Frontline Performance Group (FPG) is a company that enables hotels to maximize revenue potential via frontline teams. The company supports the implementation of service-based sales programs to increase incremental revenue, improve customer experience, and increase employee engagement. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Frontline Performance Group CEO Geoffrey Toffetti to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Geoffrey Toffetti’s Background
What is Geoffrey Toffetti’s background? Toffetti said:
“Sure, my career started in hospitality in St. Pete Beach, Florida. I began as a valet at a beach resort and worked my way up to Director of Guest Services. Later, I moved to Orlando and joined a startup called ZeroChaos. I was the third employee. When I left, we had over 600. I came in with some management experience, I’d managed 30 or 40 people at a hotel, but I started over as an individual contributor and helped build the organization. I followed the opportunities, did all kinds of things, as you do in a startup. I didn’t specialize much, except in product development and problem-solving. I became the go-to critical thinker, and that helped me. I rose to Vice President, reported to the CEO, and we eventually sold the company. Being employee number three, I had a lot of stock options that finally matured, so I could think about opportunities outside the company for the first time in a decade.”
“Right then, I met the founder of FPG. I’d spent 10-11 years helping the Fortune 500 save money. What FPG does is help companies make money. That sounded like a breath of fresh air, helping companies make more money through their workforce sounded amazing.”
“So I joined as a partner, stayed in that role for about eight years, then was appointed CEO during COVID. Great time to become CEO, in the worst economic disaster in history, especially for hospitality and travel. But we were transitioning from an on-site consulting/training company to a tech-first SaaS model, which was more my background than the founder’s, so it made sense for me to lead the shift.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Toffetti shared:
“FPG was founded in 1993 by Ziad Khoury with a compelling value proposition: helping businesses increase guest satisfaction and revenue at the point of sale. When I first met Ziad, it was a small but promising company rooted in the car rental and car dealership industries.“
“I joined FPG in 2011 as president and chief marketing officer, taking a pay cut in exchange for equity. At the time, we had 27 employees and just a few clients. Car rental made up 80% of our revenue, and one of my mandates was to diversify the business. With my background in hospitality, hotels were a natural fit, though we actually started by working with a theme park. After strong results there, a sponsor introduced us to an executive at a major hotel brand.”
“They sent us to their flagship property, likely expecting us to fail. But through professional persistence, never pushy, just consistent, we exceeded expectations. That executive became our champion and helped roll us out across their managed properties. One hotel led to five, then 30, then 60, and here we are today, with 2,500+ hotels in over 100 countries.”
“I was appointed CEO in 2021, succeeding Khoury, who transitioned to executive board chairman. Our reputation for results, being easy to work with, and two key acquisitions helped fuel our growth. In hospitality, relationships are everything.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Toffetti explained:
“FPG has developed from a traditional consulting and training firm into a SaaS company. We took decades of frontline experience and codified it into our software platform, IN-Gauge, a complete toolkit for building and managing a world-class point-of-sale sales organization.”
“The platform focuses on the front desk, a key revenue-generating touchpoint. It combines live virtual training with a digital LMS for fast onboarding, quick adoption and performance tracking.”
“What we provide is a combination of 32 years of deep expertise in transactional sales, tools to measure both performance and service quality and digital training that ensures easy, consistent frontline execution. The only thing we don’t automate is the agent-guest conversation, but we train teams thoroughly on how to do that.”
“IN-Gauge uses years of operational data to deliver smart coaching and performance insights, helping hotels augment, not replace, their frontline teams. Today, IN-Gauge delivers an average 25:1 ROI.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Toffetti and the team face in building the company? Toffetti acknowledged:
“Yes. One of the biggest challenges came during the pandemic, we reinvented the company completely because on-site hotel visits became impossible and we lost 90% of our business overnight. We had to pivot fast and completely shift to a virtual model. And while COVID was declared five years ago, its effects on the hospitality industry continued to be significant until 2023.”
“Despite the uncertainty, we made a bold move during COVID to acquire TSA Solutions, our largest competitor, based in Singapore. It was a well-timed, creative, and fair deal that gave us access to their IP and client base, which we’ve since integrated into our platform. What seemed risky at the time became a major success, thanks to bold strategy and sound execution.”
“That acquisition, along with our earlier purchase of Drake Beil & Associates in 2015, marked two of the most defining moves in our company’s history. We effectively acquired our only two real competitors and came out of the downturn stronger, more capable, and better positioned to lead. What seemed risky at the time became a major success.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Toffetti about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Absolutely. A strong upsell program doesn’t just benefit the property, it transforms the frontline experience. It makes front desk roles more engaging and gives agents the opportunity to significantly increase their earning potential with commissions on top of their base hourly wage. With effective incentive programs in place, we regularly see wage increases of 20% or more for front desk agents.”
“In fact, we have agents in the U.S. earning over $100,000 a year, not because their hourly rate is different from their colleagues, but because they’ve mastered the art of enhancing the guest experience.”
“To give you a few examples:
— An upper midscale hotel in Orlando generates $80,000 per month in front desk upsell revenue.
— A large, upper upscale property brings in over $5 million annually from its front desk.
— A portfolio of 21 upscale properties generated $3.5 million last year across the group.
