SHANE MARTIN

‍CIO, TOGA GROUP

Shane Martin is chief information officer at TOGA Group, a diversified property development, investment and asset management company headquartered in Sydney, Australia. The company’s assets include more than 70 hotels in Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland under the TFE Hotels umbrella, as well as a portfolio of commercial and retail properties. Martin began his career as a naval officer in the Royal Australian Navy. He then worked as a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers and held senior positions in several financial services companies. He joined TOGA Group in 2015.
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Since that time, the business has gone through a period of rapid growth, both in Australia and in Europe. Martin has overseen the replacement of a number of legacy solutions and has moved most of the company’s business applications to the cloud. Throughout the process, he maintained a lean internal technology staff head count, primarily by leveraging outside partners to support specific business applications.
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In fact, vendor engagement is an integral part of his technology strategy. “We’re big but we’re not gigantic, so we’ve stayed away from some of the huge vendors,” he said. “We want to be a customer that matters to our partners.”
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The company recently completed the deployment of a global human resources solution that gives HR staff a view of the entire workforce. Additionally, four years ago, TOGA migrated to Microsoft 365, which helped the business meet the challenges of the pandemic. “Most of our workforce were on the new system, which streamlined connectivity and productivity across the enterprise,” he said.

During the pandemic, Martin also accelerated security technology across the group, as many employees were working on laptops from home, making endpoint protection critical. “We rapidly deployed enhanced security services globally,” he said, noting that the improved security has protected the company from several potentially harmful cyberattacks. A large part of his security strategy is team education. “The skills of the bad actors are improving all the time, and multi-stage attacks are becoming more common,” he said. “Early detection and rapid response are key components of our program.”
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Looking forward, Martin and his team will continue to focus on cybersecurity. Additionally, he plans to implement a number of mobile guest solutions. The primary challenge, he says, is integrating those solutions with legacy systems, particularly the company’s on-premises property management solutions. “The final frontier for us is our on-premises PMS,” he concluded. “We’re evaluating some new solutions at a few properties and defining our go-forward approach. We'll be making some significant strategic decisions in 2024."

SHANE’S INDUSTRY PREDICTIONS:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) WILL BE USED ACROSS THE BOARD.
“Self-sovereign identity will become more prevalent and can give people more control over their data. There also will be a lot of discussion about where that data should reside.”

PAYMENT SOLUTION PROVIDERS WILL OFFER MORE AND MORE SOURCES OF GUEST DATA.
"With that comes concerns,” HE SAID, noting that one of the biggest challenges for hotels will be managing the data effectively

MOBILE GUEST TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS WILL EXPAND.
“This will enable enhanced service customization and an improved guest experience.”