TRANSCRIPT: Can You Automate Your Way Out of Hospitality Team Burnout?
The Michelle Pascoe Hospitality Podcast
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Michelle Pascoe: Welcome, everyone, to today's podcast. Oh my goodness, I know this is already going to be a fun conversation, because I've only just met Danica in the last few minutes. She obviously has a British accent but is living in the beautiful country of Spain, in Barcelona in particular. I know my listeners from the registered club and gaming industry know that Barcelona is one of those places many of us have either been to or are going to, for the gaming conference at the start of each year. We'll get to that conversation a bit later.
Let me introduce you to Danica Smith, an executive mindset and performance coach specialising in guest experience, business growth and human behaviour. With nearly 15 years of experience across hotels and hospitality technology, Danica helps leaders perform at their best while navigating growth, change and the increasing pressure to keep up with AI. She's particularly passionate about the human side of transformation while businesses continue to invest in technology.
Danica began her career in hotel marketing at Apex Hotels before spending almost eight years at ReviewPro and Shiji Group, eventually becoming Global Director of Partnerships. In 2024 Danica founded Morningstar GX, supporting hotels and hospitality technology companies with guest experience strategy, positioning, go-to-market and leadership performance. She's also the co-host and European correspondent for Hospitality Daily, recognised as one of the world's leading hospitality podcasts, and lectures in strategic management at CETT Barcelona School of Tourism, Hospitality and Gastronomy.
Danica's philosophy is simple: you cannot automate your way out of overwhelm, and guest experience is not a buzzword, it is revenue. So welcome, Danica, to our conversation today. Thank you for joining us.
Danica Smith: Thanks, Michelle. Thank you so much, and thanks for the great intro. It's really nice to take a moment and reflect back. I feel too young to have done all of that, but I'm not that young anymore. Thanks for having me today. I'm really excited to jump into our conversation. I can already tell we click, and there are a lot of sparks between us.
Michelle: Listeners, you always know I seem to go off on different tangents with my guests, even though we've got some great questions, because that's where the story lies, in what's underneath. So that statement at the end of your introduction: you cannot automate your way out of overwhelm, and guest experience is not a buzzword, it is revenue. What does that look like in a real hotel or venue right now, where the tech is in place and everybody's AI mad, but the team still isn't coping?
Danica: In so many different places. I feel like the pace and the overwhelm are insane right now, whether it's operational or strategic. I can give you two different examples, and to be honest they're both quite negative.
We'll start with the less severe one. I was in a hotel group's board meeting. I advise them, and the CEO was there. Their marketing metrics are great. Book direct is smashing it, they're improving year on year, conversion is doing well, and all the revenue and commercial figures are up year on year. And the CEO was just obsessed with how they rank on the LLMs. How do we come up when people search for us in ChatGPT? Where are we ranked? I thought, this is the perfect example of people being obsessed with what we should be doing with AI and not celebrating what we've achieved.
In the meantime, this group of hotels had a severe issue with their breakfast quality. I said, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the fact that you've got a 2 out of 5 on your breakfast scores on the OTAs. So that's one example of where we're getting very distracted by AI. That's causing the overwhelm, and we're forgetting about the guest experience.
The other example is where the technology is there but it's having a detrimental effect on the staff, especially between males and females. We know the pace of AI is male dominated. It's been built by males, sold and created by males, and unfortunately the AI gap is very, very large.
So here's a use case, Michelle. You have a hotel with two receptionists, one male and one female. They deploy AI with a camera that tracks check-ins, production and productivity. The man goes to the toilet and takes five minutes. The woman goes to the toilet and takes 15 minutes. If they have to make cuts at the end of the day, it's going to be, who's done the most check-ins? Who's the most productive? Sorry, female receptionist, you have to go now.
What the AI camera is not picking up is that on the way back from the toilet, the female receptionist helped a guest who was lost, and showed a lot of empathy. So we have the technology there, but it's ripping us away from the soul of what it means to work in hospitality. You cannot put an algorithm or a camera in place and track the essence of being a human. That is the disconnect facing our industry.
