Yeah. That Citizen M is a good position to do it. And then the third item that is relevant is what I said at the beginning is the tone of voice and the empathy. And also here I believe we are at the doorstep of something that could be good enough to start.
- [48:59]
Lazy Peace
Yeah, yeah. I think I've heard that from a lot of brands that it's getting close enough. And when I think of Toy and a Voice, I think about. I love reading fantasy books and reading all kinds of different fiction books. And one thing that one of my favorite fantasy writers, Brandon Sanderson, has mentioned is that that every character you create should be able to be identified without any name next to it, just by how they talk or what they say. So I think about that with brands and I'm like, how do you create a tone of voice such that even if I don't see your logo Anywhere I know that's Citizen M. And like, how do you train your AI, essentially to help you create that brand voice and tone across the board? So I'm very interested in that and seeing how people can actually execute on it.
- [49:39]
Casper Overbeck
Does he have it right? Do you. If you then analyze the books of him, do you think that you can identify.
- [49:45]
Lazy Peace
He does a really good job? Yeah.
- [49:46]
Casper Overbeck
Okay. So if you know the character successful.
- [49:48]
Lazy Peace
Yeah, he's great. Yeah, he's great. Brilliant. If you like fantasy. Don't know if you do Casper, but I would recommend checking.
- [49:54]
Casper Overbeck
I like it. I like it. Yeah. And it's because fantasy books typically have a lot of characters. So then it's also convenient that.
- [50:02]
Lazy Peace
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. And you have to be really thoughtful. And it's usually like just the things that are not grammatically correct. So it's easier with fantasy, like with brands. Obviously you need to remain in a place where people can understand and read you, so you can't go for these like, weird grammatical things. But I do think, like with colors, logo themes, like, eventually we'll have. And we do have to appoint AI systems that can really just like you can hire some writers because you still need that human. I still feel like to have like a novel piece or have something created, you still need to have that human in the loop. But you can take their creativity and augment it with this AI that can help make sure that it really does reflect what a CitizenM's brand or whatever brand is trying to work on that.
- [50:39]
Casper Overbeck
I'm very curious how that will go. We are not there yet. So for me, it's also the three steps that I just explained. What I do know is that in the end it is a physical product that we offer. It is when we. When you arrive at hotel. And I keep on coming back on that arrival experience because for me it's so important. Basically, we also instruct or team or instruct. Actually not instruct. We say, guys, just make sure that they have a good time. And your autonomy and your empowerment is there to just make sure that you can really meet people's needs and that you can just. Or if you don't know that you check in and that you can then actually make it meaningful from the moment you arrive or when you order a coffee or that you put a smile on a face and make a casual joke or anything. That's also why we. We say we hire for attitude and we will teach you the skills. Because we believe baristas won't agree with me, but we believe that making a good coffee you can learn. But being a genuine, nice person person, it's something that is in you. So we also don't. If you want to wear earrings or have tattoo or anything, that's fine as long as you have the right attitude and the mind, right mindset. If you like fantasy books, absolutely no problem. We love it and we love it. If you are able to talk about it and there's every day there will be in the hotel someone that is also passionate about fantasy books and then you're going to have a great exchange. And the moments that that happens, those are the moments of magic. And I think that, that I love AI, I love to learn about it. But that piece, that is what is the most important part of making a stay.
- [52:15]
Lazy Peace
You will never be able to replace that. You can't convince me that you can replace that. I'm not going to go talk to a robot about fantasy books.
- [52:22]
Casper Overbeck
Exactly. No.
- [52:23]
Lazy Peace
So yeah, I get that. Well, Casper, what's next for Citizen M beyond AI and tech? You got this acquisition coming out or that has happened and it's obviously something you guys are actively integrating into to what you offer. What else is next? What do you want to like tease to our listeners who might become potential CitizenM customers?
