Human-Centric Hospitality Technology: Appellation Hotels Case Study

A Case Study in Strategic Design: How TRAVHOTECH Aligned Technology with Vision to Drive Revenue, Empower Staff, and Enhance Guest & Staff Experiences at Appellation

The hospitality industry, at its heart, thrives on human connection. Yet, as we navigate a world increasingly driven by technology, the strategic challenge for leaders is clear: how do we leverage innovation to enhance, rather than diminish, that essential human element? TRAVHOTECH’s perspective, honed over three decades in this dynamic sector, has always been to view technology through the lens of competitive advantage, ensuring it serves to amplify, not replace, genuine hospitality. This philosophy forms the bedrock of human-centric hospitality technology.

And I knew right there that (TRAVHOTECH) was the right fit for us. Then we just had these fantastic conversations about those things, and then we use technology to solve for them.

This philosophy was central to TRAVHOTECH’s partnership with Appellation Hotels, a revolutionary new hospitality concept co-founded by renowned Chef Charlie Palmer and former Four Seasons President, Christopher Hunsberger. Appellation’s vision is deeply rooted in its destinations, with food and beverage at the forefront of creating immersive guest experiences. As Ed Skapinok, Chief Commercial Officer at Appellation, explains, they aim to “bring what’s great about a destination into the guest experience in the hotels,” fostering connections “between people, be it the guests with each other, or the guests with local residents, or the guests with our staff”.

Designing for Experience: TRAVHOTECH’s Strategic Approach to Hotel Tech Ecosystem Design

When Ed first sought a technology consultant for Appellation’s commercial tech stack, his concern went beyond individual systems. He recognized the “interdependencies with other systems” and the need to “get everything right”. This is where TRAVHOTECH’s strategic approach came into play. Our initial discussions weren’t about software or hardware. As Ed recalls, “His question to me was, ‘What experience do you want for your guests? And what kind of experience do you want for your employees?’ And I knew right there that he was the right fit for us. Then we just had these fantastic conversations about those things, and then we use technology to solve for them”.

This focus on the desired outcome—the guest and employee experience—is paramount to how TRAVHOTECH designs hotel tech ecosystems. For Appellation, this meant enabling all revenue centers, driving digital sales, and fostering seamless staff and guest cohesion, truly showcasing human-centric hospitality technology.

Streamlining for Efficiency and Connection: The Power of an Integrated Hospitality Technology Stack

A significant challenge in traditional hospitality is the sheer volume of disparate technology systems. As Ed highlighted, a hotel brand like Appellation could typically involve “about 120 different pieces of technology,” many handling only one task. Leveraging TRAVHOTECH’s Cohesion Matrix and Business Impact tools, “Our design for Appellation engineered an ecosystem using approximately “one-third that number,” a testament to strategic hotel technology consulting.

This dramatic simplification directly translates into tangible benefits:

• Operational Efficiency: “Fewer pieces of technology… helps us a lot in a lot of ways, and it just makes us more efficient operators,” Ed states. This allows Appellation’s team to “focus more on the guest experience,” a prime example of hospitality operational efficiency tech.
• Enhanced Employee Experience: Fewer systems mean “fewer systems we have to train and manage,” reducing the onboarding complexity and disruption that can be costly due to turnover in hospitality. For Appellation, where “simplicity” is a core value, this means doing the “hard part so that the guests and the employees, at least as far as technology is concerned, it’s very simple to use. It never gets in the way”. This is truly employee-empowering hotel tech.
• Personalized Guest Engagement: By becoming “very sophisticated in our ability to personalize on the marketing front,” Appellation can attract the “right customers” who will truly appreciate their unique offerings. Once guests arrive, the technology allows Appellation to “get to know them on a more personal level,” tailoring messaging and experiences to create a genuinely customized feel.

Technology as an Enabler, Not a Barrier: The Appellation Case in Action

The power of this integrated approach is perhaps best illustrated by a simple yet profound example from Appellation’s operations. Ed describes a scenario where a guest expresses interest in a spa treatment while at the coffee bar. Rather than directing them to a concierge or an app, Appellation’s system enables the barista to instantly check availability and confirm a booking. As Ed explains, “That wasn’t easy to do, but it’s simple for the employee, it’s simple for the guests, and we think that that’s energizing for our employees too because when you can delight a guest… it’s just very, very validating, very exciting”. This embodies the vision of empowering every employee to “host the guests on behalf of the whole property.” This is the essence of human-centric hospitality technology in action.

