Annie from HelloHost

[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl. Short Term Rental Management. We are here, we are triumphant. It's fantastic to be to have a guest today. We have a guest today, so introduce yourself. And you've been on Avery's show. That's the extent of my knowledge. So we're going to dive deep into this today. So hello, how are you? And tell us about yourself. [00:00:37] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's so great to be on the show. I'm Annie. I'm the co founder of hello Host. AI a little bit about myself. I have been in the short term rental industry since 2014 with my own Airbnb. So at the time I was traveling a lot and just had my apartment in Toronto up for rent. And then that really opened the door to everything that came after, which more recently was an acquisition of a retreat three hours north of Toronto. It was a incredible experience and at the same time I experienced a major pain point with our guest communications and just being able to kind of be on call 247 for guests. And then that led later to sort of the problem that I ended up solving through hello Host which was how do I automate some of these guest communications? And started co founded this company based in San Francisco in 2013. Sorry, 2023. And so now it's been a couple of years. I think the technology has progressed rapidly and it's really sort of making a dent in sol solving this problem I originally set out to, to solve. So I know that's a very encapsulated, encapsulated summary of, of everything that happened, but happy to kind of talk about any, any part of that. [00:02:06] Speaker A: I love it. So you are a Canadian resident or what, where, where does that like what is your, your. [00:02:13] Speaker B: I'm a Canadian citizen. [00:02:14] Speaker A: You're. You're on your passport. It's Canada. [00:02:17] Speaker B: It's Canada. I am. Well, I was very young. I immigrated parents to the US and then as a result of their work we ended up moving to Canada and I became a Canadian citizen. I grew up, went to school in Canada and I also went to school in the States and then worked a bunch in the States. I was a consultant in the, in the States. So then I was just sort of traveling all over the US but also internationally as well, especially in Europe, South America. And then finally did my. I did my MBA at MIT and then post mba, moved to SF where I essentially founded hello Host. And that was an intersection, I think of two of my passions While obviously short term rental slash property management slash, I think just real estate in general and then secondly artificial intelligence. So AI, [00:03:19] Speaker A: my goodness, this has been intimidating to be talking to an MBA from MIT just to get in there. [00:03:27] Speaker B: Don't be. [00:03:28] Speaker A: I mean I'm married to an mba, but not mit. Very impressive. Very impressive. So you call Toronto home? [00:03:36] Speaker B: Yes. [00:03:37] Speaker A: Okay, you like. You're there now. [00:03:40] Speaker B: I'm here now. [00:03:41] Speaker A: You like it there? We're going to stay there. [00:03:44] Speaker B: I like it here. I'm gonna stay here. [00:03:46] Speaker A: Okay. It's January. At the recording of this podcast, I'm in Florida and it's cold, so I can't imagine. I, I grew up, I grew up in the cold. I'm. I'm much closer to where you went to college in the Midwest and what [00:04:03] Speaker B: that said, I think I'll still, I'll still be traveling, right? Travel, of course, yes. [00:04:08] Speaker A: But you know, I reluctantly moved to Florida on the suggestion that I had no choice on which was, you know, from, from the higher up and we moved to Florida and I now realize that you don't have to live in the cold. Now I'm not saying that, that Florida is the answer to your problems, to anybody's problem. [00:04:30] Speaker B: I think it could be. I really seriously consider. Well, they do have these things hurricane and not being there for the hurricane season. [00:04:39] Speaker A: And if you're from, if you live in the pretty part of Florida which is the Gulf, that's where the hurricanes are. If you live on the not so pretty which is the ocean side, it's much less chance for hurricane or less severe hurricanes. But the beach is not, you know, it's, it's like going to New Jersey, you know, it's like just a, just a beach anyway that's neither here nor there. So at some point you did move to San Francisco with. Was this just after college or. I mean was it like you had a dream to take over the world kind of a thing? [00:05:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So moved to San Francisco after I completed my mba mostly so that I could focus on starting a company and at the time I wasn't really sure if it was for sure going to be in the vacation rental space because up until then my background was in consulting followed by just early stage technology startups but this was something that I was highly passionate about on the side. So then moved to San Francisco, got to meet my co founder and then the two of us sort of landed on this is sort of the right problem space to explore. And at the same time as I mentioned to you, I had my big Project, which was acquiring, with a number of investors and partners, a property in Toronto. So I was kind of handling that half remotely. So that's travel. [00:06:06] Speaker A: Let's talk about the property. So you, you mentioned a quote unquote, Airbnb that was, that was an apartment or a condo or something that you lived in. Is that what that was? [00:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that kicked off, like my entry into, into the industry because very expensive [00:06:22] Speaker A: from what I understand. Is that true? [00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah, at the time, I actually just rented my apartment. It was a rental and I was traveling for, for four months out of the country. And so during that period of time, I was like, my apartment's empty, I'm going to rent it out, if not medium term, then on Airbnb. And I put out Airbnb. I had a really great experience. I had guests who, this is early, early and in the history of Airbnb guests who would leave you little notes and gifts and also covered my rent. So I was just. I had a fantastic experience. And then I helped some of my friends get into Airbnb. So I had operated a few Airbnbs in Toronto. And so that never really stopped until more recently sort of switched to this property that's three hours north of Toronto. Toronto, to your point, is very expensive and also has a lot of rental regulations or short term rental regulations. [00:07:20] Speaker A: Yes, this is what, what your, your. The primary home, the apartment, the rental we would have, when I'm in my New York City days, we would have called that a sublet. [00:07:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:07:32] Speaker A: And this is actually, you know, this is what Airbnb was, was founded on. They, they said, you know, and again, I'm not here to put it words in anybody's mouths, but my interpretation of it was they, you know, they saw what VRBO was doing. Verbo had been around for a long time, like 20 years already at that point. And they said, well, you know, we live in San Francisco where it's extremely expensive, but we do want to rent these rooms while we're not here. So it's almost exactly what Airbnb was created to do. And, and you were an early adopt. 