- [52:40]
Casper Overbeck
We got a lot of feedback. Please protect the brand. So when we listen and when we see the reactions of anyone in the social media or anything, it's always about that. It's very interesting. It's not about. Yeah, it's also something. Hey cool, I can use my bonvoy points now or anything. So that's also nice. But the brand, brand or fans, they want it and yeah, it's hard to predict whatever is going to happen exactly. But I just want to assure that this is the highest on the agenda to preserve and that there is a real strong awareness among. Yeah, certainly the Citizen team, but also the Marriott team that this. Yeah, they bought our brand and that's what they bought. So how do you do that? So this will really require a lot of time and attention and that's currently happening. So when we look at the window. So somewhere at the end of the year, year we will go live in a number of waves and batches and then yeah then we hopefully next year we will be fully up and running and serve a fantastic citizen and brand. But then under the roof, under the wings of Marriott, bookable everywhere. Yeah. What happens after? I would say two things. First of all is optimizing whatever needs to be optimized. And the second part is like yeah, what is it going to be the growth strategy of citizenm and how does digital and tech play a role in that? And yeah, we just talked about AI. I think that will be the most dominant discussion. I can talk for hours on what I see as specific challenges. But what I believe what in the end will happen is that there is that the AI will actually sit on the core or the backend systems directly. So all the middle systems, anything that you need will be gone. And, and yeah, what that's going to bring, I'm very curious myself as well.
- [54:29]
Lazy Peace
Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for it. Well, Rose, I want to open the floor to you if there are any last questions you want to ask, Casper, or maybe a lightning round you want to roll through before we close out.
- [54:37]
Rose
We do have a lightning round that I would love to get to. But before we go there, Casper, I'd love to just kind of ask you a broader question. I really like when we get to sit down with hospitality leaders. I think it's a great industry for other industries to look at and kind of get inspiration from. I think it's fun to kind of watch in the news or whatever it is, but the unique and creative ways that hotels connect with their customers. So kind of off of that, I wanted to ask you, have you noticed any unique challenges that are particularly difficult for the hospitality industry? Like whether it's moving a little bit too slow with digital innovation or if it's moving too quickly and overcorrecting because it's such a. From, from different leaders that we've talked to, it seemed like it can be sometimes an expense for people. Often if you're traveling it's for a big event. So there's just lots of emotions wrapped up in it. So I think there, it feels like there's more at stake, I guess with the different connections you're making with your customers.
- [55:39]
Casper Overbeck
I believe when it comes to hospitality and, and their tech stack, I think we are not too advanced in the world of tech. So I was talking about we don't have check in desks or front desks. We have kiosk and we have them from the start 15 years ago. But I think still 80 or 90% of all hotels have traditional front desks where you still need to hand in your passport or fill out some kind of form or anything. So it's very, very interesting that if you look at airlines, for instance, there, whoever goes to a desk to check in even a kiosk you don't want, you just do it at home. So I think there's still a lot of catching up that hospitality needs to. Even today, the benefit of it is that with things like new AI and all these developments, you can also sort of start from scratch. That's still an opportunity there. I think the width of challenges is. So it's enormous. But then when I think about. If you would like, say that more on, like, what does it mean for you as a human? Yeah. What. What makes a good experience? And so we are, we are in cities. So let's. Let me make it. To narrow it a little bit to that. So we are in big cities. So what do you need actually when you're in a city. City. I personally. And we talk about. Warm welcome for me is very important. That's why I'm not super big fan of Airbnb. I like it. But then I enter in a stranger's house and, and, and where do I go? Anything. As long as you have true hospitality focused people that are just there to try to understand what your need is. I have like a trust that. Yeah. That we can also solve them. And when I was in. I was in airline. Yeah. Basically. What is the. The what is. What do you buy when you buy an airline ticket? Tickets. Yeah. You buy it going from A to B. That's actually the product. But when you buy a hotel night. Yeah. What do you. You buy the hotel experience. And as long as you want to travel and as long as you want to meet people or meet or see new places. Yeah, I think there will always be hotels.
- [57:40]
Rose
I love what you said about Airbnb too. My favorite experiences with staying at people's houses like that are when they are very communicative and they're talking to me, you know, through the phone a lot. So it's not the same, but. Or walking into the house and they have like, like a map and they have a list of places, their favorite restaurants and things like recommendations. It feels more personal even though I'm not interacting with anybody really.
- [58:04]
Casper Overbeck
But it's more like psychologically, it's also like your needs. It might take you a lifetime to find out your own needs. And then hostility is about knowing all these needs and respond to them.
- [58:18]
Rose
Yeah, that's so true.
- [58:19]
Casper Overbeck
True.
- [58:19]
Rose
We are at a little over our hour mark. If we have time, I'd love to just run through some lightning round questions with you, Casper. This is something that we like to do at the end of every interview. So first question. If someone asked you at a dinner party, what you do, how would you describe your job?
- [58:36]
Casper Overbeck
I tell them that I work for a cool hotel brand because I like to think it's quite cool. And I tell them that I do all the digital stuff.
- [58:44]
Rose
All right, second question. What is the simplest thing any hotel can do today to improve their customer experience?