Conclusion: Driving Success Through Strategic Technology Design

TRAVHOTECH’s work with Appellation Hotels is a clear demonstration that a deep understanding of industry operations, combined with strategic technology expertise, can build a foundation for sustained success. It showcases how viewing technology as a competitive advantage, focused on genuine human connection and efficient enablement, creates truly revolutionary hospitality experiences. As Appellation expands its footprint across the Western US, this robust, human-centric technology ecosystem will continue to be a key differentiator, a direct result of effective hotel tech ecosystem design and strategic hotel technology consulting.

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Appellation: A Culinary-First Hotel Revolution with Ed Skapinok

Listen to the podcast on eHotelier here.

The following is a transcript of the discussion with Ed Skapinok, CCO, Appellation and Matthew Stephens at eHotelier;

Matthew Stephens: Hello and welcome to the Hotelier Podcast, bringing you insights from hotel industry leaders around the world. Welcome to Hotel Insights. I’m Matthew Stephens.

Today, we’ll be discussing the development and launch of Appellation, a revolutionary new hospitality concept with Ed Skapinok, Chief Commercial Officer at Appellation. Ed is experienced in all areas of hospitality operations, sales, marketing, and revenue management, with achievements developing and promoting independent, lifestyle, and major global brands from the mid-scale to luxury segments. Ed was named one of the top 25 Extraordinary Minds in Hospitality Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Optimization from HSMAI. Welcome, Ed.

Ed Skapinok: Thank you, Matt, very happy to be here. Appreciate you having me.

Matthew Stephens: It’s great to have you, and I can’t wait to hear more about Appellation. So, how did you arrive at the name Appellation for the resort?

Ed Skapinok: Well, you know, Appellation is a new hotel brand and hotel company, and it’s been in the works for about four years now. And I guess to really talk about how we arrived at the name, you’ve got to talk about our co-founders. We’ve got really great partners that started this company. I’m excited to work with them. Chef Charlie Palmer is a renowned chef here in the United States, an accomplished restaurateur who has a track record of success with standalone restaurants and restaurants inside hotels. That’s where he met his business partner and other co-founder, Christopher Hunsberger. Christopher was the President of Four Seasons. He led innovation for that group and throughout more than a 20-year career with them, helped grow them from a small hotel company to the group that they are today. You know, Charlie and Christopher had a friendship, started working together on a couple of hotel concepts where Charlie was the first celebrity chef brought in to operate a restaurant inside a Four Seasons Resort. In fact, that was 20 years ago, and Charlie Palmer Steak is still inside that Four Seasons restaurant and going strong today. But they developed a friendship and a business partnership. In fact, they had invested in some hotels together that they sold their interest in about five years ago, which became the seed capital for Appellation. You know, they just decided that they were both very accomplished. They’d done a lot of things throughout their career. Charlie’s got a couple of James Beard Awards, more than 20 Michelin stars to his name. Christopher is very accomplished in luxury hospitality. They decided just to do something a little differently, you know, kind of take a different approach, something that they’ve always wanted to do and saw an opportunity for. So, that became Appellation, and the word itself means “to give a name to a place.” So it couldn’t be more perfect for us because we are very focused on our destinations and trying to bring what’s great about a destination into the guest experience in the hotels. And you know, most people know appellations, they think about wine-growing regions, and that really is what appellations are. They’re a statement of quality or something that could really only be produced in a particular region. So, out here in Sonoma County wine country, you know, we have the wines of Dry Creek Valley, or if you think about Parma ham, you know, there are similar products produced all over the world, but only Parma ham could be from that region of Italy. Or even the Barossa Valley, you know, where you live, it’s a quality seal, it’s a designation. It’s a way to identify something that really can only come from that place. And so that’s why we picked that name, and it works out perfectly for what we have planned for our guests.

Matthew Stephens: Fantastic, so an incredible foundation of hospitality leaders leading the Appellation group. What is the purpose of the resort? You’ve mentioned its location and bringing the location into the property. So what is the higher purpose that makes Appellation special?

