CMSWire TV
The Gist
- Balancing standards and personalization. Hyatt blends global consistency with local flair, using guest data to decide what should stay the same and what should adapt regionally.
- EX + CX + supplier experience. Katrina Fine frames customer experience as a Venn diagram of three interconnected circles — customer, employee, and supplier — all critical for success.
- AI as a CX amplifier. From AI-powered trip planning to agentic tools, Hyatt is testing innovations that mirror consumer tech behaviors while setting benchmarks beyond hospitality.
On this episode of CMSWire TV’s Beyond the Call, CMSWire Editor-in-Chief Dom Nicastro (aka me) sits down with Katrina Fine, Senior Manager of Standards Transformation at Hyatt. Fine shares how her role blends strategy, operations and customer experience design — balancing global brand consistency with regional individuality across Hyatt properties worldwide.
The conversation dives into why ethnographic research is a missed opportunity in CX, how Hyatt integrates customer and employee feedback into standards and where AI is already reshaping the guest journey. From social listening on Reddit to AI-powered trip searches, Fine offers a rare inside look at how one of the world’s leading hospitality brands is using innovation to elevate both customer and employee experience.
Related Article: What Is Customer Experience (CX)? A Comprehensive Guide
Table of Contents
- Introductions & Role At Hyatt
- Ethnographic Research In Hospitality
- First-Impression Moments & Guest Signals
- Defining Standards & CX Strategy
- Current CX Projects At Hyatt
- Making Standards Easier For Employees
- The CX, EX And Supplier Venn Diagram
- Bringing Customer And Employee Data Together
- Where Guest Feedback Comes From
- Combining Surveys And Unprompted Feedback
- AI’s Role In Hyatt’s CX Strategy
- AI And Human Interaction Fatigue
- AI Search And Consumer Inspiration
- Exploring Agentic AI At Hyatt
- Building MVPs And Testing Tools
- Every Company Delivers An Experience
- B2B And B2C Customer Experience
- Encouraging Innovation And Experimentation
- Looking Ahead for CX And EX
Introductions & Role At Hyatt
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Hey everybody, Dom Nicastro, editor in chief of CMSWire.com, back on CMSWire TV, and I'm joined by someone who has joined us many times in the past, talking about digital customer experience in many fashions and roles, and she's back with us — it's Katrina Fine. She has a new name now, a last name anyway. She didn't change her first name. Right? You didn't change your first name too, did you?
Katrina Fine: …just the last.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: So the heck of it. Yeah, I'm going with the Katrina now. But we’re so happy to have you — you’re the Senior Manager, Standards Transformation at Hyatt. How's it going?
Katrina Fine: It's wonderful. Happy to be here and excited to talk about customer experience, AI and all the fun new things.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: We have to, we have to. That's like the only thing on everyone's mind and we gotta cut through the noise, and I know you will as you're in the practitioner world again and you're doing your thing for Hyatt. Tell me about that role and how you arrived in that spot — a little background too.
Katrina Fine: Yes, absolutely. The role is really focused on helping identify how we can improve the customer — in our case, the hotel guest — experience during a stay. We want to create a very standardized and consistent experience, while allowing for unique regional differences. If you stay at the Hyatt in South Africa and then one in California, which items should be the same and which should differ? Perhaps you love a bathroom amenity you’d like consistent, but the artwork might vary. We’re identifying what should be standardized versus localized, and how to use guest feedback and data to turn that into a great experience.
Ethnographic Research In Hospitality
Guest Example: The Missing Remote
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Some of these hotels are so fancy these days, and we expect the best experiences. I got into one recently and couldn’t find the remote — I was ready to send out an SOS. It turned out the iPad was the remote. Little things like that could be improved with a small note: where you’d expect the remote, a sign that says the iPad is the remote.
Katrina Fine: You bring up a great point. Any company working on things that impact a customer’s experience should do ethnographic studies. What happens when you enter a room? Do you hunt for a remote or notice an iPad? Should there be prompts that guide you? Often teams assume what customers want and go full force — “look at this fancy new iPad, let’s implement it” — without stepping back to understand how humans actually interact with these things. Ethnographic studies are a missed opportunity to see where human elements should be infused.
First-Impression Moments & Guest Signals
Turning Data Into Action
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: When I walk in, it’s usually a happy moment — flight’s over, checked in, I’ve got a room. But we need to capture better data about that first walk-in. What can be improved there?
Katrina Fine: Exactly. Travel can be frustrating, and the parts that are good should become great. People should feel truly valued and have a personalized experience. Data helps us find where to plug in and how to enhance it.