But what’s even more meaningful are the individual stories. We’ve heard from agents who have paid off debt, and one in particular stands out: a front desk agent told us her son was going to a violent school and was being bullied. Thanks to our program, he was able to put him in private school and get him out of that environment.
At the end of the day, yes, we want to drive revenue for our clients, and we want to be a profitable company. But what really fuels our culture is helping the frontline thrive. That’s the impact that matters most.”
Revenue
When asking Toffetti about the company’s revenue and funding details, he revealed:
“We’ve been consistently cash-flow positive and have achieved strong, sustainable growth year over year. FPG has grown both through acquisitions of its largest competitors and through a high rate of organic customer growth driven by the strength of our value proposition. As for the future, FPG sees its hospitality revenue run rate doubling within the next two years.”
“Currently, hospitality accounts for approximately 70% of our total revenue. Other verticals we serve include automotive dealerships, car rental companies and theme parks.”
“Ultimately, we measure success not just by our own revenue, but by the incremental revenue we help generate for our clients. Our platform, IN-Gauge, averages a 25:1 ROI, and some of our larger hotel partners generate millions annually in high-margin upsell revenue. That kind of performance fuels our growth and keeps us focused on delivering measurable, real-world results.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Toffetti assessed:
“While the broad opportunity is in the trillions, our direct addressable market is about $10 billion to $15 billion. But really, anywhere revenue flows across a desk or phone line is within reach for us. It’s really about two things: revenue and guest experience. Take a hotel, for example. A guest books in advance, and the hotel knows the room and rate. But that may not be the best room for the guest, or the best one available. Without proper tools and training, front desk agents often give upgrades away for free or don’t offer them at all.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Toffetti affirmed:
“First, we’ve spent 30 years going on-site, working with hundreds of thousands of frontline employees. We’ve been present during hundreds of thousands of real transactions. This isn’t theoretical, we have the on-the-ground experience, and that’s powerful. No other tech company is going to say they spent three decades studying the problem before developing the solution. That’s a huge differentiator.”
“We’re not technologists who had a good idea and tried to find market fit. We’re the world’s expert in incremental sales, and we built a technology to enable it. That’s what sets us apart. Our knowledge and our training are what we’re best known for. You can have a great tech company with amazing software, but if they’ve never done a hotel check-in, they’re not going to understand the nuances required to drive behavior. They just provide the tech and hope the client figures it out. We’re the exact inversion of that.”
“Second, our relationships. Because we were a consulting and training firm for so long, we’ve been deeply embedded in client environments. Our people know how to build meaningful relationships with leadership, and we hire accordingly.”
“Third, audited data. The fact that our system automates all incentive calculations is actually a huge differentiator. It’s central to the program, those incentives have to be accurate. Our platform handles that automatically and ties it to an audit trail that’s verifiable by finance. That alone has proven to be very significant.”
“And it goes beyond just automation, it’s about trust. Employees have full visibility into their incentives and performance. If a manager denies an upsell transaction, for example, due to a guest dispute, the system shows the agent that it was denied, and why. That clarity matters.”
“Without a system like IN-Gauge, most teams are using shared Excel files. Every time there’s an upsell, someone inputs it manually. That’s open to human error, and even unethical behavior. Our system eliminates that. It builds transparency, fairness, and accountability, which is critical for frontline trust in the process.”
“So, to sum it up, deep field experience, relationship-driven culture and a performance platform with auditable, trusted data. That’s what sets us apart.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since its launch? Toffetti noted:
“Our technology has evolved significantly since its early days. Until 2015, everything was done manually using Word or Excel, and even printed booklets were used for client presentations. The first version, initially called Pulse, was primarily a reporting platform with a monolithic code structure. Around 2018-2019, the technology was re-architected into microservices, which is a more modern software design approach. Most of the original monolithic code has been replaced, with only a few pieces remaining (like the LMS, which is currently being refactored). This evolution represents a shift from a traditional, single large program to a more flexible, integrated system of smaller programs connected through APIs.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Toffetti’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Toffetti reflected:
“I’d say winning the Universal Studios deal. This was the first significant contract outside of the automotive and car rental sectors and it grew the company by approximately 15%. The deal was particularly exciting because there was initial doubt within the company about whether we could successfully handle ticket sales for a theme park. The contract turned out to be a huge success, and I particularly enjoyed the subsequent interactions with Universal, including participating in nonprofit foundation events like the “Taste of City Walk” and the Halloween “Black Die Affair” events. I even maintained a friendship with the executive who signed the contract, which continues to this day.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Toffetti concluded:
“Deeper penetration in food and beverage, where there are 7,000 restaurants within our 2,500 hotels. Retail, since it often runs on the same point-of-sale systems. AI, which is where things get really exciting. We see a huge opportunity and a gap in the market, to use AI, not to replace human labor but to support and augment human capacity. And doing it in the frontline is straightforward, we have an immense amount of data, we know what works and what doesn’t, so we can give guidance.”
“We can coach, using AI agents. That’s something we’re focused on, how do we help the frontline become even more productive? There’s a very long tail of human interaction in hospitality, we want to use AI to maximize that, not diminish it. It’s really exciting. We’re witnessing the first dawn of widely distributed AI capabilities and we’re jumping in with both feet.”