- [58:52]
Casper Overbeck
The real warm welcome just the moment you arrive to say, hey, how are you? I think that is. That is the moment of truth.
- [58:59]
Rose
What's one small touch of luxury you always notice or wish more hotels offered?
- [59:04]
Casper Overbeck
In our hotel, in our bathroom, we have a shower gel. We have AM and a PM shower gel. I find it a very luxurious offer. And what is very stupid.
- [59:15]
Lazy Peace
Never seen that.
- [59:16]
Casper Overbeck
Looks very stupid. I personally like PM much better than the am, But I always take a shower in the morning, and now my brain is conditioned and it tells me I need to use am. Use the am. Yeah. But then I cheat and I use PM so that. That little moment, that is a piece of luxury.
- [59:39]
Rose
No choice. Feels luxurious, for sure. Like, if I feel like I have a choice and I'm being given multiple options for something, I feel like more taken care of.
- [59:47]
Casper Overbeck
We were working on personalization. What does that mean, personalization? And we found out that it's not 100%, but in general, the way personalization is even being interpreted between Europeans and Americans is different. In Europe, when you talk about personalization, it's about recognition, knowing me for who I am. Hey, Casper. There you are again. Wow, welcome. And then I really feel odd. This is a personalized experience, but in America, most are referring to customization. I want it my way. I wanted. It's not for nothing that Starbucks came up, like, with all these crazy coffee things. So being able to do it exactly the way I like. Ah, now I feel personalization. So it's. And. And we. It took us a while before we understood it, because it seems the same, but it's actually very different. And we also try now to sort of see how can we use this in our offering. And apparently I'm a little bit more American because I like choice. So I like the fact that we have AM&PM shower gel.
- [60:56]
Rose
Well, our last lightning round question. This is something that we like to ask every guest on the show is what's one experience that you've had recently as a customer that's really impressed.
- [61:06]
Casper Overbeck
I'm a board member of a sports club, a hockey club. Field hockey it is. And we had a young member, passed away 40 years old because of cancer. And then we wanted to do something to. Yeah. As a memorial. And we thought, hey, why don't we plant a tree and Then I tried to get approval by the local governments to be even allowed to plant the tree. Tree. And to my surprise, it turned out to be very hard to get that done. And I made quite a story explaining also how sensitive the topic was and everything. So I really had a lot of pushback, to my surprise. And then I was talking to the person that actually needed to plant the tree and I said, yeah, and this. He was like a blue collar working guy and he said, oh, is this what you want? Maybe I have someone that. Yeah. That still has a tree. I think it could work. Yeah. Okay, let me get back to you. And then a day later he called me and he said, casper, we got your tree and because of this, we will also plant it for free and we'll take care of it. And that was the moment that it touched me really, because I was having so many fights for something that was so sensitive and I felt really like. And then suddenly the moment that I didn't expect it because we had made a whole budget and everything and then said, yeah, this is. We're going to do it. Yeah, that really touching and I can still feel it today. So, yeah, that was a truly exceptional experience.
- [62:35]
Rose
That's beautiful. What's the hockey team called?
- [62:37]
Casper Overbeck
It's Vini Vidi Vici. Like Julius.
- [62:40]
Lazy Peace
Yeah. Yep.
- [62:42]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah.
- [62:42]
Lazy Peace
Casper, thank you so much for your time. I know we're overtime a little bit. You got kiddos to go. Go say hi to and take care of really quick. Where can our audience find you? Where can they engage with Citizen M? Where can they, I don't know, follow you, Casper, maybe LinkedIn. Do you have any place you want to, you know, drive our audience to.
- [63:01]
Casper Overbeck
Yeah, look for Casper overbake@citizenm on LinkedIn. I don't think there's a lot of Casper Overbakes and there's definitely only one Casper at CitizenM. So you can find me there. I love to engage and hear feedback. Also, if it's critical because we do something with it, I explained it already. So, yeah, look me up. Instagram also. Fine. But LinkedIn is the best way forward and citizenm you. Yeah, I would recommend to follow it because there is a lot of exciting stuff going to happen. Not only from. Yeah, the fact what. Whatever your neck or offer will be, but also how does it actually work. An integration of. Of this brand with Marriott. So there will be case studies about it, I'm sure, at certain points. So be on top of it.
- [63:45]
Lazy Peace
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Casper. Have a great rest of your day.
- [63:49]
Casper Overbeck
Yes. Wonderful. Thank you.