Key takeaways
Coming out of “The Great Reset,” the hospitality industry must deliver a more personalized guest experience.
Robots and automation are here, embrace the silver lining.
Writing on paper tickets is a thing of the past.
Vaughn Davis has a clear vision for the future of hospitality, and we should all get behind it.
A blog by Derek Pacqué
In a recent conversation, I sat down with Vaughn Davis, the charismatic CEO steering the ship at Relevant Hospitality. If you’re unfamiliar with the man, he’s a trendsetter worth your attention. Not only does he have a clear vision for the future of hotel hospitality, but he’s already living it inside the sun-kissed walls of the Dream Hotel in Hollywood, California. Our conversation covers Mr. Davis's early years in Guyana, why we shouldn’t be afraid of robots or automation, the importance of music to guests, embracing NFTs, the death of paper, and the unveiling of the new Social Club. Vaughn’s approach to modern hospitality mirrors his eclectic style – it’s about crafting guest experiences that resonate on a personal level. He draws a fascinating parallel between hospitality and healthcare, suggesting that both, in their essence, are about healing, albeit through different modalities. This philosophy underpins his every initiative, transforming the often overlooked mundane moments we all find ourselves in while staying at a hotel and reimagining them into something refreshing.
As we delve into the nuts and bolts of running a high-profile Los Angeles hotel, Vaughn unveils his vision of weaving technology into luxury hospitality. Robots delivering toiletries, guests texting the front deck, or valeting a car without receiving a ticket might sound like science fiction. However, in Vaughn’s world, they are simply the next logical step in elevating the hotel experience.
As you’ll see, Vaughn has a way of rubbing off on you. He puts a sparkle in your eye and challenges us to dream bigger. So, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Vaughn Davis.
Suiting up for the future: Inside the mind of Vaughn Davis, where fashion meets tomorrow’s hospitality
Derek Pacqué
It's always good to see you, Vaughn. Let's talk suits to start. How do I get on your suit level? Every time I see you, you are in another stylish fitted suit.
Vaughn Davis
You don't need to get on my level. You're on your own level. Anytime you want to go suit shopping, man, I'm always down. I’ll show you the hot spots around Los Angeles.
Derek Pacqué
I might have to take you up on that!
So, what’s your origin story? How did the man behind these killer suits arrive at Dream Hollywood?
Vaughn Davis
I was born in South America. I was born in Guyana. I moved to this country (United States) when I was eight. Totally a product of South America.
Derek Pacqué
I did not know that about you! I learn something new every time we talk.
One of the reasons I wanted to do this interview is to learn how you brought elements of your life and your ideology into the Dream Hotel in Hollywood.
Vaughn Davis
I've always had a knack for hospitality. When I was younger and people came to visit the house, I offered them water, made sure they were comfortable and offered them tea or something to eat. It was just something I did since I was a young kid. So I guess it all tied in when I had the opportunity to open the Gansburg Park Avenue. I started there as a bellman manager in training whilst I was still modeling and acting. It was an eye-opening experience for me because there's no better gratification than making people smile, right?
I have this hospitality approach, which is similar to the healthcare industry. Hospitals heal people with different methods and in hospitality,
we heal people with different methods.
You might be going through a very challenging time in your life and so you go and stay at a hotel. The service, the experience, the the entire guest journey should be curated to the point of healing that person, right? That's always been my approach. Connecting with every single person that walks in and out of the lobby. I want to know what people want before they even open their mouth to ask you for it. And I think that's another level of elevated service that really attracted me to the industry.
“Hospitals heal people with different methods, and in hospitality, we heal people with different methods.”
What led to me loving the hotel industry so much was learning from the greats within the industry. I learned from everyone in every position in the hotel. Over time, I realized we're still doing the same stuff we had been doing for decades! And I said, “Okay, let's see what we can do to innovate and move the industry forward to this new frontier with all this tech that was laden throughout our everyday lives.”
I started reimagining the guest experience from the ground up. I saw a disconnect between the technology we all enjoy in our daily lives and the lack of tech in the hotel experience and decided to fix that. I also redesigned our standard operating procedures to just deliver exceptional, over-the-top service without it feeling phony.
Derek Pacqué
It sounds so simple when you state it like that, but nobody in the hotel industry was doing tech-forward hospitality like this at the time. In fact, when you and I had started communicating via email and phone, you insisted that on my next business trip to LA, I stay at Dream Hollywood to experience the hotel, which I did.
I remember arriving, slightly bewildered at first, as the openness of the entrance was indistinguishable from the vibrant social gathering of a bar. It was a lively scene, not the quiet, library-like vibes you often encounter in a hotel lobby! I also recognized a few celebrities in the lobby, which was insane.
