HostAI: Save Time, Boost Listings & Improve Guest Satisfaction

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Welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This podcast gives you the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get more direct bookings. And we're doing the Spotlight series. So this is where we look at businesses, services, things that you as a host should be aware of. And if you're not aware of them, you certainly will be shortly. So for the next sort of 20 or 30 minutes, we're going to dive into a business and we've got a very special guest to talk to us about it. And you'll hear this everywhere at the moment and we've been hearing it for a while, but AI is really changing the future. It's making our businesses easier. And today we've got a guest who is talking all about AI. So let me welcome Cole Rubin. He's the CEO of Host AI. Sorry, Host AI. You can check them out for Anybody who just wants to go off and find out more at WW hostai app, but this is going to be a really exciting podcast. I've been really excited and looking forward to this. So let's welcome Cole along. Cole, thank you for joining me.

Thank you Liam. Thank you Mark. Too excited to dig into Host AI.

Awesome. Host AI. I mean, let's start off at the the most basic question. What what is Host AI?

So Host AI is a tool that integrates to your PMS to help you automate guest messages, save time for you and your team as a host, boost SEO with fast reply times, as well as improve guest satisfaction with quick, accurate responses.

Amazing. Amazing. So basically it helps hosts in a number of different ways before we dive more into it, because I want to find out more. Obviously that's a little taster for you who are listening, but I want to find out more about yourself. What did you do before this and how did host AI get born before this?

I've been involved with real estate from a pretty young age, from around 19 years old. Studied real estate in college, was on a more corporate commercial real estate path and kind of after college got involved investing in short term rentals, fell in love with it, doubled down on it, and was eventually able to quit. My 9 to 5 solely on Airbnbs, was managing others and found guest messaging to be the most time consuming part of the whole operation until AI technology came around. The only other way to outsource this was with virtual assistants. Other employees, you had to train them, you had a, they were expensive, they needed sleep, so you needed kind of two people to have 24. 7 coverage. So this, there was really not anything to solve this problem until AI technology came around and with my co founder slash cto, we built a very rudimentary version of the product, was using it on my personal listings and it was working really well. So we put our heads together and figured out how we could bring this to the market and we did that through these PMS integrations.

And how long ago is that? I mean, obviously AI hasn't been around that long, but how long ago are we speaking? Since the first iteration.

First iteration was about a year ago. Wow.

Things move so quick, don't they? In tech in general and it's an exciting time. Just before jumping on this podcast, I was actually on a team call with a lot of Boostly members and one of them actually I said, is there any questions about AI that I can, I can put here? And it's funny to see the room because you see Some people are excited by it, but one person was like, well, you know, is there any fear that we should have around AI in general? Is there any? What would you answer to that person?

I think it's not really replacing jobs, it's enhancing them, improving the quality of the responses for the guests as well as streamlining operations. Now, a messaging agent doesn't have to look through the pms, an external database to find an answer to a question. Host AI aggregates all that, populates an answer pretty much instantly. They can simply just approve the message and carry on with their other work. So it saves them a lot of time, makes current employees more efficient, as well as creating better responses for guests.

And we're always going to get people who are like, some are worried about stuff, aren't they? Some are embracing it, but ultimately the cat's out of the bag is coming, isn't it? And it is about finding the tools which, like you say, enhance the host's ability to manage the home, but also enhances more importantly the guests experience. And then a better review. More guests in the future is the thoughts behind it. So diving more into the product now, how does it work? So I'm a host myself, what have I got to do and how involved have I got to be with with host AI?

Super simple to set up. You'll go on hostai app, make an account, you'll connect your property management software, just copy and paste the API, key over and import all your listings. Doing that will pull all your listings, all their information, all your notes, your calendar availability. So guest asks, can I extend my stay two nights? We can check your calendar and answer that instantly. We pull the pricing. Guest asks, how many, how much is a stay for X to Y dates? Six months. In the future we can answer that. You'll go in to host AI, connect an external database if you have that, whether that's a notion file with extra info, Google Sheet, airtable, et cetera. So the more info we could feed into host AI, the more it's going to be able to answer, the more it's going to be able to automate. If it doesn't know something, it's not going to make an assumption. So the more we can feed it, the better it's going to be. And then you'll set the handful of settings we have in Host AI, it's not too much. Can connect it to SMS, Slack or WhatsApp to respond to things Host AI doesn't know. You'll get a Slack notification, WhatsApp text or normal text hey, there's an urgent message at this property. We need your help responding and you'll just text back and host AI will learn from that instance and facilitate sending that message off to the guests for you. So it's kind of like a set it up on the web app, integrate it to your existing tech stack through Slack, WhatsApp, SMS and you kind of just only have to step in when you're needed.

