In an interview with Nihar Bobba for the Wharton FinTech Podcast, which is dedicated to connecting listeners to leaders revolutionizing global financial services, Selfbook Co-Founder and CEO Khalid Meniri talks all things embedded fintech and innovation in the hospitality sector. He takes listeners through the key lessons he has learned on his journey from Algeria to running Selfbook from Los Angeles, by way of New York City, and provides advice for aspiring founders. Listen to the full interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and SoundCloud.
In his conversation with Bobba, Meniri kicks off the discussion by expanding upon Selfbook’s guest-first philosophy rooted in invisible transactions and secure, modern payment methods. “Frictionless payments were bound to make their way into the travel sector, and Selfbook has been at the forefront of this evolution,” says Meniri. “In less than two years or so, since we launched our platform, we have become a vital part of hotel workflows, particularly with payment automation tools. Simultaneously, we have significantly improved the guest experience by making it more efficient and enjoyable.”
But what led Meniri to revolutionize the online hospitality experience? After growing up in Algeria and moving to the United States, he refined his design skills at Manhattan’s famed 5th Avenue Apple Store at night, falling in love with simple, sleek design. The self-taught designer went on to create apps for the likes of Hearst, Net-a-Porter and Unilever, focusing on the checkout experience.
“After becoming a US citizen in 2015, I spent about a year or so traveling and stayed in countless hotels. This experience revealed the clunky booking process that hotels had in place, and I was determined to fix it,” says Meniri. “So along with Ilyas Djeddou, another fellow Algerian and app developer at the time, we co-founded SIX Travel [...] Soon after its official launch, the pandemic hit and we immediately realized the need to pivot. While working on the app, we discovered a massive gap in the payment process for hotels that relied on outdated systems. That was the revelation that led us to create Selfbook.”
The travel industry itself provided challenges in the early days, with many hotels recovering from a recession and reluctant to invest in changing their existing systems, while other industries raced ahead to embrace modern payment technology. Changing industry behaviors proved to be one of the most difficult trials ahead, but Meniri and Djeddou managed to further develop their product and bring it to market thanks to a few key early investors who supported their vision. “It was through a lot of efforts of the early investors, particularly our seed investors, that we were able to refine our approach. I call them our early champions.”
While online travel agencies (OTAs) like Booking.com and Expedia have long driven traffic to hotels at the top of the funnel, they lack the seamless, on-brand experience that Selfbook provides by existing directly on hotels’ websites. To boot, OTAs can cost hotels up to 25% of bookings in commission costs. Selfbook helps hotels drive traffic, direct conversions and profits on their own channels, eliminating commission costs and providing a truly modern checkout experience for their guests.
With Selfbook technology, hotels can drive direct revenue by offering an end-to-end seamless and secure checkout flow, including digital wallet support, all without needing to disrupt their existing tech stacks. Hotels using systems such as Sabre and Opera can easily add Selfbook to their websites thanks to its lightweight integration. By serving as an addition that can work in harmony with a multitude of systems and other third-party integrations, Selfbook is the Switzerland of hospitality technology.
Once integrated, hotels can easily accept digital wallets including Apple Pay, Google Pay and Buy Now, Pay Later to offer their guests the type of checkout experience they have become accustomed to across other industries. With modern payment methods on the front end and seamless payment automation for hoteliers on the back end, Selfbook makes it possible for hotels to provide a fully secure and PCI compliant payment journey.
“We are obsessed with enhancing the guest journey post discovery by prioritizing two things, neutrality and privacy. This approach has really allowed us to collaborate with a lot of respected platforms, and some have been serving the industry for years. So instead of competing, our goal is to offer the most comprehensive guest-first experience, optimizing the last mile and providing hotels with best-in-class payment orchestration and automation,” says Meniri. “And quite honestly, this also saves hotels a lot of time and money by reducing labor intensive tasks. Our vision for the guest is a completely frictionless experience.”
In addition to simplifying the online booking and payment experience, a key element of Selfbook’s vision is to ensure a transaction-free arrival experience on-property, eliminating the need for guests to show their credit card upon arrival and departure. Not only does this preserve the magic of a seamless arrival experience, but it also helps to protect guest payment data.
“With our latest product, Station, which is PCI compliant, we never share critical data with hotels. And for registered guests, we can potentially personalize their checkout flow by learning from their booking behavior and purchase patterns. So ultimately, this enables hotels to provide personalized offers and a superior and more hospitable experience for their guests, free from all of the unnecessary friction,” sats Meniri.
In addition to creating a hospitality experience that prioritizes privacy and, down the line, personalization, Meniri adds three extra “Ps” to his list of key principles, particularly as they relate to aspiring founders: Perseverance, precision and patience. In creating products that will revolutionize an industry and offer customers an unparalleled experience, he encourages entrepreneurs to be relentless in focusing on quality and delivering world-class products from the very beginning.
Furthermore, Meniri encourages a more inclusive early-stage tech ecosystem, with a particular emphasis on founders of diverse backgrounds. “My co-founder Ilyas and I were fortunate enough to meet a few individuals who genuinely believed in us, despite not attending an Ivy League school or having an extensive network, essentially being outsiders to Silicon Valley. The support we received was crucial to our success.” He encourages investors in the industry to be accessible and supportive to those who may have limited resources or connections, and to recognize the importance of collaborating with founders from a wide variety of backgrounds.
To learn more about Meniri’s journey and what the future holds for Selfbook and hotel payments, listen to the full interview on the Wharton FinTech Podcast:
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