Ed Skapinok: Well, you know, I think everybody on our team is really curious and very creative, and we think that our guests will be too. Our guests are the ones that have experienced staying in luxury properties, but you know, they want to experience a destination in a different way, and that’s really what we’re focused on. So, you know, we’re trying to bring people together throughout our portfolio with food and beverage really at the forefront. And if you think about it, there are so many great memories that are created over food or around a table over a meal. We’re really creating that opportunity for guests to experience the cuisine of a destination but also be able to interact with the people who grow the food. Our culinarians will be local rather than Charlie moving some of his talent from his other restaurants to our newer hotels and our newer restaurants; he’s really looking for the best up-and-coming talent in these markets. We think that by doing that, we create a really authentic identity that can be an overused term in our business, but it really is an authentic relationship that we have with those destinations and how we present it to our guests. You know, those culinarians have the best relationships with the local purveyors. They’re used to working with indigenous ingredients, and we want that to be a big part of what we do. So, Appellation will have certain consistencies throughout the brand, but by design, every hotel is extremely unique because the destinations themselves are really unique. So, we help foster connections between people, be it the guests with each other, or the guests with local residents, or the guests with our staff. And that’s all done in a very approachable and unpretentious way. We describe ourselves as having an approachable luxury concept, so that you can have really fine things, but you don’t have to feel like you need to change your clothes to just walk through our lobby. It’s really done in a very comfortable and approachable way.

Matthew Stephens: So how have you achieved an immersive experience in the local environment for your guests?

Ed Skapinok: Yeah, good question, and it really does start with the design of the hotels. I mean, we literally are building in local attributes and unique destination features into the hotels. You know, we do start with local materials. I mean, that’s a must, and the architecture really does complement the destination. You know, where we develop a hotel, we like to say that our hotels will never look out of place, and we put a lot of care into that and really a lot of effort in the design work long before we ever start construction. We’re also building maker spaces in our hotels. These are unique features. They’re these glass boxes that we’re building inside our lobbies in our hotels. We invite local makers or artisans, craftspeople from the community to come in and sometimes just interact informally with our guests. If they’re an artist, they may just sit there and create their artwork while our guests pass by and have a chance to interact with them and learn about what they do and their techniques. We also do formal classes. We actually have a very robust experiential learning program that’s led by these local makers, and we’ve got great partners that we work with to help us interact with and find a network of the right makers to bring into the hotels to interact with our guests. And sometimes, it’s our culinarians. We can educate our guests because we do think that they really do appreciate what we have to offer on the food and beverage side. So we do something we call “making the invisible visible.” In most hotels, all the prep work is done in the back of the house, behind some closed door, or there’s a team that is preparing the food that is then presented at a meal service. You might have an open kitchen, and you can see the food being prepared. We actually take the culinary prep stations and we pull them out from the back of the house, and we’ve designed them to be in our lobby spaces. So that just like with the local makers, our guests as they pass by, they can ask questions with one of our culinarians. They might learn about technique or about the ingredients being used in that night’s dinner service, maybe even get a little sample as they pass by. So it’s just a way of really getting the guests involved. Not just in staying in the hotel and then leaving and going and experiencing the destination outside of it. We really try to bring some of the great elements inside to complement what they’re doing when they go out and go wine tasting or visit the mountains or go hiking, anything that we have to offer in our areas.

Matthew Stephens: So at Appellation, we’ve talked about the culinary side of things, but at Appellation, are you pivoting the traditional model of accommodation first, supported by restaurants and bars, to really the culinary experience being the focus with accommodation as an option? How is this impacting the markets that you attract?