And one of the worries that many hosts listening to this may have is how do we police the answer? There's that certain level of control as hosts that we like to have. How can we be sure that the answer is given is going to be the right one and is there any control we've got over that?

Yeah, if you want to control it, you can set autopilot off where all non urgent messages will be one click approval. So you get to just in Slack click a button approve message and it'll go to the guest so you still maintain full control over what the guest is getting.

Nice, nice. So if, basically if I was a control freak and wanted to know every message, you know, I could stop it. I mean I've got to be honest, I'm one of these people who go hey, let's test out. The guest will tell me if the message is, is completely wrong. But and that's, that's know as Mark Simpson says is you had 80% right and then get it out there at the end of the day and then you know that will show your experiential teacher if you need more of it after that. And if, if it gets asked questions then that it doesn't know what would.

What would happen if it's something that if like a guest asks hey, where's the closest vegan restaurant? That's something that we could find on the Internet. So it would do a call and answer that but if it was something like really nuanced to the property, like hey, where's the toaster in the kitchen? It's not going to know that from any, any data you have in the pms. It's just going to ask you hey, where's the toaster in the kitchen? You're going to say it's in the left cupboard next to the fridge. And then hosted learns from that. The next time a guest asks hey, where's the toaster? It knows.

Nice. That's pretty cool.

If it doesn't know something, it's not going to make an assumption, it's just going to lean on the safer side ask you. And then over time when all the little quirks, nuances come up for each property and you've responded, once you have a fully trained model on the house.

That'S really cool that it learns. And ultimately that removes the worry of if it is getting us something that it doesn't know, then it can, it can have a prompt, can't it? So that makes sense. One of the other questions we had from, from team Bruce Lee beforehand is there now seems to be quite a few of these kind of AI services that will help with messaging. What is the kind of X factor for host AI?

We have developed this urgency tagging system where we're not trying to say we're going to automate 100% of guest messages because we believe there's some stuff that shouldn't be automated. Like when a guest is really unsatisfied or something's broken, AI should not respond to that. AI should tell the host something's up so the host can fix the situation in real life and then respond to guest. And this system we developed is fully customizable. For example, if you wanted to tag all wedding and corporate retreat requests as urgent, you could do that. So host AI knows whenever someone asks about that, it knows not to speak up. And then aside from that, we've really just focused on having the highest quality messages created compared to the competitors. That's the core feature we're focusing right now is just best quality messages. And we've, we've tested a couple others and they do a good job. But I think we're pulling the most data from the pms where we know calendar, availability, pricing and we just can respond to more questions than the rest.

I love, love, love what you're saying with the especially around the fact that it wouldn't necessarily answer a question about if somebody's dissatisfied, then the number one thing that we say to hosts is jump on a call with somebody you know, instead of lots of messages back and forth, a quick 10 minute conversation can put that guest at ease. It shows you care because people forget what you said and what you've done, but they know how you made them feel. So by even being on that call, they know that. And that kind of still removes 99% of the messaging. And then you're dealing with actually the stuff that only you as a host can deal with. Right? And that is the know the stuff that needs you more attention and more care around it.

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, including 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 forward/call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team.

Going into one of the things you mentioned earlier on, which is the PMS connections you mentioned API and this is something which here at Boostly, because we love direct bookings and we're always talking about how importantly having an API connection to your direct booking website is just as important for your messaging through host AI. Talk us more around, around that API and, and the sort of pmss which, which it works with. Is there any kind of limitations at the moment?

We currently are integrated with Guesty, hostaway, Hostways coming soon. They're all on our roadmap to work through. We're kind of just going for the ones with the most users, work our way down. The one limitation for integrations is we need a messaging endpoint to send and receive messages. There's a couple PMSs out there that don't have those yet. They're working on it, but it's not done yet. So that is one limitation. And then things we're pulling from the PMS API is pricing, calendar, availability, all the listing details, your custom fields, and the big one is access to the unified inbox so we can send and receive messages.

