Valuetainment - February 18, 2026


“Hospitality CANNOT Be Replaced” - Ritz-Carlton Founder DRAWS A HARD LINE On Hotel AI Automation

Topics
hospitality cannot be replaced
Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Capella
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Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

150.34

Word count

1,183

Sentence count

135

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Ritz-Garten is one of the most iconic luxury hotels in the world. It was founded in the late 1800s by Alexander Ritzenberger, who was the first person to open a hotel. He was also the first man to introduce the concept of the RitzGarten, and the first hotel to offer Wi-Fi. He is also the founder of Capella Group, a hotel technology company that has become a global leader in the field of AI. In this episode, we talk about how AI is revolutionizing the hospitality industry, and how it can be applied in hotels.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.680 It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart.
00:00:03.880 Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise.
00:00:07.080 Two days only.
00:00:08.180 Tuesday, February 24th and Wednesday, February 25th.
00:00:11.700 Open your PC Optimum app to get your coupon.
00:00:16.640 So how do you differentiate between the speaker that came before you,
00:00:20.640 where he says new, new, new?
00:00:22.440 What principles are evergreen and what principles are changing?
00:00:27.700 What's changing that you have to adapt to?
00:00:29.400 The way it is done changes.
00:00:31.760 The way it is done, and of course, customers' expectations will change.
00:00:36.260 I tell you a funny story on customer expectation.
00:00:39.440 When I opened the first Ritz-Garten, at that time, the first plastic card keys came out,
00:00:45.760 which today is norm.
00:00:48.160 Well, this was nearly unheard of.
00:00:50.860 They called them wing cards at the time.
00:00:52.780 And I said, since this is new, we do that.
00:00:55.400 You were the first.
00:00:56.380 I was very early.
00:00:57.520 This wing card.
00:00:58.840 And it was, it's a good security piece.
00:01:01.280 But our guest checked in and said, you're a luxury hotel.
00:01:03.760 They give me a plastic piece.
00:01:05.580 Wow.
00:01:05.980 So six months later, we changed the locks.
00:01:10.020 Because that was, this silly thing was overwhelming to customer that I would give them a plastic.
00:01:16.240 Wow.
00:01:16.760 So they saw it as cheap, not as a.
00:01:19.340 But wait a minute, three months later, three years later, they said, you're giving me a hard key?
00:01:25.380 That is very dangerous.
00:01:26.420 What if I lose and they come into my room?
00:01:28.420 So we changed locks again.
00:01:30.880 Yes, you have to go with the customer.
00:01:33.020 But on the end, it's how I do it.
00:01:37.960 It's how they feel what I'm doing.
00:01:41.100 In the end, I have to tell them, I care for you.
00:01:43.960 By that action, they don't know that I care.
00:01:46.560 I just responded.
00:01:48.860 But by me saying, friendly, instead of saying, hi, hey.
00:01:54.600 Saying, good morning, sir.
00:01:55.740 How are you today?
00:01:57.560 And tell you with my eyes, I am here for you.
00:01:59.980 I respect you.
00:02:00.980 So, amazing.
00:02:03.320 So the question, here's a question I got for you.
00:02:06.060 You go from keys to card to what is this?
00:02:10.860 I want a key.
00:02:11.900 Back to key.
00:02:12.780 Back to card three years later.
00:02:14.060 Back to the card, yeah.
00:02:14.640 Question for you is, who do you listen to?
00:02:18.280 How do you know the right move is to go back to keys and the right move is to go back to cards?
00:02:22.680 That's it.
00:02:23.160 Is it the complaining customer?
00:02:24.580 Is it majority?
00:02:25.460 Is it employees?
00:02:26.680 What patterns help you make that decision?
00:02:29.480 You don't listen to your mother-in-law.
00:02:32.220 That's a study of one.
00:02:34.960 A complaint is also a study of one.
00:02:37.200 You make customer service thoroughly ongoing.
00:02:41.040 You have to understand what the market wants.
00:02:43.920 It's not the individual.
00:02:45.000 And that's a bad thing companies do, particularly entrepreneur owners, the billionaire owners.
00:02:51.360 His friend tells them, and then he comes and changes it all because my friend told me.
00:02:56.180 That's a study of one that you just don't respond to.
