From Room Reconfiguration to Predictive Guest Preferences — The Future of Travel Just Arrived in Las Vegas
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In this episode of Mission Matters, host Adam Torres interviews Philippe Ziade, Founder & CEO of Otonomus Hotel, about launching the world’s first AI-powered hospitality brand. From predictive guest services to dynamically customizable room layouts, Philippe shares how Otonomus blends 5-star luxury with tech-driven personalization. Recorded live at the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
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About Philippe Ziade
Philippe Ziade is a pioneering entrepreneur who founded over 60 companies within two decades, redefining industries through advanced technology and forward-thinking leadership. As the Founder and Chairman of Growth Holdings, Philippe has built a diverse portfolio spanning real estate, hospitality, technology, and more, creating impactful solutions that stand the test of time.
Recognized as a visionary leader, Philippe’s achievements include developing the world’s first AI-powered community (LIVV Homes) and leading the charge in creating innovative hospitality concepts (Otonomus). His ability to identify opportunities and execute bold ideas has set him apart as a leader in his field.
About Otonomus Hotel
Revolutionizing Hospitality with AI: Developed Otonomus Hotel, the world’s first AI-driven hotel, offering guests unparalleled personalization and convenience through advanced technology.
Redefining Guest Experience: Introduced interconnected floors and attribute-based booking, transforming the traditional hotel experience and empowering guests to customize their stay.
Enhancing Convenience and Service: Integrated cutting-edge technology like E-Butler, O Locker, and O View to provide seamless and intuitive service, setting a new standard for hospitality innovation.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I wanna welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I’m at the Newport Beach Investor Conference, and let me tell you, there’s investors here.
There’s accredit investors here, there’s businesses, there’s a pitch competition going on a whole lot, and my, my guest here today is Philippe Philippe. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Alright, so what brings you out to the conference today? Uh, you know, we are, we have a new concept. We are, uh, raising money.
We are, uh, now in the raising money spirit and we, we have an expansion plan. Mm-hmm. So, uh, we are here to, uh, mingle with investors, uh, yeah. To see if we can find the right money for us. Uh, not any money. We just want the right money. Mm-hmm. The smart money to understand what we’re doing and, uh, believe in us and sign on board and we’ll go grow together.
Now autonomous hotel. That’s the name of the brand, right? Yes. How’d you come up with the concept? Uh, the concept, uh, is through the years, through challenges facing challenges, overcoming challenges. One after the other came up, the concept came together. Mm. It’s basically an AI powered hotel. It’s the first AI powered hotel in the world.
AI powered hotel. Yes. This is, I love, this is why I like doing this job right here. Come on. Like, so when you say AI powered, what does that mean? Let me gimme, gimme some, let me look under the hood. That, that means like really personalization at a level. Yeah. That wasn’t possible before, before ai. Uh mm-hmm.
This is, was absolutely impossible because. You need the collective brain. We call it the old brain. Yeah. Uh, where every aspect of that journey speaks to the same brain from booking engines to operation to FMB, uh, to housekeeping. Uh, they speak to one brain and that brain takes all the information about the guest, and then we start adapting to the guest and we start tailoring a special.
Is if you want experience of course, and, and special, uh, program for the guest. Mm-hmm. That’s based on their likes, dislikes, behaviors, habits. Mm. And stuff like that. So really the idea is to give the, uh, luxurious level service like a five star hotel. Uh, blended with flexibility and affordability that you’ve, you’ll find on Airbnb.
Hmm. Now your background. Now there, there’s multiple concepts here, right? There’s the finance side, there is the, uh, there’s the, um, obviously the tech side of it, right? The AI part of, then there’s the hospitality side. Absolutely. What was your background in original interest? Uh, I’m originally a mechanical engineer.
Mm-hmm. Uh, and I, uh, became a real estate developer. Mm-hmm. Uh, very, very, uh, uh, experienced in development, real estate construction. And then in 2008 when, uh, with Distress Market. Oh yeah. We, we got into, we were the biggest, one of the biggest in the countries. We were ranked 13 by the Wall Street Journal, and then we were the biggest in the state of Nevada.