2014 was very early. [00:08:04] Speaker B: Yes. [00:08:04] Speaker A: In the Airbnb grand scheme of things. [00:08:06] Speaker B: All my friends are like, are you crazy? People are going to destroy your home? That was the conversation that I was having at the time. [00:08:13] Speaker A: Is this legal now in that, in that building? In other words, would, would you be able to put it on a sublet or an Airbnb? [00:08:22] Speaker B: It is legal if you're living in it. So technically, in my situation, yes. It would still be legal, but there are restrictions, such as the fact that it's subject to 180 night occupancy per year. [00:08:35] Speaker A: And was it. [00:08:35] Speaker B: You can't. [00:08:36] Speaker A: Only you could sublease it, or you didn't look and didn't care. And I mean, this is. We're. We're past the point of you getting in trouble, I would assume here. [00:08:43] Speaker B: So, yeah, I could sublet it in my lease. It was just with apartment building. [00:08:48] Speaker A: This is extremely common. Again, I lived in New York City, which is sort of like the American Toronto, I would say. Right. [00:08:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:54] Speaker A: And it was very common when I lived there. Everybody's. Everybody I knew sublet, you know, is what they called it at the time. [00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:01] Speaker A: Because you couldn't afford your apartment if you weren't living in it, you know, and if you were traveling. And this is very common of big city people that we like to travel, we like to go see things. Right. We. Now I live in a town of 9,000 people, which wasn't my choice, but that's another story. We go to New Orleans all the time. I love the big city. And when I was living there in that timeframe, actually in the same time frame you're talking about if one of my friends was leaving the country to backpack or, you know, going to San Francisco for however long to work or whatever, they would rent their unit while they were. Had no choice. Had no choice because you had to pay. Like, if you're going to San Francisco for three months, you're paying another extremely expensive rent, you know. [00:09:46] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:09:46] Speaker A: So you gotta. You can't pay the two expensive rents when you're, you know, at least for me, I was, you know, a little bit younger at the time and kicking and screaming and trying to get somewhere in life, you know, but anyway, resonates with me. I appreciate the hustle. And so you. You like the experience of hosting, it sounds like. [00:10:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I enjoy the experience of hosting. I think if I didn't do the Airbnb experience, I probably would have just subletted it to a person I found off of Facebook or so, you know, through a network, just to have someone stay there while I'm not there and help, help, help with the rent. Yeah, I did like the experience. The guests, as I mentioned, you know, left me little presents and notes, and I did the same for them. And. And that. I think that was a part of my Airbnb experience from the beginning. And also it more than covered the rent. And so I thought I would just continue to do it, you Know, when I got back to Toronto, whenever I would leave, it was still just with my own apartment. I didn't really think about scaling that because it wasn't, you know, that was not my. What I thought, you know, my career path at the time. So it was just a passion project or a hobby that I had on the side. [00:11:03] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:11:04] Speaker B: For. For many years. Yeah. [00:11:07] Speaker A: And tell me about the retreat. It's a provocative word. So what, what is it exactly? [00:11:13] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's just think of like a lakeside, four or five acres, 16 cabins slash suites. There's a chalet with eight suites, eight cabins, and is three hours north of Toronto. So a lot of folks in the summertime will head up there to get away from the heat. Yes, it does gets really hot in the summertime in Canada as well. And so it's just a really beautiful place that people want to go and relax and sort of enjoy, enjoy nature. [00:11:52] Speaker A: I. I spent some time in a town called Orillia. Is it anywhere near there? [00:11:58] Speaker B: Yes, it's very close to Orillia. [00:12:00] Speaker A: Okay. [00:12:01] Speaker B: I would say about still like an hour and a half drive away from Orillia, but just in that region. Yeah. Further. [00:12:08] Speaker A: Okay. [00:12:09] Speaker B: Yes, Yes. [00:12:10] Speaker A: I have a buddy that lives there and I went and visited him and I actually ran a 20 mile. I had a marathon coming up and I ran a 20 mile long run by myself on a snowmobile trail outside of Orillia. My buddy just said, you can do it here because he needed me there for an event or whatever. And it's a long story, but I said, I gotta run. I have a marathon in like three weeks. And you know, I was much younger. I still run marathons, but I was much younger and like really into it. And he said, just do it here. We got these snowmobile trails. And I was like, that's no way. There's no way. So I looked into it and this trail actually did look really cool. And he took me up there and he knew everything about it and he just dropped me on like we. It was an. I hate to go on about this, but it was an amazing experience. I. He knew what he was doing. He's lived there forever. He's born and raised in Toronto and he dropped me. We drove like all the way to the end. So I was to do it 10, 10 plus miles each direction, which I know you guys do. Kilometers either way. [00:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:14] Speaker A: And he drove me to the end where I was to turn around and we dropped water and snacks. We're talking the middle of nowhere. Absolute nowhere. [00:13:21] Speaker B: Yes. [00:13:22] Speaker A: This story Actually gets really good, but I can't tell the really good parts on the air. [00:13:27] Speaker B: If anybody hears now, I'm curious. [00:13:29] Speaker A: It's very. It's a very good story, actually, and I would be happy to tell it to anybody. Off. Off of a microphone. Should. Should you. Somebody reach out and I'll tell you later as well. But some crazy things happened on this journey. On this 20, 20 plus mile journey. [00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:43] Speaker A: So I hit this snowmo. I went left his house, drove. I ran