00:02:59.020 You have to understand what the market as a whole wants.
00:03:01.600 How do you do that?
00:03:04.120 By my customer studies.
00:03:06.360 We, of course, it was easy in a hotel.
00:03:09.000 We had a, I had a customer analysis done for, I knew every month in every hotel in the world what the customer satisfaction was,
00:03:20.040 what the employee satisfaction is, what my economics are, and what my future indicators are.
00:03:25.660 That's the only thing I need to know.
00:03:27.280 The rest are delegate.
00:03:29.080 The rest are delegate.
00:03:30.180 But if the customer satisfaction intended to return was not there, we then could dig in why into the various studies.
00:03:40.060 And we analyzed if there are in every hotel the same trend.
00:03:45.200 Got it.
00:03:46.000 So we know what is there.
00:03:47.200 We then tweak constantly.
00:03:48.760 You tweak so that you keep on serving the customer the way the customer wants to be served.
00:03:55.660 Like, what is AI doing right now to the hotel and hospitality business that some people are using that you'll say I'll never do?
00:04:04.940 And what is AI doing to the hospitality business that you love?
00:04:08.720 Well, I'm not there.
00:04:12.360 I mean, I'm generationally cannot quite accept it, AI, yet.
00:04:18.280 Oh, but I'm saying I work with a technical group, and we are leader in the technology that has created for hotels.
00:04:25.540 That's Capella. 0.67
00:04:26.700 No, that is the hotel company.
00:04:28.500 I'm working with a group, KYC, that puts technologies into hotels so we know everything.
00:04:38.600 And we are partially AI.
00:04:40.420 For instance, in AI, I can do everything.
00:04:44.640 But what is happening because of the AI is nearly every brand, larger brand, is becoming a commodity now.
00:04:56.940 It means you check in with your iPhone.
00:05:00.660 That's what you do.
00:05:02.360 You check in.
00:05:03.300 You call the elevator.
00:05:04.380 You go into your room.
00:05:05.280 You check out and so on.
00:05:06.380 That means it is a commodity that offers shelters, sleep.
00:05:15.040 Hospitality cannot be replaced by AI.
00:05:18.040 I still have to have a human being.
00:05:19.740 I would still have, if I was running a hotel, I would do that.
00:05:24.760 But I would have somebody on the front door that says, welcome, and walk to you to the elevator and say, I'm here for you.
00:05:31.060 You respect it here, and not just the AI.
00:05:36.340 But it's driven, of course, the company has to make a three-month report to Wall Street.
00:05:45.420 So I have to have people staying in front door.
00:05:47.260 But that's the end of hospitality.
00:05:49.460 But that's why small hotels who do it will be the leader of excellence.
00:05:54.020 Small hotels?
00:05:55.060 That do it, yeah.
00:05:56.220 Because they're able to control more of it?
00:05:57.800 They will control more of it, and they will be successful because of their hospitality and not just because of shelter.
00:06:05.740 So then scale is harder today the bigger the company is, because you can't maintain customer service.
00:06:10.980 You could if you're willing to spend the money for it.
00:06:13.960 On what?
00:06:14.600 But large companies don't because they're pushed by shareholders to make a little more profit.
00:06:20.420 Who's the bigger company today, like, you know, that you still look at and say, wow, good for them.
00:06:26.720 Big companies still maintaining customer service.
00:06:30.820 Aubergh is pretty big, becoming big, but there's still attention.
00:06:36.880 Rosewood is still paying attention to the customer somewhat.
00:06:40.980 But, you know, you see most big names that you know, and I will not repeat the names, are becoming commodities very fast.
00:06:48.740 Do you, when you sold, when you stepped away from Ritz, what year was that, when you stepped away from Ritz?
00:06:56.700 Well, I have finished my work with Ritz in 2002.
00:07:01.740 2002.
00:07:02.520 Yeah.
00:07:02.900 And you went to Ritz what year?
00:07:07.020 1974.
00:07:08.200 From 74 to 2003.
00:07:10.740 End of 73, yeah.
00:07:12.040 Success is built on how you think.
00:07:16.140 Influence is built on how you show up.
00:07:20.620 Every detail matters.
00:07:23.460 Because presence speaks before you do.
00:07:27.480 This is more than style.
00:07:31.780 The future looks bright.
00:07:33.880 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.
00:07:41.420 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.
00:07:44.200 Thank you.