That’s where I’m from. Uh. As we were doing all of that operation, uh, I faced a lot of challenges. I got into technology to streamline my, uh, operation at the time, so I like streamlined looking for efficiencies. Yes. Were you look for like, you were just another No. Efficiency. We, we hired a company to do the job.
They couldn’t do it. Then I had a, my brokers told, told me, Felipe, I can code. Get me two guys to go with me. We can do it. No way, way that, that’s how I started and I got fascinated with tech, what tech can do to real estate. Uh, fast forward, uh, we got into Airbnbs. Now I have into tech and I understand real estate, and I start seeing the challenges with Airbnb.
Like the zoning challenges. People are against you. Yeah. Yeah. You have the variety of the product, but the downside of Airbnb is always consistency in the guest experience because every time you go and stay at a place, you don’t know if you’re gonna, sometimes you have a great experience, but a lot of times you don’t and, uh, you don’t know what to expect.
Yeah. But, but what you do is you get a variety of product at the right price. You, you feel like you got mm-hmm. You know, value for your money enough, better than a hotel. Right. So the hotel gives you the opposite. The hotel gives you consistency mm-hmm. Depending on the brand, you know what to expect from that brand.
Sure. Uh, but the downside of the hotel is you only get, uh, uh, uh, one room, right? Yeah. Yeah. The studio of course. And everything other than the studio becomes too expensive and, and it’s limited anyway. Mm-hmm. So you don’t have that flexibility and, and you don’t have that price that you want, especially if you’re traveling more than two and you need more than one bedroom.
So what, what the hotel is, is really, the entire floor is interconnected. Mm. And then we created an AI powered booking engine. So instead of giving you like typical hotel, three, four room types to choose from. Yeah. We tell you, you puzzle, you, you tell us what you want and we’ll puzzle it on the fly for you.
Mm. So you can tell us you want a studio, one bedroom, two bedroom, six bedroom penthouse. Yeah. The eye will puzzle it together. The, the, oh, come on. It’ll open and close. How cool is that? We’ll open and close doors. Based on your booking. So it literally is configuring it differently without human interaction.
So we developed the software and the hard hardware to open and close all of that. So you really, you, you, we call it an attribute based booking. Mm-hmm. You just book based on the attribute, starting from the physical space like. You, you really design your room. Mm-hmm. Tell us what you want. One bedroom, two bedroom penthouse, six bedrooms.
Yeah. We’ll puzzle it for you. Wow. So, so that’s the start of, and you said that part is without human interaction? No. Human interaction is, is amazing. Is through the software and the hardware. Hardware we develop. Yes. And then the ai, see what the AI does. It takes your attributes. Let’s say you want a three bedrooms.
Yeah. You want a room away from noise. Mm-hmm. You want to clean no cleaning or you want to clean every other day. Depends, whatever you pick. Yeah. It would affect your price. Like when you custom tailor what you want. Oh, so it even may. So then to take that a step further, if you’re, you say no cleaning and you’re going for three days, would there be maybe a little bit of a break?
’cause it’s less than that? Absolutely. And then you’re, so you don’t have a room cleaning. And then if you want, oh, that’s so cool. You can always add it if you’re there. Yeah. You just say, you tell your virtual assistant, I want, I want a room cleaning. You’re like, it’s only by appointment. Change my mind. No one’s gonna knock on your door at, at eight, 9:00 AM and wake you up.
Which is so annoying. Yeah, and, and you know what’s worse than that is when you tell him to come back in 15, 15 minutes or 30 minutes and youre still not ready. Like I’m stressing. That never happens to me. Never. I never know. Right. I, I trust, like, I’m like, why did I tell him 30 minutes? I, I, I should have told him an hour.
Why didn anything should, and, and then 30 minutes they knock again. And now you’re more frustrated. But, oh my gosh. But with us, you know, it’s only by appointment. Uh, your virtual assistant is always there, and, uh, if you didn’t book it originally, you can, you can still add it and then pay for it. Mm. That’s amazing.
