Ines Ganner

Ines runs the hospitality-tech startup NeedNect which helps hotels to use data in a more efficient way. With her Master degree in Psychology she is passionate about data science and fosters the scientific knowledge transfer into everyday routines.

Technical Vision Talk: “Transforming hospitality by using guest data smartly: the journey of a female-led hospitality-tech startup”

I never thought, that one day I might end up, founding my own startup and tie up loose ends of all my previous work and educational experiences. But with NeedNect Solutions it came true. Even though loving quantitative research and statistics during my Masters degree in Psychology and conducting several studies, I never have expected to use these qualifications as a CEO of a startup. Sometimes, it’s all about mingling your passions and finding your own path!

Your to-do list: Select the industry you’d like to transform, find the a solution to use your data science know-how and choose a great team to take every step of the journey with you.

In my case it was my vision to change the way hospitality operates. Hospitality collects a lot of guest data from various points. Guest surveys, guest observations or booking information contain a lot of information about the guest and how to better serve his or her needs. But still most hotels and other hospitality organisations don’t use the power of data, out of a lack of knowing how to read data.

What does NeedNect Solutions do? We connect the needs of guests and hotels on our platform, collect lots of guest data and help hotels to use this data to make smarter decisions. By initially enabling to analyse their own data, our MVP was launched. The next steps were using guest data for more sustainable hotel operations and empowering employees to read guest data. Making our platform smarter with AI, our recent projects aims to use Natural Language Processing and Recommender Systems to provide a personalised and fully automated experience for all guests.