How independents are finding the right tech faster

Your hospitality tech matchmaker, Jasmine Seliga, is the founder and CEO of Affixify—a software company that cuts through the sales fluff to pair your property with its true software soulmate. She connects hoteliers with solutions that actually work—minus the 17 demos and the "just checking in" emails. 

Here, she shares how hospitality tech found her and how she helps hotels ditch the noise to build a tech stack that actually works.

—Interview by Jennifer Glatt, edited by Lesley McKenzie

What led you into tech, and what ultimately inspired you to start Affixify?

I always had a dream of being in the medical sales/equipment sales space and when I was in my senior year of business school, I couldn’t believe how every door was closing for me to pursue that career. My dad called me one day and said, "You're graduating in two months and I found you an internship." In my young 20s pride, I told him I didn't want an internship, to which he replied, "I don't see that you have any other options?"

 Now, I will never be able to thank him enough! He introduced me to a man by the name of Don Hay, who was the CEO of Digital Alchemy, a CRM/email marketing company that serviced independent hotels and resorts worldwide. I started two days after graduation and went from intern to VP of sales over the course of seven years. I couldn’t have imagined this path, but I will always be so grateful for it.

The experience I gained there showed me how challenging it is for hoteliers to find the right technology. After we sold Digital Alchemy to Travel Click and, ultimately, to Amadeus, I started my next act as a consultant. Through that, I realized it was time to bring the solution to the tech selection problem, and alongside Stephanie Trussell, who is my fellow founder and our COO, Affixify was born. 

How does Affixify ensure that its matching process accounts for a hotel’s brand personality—not just operational needs—when pairing them with vendors or talent?

Affixify is fully data-driven on the operational side, which is where our algorithm shines. But we also layer in a human-fit component. Every vendor can review each match, property type, location and overall potential before accepting the connection. From there, we personally introduce both sides to ensure communication starts smoothly. That intro usually leads to a meeting where personality and working style come through. In short, we make the strongest, most qualified matches possible and then let partners decide if the chemistry is right. 

What have you learned about the biggest operational or staffing constraints independents face, and how does Affixify reduce that friction?

Independents often face two major constraints:

Limited time and bandwidth. GMs and owners wear 12 hats. They don’t have the capacity to manually research, vet, compare and negotiate every partner or piece of technology.
Lack of internal specialization. Most independents can’t always justify a full staff of specialists like IT, revenue, marketing, digital, procurement…so gaps are filled by whoever can take it on.

We reduce that friction and give clarity to hoteliers in five minutes. We do this by: 

• Automating the discovery process through our vendor vetting process. Every vendor found on Affixify has been pre-vetted through a rigorous process we call validation. This means we go through hours of demos with every vendor before allowing them on our site.
• Providing a shortlist of partners who are already aligned with their needs using our algorithm and allowing the ability to compare them using our comparison dashboard.
• Saving thousands in the technology research process  (some have told us we are saving up to $7,000 per tech research process when compared to hiring a firm to do so).

This means operators can finally move fast without sacrificing quality.

Which current tech trends do you see having the biggest impact on the industry?

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention AI. We know that everyone is curious about it, and I think the ways AI is going to help operations are going to have a major impact. However, exactly how (in my opinion) is yet to be seen. People are curious, but I’m not sure adoption and adaptation have happened in hospitality just yet. 

Frankly, I also think that as systems get smarter, have more integrations, play well with others and make it less complicated for the hotelier, we will also feel those impacts.

What tools or technologies are people gravitating toward right now, and what’s driving that interest?

We really see it all. Our top searched tool is PMS, but we have a pipeline of many hotels searching for CRM/CDP for example. Lots of interest right now in ancillary revenue drivers as well. But truly, each need is different. That is what makes this so fun!

Interview has been edited for brevity.

(Image courtesy Jasmine Seliga)

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Mint Pillow is curated and written by Jennifer Glatt and edited by Lesley McKenzie.