How You Can incorporate AI Into Your Hospitality Business

Welcome back to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives you, the host, the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly the confidence so you can go out there and get yourselves direct bookings. What we like to do on this Boostly podcast is we like to bring your attention to services, people, things within the industry that will help your hospitality business. And one of the biggest things at the moment, and you're seeing it everywhere, is AI and how you can incorporate that within your hospitality business and how it can make things a lot easier for you, how it can make things smoother and ultimately give your guests a better experience. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. And we've got very special guest joining us for this. We've got Clive, who's the founder of hello Hostie. If this is your first time listening to the Boostly podcast, then tune in for the next 20, 30 minutes. We're really going to deep dive how hello Hostie is going to help you and within your business. Let's go for it. So Clive, welcome along.

Hi Liam, thank you for having me.

Clive. There's going to be people on here who have never heard of hello Hostie. So before we, we dive further in what is hello Hostie and an elevator pitch style.

Okay, so to summarize, hello Hosty, we have an AI concierge, Alina, which can communicate with your guest, learns about your property and communicates with your guests, alleviating the necessity to be available 24 7. And supporting your guests in the best possible way in the most friendly, empathetic and informed way possible.

Nice. Basically it makes you an absolute killer for guest communications. Basically it helps you with that, doesn't it? So, yeah, before we dive more into that, Clive, as the founder, how did hello Hostie come about? How it always amazed me when I'm not a techie person. So to see these new AI tools come around, which is solving some of the biggest problems for us as hosts, it always amazes me to find out how those problems came around and how you solved them or how you've come up with a solution.

Well, I've always been a kind of techy person, but I've been working in real estate, vacation rental, short term rentals for about 14 years, so managing a lot of properties all around the world. And one challenge that we couldn't overcome that was always present is guest communications that guests need. They need, I call it a digital hug. They need to know that you're there. They need information, even if you've Given them templates. Guests want a human at the other end of, of the phone or of the app or whatever it is. However, they're communicating with you and they want to feel that they've got your attention, that you care for them. Hospitality is the whole nature of the business. And with this recent revelation in AI technology, in generative AI, we were able to build a product which could easily communicate with your guests, so learn about your properties and in a very human manner, with empathy, with reasoning, respond or generate responses to guest inquiries. So I mean, we use it in our, in our business and I've, I've seen it, I've seen it handle some really, really interesting situations. I've seen it talk guests through the process of topping up pressure in a boiler. I've, I've seen really kind of interesting conversations that have gone down a really like, I mean, sending like love heart emojis and you know, like the way that the, that Alina is able to communicate with guests is, is phenomenal. It's, it, it really is like a human communicating. And with our, with our product it's, it's possible with booking.com to put it onto auto as well. So if a guest is like many guests that like to just communicate and just fire backwards and forwards continuously. I mean, we had a guest on Sunday night just gone and the guest starts talking at 10:30pm and I'm watching the conversation. I mean we have team that deal with communication, but I'm watching the conversation and this guest started talking at 10:30 and was asking like all kinds of questions and Alina was responding. I went to sleep and I woke up the next morning and there'd been an exchange of about 20 messages between the guest and Alina all through the night. 2:30am and Alina responds within about two minutes. So this guest has got, has fundamentally got a hospitality professional available to them 247 answering their questions. And we're not out to trick anyone. But the guest was completely unaware that this was an AI, that it was, that it was actually talking to.

I think that is one of the biggest fears for hosts, especially when you've got more than one property that at some stage there's going to be times when your guests need you where you're just not available. We're human, right? We need to sleep, we need to eat. There's this family stuff going on. You know, as soon people and hosts who are listening to this that you don't want to be spending all your time working 24 hours a day. So surrounding yourself with the right systems and the right tools is just so important. And that is a great example of you could go to sleep and actually know that there's somebody responding to the guest. So let's talk more about how it actually works. What from the host's point of view would I need to do? So I'm a host myself. What do I need to do to have that ability to be able to not worry about the guests communicating with me at 2am in the morning?