down to the lake. There's a lake there and a casino and all that. And I hit this snowmobile trail and just went. And it was the most gorgeous. It was probably. I've run a lot in my life, Annie, and this was probably top. I would say top three or four most gorgeous runs I've ever done. And to have it not even be a race of any kind or organized and like, you know, put put together for money was even more. It was surreal. Anyway, long story short, I ran this 21. It was just over 21 miles, I think, and it was extremely enjoyable. The every moment of it was like a perfect weather. The course was extremely flat, and it was crushed. Crushed pea gravel. Perfect underfoot. No. No issues. Anyway, nobody cares about running except for runners, so I'll change the subject. But I did really enjoy my time that area. And I learned that that area is very heavily what you're talking about. It's almost like the Hamptons kind of a thing or like the. The Poconos kind of a thing, where people. They go here on retreat in the summertime on vacation to get away from the city. Is. Is. That's kind of what's going on here, right? They're driving up from Toronto to get away from it. [00:15:01] Speaker B: Yes, pretty much. And this particular property originally was established by, I think, Doctors from Rochester, New York, who went up there in the 1800s in order to treat tuberculosis patients because of how, you know, fresh the air is up there. [00:15:20] Speaker A: And that's how this plug property was. That's why it was built. [00:15:24] Speaker B: Yes, that's why it was originally built. [00:15:26] Speaker A: Fascinating. And where did you find it? Where did you come across it? [00:15:29] Speaker B: It was through. Just through my network. So a friend of a friend. Yeah. Who introduced the property and then obviously got pretty excited about the prospect of. I think at the time, it was kind of deteriorating in both condition, but also the way it was being operated. So really saw an opportunity to preserve the character of the space and at the same time sort of turn it around and turn that. That neighborhood. Improve the neighborhood a Little bit. [00:16:00] Speaker A: When you say neighborhood. I'm picturing this thing to be in the middle of nowhere. There's other properties surrounding it. [00:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah, just. Just similar. Not. Not similar. More residential. [00:16:11] Speaker A: People live there. [00:16:12] Speaker B: Properties run. Yeah, people live there. [00:16:14] Speaker A: Is there a lake? [00:16:15] Speaker B: It's not completely remote. There's a little town that is 20 minutes away and there is. It's actually technically, it's part of the lake of Bay Township. So all along the lake that is one town. And then we're next to a. A small city 20 minutes away. [00:16:36] Speaker A: I see. What did this property cost? [00:16:41] Speaker B: The property cost 2.8 million. [00:16:44] Speaker A: Oh my. For eight structures? [00:16:48] Speaker B: For 16. [00:16:50] Speaker A: Oh, 16. [00:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah, 16 units. [00:16:54] Speaker A: And they're all separate stick built structures with the foundation. Sixteen separate buildings? [00:17:01] Speaker B: No, so 16 units, eight of which are separate. And then there are two main buildings, Waterhouse and like little small structures because it's on the grid, but the water. Waterhouse, obviously. So it just gets the water from. From the lake and filters it and [00:17:18] Speaker A: that pumps it into the cabins. [00:17:20] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [00:17:21] Speaker A: So if I'm looking at this thing on your website or on Airbnb, how many of them are for rent? [00:17:27] Speaker B: 16. [00:17:27] Speaker A: 16, okay. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Just eight of them happen to be in one building. They're like little suites. [00:17:33] Speaker A: Oh, I see. So it's like a hotel kind of thing. [00:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:17:37] Speaker A: Is it seasonal? [00:17:40] Speaker B: It is four season, but we experience most of the gas coming in the summertime. [00:17:46] Speaker A: Are you managing it yourself? [00:17:49] Speaker B: Yes, my husband and I are sort of managing operations alongside with our partners. [00:17:55] Speaker A: So yeah, it's fascinating. Can I have the name? Like how do I find this thing? I'd like to look at it, if not go there somewhere. [00:18:02] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. It's called Muskoka Waterfront Retreat. [00:18:06] Speaker A: Oh my. Spell that. [00:18:08] Speaker B: M U S K O K A Muskoka. And that's the region as well. Waterfront retreat. [00:18:17] Speaker A: And it is waterfront, I would assume. Is it lake or. [00:18:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just alongside the lake. [00:18:23] Speaker A: Am I using the rig recreationally for fishing, etc. [00:18:28] Speaker B: For fishing, yes, exactly. You can go fishing, boating. One of the three big lakes. [00:18:34] Speaker A: That sounds absolutely wonderful. Do the individual standalone stick built cabins rent better than the rooms in the. [00:18:42] Speaker B: Yes, they do. [00:18:43] Speaker A: They do. [00:18:44] Speaker B: They do. [00:18:45] Speaker A: I could have actually seen that going either way. [00:18:49] Speaker B: The prices are a little bit different, but I would still say the cabins are more popular. How? We just have a baseboard heating. [00:19:01] Speaker A: Okay. [00:19:01] Speaker B: For everything. So we're on the grid. Yeah. [00:19:03] Speaker A: No air conditioning. Is air conditioning needed? [00:19:06] Speaker B: Air conditioning. All of the units as well. [00:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a central air. It's a window unit. [00:19:11] Speaker B: It's a. It's a mini split. Yes, exactly. [00:19:16] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. And do you go up there and do maintenance? Is there a front desk person? [00:19:24] Speaker B: Yeah, let me tell you a little bit more. So no front desk person. It operates kind of like a self check insect, self checkout process. So just like an Airbnb. With that said, we do have folks who live on site and they are cleaning team. So we have two members of our team who live on site and then one person who's working on maintenance on a part time basis. So three days a week. And so we have essentially just this, that staff of three who are, you know, constantly present on the property. Obviously myself, my husband visit very often, but otherwise all of the operations is handled. Handled remotely. [00:20:03] Speaker A: The team of two. Is it husband, wife? [00:20:07] Speaker B: No, they are relatives. [00:20:10] Speaker A: Okay. Like cousins or something? [00:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah, cousin. [00:20:12] Speaker A: And they. How long have they been with you? [00:20:17] Speaker B: They've been with us for like two, three years now. [00:20:20] Speaker A: And you like them? No problems? [00:20:22] Speaker B: Yes, I like them. No problems. [00:20:24] Speaker A: Okay, that's good. The maintenance guy does not live on property or. He does. [00:20:28] Speaker B: No, he doesn't. He doesn't. Yeah. [00:20:30] Speaker A: He just comes in and he's servicing other homes in the area and things like that. [00:20:35] Speaker B: Yeah, he is a retired fire marshal and so he is just working on. On Muskoko. [00:20:43] Speaker A: When you purchased the home or the property, when was this? [00:20:46] Speaker B: This is back in 2022. [00:20:50] Speaker A: Oh, peak Covid. