How To Really Impress Your Guests and Increase Repeat Bookings

So one thing which I absolutely love at the moment is the amount of tech and the new and exciting things which is happening in hospitality. And obviously boostly, what we want to do is promote more direct bookings and ways that you as a host can stand out and make sure guests always remember their experience when they come and stay with you. And our guest today helps with exactly that. They really help both with the experience, but also so you can really impress them and get more direct bookings for the future. So this is the Bouchely Podcast. If this is your first time here, the Bouchely podcast helps hosts with the tools, the tactics, the trainings, and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get more direct bookings. Today we're joined by a very special guest. We've got the CEO and founder of Enzo Connect, It's Francois. I'm going to be terrible pronouncing this Francois Goello.

Is that you? Got it.

Superb. Okay, so he's here to tell us all about the latest things happening with Enzo Connect. And if you haven't heard of this before, do stick around. You're going to have a great time finding out about this product and how you can get involved and put this into your hospitality business. So welcome along. Francois, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me. And I love talking about everything, book, direct and so on. So I know you guys are the the OGs in this space, so I appreciate you having me on the podcast today.

Thank you. Thank you very much. So just before we went live, we were talking about where you are in the world. But before we dive into the product, which I know everyone's going to be excited to find out about, give me a little bit about your history of, first of all, where you are in the world, your history, and how Enzo.

Connect came to be 100%. So I'm currently based in Toronto in Canada, originally from France, but raised in England and in the US a bit. So traveled a fair bit with family, which is always an amazing thing. And I did my studies. You know, some people might see me on this and might be like, how old is this kid? So I'm about 26 years old and I started Enzo Connect right out of university. I studied computer science, cognitive science, focus in computational linguistics, literally working on models like ChatGPT Transformer, as we used to call them before OpenAI, kind of brought their own version of it, and then did a Master's of entrepreneurship at Cambridge in the uk. Enzo Connect was, I was never meant to start a company it was a pure accident. In fact, I was supposed to go get a job like, you know, any normal person after university and figure out what I was going to do. But instead, I started this company out of pure accident because I was in a course and we had to come up with a solution to an entrepreneurial problem. Now I had to be robotics focused, and I absolutely hate robotics. So I went up to my Prof. And I said, can I do smart home devices instead? And he reluctantly said, yes. But he said, you're probably not going to win the $10,000 cash prize at the end of the course. And I was like, wait a minute, there's a $10,000 cash prize at the end of this course? Challenge accepted, Mario. I'm going to do everything to win this. So I don't think I attended any of my other courses. I just focused on that one. First weekend, my best friend calls me up and he tells me, francois, you're trying to become Canadian. You're French, and you don't know how to ski. So we're going to go to Mont Blanc and we're going to learn how to ski. So it's a Friday morning, early afternoon, and we drive towards Montan Blanc from Toronto, which is about a four or five hour drive. We book a vacation rental on Airbnb. Maybe the first mistake, I don't know. And we get an automated message that says, keys under the doormat. Here's your check in instructions. Have a nice day. And that's about it. We get to the unit, keys frozen under the doormat. We finally pry ourselves into the unit, and we noticed the heating system was per room, but we didn't figure that out until the checkout. So we just ended up staying in the living room where it was warm and we could make a fire. And then throughout the state, we're asking basic questions. How do I get pizza delivered in the middle of nowhere? The millennial that I am, how do I do this? How do I do that? And no answers whatsoever. Five days after checkout, we get a text message from the host saying, we left one of the windows open in the kitchen. Kitchen pipes froze. We owe him $5,000 and he's sending us to small Claims Corp. So that's kind of the birth story of Enzo Connect. We did close those windows. Message coming in five days after checkout. Could have been a different guest. I mean, it was a whole ordeal. And we decided to solve the check in problem. So we started with a very, very basic proof of concept. And the idea was everyone has data about them. We know basic information. Now, as much as an OTA might restrict emails and phone numbers and such, we know certain key information that should allow you to make the check in process seamless. So we built a very small proof of concept. We actually brought in a door which I still have right here on my, near my, my desk holders now to sign it. And we built a proof of concept. We ended up winning the 10 grand and then I was starting a master's of entrepreneurship and I was like part of my French, but it, I'm going to try and do this on the side and see what happens. So that's kind of the birth story of Enzo Connect. Obviously a lot has changed since day one. I mean, we connected with a smart lock that I don't think exists anymore. So there's a lot more to just smart locks and checking in, if you will, that we've developed. But yeah, that's the founding story of Enzo Connect.

