Is Self Check-in the Future of Hospitality - FULL INTERVIEW with David Jacoby of Hostfully

There are a lot of people watching or listening to this and they will fall under B and B. Guest house hotel owner on my right hand side here and on my left hand side will have the rental owner. Now, like we say when it comes to rental, specifically when you don't live on site, the self checking will be something that you are more commonly known for. Like you say the key or the padlock. We have the key combination but there's obviously pitfalls to that. Now could you just sort of elaborate for people who don't know some potential pitfalls when it comes to having a self checking system?

I'd say three big buckets would be just the technology failing, the guest experience standpoint, having a decreased quality on that and then some safety measures when you don't have a person there greeting them. So. So taking each of those one at a time, the technology failing, that's obvious. I heard about a some I forgot which system it was and I don't want to bad method anyways. But one smart lock, there was some system update that just automatically happened and they got bricked and they just literally didn't work unless you had to physically go and do a factory reset of those smart locks. So imagine if it's a vacation home and you're not near there and the guest goes in and they can't, it's broken, they can't get in. You know, having an old school key, you're kind of wishing for that at that time. So you need to make sure you have some kind of backup, especially if it's not your home and you're not there. So in general related to self check in, but just things to think about when having, when wanting to make it personal, there's ways to do it without you actually being there, right? So you can have automated emails and texts that get sent to the guest before, before they arrive as well as after they've arrived. The next day, send them a text, whether you're personally doing it or through your property management software. Just checking in, making sure everything's okay. Also of course our guidebook. We really help in that area because it makes you look more professional and gives you a personal experience in general to that guest.

Welcome to the Boosted podcast. We're in season seven, episode three and today we are talking about the future of hospitality and is self checking going to be essential or not? Now joining me on this episode we have David Jacoby of host Fleet and what we are going to be discussing in detail is a little bit more about what self checking is and how we as hospitality businesses can potentially get sorted for what could be coming. So without further ado, I welcome David to the podcast. David, if you could please introduce firstly yourself, introduce hostfully and just let us know all about you, all about the company and then we will get started.

Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. Big fan of what you're up to and love the hospitality community and getting connected earlier this year was real exciting. So excited to be on this podcast so hostfully. We are a platform for hosts for property managers to help them run their business from tip to tail. Essentially we have two separate platforms. One is a full service property management software that helps you list your properties on multiple channels like Airbnb and vrbo and your own website and automate emails to the guests and have a central reservation system calendar so you don't get double bookings, owner portal so you can tell the owners about how often the place is being booked and how much they're making if you're renting it out on behalf of owners, stuff like that. Our other platform is a guest communications platform, essentially digital guidebooks. So we take that mediocre looking three ring binder and bring it into the 21st century and make it real easy to share important information to the guests. So about nine years ago now, my wife and I, we took a one year sabbatical and we traveled around the world. We had our one year of fun before we had kids. Not that this isn't fun, Mark, right, Just a different kind of fun.

Different kind of fun.

And we went to 27 countries and five continents and ended up staying in 38 homes during that trip. Some was through traditional vacation rentals, some through friends of friends.

Tonight we're going to talk about self checking and what does this hold for the hospitality world? Now I say I read your blog on it. It piqued my interest. It got me investigating into it further. I know there'll be a lot of people who tune into this and whether it's on video or on the audio and they'll be going, well, I already do self checking, but there are so many that don't and there's reasons for and why they do this. But I just wanted to go right to the very beginning and the first question that I'd like you to elaborate on in simple terms is what does self check in mean to you? How does it work? And like I say, simplest way, what is a self check in?

At a high level, it's having it so the guests can check in on their own without anyone there to greet them. So whenever they arrive, their flight's delayed. As an Airbnb host, you don't need to be waiting and waiting, wondering when they're going to come. So essentially there's either I guess two buckets. One both similar. One having an old school lockbox that has a key so you enter in a little code, open it up, get the key and you can check in. Or having varying degrees of newer, smarter locks that either have PIN codes on it or are connected to your phone with an app that automatically unlocks it. So there's different ways, but essentially you don't need to be there for them to check in.

There are a lot of people watching or listening to this and they will fall under B and B. Guest house hotel owner on my right hand side here and on my left hand side will have the rental owner. Now like we say when it comes to rental, specifically when you don't live on site, the self checking will be something that you are more commonly known for. Like you say the key on or the padlock. We have the key combination but there's obviously pitfalls to that. Now could you just sort of elaborate for people who don't know some potential pitfalls when it comes to having a self checking system?

I'd say three, three big buckets would be just the technology failing. The guest experience standpoint, having a decreased quality on that and then some safety measures when you don't have a, a person there greeting them. So taking each of those one at a time, the technology failing, that's obvious. I heard about a some I forgot which system it was and I don't want to bad method anyways. But one smart lock, there was some system update that just automatically happened and they got bricked and they just literally didn't work unless you had to physically go and do a factory reset of those smart locks. So imagine if it's a vacation home and you're not near there and the guest goes in and they can't. It's broken and they can't get in. You know, having an old school key, you're kind of wishing for that at that time. So you need to make sure you have some kind of backup, especially if it's not your home and you're not there. So in general related to self check in but just things to think about when having, when wanting to make it personal, there's ways to do it without you actually being there. Right. So you can have automated emails and texts that get sent to the guest before they arrive as well as after they've arrived the next day, send them a text, whether you're personally doing it or through your property management software. Just checking in, making sure everything's okay. Also of course our guidebook really help in that area because it makes you look more professional and gives you a personal experience in general to that guest.