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Mm. Peak covet. [00:20:53] Speaker A: The height of the market. [00:20:55] Speaker B: The height of the market. But also I think there were still concerns about, you know, lack of tourism in the region maybe. Not necessarily. I think just Airbnb being impacted in general. [00:21:10] Speaker A: When I meet 22 purchasers, I generally. I'm worried that they're not happy with their purchase because of the rates and because of the prices. Are we. We're three years now, I guess almost four years. You're happy with it? You ever considered dumping it or we're going to keep it [00:21:27] Speaker B: where. I'm very happy with it. One thing to note for us is that we didn't come in. There was a thesis around this, meaning that we just thought that this was a really good investment opportunity because the. I'll just give you an example of the booking system. I mean, I think a lot of the reservations were still being taken over the phone on notebooks. Right. And the. The property just wasn't maintained. So I think there was mostly about investing into the property and then getting everything operational. So we ended up renovating all of the cabins. So I think where it's landed today. I'm very, very happy with. It wasn't just like acquire and keep operating as is. It was kind of turn around the. The entire operations and hold. [00:22:16] Speaker A: You do plan to hold? [00:22:19] Speaker B: I do plan to hold. In the medium term, I would say. [00:22:23] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Interesting. Not that I care. I'm just curious. I mean, care either way is what I mean. Would be a. A smart move. Either way. We're hiring Realtors. This show is brought to you by the Short Term Shop. Join our exciting team in the best vacation markets in America. We're currently hiring agents in Gulf Shores, the Poconos and Outer Banks. Email us at Careers at the short term shop dot com. That's careers@the shorttermshop dot com. Okay, so this is. When did the move to San Francisco take place? [00:23:11] Speaker B: The move to San Francisco took place in 2020, also in 2022. [00:23:18] Speaker A: So you graduated property, rehabbed it and moved simultaneously. [00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah, this. This purchase was actually end of 2021, closed at the beginning of 2022. [00:23:29] Speaker A: Okay. [00:23:30] Speaker B: Came back to Toronto, moved to SF. Was very fast. Very pretty intense period of my life. [00:23:38] Speaker A: Did you raise money for the purchase? [00:23:42] Speaker B: We just found. I mean, we had, as I mentioned, [00:23:45] Speaker A: investors, but myself included syndication of 506B or anything you. [00:23:50] Speaker B: No, no. Yeah, just partners. [00:23:52] Speaker A: Okay. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Like a group of. Think of a group of folks who know each other or friends who wanted to undertake a really fun project. [00:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds cool. [00:24:02] Speaker B: Project. Yeah. [00:24:04] Speaker A: Love it. Okay, so we moved to San Francisco and it was time to get in on the. The tech thing, which I all I. My extent of that is massive amounts of podcasts and. And you decided to go with the. Would stay in the same space, so it makes sense. And now I guess my question is, is I'm just going to jump right ahead. How do you deal with the competition? There's a lot of competition in your space now for. Yes. For. For the. [00:24:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think we made a very strategic decision in the beginning, which was. This is just from my personal experience. Right. So my personal experience was I was handling a lot of the guest communications. So when we first acquired the Muskoka property, we didn't. We did have a general manager, and then the general manager left the. Left the company. And at the time we made. There was a. There was a decision point, like should we hire other general manager to replace her? Or maybe this is something that myself and my husband can figure out. But obviously the most immediate problem to solve was the GAS communications piece and also creating a team or building a team around this. And we just thought with 16 properties for 24, 7 coverage, you're going to have to have at least like two, three people who are just, you know, full time. This is definitely a cost flow on the, on the property. So that was, that was the problem that we were facing at the time. And then trying to actually solve this problem myself with hello, Host. So that was, that's kind of the origin story of how hello, Host came to be. [00:25:43] Speaker A: Okay, hold on. Before we get. Because we're going to cover the, we're going to cover the competition thing, but now I have more questions. So you are renting this, this, this property on Airbnb in vrbo? [00:25:53] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [00:25:54] Speaker A: Okay, where, where do you see we draw the line? Because I'm sitting here thinking to myself, you know, hotels don't need, don't need it. Hotels just have a phone number and a front desk and you call and they don't have like this messaging system. Maybe. In other words, are they doing it right or are we doing it right? Why, why do we have the. [00:26:14] Speaker B: They also have messaging systems in the sense that you might. Yeah, you. Yes. If you respond back to an email that hotel sends you saying, you know, I want to cancel this reservation or let me know if this amenity is included or all these types of things, it's going to go somewhere. Someone has to go and manually respond to it. So even though hotels may not have a platform like a OTA platform through which messaging is obviously occurring, they will also deal with messaging. [00:26:44] Speaker A: I see. Is this something that could be used for hotels? [00:26:49] Speaker B: I think potentially down the line right now we're not really optimized for hotel use, except in cases where they're already using a property management system that we're familiar with in the short term rental industry. So think like guesty, Hostaway, these type of property management systems or maybe the hotel. Like there are a lot of boutique hotels on Airbnb. So I think in general, if