← The Boostly Podcast
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- [00:00]
Liam
Hi, welcome to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives you the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence for you to go out there and get direct bookings. We do a spotlight series on this podcast where we talk to services and people who you need to know about as a host. The big thing at the moment is AI and how AI can help you as a host. And this is where we're going to introduce you to a AI software that can really help you today. So do pay attention during this episode. Our gu today is Jay. He's the CEO and co founder of Host Buddy AI. It's a AI guest messaging platform built by hosts for hosts. And we're going to dive into exactly what that means. So welcome along Jay. Thank you for joining me today.
- [00:47]
Jay
Thanks Liam. Thanks for having me on to sit down and chat.
- [00:50]
Liam
No worries. So Jay, welcome to to this and let's kick off with the the big picture. What what is Host Buddy AI and why should short term rental hosts in their busy days care about this this offering?
- [01:05]
Jay
Yeah. So Host Buddy AI is an automated AI messaging solution for hosts. So it plugs into your property management system and responds to every single guest that's coming to stay at your properties, whether that's through Airbnb, vrbo, direct bookings, google booking.com, anything like that. And you know, we do a lot of other automations too that that all had to do with with messaging. So we've automated a lot of the the templates and upselling features to maximize your revenue and cuts down a ton of time and saves you a lot of money as a host for, you know, property managers of 100 plus properties to hosts of a one or two.
- [01:45]
Liam
Nice. Nice. And I think one of the important things to pick up on is it's built by hosts for hosts. What specific pain points led you to in guest communication? Led you to co found this this offering?
- [02:00]
Jay
Yeah. So I'll start back at where I got involved in short term rentals because you know it's really takes takes over my entire life now which I love. But I was initially working as a civil engineer trying to get out of the 9 to 5 workflow, wanted to start my own business, found short term rental management as a way out of that, partnered up with my good friend Sam at the time. We both left our jobs after 10 months working that we had scaled up to nine properties and we decided just to, you know, go go fully into short term rentals as our career path. So since then we scaled up to 50 units within the last four years. In the middle of 2023 though, we were really in that big growth mode where we just got a big management contract for 16 units in a building and that basically doubled our entire portfolio. Like it was a really great moment. And a lot of the, you know, the things that allowed us to scale were the tools and the automations that we implemented into our business to allow us to focus more on going and finding these deals and focusing on maximizing our time and our team's time and making every dollar count, right? So we have these, you know, software that, that's going to automate our cleaning tasks, software that automates our door locks. We don't have to send codes to, to guests manually and set them every single turnover. You know, there, there's all these things, dynamic pricing, operations management software. So up until that point, you know, we'd all, we done all these, these things, right? And our business is growing, it's still growing today, which is great. I love being involved in the business. But there was one critical factor that was missing and that was the automation of the guest messaging. And that's a big task, right? Because every guest is different, every property is different. To handle an entire conversation with the guest is not an easy task, which is why you have virtual assistants or other people that work on your team to assist with those tasks. But even paying them hourly to support you for 24, 7 coverage is quite a lot to pay, especially when maybe you don't get a ton of inquiries overnight, but you just want to make sure that your guests are taken care of, right? So we looked on the market for something that could take care of this for us. That was an AI solution. There was nothing at the time. We decided to create it ourselves by partnering with one of our good friends who's a software developer. And we've basically set out on the mission to automate the entire guest messaging process to improve the hosting experience and save them time and money. Launched in May of 2024. And that brings us to today, in March of 2025. Not even a year that we've been released, but you know, we have thousands of properties on our platform and everyone is, you know, automating their guest messaging, saving a ton of time, ton of money. So yeah, it's a big journey, but that's kind of how it started. It was, it was in the need of some, something that we didn't have for our own property management business and decided to create it ourselves.
