10.15.2024
Leah Rankin, Chief Product Officer at SiteMinder, brings a unique perspective to the world of hotel technology. With over 20 years of experience in product development and engineering across diverse industries, including telecommunications, travel, and technology, Rankin’s journey has taken her from leading global teams at Vodafone and Expedia to heading product and engineering at Nearmap. However, it was her time leading SiteMinder’s customer teams that truly shaped her understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing hoteliers today. This deep understanding of customer needs, combined with her extensive technical expertise, makes Rankin ideally positioned to lead SiteMinder’s product strategy into a new era of innovation and growth.
In this Spotlight Interview, Rankin shares her insights on the evolving landscape of hotel technology, the importance of a mobile-first approach, and SiteMinder’s commitment to making sophisticated revenue management accessible to all hotels. She delves into the company’s “Smart Platform” vision, which aims to empower hoteliers with the tools and insights they need to navigate a rapidly changing market and maximize their revenue potential.
Congrats on your appointment as Chief Product Officer at SiteMinder. What drew you to this role, and what are your key priorities as you lead the product team?
After working in product and tech roles for more than 20 years, I accepted the role of VP Global Customer Onboarding at SiteMinder in 2019 before eventually assuming the role of Chief Customer Officer, responsible for onboarding, customer success and customer support. It was different. Initially, I was unsure about the move, as I thought it was a departure from the product and tech leadership roles I’d normally sat in, but very quickly I realized the synergies. It was still very much about delivering a great customer experience – now from the front line – looking at how that experience can be continually improved, and doing so by building high-performing teams.
This said, when the opportunity arose to move back into product as SiteMinder’s Chief Product Officer, I didn’t hesitate. And, I must say that after being so close to our customers, and having had the chance to really understand their experience from the earliest conversations they’d had with our sales teams all the way through their full customer lifecycle, my prior experience proved hugely valuable. Perhaps it’s a good transition for all CPOs. Everything is about our customer after all.
As far as key priorities go, my approach is very much about finding the balance between delivering new innovative solutions to add even more value for our customers, while ensuring we’re continuously improving their current experience so we have deep product adoption. This is not always easy—delivery capacity is finite—but I do believe, as a product team, this is our responsibility and should be our commitment to our customers.
You have extensive experience in product development and engineering across various industries, including leadership roles at Wotif Group, Community Engine, Vodafone, and Nearmap. How will you leverage this experience to drive innovation and growth at SiteMinder?
My exposure to different industries has always allowed me to take learnings from one and apply them to another. It’s helped me to drive innovation, as I’ve been able to push the boundaries of what might be seen as the norm in a particular industry, but doesn’t have to be. Having worked within the flights business at Wotif Group, for example, has allowed me to see the extent to which the hotel industry lags the airline industry – and therefore the opportunities available to hotels. And, at Nearmap, we were using machine learning on our 3D models years ago – well ahead of the current AI buzz.
What is your vision for the future of SiteMinder’s product offerings, and how do you plan to address the evolving needs of hoteliers in a rapidly changing market?
The environment for hoteliers has increasingly become dynamic and fast-paced. The need for hoteliers to stay on top of market changes is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s non-negotiable. This is true for all hoteliers, whether you’re managing a global chain or a five-bedroom guest house.
It’s also become more critical than ever that hoteliers maximize their revenue opportunities, from making sure they’re attracting the right guest through the right channels, to providing a great stay that can turn into more dollars. What this means for the tech supporting hoteliers is that it needs to be smarter, simpler and more accessible. These principles have always underpinned SiteMinder’s vision for technology and that won’t change. Technology needs to work for the sophisticated hotelier, who may have global teams of people managing revenue and distribution, just as it needs to work for the owner-operator of a bed & breakfast. So, more and more, I’m thinking about how we can deliver great experiences that remove friction for hoteliers and drive more revenue – but also how we do this at pace.
How does SiteMinder’s platform address the challenges that hoteliers face today and empower them to succeed in a competitive market?
It goes without saying that today’s guests are the biggest challenge for hoteliers today. They’ve become increasingly dynamic and unforgiving. They’re seeking more than a room for the night; their expectations are high when it comes to their entire experience. We believe that tech has a big role to play here, but we also see that three of the biggest areas challenging our customers today are distribution, revenue optimization and intelligence. Hoteliers are often unsure which distribution channels are most effective for their property or how to maximize their revenue through quick decisions that respond to market changes. Additionally, every hotel has access to so much data, whether they realize that or not, but that data comes from so many different sources and it’s difficult to not only get those sources to speak with one another, but to make sense of what it’s all saying together.
At SiteMinder, we see distribution, revenue optimization and intelligence converging, and so we look at all three of these challenges together. It’s complex, and it’s what we call our Smart Platform vision, which is about helping hoteliers address these challenges by bringing all of the data together (theirs and market data), producing meaningful insights from that data, and providing one place to execute their distribution and revenue management strategies using the consolidated data available to them. It’s about removing the friction. What excites me about our Smart Platform vision is the commitment we’re making to bring the capability to all hotels – no matter their budget or level of expertise. This commitment stems from our mission to make sophisticated revenue management accessible to every hotel in the world. We believe hoteliers no longer have to be the expert in all things; our platform will serve as the expert hoteliers can trust to get the best revenue outcomes.
