The Future of Guest Services: Software Innovations for a Professional Touch

Welcome back to the Boostly Podcast, the podcast that gives you the listener, the tools, the tactics, the training, most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get more direct bookings. On the Boostly Podcast, we shine the spotlight onto services, businesses and people that you need to know about as a host. These can be anything from tech to awesome people. And today we are actually diving into a person who is the CEO and founder of their software and someone who I'm really excited to talk about today, software that I actually use personally in my SDR business. And we've got Jeremy from Breezeway with us today. So this is going to be so much fun. Stick around for the next 20 or 30 minutes as we dive into this product and see how you can utilize this within your short term rental business. Welcome along, Jeremy.

Thanks, Liam. Happy to be here. Excited.

So, Jeremy, I know I've kind of teed you up there. Can you give everyone a short introduction as to what Breezeway is for those who have never heard of it?

Sure. Breezeway is a property operations and experience platform to help you really professionally deliver on, you know, what we think are the most important parts of the guest experience. How is the property prepared? How do you clean and maintain this property so that your guests have a great experience? And then while they're there, how do you communicate with them? Make sure they're enjoying your home. Provide other services to make sure they truly have a great experience while they're there.

Now, I know there'll be a lot of hosts listening to this and some of them will, will be familiar, some of them won't be, but they might be asking, why do I need a second product when I've already got, say, a property management system?

Sure, yeah, we think, and I've got a lot of history in, in the STR and in the vacation rental space that vacation rentals and short term rentals have become so much more experiential than transactional. Your property management software system is really your transaction hub, your channel manager, and how you get new guests and manage your reservations and your bookings and your occupancy separate from that, how you touch the property, how you coordinate tasks, task management, and the experience that goes along with it. It's a really big part of the job. And I'm sure a lot of your listeners and hosts, you know, feel the pain of what it's like to deliver over and over again and make sure that they, you know, have a great experience that they bring to the guests. It's not easy to do, especially if you're remote, you've got a property or home someplace far away from where you are and really dialing it in to understand how you're doing it, it's challenging 100%.

And ultimately a lot of the time the PMSS, which we, we speak to, they've got solutions, but they aren't complete solutions necessarily. And they don't do in depth as much as certainly what I use Breezeway for. I've found it very good and it's very, it's integral to my business now that it just is easy to get the message and the date when I need things done to the different people within the team that need it done. And this is especially true of managers. I mean, I guess once you, when you've got one property, you've only got one single task and one change over there at a time. But as soon as you've got more than one, this stuff gets more complex, doesn't it? So how did. Give me a history of the business, how did this start? And can you take me back to the beginning and give us kind of like the why you've done this?

Yeah, sure. I'm a talker, so I'm going to. I'll keep it, I'll keep it short, I'll keep it sort of succinct. The. I'd started a previous company in the vacation rental space called Flipkey, sold that company to TripAdvisor and Expedia, which was a marketplace for vacation rentals. While I was doing that, we built that up to about 500,000 listings worldwide, made a lot of friends with property managers and hosts, started talking to them about their business and what it was like, what it was like to deliver service to the guest. And I felt that, you know, vacation rentals and short term rentals were converging more and more with hotels and hospitality. The magic of a great short term rental is a unique property that feels so personal to you as a guest, but is prepared, cleaned, your interaction feels like you're at an incredible hotel. Right. It's really perfectly set up. Like that's what you want. You want authentic, but you want this hospitality level service and experience. And I felt like it was really hard to accomplish that. So I talked to a lot of property managers and a lot of hosts about how they did this. A lot of people told me it was painful, this was a really hard part about their business. They didn't think they had a lot of insight into it. And then I approached the PMS partners that we had had all the way back at Flipkey and said, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. We think there's an opportunity here for a point solution that's totally focused on operations, property care and the experience we started in 2017. Over the years, we've built up now, I think, 45 different integrations with property management software systems, with lock systems, with supply providers to help with amenities in the, in the home on each stay. Now we work with about 200,000 units worldwide and in 90 countries and we help millions of people, millions of people have a great vacation.

