Victoria Searl - The Future of Hospitality Lies in Customer Data

In this episode of Captive Conversations, I sit down with Victoria Searl, founder of DataHawks, to unpack her career from running pubs at 18, to senior sales & marketing leadership, to building a platform designed to turn hospitality data into action.

We cover:

✅ Early lessons from running pubs and learning ops the hard way

✅ Sales and marketing at major brands under private equity pressure

✅ Why operators collect endless data but struggle to act on it

✅ Building DataHawks to help operators focus on what really matters

✅ How to balance people, process, and tech in hospitality

💡 Standout quote: “Hospitality is easy when everything’s going well. Real hospitality is tested when something goes wrong.”

If you’re in sales, ops, or tech, this one’s packed with nuggets of genius.