Tech Solutions: Efficiently Handling 350 Units Across Six Markets

Welcome back to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives host the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly the confidence so you can go out there and get yourself some direct bookings. I'm Liam Carolan, I'm Mark Simpson's co host. And this is the spotlight series on the Boostly podcast which really dives into services, businesses, people that you need to know about as a hospitality owner. Today we're talking about AI, we're talking about hospitality and we're talking at about our very special guests company called Journey. So we've got Jason Lopez, he's the senior director and business development at Journey and you can go and check them out@journey.com I'm going to let him introduce the business and let you know all the cool stuff that they do. But this is all going to be one that you want to stick around for and I'm excited to dive into this because AI is one of the hot topics in hospitality at the moment and in the world. So welcome along. Jason, thank you for joining me.

Thank you, Liam. Happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.

So Jason, for those who haven't heard of Journey, do you mind giving a elevator pitch as to who you guys are and what problem you solve?

Yeah, absolutely. So Journey is the first AI powered property management software in the space for short term rentals and vacation rentals. So we were born actually as a management company ourselves six or seven years ago, went through, you know, a lot of heartache with some of the, some of the tech in the space. We originally started out managing luxury villas. Our founder Luke, managing luxury villas in la, spun that off into a management company right around the same time as Lyric and Sonder. And those companies grew to about 350 units under management in six different markets across the US and one of the biggest barriers to entry and the biggest barriers to scale was technology. So that's really kind of how Journey, once the journey to Journey began, we started building some tech in house and really that's how the technology was born when we started bringing it to market to other hosts and property managers.

That's cool. So you've started life really as a manager and then PMS and really now PMS/AI kind of amalgamation basically. So talk us through a little bit more of the, the kind of AI. How did that Journey really come in? What, when did you go do you know what? I just need to get really good at the AI side of things.

That's a great question. I think AI caught a lot of people off guard last year, late last year, maybe November, December of last year, I think people started to first take notice. We actually released our first version in December of last year. So I think we were already kind of ahead of the game from a lot of other, you know, a lot of other companies in the space and a lot of other AI companies just in general. But we really started to take notice Luca at myself, our cto, we're all tech enthusiasts, so we've always, you know, we always have kind of have a pulse on what's going on in technology and are always looking at ways that we can leverage new technology in innovative ways to be more efficient and more productive. And so that was really the main motivation when we first just started tinkering with AI and it started to snowball, right? We first built a chatbot, then we started to build some review responses. Personalization came from there. Now we're looking at doing things with data, with AI. So that's, that's kind of last year is when we first began incorporating officially into the product, but have been kind of in tune with it, I would say for the past year or two.

It's cool. And really we've got Chat GPT to thank for a lot of the, the kind of big headlines from November last year. Since launch, you start to see it in some communities, Facebook groups and things like that. And then really from there it's really taken off. And if you're a host listening to this and you're just not sure where to, where to start with anything, go to open AI or type in Chat GPT into Google and just have a little play around with that. Many hosts that I know are using this day to day now. But for hosts who are listening to this podcast going well, how does AI help me in my business? You know, I'm busy with doing changeovers, I've got guests to talk to and all this stuff. How is AI realistically going to help me? Can you put into words why those hosts should care and you know, how it can help them?

Yeah, absolutely. So just the kind of low hanging fruit is conversations with guests, right? That is typically one of the biggest areas of like labor intensive areas for property managers and short term rental hosts. So if you think about leveraging AI, a lot of people think they think, you know, the AI is convenient, it's a convenience, it's not necessarily a must have. But if you're managing, let's just say 10, 10, 10 listings, not, not, not a huge number and each one of those listings have a different, let's say WI FI password. This may not be the best example because a lot of hosts typically standardize that, but let's go with that. Right? Each one of These properties have 10 different Wi Fi passwords, and a guest is asking for that WI FI password. Sure, you could reference them to a guidebook or wherever you have it, you know, posted in the listing or in the property. But if you're going to answer that guest, you typically have to reference a document somewhere, a knowledge base, before you can answer that question. The AI does this instantly. So you're cutting down your response times by literally 80%. These are the metrics that we've measured and that we are seeing. So that's just the lowest hanging fruit. Then if you think about kind of where we're going in the future, being able to just ask AI conversationally to do things for you, like an assistant, for example, hey, block the calendar from this date to this date, or schedule a clean on unit, you know, 100 for tomorrow morning. Things of that nature, or even analytics, like, hey, compare the revenue of October of this year versus October of last year. Where did my bookings come from in those months? And so these are things that AI is very good at just fetching and serving up to the user very quickly.