And also, and since this is just the AI learns you, let’s just say, I don’t know, I’ll throw it in a use case, A case example out there, maybe you travel, normally you have maybe a couple kids and you’re like, oh, normally you’re with the kids, but this time you’re not going to be with the kids. So then it’s a different configuration, possibly.
Like you may want something completely different than Absolutely. You would be on a family trip versus a, you know, just a trip with the wife or the girlfriend. Absolutely. There’s so many layers. If I want to talk to you about the layers we have, we’ll sit here till tomorrow. But I can tell you, gimme another layer.
I want another layer. This is cool. Okay, so once, once you book. Your, your, your, your custom tailored room. Sure. The way you want it. Once you Yeah, my bespoke room. Come on. So once the suit is on, the room is ready at the price of an Airbnb. Huh? Come on. That’s what’s crazy. That’s what’s crazy. So once you book your room, then AI will go and scrape the web.
Mm. About every public information on you, every post, every comment. Mm. Pictures. We analyze picture, and we understand from the picture if you’re a cigar guy or, or, or you know, like scotch guy or, or wine guy. Yeah. So it does all of that. Brings all the information. Geez. And then at the same time, AI will will reach out to the guest in a gamified approach, play game with you, start playing cool questions, and then.
And then every time you, the AI feels you’re slowing down, it gives you like free perks. Like, Hey, you got a free upgrade. You’re two questions away from a free drink at the bar. Or like, dang. Yeah. So it keeps you going to, to really know more about you. Are you a coffee guy, a morning guy? Are you like a vegetarian?
Right. So we, so AI will get both of these approaches and take all the data and then we correlate the data mm-hmm. And compute the data and gives us an output and tell us. You are gonna stay with us for three days. Yeah. And here’s what you like. Mm. And, and then it predicts that you’re gonna be spending a thousand dollars.
It tells us. Yeah. And then here’s how he’s gonna spend a thousand dollars. He is gonna have the wine. He is gonna have this, he’s gonna have that. You can upsell him on this. Yeah. So what we do out of this is two things. Is, is one is we increase. Uh, spend your satisfaction. Yeah. No, no guest satisfaction. The spend of meat.
Why we monetize you more. Right. So that’s when you monetize people when they’re happy. That’s what I mean. I already know. So, so, so that’s, they get you no matter what. They get you, they get you with the service. They’re, and you’re. Gonna get, we’re going to Vegas, so we expect to get gotten, we open July 1st, so we wanna, but at least we’ll be happy.
Advantage of you if you’d like to call me. Stay. See what I mean? I told you they get, you start with the interview now. They’re like, and I started by handing the wife a poker chip. You can’t see her. She’s on the other side of the camera. They still got me. That’s only the beginning. That is only the beginning.
So the more you stay with us, the more we get you. Wow. I’m just joking. The more we No, it’s ’cause you’re happy though, the more we adapt to you ab Absolutely. And the interesting part about that though, in all sincerity is that like how many times everybody watched this has gone somewhere and spent some money went to, so it was a suboptimal like experience and you’re like, why did I do that?
So if I can go to a place and I know I’m gonna. Feel good, I’m happy to just go back to that place and be like’s, have another experience. Absolutely. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna venture and just guess and waste my money like I’m in, you know? I’m gonna ask you personally, right? Yeah. I go, I go always to two or three places, restaurants, you know why I go there?
Because they know me by my name. Yeah. Yeah. And when I come in, I don’t even have to order. Yeah. They know what I eat. They know my salad. They know this. Yeah. Just the fact that they know you and the fact that you don’t have to, it feels good. It feels good. Yeah. Like you just want to go and you’ll spend more money.
