Experts of Experience - The World’s Most Customer-Obsessed Hotel Brand

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

CitizenM’s CXO, CDO, and CPO (yes… all three!), Casper Overbeek, joins Lacey to reveal how one of the world’s most innovative hotel brands uses technology to empower people — not replace them. From launching a wildly successful paid loyalty program to redesigning customer journeys with AI and real-time feedback, Casper shares how CitizenM is redefining modern hospitality. Plus, he talks about their recent acquisition by Marriott, how a Slack-integrated feedback loop transformed their ops, and the loyalty that lives beyond points: the subscription model that works. Hit that like, subscribe, and tap the bell to stay up to date on visionary customer experience leaders. Key Moments:   00:00 Introduction to Casper Overbeek, citizenM Hotels03:46 Citizen M's Unique Approach to Customer Experience04:20 A Unique Loyalty Program and Digital Experience12:52 Marriott Acquisition and Future Plans34:27 The Importance of Human Connection in Hospitality37:58 The Role of Feedback in Improving Services41:22 Integrating AI in Hospitality45:48 The Future of Customer Experience with AI51:57 Balancing Technology and Human Touch53:29 What's Next for citizenM?55:42 Lightning Round and Experiences as a Customer –Are your teams facing growing demands? Join CX leaders transforming their AI strategy with Agentforce. Start achieving your ambitious goals. Visit salesforce.com/agentforce Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org

When I started Sits and M, we had 10 hotels and now we are 37, 38. Your title is CDO, CPO and CXO, right? Did I miss anything? Is there anything else to add to that? 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. It's literally taking technology to allow humans to connect in a more human way. Those 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 a customer journey, that is something that is there from the start. You want to serve humanity with technology, not replace it. 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 SIDS&M,

you really feel it from the moment you walk in. Oh wow, that's amazing. We actually answer these questions and the success rate is fantastic. It's 95% and we have like a four and a half out of five customer appreciation score. I was always skeptical because I thought, yeah, I think that AI can solve a lot, but can they also be empathic? Can the tone of the voice be right? And now I find out that it actually is possible. voice be right and now I find out that it actually is possible.

Welcome back to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lacey 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 chief XYZ officer titles. He is every person in the C-suite. Yeah, like there's actually no one else. It's just Casper running the whole company.

It's just Casper. 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 has been there for the last seven, eight years now in this role, I mean, in the 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. 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 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 a hospitality experience. So you can't get away with not being customer obsessed. Well, and I think that's a 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 away from their family. They were on a flight that was terrible. The airline that they just experienced sucked, which would be no- The Uber ride was gross and dirty on the way there. Like who knows how they're ending up here?

What I find fascinating that Casper mentioned a few times in this interview is that for them, the stay, the sleeping overnight there is the product. The experience is the product, whereas we'll talk to some other companies that actually have tangible products. I make this thing or I offer insurance or whatever. But 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?

I think the loyalty program that he mentioned, so I'm not going to say what it is because I just really urge the listener to tune into the full episode. Because I've never heard about a loyalty program designed the way they've designed it. And that alone makes me so badly want to become 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 over-correcting 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. And speaking of digital, I mean, there's just like 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've 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 what Citizen M does beautifully is they talk a lot about this first 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 recognizing that you're here. And whether or not you wanna 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. And before we let you guys get to this interview, please hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, head to Leacy'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. 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 Codcast isn't up to date on the latest technology yet, you can 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. Hi, Lacey. How are you?

I'm well. How are you doing? It's good. Exciting times. Where are you calling in from today? What the audience know? Yeah, we are in Amsterdam. So Citizen 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. Well, Casper, how long have you been at CitizenM? I would love to hear a little bit about your background there. I'm seven and a half years at CitizenM. I started my career at KLM, the airlines, we're at France KLM, we're partnering with Delta. And I worked there for 14 years, did a lot of different stuff, really loved traveling,

but also discovered that I have a passion for customer, a passion for digital. I was picked up by an 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 of and convenience of customers. And then Sits&M 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. 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?

When I started, I was appointed being a membership director, but I didn't even know myself, I did because we didn't agree on job titles. I did 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. Oh, wow. So what does your day to day look like with all of that?

That just sounds like a lot. It sounds like you don't sleep. So how do you actually navigate all of that? 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. And then when they arrive at the hotel and all the way when they 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 day-to-day attention. So that's what I was basically doing. But then we were, as I said, we were growing and growing. And at a certain point, you see that you build up legacy in your tech, in your digital setup. And then at a certain point, you are trying to solve issues 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 where we said, well, hey, let's take a different approach to this. And that's where 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, yeah, 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. We're going to steer the digital product development. What are the innovations that we see?

