Chief Commercial Officer, Wyndham Hotels Resrts
Search every verified Scott Strickland interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Scott Strickland, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, has discussed the company's integration of artificial intelligence into guest services. He stated that Wyndham's guest engagement platform uses AI to interact with guests via text message in 100 languages, and he described the system as "empathetic" and "engaging," noting that guests have asked the AI out on a date. Strickland also highlighted the company's "Wyndham Connect Plus" platform, which he described as an omni‑channel system for reservations and guest engagement that is voice‑interactive and can book, modify, or cancel reservations. He said the company spent $350 million modernizing its technology platforms and that it operates on a single tech stack globally, using one cloud provider and two property management systems. Strickland also addressed Wyndham's loyalty program and partnerships. He said the company removed loyalty enrollment targets for property owners, stating that technology would handle enrollment. He mentioned partnerships with Madison Square Garden, Live Nation, and Applebee's, and the launch of a paid royalty service called "Wyndham Rewards Insider." In a separate appearance before Franklin County commissioners, Strickland urged action on homelessness, recounting the death of a homeless man named James Calhoun in a parking lot and stating that "the money is available" and "they're dying every day out here."
“It means I'm responsible for the intersection of technology and guest revenue. So, breaking that down, that means all the traditional technology you think of in a hotel company from back-end systems to our central reservation system to our websites and the like. Ultimately it's the end to end flow of how you get a gues...”
“From a Wyndham standpoint, our most critical piece of technology is our central reservation system because that is the system that puts our product, our hotels on the shelf. If that system's down we're not selling anything.”
“We are on one tech stack globally. We have a single CRM in terms of Salesforce.com. For that, we're running two property management systems based on the type of hotel you are. It keeps our costs in line — we're only using one cloud, Amazon Web Services — and because we're on a single system, we're able to innovate fast...”
“Our strategy is always to buy where it exists; where it doesn't exist, then we will partner with a software vendor to co-develop that system. In some cases we might own some of the IP on that system, but the vendor themselves will commit to maintaining and continuing to release on that system.”
“Treat them like partners. Our Oracle representative, our Saber rep, our Salesforce rep, my Adobe rep — all those folks have offices here on campus. Share your visions, be open book on strategy, and be good to each other — do case studies, speak at conferences — and you'll get better access to their engineers and roadma...”
“A partner we love that just joined our stack is Snowstorm. They allow us to represent airlines, cruise lines, rental car companies and the like on our website and sell a travel bundle — we launched yesterday our Wyndham Rewards Insider, a paid royalty service that gives you discounts on all those things.”
“We were AI before AI was cool — about two and a half, three years ago we were doing generative AI and responses. We've made it so empathetic and so engaging we've actually had guests ask our AI out for a date.”
“We call it Wyndham Connect Plus — this is our omni‑channel platform for reservations and guest engagement. It's voice interactive, will book, modify or cancel a reservation via voice or chat, and it engages on Google Maps and Apple Maps; it speaks 100 languages and intuites tone.”
“Our personalization model will learn behaviors and even timing — for example, it might learn you open email at 5:30 in the morning so it will put an offer in your inbox at 5:15; it will even test different verbiage to see what you respond to.”
“Our objective within the commercial organization is to make sure guests stay at our hotels, to encourage guests to stay at our hotels and to offer them ultimately a seamless experience. One high priority is to continue to drive up that direct contribution — what we as a brand provide for our franchisees — through loyal...”
“That guest engagement platform is using an AI. At one point, before anybody in hospitality had really caught on, we believe we had the world's largest large language model in hospitality because we were enabled for 5,000 hotels engaging with that guest via text message in 100 different languages with 400,000 guests che...”
“We're the first in the industry that have said, 'We're removing loyalty enrollment targets because we're giving you a piece of technology, Mr. Property owner, Mr. Hotel owner. You don't have to have and enroll a certain number of people into our loyalty program every time. You don't have to be there at the front desk....”
“We've spent $350 million in terms of modernizing our technology platforms and every one of those programs has included some sort of data cleanup activity. Because of that, whether it's just standardization or transport or housing that data in a cloud-based environment where it can be easily accessible, in every one of...”
“From a central standpoint, of course, we've applied AI across our call centers. So, that's been serving to augment our guest service agents so that when Peter calls in, we know your loyalty status. It sends us the last upgrade that you had, your preferred bed type, how much you spend with us, the last place you stayed....”
“When you join a franchise, you're joining for technology, you're joining for brand, you're joining for some sort of differentiating factor. Well, now that three of those fall under me, when we have a really important franchisee, quite often I'm called upon to explain to them why Wyndham and to sell them on that.”
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