Okay, so we've basically built, we built this product with simplicity and ease in mind. It has to be, it had to be really, really easy for hosts to be able to sign up and just start using. So what we've, what we've done is we've kind of. Alina needs to have as much information as possible in order to be able to respond to guests. But to get that information from the host, we don't want to, we don't want host to have to spend hours and hours updating Alina. So our software can take information from Booking.com, airbnb, VRBO, it can gather all of that information. There's some information that the host will put into a profile for each property that they list on hello hosting. And we also, if the host has a guidebook. Amazing, Fantastic. You can upload the guidebook if you don't have a guide. But if the host doesn't have a guidebook, we have a short questionnaire which can be filled out. We create the guide, digital guidebooks included within the price for the host, and then Alina will use all of the information which is in the guidebook, all of the information which was gathered from Airbnb, booking.com and VRBO, and a couple of other small pieces of information regarding checkout and address and different things like this that the host would upload and then answer the que. Any question relative to the information that's contained within those three areas of information Alina will be able to respond to. So from the host perspective, it's a really easy, fast sign up. It's, it's, it would take roughly about five minutes to, to, to create a property and get it and get it started.

Is there any limitations around what it can and can't answer? You know, is there, is there any times where it would need a human involved?

Yeah, absolutely. We have team overseas that handle a lot of our communications, a lot of the admin in our business and, and Alina was basically modeled to be able to do what these guys can do. So if there's A maintenance issue. Of course, a computer can't turn up and fix a leak in sync, or likewise it can't turn up with more towels. But what would happen in that scenario with our, with our overseas team is that they would notify us that there's an issue. So if a guest says to Alina, oh, hey, there's the sink, the sinks leaking, can someone come out to fix this? Elena? Elena will respond to the guest saying, oh, I'm really sorry to hear that. I'll speak to the property manager and I'll come back to you shortly. And at which point hello Hosting notifies the property manager or owner and says that your attention is required. This is the conversation. So there are points where Alina will jump in. Similarly, if Alina doesn't have access to information. So for example, if the guest were to ask a question that wasn't included in any of those areas of information we discussed earlier, then Alina would say to the guest, I don't have that information available right now. Going to check with a property manager and I'll come back to you shortly. And hello Hosting would notify the property manager.

It makes sense.

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 book in an appointment with one of our sales team.

What would you say to those hosts who are worried that AI doesn't sound very human and that they're concerned that their guests will pick up on the fact that is a robot they're talking to?

I would say, well, I'd say a couple of things. First of all, I would say try it out for yourself. We have with, with hello hosted, we have the option that, I mean, we have a free trial that anyone can come and come and try it for free. But we have the option to put Alina onto. The default setting is not to be an automatic response, it suggests a response and you have a button to press send or edit. And then when you feel comfortable, I mean, when we first launched this product, I was the same. I was very nervous thinking, I don't want my guests to think they're communicating with a computer. So we, we worked really hard. Myself and a team of prompt engineers, software developers, an incredible team, we worked really hard preempting this kind of situation. We never want the guests to know because they don't need to know that it's an AI that they're communicating with. However, when we, when we first launched the product in its, in its beta phase, I was, and we were using it in our business, I was very concerned that, that this might actually happen, that, that the guest might figure out that it's AI. So I was really nervous and I didn't allow Alina to go automatic to begin with. I was very, very reluctant. And then I was watching the response, I was like, this is pretty good. And then after a while I was like, okay, so when the guest has arrived and they're inside the property, it's pretty safe that they're already settled. They're not, they're not going to be left out in the snow. They can get inside. Then I'll put it on auto. So then we, we started to put it on auto when the guest was inside. But now as soon as the booking comes through with press auto. I mean, the responses are, the responses are fantastic. And not once has a guest turned around to us and said, or said to Alina, are you AI? Are you a computer? This is, this has not happened. It's quite incredible seeing reviews mentioning, mentioning Alina's name now, which is. Alina was so helpful. Alina was available whenever we needed anything. You know, like, it's really quite, quite satisfying to see that being the case.

What I love about that is the fact that your guests don't know that it's AI and that it's obviously coming across as, as human responses. Why. Why did you choose the name Alina?