they're using Airbnb BRBO for acquiring new guests, then yes. [00:27:16] Speaker A: Right. For smaller properties. [00:27:19] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [00:27:24] Speaker A: Is that how you got into, broke into this was to kind of crack the code with these management softwares or was it to. In other words, you got to, you got to be able to work. I'm not good on the tech lingo here, but, you know, like integrate well with the, with the hostfully and all, you know? [00:27:39] Speaker B: Yeah, we integrate. [00:27:41] Speaker A: Or is it more so the Airbnb and the vrbo? [00:27:43] Speaker B: Yeah, we integrate well with all of the property management systems. [00:27:46] Speaker A: Okay. [00:27:47] Speaker B: Because this is ultimately still for professional hosts and not for think like individual owner of an Airbnb for guest communications. [00:27:56] Speaker A: And so in other words, if I'm just a person with one or two houses, I wouldn't want this [00:28:05] Speaker B: if you already using a property management system. So if you are. What if you're someone with one or two houses and you happen to also be on, you know, vrbo booking.com Airbnb, then I think it could be for you. But I think if you're just like, I'm only on Airbnb, I only want to stay here. This is already getting me to my max occupancy, then that I would say probably not, not worth it. [00:28:28] Speaker A: I see, I see. [00:28:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:30] Speaker A: And now. But now all the management software is back to the competition thing. They have their own AI, Right. I can just push a button on Hospitable. It'll do AI for me, but I would assume yours is better. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Well, again, back to that strategic decision, mostly based on my own experience, which is I don't want to be in my inbox all the time. So if a guest messages me, I want someone to handle it. And that really requires a person or I thought, okay, and I can just handle it for me without me going again. And I think everything that's on the market, at least a majority of them that are on the market, still requires you to go and review the AI's message before it's sent. You know, you're not going to trust that it's just going to send the right message at the right time. So that's kind of how we differentiate from all the competitors on the market. [00:29:19] Speaker A: I see. [00:29:20] Speaker B: Right. So it just, it doesn't require you to go and look at the message and go like, this is not quite right. Let me go and edit this message. Right. And I just wanted to be free from messaging when I'm having dinner or taking a shower or like in the middle of the night. I just wanted that to be handled. And at the same time, the company is just hard to staff or support for 24. 7 coverage. [00:29:44] Speaker A: Yes, I use Hospitable and their AI is good, but it's extremely limited. Like, I don't have ways to tweak it and make it my own. And sometimes it just doesn't send a message and says, we're not going to send a message because we don't understand this or something. [00:29:59] Speaker B: Right. [00:30:00] Speaker A: It's not sophisticated. That being said, it is fairly new and I do like it, but it's very limited. [00:30:09] Speaker B: Yes, it's I think that's the main thing, which is just the message quality. So what that means to us is because it's only. Our product offering is only on autopilot, right? It is going to just answer the guest message as it comes in. I think some users at least are a little bit intimidated. Like, what if it says this right or wrong? And I want it to say it's in a different way. One thing to note is that we've now had, you know, have thousands of properties on the platform and so so many iterations of issues that have come up and all the edge cases which we focus on solving. But I think if you're not focused on the autopilot problem and instead you're focused on a here's what the AI suggests as a response type problem, you're not actually solving the true problem, which is what should the correct answer be to a guest question? [00:30:57] Speaker A: Let me ask you this. Like, what if it's a situation where the host, every host, has a different opinion on how to handle it? Such as, this weekend, we're about to get snow in the Smokies, which is rare, and everybody loses their damn mind in the smoky, which again, this is the biggest overnight rental, single family home, overnight rental, Airbnb, if you will, market in the world. And when it snows there, people lose it, lose it. The hosts lose it, the guests lose it. Because it doesn't happen very often. And it's a long conversation. It really is, because people think mountains and they think snow. So then you got the contingency of people that just assume it snows there all the time, which is mostly guests. And then of course, you got a lot of out of state owners that live in Arizona and just don't even realize that it doesn't snow in East Tennessee. And when it does, know there's no snow plows, there's no way to get around, there's a good chance there's no electricity, so everything is shut down. There's nothing to do. We're dealing with that right now, this weekend. So I've noticed that we have mostly two different types of people when it comes to this. There's the people that, I guess, for lack of a better way to put it, roll the dice, let their guests come, see if they get stuck. Then you have the people that proactively reach out to the guests and say, it's gonna snow this weekend. You are not likely to get to the property. And even if you do, you're sure as hell not gonna be able to go anywhere. Cause everything will be closed. Would you like to cancel? And then they offer their money back. So there's the people that don't wanna give them their money back. And I hate to put it that [00:32:24] Speaker B: way, but yeah, you're right. Yeah, Everybody. Yeah. How? [00:32:28] Speaker A: I mean, is this an example? Like, how would I handle this if I'm using hello host, would I need to manually take over? How does hello host know how? I like the host versus the other guy. [00:32:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think there are still a, a type of industry knowledge. So I think there is. Before the AI is trained on your data and is looking at your data, it first is positioned as experienced vacation rental manager. So think someone you might hire who already has some years of experience, but they still maybe don't know your specific policies and procedures, but they understand, okay, they have to make sure the guest experience is great. And they have to understand, you know, they, they have to wear the customer, customer support hat and not like dispute with the guests over, over, over, over an issue because they just happen to be very emotionally involved in that. In that moment, they understand. Some of the best practices across multiple users is how I might condition it. On