I mean, there's been quite a journey from that. And when did the company start?

2017.

2017. So in such a short period of time to do that. And this is the exciting thing about being in hospitality at the moment, right. What it'll look like in another seven years is so much different to what it looked like seven years ago. And yeah, this, this is exciting. So let's dive into the product because there'll be people out there still not fully, fully understanding what it is. So is a host. What, how does it work for me and what is the big benefit?

Yeah, think about, I think the easiest way to orientate to our product, it's an operations and experience platform. We have a couple of different products. One of our main products is the operations product, which is everything you need to do, someone has to touch the property to get that property prepared, from cleaning to quality assurance, inspections, routine maintenance and fixes. And, you know, a lot of the power of the breezeway platform is how you schedule and coordinate those tasks, how you automate it. You have a workflow, you have a standard that you want to operate to and that you want your properties prepared to, you know, in accordance with, and we help you do that by, you know, photos to help guide cleaners and inspectors and maintenance folks exactly what should happen at the property, how you want your, your property positioned, exactly what it's supposed to look like, very detailed task management and coordination to get the right people at the property at the right time, understand and track their work, pay for their work and help them, which is equally as important. A lot of these service providers, they might be working for a number of different small hosts. Help them understand exactly what is expected, where they're supposed to be, what they're supposed to get done, when it's supposed to get done. It's a detail orientated job. You know, Liam, you said earlier, and I agree, like, as soon as you have more than one property, you know, your, your burden starts to extrapolate and become bigger but even with one property, you know, it's a complex dance that happens when you turn over a property and there's so many points of failure and risking that failure and risking, you know, a bad review or letting the guest experience that the property start on the wrong foot so that you're behind the whole time. Know it's pretty, it's pretty tough. So the operation system sort of dials all of that in, makes sure that it happens with a lot of automation. And then separately we have a messaging product so that as your guest is arriving while they're staying with you, you can automate certain touch points through text messaging to interact with the guest, offer more services, make sure they're having a great stay, you don't have to worry about remembering to send that message and then if they write back, you can coordinate, you can communicate one to one, two way texting and pick it up and personalize it. And that's integrated directly with Airbnb messaging or directly with your PM system.

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 on 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.

I know for me, one of the things which I absolutely loved about it, especially when you don't know what you don't know, right? There's many hosts who don' know what sort of things we need to be checking. Until you're out at the property having those lists where there's suggestions already pre done of what you can be asking your cleaner to be checking is fantastic at least gives you a great starting point and removes procrastination. And like you say, since for me having this, I used to be quite in hospitality, it's not unusual for owners to want the very best for their guests and because of that we might be quite controlling wanting the cleaners to do certain things and wanting contractors to do certain things well, instead of constantly being involved with all the communication between everyone, this is what Breezeway is sold for me. It just means that I Can see what's happening without having to be there or even be involved in the conversation at any time. I can go in and see exactly what happened on the clean with the photos, with what they've ticked, what they haven't ticked. And of course, ultimately, you mentioned it results in a better experience for the guest. And I just want to touch on that as well for what's important with hospitality at the moment. Experience. I know you guys are doing some awesome work with guides as well. Guidebooks. Can you talk about that for me?