- [04:56]
Liam
It's very cool and this is what I love about the hospitality industry is we're problem solvers. We see if we know there's a problem that's got to be solved in our own business and it's not there. It's amazing to hear that hosts are going out there and creating these solutions which then ultimately help other hosts. And the nice thing is, whenever I, I'm considering a software, I'm certainly looking for people who are in and around hospitality because there's so many softwares out there which solve the, you know, build the software first, doesn't know really about hospitality, and then try and break into the industry. Whereas, like yourself, because you've got firsthand experience, you know, the problems that are trying to be solved by hosts listening to this, ultimately you get a firsthand understanding of the problem and actually you face that problem first, which is how the software's come about. Now, one thing you did mention there was there was no real options at the time. And of course now there is a few options out there. They seem to be, you know, AI is a buzzword at the moment. It seems to be popping up on different softwares that people have already got and maybe already have, and then there's other ones in the market. So would you be able to guide us through what makes Host Buddy different from other sort of automation and AI solutions? What is this kind of X factor?
- [06:13]
Jay
Yeah, so I think the reason why now there's, there's several options out there, like you mentioned, is that there was a major development in AI over the course of the last three years. I mean, it's been insane over the past 10 years. But specifically, as far as the reasoning and the capabilities of AI, that's something where at the beginning of 2023, I started using AI. Me, my business partner Sam, started using it within our business to improve our listing descriptions. And we started implementing it as an aid for our VAs when they need to just cut down time. But it still wasn't efficient enough for us to really make sense of it. And so I think that's why now there's multiple options because of the advancement of AI. And that's the great thing about making a software using AI, is that it's always going to continue to develop. The biggest part that we wanted to tackle was the conversational aspect of the AI, making sure that it sounds human and it's going to be hospitable because it's a really interesting industry, being in hospitality, knowing that it's so human focused and that it requires such delicate, you know, there's just a lot that needs to be involved for it to be a successful AI because the human can problem solve and they can think on their feet and they can contact other people and involve different parts of the team and make sure that you come to a resolution when there's issues. And so up until now there really wasn't a way for AI to do that and be implemented into the hospitality industry. So we took literally probably seven months from like actually starting to develop the application to launch to perfect the language of the AI because we didn't want to put out a software that wasn't going to respond to our clients guest messages sounding like a host. So that's the big differentiating factor. And we're always improving our AI to sound like a real host and that's what we hear every single day. We have people that come to us from other competitors, other solutions on the market saying, you know, I didn't think that the way that their AI was responding sounded like me. And so I was looking for a better solution. And we're, we're able to provide that and we're able to answer the most amount of guest inquiries because we've trained our AI to have high level of reasoning where it's able to problem solve and ask clarifying questions. Instead of just a general AI that's going to give you a big response that's just paragraphs long and just saying all the information that it knows. We're picking and choosing the right things to ask and say. That way that's most effective. And that's what humans do ultimately, right? You don't just answer a question by giving a one minute narrative of everything that you know, you have to ask the right questions and get come to a solution. So that's the biggest part that really differentiates us. We've built a lot of unique features since, since launch that different differentiate our product as well. So I'd love for people to, you know, at least go on and check that out. But we're the only AI messaging solution that puts our AI on the front pages of our website. So if that people can go on the the public website and just go and chat with it. So if you go to HostBuddy AI, you can go to the Meet Host Buddy page and there's basically just a simulation of a fictional property and it's the same exact technology that you'd see when you have it responding to all of your guests automatically. You can go in and ask the hardest questions you like. And that tool by itself just shows the confidence that we have in our product to make sure that, you know, we're representing hosts properly and that it's going to sound like you when you sign up and connect your properties.
- [09:44]
Liam
That's very cool. I mean, ultimately, people like to try this stuff right before they go by. And definitely what you've mentioned there is one of the biggest worries I've got as a host, and I'm sure many people listening to this is like, hey, I don't want people to think they're talking to a robot. Or if people know they're talking to a robot, I don't want it to sound. Sometimes, I guess AI, I worry can sound like insensitive or, you know, it'll answer the question really quick, but it won't do it with warmth like I would as a host. You know, like if, if somebody's broken something that'll be like, hey, well, we'll take out your security deposit. Do you know what I mean? Like, whereas I was going, oh, such a shame, let me have a look, we'll see and decide, you know, like, this is where that reasoning and it feeling like a not a robot is so important. What would you say when it comes down to what's most important? Is it, is it the speed of responses or is it, is it able to do the, like we say, the tone and kind of that warmth that we're looking for?