Michelle: It's so true. It doesn't get that human aspect, does it? With your first example, it's so interesting, because some people are so caught up in the AI world that it's all they hear about. You can't help it. Everything you open is AI, AI, AI, all the time. It's the new you-beaut thing. And when you think about it, ChatGPT is only just over two years old. It hasn't been around long, and it's grown exponentially. We know AI was around a lot longer before that, but it's now getting through to those looking at hospitality as a career. A lot of them say to me, do you think my job will disappear? And I say, it won't, because we will always need that human connection.
As you rightly said, with that female staff member, it's looking somebody in the eye, or intuitively knowing they're looking for the pool, and asking what she can do to make that guest and their family feel they've made the right decision coming to that particular hotel.
Danica: Yes, and I think it's important to choose the company you work for, because there are some great examples. There's an example from IKEA, where I think IKEA reduced around 60% of their customer success call centre and replaced it with AI. But instead of just firing 1,200 people, they retrained them in interior design and emotional intelligence and put those people on the shop floor. And the profit that came from that, all of the statistics: customer success was more efficient, customers were happier, staff were happy and more products were being sold.
So choose your company very carefully, because there are some companies that just say, bye bye, we're replacing you with AI, good luck, here's your pay for next year. And there are other companies saying, let's bring in AI to help with the efficiencies and really free up the human to be human and shine in that aspect.
It's really tough. I'm a university teacher, and I teach students in their early 20s who are in the fourth year of strategic management in hospitality. Michelle, I feel so sad for them. They are broken and scared. Sorry, my dog's heard the postman arrive. These fourth-year students in their early 20s are so concerned about getting a job, any job. I don't think we can really comprehend what it's like to enter the workplace today.
Michelle: It makes it so hard. That's a really interesting example you used with IKEA, because I was actually in an IKEA store yesterday, and as you know, the majority of the checkouts are now self-serve. Of course, I got there and one thing didn't have a price on it. All the toys had gone down from $15 to $4.90, but there was nothing there, and I thought, isn't this always the way? Then I had the voucher from having lunch there. I'd said to my grandchildren, here you are, you've got a five dollar voucher to use on something from the kids' department. The voucher didn't work either. I thought, well, this is a bit of a scam, and I was about to get a bit tense.
They had a whole lot of staff there, literally one between every two machines, which was quite practical, and one came over. He said, look, you wouldn't believe it, and it wasn't about blame, but head office had put the scanning number in and hadn't connected it, so none of the branches' vouchers were working. He then went through methodically and changed the price for every item.
And I thought, without that person, I probably would have said, I'm not spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars, I'll just walk out. But having that person there saying, that's fine, bear with me, it's going to take a little bit of time, was perfect. You can work beautifully together.
And you're right. A lot of Gen Z, and we've got Gen Alpha coming right behind them into the hospitality industry, have that concern. But it's a concern I also see with a lot of middle managers, and even some senior managers in their mid 30s, who are absolutely burnt out in hospitality, Danica. They're still doing everything instead of delegating. They feel they've got to be everybody's friend but also everybody's boss, and they've got to keep up to date with all these new you-beaut things. It's not easy, but it's a wonderful industry.
Danica: It is, and I think that's where training comes in, especially with Gen Z and Gen Alpha. I saw a wonderful woman, Dina from Staypineapple, a boutique collection of properties in North America. Their technology stack is amazing. They've automated everything. And she speaks a lot about what you do next. If I have digital check-in and a seamless process, who's teaching the 20-year-old emotional intelligence? Are we recruiting for emotional intelligence? It sounds like that young man at IKEA was a natural at that, but we have to make space for it and make sure we're guiding young people with EQ first.
Michelle: And for them, it's getting the right person, but also supporting that person so they can reach out and have that conversation with the customer. Back in the 90s the word was empowered, and it's so true. They need to be empowered. They need to know that whatever decision they make, they're going to get that support. So it comes down to coaching leaders, and I know you do that so well. You've coached leaders through growth, change and AI adoption from both sides, the operator's seat and the tech seat. So what's the mindset shift, Danica, that separates the leaders who adapt well from the ones who burn out trying?
