Tim Hubbard (speaker) explains how artificial intelligence is being applied to guest reception in hotels and short-term rentals, defining "AI guest reception" as AI trained to handle messages, emails, texts and voice interactions. He lists five situations where AI outperforms humans (no wait times; consistent/professional tone; memory of guest history; lower cost; reduced management/training overhead), names example tools and platforms (HostAway, Guesty, Bestie AI, Conduit, Host Buddy AI), and argues for a hybrid approach—using AI for repetitive communications while retaining humans for payments, emergencies, verification, maintenance and nuanced issues. The piece concludes with a positive outlook on continued AI adoption in hospitality and a call to explore available tools.
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We all know that AI is here. It's made its way into our world in so many different ways and it certainly made it into the hospitality industry. Everything from guest communication to automatically answering FAQs to sending check in instructions. Hotels are taking advantage of AI. And the short term rental industry has lots of options as well. And so we're going to talk about that today, how it's helping cut expenses, improve the guest experience, but also the places where you do not want to be using AI with your short term rental business. Stay tuned. Let's jump into all of that.
If you're still relying on 100% human interaction for guest experience, well, you're falling behind. Now, I know that might sound crazy, but the reality is, is that AI will improve the guest experience. It doesn't get sick, it's available 24 7, it keeps consistent tones across all your properties and all your portfolios and it remembers everything. But there's also some places where AI definitely should take over for a human. We're going to talk about all that this week. So let's just start off at the very beginning. What exactly is AI guest reception? Well, think about artificial intelligence trained appropriately to handle your guest communications. This can include all guest communications, whether it's a text message, an email, a message on your message platform, or even some companies out there offering voice services. Assuming the AI is programmed properly, well, it can handle all those frequently asked questions about your property, about the neighborhood, about the whole guest experience. AI guest reception is also something that can operate automatically. Now I said can. In, in today's world, you don't want to set things up on autopilot. We've got some considerations for you. But before we do, let's talk about where we're seeing this AI pop up. Well, we know that the hotels are using this. Of course, the biggest chains in the world are implementing this for communication. In terms of support, we've seen this with Airbnb and all the big OTAs. They're bringing AI in to replace a lot of repetitive tasks. We're also seeing AI make its entrance into a lot of the software programs available in the short term rental industry. So programs like HostAway or Guesty, which are property management systems, or even designated AI tools like bestie AI or Conduit or Host buddy AI, There are quite a few of them popping up and they're popping up faster than ever. So we have a general sense of what this could do. We have a general sense of who's using it and where these tools are available. Let's Talk about five reasons why AI guest communication is actually better than human communication. And I would argue that it's better 100% of the time in these five situations. The first one is that there are no wait times. So if you message off without even reading something, so that's number one. The second piece is that AI allows a larger operation or a team of people to have the exact same, same consistent professional tone in all of their guest communication. This means that even if your receptionist was having a bad day, they were sick. The tone is always the same if you're using an AI tool for these communications. But it's not just that the tone is more consistent, it actually can be much better, right? Imagine if you've trained your AI after the best hotels in the world, after brands that consistently get five stars, always in terms of their communication. Well, once you train it, it will consist respond with that tone. And if you have multiple people on your team, then that's quite hard to do, right? You have sort of different tones and attitudes and emotions coming into the messaging. The third thing is that AI remembers everything, which means it can go back and find your guests from five years ago that your new receptionist might have never seen or met. And it can bring in personal details to that communication and to that guest experience. There are, of course, software systems to help you monitor which guests are returning. But still, if someone has to go through and review all those, it's going to take longer and it could very easily get overlooked. The fourth place where AI is always going to outperform is in terms of costs. I'm not saying to go out and replace receptionists. Our receptionist team is amazing and I would never imagine a million years getting rid of our team. The reality is, though, they can use their time for some more important tasks, which we're going to talk about here in a second. While some of the legwork, the groundwork for some of this guest communication can be created for them in the form of a draft message, for example. So, of course, if we're using an AI tool that's going to cost less than hiring a human. And that sort of leads into the fifth piece, which is if you're building a portfolio and you're growing a team, you will have less management. We