You, of course, welcomed me immediately and helped me check-in. As several other guests and I were waiting on the elevator, a unique experience caught our attention: a robot boarded the elevator along with us! We collectively giggled and got to know each other as we watched it get off one of the floors and disappear down the hallway. So, by the time I had reached my room, there were countless innovative feel-good moments like this that I had witnessed. All I could think about was how I had forgotten all about my exhausting trip from the airport and how I was now in a seamless integration of futuristism from your team's forward-thinking approach to hospitality.
You were so right! I had to visit and experience the difference of Dream Hollywood for myself. How do you create a refreshing hospitality experience like that, from walking in the lobby to tossing to reaching your room?
Vaughn Davis
We subscribe to “experience-driven hospitality” as a brand. We've been focused on that since the inception of Dream Hollywood. And you know, for us specifically, we understand human psychology and psychographics and life sciences and neuroscience, and anything we do comes from a place that's rooted in science.
Also, think back to the pandemic experience we all had, right? You had about two years of being a part of a captive audience in your home during the pandemic, where you were consuming streaming services and just content all the time on your mobile devices, on your television, on your video game console, and on your VR headset. You were stuck at home during a pandemic, and all you had were these unique experiences catered to you because you chose to engage with those experiences.
So what our team at Dream said internally was that coming out of this pandemic, you're going to see a completely new psychographic of all of our guests because they had that experience for two years. Moving forward, they're going to want just remarkable experiences outside of their homes.
We said, “Okay, all of our venues, our hotels, everywhere has to be a programmable moment for our guests to deliver an amplified experience that wasn't similar to what they experienced before. As Klaus Schwab put it, it was “the great reset,” right? Then, understanding the fourth industrial revolution and heading into the fifth industrial revolution, now with artificial intelligence, we wanted to make sure that we were primed.
Derek Pacqué
This is what excites me about our conversations, Vaughn. The context and level of thought behind your vision are kind of infectious. I bet you and your team have even thought far beyond the next few years, haven’t you?
Vaughn Davis
Oh yeah! We joke about being the first hotel management company or first hotel brand to partake in Project Artemis, NASA’s project to have humans living long-term on the moon. That's something we joke about, but we're kind of serious too! If Elon wants to go to Mars, there's no better team then. Who knows hospitality better than the best hotels on earth? Who's going to run it? I don't know… (Vaughn laughs) But I think I know someone… (pointing at himself).
Creating a hotel Pop-up for Coachella
Derek Pacqué
Okay, okay. We're seeing deep into the future with Vaughn Davis here, folks.
Vaughn Davis
Yeah, that's how we approach it, and that's why we build what we build.
I'll give you another example of how we think of the future of hospitality: We had a pop-up in Coachella for the first time.
We did a glamping pop-up hotel for weekend one of Coachella, and what we did there was just a decentralized version of what we have here at Dream Hollywood. So we took all of our partnerships, all of our brands, we spread it out all over the campgrounds. We took these space-aged dwellings with air conditioning, lighting, and all this fun stuff, right? We built out a decentralized hotel in a date palm farm just outside of Coachella and just programmed the daylights out of it. People raved about it.
Derek Pacqué
Of course.
Vaughn Davis
Yeah, and this goes back to what we were talking about a minute ago, which is this cyclical environment of just experiences, constantly creating new experiences for our guests to enjoy. So, anytime you book a stay at our hotel, you should never have the same experience twice. You should feel like it's new every time you come to the hotel.
Music’s role in hospitality
Derek Pacqué
How does your team think about something as overlooked as music in a hotel?
Vaughn Davis
Yeah, man, we had to reinvent the way we experience music in hospitality as well.
Being a bell captain, a bellman, a manager in training, or a guest service manager, you're constantly hearing the same music every day, right? When you're standing in the lobby, your experience as an employee is pretty mundane. The average hotel employee is thinking, “Please let something fun happen today!”
So, if we feel that way as employees, how do the guests feel?
I don't know anyone who wants to do the same thing for their entire life, get the same experience over and over and over. People don't travel for the same basic experience, man! They wanna get away from their family and actually go on a trip and enjoy themselves and see something new, feel something new. They wanna get away for an anniversary, feel something new, do something new. It's their birthday – whatever it is.
Derek Pacqué
And is music a part of that ever-evolving experience you create? Because I heard a lot of great music during my stay.
Vaughn Davis
Yeah, we audit the guest journey quite often in the service culture. We don't rest on our laurels. We're always looking at ways to improve the guest journey or, as we tech folks call it, the UX, right?
So, it's the five senses of the guest experience. And one of the big ones, I think, the main driver of the entire experience is music. Sound would be one of the reasons you see the energy shifting throughout our hotels as you venture through different areas. We work very closely with a company called Gray V, and we gave them specific beats-per-minute mandates and different frequency requests on the music. We even changed it for major cultural events, so if it's African American History Month, only African American artists and their music will be played in our hotel. And we do that all throughout the year.
