The economy’s still bad, there’s a homelessness crisis, as a result of the severe property bust, which has gripped Ireland the last couple of years, and there’s an election coming up tomorrow for the seat in Europe.

“You see this man?” asked the driver as he pointed to one of the buntings promoting one of the candidates. “Oh, his father’s a real rogue. I hope he’s better but then you never know till people get into power, you know.”

Then he shrugs his shoulders and said, “Ah but who cares? The sun is shining. Welcome to Ireland.”

I love his Irish lilt – he may be talking politics but I hear whiskey and see rolling hills and flowing streams in his voice.

Taxi drivers are very friendly in Dublin. They love to talk. Last night, I had one who gave me the history of One Direction who are performing this weekend in the city – the boys are performing three nights in an 80,000-capacity stadium and they are sold out every night.

“One of the boys is Irish, you know,” Darren said. “Did you know, One Direction was discovered at X-Factor and Simon Cowell put them together?” And he goes on to tell us how Simon wears his pants. I won’t share that because it might take too much time before I get to the point of this letter.

And the point is, just as taxi drivers are the best fount of knowledge for anything that’s going on in any place, digital players are the ones hotel companies must look to and learn from in this new technology-driven world.

The Commandments of Digital Players

Deputy COO of Accor Hotels, Vivek Badrinath, who joined the Paris-based hotel group this year from Orange, opened the first PhoCusWright in Europe with a strong message that hotel companies must learn from digital players.

Badrinath, who is in charge of marketing, digital activities, distribution, and information systems for the Accorgroup, said that hotels must learn from digital players, and not fear them, because “starting from fear is not a good position to start and embrace change”.

Digital players such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube teach us new ways of serving customers and he listed some of the commandments which make them powerful.

1.    They are powerful marketing machines

2.    They are maniacs on customer experience

3.    They are extremely data-driven

4.    They are global by design, local by exception

5.    They are agile, innovative and ready to experiment

He said in the new world, “it’s all about direct”. “We need to engage through video, mobile is the future, meta-search allows us to search for customers better and targeting is the future of segmentation.

“The data revolution is taking us there,” he said.

Hotels must enhance the booking experience, live in a multi-screen world and understand social media marketing and the deeper use of analytics for better marketing.

“We must be able to enhance digitally each and every step of the customer journey and build an all-digital ecosystem,” he said.

Accor gets 280 million visitors to its website, 31% of whom book online. The group has 31 geo-located versions, 16 languages and runs 13 brand sites as well as apps and mobile websites. It has 1.5 million fans on its social networks and its Le Club loyalty programme now has 14 million members, four million of whom joined in 2013. “Members stay 2.3x longer than other guests.”

The group launched its Welcome programme which “removes repetitive data collection and move it outside the period when staff are face to face with guests”. Welcome is to ensure the last mile is easy. “You get a quick check-in with a human touch but on departure, it’s just a quick drop.”

Technology has allowed companies to roll out global solutions in a more flexible manner and he said that there was a growing sense of urgency among hoteliers who realise they need to change.

“The real core of success is hard-nosed execution”

It was appropriate therefore that the speaker who closed Day One of PhoCusWright was Darren Huston, who heads Priceline Group and Booking.com, because if there is one digital company we all need to learn from, it’s this seemingly unstoppable company.

For the first quarter of this year, the group reported consolidated gross bookings of approximately $12.3 billion, up 34% year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income was $416 million, up 40% year over year, itscustomers booked accommodation reservations for 83.4 million room nights in the quarter, up 32% year over year.

Like Badrinath, Huston’s in the new role as group CEO, for five months and since then, he’s brought his hands-on style to a lean, entrepreneurial culture by increasing communications within the brands and increase the amount of sharing so that the brands can share best practices.

He said with such growth, the challenge is to keep its employees hungry and humble at the same time. Saying that if he were to write a book, it’d be called The Lean Corporation, he said the group has 40 teams working on the sites in small pods so that everyone has a sense of ownership.

“It’s under-estimated but the real core of success is hard-nosed execution. We love hard problems.”

It also loves organic growth. At 39% internatonal growth, Huston said it’s the highest growth in history. “The best way is to build it from the ground up. We have a strong pipeline in longtail accommodation and we continue to chase loyalty and engagement.”

Talking of Booking.com’s decision to launch a new site, villas.com., which takes the group into alternative accommodation, Huston said, “To move forward, you have to innovate and experiment. More than half of our properties are now not hotels but bed and breakfast or self-catered – they come with different expectations.”

He believes there is an opportunity for the group to reinvent vacation rentals and make the whole process more secure. “We will find a way to get into the owner-managed space – we think we can drive change in that space as well. Owners have to be committed if they want access to customers.

“The single home owned by single owner, that’s the last bastion of accommodation.”

The other bastion it’s looking to breach – corporate travel. “While we are a leisure-focused company, there’s more we can do to make the site business-friendly. With the consumerisation of business travel, Booking.com can have a real impact on that. Business travellers are starting to rise up and want more choice on where to stay.”

Concluding, he said, “The whole business is about little innovations.” Led of course by a lean and entrepreneurial culture – because it doesn’t matter how smart you are with technology and how much you have to spend on it, it takes smart, motivated people to drive that forward.

Now time for that pint of Guinness because as Darren, the taxi driver, told me, “It’s good for you, lots of iron.”