You know, that is music to my ears, especially because not all of these different. You know, some of your competitors don't pull in the data around availability. So some of the guest kind of apps can answer, does it have a swimming pool or does it, you know, have parking? But if somebody said can I come and stay next week? It wouldn't have a clue necessarily for, for those other ones. Whereas for yours, obviously, because API connected, if it's connected to one of those PMS is, then it can, it can tell exactly what is what's going on. And I absolutely love that.

Yeah.

And I think you'll have lots of people, you know, reaching out to do this because this is just really cool from a guest perspective. Do they know they're talking to an AI? What's their kind of experience of on their end?

The guests don't really know it's there. There's guardrails set in place with us. So host AI never admits that it's AI. In addition to that, we have this host profile section on the Host AI web app where you kind of tell host AI who you are and it, it becomes you.

Nice. Nice. So they, they literally wouldn't know. Can you, is there any kind of programming around the kind of tone? Because it's the only other thing which I see some people have businesses which are very formal, some people have businesses which are very friendly and all of that side of things. Is there any options around that or is there anything coming in the future that'll I'll be able to do that?

Yes. Through the host profile, you can say who you are and how you want it to act. And it will, it will do that. But we are working on more ways to customize the tone. In our first version, we had it an option where you could customize what it was. We realized everyone put the exact same thing. So we're like, why maybe this shouldn't be an option right now? Because everyone wants the same thing and we want to make setup onboarding as seamless as possible. So the less we can ask, the easier it is. But it is on the radar to come back in the near future.

You know, that is, I, I, I hear what you said there because often people say, you know, hey, I've got a tagline. It's a, it's my place with a home from home feel. And you just go like when you've been in the industry a while, you just go, Everybody uses that. So you want to stand out, you know, like if you said, if you had a pirate themed place and when they messaged you that talked like a pirate, then that would be amazing, right? You know, that would be on, on brand and stuff like that. It stands out from, from the, the other guys. So yeah, I really, I really like that. So moving on more generally around the industry, there's two questions I'd like to ask. So first of all is what do you think? What are you excited about at the moment?

For us specifically, we just got accepted into Y Combinator, so the team, the engineering team and the product business team has been split between SF and la. So through the acceptance in the Y Combinator, we're all going to be moving up to sf, got some funding through them, export mentorship guidance from them. They backed a lot of very successful companies in the SGR space. Airbnb specifically Stripe, Guesty, TopKey, HostFi. So super super fortunate to be among one of the few SDR companies to get accepted into yc.

This is a big deal, right? Because first of all, it unlocks a lot, especially for a software company and for, we've got, obviously listeners in the us, we've got listeners in the uk, but this is effectively, you know, the, the kind of unlocking the, the, you're on the road to the. One of the big techs or, or could be on the road to, to one of the big techs. So I'm really, really excited for you, Cole. That's, that's amazing to hear. In the future around AI, what do you think's going to happen in the industry? So talking generally well, or, or specifically about host AI, either or. What do you think is going to happen with AI? Where do you think this is going to go? How do you think it's going to end up, say, in five, 10 years?

I think every OTA, every PMS, every tool will have some AI component to it. Whether it's on the OTA side, it's, it's helping potential guests find a stay for exactly what they want on the PMS side, helping host a million different things that could help automate. So I think we're going to see iterations from every tool in the industry coming out with something. And then on our end, we're just really focused on guest messaging and expanding that out to marketing tools to. We have the conversations from what the guest said in the past. How do we use that to leverage that to get them to come back in the future as well as when they're at the property, how we can drive more revenue, whether that's through offering stay excursions based off things they're liking, restaurants are liking, or even stay extensions based off calendar availability that we're pulling.