Where do 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 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, yeah, they are flexible. They are thinking of solutions. They know how to deal with customer, yeah, customer thinking, I would say, but they also know their fair digital share. Well, 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've got 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. Well, let's first of all, we are, although we have grown, we're still relatively small company. So it is not unlogical that people have carried multiple heads, 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 suddenly your 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 then I'm not even talking about the front end, like what does a user journey look like, but also like a backend, like what supporting data systems or reservations or anything do you need. Yeah, 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 roof. 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 Marri talking for quite a while. At a 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 a certain point, you become too big. And then at a 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, that was basically too hard to do on our own.

And then, yeah, when we were, yeah, sort of investigating what our options, Marriott came by, yeah, and now suddenly you're talking about, yeah, 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 go out to the market and say, hey, what is the next SIDS NEM going to be? The third part, and that is something

that we are super strong about, is that they have indicated that they really wanna 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 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. Well, congratulations. That's amazing. I'm curious to from 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. 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 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, the combination, combined with a very strong and distinct design. I always say, 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 have, 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, have 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 with an entrepreneurial mindset, that really fits in also the market that they want to address. 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, take us back a little bit

to the beginning of that loyalty program, what it is so the audience can hear 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. The whole idea of a paid subscription 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 into 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. 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 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, I know that a hotel room costs for the cost, but I don't want to find out later that it's cheaper somewhere else.

So then when we said, this is the cheapest price that you can get, and we take 15 percent off and that is our promise. That was one. Then the second part was that this guaranteed availability, which of course, is very hard promise to make. But we said, 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 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 liked. For instance, they check out some F&B options that you can rent a meeting room with a discount. So this is how we built up the 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 Bolvoy 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 out that we have quite a clear idea of how we're going to do it. But the idea is that the MySitzenet Plus program will continue to exist also in the new setup with Marriott.

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.

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, start a book, digital book, start simple. We had a design, a vision that had like, was all encompassing, it was so big, and we wanted to do co-working 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? Yeah, 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 on that. And it 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 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 you 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? It's because 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 all about experience

and we wanted 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 social media influenced a 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.

Yeah. Oh, that's great. I love that start simple message because I think so many people do get overloaded, especially entrepreneurs. Like we get overloaded with this vision of we've 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 really cool, interesting things along this path as we start to continue to brainstorm.

And then as you guys 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 size pieces makes total sense. Correct. And what is also nice and I think that is also any entrepreneur or started 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 your your place. And but then because you have it like, for instance, Airlines, we have a partnership with KLM and we worked along really, really well. And that it starts the first time you say, yeah, we are starting this membership. Hey, are you interested? And they say, hey, yeah, that's quite cool. But come back when you're a grownup a bit.

But then those 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't 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 called the corporate subscription. That basically was that we allowed a corporate to have a bundle of memberships and you would get a few rooms for free and you would get some working spaces. That was really in the middle of COVID that no one was traveling. They all said, yeah, it's actually a really nice concept,

but 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 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 the 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, like that concept. But then they also started users, user rooms for hotel rooms for storage. Because actually $1 was cheaper than a storage. So that was also not the idea. So that's, this is how we, how we involved. Yeah, it was just a lot of fun. So that was also not the idea. So this is how we involved. 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 legal, whether it was marketing, whether it was a branding, everyone, and they all get engaged on this same goal. Yeah, that also creates energy, what you can also use for your mainstream work. Yeah. Well, and it also makes 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, or you guys sort of compare to these other brands that you're now working alongside. Tell me a little bit about your guys'

digital transformation. Has it been so integrated in Citizen M's culture, philosophy, plan for the future 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 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 at 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 back end 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 a 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 the core functions. So I'm talking about the customer data platform, talking about the 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 say, 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, that 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. These are very basic functionalities in, for instance, in an e-commerce or anything. But for hospitality, they're relatively new. Because very often, decentralized 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 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 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 at 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, Lacey, 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 back end. 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 tech stack is needed to support it.