Maybe level three and then raise them to six later on in the day and raise them even higher. The beats per minute also change throughout the day, as I mentioned before. The type of music, the kind of energy we want you to feel, we project that through music. So that's why you felt that way. That's all by design. Everything's by design.
Derek Pacqué
Now, thinking about it, I realize that was happening. I wasn't even noticing, but it was definitely keeping it exciting. So these little things, I guess, that your team thinks of, now that you kind of explain how you approach it, it makes so much sense. Very interesting.
What is Vaughn doing? People are following and trying to understand how you’re achieving what you're doing. How do you execute them at the pace, you know, to keep up and to just constantly be at the forefront? What are some tips and tricks for people looking to make a change to innovate and make an idea happen that you could give as advice?
Vaughn Davis
Yeah, I mean, we all get ideas, hopefully. And it's just a matter of doing your underwriting on that idea. Do your due diligence on that idea, right? Is this feasible? And how can you deploy and execute? So before any of these ideas materialize in reality, we as a team sit down and discuss them in depth. We look into different challenges that might come from this idea or ways that we can amplify the guest experience from this idea or generate revenue from this idea. How does it tie into other initiatives that we have, other verticals? How does it drive more group business, corporate negotiated business, or more leisure business? I mean, we look into this thing very deeply, and the team helped me get a whiteboard because they're probably tired of me blowing their phones up every day with different ideas.
Derek Pacqué
Haha! We're gonna write them all down on the whiteboard now.
Vaughn Davis
Without my team, none of this stuff is a possibility.
Derek Pacqué
Same. Yeah, I get that.
Vaughn Davis
That's kind of, just to give you an example, some insight into how things happen here at the hotel. I mean, the same for the robots. You have to build out the framework; you have to go back to first principles. The same thing goes for the Crypt Gallery and the NFT Gallery. Back to first principles, right? What does the standard operating procedure look like for this?
Once it's all refined and built out, then we deploy. And there are times when we have ideas that we love, but it's not the right season to deploy, so we put it on the back burner.
Derek Pacqué
I was intrigued by the concept of progressing from the basic MVP to a comprehensive 12-step vision for the future. As someone with a knack for envisioning and executing ideas, I found our conversation enlightening. Initially, I approached you with a simple idea for the hotel industry: replacing physical claim tickets with a digital solution. Why not associate guests with their belongings directly, enabling a seamless drop-and-go process?
You expanded on this by suggesting a more integrated approach. For instance, guests could simply enter their name and phone number, receive a text, and then walk away. You proposed linking this system to reservations, streamlining the process even further. With just a few taps, hotel staff could locate a guest, process their request, and expedite their experience.
Your insights went beyond just updating luggage storage or valet ticketing systems. You helped me see the broader potential: a holistic guest journey if you will. From storing luggage to checking in a valet car, you envisioned a connected experience. Picking up luggage could automatically signal to prepare a guest's car. You were thinking several steps ahead, piecing together the entire guest experience.
Your vision has been instrumental in our development process, and your team's ideas have been invaluable, particularly for our next project, the Social Club. I'm eager to hear your thoughts on how you foresaw all of this coming together.
Vaughn Davis
Yeah, my experience has given me insight into new software, hardware, and whatever it is that you're adding to these hotels. And what generally happens is, a hotel adopts some new software, the operators take it, they use it, they like parts of it, it doesn’t do one thing they want, so they cancel their subscription – “we're done.”
That’s a big no-no! Why are all of these hotels doing this? If you like the idea or function of software, why don't you help them develop the idea further and allow it to be one with your hotel ecosystem?
Derek Pacqué
I 100% agree! Your team’s feedback has definitely helped shape our ticketless luggage and valet system over the years. Our engineering team has designed some incredible new features this year. We’re extremely proud of what we’ve built, and the team has some really big additions coming down the pipeline. And it’s all from our client’s feedback. We work hard to keep the communication going between our engineering team and our clients.
Vaughn Davis
Yes. I see that. Your team is doing amazing things. I love the way you’ve revolutionized the luggage tags and replaced them with reusable tags. I want nothing to do with paper. If you still need to write on paper, we need to have a discussion.
“Hi! Welcome… What’s your first name? What's your last name? What's your room number? How many bags are you checking?”
Then, after you write all that down, you have to write it all over again on the other ticket, break it off, give it to someone, take the stickers, wrap them – guys, we're in the year 2023! I'm sorry! That is unacceptable! The bellmen's process of writing out all this stuff on paper luggage tickets needed to be eliminated.
Now, with Chexology, that’s all out of the way, and our bellmen can connect with the guest – and focus on how the guest is doing.