That's amazing. What I love about that is you've experienced a problem. First of all, can I just say that host sounds awful. I mean, like if they're not calling you during your stay to encourage you to obviously book direct next time or just to make an impression, then obviously, I take it you're not going to leave a fantastic review, especially after that text saying about the window. But when it comes down to Enzo Connect and you experiencing that problem, I love the fact that you've just gone out there and just went, you know what? This needs solving. You know, this is a clear thing that needs solving. And it might be a case of first of all you experiencing it, but then also at the perfect time because the tech is now there. There's something we always say to hosts who are worried about leaving OTAs, that there's so much tech out there that you can do so many things that other hosts 20 years ago, five years ago, couldn't even do, you know, and, and that's, that's the great thing. What would you say is the experience from a guest? So if you had Enzo Connect when you were checking into that Airbnb, what would your experience have been like?

Well, you know what, I'll tell you what my experience was. A week ago I went to Montreal for a festival. Not very professional of me. I wish I could tell you it was a work trip, but no, I went out and partied at Oceaga and I decided to book one of our clients properties called Simplicimo out of Montreal. So same destination, different client and I got to check in using Our platform. And what was really cool about this is we drove from 6pm and arrived at 1am and the check in was smooth. So I got the information at the right time. I got what we call Boarding pass, which is kind of a web app that encompasses all the different links that you would usually send to guests. So things like guidebooks, upsells, verification, check in information, smart locks, all in one, branded and designed in your way kind of web app, no downloads required or anything like that. And I got to check in and the process was smooth. It was step by step, picture by picture check in instructions with the last element being a unlock door button, unlocked the door, took a shower, went to bed and then went and partied for the weekend. So it was a great, great experience. Also a great way for me to see certain items of the check in experience that were not the way I would want it to be. So noticing that, you know, an integration with a particular SmartWalk generates six digit codes instead of four digit codes, I should have had that off the whole time. So just being able to understand how clients use our platform, what are some limitations, what we could improve? But definitely I think it would have made the check in experience and the upsell part way more convenient.

So 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-ostly.co.uk call and booking an appointment with one of our sales team.

One of the things which you mentioned before is that people set up these automated emails and one of the people, when I go and stay somewhere, I don't want to be getting like seven different emails and trying to remember, oh, let me scroll up, looking for my checking, checking information. And I've been guilty of that. When I first set up, I was like, I need to tell them everything right now. And that was like, like, you know, throwing up information on one big long email and inevitably, what do people do? They get there, where's the keybox? You know, that's annoying.

I'm guilty of that as well.

I'm fully guilty of that, but this is the great thing about having, you know, an app, a place where they can go and access all this information. And you also mentioned the upsells as well. So how would it work for us as a host? What do we need to do? How much effort does it take to set up something like Enzo Connect? What is the, what's the, the time involved? I guess.

So I'll take a step back and I'll give you a bit of the story behind the boarding pass and how we got to that point. Because this was developed a year ago and it's evolved so much from all the client feedback that we've gotten. When we first started, it was really just collecting data and a guidebook and not a great guidebook at that, to be quite honest. So we've developed it since to account for more. When we first started Enzo Connect, we actually started off as a unified messaging platform with different AI capabilities. Not ChatGPT at the time, although now we've finally launched Enzo AI, which is ChatGPT in your inbox. And it was a basic inbox with text, email, WhatsApp and Airbnb message. Something which at the time was lacking for many property management systems. We would centralize the information, create different automations and we would focus a lot on the concept of if this, then that. So if the guest sends this kinds of message or if this happens, or if that happens, then sends send a message. What we realized this was about a year, year and a half ago is people were setting up a ridiculous amount of workflows of these conditions and logic for their guest experience. And effectively it wasn't actually reducing the amount of questions guests had, it was just automating their tasks of sending out messages, but not necessarily responding to the overwhelming number of guest questions. And so the idea shifted from well, let's not think about automating guest messages, let's think about removing them completely. Why is it that when I book a hotel, I don't interact with anyone until I show up to the property? If they're not self check in, then I have a front desk to just get my I.D. and you know, get the key and so on, but I don't have any questions. And that comes to two things, trust and the way operators communicate with guests. And so the idea was with this web app, our goal is to remove all of those questions so that it's all answered already. And it's kind of a self serve model. So the boarding pass is a web app, super configurable, using the same if this Then that, that can dynamically change based on conditions. So if it's an Airbnb reservation, I don't need to do ID verification, but if it's a direct booking, I need a safety deposit and ID verification. Things that Airbnb offers as an OTA that I can't offer as a direct booking channel. So being able to tailor the experience according to different conditions and then running the guests through that guest journey, so it's, it's through what we call our Guest Journey editor. Literally, you just go through every stage of the guest journey and you set these things up. So booking confirmation, what do you want to do? Pre check in, what do you want to do? What do you want to say? What kind of upsells you want to have check in? And we just run through the whole experience, hit a button that says go live, and that's it, you're done. And then you just, obviously, you have to actually manage the guests and the rest, you know, through our inbox, your PMS or any other tools that you might be using. So that's kind of the setup, if you will.