And I've got visions of like Iron man where he's asking Jarvis to do stuff and, you know, it's able to do that, but we're not a million miles away from that. So how can AI, and with Journey, how, how will that help direct bookings? Obviously a lot of the people listening to this are hosts. We're about getting direct bookings here at Boostly. How will AI in general help that? And then how. Does, how does Journey help with the direct booking side of things?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think for, for hosts, property managers, anyone in real estate, really investors, anyone really in real estate or hospitality, you really want to maximize your efficiency and profitability. And AI really allows you to do that very well with limited resources. So I think from that perspective, that's something that people definitely need to be paying attention to. You can really leverage artificial intelligence to drive personalization in terms of marketing, in terms of a lot of the things that you guys talk about on your podcast and your books. So I think that's, that's, you know, again, talking about low hanging fruit, I think that's, that's one of the, one of the places that people can kind of start exploring and experimenting with AI. And then in the future, I think we're going to see a lot of other really, really cool things like. Well, we're already starting to experiment internally on, for example, marketing, matching up person, using AI to match up Personas with specific ad sets. And so these are all things that are, that are happening now already today.

So, and this is, this is one of the cool things that you. We've just seen Brian Chesky's announcement just recently and Mark Simpson, our founder, our CEO, was talking about his take on that and how Airbnb is using AI to really market specific listings to specific groups, communities, people, you know, based on all the preferences, all the data they're collecting and how much easier AI is going to make that. Well, if you've got a PMS with AI inbuilt, well, that's going to, going to start to work for you, which is really cool.

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, 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-Tly.co.uk call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team.

I completely agree as well that we've seen a, we've seen a change or certainly I've seen a change since, since I've been in hospitality where still I caught the tail end of where people would have guest book folders. And there'll be people listening to this just, you know, saying, well, I still got my folder. Well, it's okay. But then a lot of people moved over to the guidebooks, the digital guidebooks, which of course is the step up. The next stage above that is that instantaneous response that you've spoken about, which is where people don't even want to read through any guidebook. If they can just say, what's the address? Get that when they need it. What's the password for the WI fi? Get that when they need it? Well, that's, that's the next stage. And of course, if you've already got all of this information somewhere, it's just a case of putting that into the system so the AI knows how to, how to respond. But it's such an exciting time, both as a guest, because I'm excited that I won't need to wait hours to get a response for more hosts who put AI into their business, but also as a host. Well, actually I might be able to save a higher. You know, like there's everyone talks about they want more time, they don't want to be interrupted. Well, you might not have to hire that extra member of staff or your first member of staff for a little bit longer if you've got these tools in place. So I'm really excited by it. So in terms of Journey being obviously AI and a pms, can you talk us through what that kind of what the full services kind of COVID and you know, does it do everything a normal. I say normal PMS does?

That's a great question. So we. No, it doesn't. We started as with a different pms, with a different concept in mind for technology in the space. We talked about the barrier to entry and one of the biggest hurdles being the technology and really setting up that proper tech stack to be able to scale. So part of the vision was providing a technology stack that was plug and play out of the box, ready to go, meaning you don't need to start with a PMS and then go find your dynamic pricing provider and then you go find your smart lock provider and then go, you know, find your housekeeping and maintenance provider and then integrate all of that and train your staff on four or five different systems and then potentially even more, because sometimes those systems don't work out and then you have to rip and replace them. So the main kind of vision when we first started out was a unified system that did it all. So that allowed us to really build a system that from an infrastructure perspective is going to allow for more scalability going forward because all of the data is centralized within JourneyOS as opposed to being siloed in four or five different platforms. And so that's part of also the power of the AI. Once we incorporated the AI, it has access to all of this data which is centralized in the platform. So it doesn't. So it's. It's already going to be leaps and bounds ahead of kind of anything else that you can plug into maybe an existing system, for example. But that was kind of the philosophy when we started. And then empowering that system with AI kind of kind of came later, but has. Has very much become a driving force.