You know, like they say, there's so much software and app out there that technology now just makes it phenomenally easy, even if you're on the other side of the world, to make sure that A the guest can find you okay, B the guests can get in, but once they're in, there's no mad party going on. You know who's coming in, they say who they are and like you say, you can get all of the documentation, all of the agreements signed even before they arrive. One of the big pain points that I have of running a guest house is you've got set check in times. How could self check in with the technology that you've described? How do you feel in your opinion? I've got my opinion. But how do you feel in your opinion that guest house owners can adopt the self in checking processes specifically with all the technology that's now available?

Depends on their specific house. There's many ways of doing it. So the hardest might be if it's actually apartment in a big downtown building where there's, you know, you need to have that key so you can't use a smart lock. But there's still been technology that's helped that out. For example, Key Cafe is a business where you can go to a local cafe and get the key there to go in. And I'd say it depends on your comfort level as to exactly how much you want to install. So I hear what you're saying about having the issues with someone not putting a key back or it being cold and the button's not working. So I think having that redundancy is the best. Just knowing you have the backup, how.

You using email triggers with hostfully and the PMS that you've got to make sure that when the guest books to the point of arrival, everything goes as smooth as clockwork and getting people into the guidebook and whatnot, that'd be really cool to find out what you're doing.

So there's a few triggers that I personally have in place and that we recommend to our users and just what I've seen from other clients of ours doing, of course, right when the reservation is confirmed, having an email getting sent, whether it's having the same email gets sent no matter whether it's coming from Airbnb or vrbo, it adds this consistency to it. So you can confirm, you know, hey, so glad that you're interested in staying in my place. I just want to reach out and confirm that that reservation is made. Even though they might have gotten that confirmation from Airbnb, that email, getting one from the host is essential.

How does the Guidebook actually work? When does the guest get hold of it? How do the user, as in the host, put the information in? Can you just share a little bit more about that, please?

It's a simple URL, so it's not an app that you're forcing the guests to download and install a temporary app for the three days that they're on vacation, but rather it's a URL and it looks beautiful on any device. So. So we see a lot of guests viewing the Guidebook on desktop because they're getting that welcome email before their trip. So they're at work on their computer, they get that email and they want to click on the link and it comes up and it looks great on a computer. And it's also our design was mobile first, so it kind of looks and feels like an app. It's super mobile friendly. But again, you're not downloading anything.

Now you mentioned as well that guests can actually print these off as well. So how does that work?

So we have a QR code and you can print that out and put, you know, put it on your refrigerator or coffee table and then people just put their phone over it and the guidebook will pop up by just pointing.

Them to the guidebook at the first point. It just eradicates unnecessary questions being sent through. Okay, so we've teased people enough about Hostfully. Where can somebody go if they want to find out more information?

So H o s t F u l l y hostfully.com and we have a special code. Do you want to say that?

So we're chatting before about the Guidebook before we came live, and David and the guys at Hostfully have kindly put together a little coupon. So if the Guidebook is something that you think will benefit you, head over to hostfully.com, go to the guidebook, and if you use the coupon code Boostly2M. So B O O S T L Y the number 2 and M, you'll get two months free of this Guidebook, which is. Which is pretty cool. So hopefully this episode you've gathered a little bit more about self checking, you've learned a little bit more about Hostfully and if you want to go check it out and if you appreciate it, I'm massively appreciative. We've been able to get David and the guys on here because it's like something that I've been recommended by. I've seen it and I think it's great and hopefully you guys can too. Go ahead, get the two months free of the app and the guidebook and give it a good go. And then most importantly, if you are going to use it, report back to me, come into the hospitality community or email market Boostly, send me the links, let me know what it looks like. I love to see these sort of things live to the world and most importantly I want to know the results.

So I just want to comment that we actually have one guidebook is free, so go and kick the tires and you can make a pretty cool looking guidebook for free. We also have a premium version, so that's the code that Mark had given you for. And a lot of the features in the premium version has come from hosts that have asked for stuff. So you can private label it, add your logo to it, you can add a splash page that collects email address of not just the main point of contact but other guests that are going to be there. You can customize the URL and we've just launched a marketplace.

David, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge and talking about self checking and sharing hostfully with us. If they want to find you on Instagram or LinkedIn, are you on any of these channels? Can they find you further if they've got any questions or where's the best place to get in touch?

Yeah, Twitter, Sovid, Jacoby and Hostfully Underscore actually and that's all on our website as well. So just go to hostfully.com and you'll see all the links for that.

Amazing. Okay, so David, appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on and thank you everybody for tuning into season seven, episode three of the Boostly podcast. Before you leave, can you go and rate and review on wherever you tune into this podcast on I will be back for season three seven, Episode four very very soon. If you want to go and download the back catalog of all of the seasons, just go to Boostly B o o s t-l y.co.uk podcast and all seasons and episodes are clearly on there. The first season I share with you five steps on how you can increase your direct bookings. In the second season we went through the guest booking process. In the third season we interviewed hospitality owners from all over the world and found out what they're doing to increase their direct bookings. And you know, the one that's just been season six, we delved into the world of serviced accommodation, so there's loads for you to catch up on. I really appreciate every single one of you tuning in. I've just been checking my download report and last month we broke the record for the amount of downloads. So thank you so much for doing it. Thank you so much for sharing and telling your friends and liking and rating and reviewing, because it's just going slowly up the charts and, and that's, that's all I'm trying to achieve with this, get more hospitality owners to find out more about what they can do to increase the guest experience and increase their direct bookings. So thank you so much for tuning in and I'll be back very soon for episode four. Very soon.

Sam.