Juan Ruano, Director of Hospitality Solutions, EMEA, is our Unicorn of the Month for July. Based in Alicante, Spain, Juan has worked for Duetto since April 2016.
Juan was awarded by his teammates because he ‘exemplifies teamwork, simplicity, respect, data, relationships, innovation, impact, and diversity.’ It’s quite a list!
Juan’s colleagues said that he ‘works across departments creating a platform of collaboration and timely support’, ‘Juan is always in a good mood and shares a positive attitude,’ and that he is ‘the true definition of a Rockstar!’
Here we catch up with him to find out more about his years of hotel revenue management experience, how he came to work for Duetto, and what he loves most about his role.
What was your work experience before joining the Duetto team?
I’m a hotelier by trade. I’ve been working in hotel operations and revenue management for many years in the UK and Spain, where I’m originally from.
I have worked for many groups; Como Hotels, One Aldwych Hotel in London, which is a beautiful independent property in the West End of London. I have also been involved in a couple of hotel openings; I was very lucky to be part of the opening of the Mandarin Oriental in Barcelona over 10 years ago, and the reopening of The Savoy hotel in London, which was a beautiful project to be part of.
From The Savoy, I moved into revenue management consultancy for a company called Bamboo Revenue, based in London, mostly consulting for UK-based properties, but also with some projects Europe-wide.
After that, I felt that since I had gained a lot of operations experience as a hotelier and also had extensive consultancy experience it was time to jump into hotel technology.
Can you remember what it was that attracted you to Duetto?
During my time working in revenue management and consultancy, I was very lucky to be introduced to revenue management technology and I worked with most of the providers at the time.
Then, while attending a Sabre event at World Travel Market in London, I met one of Duetto’s founders, Patrick Bosworth. It was the very early days of Duetto and he talked to me about what he was working on, he mentioned things like Open Pricing, revenue strategy platform and it resonated with me.
Six months later a recruitment consultant called me and told me that there was a revenue management technology vendor that was looking for a customer success manager and my profile perfectly fit the role. I told them that, although there were a number of vendors out there I would only go and work for Duetto because I was very interested in what they were creating. And the recruiter said it was Duetto, so I said, okay, let’s start the process and see whether I’m successful. And I was very lucky to be selected and join Duetto in April 2016 as a customer success manager.
Tell us what your job entails?
I started in customer success, which is a department of revenue management experts and Duetto experts that help our clients to really optimize and fully benefit from the platform. I was doing that for about three years. I was very lucky to support some of our enterprise accounts, and then I started supporting sales by doing demonstrations of our technology to revenue managers who were interested in working with Duetto.
My revenue management experience was very valuable in presenting our solutions and making Duetto resonate with what revenue managers were trying to achieve. It was later decided to create the role of Directors of Hospitality Solutions; working as internal consultants for our Sales team and prospects, to understand hotels’ business models, and to map the solutions that we provide with the challenges that hotels are experiencing and their business objectives.
What is your average day like?
My job is very varied, as you can imagine! I love working closely with the sales team here in the EMEA region, but I also collaborate internally with other departments: customer success, deployment, marketing, product, and across our regions. I also have the opportunity to talk about hotel revenue with clients and prospects across the globe.
I can have a mix of internal meetings, sales presentations, data analysis, project work, and drafting, as well as delivering training and onboarding new colleagues, which is something I particularly enjoy.
I also sometimes lecture for educational organizations across Europe, which is something I find very rewarding.
What do you most love about your job?
From my home office in Alicante, Spain I can travel the world in a day.
I normally start my day talking to my colleague Tas in Singapore or clients and prospects in APAC. Then I spend most of my day interacting with Europe and the Middle East. I am based in Spain, and I have colleagues in France, the UK, and Germany within the EMEA region, so I enjoy the sense of working within a global village and hearing news, views, and gossip from hoteliers all over the world. It is always stimulating and entertaining in equal measure, and I feel very privileged, particularly over the last year and a half, that I have this global perspective in my daily life.
The best day you’ve ever had working at Duetto?
This is the hardest question because I have had lots of good days at Duetto!
When I joined the Duetto team in Europe we were five people, and we had a handful of clients so imagine the celebrations for each new client as hotels adopt the Duetto way. We have a motto in Duetto which is ‘work hard, play harder’, we have lots of celebrations and we make the most of it.
However, what I enjoy most is the special sense of achievement after every annual Jubilee, which is our full company get-together. We come together to work, but there’s also sports, karaoke, celebrations, and the annual Duetto Hackathon.
Hackathon is when one appreciates face to face how talented our Duetto community is. You put an idea to the engineers, something that would solve a revenue problem, and in a few hours, they have something to present back to you. [See last month’s Unicorn of the Month interview with Juan’s fellow Hackathon teammate, Guillermo Kleinlein, to learn more]
This partnership between revenue management and technology is a foundational strength of our company: sparkling technological solutions to real business conundrums!
We all work as a team in this Duetto global village, which is, I think, something very, very unique and special.
I always leave Jubilee pumped up for all the work that we are planning to do in the year ahead.
Interested in becoming a part of the Duetto community? Check out our Careers Page for our current openings.