The Aavgo 360 Platform is one of the company’s newest, most exciting products. Can you explain the product and how it will help businesses? Aavgo360 is a virtual front desk platform that we use to provide dedicated virtual front desk agents for a property. Due to the labor shortages, we have multiple hotels that are now able to keep their lobbies open 24 hours a day and are utilizing our service as their full-time front desk operations. Our service is the same service you receive today, if not better. You can speak with our front desk agents; you can call down from your room and speak with the agent; we do room changes, make reservations, open housekeeping and maintenance tickets, answer questions, we even run Night Audit. We’re able to provide all these services, which allows hotel owners and managers to empower the staff and engage in high-impact activities instead of low revenue-generating transitional tasks. Mrunal, what led you to the technology industry? I started my Journey in technology at Microsoft 16 years back and loved the tech world. I have worked at various companies like eBay, Verizon Business, Ariba, and Macys.com. Prior to getting into tech, I worked in the hotel indus- try for 6+ years, so I’ve seen the inner workings of hotel operations up close. The hotel has traditionally been slow to adopt new technology. So with experience in both worlds, it was perfect for someone like me to do something that bridges hospitality and technology. What are the challenges of being a CEO in the tech industry? Educating an industry that doesn’t have much faith in technology is the toughest challenge I have faced. The hotel
industry gets very excited about the benefits a product can bring, but they are also nervous about tech- nology. Apart from that, integrating and working with legacy systems in hospitality is a big challenge. For example, we’ve seen clients running a PBX that was first introduced in the early 90s. The good news is that most suppliers serving the hotel in- dustry are helping hotel update their legacy systems to current standards, which will help improve the industry as a whole in the coming years.
What are some of the other productsand services Aavgo/Astics has released? The Aavgo360 platform bundles other stand-alone solutions to help digitize hotel processes. For hoteliers, we also offer stand-alone Staff Optimization Software, which consists of Housekeeping, Maintenance, and Communication solution. It helps hotels move away from paper and walkie-talkies to a digital platform that saves costs, increases effi- ciency, and improves employees’ productivity. We also offer APIs to our Mobile Check-in, Digital Keys, and Physical hotel key software. These APIs can be used by any other hospitality company to complete their process. For example, a mobile check-in company can use our digital and physical key software APIs to complete their guest journey. The hospitality sector took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Has the sector rebounded and what is in store for the future? As the whole world had to face the COVID-19 pandemic, globally, we have seen a massive shift in people’s behav-
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