Danica: The culture of the environment or the company they're in, and how much they invest in themselves as a person. The leaders who are stable and calm, with good energy levels, meditate, prioritise their family, their exercise, their sleep and their health. They're the ones who say, my business cannot take over me, it needs to be part of me. I think that's easier to do if you're a founder and it's your business. If you're a newly promoted executive who has to prove themselves, that's a different space.
There is still a male and female difference. The majority of burnout I see is women managing a household and a workload, plus the pressure they put on themselves. That's really sad. Men suffering from overwhelm and burnout are certainly out there too, but not as much as the women I've worked with.
Michelle: Do you also find, and I see this here in Australia, particularly in the registered club industry, that there are fewer women who will step up from the floor? They may go to supervisor at a stretch, or to duty manager, but there aren't as many going into middle and senior management. Partly because they don't always believe in themselves, which drives me nuts, and partly because they've got so much else going on that they say, it's too much. I can stay in this role, get reasonable money and not push myself.
Danica: It's tough. I'm about to turn 40, and my friends and I are all at that stage where we're saying, this isn't what we were sold. This isn't what we signed up for. We've worked really hard and made it to director and management level across all industries. I've got friends in banking, finance, retail and tech, and on a Friday we're all asking, how can I go and start a farm and have chickens? We're that burnt out.
And again, this is where AI and the divide are really difficult. Take my husband, for example. School starts in September, with the WhatsApp groups and the schedules, and we've got two young kids. I use AI a lot, but my husband went and built his own agent that is our school chief of staff. Every day we get a little briefing that says, this is the PE kit, this is what's happening. And I thought, I would never have thought to do that myself.
So with the mental load and stress of running a household, men are much more confident with AI. They see other men around them building, so there's visibility, and they play around with it. Women still carry the shame and the guilt: I need to learn ChatGPT, I need to do that course on Claude. And it just builds even more. The overwhelm is overwhelming, thanks to AI as well.
Michelle: I think your husband could trademark that and sell it.
Danica: I know. He's got to sell what he's already building first.
Michelle: The equivalent for us was writing sticky notes, or the magnetic whiteboard on the fridge, and trying to get people to read it.
We've talked about AI and the impact of burnout and overwhelm. Psychological safety is another one. We've just changed some laws here in Australia for our workplaces, and it does get thrown around a lot. But what does it actually look like day to day for a hospitality leader in the middle of a busy shift, not in a workshop room? As trainers, it's very easy in a workshop room to say, this is what you need to do. I always preface it by saying you've got to think about your surroundings, the space around you and what's led up to it. So what are your thoughts?
Danica: That's a great point, Michelle, about the workshop room. Everyone says, we've got training on corporate wellbeing, and it's on a Friday morning and everybody's relaxed with their coffees. That's not reality.
I think it starts culturally, at the top of the organisation. Psychological safety and wellbeing shouldn't sit with training and development or HR. It needs to sit alongside hotel expansion, guest experience, revenue and commercials. What I've seen in my advisory work, from a leader's, manager's or head of department's perspective, is that you can have the best strategy, the best partnership and the best revenue strategy, but if you have a leader who is defensive, insecure and paranoid, you're never going to hit target. You're never going to launch that hotel or achieve that KPI, because we all know it's the people that are the barriers. So it needs to be part of the organisation, not a side thing or a tick box.
Michelle: It really does. As I said, we've just had some major changes to workplace laws here in Australia, and it's absolutely key, particularly in hospitality, because of the impact of unusual hours and inflexible rosters. I think we're all realising that if we don't give people flexible rosters, we're not going to get these young people in. But that's another story. Psychological safety certainly has to be there.
Danica: And the fear of being replaced as well, Michelle. Having transparent conversations, sitting your team down and saying, okay, are you scared about being replaced as a receptionist? Let's talk about this and how we can use AI to support you and not replace you.
Just have more human, transparent conversations, even if you can't commit. If I'm a general manager for a chain and I don't know what the AI strategy is, and maybe someone in housekeeping will be replaced by a robot, at least have the conversation and say, I'll support you. I'll be your reference. Don't worry about the future. That's the mindset coach in me: just focus on now. You're great at what you do, and whatever happens, we'll figure it out together. But right now I can promise you nothing is going to change this year. Just have those conversations. I feel leaders are very scared to be more transparent, even when they don't know what the situation is.
