Director of Digital QA on mobile’s role in guest services
Pamela Thomas: My name is Pamela Thomas. I am the Director of Digital Global Quality Assurance at Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide.
Interviewer: Are you seeing any transformation in your industry?
Pamela Thomas: Transformation at Starwood has always been integral. When we look at our industry, there are many drivers that we see. Our guests have very high expectations about how they interact with us, and so service is key. How do we improve that? How do we use the technology that we have available to us in order to better service our guests? We have done keyless entry, which was the first in our industry. Others are now trying that. But I am sure that as more becomes available within the industry, as far as technology is concerned, that our leadership will think about not just rolling out keyless but wearables. That’s becoming pretty important to customers. How do we use our leverage wearables in order to provide service?
Interviewer: How are you connected to Apexon?
Pamela Thomas: Over the years we have built a very strong partnership with Apexon, where we have looked to them to partner with us in thought leadership around quality, for mobility. Around what’s coming next and how we plan for proactively anticipate to ensure that we can indeed support our business.
Interviewer: Benefits of working with Apexon
Pamela Thomas: So we’ve seen many benefits from our Apexon engagement. We have actually been able to leverage their connections. Whether that is their connection with other partners bringing tools to the table that we can use at significant cost reductions. Simply their expertise, Apexon is an expert in the field of mobility and this is something that Starwood actually needed in order to deliver on the very ambitious goals that we have.