Yeah. We ended up. And maybe this helps a little bit with, like, history and orientating listeners to, like, what it is we do and who the hell are we and what's going on here. You know, we started with operations because we knew there was a lot of pain there to be solved and a lot of value for to really use the process much easier. What we ended up finding was hosts and managers using our operations tools were getting their properties ready and prepared faster and wanted to communicate to the guest that the property was ready. So that kind of pulled us into our messaging product. And so that's why we launched a messaging product. And then one of the other important things I think you. You sort of touched on it, Liam, about Breezeway is we help you create this very detailed profile of your property. Right. And that profile of the property can be leveraged in checklists to help tell your cleaners exactly what should happen or even tailor some of that experience to specific guests. Here's the housekeeping notes. These folks are coming with a family. If so this is what you should be doing, et cetera. And you could tailor the experience, personalize it a little bit to every guest. What we realized is we were collecting so much information about the property. We had this great rich property profile. We knew lots of things about it. We had done lock integrations, we had the lock codes, we had messaging for the guest. We had all the pieces available to us to say, well, actually, we can put this information in front of the guest in a really unique way and build a nice guidebook so that they can understand exactly what's happening at the property. And if they need more service, if they have a question, they can connect the guidebooks connected to messaging, connected to operations, so that you can actually fulfill that service. And it becomes this really nice, like, cycle. And then on top of that, we've launched another product called Assist, so. And Host. You know, pay attention. This one's pretty cool if you don't want to answer the phone and you don't want to answer your text messages from a guest, either after hours or all the time. We have a team of hospitality professionals who are trained to answer those calls and answer those text messages on your behalf. And they do it right within Breezeway so that you see full transparency of what's happening. And if a task needs to be created, a guest is writing in and they're saying, hey, we need more towels, or, hey, you know, we noticed there's a problem with, it's not an emergency, but the toilet's running and you need to send somebody over tomorrow. Great. Our team will create that task for you in Breezeway. You'll see it when you wake up in the morning, and then you can assign it to them. And if it's a real emergency, well, you tell us when you sign up, what your SLA is and who you want us to call, and we'll call you up. So the reason we got into the Guidebook is that we're just sort of being pulled into this value chain where all of these things are interconnected. And of course, Liam, there's folks like you who don't want another password. And so sort of collapsing a lot.

Of these products into one is helpful 100%. There's. Nobody ever turns around. No host is going, do you know what I need? I need more software at the moment. I need to have a bigger software stack everybody in the industry at the moment. I certainly think there's an amount of software fatigue where you don't want to keep stacking all the. You really want a few key pieces of software to do everything you need it to do as a host. And that's exactly why I'm a big fan. And that feature you've just mentioned, I'm excited about. And some of the features that we've already talked about, the text messaging, the Guidebook, is something which I'm definitely going to dive into myself, as is something that we could use. I mean, overall, it's a really exciting business. And I think because everything is centered around operations and like you say, instead of coming from the inside out of, like, say, you just had a guidebook, well, that's not connected to operations anyway. You've got the central operations and you're having these ancillary sort of bits added onto it, which is. Which is amazing. What. What has been the biggest wow moment over the last seven years for you?

Yeah, it's really interesting. I think when I started, I. You have to have a level of naivety to sort of start one of these businesses, I think. And I I think when I first started I was, I was a bit concerned about operations and the scope of the value we could deliver to clients. I think part of the wow moment for me is seeing how these products are connected and how operations is a loaded word. Right. And I think, I worry sometimes that it doesn't totally resonate with hosts and managers. They think to themselves, like operations, like what exactly is that? Right? But what it is is it's, it's the nitty gritty work of actually being a host. It's everything except marketing and taking the reservation. Right. And there's so much of that that has become so much more important in the business. And I think we've just, I've really enjoyed. It's such a dynamic industry, travel in general, but short term rental and vacation rental specifically is so dynamic and ever changing. And I think another interesting sort of trend over this time has been professionalism and quality and how you can see it at Airbnb through favorited homes and kind of the prioritization and the changes that they're making. In search, everyone's focusing on quality and how to surface these quality experiences to guests. I think it's, it's incredibly fascinating.

I think one of the books that I've read is by the owner of Marriott. I can't remember the, the, the, the book itself, but he talks about how systems and, you know, how everything's got to be the same experience for guests. And actually to do that, especially across multiple homes, that's quite hard to do to have a brand where everything's kind of the same. And when you look at industries in general, I mean, I'm from retail and when you look at, you know, I guess the Walmart or the big supermarkets and things like that, once upon a time all of these were just independent with little stores and things like that. And as time goes on, things become more professional, more standardized and anything that helps stores do that is, is exactly this and same for hosts, you know, is, you know that we're seeing a lot of more property managers instead of just hosts as time goes on and those are buying each other and all sorts. So the professionalization is such a big trend.