So that's cool. And of course, I guess people can come onto the website and see more and book demos and all that cool stuff. So the kind of AI side of things, just to park for one side at the moment. What's your history? So you're the business development director, and what is your history? How did you come to be part of Journey? And yeah, just give us a bit of a backstory for yourself.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. So while I was born in Miami, Florida, which my favorite city in the world, despite, so I traveled a ton. My parents loved. Loved to travel growing up, and my mom worked for area Mexico, which for about 30 years, which allowed us to travel for pretty much just the cost of taxes, which was pretty awesome perk. So, you know, I've been traveling all my life, and that really allowed me to kind of adopt a deep appreciation for hospitality, travel, tourism. About 10 years ago, Co founded a travel agency with my mother here in Florida. And so I've been in kind of in the space adjacent for that time and directly in the space for five years. I was with another tech company in the space prior to Journey for about two and a half years. But when I saw what was being built here, the innovation that was happening, it was very exciting. And so that's kind of what. What brought me, what lured me to be part of the journey.

That's cool. And what are you most excited about in hospitality in general at the moment?

I think a few things. Well, AI, of course, really excited to see where that goes and the innovation that seems to be happening in the space now, compared to traditional accommodations like hotels, which tends to be more slow moving in terms of adoption, I think it's an exciting time. I think there are challenges so, you know, in terms of standardization that I think some people are addressing, and I'm excited to see where that goes in the industry, sustainability as well. Excited to see some of those initiatives. Yeah. So I think. I think it's an exciting time, really, to. To be. To be in the space. It's growing, I think, faster than ever.

So it's 100% agree is it's really exciting. I mean, I know there's lots of times in history where people would go, well, you know, when Airbnb first launched, you might want to be a part of that. But actually, I think right now is the best time. I think we've got access to more tools, more customers, more of a worldwide network than ever before, and access to more information, more free information, like people listening to this. So what I'd love to know is what has been the biggest wow moment so far for yourself or for Journey, and what has been the biggest Challenge. We'll sort of flip it and mix it up there.

Biggest wow moments. So I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but AI, when we realized, you know, mid last year, hold on a second, we can do some pretty cool things with this, I think that was a big wow moment for us when we first started to realize the capabilities and not just develop those tools and see them working live in action. That's a big like wow. This is, I mean our. So I mentioned that we started as a management company. We don't, we're not a management company anymore. But we had a few legacy, you know, deals that are still managed and that guest experience team, the efficiency, the response times, that was one of the, one of the wild moments for us as well when we saw kind of, kind of the improvements there that we were seeing. And then in terms of challenges, so many challenges. I will, I personally, I recently became a father, so that's been a challenge.

Yeah, that is a big, big challenge. Certainly that's one of the only or one of the main times in life where so many things change. You know, they say even character change. Certainly I did when I had my little boy. So yeah. Congratulations. Thank you.

Oh, so much changes. That's so true. Everything that everyone has ever told me about being a parent, almost everything has been true. There's, it's so hard. It's, it's, you know, I turned to my wife probably about, she, she's eight weeks now, the baby, but probably about five or six weeks in one night, like three in the morning. You know, she was crying and waking us up and, and I turned to her and I was like, this has to be like the hardest thing we've ever done. I mean we're, you know, five or six weeks in. Sleep deprivation has really taken hold at this point. And she was like, yeah, I don't, this is really hard. It's getting better. She's you know, sleeping a little longer overnight, but that's been really challenging. On a professional note, I think I mentioned that we, that we started as a management company and then, you know, transitioned to a tech company. That transition from a service led business to a product led business was, was a significant lift, but I think super grateful to have been a part of it. Learned probably more than I would have in 10 years of business school. So yeah, I think those are some, some, some of the most recent challenges.