Michelle: And that communication, you cannot beat it. I was sharing with my team, because I love researching multigenerational teams, some research I read the other day. It said this is the first time in history that leaders have had to lead so many generations at once. It used to be one or two, the pre-veterans and the baby boomers, or the baby boomers and Gen X. Now you're leading baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, all with different beliefs, values, work ethics and ideas. Some say, I just work by myself, while for Gen Z it's all about group work, and Gen Alpha are going to be the same. It's not easy for a leader to understand all these different dynamics.
Particularly when we talk about change. As you rightly said, that Gen X group goes, yep, I'm going to lose my job. And without stereotyping, there are some people in the industry who may not have the awareness to seek out the correct information, whether it's a cultural or language barrier, whatever it might be. They hear this fear that robots are going to take their job, and they're so fearful that they make themselves sick, or they just don't know what to do. If someone told them what it is and what it means, and said, like you did, we can figure this out as we go, it creates a much better workplace, doesn't it? Because there's no fear.
Danica: Yes, it removes that fear. That's one of the reasons I teach at university, to have access to that generation, because I don't otherwise know anybody that age, and it's fascinating. I think setting up some sort of mentoring buddy system is a good idea, because we can learn so much from each other, and it makes it fun because the generations work so differently.
One of my clients is a CEO who isn't the best at giving feedback, and the rest of us know no news is good news. But you've got a 22-year-old who's always asking, how am I doing? Am I okay? And I say, you're doing great, you're amazing. I'm a millennial, so we're full of feedback, because we never got it. It's just so interesting to see. So take the time to learn about the different generations.
But then, Michelle, when I look at hotels, I don't know what it's like in Australia, but in Europe we still haven't recovered staff levels since Covid. It's easy for me to say to a general manager, maybe listen to a podcast about the different generations in your workplace. And then I think, no. That general manager is trying to recruit, doing interviews, cleaning a bed because the housekeeper didn't turn up, dealing with a stressed chef and a head office that's cutting budgets. It's really tough out there right now for operators.
Michelle: I think it's global in hospitality. We are getting people coming back into the industry, but not to what we had pre Covid. Hospitality was the first to shut down and the last to open here in Australia, and we lost a lot of middle managers to other industries, health, government and so on.
Danica: Better hours.
Michelle: Yes. So now we've got all these younger ones coming through, particularly Gen Z, who say, I'm not going to spend seven years learning how to pour a beer, then go into the gaming room, then do this. I can do this in seven weeks, maybe seven months. And they're not going to wait, and they don't need to wait around, if you've got AI, the right systems and the right processes and procedures. They go through it, they've got a checklist and off they go.
But having these conversations, and to me this is the next part in all industries but especially hospitality, is the sharing of knowledge, isn't it, Danica? Globally, the baby boomers are retiring at their own pace, whenever it suits them. It doesn't matter how many times you say, could you write that down? They say, yeah, yeah, I'll get to that. Yes, here are the six steps to do X, Y and Z. But let me tell you about Fred. When Fred comes into the bar, or Mary comes into the hotel, they like to have this. Those are the notes, the things we need them to share, don't we?
Danica: Yes, and I worry that AI is cutting corners in that sense, Michelle, in just being able to know people. I was at a conference all about AI, data, meetings, events and weddings, and how we could use AI to optimise the booking process and take calls on a Saturday night. Amazing. And this one woman stood up and said, okay, but what AI can't do is this: when a couple walks in, I can say they're not going to make it to the wedding, because I picked up on the way they interacted with each other during a 45-minute show round. AI can never tell me about that cancellation, which could cost the hotel $60,000. And it was like, exactly. That's the problem. If you have a 20-year-old who's learning with AI and everything is automated and easy, are they going to get to the point of seeing what's happening?
But I think one good thing about the younger generations in hospitality is that they're so ambitious. I mentor two young women outside our industry, and every six months she wants a new promotion. You've just been promoted! In hospitality you can move up so quickly. You can go from washing dishes to head chef in two years if you work hard. I think that's really appealing to young people, that they can climb to senior management and GM level relatively quickly compared to other industries.