That is always the order, never the other way around. 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 CitizenM 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, 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. So it's literally taking technology to allow humans to 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? 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 there's many other convenience, and especially around hospitality, not only in hospitals, but also outside. Then the third one is that we want to be leading in personalization, that we recognize who you are, and that 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 fiction out, but never at the expense of 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 citizen M, 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 citizen M experience should be. And only after that, it's nice that when you go in 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. 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. Yeah. So frustrating. Cincinnati was founded on the premise of customer frustrations. I think this is maybe a nice side story, is that Ratan Chada, he is our founder, and he was owning a big fashion brand called Max. He sold it to Liz Claiborne at a 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 line for I don't know how long. They could not even get a bottle of water if they wanted to. So there was all these things like why? So that's where Syt and them 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 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 we see. We also see that safety has become more and more important, especially also for anyone traveling alone, but especially also women. How do you accommodate an environment in which you really feel safe,

but also how do you make sure that you don't get hacked or anything? So all these kind of 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 Spotify. I say, okay, okay, we solve it, we solve it. And that's also how we try to listen to what customers and guests tell us. We have a lot of micro feedback loops to do that. We also have a survey, but what also happens, 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. And 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 all day long, literally all day long, I get Slack messages by people telling me. And what is very interesting is that there's also an immediate follow-up. And this, 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 1. And why do you give a 1 out of 5? That's a negative score. Why is that? Yeah, because the airco is not working. Okay, now the question is,

is the room control not working? Is the device not working? Or is simply your airco 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, I 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, 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 day, but this would make it even better. Right? I don't ever see follow up or a note that says, hey, we addressed that or thank you so much. I never ever do I get anything back from anyone that's like, oh yeah, we heard you feedback and we're incorporating it or thank you at least for taking the time to leave a note. It's actually turned me off to leaving feedback or filling out these forms because I'm like, oh, they don't do anything with it anyway.

They're not going to change anything. It's just going to go to some person's inbox and never get addressed. But it sounds like here, that's really cool that now I know when I send I send this, someone's gonna get a Slack notification and they're gonna deal with it right away. Yeah, yeah. The only thing is, and I recognize what you say, we cannot tell you yet that we are doing something with it. I only can tell that we do something because I am the power of it. I know because I went to Portugal with the family. I think I missed some tea. I wanted to boil some water and I said, well, it was a fantastic stay, but I didn't get that.

And I thought, okay, nevermind. And then I think three or four months later, I got a note in two 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, we decided to as of next summer do it. And I thought, wow, taking it so seriously. And that's why when we think about this kind of feedback, we also want to take that next

step. So that's still on our backlog somewhere. I want to talk a little bit more about AI too. So we talked a lot about digital, which encompasses everything from putting an iPad in the lobby to the backend to the, 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 AI agents. What sort of things are you guys looking at doing?

Is it mostly internal, reducing friction for employees or is there also external AI agents that you're putting together for your guys' customers. What's that look like for you? Yeah, it's interesting that 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 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. That's one thing what we do. The other thing that we do is any question coming to an online federal agent like booking.com or Expedia, that is forwarded to us. We used to have, don't spam us the reaction, online federal agent like booking.com or Expedia that is forwarded to us. We used to have a don't spam us a reaction like no reply message. Thank you for your email.

But please go to booking.com or Expedia. But now we actually answer these questions and the success rate is fantastic. It's like, I think, 95 percent or something. And we have like a four and 1 half out of 5 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 empathic?

Can the tone of a voice be right? And now I find out that it actually is possible. So that I see as 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 to do it right. And then what we also see is 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 note is working.

Or the TV that is not working. Is it a problem with the TV? Or is it a problem with the connection? Or is it a problem with the TV or is it a problem with the connection, or is it a problem with wires or anything? Well, what happens now is that if a customer or a guest, let's say in this case a guest, calls us, then basically the ambassador who picks up the phone needs to identify what is the problem here.

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 apparently I need to bring it to tech and then brings 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. 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 it. And that triaging is now also something that we are doing 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 agents,

that's the first step that we say, hey, it actually works. So now we might also do a few other 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 to talk about a whole new system landscape that needs to connect to a landscape, and then all functionalities that will go

or that will be different. And that's where we also expect AI to do a lot for us. 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 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 some food there for me at the hotel when I get there, whatever it is. Like I'm hoping, dreaming of this AI system that has all those little things for me so I don't have to think about it. How else do you think customer behavior is gonna be changing and how are you guys kind of preparing for that?

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? So I love this question because I've talked to several people about this. And I have friends that they love the way GPT talks to them. They love that it's like their ego is being stroked. 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. 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 talked 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. 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 a citizen brand or any brand that you want to connect to? Yeah. 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, but can also be, I don't know, what your favorite coffee place or

your gym, it starts the moment you, but can also be, I don't know, your favorite coffee place or your gym. It starts the moment you enter the gym. So whose territory is it? I think it's very personal, but I think it's not yet clear. Let's assume that your brand experience starts the moment you talk to your personal assistant. Well, then, if that is a sit-in-em assistant, the empathic part becomes relevant from the moment

you connect with us, because it's a key part of our brand. Let's say half a year or a year ago, I was thinking, yeah, you first need to prove that you can provide a solution, but I'm convinced about that now, especially because of the agentic AI. So yes, that box is be 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 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 backend that allows us to very quickly iterate and like, 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. 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 the next best action for London. 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. I think that that AI savvy-ness on really understanding customer needs, I think that will allow,