Related Article: The Hidden Dangers of Over-Personalization in Marketing
Defining Standards & CX Strategy
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: About “standards transformation” — in CX terms, what would another title be? VP of customer data? Voice of customer? How does it fit in the CX world?
Katrina Fine: I see it as the CX strategy side. My role is figuring out the strategy for standardizing and improving the guest experience — looking one, three, five years ahead. What do we want to do? What metrics are we trying to drive? Then we create the roadmap. I’ve got a great team for the tactical build and technology. We’re in the operations group but work closely with branding and technology teams. It’s aligned to a CX strategy leader role, uniquely positioned with many functions working closely with us.
Current CX Projects At Hyatt
Making Standards Usable In The Moment
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Give me a recent CX project you’re excited about — something the data tells you will improve guest experience.
Katrina Fine: Right now, hotel colleagues — a general manager, front desk host, or executive housekeeper — are trying to pinpoint what matters most. Does the iPad matter, or does a clean room matter more? Which key levers should be standardized?
We’ve researched and defined those levers and built standards that live in a large repository. For a non-hospitality analogy, think of call-center scripts — compassionate, tested, designed to open dialogue and solve problems. But many standards aren’t in an easy, actionable format. In the moment, when a guest is frustrated, it’s hard to search and find the right guidance. We’re pursuing a multi-year strategy to improve how standards are delivered so colleagues can use them instantly — ultimately improving the guest experience.
Making Standards Easier For Employees
Katrina Fine: For non-hotel people, imagine you’re in a call center. A frustrated customer calls in, but you can’t find the right script or policy. That would be so frustrating. Similarly, our process for looking up standards is cumbersome, and we need to make it easier for hotel colleagues. We’re exploring tools and technology to do that, but also recognizing that at the end of the day, we’re all humans. We want to do our jobs well and easily. And when you stay at a hotel, you want to have a really good experience.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Sounds like you’re echoing what we’ve heard about building customer experience from the inside out — doing employee experience work first, empowering them with tools, data, and the right scripts. Would it be fair to say you’re moving toward being an EX person too, alongside a CX person?
The CX, EX And Supplier Venn Diagram
Three Experiences Interconnected
Katrina Fine: It’s funny you mention that. I look at customer experience as three overlapping circles in a Venn diagram. The first is the one everyone talks about: customer experience. At the end of the day, we’re all customers of some company. We’ve all gone to the grocery store, stayed at a hotel — so we understand that.
The second circle is employee experience. You can’t have satisfied customers if employees are dissatisfied. If a call center employee has just been yelled at by a bad boss, that frustration may come through on the next call. The third circle is supplier experience. You can’t expect good relationships downstream if you aren’t good to suppliers.
I see all three as equally important and interconnected. The missed opportunity for many organizations is treating them as separate departments — HR handles employee experience, supply chain handles supplier experience, and marketing handles CX. In reality, everyone should focus on all three, because you can’t have a strong customer experience without the others.
Related Article: Why Great Employee Experience Leads to Great Customer Experience
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Bringing Customer And Employee Data Together
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Are the tools you’re exploring giving you a good view of customer data and employee data together, or are they siloed? Many deal with employee data over here, customer data over there. Some vendors are trying to unify them. What does that look like in your world?
Katrina Fine: Right now they’re separate. I wish I could say everything was integrated and easy to see, but that’s not the case yet. Much of my work is bringing them together. I build dashboards in Power BI that combine employee and guest data so we can see how levers are being pulled together.
The dashboards may draw from separate repositories, but decision-makers need to see both sets of data side by side. Half of my work in setting standards focuses on guest impact — does the guest get frustrated here, or expect this to be provided? The other half comes from feedback from hotel colleagues — who may say, “Sure, the standard sounds great, but it’s impossible to implement under current restrictions.” Looking at both perspectives together helps us decide what supports both employees and guests. If you only help one side, you end up helping neither.
Where Guest Feedback Comes From
Prompted And Unprompted Signals
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Where are your customers talking to you most? Calls, check-in behaviors, surveys? Is it fluid and sporadic month to month?
Katrina Fine: Feedback comes from two main areas. First, what we solicit — surveys, like every company uses. These give us baseline metrics and focus on the areas we know matter. If a hundred things happen during a hotel stay, we ask about the ones we know are critical.
