Stamina and creativity carry Monscierge through pandemic impacts
By Scott Meacham
When we talk about entrepreneurs and startup companies we use words like visionary, determined, energetic, and pivot. All those adjectives and more apply to the unstoppable team at Monscierge.
Monscierge is an Oklahoma City-based interactive software company with solutions installed in hotels around the world. As you can imagine, there were not many industries hit harder by the pandemic of the last two years than hospitality. Hotels, particularly international properties, shut down overnight. It has taken most of the last two years for the industry to struggle back to pre-pandemic occupancy rates.
Scrappy Startup
Considering that the world’s top five largest hotel chains lost more than $25 billion, it is hard to imagine the stamina and creativity that powered this scrappy Midwestern startup to not only survive the devastating impact of Covid on its customer base, but to come out the other side of this pandemic as stronger than ever before.
Today, Monscierge is growing sales with an industry-shaking, in-room Apple TV product that is engaging hoteliers in hotels, resorts, as well as operators of rentals managed through VRBO or Airbnb across the globe. The company has actually improved its growth trajectory through the pandemic. Investors not only didn’t forfeit their investment. They helped Monscierge recapitalize to posture the company for future growth and additional investment. How on earth did this come about?
It starts with a team who never gave up. “We were so determined,” said Marcus Robinson, Monscierge’s co-founder and CEO, “thinking that there always has to be a way. In life and in business, you get turns with adversity. Our leadership team is all of like mind. You can’t give in. If you have the right attitude, you can find your way through.”
The uncertainty of the pandemic hit Monscierge like a body blow. “We immediately began to focus on other industries,” said Marcus Robinson, CEO of Monscierge. “But there was so much chaos and confusion in the healthcare industry, that although we felt we had a good solution for the situation, we couldn’t find decision-makers with the focus or budget.”
The Monscierge team — intrepid is another word — made the decision to do what they did best. They doubled down and focused on improving the digital aspects of the platform and suite of solutions for the hospitality industry that they had been working on with Apple when the pandemic struck.
“We had to believe that eventually Covid would be over and that we would come out the other side,” Robinson said. “We focused on areas of improvement and streamlining. We made our operations more efficient. We had to produce a better experience for customers that also gave the properties a way to increase revenue. It turned out to be something the market wanted.”
Bring Your Own Content
That product is an application that provides guests with the ability to watch Netflix, Hulu, or stream their own content into their hotel room without clunky interfaces or cable equipment. Monscierge’s in-room product is an interface that allows guest to gain information about the property and the surrounding area, order room service, schedule hotel amities, or sign up for unique experiences.
“With this platform, one hotel in South Carolina created a beers and brats campfire experience that they sell to guests,” Robinson said. “It is an on-property experience that gives guests a fun experience and increases per-room revenue for the hotel.”
During the Christmas season, another hotel created an experience that included bringing a Christmas tree with all the trimmings to a family’s room, complete with an elf to read stories to the children. “During Covid, we helped hosts and hotels generate more revenue without guests having to leave the property,” Robinson said.
We were the first institutional investors in Monscierge like we have been in many companies. Throughout the last two years, we have seen this team receive criticism as they struggled through the headwind of Covid. There were weeks of sleepless nights. But I will tell you this –never, not once did Monscierge lose track of what they were trying to do — enhance their customers’ customers guest experience.
Monscierge is the company enabling that in amazingly creative new ways. They are all about providing a superior guest experience and changing the hospitality industry.
Scott Meacham CEO of i2E Inc., a nonprofit corporation that mentors many of the state’s technology-based startup companies. i2E receives state support from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology and is an integral part of Oklahoma’s Innovation Model. Contact Meacham at i2E_Comments@i2E.org.
Stamina and creativity carry Monscierge through pandemic impacts