“I love the way you’ve revolutionized the luggage tags and replaced them with reusable tags. I want nothing to do with paper. If you still need to write on paper, we need to have a discussion.”
Derek Pacqué
And now we’re everywhere! No more paper luggage tickets and no more paper valet tickets! Just a better guest experience that seamlessly integrates into the hotel’s hospitality experience.
So now that paperless hospitality is here – the future has arrived, so to speak, let’s think out of the box. What do you want to see next for Chexology? What will the future look like five or ten years down the road? What should we be doing?
Vaughn Davis
I'm waiting for AR (augmented reality). We're getting closer to a future in which AR can be adopted in hospitality, and when it happens, it'll be a game changer.
Derek Pacqué
I agree. Imagine just looking at someone's luggage or their car, and a screen pops up in your glasses that displays their name, reservation, and preferences, and you know everything about the guest.
Vaughn Davis
Right? What if you were sitting right in front of me right now, or you walked up to me at the front desk, and I could see off to the side of you, you know, everything about you? First name, last name, age, where you traveled from, Instagram handle, how many followers you have, and your last tweet. We don't need to get into any more personal information. But just imagine if I could see everything about you right when I met you, right? And then, like, here's the luggage that you stored with us, what time you stored the luggage, and what it looks like. So I don't have to ask you for your luggage ticket. I don't have to ask you how many bags. It's in Cubby L5, and it's six pieces. I know what it looks like, and then I can always recall that when I get to the luggage room.
Derek Pacqué
Exactly! We both align on the future of what is potentially possible.
Vaughn Davis
Absolutely. Now imagine if I had all of your preferences from the previous days that would pop up like, he likes sparkling water, he doesn't like still water, he only drinks sparkling water, he likes Voss. What if I knew that? And what if I knew that the moment you got into the taxi from the airport, you were en route, and I'm not asking you questions? I'm just delivering greatness, right? That is what the future holds. That's the future of hospitality, and that's what I'm hopeful we'll continue to innovate towards in our industry.
Derek Pacqué
It's been two or three years since we started working together. We've made some moves, like the switch from writing paper tickets to digital input for luggage storage. We also implemented iPads in the back room to streamline operations, and now we're integrating valet services, sending cues to different teams. This proactive approach our team has had with yours has been pioneering.
Vaughn Davis
Your team has been great, always implementing our ideas. You're changing the hotel guest experience.
Derek Pacqué
The last time we were hanging out in Los Angeles, you were talking about this secret project you had in the works about a social club. I see that you’ve launched it! Can you tell me more about it and how can I become a member?
Vaughn Davis
Yes, the Social Club! It started in 2011 at Dream Downtown. We've had high-caliber guests, leading to the idea of a club. Now, it's an NFT-powered private members club, offering various perks and access to exclusive events. Our members include influential figures, and we aim to create a community that's changing the world.
We have an application process on our website, but most of our members come through word of mouth. We have a committee that decides on membership and programming. Membership is currently $2,000 per year. We always have new things coming – always a surprise.
Derek Pacqué
The NFTs are so cool. Who’s the artist?
Vaughn Davis
Yeah, man, the artwork for the NFT was created by a world-renowned artist named Perry Cooper. So that's the first collection. Our next collection will be another major artist, but that’s still in the works.
Derek Pacqué
I love this! How do you get into the Social Club? I want one of these NFT membership cards.
Vaughn Davis
Derek, you're already in the Social Club. We'll send your NFT. So yeah, that will be your membership card.
Derek Pacqué
Thank you, Vaughn. I appreciate your insights. I look forward to having the same type of conversation with you a year from now. I love these conversations, and I love that people get to see all of the amazing trends you’re setting in the hospitality industry. Your team is charting the future for the whole industry.
Vaughn Davis
Anytime. Let's set up a think tank call going. I'm pretty excited about the future of your company. That's pretty cool.
Derek Pacqué
Absolutely. We'll talk soon.
Vaughn Davis
Thank you. Keep winning, man. Keep winning.
Derek Pacqué
You too! Ciao!
My closing thoughts
A few days after the call, I reflected on my conversation with Mr. Davis. It’s clear to me that he is not just reinventing Los Angeles hospitality but revolutionizing it. His visionary approach, blending advanced technology with deeply personal guest experiences, sets Relevant Hospitality as the benchmark for the industry. After staying at Dream Hollywood, I can truly understand his philosophy of healing through hospitality, akin to healthcare, and just how is adds a unique dimension to the guest experience. Vaughn’s embrace of robots and NFTs and his focus on sustainability through eliminating paper all point to a future where hospitality and technology coexist seamlessly.
Mr. Davis leaves us with a glimpse into the future of hospitality and a sense of inspiration. It's a future I’m looking forward to and one that I hope the rest of the industry welcomes sooner rather than later.
See you out there!
Derek