- [10:41]
Jay
Yeah. So when you connect your property management system into Host Buddy, it's going to pull in all the data that it can. So that's all of your reservations, your calendar, your property data. So all of your listing information, the descriptions, all of your amenities, and it pulls in six months of past conversational data as well. So all of that is combined into a knowledge base that it uses to answer your questions, your guest questions. And so it's actually taking your past conversations and learning how to respond like you historically would, which is a really cool thing. Like whenever we go into host accounts to take a look at any of their conversations and track a lot of the, the data that's coming through. Every conversation is different because every host is different. If you respond with a specific emoji, it's going to replicate that and mirror it. Right. And it's not just those things, it's the tone as well. So if you're typically a lot shorter, you know, a bit more, you know, brief in your responses, it's going to reflect that as well. So it's really cool the, the capabilities that it, that it has and it's going to continue learning over time. You can also customize the tone within Host Buddy's settings so that if you want it to act a different way, let's say maybe you had somebody on your team that you didn't really like the way they were responding before. You're switching now to Host Buddy and you want it to be a specific way. You can customize that tone and type in exactly how you want it to sound. Very explicit instructions. You can give it all these different things like lockbox codes and backup instructions and troubleshooting instructions and things like that. And it's going to use all this information to provide the best service to your guests.
- [12:16]
Liam
I like that. I like it a lot. And I'm sure people listening to it want to go and give it a try. What kind of real world impacts are you seeing from people using this? So is this helping people to get better reviews? Is this helping people to get more revenue? Because we all want more revenue and obviously I've got Ross. Does it help in. Does it drop the direct book message? You know, you need to book direct for your next day. And can it do all of these things that as hosts we, we'd probably do on a human level?
- [12:46]
Jay
Yeah, absolutely. It can do all of those things. I think the biggest impact that people are seeing and typically the way that I like to explain is it's kind of split up into a different, a few different buckets of hosts, right? So like there's the, the property managers of like 1 to 20 that maybe they haven't even hired somebody before. They're still doing all this by themselves. And so they're thinking about hiring a full time employee to come onto their team for thousands of dollars a month. Or they can look at an AI messaging solution like Host Buddy that can go in and respond for 6 to $10 per listing per month, which is a fraction of the price. I think it's over 92% in savings typically on average. And put the money that you're making back into scaling your business. So that's those hosts where I'm seeing them just now start to grow and they're like, oh, I don't have to hire somebody right now. I can just employ Host Buddy. Or maybe they have one VA on their team and they're thinking about hiring more. And now they can just use Host Buddy instead and make the VA do all these other amazing tasks that they can do. Because having VA is held up on doing the, the repetitive messaging within your company is not something that necessarily grows your company. It just sustains it. And if you can replace that with AI at a fraction of the cost. It's like a no brain, right? But now we have also property managers who are 50 plus properties, 100 plus, 200 plus properties on our platform, who now they have a team of 10 plus VAs or something, they're able to cut that down by a ton and now focus out their VAs onto tasks like optimizing their listings, searching for deals, you know, doing amazing things that they're very capable of doing. We see people employ VAs, switch them completely from doing guest communications to finances. Like there's all these things that you can have them do that take up your own time, that takes it away from you, building the business that now you can focus on. In addition to saving the time and the money doing that, we're also maximizing your revenue and your occupancy by doing automated upsells. So Host Buddy can detect when there's gaps in your calendar created by a minimum night stay. So say you have a minimum night stay of two and there's a one night gap night, you can't necessarily fill that, right? Because one night stay wouldn't be able to be booked. But you could have the person who's checking out the day before extend for a potential discount or the person who's checking the day after arrive early. So there's the upsell opportunities where host B is going to automatically understand that that's an opportunity to upsell and send a message out to that guest saying do you want to check in a day early at a 30 discount? Or whatever you set, you can completely customize it. And now people are making thousands of extra dollars per month just on that simple. You basically turn on a switch and write exactly what you want for Host Buddy to send out. And it's going to personalize it with AI too. So it keeps it personal and makes sure that it seals that deal. So it's like your extra little salesperson in there as well. That's a part that I really like. And we're still gathering