the topic of how would you handle snow? It might look at your past conversation history to see how you've handled it in the past. If it hasn't, it might say something that it knows is not really going to upset the guest, but it might not be exactly what you want. And then, and then you're like, okay, I want to change this. I want to customize it. So this is. This leads me to the second part of how we're pretty different from competitors. The AI is fully customizable for you by conversation. By conversation. What that means is that we're not really like a software where you go and you kind of click on buttons, you input data, you put information, you kind of use it like a software. Because fundamentally the is not. Doesn't really operate like a software. It's not always going to give you the exact verbiage of an answer. There's a probability of, of a distribution of answers that you could have. So we kind of treat it like a person. So what that means is you would just literally write in a WhatsApp group conversation with one of our AI operations agents and go like, hey, moving forward, I want you to handle SNOW questions like this. And then you just give an example. And then that information is then routed into our system. And a combination of the AI and our team will help ensure that moving forward, the AI will answer that appropriately. [00:34:49] Speaker A: I See, and just like how you [00:34:52] Speaker B: might work with a person, right? So that's a little bit different from like, okay, this is a traditional software. I'm going to go, I'm going to have to input this data and it gets it wrong and then let me go into a software system, input this data. We kind of want the experience to be like you working with a person who already is a trained, experienced vacation rental manager, but at the same time knows everything about your properties already does. [00:35:17] Speaker A: Do the OTAs ever have a problem with, with AI, in other words, is it green light or is it like they're not really paying attention to it yet? And does for guests like me. [00:35:32] Speaker B: So the OTAs are already using AI significantly in all their operations. Airbnbs main use at the moment is still on sort of ID verifications of, of both guests and hosts and just keeping the platform safe for all the users. So saying people who have a track record of maybe like parties and things like that, that's number one. Number two, I definitely think is still in, in the guest messaging. So, so they're monitoring guest messaging to understand what Airbnb policies have been violated. So I think num. I, I think they're just very, they are definitely using AI in their own operations and they expect operators to also use AI in their operations, especially experienced operators. [00:36:15] Speaker A: Okay, and how customizable is it as far as like, can I say, hey, I don't want you to be that nice. [00:36:23] Speaker B: Yes. You can customize the tone just like how you might, you might speak to the AI, how much you might tell a person what to do. Right. So. [00:36:33] Speaker A: So just like Chat GPT. [00:36:35] Speaker B: Yeah, just like Chat GPT. [00:36:37] Speaker A: I see. So like yesterday I was asking Chat GPT about the difference between two guitars and I told it, I said, it sounds to me like you're pulling this information from a website that sells Yamaha guitars because you're just giving me Yamaha stuff and I don't even want a Yamaha. And it was like, we will try not to do that. So is this that kind of thing? Like I, I talk to it or it has like sliders or. I guess I should have done it. [00:37:02] Speaker B: Y. It's a little bit defined on the business use case. So it's not like chatgpt where it's freewheeling. You can take the conversation in any direction, all the topics. I mean, we just expect the conversation to be really around the operations of, of your short term rental. And so as a result, certain business operations, you can actually ask it to do things which chatgpt you can ask it to do certain research, it's going to go online, it's going to pull different data sources. But I just want to clarify, there's two. One that's to communicate with, with the guest. So one that you get to communicate with. Right. There are two AI agents here. And so for the one that is communicating with guests, it, it has actions that it can take such as look up your calendar and see which dates are available or unavailable or because there's a same day turnaround, you know, a late checkout is no longer allowed. So it's capable of answering, handling those types of complex situations. It can go and look up the Uber pickup location, it can go and use Google Maps and, and just web search. That's, that's one agent, the other agent lives inside a conversation with you and in that conversation it can do things like you can tell it, hey, let this guest know. You know, maintenance is going to come by at 2pm because, because there's all these operational things that only you and your team will know. So there's, there needs to be a method to get that information to the guest. And so that AI agent helps you do that. Right. Like you can tell the AI to send a message to the guest. You can tell the AI, hey, for future guest messaging, I don't want it, I want it to sound more professional or sound more friendly or hey, for this specific message, the verbiage is a little bit off. I want you to say this moving forward, hey, add this information for this property. So in the future I can always answer this way. [00:38:58] Speaker A: Will it pull information from my guidebook? [00:39:01] Speaker B: Yes, if you provide the guidebooks to us during the onboarding process, it will, or, or through the conversation process with the second agent. [00:39:12] Speaker A: So when I come on board with you, there's some sort of, there's an actual consultation with a human? [00:39:17] Speaker B: Yes, there's a consultation. So it's just a 30 minute onboarding call with a human, not AI. Yeah. And then afterwards, the conversation, you can, you can change anything. You know that, that you discussed in the consultation with the human and talk [00:39:33] Speaker A: to a human to make changes. [00:39:35] Speaker B: No, you, you, you talk to our, you just, you just say things like, hey, I want to change my response time from two minutes to three minutes. So you just kind of do everything by conversation instead of using a software like normal. Of course we do have the software, we have the interface, but these changes can be made through conversation is what [00:39:57] Speaker A: we just do that on the hello Host website. [00:40:00] Speaker B: You would do that inside your WhatsApp chat WhatsApp. Yeah, inside WhatsApp or Slack. And the reason for this is that the AI sends. [00:40:10] Speaker A: So it zaps to my Slack. [00:40:13] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [00:40:14] Speaker A: Really? [00:40:14] Speaker B: Even though we don't use Zap. Yeah, Zapier. [00:40:17] Speaker