Second, we look for unprompted information. That’s where guests volunteer opinions outside surveys: complaints when something goes wrong, or compliments when staff go above and beyond. Most of this comes through social media. Facebook groups are full of travelers sharing experiences: “I’m planning a trip to Norway — where should I stay?” and people reply with real stories. We also do social listening and Reddit research, capturing unfiltered guest perspectives. Then we distill that data into dashboards to inform decisions.
Combining Surveys And Unprompted Feedback
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: That unprompted feedback — I’m hearing more CX leaders say it’s the gold mine. Survey data is useful, sure, but it can feel forced. The survey might land weeks later, when customers forget how they felt, or they rush through with 5-5-5-5s. As CX leaders, we know the fallacies of surveys. Where are you at with combining traditional surveys with these new tools for unprompted feedback? Where are you leaning?
Katrina Fine: We definitely find unprompted feedback really valuable. Guests surface things we may never have thought of, and that helps shape strategy. We’ve fixed many of the issues we proactively asked about in surveys, so now the focus is on issues we didn’t know existed — and that comes from unprompted data. As you said, survey fallacies are real. Even as CX professionals, we fall into them. Imagine someone less familiar. That’s why unprompted research is the next area every organization should explore.
Survey Follow-Through
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: I always say yes when asked to do a survey after a call, because I think I’ll get treated better — but then I don’t follow through. We all do that. Where are you with that?
Katrina Fine: I’d love to see the follow-through rate. I always say yes, but then I’m running late and just hang up. It happens constantly.
Related Article: 3 Must-Follow Rules for Customer Feedback Before Launch
AI’s Role In Hyatt’s CX Strategy
Guest-Facing Search Experiences
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: We’ve been talking feedback tools and methods, but let’s shift to AI. Where is AI giving you real, tangible outcomes at Hyatt?
Katrina Fine: I see it in three areas. First is guest-facing. On Hyatt.com, you no longer have to just search “hotel in Chicago.” Now you can search “toddler-friendly all-inclusive in Southern Europe” or “near a national park under 30,000 points.” The system surfaces that directly. It makes trip planning easier for guests and helps us see demand patterns. For example, if searches for nightlife destinations spike, maybe we should standardize bar menus so guests can get favorite drinks in Miami and Los Angeles. That’s unprompted data in action — people telling us what matters without us asking.
Consumer Search Behaviors
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: As a consumer, I’m rarely Googling anymore, even though Google dominates. AI just gives me answers. It feels like a live contact center agent rattling off information. Where do you see that trend?
Katrina Fine: Exactly. I like that AI feels more human and polite. While 90% of people still use Google or another search platform, AI makes me feel supported, not like a burden. It asks if it can help further. That experience matters — especially as daily life has become more mentally taxing. AI fills a gap, providing conversational interaction when people may not have the energy for more human-to-human exchanges.
Related Article: AI Customer Experience Ushers in a New Era of Engagement
AI And Human Interaction Fatigue
Shifts Since The Pandemic
Katrina Fine: Years ago, I did a study post-pandemic that found a big shift. Pre-pandemic, people had around seven human interactions daily that were mentally taxing — dentist visits, kids’ soccer, church, grocery store. Now, in an eight-day span, people have only about seven total. A dentist appointment and work might be the only taxing things in one day. Social batteries are low. That’s why AI interactions feel helpful. They give human-like responses without draining energy, filling the gap created by fewer in-person exchanges.
AI Search And Consumer Inspiration
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: It’s incredible. We once took a picture of our living room, dropped it into ChatGPT, and asked for rug suggestions. It gave us amazing options. Then I asked where I could actually buy something like that locally, and it sent me direct e-commerce links. Incredible, right?
Katrina Fine: That’s incredible. And the memory is so powerful. A month later, if you ask it about vases for your living room, it remembers your style. You don’t have to restart by searching retail websites — it already knows your preferences.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Exactly. Or I could tell it not to remember, so my wife doesn’t make me buy another rug when she changes her mind. Which she did, multiple times! What I’m getting at with Hyatt is your AI search function on the homepage. That’s really cool. Guests can either use AI-powered search to plan their trip or just use the traditional date/location filters. But I wonder — how is agentic AI playing into your CX programs? Are you offering chatbot-style, agent-assisted experiences yet?
Exploring Agentic AI At Hyatt
Katrina Fine: You cannot today, but we’re exploring it. We’re looking at how we can take the AI tools people already use in daily life — like your rug example — and apply that to hospitality standards. What would it mean to know what a standardized rug looks like at a Hyatt? Or how can we use AI to make brand standards more accessible and actionable?