Michelle: Yes, definitely. The other big change is flexibility in rosters, in the sense that they're going to choose when they want to work. We also understand that hospitality is 24 hours, seven days a week, so to speak. But they're not going to stand in one spot for eight hours. They need to move around. So either they use their initiative, if we allow them to, and move to where the busy spots are, or we have it marked out: you're doing this for the first two hours, then you can do that. That creates interest, and they love to learn.
Danica: Exactly. And to that point, Michelle, when it comes to rosters and times, I think the whole industry needs to change, even from a guest perspective. Take the concept of breakfast times and check-in at 3pm. Why does check-in have to be at three? Obviously you're cleaning rooms and turning them around, but it can be completely creative. There's a boutique hotel in Amsterdam, I think it's called 24 something or 26 something hours, that has thrown out the hotel rule book. You can have breakfast whenever you want during the day, which makes sense. I'm a busy, stressed-out working mother. When I go away with my husband and stay at a hotel without my kids, I do not want to wake up at 9 o'clock to go and get breakfast.
So as we look at staff rotas and accommodating Gen Z and Gen Alpha, maybe it's a good time to look at the whole timing of hotels afresh. If we were creating hotels today, we wouldn't have the regimented timing our industry has followed for hundreds of years just because that's how we do it.
Michelle: It's a bit like school hours, but that's a whole other conversation. We've got to start at this time, finish at that time and sit there all that time, which is crazy.
You've mentioned that you work with both hotels and hospitality tech companies. Where do you see the gap most clearly between what the technology promises and what the humans using it are actually ready for? Because I think there is a gap, isn't there?
Danica: Sometimes I just get my popcorn and feel like I'm watching the two sides, because there is a huge gap and a huge divide. Hoteliers are frustrated with the tech vendors because they've been lied to. They really have. We have a lot of legacy tech in hospitality. This POS doesn't integrate with this PMS, and this PMS doesn't integrate with this payment system. We know it's been broken.
Then over the last three, four, five years we've had a new wave of tech vendors with the platform approach and open APIs saying, we can connect with everything. And what happens to the hotelier is, oh, we can do that, but you have to pay $15,000. The hotelier pays, and two years on the project still isn't finished. That's what's been happening for the last five to eight years, and it's why I left my partnerships role at a leading tech vendor. It was so frustrating that the resource isn't there. There's the promise, but the delivery is not there.
Now I think hoteliers are saying, that's it. They talk to each other. They really grill the salesperson. You can't just have a shiny demo. They want more customer references than ever.
I have a client who was changing their PMS. It was obviously a huge investment and a big project. She had three final vendors to choose from, and she had her whole team involved in the project. She was the managing director, and she invited the senior leadership of these three vendors to come and stay at one of her properties. Then it was the staff who helped her choose the vendor.
Michelle: Interesting.
Danica: Who sat at the bar and got to know my team? Who asked for a show round? And who stayed in their room doing emails? I thought that was amazing, because it was asking the leaders of those PMS companies to walk the talk and actually come into her space. So there's that gap of trust, and rightly so.
The other gap is just the confusion. I've worked in this space for 15 years, it's very small and niche, and I am so confused. You're an RMS, but you do guest communications? No, you just do guest experience? Oh, but you're a PMS that also does guest communications? It's just a blur of everybody with blue logos. And now you throw AI in, with AI sprinkled on this and AI concierge and digital concierge, and it's overwhelming. I'm not a tech consultant, but I can see the need for tech consultants now, because hoteliers don't have time to navigate which vendor to choose, or whether you're a vendor or a partner.
Then you have all the new founders. Every week I get contacted by somebody from outside our industry who has just built the latest, greatest guest experience platform from his bedroom, because they've opened up AI and coded it. It's a fascinating space. And finally I feel hoteliers have some say and are pushing the product road map towards what they want and what they need for their customers. There's more dialogue.
But what really frustrates me sometimes about our industry, Michelle, is that the technology is there and the capability is there, but we don't have the best practices, especially with AI. I did a post yesterday that's gone viral, because since 28 September Booking.com no longer passes guests' mobile phone numbers to the hotel. That's a big implication, because so many hotels use them for pre-arrival communication and upselling. There was a huge debate, with over 100 comments in 24 hours. Lots of tech vendors were saying, well, we can do this, it's possible to do it this way. But nobody shows you how. And you've got to pay for that.