It's changed dramatically. I think there's plenty of folks who are so new to the industry that they might not appreciate that, that, you know, back when I was at FlipKey in 2010, we were debating, you know, whether or not people would actually book their short term rental online. Would they book and put in their credit card or would they keep mailing checks to Owners who had, you know, created a brochure and had set their listings and their pricing for the whole year, one year in advance and had no opportunity to change it. I mean, so much has changed over the last 15 years in this industry as far as professionalism and how much more short term rentals and vacation rentals approximate the way that hotels work. And that trend is just only going to continue. And the people who embrace it will continue to be very successful. But the accidental host, the person who sort of does it but doesn't really do it, they're just going to keep seeing less and less activity and be marginalized in the industry.

I completely agree. And this is where by listening to podcasts like this, by having the right softwares, people can, can really give themselves a better chance to, to succeed. I think.

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So we talked about the wow moment and I guess this may go hand in hand with, with your answer from the wow moment. But what's been the biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?

Wow. Ongoing. I would biggest challenge is there's a lot of value that can be delivered in this industry. People run complicated businesses, they do it in a different way and they could use a lot of help. And so if you're a software provider in industry, there's so much you can do and how you prioritize that is really interesting. And I think that's an ongoing challenge for us. There's so much for us to build, a lot to deliver, a lot we can do for folks that they're asking us to do. You and I were chatting about some, you know, interesting functionality and how you can use it. That's the hardest thing for us to navigate is like how do we prioritize that, what's the order of operations that we do it and then how do we communicate to clients and prospects everything that we've already built?

Yeah. And that is, that reminds me of a mentor of mine who says say no to grow, sometimes all of these cool things you just have to say no to, to continue growing on the path they're growing on. And yeah, that's, that's a very, that's a good answer. I haven't had that when it comes down to challenges before, so thank you for that. So for the hosts who are listening to this, who are just going, well, what should I be thinking about? Is there any tips that you can share? Can be around operations or guest experience or from your time as a short term rental host as well. But what tips can you share with them? What should people listening to this be thinking about?

Yeah, I think you have to think about. Don't undervalue. I think a lot of folks. When I started this business, 2017, I went back to the Vacation Rental Managers association meeting in the States and all the sessions, most of, not all, but 90% of the sessions were about marketing and marketing your homes and how you handle that. I think hosts and small managers in large need to remember that's only one piece of your business. And the operational piece of it is actually increasingly what differentiates you from everyone else. And it's easy to get by, but it's not that hard to optimize either. And I know there's software fatigue. I know people are probably thinking like, oh my God, last thing I need is another tool. I've got this figured out. But you'd be very surprised what adding some controls to your business and some standardization can do for you. I love that comment, you know, from Marriott. I mean, that's the thing, right? You go into a hotel and you know the waste bucket is underneath the desk in the same spot in every home and they know that that room is clean because everything is being done exactly the same way. And in unique homes, that's very, very difficult to accomplish. And yet that is what your guest expects. Your guest expects this to be a spotless, to be as spotless as a hotel. That wasn't always the case. Fifteen years ago, I don't think guests did expect that, but now they do and it's only going to increase. So I think one of the tips is like, don't be afraid to embrace a little bit more technology and a little bit more control over how you, how you host and how you manage your property, because it'll pay dividends. Another one that is top of mind is, you know, safety and quality or something we spend a lot of time focusing on. I think it's an undervalued area of the business and folks need to be Thinking a little more about their property, about asset management, investing in their property and making sure that they're maintaining the property adequately to serve guests and really deliver on the experience.

Completely agree and this is good tips and thank you so much for that. With the future then what, what does the future, I guess of breezeway hold and yeah, is there anything you can kind of share or you know, sort of something to, to dangle as a taster as what's to come in the future?