some data here to, to see how it's really impacting hosts. But people love it. And to answer your question about the direct booking thing, you can absolutely have it reach out. We have something called smart templates that are also essentially, you know, you could use it as an upsell, but it's, it's essentially what you'd see as a, as a custom template in your property management system. But now we've added another layer of personalization. So it's going to say, you know, I hope you had a great time celebrating your aunt's birthday at this location at this time. You know, if you'd love, if you'd like to come back and you really enjoyed this day, you know, you can see the rest of our properties here and Book Direct next time, save a lot of money. So I know there's kind of, you know, some communication risks there when saying that through the ota, but there's ways that you can kind of work around that as a host to make sure that you're, you know, getting those return guests and kind of creating a community around your property management business.
- [16:30]
Liam
100. And also that personalization is super key. If it can then personalize that. And even if it was saying, you know, like, because I know some people be worried about saying book Direct through the ota, but even if it was to say, hey, save my number underneath this message and don't message here, just send me a message next time you look into Book and I'll make sure you're looked after. You've not technically say, you know, like book Direct, but ultimately that person's got the message, hasn't it? Haven't they? And ultimately, by personalizing it, they'll thoroughly believe they're talking to it to a real person, which is super cool. So I kind of get the value add. It's. It's really good for hosts. One thing I'd like to ask more, diving into your journey, Jay, and also into host buddy in general, is what are some of the challenges you. I know it hasn't been that long since it's been started, but what are some of the challenges you faced and how did you overcome it? And then flip that round of what are some of the successes that you've had so far?
- [17:28]
Jay
Yeah, I would say the biggest challenge was perfecting the language to sound like a host, like right off the bat. That's why there hasn't been any major solutions out on the market is because it's not an easy task. So that was a big one where, like when we finally felt confident with it and we launched, that was. That was a big win for us to get over that, that challenge. And to be honest, the biggest one right now is there. Everyone's business is set up so differently and we're all hosts. We all have the same mission, the same goals for the most part. But there's so many different softwares out there and there's a lot of opportunities to integrate into our systems and a lot of opportunities for us to add additional features into our pipeline to make the hosting process a lot more efficient. So we've had to sit down and really prioritize with our customers directly. We have a big feedback board that we let people go and respond to and comment and upvote things. And so that allows us to prioritize our roadmap and ensure that we're hitting the most important things next. And we're lucky that we have such a strong team of developers on our team that can implement these things really quickly. But I would say that's probably one of the, the bigger things now is I want to be able to solve every issue in the AI space or in the STR space with AI, but you can't do that immediately. And so it's, it's taking it step by step and making sure that we're listening to hosts. And that's always the mission, is making sure that we're solving actual problems and not releasing things that people don't need. One of the big things, and something I forgot to mention with smart templates is we add extra, these extra layers to things that, that, you know, provide an extra layer of personalization. So like I, I mentioned the AI personalization and smart templates, but what we did even further is now we made it so that you can set a condition to only send out templated messages if the guests had a positive experience, or only send out a message if they had a negative experience or neutral experience. You can have a combination of those. So things like that where now there's, there's certain things that you never even thought were necessarily possible. But now if you basically convert all of your templates over into Host Buddy, your communication is running really smoothly. And we're seeing so many hosts benefit from that now that we've been out for less than a year and we're seeing people that started with us at the very beginning who are now, you know, they've been running for months and months and months. And it's, it's really cool to see that. So, yeah, I, I guess I, I wouldn't say there's, I wouldn't pinpoint like a specific challenge. It's just in general, I'm a host and I'm not a, I'm not a software engineer, I'm not a software person. I'm not a, you know, super technically forward person, but I have the best perspective as a host creating a software in the STR space in order to influence the market and ensure that hosts are getting, you know, having the best tools possible. So it's really cool. When you kind of zoom out and understand that like you have so much ability to influence how, how the ways, the way that people are hosting now. And so that's like just a really cool moment for me to see that and be able to develop that alongside my business partner Sam, who we've built the STR business with since 2021.