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire:
Yeah.
Katrina Fine: That’s exactly my role — figuring out which tools we should be piloting, based on what people already use personally. We’re interviewing colleagues and guests who say, “I’m using AI for this in my daily life.” That sparks ideas for how Hyatt could test similar tools. Right now, we’re putting many of them out there, trying, and seeing what sticks.
Related Article: Agentic AI in Contact Centers: The Next Big Shift in Customer Experience
Building MVPs And Testing Tools
Comparing Experiences Across Industries
Katrina Fine: My role is really focused on creating MVPs of different tools. If we talk again in three months, I’ll be able to point to the ones we tested, what’s working, and how it’s making a difference. One lesson I learned early in my CX career is that customers don’t just compare you to competitors in your category. If you stay at a Hyatt and then call Marriott, sure, you compare. But really, you’re also comparing that call center experience to your food delivery service or even your OEM dealer. Customers benchmark across their entire life.
That’s why companies shouldn’t only look at competitors in category. Benchmarking should be cross-industry. My consulting work in CX strategy showed me too many organizations obsess over competitors. I always say: don’t worry only about what your competitor is doing. Look at what everyone is doing. Do a comparative analysis. That’s how you get better than competitors — not by copying them, but by surpassing them with broader inspiration.
Every Company Delivers An Experience
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Exactly. It’s called experience, and every company delivers one. Not every company has a hotel room with an iPad remote — some sell candy bars. But they all have customer experiences. I heard the same perspective from a previous guest from Aflac, who said they aren’t competing with other insurers, they’re competing with the Domino’s Pizza Tracker.
B2B And B2C Customer Experience
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: And you know Amazon — it’s like, “Oh, we should do that,” even though it’s so B2B. But you play in both worlds, right? B2B and B2C. When you’re talking about suppliers, are you still living in that balance — both B2B customer experience and B2C customer experience?
Katrina Fine: Yes, very much so. I feel like I’m in a unique position where I can play in both, and I see them as equally important and interdependent. Any company selling to an end user almost always has a B2B element, whether it’s a supplier or a shipping company. And in the B2B world, those relationships still funnel down to the end customer. If that customer isn’t happy, your place in the chain might disappear.
Everything is so interconnected now. People are self-focused — they care about what impacts them most. So you need to treat people like humans and create impact whether they’re in a B2B or B2C role.
Related Article: Building Customer Trust — Statistics in the US for 2025
Encouraging Innovation And Experimentation
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Before we wrap, I want to ask about AI innovation. Do you encourage your CX team to experiment with prompts, threads, GPTs, or are things more rigid — “Here’s the tool, use it this way”?
Katrina Fine: Yes, there’s a lot of encouragement to innovate. One of the things that drew me to Hyatt — beyond it being the best hotel company — is the freedom to explore. I started speaking at conferences and teaching leaders about AI nearly 10 years ago, long before it was mainstream. And the same advice applies today: just try it. Find a safe space, experiment, and see what works.
Not every AI solution works for every organization. Some of the tools I’m coding may be useless elsewhere. Others may prove amazing. Many leaders are still scared of AI, often for ethical reasons. I challenge them to try it in ways that make the world better. Could an AI tool help increase volunteerism in your community? Could it create safer, easier places to play and learn? That mindset has empowered me, and Hyatt’s leaders encourage it — “just try it, you don’t know until you try.”
Recognizing AI’s Limits
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Yeah, but don’t try too much or you get lost in prompt world — chasing perfection. Sometimes we need to teach AI more than it teaches us.
Katrina Fine: Exactly. And we need to recognize the limits. Recently, I asked an AI tool for instructions. It gave me a YouTube link. I said, “I’m at work, no headphones, can you write it step-by-step?” It insisted it wasn’t a video, just a URL. We argued until I realized I could’ve Googled it faster. That’s a reminder it’s still not human, and can even feel like arguing with a stubborn person over technicalities.
Looking Ahead for CX And EX
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: That’s a perfect example of how AI isn’t human. But it’s improving as we train it. Thank you for letting us peek behind the curtain at Hyatt’s CX and EX teams. We’re seeing new roles like director of customer and employee experience — combining both because it just makes sense.
Katrina Fine: I love that. You’re right — it makes perfect sense.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Katrina Fine — all things AI and CX, laser focus. We wish you the best at Hyatt, and let us know how innovation unfolds. We’ll catch up with you again soon.
Katrina Fine: Look forward to it, can’t wait to catch up.
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire: Alright, have a good one.