You shouldn't have to pay for that when you're already spending millions with them. We really need to give hotels the strategy: when to send the WhatsApp message, how to actually capture that mobile phone number, and how to convert guests to book direct. Not just, you need to convert them on property to book direct. Well, come and show me how.
Michelle: Yes, and make sure messages get past the spam filters in people's email folders. That's one of the biggest things I hear from some of my clients. Even though guests have given their email address and are quite happy to accept an email, it goes to spam, so they never see it.
The other thing: we recently had a very big conference here, the Australasian Gaming Expo, and it was quite interesting. A lot of my clients were walking around saying, there's some great tech here, but you can tell the ones that aren't from our industry. They know the spiel, they've been given the script, but they don't know anything about it. My clients said, you've got to ask them X, Y and Z questions, and as soon as they started umming, or saying, oh yeah, I'm sure we can do it, it was a no. We're not sure; you need to actually be doing this. As you rightly said, there are a lot of new people coming into the market, which is great, but you've got to know your stuff and know the industry. Guest experience exists across every industry, but in hospitality it's something very specific.
Danica: Yes, very different. And when you put a problem to somebody from the industry, the passion comes out straight away: you could do this, or maybe this, but that's not going to work. It's a good test, Michelle, because you can spot the ones who care and live and breathe hospitality, and the ones who are just trying to make money. The reality is that our staff, our guests and the way we've built our industry are based on people and passion.
Michelle: Exactly.
Danica: Not money. We'd all be in finance or other industries if we were doing it for the money. You have to have partners who are in the same boat.
Michelle: Definitely. If a GM or department head is listening to this podcast and feeling overwhelmed and reactive right now, what's the one shift you'd want them to make this week, before anything else changes?
Danica: First of all, take a breath and do some mindset work. GMs, we got through Covid. We went through the worst situation; other than medical, our industry suffered the most, along with airlines. So take a deep breath and remind yourself you've been through far worse crises than this.
Then, immediately, look at your headspace. What can you take off? What can you do today? What are you carrying that you're worrying about? My advice to the GM or the HR director would be: let's get you calm. What can we do tonight so you go to bed calmly? Maybe it's a bath, maybe it's the gym, maybe it's writing a to-do list. It's about looking at their immediate wellbeing, nothing to do with the hotel or the work. How can we get you centred? Sometimes it's writing that list, getting it out of your head and onto paper, and then sharing it. It's like setting boundaries. There's no use keeping it in your head.
Michelle: I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. As you said right from the start, we've clicked, and we could talk a lot more. But I'd love my listeners to know how they can contact you, Danica. You're based in Barcelona. We'll certainly put it in our show notes, but please share how listeners can contact you and what you offer.
Danica: Thanks, Michelle. I have a website, morningstargx.com, but LinkedIn is always the best because I wear many different hats. It really comes under the advisory hat, whether you're a founder, a GM or a hotel looking at the guest experience side. So that's how you can contact me: find me on LinkedIn, Danica Smith.
Michelle: As I said, listeners, all those links will be in the show notes, along with Danica's website. I love LinkedIn. I think it's always a great way to connect, and that's how we connected, which was good. Listeners, this has been a wonderful podcast. Please reach out no matter where you are in the world. Danica can certainly help you, but if you're in Barcelona, don't go this weekend, because I've heard it's raining.
Danica: Come over and come and see me. And if anybody needs help connecting with tech vendors or wants recommendations, I'm happy to help free of charge. I have no referral schemes or kickbacks with anyone, so it's really based on honesty and feedback. I'm always happy to help connect people in our industry.
Michelle: That's what it's all about. We are the connectors. I always see myself as a conduit, connecting one person to another, and that's the hospitality industry. The pie is big enough for everybody, and if we're just there for each other, it makes such a difference. So thank you so much for joining me, Danica. It's been lovely having this conversation with you.
Danica: Me too, Michelle. Thank you, and have a great weekend.
Michelle: You too.
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