Yeah, sure. I think, you know, we started this and we continue to invest in this because we believe, you know, all the trends point to the way that you get this work done, the way that you host becoming more and more important. Right. Consumer expectations are going up, quality is becoming more of a focus. The industry continues to professionalize. That will put a lot of pressure on your operations and the way you work to make sure you do it right and the way you work. There's a lot of talk about the guest experience, right. And I think what the future holds is like the way you work and how you get that done. That is the biggest driver of the guest experience and we're investing heavily in that. To then think about what are the interactions that you have with the guest, how can those be personalized? How can you sort of provide personalization a unique experience, but process that so that you can actually execute on it? Because to keep awareness in vacation rentals up and in short term rentals, you have to keep approximating that hotel experience and so you really got to live. You know, I use this phrase too many times today, but you really do have to deliver. So the next things for us are how do we build more automation into the system, how do we tie some more of these pieces together and really help you deliver amazing experiences at the property and do so that you have less to do.

That's cool. That's very cool and I'm excited. You've reminded me of one of the books which I read and before reading this, I mean as a short term rental as a business was my first business and I didn't realize what was involved in any business in general. But I read a book called Clockwork and it shows you that you've got the segments like you say, sales and marketing, operations, admin and cash flow that really, it's really clear on there. And until you start to think of every business runs in that way in some fashion, right. And it's only when you start to look at that then you realize how important that operations part of the business and actually that's it. The delivery of the product is a huge part of it. When we're selling rooms and nights and houses, then the delivery of their experience is a huge part of that, isn't it? Are there any books, podcasts or media at all that's helped you on your journey that you'd like to share with the listeners?

Yeah, I think I saw Will Gadara speak and I've been reading Unreasonable Hospitality. I think everybody's been reading it, but I think it's super fascinating and I think it's a great example of what's going to happen in this industry. Have you read that? Are you familiar with that?

It's on my wish list. This. Yeah, it is on the next one. I'm at the end of Traction by Gino Wickman at the moment, but it's.

Oh yeah, that's a great one. Traction's a great one too. But like the interplay between those two, it's just very interesting. Right. And I won't spoil the whole book for you, but, you know, he becomes really fascinated with how to deliver very special experiences that feel magic, almost magic, magical to you in the restaurant that you would never expect. That's what makes them unreasonable. And then he starts to figure out that, you know, you can only do that rarely, but if you try to, if you think about how you could process that and create a process for doing that more frequently, you could do it more often. And I think this is where, you know, the best vacation rental and short term rental operators are going to be thinking about what it's like to deliver on a vacation home and what it's like to deliver for that guest experience. And I'm like super fascinated about how you process and sort of operationalize something that feels super special and customized to the guest. And I think this is where hospitality goes. Over the next 10 years. It's going to be really exciting because it's not going to be easy to do when you have unique homes, but if you can pull it off, it's going to be incredible.

I'm excited. I'm excited to see it. It's an exciting industry to be part of and so there's, there's going to be people listening to this. Who wants to find out more about Breezeway? Where's the best place for them to go and do so?

You can go to Breezeway I.O. you can shoot us an email at VIPreesway I.O. we'd love you to say that you heard us on the Bruce Lee podcast, but you don't have to, of course. And reach out super consultative. We're happy to chat, give you some more tips, help you think about safety and a couple other things that you're at your homes.

Thank you so much. And of course we will add that to the show notes. However you consume in this media, look around the media, there'll be the links to reason in the show notes. So that brings me to the last question, Jeremy, which is, is there a motto, a mantra or a piece of advice which has stuck with you over the years, which you'd like to share with us?

Wow. You know, in. I don't know if you. I don't know if you do this in the uk, in America, oftentimes like at the end of high school you have to like put a little quote in your yearbook or something like that. And mine was the difference between the possible and the impossible lies in a person's determination. And I think, you know, that is a mantra that fuels a lot of my, a lot of my work, a lot of my efforts. And that, you know, progress is hard earned. Stick with it and you'll be able to accomplish hopefully some pretty great things.

So true. And what a nice sentiment to, to bring it to an end. Was there anything we missed along the way?

No, I think it's great. We appreciate, we appreciate you having me on the show. Thanks so much. We appreciate having you as a line as well. Don't be a stranger and make sure you reach out.

Thank you so much. Thank you too for listening to this on the Boostly podcast. We know there's lots of places you can put your attention. Really thank you for putting it with Boostly. That's it from me. That's it from Jeremy. We'll see you on the next one. Thanks for your time today, Jeremy. Bye for now.

Thank you.