A: But I would have a Slack channel for host. Hello, Host. [00:40:21] Speaker B: Correct. [00:40:22] Speaker A: Say hey, hey, hello, Host. Can you do this for me? Yes, that's cool. [00:40:27] Speaker B: But you wouldn't say hello, Host. You call. Its name is Wally. But yeah, you would say at Wall E, like, can you. [00:40:33] Speaker A: And my whole team can be in there. [00:40:35] Speaker B: Your whole team can be in there. [00:40:36] Speaker A: Wow, I like that. I wish I was using this to be honest, because this conversation would have gone a lot different. So let me ask you another question. When I'm again, I'm using my management software's AI, which is not sophisticated, but it's fine. And I also have full time employees, so that makes things a little easier. But when I send my, when I have, when, when my management software sends an AI message, which again, I can't, there's no way for me to change the tone of it. There's no way for me to adjust, you know, like a lot of times it'll just say, we're not going to reply to this. There's nothing I can do about it. [00:41:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:17] Speaker A: When it does send messages, I have at the bottom a little signature, if you will, like an email signature that says this message was sent by AI. If you want a human, please reply. Do you recommend doing that or should I mask the fact that it's AI? [00:41:31] Speaker B: This is up to the individual users, but the option definitely exists for them to add, for any user to add a signature that they want across our user base. Generally see that they're, they're kind of blending the AI into the team. So the AI is speaking on behalf of their team versus stating that it is an AI. The rationale mostly around this is not really to obviously to mislead guests by any means, but more so because when you say it's an AI, there there's just more opportunities for abuse, possibly by guests or it just changes the guest's behavior. [00:42:09] Speaker A: But I'm concerned that if the AI says something I don't like that. Now I have no excuse. If I don't do a signature that says this was sent by AI. You know what I mean? If you think it's me or a human representing me and the AI is something I don't like, then I'm in trouble. Right, Right. That's what I'm worried about. [00:42:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think it kind of Falls into two categories. One is more, you know, excusable types of mistakes like, oh, I'm sorry, I just double checked this and you know, we happen to have a particular amenity like we, we do have, I don't know, salt and pepper being offered. So I think one where the guests are not really going to care about what the, what the specific answer was. And then the second type are more like, hey, I promised, you know, the, the AI quote, unquote. This is what people are afraid of. But like the AI promised a refund, but I don't actually agree to, to the refund. Right. So this type of instance, and for the second instance, we've worked on this so much that obviously it's operating completely fine for thousands of properties. And if we're constantly giving out free refunds, we wouldn't be in business. And we have a policy whereby if AI creates a real loss for you, then hello host will help cover it. So that just goes to show our confidence in like the state of our system now where it's really not saying things that's going to get you into like monetary trouble. [00:43:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that wouldn't be a concern for me. But what happens when the guest says, hey, I want to cancel, I'm outside of my cancellation policy and I have a refund. Can I tell it to not respond to certain messages? [00:43:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you can say don't respond to cancellation messages, that's perfectly fine. [00:43:55] Speaker A: Or you can just, hey, hey, what is it? [00:43:58] Speaker B: Ollie, Ali, Wally. [00:44:00] Speaker A: Hey, Wally. Don't respond to cancellation messages on Slack. And it will write me back and say, no problem. [00:44:06] Speaker B: Yes. [00:44:06] Speaker A: Oh, this is fantastic. This is great. I was not expecting that I'd be so turned on here. This is, I like this a lot. This is cool. [00:44:13] Speaker B: Great to hear that. [00:44:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, and let's say you're a guy like me that's got, you know, a couple dozen properties or whatever and you do have somebody full time looking after the inbox. But they're, you know, they do, they're 40, you know, like let's say I've got maybe not maybe I'm not a good example. I have multiple employees, but I got one full timer working 40 hours a week. How would this be managed? In other words? I don't think I want to replace the human, I want to keep the human. But I just turn the Slack messages and all notifications. [00:44:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So instead of responding to every single message like, hey, I'm about to arrive, hey, I'm checking out, or like, you know, where can I Park. And it's the same repetitive thing. And I think for that human, they're not excited about these messages either. They might even already have a safe reply that they're using for, you know, if not, if not, 80%, not at least 60, 70% of their messaging anyway. So we just think that maybe they can do something more valuable with their time and then come back into messaging and they can check it on a regular basis. Right. So like here I'm going to set. Because one of the problems is that there's a high switching cost, which means that when you're doing guest messaging, it's kind of difficult, especially if you have a lot of messaging come through, it's very difficult to do something else and then come back to the message because each time that switch takes you like 10, 20 minutes for you to focus on your new task again. So then you can set a time instead. Like, hey, in the morning I'm going to check. In the afternoon I'm going to check on the messaging. I'm going to handle any escalations that have come through unless it's super urgent. And obviously the AI can tell the guests what to do if it is super urgent, like if there's a leak, call this number. Right. During work hours and things like that. And then with the rest of the time, we just think that there should be additional value add that they can bring to the company because the marginal cost of applying AI to one of these properties is very low. And then the human value that can be created should be much greater than AI and doing relatively repetitive guest messaging. [00:46:33] Speaker A: Price is, according to your website, $20 per listing per month. That's across the board. [00:46:43] Speaker B: Yeah, to 100 listings. And then after that it's kind of enterprise level. [00:46:48] Speaker A: Would you say that, what Would you say the average number of homes your clients are bringing to you? Are they property managers? Most of these folks? [00:46:55] Speaker B: Yes, they're mostly property managers. I would say the average. We have a good range. We have folks with one or two all the way to over a thousand. So I would say probably 30. 