SiteMinder recently launched its platform on mobile. What were the key considerations and challenges in developing a mobile-first platform for hotel revenue management?
Statistics show significant growth in mobile use when it comes to the day-to-day operations of a hotel. In fact, for years we’ve provided our all-in-one hotel management system for small hotels as a mobile app, and both adoption and usage remains very high.
Through our broader customer base, we also know that revenue managers are increasingly on the move, needing to work with distributed teams and action things quickly. So, mobile has been a priority for us, and we invest in both enhancing our mobile app as well as ensuring we deliver mobile-responsive experiences across the board. This said, it’s important to us that we look at the mobile experience alongside the desktop experience, as we want to provide optionality for our customers but also let them take a multi-device approach to their work. This requires a lot of customer research and thinking around the user experience to get right, but it’s something we’re heavily invested in.
How has the response been from hoteliers to the mobile app, and what are your plans for future enhancements?
Very positive. As a reflection of the challenges and demands they face every day, our customers love that they can access their data from anywhere and execute their distribution and revenue strategies from anywhere.
SiteMinder recently unveiled Dynamic Revenue Plus, a solution that combines market intelligence with actionable insights. Can you elaborate on the key features and benefits of this product?
At its core, Dynamic Revenue Plus allows hoteliers to see relevant data, review it in context, and act on it. The solution mines data on what’s happening at a hotelier’s property or the market, which could be based on current and historical performance, what that hotelier’s competitors are doing, or the latest event to be announced locally. And, rather than be served up to users as random, isolated bits of information, this data is served up to users as meaningful, real-time insights with context, and these are delivered to a user’s mobile device as alerts and notifications. From there, users can make the decision to apply a strategic change – for example, a stop sell or a change to price – directly from their mobile, to alter their revenue outcome. Effectively, this means they can respond as and when something is happening, to make sure they can be as dynamic as the world around them and can get the best revenue result.
How does Dynamic Revenue Plus differentiate itself from traditional revenue management systems, and why is it particularly beneficial for smaller hotels?
Dynamic Revenue Plus looks at more than just price, which is what a lot of the traditional revenue management systems look at – and are very good at. For this reason, we see the solution as complementary to RMSs, which is why we’re so excited about our deepened partnership with IDeaS. We will be integrating IDeaS into Dynamic Revenue Plus in the new year, so they can provide the pricing recommendations that they excel at while we focus on other strategies for hoteliers to maximize their revenue. If a hotel wants to spin up a promotion to fill rooms where they’re behind fulfillment in the market, Dynamic Revenue Plus can let them do that. If a hotel wants to update content on their direct booking solution to capture more guests via that channel, or if they want to access a new distribution channel that they haven’t previously thought of in order to access guests from a specific market, Dynamic Revenue Plus takes it all into consideration. As mentioned, it’s about making this incredibly powerful capability available to EVERY hotel in the world. We see this as a huge opportunity for any hotelier who doesn’t have the time or expertise to make such decisions and is leaving money on the table today.
What emerging technologies are you most excited about, and how do you see them impacting the future of hotel operations and revenue management?
Obviously the role AI plays in the future is pretty exciting. And, we’re big on AI adding value, not just being incorporated because it’s shiny. We believe AI has immense potential to help us reduce friction for hoteliers, give them more time back and make smarter decisions that can materially impact their success. We’re also interested in how advanced machine learning can improve recommendation algorithms, leveraging the rich data set we have available to us at SiteMinder.
How do you see the role of data and analytics evolving in the hospitality industry, and how is SiteMinder preparing for these changes?
More and more, data is playing a critical role. Every decision a hotelier makes today should be a data-led decision, and they should be learning from data. What worked and what didn’t? How did guests respond? What’s making up the optimal guest experience? All of these questions should be answered by data. But the key is how we can translate the answers in a way that makes sense to hoteliers, and this will require us to think about creative and innovative ways to visualize those answers. No longer do hoteliers need to be data analysts or experienced revenue managers. We’ve entered a new era of hotel revenue management and I am very excited about it.
SiteMinder has a vast network of partners across the hospitality industry. How do these partnerships contribute to the company’s success and enhance the value proposition for your clients?
We are incredibly proud to have the largest and most open ecosystem for hotels. We see the success of our partners as a win win win – a win for them, a win for us and, most importantly, a win for our shared customer. It’s important to us that we offer optionality to hoteliers and to stay competitive, as we simply can’t be all things for all customers. This is why we have always valued our partnerships and this won’t change moving forward. In fact, I see us having even more successful partnerships through deeper integrations as we work collaboratively together to really improve the experience for hoteliers everywhere.
What excites you most about the future of the hospitality industry, and how do you see technology playing a role in its continued evolution?
What’s most interesting to me is how much things have changed and evolved more recently. Spurred on by the fast past of change in the market, we have seen a shift, both with our customers and partners, which has created this amazing opportunity to work with both to build amazing experiences that help drive more guests and ultimately more revenue. And, SiteMinder, through the vast data and large partner ecosystem we have available to us, is uniquely positioned to play a key role in this evolution.