MATT SCHWARTZ

‍CTO, SAGE HOSPITALITY GROUP

Matt Schwartz is chief technology officer at Sage Hospitality Group, a development, investment and management company with a portfolio of 60 hotels, both independent and branded, and more than 30 food and beverage establishments located across the United States. He joined the company in 2015 and is responsible for all aspects of information technology, including applications, infrastructure, business intelligence, project management and security. Prior to working at Sage, he held senior leadership positions at Intrawest, Staples, Ascend Analytics and PetSmart. A self-avowed technology enthusiast, he began his career as a coder of HTML and SQL
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Schwartz says he focuses on five key areas at Sage: business intelligence, customer relationship management, cybersecurity, associate productivity and guest experience. “These are the areas where I believe technology can have the greatest impact.” One of his biggest initiatives has been to standardize the company on Microsoft PowerBI for all reporting. He also layered ChatGPT on top of the data for easier access. As for customer relationship management, he recently migrated all of Sage’s independent hotels to Salesforce. As a result, the company now has a proprietary guest database that exceeds 1.5 million unique
contacts.
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Security is also top of mind, and Schwartz has adopted the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity framework to manage the company’s risks. “I’m always looking for ways to bolster our defenses and improve our detection capabilities,” he said. And because employee performance is often tied to technology, he maintains strong partnerships with Microsoft, Box and Zoom to create a more seamless workflow. Additionally, he’s rolling out each partner’s artificial intelligence functionality to enhance collaboration and support more flexible communication. Finally, Schwartz and his team are studying a number of guest-enhancing technologies, including kiosks, robots, room controls, noise monitoring solutions and guest recognition programs. “These solutions not only enable more personalized guest experiences but also improve efficiency,” he said.
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His upcoming projects include developing a multi-year strategy and roadmap for potential artificial intelligence use cases across the enterprise. He also plans to deploy labor management systems across the company’s portfolio of hotels and restaurants. “Managing labor levels is one of the best ways to optimize the balance between financial profitability and guest service,” he said.
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Three years ago, Schwartz and two partners launched a revenue management software company that leverages the latest academic research in artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically price rooms on a 24/7/365 basis. “It has been fun and challenging to build a software company from scratch,” he concluded. “And I’ve learned so much that has been helpful in my role at Sage.”

MATT’S INDUSTRY PREDICTIONS:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WILL EXPLODE.
“The hype around it is real and here to stay.”

BIOMETRICS WILL COME INTO ITS OWN.
“We’ll use CLEAR or something similar to check in hotel guests, HE PREDICTS.

VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) WILL BECOME MORE PREVALENT.
“The new Apple Vision Pro will change everything we think we know about VR.”