From the pms, that is proper exciting because literally daily I tell my team, you know, hey, if there's a gap, try and fill it with. The best person to sell it to is the person that's already in there. Right. And that does take a lot of logistics to, to manage that well and get the timing right around that. Whereas if we knew it was automated, you know, that would just, just save so much time. So that's a big one. And like you say, we're already seeing companies like booking.com Airbnb and these companies, what they do is each person, what they see on the app is tailored towards that person, isn't it? So it's, it's to the degree where not only is it tailored, but Sometimes now people are saying even the price is tailored towards that person based on their spending habits. So if you could. All that sort of stuff, which can be pulled in, you know, it's all exciting that that could be done in the future, isn't it? But in the meantime, I'm excited. First of all, as. As one of the PMSs you mentioned, which are now coming on that I use. I'm excited that I could potentially become a customer in the future of host AI. Just to cover. Where do you cover at the moment? Is it. Is it just us? Is it uk, Is it Europe? Is it Australia? Whereabouts do you cover primarily? And is there plans to expand?

We're serving customers worldwide.

Nice. Can't really expand past that, can you? Not at the moment. Maybe when?

At the moment, yeah.

When Elon's colonized Mars, maybe. Something like that. So I've really enjoyed this. As we get towards the end, we like to do a couple of fun questions. So my question for you, Cole, is if there was anybody famous throughout history, alive or posthumous, who would you invite for dinner and why?

Brian Chesky would have to be up there on the list. Not just because we're involved in the same space. I just think he's a brilliant founder and done a lot. Love watching him speak.

He's. He's on Shark Tank as well. Is he? I don't know if he's still on there. Is he?

I think he made a guest appearance.

Did he? Ah, fair enough. I might have seen that then. So awesome. Anyone else at all, if you had.

A second Steve Jobs.

Yeah, Steve. I'd love Steve Jobs. That'd be amazing. He's. He literally his vision and the fact that he didn't want to deter from that at any stage is huge, isn't it? And everyone got on board, which is amazing. What do you do for fun when you're not dealing with tech and all of that cool stuff and Airbnb? What do you do for fun and who do you spend your time with?

Love to ski with friends and family, play ice hockey. Played hockey in college, so that's a little tough to get people together to do. But love that. Any opportunity I get. And then looking at cool houses. Love, love unique stays. Airbnbs. Driving around through, like, la, Newport Beach. Seeing the cool houses or people are building. Love doing that, too.

Nice. Of course, if you do go on property, sorry, on ski trips, you can actually make it, you know, make it a property meet and then it's tax deductible, at least is if you're in the uk. So yeah, it can be work, work and pleasure and then tax deductible, which is amazing. So I know from what you've told us tonight, Cole, like people are going to be interested. Before we share your details, is there any other anything we missed or anything else you wanted to mention around host AI?

I think we hit all the good points. One minor detail is we have a Slack app too. A lot of property managers use Slack for their internal communication. So with our Slack app you could create a guest messaging channel and bring all your OTA messaging in there. So if your VA is already in there, your team's already in there, kind of just moves everything to one easy spot.

Nice, nice. And for, for those listening who doesn't use Slack then it's worth checking out. I mean a lot of the time I see businesses, the ones who use Slack, absolutely love it. Other people are still using things like Telegram or WhatsApp and things like that and others are just sticking to good old fashioned like emails which I find like difficult to lose on the thread and stuff like that. So Slack is a really great integration there, isn't it? So we're going to throw the mic open then, Cole, how can we find out more?

You can check us out at Hostai App app book a demo. Could talk with me, talk with our team and we'll get you started. We'll do. How about 30 days free for boostly? We use code boostly for 30 days free.

Oh, awesome. Thank you very much. We will definitely be be diving into that. Cool. The last question that we love to ask is, is there a mantra or a motto that really resonates with you.

Just not being too young and taking action now. Like when you think about something you want to do, just go do it and don't let people tell you otherwise.

Great advice. And yeah, I know there's people listening to this who will be thinking that right now. I mean it's exciting times. Hey, there's never more opportunity than right now. If you're alive on this earth right now, you've never got more opportunity than now, have you? With, you know, all that sort of technology, technology and that. So the world's a little bit smaller place than it used to be. Everyone can. I mean, I'm in the uk. You're based. Whereabouts are you at the moment?

I'm in Irvine, California.

So yeah. So you're west coast. Yeah. It's amazing to be able to do this, isn't it? So thank you so much for your time. Thank you too for listening to this on the Boostly podcast. That is it for myself and Cole for this one. Hope you've enjoyed this. And if you do know somebody else who can get some value from this episode, if you please feel free to share the episode with them and I'm sure they'll thank you for it. So thank you very much, Cole, and we'll see everybody on the next one. Bye for now.

Thanks, Leo.