Yeah. And that’s the idea of what we are creating here. So. In a, in a typical hotel, you go stay one year. If you go a year later, one time a year, you go a year later. They don’t even know who you are. They know anything about you. Yeah. You have to be a real freaking gas, a certain level. You have to go at least like they to start knowing you.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So with us, you stay one time, we know everything about you. Yeah. And next time, the more you stay with us, the more we, we get to know you. So, so I told you I’m onboarding, right? So one, you come stay, we track everything during your state, the room temperature in the room. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lighting in the room. Yeah. We know what time you woke up, how you took your coffee. How many times you took a coffee? What did you order by the pool? What did you order when you were in the lobby? Wow, what did you order as a room service? We know all of this. And then when you check out, the AI will capture the gap between what your avatar, we call it, your digital avatar, predicted you’re gonna do and what you actually did.
Wow. It capture that gap. And then it starts a new gamified approach with you to understand why. So what happened, why you didn’t spend as much as the AI predicted you’re gonna spend. Ah. And so the more you stay with us, we align your avatar with your actual stay. We take advantage of you. Of course, of course, of course.
It’s good. So, so you’re happier. Yeah. And therefore we make more money. Mm. What about the entertainment side of things? Like, I know you said there’s a gamified post where they’re asking questions and things, but you’re talking Vegas, so shows tastes. Like concierge style, like, like pushing me things to go do, like Absolutely.
I figure thats in, in our first hotel, we don’t have gaming. Yep. Uh, we have four restaurants. We have a rooftop bar, we have two pools. We have a lifestyle, right? Yeah. We have music. We have a beautiful courtyard where we are gonna have pop-ups of different, uh, events, cultures, uh, type of food, stuff like that.
Uh, we have, uh, 300 apartments, 550 rooms, and we can sleep 1100 people. Wow. That’s amazing. That’s great. Yeah. What a story. Very excited. This is very exciting. I gotta go do a video or something and show these, these, this movement and this mod, these modular things and how the Absolutely. The avatar I’m in.
It’s cool. You are my guest. Where’s it located though? I’m not gonna take advantage of you the first time. It’s Las Vegas. I know. ’cause I’m, I’m easy. I don’t, I travel. I go to Vegas and do shows maybe five times to 10 times a year. So I already know, like I’m, I’m booked in Vegas pretty awfully, so we’re waiting for you.
Um, that being said though, um, you said July, what, what July 1st we opened July 1st we opened, uh, and that’s 2025. So we’re talking No, in two weeks. Oh, in two weeks. So we’re 20, 25, 2 weeks. I just mean, ’cause this is gonna come out in the next five business days or something, so I want people to know that it, it should be opened when this is out.
Absolutely. Um, so July 1st is the grand opening, and then for the, um, location, like streets, where, where’s it at? In Vegas. Uh, it’s, uh, it’s one block off of the Raider Stadium. Oh. It’s like on Wow. So great location. Decatur and Russell. Yeah. Yeah. So, so we really want to capture the nb, the Airbnb. Yeah. Uh, uh, kind of like guess, right?
Oh, for sure. Because you, you cannot find anywhere closer to the strip. We don’t wanna be on the strip because that changed the entire price point. For sure. So we wanna be closer and we wanna wrap around the strip. So we have the second one. We’re starting in, in 60 days. Mm. It’s gonna be in the art district, uh, in Vegas.
Yeah. So it goes, we, we gonna wrap around the strip in Vegas. Wow. And we opened the first one in Tulum, Mexico, December. Wow. And we are already, uh, ranked by Expedia Top 10. We are number six. Oh, come on man. Yeah. Over a lot of, uh, older, bigger brands. So we are, we’re really excited. People are loving the product.
Mm-hmm. Uh, and then we are gonna expand nationally and globally. Amazing. Hopefully. Last thing I want you to do, look into the camera. If people wanna follow up, if they wanna stay at the, at autonomous, how do they do that? Uh, all, all social media platform or we can, you can go to autonomous hotel.com. Uh, you can reach out to us and tell ’em that you met me, Philippe Yare, the CEO, and I gave you a special deal.
You come in July and your stay is on me. Fantastic. For everybody watching, just so you know. Um, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes and you can feel free to head right on over. Book your stay. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Philippe, man, thank you so much again for coming on this. I appreciate you. Thank you. My pleasure.
Thank you so much.