- [20:44]
Liam
That's really exciting to hear. And yeah, I completely can emphasize with the challenge of so many different softwares to be able to plug in is the challenge. And then that win of like you say, just being able to zoom out and see the effect you're having on the industry must be quite big and especially in a landscape that's moving really fast. There anything that you're really excited about, which maybe we've, we've either host buddy AI or, or maybe with other AIs which are coming in. Is there anything you're looking in this AI space and just going, do you know what? This is going to be mega. This is, this is what I'm really excited about.
- [21:20]
Jay
Yeah, I would say kind of going along with my, what I was mentioning before. There's just so many things to tackle. I think time will show how much more that we can do with the AI because there's so much that we want to be able to do and release. And it's coming all very soon. It's coming very fast too. I think that's the coolest part is that this all appeared within the last like year or two that now you can automate all of your messaging with AI. So yeah, I think, I think there's a lot of cool things. I think what's happening now is that in general, the landscape of the short term rental industry is changing a little bit where hosts are able to buy back a lot of their time and their money and put it directly into exceptional experiences for guests. And I'm seeing that more and more now. And it's like the industry is becoming more competitive but now you're able to compete because you're next up on this list of, you know, you're in a competitive market but your competitors are still using the, you know, standard, standard communications members on their team. And now you can have a leg up by employing AI to answer all of your guest communications and then allocate that time and those resources back into other things. So I mean it's so cool. Every day I see new listings that I'm just like blown away by the experiences that people are able to provide and some of the people that are using Host Buddy like I look at their properties and I just, I'm very thankful for the fact that we're able to benefit them that them in that way. But I just think it's really cool how the whole industry is transforming to really provide exceptional stays. And now the host can focus more on the actual, you know, building the business and take, take a lot of the repetitive messages off the plate.
- [23:04]
Liam
Definitely. And I know there's a lot of negativity out there in the world but ultimately if you focus on what you can control and when we look at the tools at our fingertips as hosts is better now than it's ever been before. I'm really excited. So yeah, thank you. It's a really good answer. So for people listening to this today, what is the simple and powerful way they can improve their guest experience and then if you wouldn't mind sharing the link again as to where they can come and find out more.
- [23:32]
Jay
Yeah, so it's, it's really easy. We give all of our users a two week free trial when they start so you can have unlimited automated messages right when you start off, right off the bat. And you can go to HostBuddy AI and go to our website if you want. You can try out our Meet Host Buddy page and just see how it's going to respond. But you're going to have completely free 2 week trial to try out how the responses are coming through. You don't have to turn it on 24. 7. You can pick specific hours for Host Buddy to start. You can even start with just uploading one property and see how it's going to respond and tell your team, hey, you know, this one's going to be responded to by Host Buddy today and just kind of test it out and see how you like it. We find that a lot of the people that start the trial end up using it full time because it's just once you start using the communication software, it's, there's really no going back. It's a complete game changer. So we see that over, I think it's. It was.89 of our users employ Host Buddy for 24. 7 coverage. And the average hours covered is around like 22 hours now. So almost everybody does it 247 of our users, which is really cool. But we still have people that just do it overnight. We have people that do it only certain hours or certain days. If you're a smaller host and you know you're going on vacation, turn it on. You know, it's, it's, it's only six to $10 per property per month, depending on your property portfolio count. So it's really easy to get started. And, you know, we're always here for, for our users to make sure that they're making the most out of their. Their account and that they understand that the AI needs the right resources to respond. So, yeah, we're dedicated to making that hosting process as easy as possible.