That's really cool. And as I say, I mean that sleep deprivation, my little boy didn't sleep for about six months. So yeah, you're doing well to even be on a, on a podcast or even operate, you know, I mean, in, in life, just with sleep deprivation, it can be a killer. So, yeah, well done. I love to ask, all tips, all tips, all guests, have you got any tips to get more bookings or more direct bookings? Anything that you can share around that?

I don't have more bookings and more direct bookings. I mean, start by having a direct booking channel. Number one, you can't get direct bookings without that. But number two, I would say look at the top performing mark, top performing properties in your market, your comps, look at what they have in common and see what you can do to, I don't want to say copycat, because you still want to differentiate yourself in some ways, but see how you can, you know, what can you also do to get yourself into that kind of top 10, for example. And then the other tip that I would say is that a lot of folks I talk to hosts, literally a dozen hosts a week, and many of them think that if they build it, people will come. And that's not the case. You need to, you need to advertise your website, your direct booking site. You need to, you know, post market it, put some, some marketing dollars behind those posts. You really don't want to, you know, to, to, to drive, drive traffic.

So, and that's absolutely agree. So many people have a direct booking channel and think, right, I've done that, I don't need to do anything. It's about how we talk about it, how we market that and all of that. I mean, for anybody listening to this podcast for the first time, there is the book Direct Playbook by Mark Simpson, a book you can go get on Audible or on Amazon or wherever you get your books from. And that shows kind of what you need to do, not just having the website, but what you can do after that. And of course, that's how Boostly helps in general. So by all means, go to boostly.co.uk to find out more. You guys, I must mention, are partnered with as in terms of the website side of things. So if anybody's got, you know, has got Journey as a PMS and need a direct booking website, or if anybody from Boostly has got a direct book and website and is thinking, I want some AI tech within my business, then go and check out Journey. You know, this is, this is why good companies work together, is because mutually everybody moves forward and ultimately having companies which are the best in the area of expertise is just so important. That's what I call. You wouldn't use a generalist for, you know, or a normal army cadet for a sniper's job. You need snipers in the places you need them. So. Yeah, that's very cool. So in a moment, we're going to share how people can get in touch, but before we do, we love to ask just a couple of fun questions. So, Jason, what would be the song of choice if you was to go into a karaoke bar?

Oh, Journey. Don't Stop Believing.

Ah, nice. Yeah, classic. Every time I think of that, I can't help but think about the Sopranos and the really frustrating ending. I don't know if you watch Sopranos, but that is the last song in that. But yeah. Who would be the person you'd invite to dinner? Famous or historic? Anything you like. Who would be the person and why?

Alive or can be alive can be posthumous, probably Tesla.

Ah, nice, nice.

Because we're still using many of his inventions today.

Yeah.

Microwave, for example.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. I haven't had that answer before, so I like that. So how can we get in touch with you? Where should people go to follow. Follow you follow Journey.

Journey.com www.journey.com J U R M Y.com we're also on LinkedIn TikTok, but our website is the best way to reach us.

Cool. And as ever, however you consuming this media, that link will be somewhere around this media, whether it's YouTube podcast, you'll be able to find that link. So that leaves us with the last question, which is is there any advice or a motto or a mantra that you've been given that really has helped your journey?

So my personal mantra whenever I need to tackle something that is difficult is maximum effort. Yes, I stole it from Deadpool, but I love it. It's kind of. I don't know, it just gives me that. That extra month to go and go get it done.

Maximum effort. So that is. It's basically saying that no matter what, just. Just drive fully at whatever the goal is. Is that right?

That's right, Yep.

Well, I need to rewatch Deadpool. Deadpool 2 was on the other night, but I haven't. Haven't rewatched the first one for a while, so I will check that out. Uh, was there anything we missed along the way, Jason, any. Any last years before we bring it to a close?

No, I think it's been. You did a great job. You've been a fantastic host. Thank you so much for having me on.

Thank you.

Really enjoyed the chat.

Awesome. Thank you very much for sharing your. For sharing journey and sharing your journey as well. So that was great. And thank you too for listening to this on the Boostly podcast. We know there's lots of places you can put your attention. We really appreciate you putting it with Boostly. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.