that's it's name is a good position to do it. 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. Yeah. Yeah. I think I've heard that from a lot of brands that it's getting close enough. And when I think of tone of voice, I 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 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 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. Does he have it right? Do you, if you then analyze the books of him, do you think that you can identify? He does a really good job. Yeah. Okay. So he is successful. Yeah. He's great. Yeah. He's great. Brilliant. If you like fantasy, I don't know if you do Casper, but I would recommend checking out. I like it. I like it. Yeah. And it's then, uh, because fantasy books typically have a lot of

characters. So then it's also convenient that, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you have to be really thoughtful. And it's usually just the things that are not grammatically correct. So it's easier with fantasy. With brands, obviously, you need to remain in a place where people can understand and read you so that you can't go for these weird grammatical things. But I do think with colors, logo, themes,

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 you 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 is this citizen and brand or whatever brand is is trying to work on that.

I'm very curious how that will go. We are not there yet. 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 the hotel and I keep on coming back on that arrival experience because for me, so important. Basically, we also instruct our 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 read people's needs and that you can just or if you don't know that you check in and if 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 her face, you make a casual joke or anything. That's also why 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, it's something that is in you. So we also don't, if you want to wear earrings or have to do anything, that's fine.

As long as you have the right attitude and the 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 had I love AI, I love to learn about it. But that piece, that is what is the most important part of making you stay. You will never be able to replace that. You can't convince me that you can replace that. I'm not going to talk to a robot about fantasy books. Exactly. No. So yeah, I get that.

Well, well, Casper, what's next for CitizenM 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 what you offer. What else is next? What do you want to tease to our listeners who might become potential CitizenM customers? 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, anything, it's always about that. It's very interesting. It's not about, yeah, it's also some, 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 year 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, 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, it's optimizing whatever needs to be optimized. And the second part is like, yeah, what is it

going to be the growth strategy of citizen M? 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 the AI will actually sit on the core or the back end systems directly.

So all the middle systems, anything that you need, will be gone. And yeah, what that's going to bring, I'm very curious myself as well. 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. 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 over correcting because it's such a from from different leaders that we've talked to it, 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 that it feels like there's more at stake, I guess, with the different connections you're making with your customers. 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 kiosks 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, they're 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 do even today. The benefit of it is that with things like new AI and all these developments, you can also start from scratch. That's still an opportunity.

There, I think, the width of challenges is so enormous. But then when I think about, if you would say more on what does it mean for you as a human, what makes a good experience? And so we are in cities. So let me make it narrow a little bit to that. So we are in big cities. So what do you need actually when you're in a 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 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 airline, yeah, basically,

what do you buy when you buy an airline ticket, an air ticket? Yeah, you buy it going from A to B. That's actually the product. But when you buy a hotel night, an air ticket. 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. 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. It's not the same, but we're walking into the house and they have 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. 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. Yeah, that's so true. We are 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? 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. All right, second question. What is the simplest thing any hotel can do today

to improve their customer experience? The real warm welcome. Just the moment you arrive to say, hey, how are you? I think that is the moment of truth. What's one small touch of luxury you always notice or wish more hotels offered? In our hotel, in our bathroom, we have a shower gel. We have an AM and a PM shower gel.

I find it very luxurious. And one is very stupid. I've never seen that. Wow. That's very stupid. Yeah. 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'll use PM. So that little moment, that is a piece of luxury. Yeah. Now 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. We were working on personalization. What does that mean, personalization? And we found out that it's not 100% accurate. But in general, the way personalization is even being interpreted between Europeans and Americans is very, it's 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 wanted 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 we, it took us a while before we understood it because it's diff, it seems, 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 and PM shower gel. 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 you? 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 get in 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. 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 a tree. And I said, yeah, and he was like a blue collar working guy. And he said, oh, is this what you want? Or 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 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 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 gonna do it. Yeah, that was really touching. And I can still feel it today. So yeah, that was a truly exceptional experience. That's beautiful.

What's the hockey team called? It's Vini, Vidi, Vici, like Julius, Lisa. Yeah, yeah. Casper, thank you so much for your time. I know we're over time a little bit. You got kiddos to go say hi to and take care of. Really quick, where can our audience find you? Where can they engage with CitizenM?

Where can they, I don't know, follow you Casper, maybe LinkedIn? Do you have any place you want to drive our audience to? Yeah, look for Casper Overbake at 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, and Citizendem, yeah, I would recommend to follow it because there is a lot of, yeah, 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 in 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. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Casper. Have a great rest of your day.

Yes, wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.