Well, I actually, I met somebody just, you know, just random introduced to somebody. Had this at Lena. And as soon as I heard the name, I thought, wow, that's perfect for this AI assistant. It's. It sounds, I mean, the name, to me, it sounded like. It just sounded like a nice, a nice name that works phonetically and also AI Alina. AI. It looks like a AI, but reassuring. I get asked, asked this a lot. We get asked this a lot about whether it's possible to change the name from Alina to anything else. And what actually happens is Alina won't mention her name very much. She will, because. Okay, so the way it works in terms of, in terms of tech, Alina will take the past 10 correspondence, the previous 10 messages, if there are 10 messages, so that she has context in order to create, generate the next, the next response. And in doing so in, in, in taking those 10 responses, she can really gather context, she can really have an understanding of the, of the flow of conversation.

Nice. And this is something which, when hosts who are listening to this first, first experience AI, this is the main difference, right, why I now use some of the big AIs as my homepage as opposed to using Google as a homepage now because the difference is that when you Google something that alone you just.

Search that Google term. Right?

Whereas with AI it knows what you've talked about on the thread. So if you ask a question of, I don't know, quiz question, what is the largest coastline in the world? And then you ask a follow up question of now which one has got the, the most bays in or whatever it is, you know, most random. I don't know where that trivia content came from, but when, when you ask.

That you, if you was to just.

Put that on Google, that second question, which one's got the most base, then it just wouldn't know what you're talking about at all. Whereas with AI it does. And, and this is the cool thing about having context that, that AI can understand the meaning, not just the words that you've, you've written.

Which yeah, it, to continue with that point, it's, it's context and also reasoning. So with, with AI and with Alina, let's say I've seen an example of a guest was inside a property and they were saying, hey, there's no hair dryer here. And Alena knew there was a hairdryer in there. So Alina was saying, are you sure? Have you checked in the bedroom? Yeah, I've checked in the bedroom. And then using reasoning, Alina said, okay, have you checked in the, the wardrobe? Have you checked in the bathroom cabinet? And then the guest responds, oh, it was in the bathroom cabinet. So the level of reasoning that this, that AI, generative AI is able to, to create now, I mean this is, this is a revelation which has taken place in the last 12 months, but publicly available in the last 12 months, generative AI, it's mind blowing. What, what is now possible. And yeah, so to answer your previous question about what would I say to somebody who's nervous about AI not being human enough? Try take a free trial. Like it's mind blowing. It's mind blowing.

There's some Big changes haven't there? Which has happened like you say over the last 12 months. What would you say has been the biggest wow moment for hello Hosty so far? And, and why?

I would say well outside of the development of the product itself, which for me personally was quite, quite a while outside of that, I would say that the feedback from, from the guys that are using it, guys and women, ladies, ladies and gentlemen are using it. They, the feedback is phenomenal. We've had people say that they never want to send another message again without the use of Alina and just having it as a, as a suggestion as well. I mean everybody's busy, everybody's doing loads of things, staff are busy doing lots of, lots of different tasks and not always on the best foot. So you know, good day, bad day, dependent. The response that a guest may get may be really warm and welcoming and hospitable or maybe it will be. I'm in a rush and this is the best I can do. Whereas Alina's always on the always, always happy and always cheerful and always empathetic and yeah, so to answer your question about the wow moments, I would probably say it's the feedback from, from people I am, I had a conversation with, with a user, a guy last week and he was telling me how he worked out his cost on staffing and how Alina has helped him reduce the number of team members that he needs and he was an absolute no brainer for him in his, in his use case to be able, to be able to, or to, to use Alina is, makes absolute economic sense. There was another guy, somebody I've known for a long time, he operates in Portugal, he's got a lot of villas over there and he speaks fantastic English. He lived in London for 10 years and he was telling me now I know that he speaks great English, we talk often but he was telling me that he in communication with guests over some kind of dispute. He doesn't feel so confident and he knows that he can sometimes it will take him a lot of time to construct the perfect response in English let's say. And he was saying to me this was a use case that I completely did, I completely did not see coming. Alina can speak whatever language you throw her. She can speak Japanese, Cantonese, Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, whatever, of course grammatically perfect. So when I heard this use case that in fact Alina had, she had helped him avoid a negative review because there was a dispute going on, I was really kind of like wow, this is something I hadn't even foreseen that Alina would be able to assist people that don't necessarily speak well English as a first language or wherever you're operating, if you're operating in Spain or wherever you know, to be able to, to generate a response in the, in perfect grammar in the, in the native tongue of your, your guest is pretty powerful.