- [25:13]
Liam
Thank you, Jay. And before you go, there's one last question which I'm going to ask in just a moment, which is, is there anything we missed? Words of wisdom would you like to leave our listeners with? But before we do, I just want to let everybody know who's listening to this is. If you want to carry on the conversation about hospitality, there is a free Facebook group called the Hospitality Community that you can come and join on Facebook. It is from our founder of our Boostly podcast, Mark Simpson's Community. And you can come and talk about direct bookings. If anybody is listening to this episode and you go and test out Host Buddy and you give it the free trial, please go and put a post in that community. Put Host Buddy, ask your questions, put, you know, let us know how you're getting on Usenet, because ultimately, why wouldn't you do this? This is a free trial. You can go and check this out, and ultimately it can save you money. What I'm taking from this podcast, Jay, is that ultimately, I mean, I love having my VA teams, but I think it's time that I did dive back into the world of AI. I've tested out a few softwares, but I am going to give it a go with Host Buddy as well. And ultimately what I will be doing is they say the biggest time loss for our staff and for us is when there's interruptions. And this is where I see my VAs. They've always got jobs to do, right? Whether it's social media, email marketing, admin, bookkeeping, whatever it is. But as soon as a guest message comes in, they are told, hey, cut what you're doing and jump in onto that. And they say it takes about 20 minutes to get back into the original task. So I can only guess at the amount of time which is being lost. And this is where, like you say something through using Host Buddy can, can save that time and still sound human. So thank you so much. You've inspired me, Jay, to go and check it out. So before we wrap up, is there anything we missed along the way or any last words of wisdom for our listeners?
- [27:04]
Jay
Yeah, a couple things that kind of came up While you were speaking too, that we tracked some KPIs for your company. So you can see the average response time for Host Buddy compared to your team, which is really cool. Another big thing and a question that a lot of people have is like, what if Host Buddy can't respond to your guest question? What if it, what if it doesn't have the answer right? And if it doesn't, then it's going to loop in the host by sending you a direct message over Slack or text or email or WhatsApp. There's a ton of different communication channels that we can push out action items to and then you can manage those all in an action items board. So that way your team can go in there, add notes of, hey, I, I'm going to take care of this specific action item. You know, let's say that somebody needs extra towels that needs to be coordinated with your team, right? You can also have these action item notifications categorized and let's say cleaning notifications can be sent to your cleaning team. Maintenance notifications can be sent to your maintenance person. So it's really cool how you can kind of break these things down because AI is not going to be able to go to your property and fix a leaky pipe. You know, there's still people that need to be involved. There's still need to be people that pick up the phone. So ultimately, sometimes people think like, am I saying fire all of your VAs and all the people on your team? No, absolutely not. Keep them, but utilize them for things that are going to generate more revenue for you and allow you to scale. And lastly, I would say there's a really big opportunity for people who are in the STR space trying out new tech to influence the way that it develops. And that's one of the favorite parts that I have about being a CEO in the STR space of a software company is that people come to us that are exactly like me. You know, like I, I designed this product alongside of my, my business partner to work the best that it could for my property management business. And since then it's been just developing, developing it to be the best that it can be for everyone else. But you have such a good opportunity right now to provide your feedback and tell us what's the most important and what pain points you have. Because we're at such a cool turning point right now. We're able to solve so many things with AI and it's only going to get better. So I'm super excited for that. And hopefully I see people pop up on the on the registered list that are listening.
- [29:12]
Liam
This has been so fun. The link to come and find out more. Just give us that one more time and that will be in and around the audio or the show notes as well. Where do we go? Hostbuddy AI, thank you so much. We'll see you again in the future, I'm sure. Bye for now everyone.