AI-Driven Success: Streamlining Your STR Business Operations

Today we are talking about all things AI and you're really going to want to stick around for this Spotlight series which is the mini episode where we get to dive into people, businesses and systems, things that you need to know about as a short term rental host. Today on the Booster podcast we've got Naeem Payment, he's the CEO of Guest Guru which we're going to be speaking about today. Honestly, this is so exciting and this is something which I've had firsthand trials of and I'm excited for you as our listener to get used to this. So if this is your first time here, my name is Liam Carolan. This is the Boostly podcast and this is where we give the tools, the tactics, the trainings and most importantly the confidence. So you can go out there and help with your direct bookings, but any bookings at all when it comes down to AI. So Naeem, thank you very much for joining me. Welcome along.

Thanks for having me.

So first of all, whereabouts are you in the world and can you give me a bit of history of how you've come to come to be in charge of Guest Guru? Sure, yeah.

So I'm not being at the moment, which is where I grew up and back and forth here in the uk, but AI runs not only in my blood, most in my name. So I don't know how my parents do all those years back when they b me down. Here we go again. So I started off by managing service departments for various owners and then I went leasing entire blocks of plants and submitting those or as they call it, the US arbitrage without knowing it was a thing, without knowing the whole community, people were doing this and that grew considerably. And within six months we went from having five plus units, about 56 units and things started going clear shape so I decided it was time to slow down and started developing some tech. So that was Zebu which has turned into a co channel manager, property management system, path manager, booking ed and so on. And then I kept working on that. Once we started using it we then had another gross square unit, about 60 units, 150, 200 units and then Covid hit and we lost about half of what we had and had to start rebuilding some house. About six line miles to the pandemic I decided to start buying hotels. The prices have counted and yeah acquired nine hotels nine months and luckily we built the system deal with multi unit setups. So we managed both our hotels under certain departments from the same central login, centralized report, fast country and so on. And then last Year I parted a wedding venue as well. After I got married at the venue, decided to sail. So we gone into weddings. No back kit for the wedding side, but who knows in the future.

Wait, wait a minute.

You.

You bought the place you got married at, did you say?

Yeah, just as I wanted to say, I got married in my backyard.

I love that. That's brilliant.

Yeah. And then last, what was it? May, I think one of our Z users messaged me and he mentioned before about VS Guru and said, can you guys integrate with us to this really cool AI Chatbot? And I said, sure. I mean, we've got an open API so they can go for it. Never happened. A couple of weeks later he messaged me saying, get through for sale. I said, okay, what happened there? He said Airbnb had shut down the system, unofficial system they're using to manage the messaging. And yeah, the system had shut since one or two days and they're looking for people who might be interested in buying it. So I said, sure thing. So I bought the code they've written and tried to set things up again and thankful that we had a backup because we could integrate to Zebu and Airbnb and all the channels for that. So we did that and we've integrated a lot of other document management systems and channel Manager since then. So, yeah, we're excited and running and excited for what the future holds.

I mean, this is exciting. First of all, wow, what a journey. I mean, like, I know there will be some people listening to this whole. You're well known in obviously the UK service Accommodation group, on Facebook and, you know, sort of in a lot of the social circles and, you know, you go to a lot of events and speak at a lot of different things. So I know there's people listening to this who will know you and know your journey. But if you haven't gone and checked out, obviously Zivu or seen Naeem's journey, then please do go and check that out. And to buy Guest Guru at a stage where, I mean, potentially was a chance that it just wouldn't necessarily work. But the great thing is that, as you say, you've already got your own PMS that you know it can integrate with because you've got that open AI, which is just so important to have that flexibility and. And integrations with other things that you've gone ahead and done it. So now feels like a great time for people to know what. What is Guest Guru? How can it help them?

Yes, so it's me, I based on ChatGPT, basically which allows you to automate replies to guest inquiries. And we've now also created a chatbot which you can actually embed on your existing website and you can use for your direct inquiries, or you can use for direct bookings. We currently don't have the ability to distinguish between information that can be released before booking and after booking, but we're working on that as well. So hopefully at some point we'll be able to have a distinction and you'll be able to use it both on the website as a sort of sales tool, but also following booking as a centralized information database. For more specific questions that you all have to share with guests, met whatever conditions are.