Ed Skapinok: Yeah, well, having a Master Chef as our co-founder and CEO really does mean that great food is in our DNA. So we are very culinary-forward. One thing that’s interesting for any of your listeners that have been in the hotel business for a while or they’re food and beverage operators and operate inside hotel facilities, especially in the luxury segment, it’s often very difficult for the restaurant to perform very well. Typically, they’ll break even or they’ll lose money, and most luxury hotels, that’s okay. It’s an amenity for the guests; they have to have that. But Charlie’s got a 30-year track record of very successful restaurants inside hotels, and I think one of his greatest appeals is that 70% of the covers that he has in any one of his restaurants in a hotel are coming from non-hotel guests. So that could be local residents, which are tremendously important to us. We want them to come visit, but they’re also people that are visiting and staying in other hotels in the area, but they want to experience the cuisine at a Charlie Palmer Restaurant. So, I think that we attract people that are there and coming to us for a number of reasons. Maybe they’re staying with us, which is great. We love that, and I think we have a lot to offer with our culinary programs, our experiential learning, our spas, everything that we’re doing. But if we’re getting locals coming in and then visitors that maybe are not staying with us but are at least coming over and interacting with our guests and our staff, we just think that that creates a really great experience. A very well-rounded experience for everybody involved, as part of using food and beverage to create those connections that we talked about. So I think that’s really influencing the type of traveler. Even if they’re not necessarily from out of town, it’s a guest to us. Whether they stay overnight or not, we do think that there are a lot of people that will be really loyal customers of ours that may never ever stay overnight with us, and we’re completely fine with that because we think that that does influence the type of experience that you have when you just step foot into one of our hotels.

Matthew Stephens: So, technology is playing a key role for you, and this may sound at odds with such an immersive, people-focused experience, but how does your use of technology really enhance the guest experience?

Ed Skapinok: Yeah, well, technology is really key, and we’ve really spent the last two years designing and assembling our technology ecosystem. We actually started. Our CIO is a gentleman named Mark Fancourt, and he’s from Australia, actually. He’s just a perfect fit for us. I met Mark. I was actually looking for a technology consultant to help. You know, I had a vision for our commercial tech stack, but I’ve been in our business long enough to know that even if I identified the best commercial systems for sales, marketing, and revenue, there are so many interdependencies with other systems that we had to get everything right. I didn’t want to have the greatest revenue management system and then find out it has a hard time coordinating with our property management system and the inventory that I’m trying to sell online. Because we are broadly focused when it comes to inventory, we’re not just talking about rooms; we’re talking about learning, we’re talking about dining, we’re talking about spas, everything. And so in order to merchandise that properly online, I needed the right property management system. I needed the right place to keep all of that inventory, make it available in the ways that we want to our guests. So when I first met Mark, I knew he was the right fit for us because even though he had been a CIO in the industry for several years and he understood luxury and he understood ancillary revenues and how we needed to build for those, the first three conversations he and I had, he didn’t want to talk about technology. We didn’t talk about software, we didn’t talk about hardware, we didn’t talk about systems. His question to me was, “What experience do you want for your guests? And what kind of experience do you want for your employees?” And I knew right there that he was the right fit for us. Then we just had these fantastic conversations about those things, and then we use technology to solve for them. And so our tech stack—you used a very bold term to describe us as revolutionary—and so I do think there are a lot of things that we’re doing that are different, that we’re very proud of. But one thing that we have figured out how to do is to use fewer pieces of technology in our hotels than what you would have in a typical hotel environment. We identified that in a hotel like ours, there are generally about 120 different pieces of technology if you think about all of the different components and the work that they do. Many of them only handle one task. And so we’ve been able to design an ecosystem using technology with about one-third that number. And so that helps us a lot in a lot of ways, and it just makes us more efficient operators, which means we can focus more on the guest experience. So that’s really a big thing, and at the heart of it—and this is kind of where I started in the process—was identifying a way to become more personalized. On the marketing side, to me, marketing, the effectiveness of marketing, if I have to distill it down to something very simple, it’s just targeting the right customers and the ones that really appreciate whatever product you have and are the right fit for you and vice versa. And so we’ve gotten very sophisticated in our ability to personalize on the marketing front, which means we’ll be attracting the right customers to our hotels who will love what we’re doing. And then the technology, once they’re a guest with us, we get to know them on a more personal level, and then that changes our messaging to them. It changes the experience that they have with us because they really do feel like it’s tailored to them. And we’re actually building a new website right now and our guest app, and we’re building those on the same content management system. We wanted that so that there’s a lot of cohesion between the two systems and it doesn’t feel like two different environments whether the guest starts with us on the website and finishes communicating with us on the app or vice versa. We wanted to be really mindful of that.

Matthew Stephens: I think that’s fascinating. I have a background like Mark, and know Mark well in IT and hotels as well. It’s often the challenge, as you say, to get that tech stack down from 120 down to a third of that. That’s impressive. But really with a focus on the guests and it being a seamless guest experience where the guest doesn’t necessarily see the technology unless it’s going to facilitate that as a tool, I think is a fantastic move. So you talked about the employee experience as well. How does technology support your team members?