Yeah, it's such a time saver, as you say. It's just so, so when you first start using any kind of AI or if you're not using AI, if you're listening to this right now and you're not using AI, you know, like Clive said, just, just go and give it a trial at the end of the day because your mind is blown as to how much time it saves yet. And also there's many times where I've written things out which I think is a great response. Right. I've had years in both retail hospitality and where I'll write a response thing and this is great. And just before I hit send now I'll put it into an AI function just to check it and usually it'll rearrange it ever so slightly and it'll just make it sound much more professional and sometimes even more empathetic than what I've sounded. Which will help you with guests knowing that you're making them feel welcome. Right. Even if you're, you're having a disagreement. And yeah, it's just very good at doing that.

Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two boostly books that we brought out, the Book Direct Playbook and the Book Direct Blueprint, are two of the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon for just two pounds you can grab both of those books right now. The foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the Blueprint and then for 101 marketing tactics that is in the Playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon now. Just type in Book Direct Playbook or the Book Direct Blueprint and we'll see you on the other side.

One of my mentors once said, you've got to let go to grow. And this is one of the things where there'll be hosts possibly listening to this, where if you're, if you're a host, where you're thinking, do you know what, I just like answering these questions and I like doing everything myself. If you truly do want your business to grow and expand and and yet have more time with, you know, even working on other stuff or even with family or just time off or time to sleep then having this kind of AI at your fingertips is now a must. What would you say to hosts who aren't using AI at the moment? Do you think there's going to come a time where everybody has got to be using this? Do you think it will go that far?

Whether a time will come where everyone will be using a product like hello Hosty? Or are you talking in, in a wider sense?

Wider sense. Really? You know, like do you think how, how in our day to day lives with AI, how.

It's not a question in my mind. I mean everybody has, everybody has one of these things now and maybe when they first came about people. Well, definitely when they first came around, people were skeptical and everything else and that was commonplace. If somebody doesn't have a mobile phone, you'd look at them like where have you been for the last 30 years? But AI is here. It's not going anywhere and it's only going to, it's only going to grow and develop and become further integrated into our lives and existence. And if we go down a deeper part, talking about AI in general, I think that we have an opportunity as humans right now to ensure that the relationship between humans and AI develop, develops. Well, there's an expression I heard which I quite like that AI can either become a, a useful servant or a dictatorial overlord. And I definitely prefer the first option 100%.

That's an Elon Musk quote I think, isn't it? That one is.

Oh, is it really?

Okay?

Yeah, could well be. Yeah.

He's. It's so true, isn't it? So true. So there's lots of AI options at the moment that I'm seeing come through for the host. Listening to this. What is the reason that they should go to hello Hostie? What is the, the kind of X factor for hello Hostie?

Well, I can't speak on others products but on, on hello Hosty from personal experience, it, it or Alina has become a very, very dependable and immediately, immediately up to speed member of our team. So like there's no training process we didn't have to go through? Oh no, you have to learn about how to do this, how to do that, how to do. No, it's already there. She's already really, really well trained on how to respond on what to do under, under many, many, many, many, many situations. Building Alina was a lot of fun making sure, training the AI to be Alina was a lot of fun. And, and really I would say that having a product or having a service like this within your business as a property manager, it is like having superpowers. All of a sudden you're, you get your time back. I agree with what you said earlier. You mentioned that your mentor told you about. The expression that came to my mind was to work on the business and not in the business. I'm a massive advocate for systemization, automization and to outsource as much as possible. You got to streamline. If you want to grow, you need to figure out systems and structures that are going to enable that growth. And Alina is, is ready to, is ready to do that, ready to help.

Nice. Nice. When it comes down to your, your journey, obviously you've got hospitality experience and then you've got this, this software company as well now, which is amazing. What tips would you have for other hosts? There'll be hosts listening to this at the start of their journey. What tips from all of your experience combined would you be able to share with them?