Except if you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B O O s t l y.co.uk call and booking an appointment with one of our sales team.

And can you now integrate with Airbnb? So if there's people who have got their listing on Airbnb, obviously that's one of the worries originally why Guest Guru changed hands in the first place. Can you now work with Airbnb?

Yeah. So you can't work directly with Airbnb because they've discontinued email porting service, which has previously. But if you use One of the MSAs that we've integrated to, so Zebru, Gassy, a whole bunch of others, then yes, you can use it with Airbnb. And what's more is that you're not limited to just using with Airbnb anymore, but you can actually use it for vrbo for booking.com for your direct bookings and any other channels where you've got email communications coming and going through your pms.

That's amazing. So as long as you're with one of the partnered PMSS or xivu, then you're able to connect to not just Airbnb that they're used to, but all of them, which is just amazing. And just sharing a quick story, as I've used Guest Guru, I mean, the first time that I used it, I was a Little bit worried because handing over any part of your business is like handing over your baby and. And when we get a guest question something you just don't want it to give a silly answer. But I found that as long as I've put in the inputs correctly then the output was fantastic. And I've got to be honest, you could my I've got a team of VAs and the answer they give and the answer this gave, it'd be indistinguishable between the two. So it was really a good. Well, it might be. Might be a bit better but no, my VAS are very, very good but my worry was got me sweating now name. I know they listen to this. So yeah when it comes down to the. The answer I expected it to be a little bit more. Everybody knows right these days when you've got an email that comes from. From AI because it says I hope this email finds you well and all that sort of stuff. But have you still got it where you can kind of help with the tone? Can you still do that unguessed? Amazing. Yeah. So that is. Is one of the best features on it. How can you see this kind of shaping in the. In the future? What are the. Some of the things that you would like to do or how can you see hosts using this in the future?

We were working on adding all sorts of features to it and obviously more people start using again list of desired features keeps increasing but we've got things like general FAQs so right mom, you can add FAQs to different properties and then that information gets used. But we're working on adding a level at the company level basically where you can add FAQs that apply to the properties to make it easier to input data from the shop that will have that information. Hopefully at some point. We'll also work on automating replies to the news so we can have information from the listing and I'm not sure yet whether you'll be able to imagine that with the booking and if we can feed the information from the previous communications to the guests that might be able to improve the accuracy place on that as well.

Nice. So exciting exciting times ahead.

One question, other ideas? You know I wasn't planning on buying this.

Well, well, speaking of other ideas, as I said just before we went live I was on a mastermind speaking to Dena from Keys to Kelowna based in in Canada and she said that one really idea would be is obviously all the questions that it gets asked. It must know what the most common questions Are and if there could be a hint for guest, for host, sorry to know what are the top 15, 20 questions that it's getting asked and then already prepare that answer, you know, because you get. Chances are it's going to get asked. Is it learning? Is it doing things like that to what. What's the limitation?

I guess it's. We haven't done any work yet on proposing epic fuels or proposing answers and the FAQ bit is. That's the input you're talking about. Right. So that. Yeah, I struggle to see how we can generate that without the host having input on it because there'll be specific things about the listing or the way the host does business. But we can certainly look at trying to extract some of the more questions, common questions and providing noses that templates almost guarding the antisliptic use.

Yeah, that makes sense. And ultimately, I mean as long as somebody. Everybody listening to this. Right. Is probably a host of some degree, most people are either going to have a, you know, if you're old school, got a handwritten guidebook and in which case you can. It's probably printed so you've got all the information already somewhere where you can then paste it into the Guest Guru system or they've got a digital guidebook again, they can just take the information, copy and paste it into. Into the. Or alternatively they've got a website or somewhere where you can just generally get all the information that you send to guests, even your emails. And I found it really quick and easy to set up personally because although I had to input that information, ultimately it wasn't like I had to think what shall I tell this? It was like, hey, I've got all this information that I already sent to guests, let's just put it in. And yeah, the results were fantastic.

Well, depending on the pms, we also pull all that information from the PMS itself.

Oh, nice.