know that hiring a new receptionist can be a huge, huge help, but there's still a lot of training that goes into that. And they take vacation days, they get sick, they're not available 24, 7. So AI can really help your whole operation improve the tone, the guest experience, and Have a much more solid foundation for you to continue operating your short term rentals, to continue offering really good guest experiences. Even if you found the best person possible. And they're super nice and pleasant to speak with all the time and they have a big hospitality background, you're still going to have to train them on the policies for these different listing sites and everything that has to do with your property. If you're hiring someone in a different country, well, it's very possible that they could have an accent. And if they're making phone calls to your guests, well, sometimes your guests might have a hard time understanding them. Now, our team all speaks amazing English and we are spread out all over the place now. So we have receptionists in the Philippines and Mexico, we have team members in Europe and South Africa. I'm in South America. I mean, we're spread out all over the place. So I don't want to say can't find amazing people with minimal accents, but if English isn't their first language, well, then you have to consider that. And of course with AI, you don't have any of that. If we're hiring virtual receptionists in other places, then we also have to deal with time zones, right? They're very likely on a different time zone and that can be challenging. Finding really good help that's having to work at midnight or different hours. Again, with AI, we won't have these challenges. So with any AI tool you want to use, I don't care if it's with guest reception or if it's helping you draft an email, you get what you put into it. So garbage in, garbage out. And if you're planning on using AI to help you with your short term rental business, well, you have to make sure, 100% sure that the information that the AI is referencing is completely accurate. You have to make sure that you have a way to update that information if it changes. And even then, I do not Recommend Turning on AI 100% because it's not going to cover the whole guest experience. At least today we know these tools are developing a lot. And I've got some of those caveats. The things that you want to make sure your receptionist or whoever's helping you on your team is handling as a human being to make sure that nothing gets overlooked. All right, now let's talk about why you absolutely need human beings on your team. And I think the first thing is that when we talk about guest communication in the short term rental world, most people think of just communicating with guests. But the reality is there's so many other pieces to the whole operation that involve your reception or the people speaking to your guests. That could be anything from payment issues or collecting payments, damage issues, or dealing with support on the phone or emergencies. That's a really important one. So if someone can't get in your property, if there's bad weather, if something's not right at the property and it's not a standard piece of information like, you know, where do I find the charcoal for the barbecue? Well, then AI will have a hard time answering that, Right? And so it's crucial that we have some really good talent on our team, some really good help to make sure that none of these things get overlooked. We also have things like guest verification or when maintenance stuff pops up. Now, I'm sure in the future, as AI tools get better and better, there will be ways to help coordinate this with less human interaction. But at the moment, you can't get by with AI alone. We definitely do not plan on doing that, but we do plan on reorganizing some of the tasks that our receptionists are doing on a regular basis. If we can alleviate some of the general communications or at least create an auto draft, an auto draft response, then that saves our receptionist team a lot of time to where they can use that to help focus on the guest experience and to touch on all the other pieces of the operation. So what does all this mean for the industry? Well, undoubtedly you're going to see more AI interaction in the short terminal world. It's already here, it's being perfected, and with good reason, right? It's helping us keep consistency, it's helping us respond quicker, it's helping reduce costs, it's helping with the training and the management overload. And it has a perfect memory. I know just from doing this podcast for years and years, if I go back to some of the first few episodes, I don't remember all the details that were in there, but I know that a lot of those episodes are evergreen. They're still as valid today as they were five years ago when I recorded them. So if you're new to the channel, you can check out all of our prior episodes@striches.com we've got tons of free resources for you there. And if you've been tuning in for a while and you found a lot of value in our content, I'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't mind giving us a thumbs up, subscribing on Apple or itunes, wherever you like to tune in. So AI is here to stay when done right, it's going to increase the guest experience. It's going to make their time better at your property, and it's going to make your operation easier. I think we're going to see a lot of really cool changes just in the near future, and not just in the short term rental world, but in the hotel and hospitality industry in general. I hope you found today's insights helpful. If you haven't yet, take a peek at some of the tools available. Until next time. I hope you have a fabulous week. Sam.