I mean, it sounds fantastic. Especially. I'm so glad you mentioned the difference if somebody books direct, because we get to speak to people all the time who have got their direct book and websites being set up. And one of the biggest questions is, hey, how do I protect my place when I get a direct book? And, you know, it's the biggest thing Airbnb will cover me. How do I protect myself? And you go, well, you don't have the same thing like air cover, but what you do have is you making a huge percentage more. You know, you can, you can usually charge a little bit more or you're more likely to get guests, but then there's lots of ways to protect yourself and take an id, getting them to sign your, your terms of stay. Sometimes, you know, the security deposits, things like that, and just making that flow as easy as possible is just so important, isn't it? And that I think that's the number one thing is if you can take that hassle out of the transaction with the guest, the more likely it is they're going to book with you direct next time. And, you know, if, if they're also having an experience like you've mentioned, where they everything's in one place, they'll remember how easy it is. And I've had an experience of this recently where you go and stay somewhere, and if it is easy, you're left with such positive image that you just get, you know, What, I'm going to go back there again. I really enjoyed that. That took the hassle out of everything, 100%.

And to add to that, I would say, you know, it's about making it configurable for those kinds of bookings and providing that optionality. But it's also, and this has been our, our strength, I would say, at Enzo Connect is, you know, you talked about there's a lot more tech vendors coming out in the space, and this is a good and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it gives you optionality, but it's a bad thing because it gives you optionality. And that means you have to do research and you have to figure out which one's the best for your business and so on. And so what we've done at Enzo Connect is we're trying to become Switzerland in this sense. So we connect with your pms, we connect with your payment gateways, we connect with your smart locks, but we also with white label providers that you've already work with. So instead of replacing your verification tools, we white label super hog, we white label auto host, and we allow you to choose when to use different platforms based on different conditions and so that you can offer the existing solutions that you have, but in a connected manner. Hence the name Enzo Connect.

So, yeah, I really like that. Yeah. And you mentioned some spectacular tech that people can use just then, and it's great to see that it's not replacing, you know, because the worst thing now is that people are worried about, oh, does this kind of take the place of this or does this, you know, there's, there's so much tech and they're, they're worried about having, you know, overwhelmed by, by choice, like you say, of different tech companies, but also going, well, how much do I really need to stack? Well, actually using Enzo Connect, you can pick your, your favorites and really stack in that way, which is cool. You mentioned AI, and I'm so glad you did earlier on, because one of our questions is what's new, what's exciting, what is, what's happening in the world of Enzo that, you know, what does the future hold? So what I'd love to expand on is what is that AI technology now and what things could be planned. Is there any sort of gems that you can drop as to things that you'd love to have in the future?