Ed Skapinok: Well, you know, fewer systems means there are also fewer systems we have to train and manage. So it’s not as overwhelming for our staff when they come in because they don’t have to learn all these different disparate systems. And then if we make a change or we stop supporting one or move on to a different product, that just really creates a lot of disruption. And with turnover being so costly, especially in hospitality—I mean, it’s costly in all industries, but in our business for sure—we want to be mindful of that. We don’t want our onboarding process to be so complicated that we maybe lose new team members in the first two weeks because we’ve just made the process of starting to work with us more complicated than it should be. You know, one of our core values is simplicity, but we say that “simple is not always easy,” and I think that’s what we’ve done now. We’ve done the hard part so that the guests and the employees, at least as far as technology is concerned, it’s very simple to use. It never gets in the way. So, an example of that, one thing that Mark and I talked about early on was, if a guest gets up in the morning and they’re going and getting espresso in our coffee bar and they noticed that we have a spa in the hotel and they say out loud, “Oh, I didn’t realize there was a spa here, I think I’d like to get a massage today,” we shouldn’t send that guest back to a concierge or make them look up on an app and see if there’s any spa treatments available. As that barista is preparing that espresso drink in the morning, our system will let them look and see what spa treatments are available, the times that are available, and be able to confirm it for the guests right there. Now, that wasn’t easy to do, but it’s simple for the employee, it’s simple for the guests, and we think that that’s energizing for our employees too because when you can delight a guest, and that’s just a very small example, but anytime you can delight a guest, it’s just very, very validating, very exciting. And, you know, we think it creates a better environment not just for the guests but also for the employees.

Matthew Stephens: I think there’s a sentiment in the hotels that it’s the general manager that’s the host of the property. This is really making every single employee able to host the guests on behalf of the whole property, which is fantastic.

Ed Skapinok: Yes, absolutely.

Matthew Stephens: So you’ve got big plans for Appellation. What does the future hold?

Ed Skapinok: We do have big plans, and we debuted the brand, even though it’s been in the works for a number of years now, we debuted it this year, and it’s been very well received. We have three hotels under various stages of development right now, various stages of construction, and we funded those first three projects ourselves. We’ve got about a half dozen in the pipeline that will be a fast follow after those three, and we may even have a couple of projects that come online through acquisition or conversion. But right now, everything is ground-up development, which is good. I think for a new brand, you should be able to define ourselves and be able to show the industry and our guests what we stand for and what we’re all about. I think that that’s the right approach. So right now, we’re heavily focused on getting these three hotels open. We’re doing our work in preparation for those other locations. And we’ve been receiving inquiries about investment partners. We do think that finding the right investment partner and even the right debt partner for us is really the fastest way to grow the portfolio. So, we’re content to keep working hard and doing our part, but some of the conversations we’re having are pretty exciting because the best way for us to grow this brand and this portfolio is to open up new locations and do what we’ve done in these first three. And really get the word out about what we’re doing on a larger scale.

Matthew Stephens: And is that US focused or are you looking at going global?

Ed Skapinok: For the foreseeable future, we would be here in the US, but all of us have been in the business a long time and worked for multinational organizations. I could certainly see us growing as far as we’re capable, but our initial focus for pretty much the planned we’d like to focus in right now, focusing really on the Western US. But I know that there are a lot of great places that we have in addition to Healdsburg, California, Sun Valley, Idaho, and Pacific Grove, California, down on the Monterey Bay. All those are our first three, but the places that we that we’re looking really up and down the Western US for the next few years.

Matthew Stephens: I can’t wait to visit one of your resorts and looking forward to hearing more about your development plans as well. Thank you very much for sharing the Appellation journey with us, Ed. It’s been an absolute pleasure talking with you today.

Ed Skapinok: Great. Well, thank you, Matt. I really appreciate you having me. We love talking about what we’re doing and would be happy to keep you updated. If there’s anything else you’d like to learn about our projects, just let me know anytime. Look forward to it.

Matthew Stephens: If you’re interested in learning any more about Appellation, you can visit AppellationHotels.com or click the links in the episode notes. Thank you very much for listening. Take care, and safe travels. Thank you for joining us.

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