Empowering The People That Power Hospitality

By Andrew Arthurs, COO, Actabl

At Actabl, our mission is to empower the people who power the hospitality industry. For me, that’s about connecting with people and helping them unlock their true potential. 

As an industry, we've been laser-focused on the guest experience and how technology can help improve each stage of the guest journey. We haven't spent as much time thinking about the associate experience with technology. As a hotel tech provider, it is our responsibility to ensure that associates using technology have a great experience and minimize the friction they encounter when interacting with new solutions.

Before joining Actabl, I worked for many years as a CIO for hotel management companies. When you work in a corporate environment, it's essential that you maintain connectivity with the day-to-day business. One way that I did that was by traveling to our hotels. The benefits of this were twofold: I got to experience the property as a guest, but I also had the opportunity to work behind the front desk, observing how the front desk agents used technology and identifying potential obstacles they might encounter.

I have many great memories working on-property with the teams, including front desk agents, night auditors, reservation agents, and concierges, as well as understanding how the different departments function. These experiences helped shape my appreciation for the complexity of hotel operations and how technology can be a powerful differentiator. 

As CIO, my focus was on ensuring that everyone on the property had the necessary tools to be successful and knew how to use technology as a business enabler.

Today, in my role as President and Chief Operating Officer at Actabl, it’s no different. 

In my role, it's essential that I'm connected to our customers and I build a relationship so I can harvest genuine, candid feedback. Obviously, we want that feedback to be, ‘We love Actabl,’ ‘We love the software, and ‘We want more.’ However, sometimes it doesn't work that way. Our commitment to all our customers is that when challenges arise, we'll have a conversation and work through them with you. We may not be able to solve it overnight, but we're committed to working towards the outcome you expect. 

Just like hoteliers, we index very heavily on the customer. We have a customer-centric culture, and that means that we always have eyes on what we can do better to serve our customers.

Making User-Intuitive Tech

We understand that the bar is very high for technology adoption in our daily lives. For example, many of us use a smartphone we’ve never been trained on. And that's the expectation and the aim: to minimize the training, enhance the user experience, and drive adoption. We’re using that as our North Star to focus on delivering an experience that customers expect, based on how they use technology in their personal lives.

We’re putting that into practice across the Actabl suite, especially in our labor management tools. Hotel Effectiveness is built specifically for hospitality teams, helping GMs and department heads build smarter schedules based on forecasted demand, compliance rules, and historical trends. But just as important, it’s designed to be usable without a manual. Associates can view their shifts, swap, and communicate with minimal clicks, because if the tool isn’t intuitive, it won’t get adopted. And adoption is where the value gets unlocked: better coverage, fewer scheduling gaps, and more time spent with guests instead of in spreadsheets.

The associate experience is most important because it may be a way to differentiate your offering from that of the hotel next door. 

Good hotel reviews often focus on the associates. The hotel industry is about people serving people. If you empower your associates with modern technology that can eliminate some of the mundanity from their roles, they have more time to interact with your guests, to deliver that personal touch. That is what makes the difference to the guest, and it’s what makes the difference to your associates, too.

We want to help remove the friction and empower your teams to be their most brilliant selves.