30 to 50. In that range, [00:47:14] Speaker A: 30 to 250 units is the average. [00:47:17] Speaker B: No, sorry, 32, 50. Yeah, still on the smaller side, but we have lots of users who have a few hundred properties. Yeah. So it works. [00:47:29] Speaker A: I'm intrigued here. I'm going to check this out and I appreciate your story and the hustle. Seems like you really care about what's doing here and I'm impressed. [00:47:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really excited to bring. I know there's a Lot of AI companies out there, but really, really excited to bring really cool technologies. There's so much progress in terms of what's been happening with AI to this industry. So I think that's something overall that is very exciting to me. [00:47:56] Speaker A: Let me ask you that, what's the future? What is the future of this business as far as OTAs and bookings and all that kind of stuff? [00:48:04] Speaker B: I mean I think the future is still going to be oriented around people, right? People human to human relationships. I think that this industry is going to continue short term rentals in general still going to grow and then it's more about how do you utilize really cool technologies to help support your operations or how do you find an advantage I think overall for guest communication side. Unless you plan to make gas communications a competitive advantage and maybe some, some users will, which means that you know, perhaps the margin again the marginal cost of, of answering messages a human is ultimately going to be higher than that with an AI. And if it's turns into a true competitive advantage for a user such as, okay, for every single message I'm going to, for every single guest that comes, I'm going to give them a call and ask them about, you know, crafting a really, really guest, great guest experience. I think there's a group of users who are going to go in that direction and then make that a differentiator. And I think a lot of users might go in the other direction, which is that's not where like communications may not be where I'm going to plan to have my competitive advantage. And so I might just use AI to take care of messaging is going to be a part of my automated workflows. It's very consistent. This is what I can expect. I can get certain reviews that are like that. So I think you're going to see this bifurcation with a vast majority heading towards more automation of guest messages over time. [00:49:32] Speaker A: I'm impressed. Let me ask you a question. One of the most common things that comes up all the time with overnight rentals is because we don't have a front desk in most cases. I can't figure out the tv, I can't get the Roku is on the wrong input or something like that. What's the best way, how do, how do I do that with, with hello Host, you know, what's the best way to automate that? Now I will say that my process right now is to call them. We found that this is the only thing that we feel is worth a phone call because they are agitated They've generally just checked in, they're annoyed because their kids are screaming and they're trying to get bluey going, etc. And messaging, it just tends to make it worse. So our policy right now is to make an actual phone call. I would like to change my policy. What do you do there on your resort? [00:50:22] Speaker B: So just to confirm, this is when they can't get the TV going with their favorite show, right? Like signing into Netflix and all that kind of stuff. [00:50:30] Speaker A: Yes. [00:50:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have a combination. We have a combination of messaging on our resort. One is our AI guest messaging, and the second is actually a text messaging system to. To a person. Again to a person, because we have on site staff, which means they can actually go to the property and per to to the cabin in person and then physically help them set up. And I think this is pretty unique to us, but this is what has worked for the business. So which this is what it looks like. They'll send a message, typically through Airbnb, my Netflix isn't working. And then our team is going to get that message and then literally say, I'm going to be here in like 10 minutes just to make sure that you're settled in right. [00:51:11] Speaker A: But if I don't have the human that can show up, what do I do? Yeah. [00:51:15] Speaker B: Then the AI in most cases for troubleshooting, as long as it's a common troubleshooting issue, the AI can actually help the guests troubleshoot through that. And that's not just on tv. It could be a lockout. Like a guest is at the door, the door code is not working. They're like messaging in what's going on? How do I get in? Very frustrating experience. Lots of our users have backup lockbox. The AI will say, double check. Hey, have you tried again? Try the code again. Double check. It's the correct code. And then if that doesn't work, here is the backup lockbox where it's located. And obviously the host is notified, but it's no longer. I must respond within a 2, 3 minute timeframe. And more of a, hey, I'm going to check in. An hour later, I noticed this happened and it was already resolved. But obviously the AI is not capable of resolving everything that's happening on the property. Such as, as I mentioned earlier, a leak. Right. So there are like maintenance emergencies and things like that that will. No matter what, I think there needs to be a person stepping into. [00:52:18] Speaker A: Is there a particular management software that you see your clients using more than other. So in other words, are. Are more owner as people coming to you are more hopefully people come to you. Or is it across the board? Board? [00:52:30] Speaker B: I think it's across the board. Yeah. Lots of. Yeah, just across. Across the board and people have their preferences over though we don't have a specific recommendation there. [00:52:40] Speaker A: I love it. I love it. And it's. How do I find you? [00:52:45] Speaker B: My email is Annie hello.com website hello host.com and you can book a demo if you're interested in the product. Yeah. So feel free to. Not sure if I'm opening the door to everyone, but feel free to give me a shout. Happy to talk to any host. I think what has really for me in terms of building hello host, the number one most fun thing I've done is just talk to so many hosts about all the problems that they faced and then incorporating that into the product that is just baked into the DNA of the company. [00:53:18] Speaker A: Love it. All right, well, thank you so much for your time and we hope to see you again. [00:53:23] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Luke. [00:53:24] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:53:24] Speaker B: Appreciate.