Thing. Or has the queues but missing. And we try to. All those skills you don't have to learn.

That's cool. And you mentioned you've got the plugin for boostly websites or WordPress websites in general. Do you have to put inputs to that or can it read the pages or do you need to copy and paste? How does that.

How does that work? Yeah, so you need to import the listings first into Guest Guru. We don't concentrate information on websites. And then once this is. Once information is in the system, it can generate a link for each listing and you can use that. It's not even a plugin, it's just A script that you can embed so you can use it on bricks, website or whatever. You can paste the code or link the chatbot page for each listing. So you can have listings, specific chatbots that will all look the same to the user, that they're actually pulling information from within the same database.

That's really good then, because that means that obviously it can answer questions specifically like, has this got a balcony? Or you know, is it pet friendly? All of that stuff. Which again, do you think guest guru is a threat to virtual assistants? Do you think there's a. There's still going to be space for things like tech and virtual assistants? Or if I was a host just getting started, would it delay the time I need to get my first va, for instance?

I wouldn't say, let's say it's okay. I mean, you can't answer every single question. So sometimes escalate things. Yes, of course, VA estimates things as well, so you could argue that it's replacing that. But what question. If you. If it's saving you time that a VA would be spending answering questions, surely there's something VA can do to add value to your business more than just answering questions. So the way I would see it is that it's freeing up valuable resources whether the time of the VAs, or decide not to take the base expanded business in other ways.

Either way, it gives you online business.

You'll probably hire someone to do something else with that money, whether it's a designer or social media person or whatever it is.

Salesperson first hire. Gotta get a salesperson talking directly to the, to the guests. So yeah, I mean, either way, it frees up time. You touched on something there which was. Was my next question, which is what happens when you do when it gets asked something which needs to be answered by a human. How does it know? And what's the. What's the process? Love it.

If it gets escalated, you'll get a message in the host saying this question needs your attention. You'll then have to reply to that.

Once you reply, will it know the reply at all or will it. Will it learn from that reply or do you need to update it?

Yeah, so the system reads all incoming outgoing messages. So if you're sending outgoing messages as well.

This is really cool. I mean, just in general, isn't it? I mean, we're talking about something which can save time. It can ultimately free up stress of dealing with, with guests. So, you know, it's time stress less. Yeah. Well, is there any other thing that you want to share around guest guru or anything that we've, we've missed along the way?

Well, not much except for those who haven't worked with me before, I'm all ears. So if you have ideas, if you've been waiting for an AI chatbot to come out when he's. Join our community and contribute with your ideas, it only costs. This was the previous pricing and we know that it's only $1 per property per month for your first property. So it's essentially free. And we'd love to have as much feedback as we can.

You can't go wrong with that, can you? I mean, that is, you know, this is such a useful tool. I mean for less than a coffee a month, you can, you can start to implement AI really deeply into your business. So where can people go to find out more and to, to come and come and sign up for guest guru.

Sure. So you'll find us on social media either on the guest guru or your guests guru on the social media platform, you know, and our website is guest.

Nice, nice. And we will pop them links somewhere around however you're consuming this information as you're watching it. So yeah, I think that's, that's everything. Thank you so much. Name and thank you to. If you listen to this on the Brucely podcast or watching on YouTube, we know there's lots of places you can put your attention and we really like you, really thank you, really like you as well. But we thank you for putting your attention with us. Just before we go, name the way we love to end this is. Is there any great pieces of advice or the best advice you've been given that you'd like to share with the listeners or maybe a mantra or a motto, something which can leave us with some inspiration that was sprung that on you, I guess.

Learn from AI and how it adapts to changing circumstances and try and buy onto your business. We've been through an interesting couple of years and God knows what future holds, but I'm sure it'll be no less of a rough ride than we've done so far. So keep on your toes. That's good.

Great advice. I mean ultimately everybody listening to this should be thinking, how can I implement AI into my business? Because most people aren't, you know, there's so many people out there don't even know about AI at the moment. So early advantage still, you know, it's only been around less than a year still. So yeah, everyone dive into this. Thank you so much. Na and yeah, we'll. Thanks for having me thanks for. Thanks for joining us. Bye for now.