Skift Take
There were dozens of people waiting in line to speak with Dan Blanchard after his hour-long HITEC presentation, half of which was an audience Q&A. He has learned a lot over his four years as chief tech officer for IHG, and people were clearly interested in hearing about it.
IHG Hotels & Resorts was a bit too aggressive during the early days of developing its tech.
The hotel brand had a lot of ideas to test but its infrastructure couldn’t keep up, so the company had to backtrack to fix some issues.
That was one of the lessons that Dan Blanchard, IHG chief technology officer, shared during a presentation Monday at HITEC — and in a brief discussion with Skift. He started the company's latest tech journey after he was hired four years ago.
“There's a bit of a maturity journey that we have had to go on with this. We had a lot of missteps,” Blanchard said during the presentation.
“We stubbed our toes plenty of times, and most of that was because we got a little bit too aggressive. We went too fast in one thing or another.”