For sure. Well, I'll say, you know, the concept of ChatGPT in any messaging platform is going to become just a normal thing. So whether it's your pms, whether it's a specific messaging tool that you're using, or Enzo Connect or whatever, the concept of ChatGPT is going to be in every one of these platforms. The way we integrate and the way we operationalize, if that makes sense. ChatGPT is what's going to make certain platform stand out from the others. And the way EndSoConnect we developed it is using the same concept of this conditional logic. When you put in a ChatGPT button, an inbox, it's basically using its 2021 or 2022 data to generate a response. Now, some might be a bit smarter, as for example, Host Weight launched one, which is a bit smarter. And it's going to look at the property details, your check in, checkout, name of property and so on. Where Enzo's going to take it to the next level or where we have taken it to the next level is we're looking at these different workflows and the content in your guidebooks and your upsells and your fees and everything. And we're drafting responses that aren't about providing the information to the client, but about educating them to keep using the boarding pass to find this information. So I'll give you an example. A guest asks about a check in time. Well, your standard property check in time is 4pm Chat GPT gets fed this information, it would just spit out check in times at 4pm, maybe add a little, you know, green to it and a little pizzazz to make it sound better than just check in times at 4pm but that's pretty much it. What happens if a guest purchases an early check in? You've just told them now that check in is at 4 and they're now going to complain saying, but I thought I purchased an early check in and now you have to manually intervene. Kind of useless to have chat GBD in this case because now you just put in more work and frustrated the guests. So the way we're going to look at it is we're actually going to go through all the conditions and see, okay, was this a direct booking? Yes. If it's a direct booking, he's offering this upsell these guidebooks, this type of verification. Has the guest gone through the verification? Yes, and it's going to go through the whole workflow before it drafts a response. That way you're not providing check in instructions if the guest isn't verified. You're not, you know, sharing the wrong check in time. You're providing the right information about, you know, restaurants in the area, not ones that we just randomly found on Google that are outdated in any case. So that's the current iteration of Enzo AI. Additionally, we have things like sentiment analysis, which allows you to then create conditions to say if the sentiment of a conversation is going well, let's remind a guest to leave a review. And where we're taking this and we're fairly transparent about our roadmap, I'm hoping to eventually just make it a public roadmap, to be honest, is more and more people are like, great, Francois, but this is still a saved reply. So it pops up as a response and I have to click send. Can you just send these responses for me? They're working, so just send them for me. And we're getting there. But we want a certain accuracy rate before we send them out. And the goal is to gradually bring the industry towards a comfort level of chatbots that would be acceptable. And what I mean by that is instead of just launching a chatbot that responds to questions where one in three are wrong, and then you get mad at us for sending the wrong response, it's creating again a condition saying, well, if it's the evening and I'm not available, respond, because it's better to get a response even if it's wrong than anything. So that's kind of the next iteration of where we're taking Enzo AI. And then the final version is take care of it all for me and just answer these guests for me, if you will.

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I'm genuinely excited and I know I say a lot on here, but I'm excited because when the world of AI is crashing into the world of hospitality and we're at this kind of crossroads right now where you can do these awesome things. I mean, like you say that the tech is already there to answer questions, to just pick out a thing, a point of your listing, but what if it picks out the wrong information? Or like you say, they've just purchased something unique to their stay early check in or some sort of upsell. And what you've described there just sounds perfect for the future in general. You know, that is what we want. And as opposed to listening to this, I certainly, when I started out I was worried about, well, what happens, I need sleep, right? What happens if people got questions when I need sleep? Well, they're having to wait until the next day. Well, in the future they won't have to wait. And again, even with things like guidebooks and things like that, I mean we use just a straightforward. Within my hospitality business this is like link where all the information is on. But the trouble with that is guests still ask questions. They still ask the questions, even if it's the very first thing on the link with the wifi code, which people would rather be without water than WI fi these days, still will ask what is the, you know, what is the WI fi? And that's where having that automated response is so important. So I'm excited to see that develop along.

I mean it's, it's about providing as well the, you know, the whole concept of AI. And I have a friend who always says this, Evan from, from Adaptive is AI won't replace humans, but it'll replace those who don't use it. And I think that's really a powerful statement because it's not about hospitality. One thing that I love about this industry is the human connection in the industry, whether it's between vendors, partners or guests or owners, property managers. I mean think about the number of property managers and hosts who interact with other competing property managers and hosts and share tips and tricks even though they're actually competitors. It's a very collaborative industry and the concept of human touch is extremely important. But what I like about short term rentals over hotels in that sense is there's an understanding that technology is here to assist your operations in order to scale. Because you're not managing a building with all the same concept, with all the same check in instruction. You're managing properties where every guest is different, every owner is different, every property manager is different, every unit is different, everything is different. So providing flexibility is key. And AI will understand the nuances that you won't have that you won't be able to understand because you just have too many things going on with too many variances. So yeah, long story short for Enzo.

AI, I mean you're absolutely right. I mean can you imagine if you were just getting into the industry right now or if you're a host thinking, oh, I just need to refresh things. Well, what a great time to be involved in hospitality. And like you say, it is one of the friendliest places that you can get a starter business. It's very forgiving as well, to a certain degree. One of the things which I follow from a chap called Daniel Priestley, he talks about AI in a way where it can replace so much, but it can't replace community. And I think that's the one thing with hospitality. There's a huge amount of community and people involved, isn't there? So is there anything else you'd like to share about Enzo Connect or bring people's attention to any sort of wow moments or anything like that that you'd like to share?

