Lessons from hotel leadership that continue to shape how I assess innovation at Velocity Ventures
By Patrick Imbardelli | Partner, Velocity Ventures
In the boardrooms I used at both IHG and Pan Pacific, one chair was deliberately left unoccupied. Its cover read: “Reserved for Our Customer.”
It was a simple gesture, but it carried real weight. In every discussion, the customer was present, even when they were not physically in the room. Any new system, commercial decision or operating idea had to make sense from their point of view.
That discipline sat naturally alongside something that has guided me throughout my career: curiosity. I have always needed to understand how things are done, why they are done that way, and whether there is a better way. In my experience, meaningful innovation rarely begins with technology alone. It begins with a better question. It is also the lens I bring to my work today at Velocity Ventures.
“Innovation is not about chasing novelty. It is about seeing an old problem clearly enough to solve it better.”
Curiosity before technology
When IHG entered Japan through its joint venture with ANA Hotels, we took the opportunity to examine how technology could play a larger role in the business. I spent almost a week with the ANA Airlines team, studying how they used technology to improve planning, efficiency, booking and the broader customer experience.
The value of that exercise extended well beyond Japan. Airlines and hotels are different businesses, but both manage complex operations while trying to make the customer journey feel effortless. Looking outside our own industry helped us challenge familiar assumptions and bring useful ideas back into IHG more broadly.
At Pan Pacific, that same approach led us to introduce a room-maintenance scheduling system. Preventative maintenance is hardly glamorous, but when it is poorly timed, the effects reach the guest very quickly. By scheduling the work more intelligently, we could protect busy periods, reduce disruption and use hotel resources more efficiently. The technology mattered because the operational problem was understood first.
Measure what truly creates value
Innovation can also mean changing what a business chooses to measure. At Pan Pacific, we reviewed our guest yielding process to understand the total additional spend generated by corporate customers at each hotel. Rather than looking only at the room rate attached to an individual account, we considered the wider value that customer brought across the property.
That broader view allowed our teams to target the corporate clients who contributed more overall, rather than simply chasing the highest room rate in isolation. It was a shift in perspective, supported by better data, and it made a significant contribution to hotel revenue. At Velocity Ventures, the same principle shapes how I consider the potential of a business: look beyond the headline metric to understand what value is being created, for whom, and whether it can be sustained.
Treat experiments as learning
Creativity also requires permission to test ideas without pretending every trial will succeed. At the Pan Pacific Seattle, we experimented with a “24-hour room” concept. After six months, it was clear that the model did not work operationally.
But the experiment was not wasted. It showed us precisely where the operational pressure points were, and the lessons helped us capture other efficiencies and reduce disruption to guest-room cleaning. A failed experiment can still create value when the team is honest about the result and disciplined about what it learns.
The principle I bring to Velocity Ventures
Today, as a venture capital investor at Velocity Ventures, I continue to look for the same qualities in the founders and businesses we meet. We focus on technology and innovation that supports travel and hospitality, and we are drawn to teams that understand the customer deeply, question established processes and apply technology with a clear purpose. The strongest ideas are not necessarily the loudest or the most fashionable. They solve a real problem, fit the way people actually behave, and produce an outcome that can be measured.
Innovation is ultimately a habit of mind: remain curious, keep the customer in the room, test with discipline, and carry each lesson forward. The tools will continue to change. Those principles should not.
