“A Humble Leader”

Dr. Michael Toedt, Managing Partner, CEO, has a hybrid background. Growing up in his parent´s hotel, he started his career in a Michelin star restaurant and worked as a Chef. At 25, he started his university career, which resulted in his doctoral degree. He combines deep practical knowledge with the theoretical background, as he is never satisfied ensuring to push the organization to the next possible level.

Michael and his team are implementing digital strategies to enhance the competitiveness of their business to keep a leading position in the industry. Continuous learning and never being satisfied with the current status—are the two rules to enhance competitiveness and keep their leading position in the industry. The continuous exchange with Hotel CEOs around the globe and his work as a lecturer for Big Data and eCRM also fills a big pool of ideas and drives the company forward.

dailypointTM has by far the most complex and best data cleaning algorithms to clean data and create the so necessary central guest profile. Using multiple sources, dailypointTM continuously searches for data points it can transform automatically into useable guest insights. “Especially the hotel industry has so many touchpoints, so in theory hoteliers should know everything about their guests. Practically Hotels today have about 30 profiles for each single guest in multiple applications, which leads to the fact that AI or a great individual service along the customer journey is not possible, even for the most luxurious brands. dailypointTM is the solution to solve this severe issue,” says Michael.

“dailypointTM has by far the most complex and best data cleaning algorithms to clean data and create the so necessary central guest profile. Using multiple sources, dailypointTM continuously searches for data points it can transform automatically into useable guest insights.”

Michael adds, “We always want to be at least two steps ahead of our competitors. All of them are driven by venture capital companies which strongly focus on sales and marketing and forget mainly the product. Our focus is: the solution first and sales success comes afterwards.” Their key USPs are Data Laundry, the platform approach with many dailypointTM modules enhanced by best-of-breed solutions from partners on the dailypointTM Marketplace, and our open-API strategy.

Over the last 30 years, hotel companies implemented multiple solutions along the customer journey. Decisions were made on a departmental level. This leads to the fact that hotel companies lost control of their guest having multiple profiles for the same person in many different systems. At Steigenberger Hotels & Resorts, dailypointTM works as their central data management platform. dailypointTM modules replaced multiple unconnected systems. eCRM, guest feedback, the loyalty program, and others have been integrated with deep 2-way interfaces like the Property Management Systems. The company now has a central profile for each guest, which leads to a better service level, accurate reports, and better management decisions driven by high-quality analysis based on clean data.

The biggest achievement for Michael is to grow a company in an environment where everyone thought the big PMS vendors like Oracle or Infor could do what they do. “I guess we are a great role model starting a digital company out of nothing and even without a financial investors but we have the passion, the knowledge and the right idea,” he adds. “However at a certain point it is also important to realize when you need a strong partner, therefore we decided to bring Accor, the fourth biggest hotel group in the world, on board as a shareholder.”

The most important thing for Michael and his team is that the central profile they create with dailypointTM is used everywhere along the customer journey. “It is so obvious what a central profile means but to benefit from it, hotels have to go a long way. It is a change management process in which they must get rid of the traditional thinking that the PMS rules the universe,” he explains. “This change requires the lead from the top. My goal is to make sure that more and more CEOs understand that they must take the lead and a real CRM approach cannot be managed by the Marketing department.” IE