Wow moments? I mean, we'll announce one very soon. I can't say anything about it because I'm under strict NDAs, but September 30th is when we'll announce the wow moments. But overall, I mean, no, we're. We're a tech vendor in the space. We're always happy to have conversations with property managers. We're more focused on scaling operators than hosts. So, you know, it doesn't mean we restrict the number of units that you have to have, but our, our pricing does start a bit heavy for the 1 to 10 units, if you will. And the real reason is just because, you know, we're not a host platform. Like, if this is a side hustle and you just, you know, doing it as a side thing, it's not really. We're going to be too much for you, you know, like hostfully. As a. Not hostfully. Touch the Touch Day. The guidebooks. Oh, my goodness.

Mostly. And Touch Day. Both guidebooks.

Both of them have guidebooks, things like that. You know, web apps, they're amazing companies. We actually can embed host, hostly or touchstay guidebooks in Enzo. So, again, yet another reason why we try to connect with everyone, but we're really focused on that. You know what? I'm growing the number of units and I'm trying to create different rules, and I'm just facing death by a thousand cuts. That's where Enzo Connect shines. But all in all, no, I mean, AI is going to be prevalent in every tool that you use. So picking the right systems that fit your business needs is. I think the next chapter for a lot of operators in this space is understanding what that guest journey looks like and where they want to take it.

Yeah. Nice. So in a moment, we're going to share how people can go and find out more about Enzo Connect. But Just before we do, we'd like to have a couple of fun questions. Now I know the answer to this because we talked just before we went live. But where was the last spontaneous stay you went and had and why?

So I just had my first PTO last week. First time I hadn't seen family in a long time and I got to go sailing in La Rochelle with family, which was the coolest thing ever. Get to learn how to sail. And funny enough, there was actually great cell service on the boat. So I even got to take a couple demos for from a sailboat. Now it's not the most convenient when you're doing a demo and you're just rocking like this between the demo because they think you're drunk and then you have to explain, no, no, no, it's just the boat. But it was a great time. That was a fun time.

That sounds amazing. And as you say, home is in France originally. So yeah, very, very nice back. What is the number one karaoke song you mentioned? You go out festivals, parties. What is the number one karaoke song that you go to as your one of choice?

That's a great question. You know I'm a big fan of funk music, jazz music. That's kind of my, my go to style. So I. But also like right now I'm on the sitting. Sitting on the docks of the bay. I forgot the name of the artist. It's running right now. So that's not really that vibe. I don't know.

Good song. Reason.

I don't know if you know that one.

Don't know that one. Straight afterwards. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't know.

Not a big karaoke guy. I can't sing. I can't sing.

But most people who do karaoke can't. Yeah.

Campaign.

Awesome. So Francois, thank you for this. If you can first of all share how people can get in touch with Enzo Connect, come and follow you and then if you can finish with your piece of advice that you'd like to leave everyone with, that would be awesome for sure.

So Enzo Connect. Super simple. You can go on our website enzo connect.com you can always reach out to me as well if you want to learn more and so on. I'm a very accessible founder if you will. So first name, dot, last name. @enzoconnect.com our pricing is available publicly. You just need to fill in a form and it'll show you you can book a demo. With our team, we've put in a lot of effort on trying to make it as self serve as possible despite, you know, having to go through certain processes so we can best explain what we do. And then my go to motto, which I know in a few languages, that's how much I, I say it all the time, is every problem has a solution. I know it's kind of basic, but whenever you're kind of feeling overwhelmed and you have all these things that you need to do and just back to the ground zero of every problem has a solution. Let's just calm down and figure out how we solve this. So in French, to the problem, on the solution in Russian, I say it in every language I can speak to to get this going, you know, we.

Can say the Bhushti podcast is now multilingual, you know, so, yeah, thank you so much, Francois. I love that as well. It's a great piece of advice and ultimately, this has been so much fun. I love finding out about new technology and I know there's lots of people who go and check out those links. We will put them around. However you're watching this on the podcast or YouTube, Facebook, wherever you are watching this, I know there's lots of places that you can put your attention. And we really thank you for spending it with Boostly. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. Go out there and get yourself some more direct bookings. We'll see you on the next show. Let's buy from me and bye, Francois.

Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Thanks very much.