Well, it depends what their goals are. If your goal is growth, then I would say aim for good enough and don't aim for absolute perfection. It's very, very easy to fall into the, to fall into the trap of focusing on the micro, not the macro. So in terms of, you know, onboarding new properties and getting places out and marketing, you've got, you've got, you've got to make sure that you, you don't focus on the micro as much as focusing the macro. Outsource as much as possible so that the micro can get taken care of if it's important. But, but really, yeah, focused on macro. I like that.

There's, there's certainly, there's, there's people who are listening to this right now who needed to hear that. So that's, that's really cool. Thank you for that, Clive. So in a moment we're going to be sharing how we can get in touch and find out more. But before we do, I'd like to ask a quick fun question. And you mentioned earlier on that have an AI is like having a superpower as a host. So my question for you is what superpower? If you could have any, and we're talking, you know, Marvel Universe type superpowers, what superpower would you go for and why?

Well, that's a good one. You didn't pre warn me on this.

One, so I never do with the fun ones.

Well, I mean, I would probably. It'd be, I think it would be, well, either time travel, that'd be really cool or the ability to read really, really quick. I've I've heard somebody else give that as an answer to this question and I thought that would be good because you'd be able to educate yourself so quickly on so many topics. I'd go with the read quickly one. Yeah. So I'd be able to read a book in, in, in a second.

It's so important. Is it? Because when you think of books, they're all the lessons that whoever has written that has put into one, one context, haven't they? And the thing is, if you could just pick up that, then you increase your speed, if you increase your speed of gaining that knowledge, then you can increase implementation, can't you? So, yeah, I really like that I've not had that answer before and we've.

Asked quite a few people across the.

World, so thank you so much. So let's, let's throw the mic open. How can we get in touch to find out more about. Hello, hosting. Sure.

We're pretty active on the social, so hello, Hostie Instagram. Find us on there. Hello, hosty.com come over and, and, and take a free trial. Yeah, I'd say either of those two would be best.

Nice. And of course we'll add them to the show notes. So however you're consuming this media, have a look in the show notes. You'll be able to see that. Was there anything we missed along the way, Clive?

Not that comes immediately to mind, no. That's cool.

That's cool. Well, thank you so much for spending your time with us. I know we've had a couple of great sayings and some, some lessons along the way. Was there any other kind of mantra or motto that comes to mind is something that's helped you along your journey. Just, I always find that's a nice way to end.

Well, there's, I'm sure I'm, I'm, I'm sure the people, people that know me best probably think that I'm, I'm full of ridiculous sayings, but I don't know if I have one that comes immediately to mind. Perhaps, perhaps the values that I operate, I like to, I like to operate within. So I like to, in terms of business, offer massive value everywhere I can, any way I can, to anybody that the ultimately business is serving others. So in any way that I can or we can offer value as a, as a company. That's what we do. Obviously. Honesty and integrity to be an open book and. Yeah. Help people and be an open book. I'd say that they're the two mantras I'd live by.

Nice Nice. I think that's a really nice way to end and it comes across in this interview. I mean, I, I think there's going to be a lot of people out there who now realize off the back of what they've heard today how important AI can be in their business. That story you told of, you know, being able to go to sleep when you need to certainly resonates with me as a host and I know others are gonna, that's gonna resonate with them. And the great thing is they can go and have a free trial. So why wouldn't you? So if you're listening to this, go across to the link in the show notes, have a free trial, you'll learn more, you'll be able to find out what it is all about and ultimately it could change the way you run your business. So, Clive, thank you so much for spending your time with us today. Thank you too, for listening to this on the Boostly podcast. If there's anyone out there that is another host or a friend or somebody else who you think will get value from this content, share this podcast with them and let them know to come and listen to boostly. At the end of the day, we are trying to get as many hosts in the world to know about all the tools, all the tactics, all the trainings that you can get to increase your direct bookings. And the more time that you're not spending necessarily on the guest communication, the more you can look at your business from an overview and work on the areas that you need to. So this has been great fun. That's it from us here at Boostly, and we'll see you on the next one.