Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / Hosts Missing This AI Trend Will Fall Behind

Transcript

Hosts Missing This AI Trend Will Fall Behind · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

0:00
Stop optimizing for those really short keywords.
0:03
Start optimizing for answers. Make sure that when you're
0:07
generating content that you're building out your web page,
0:10
you're thinking about what are the types of things that people
0:13
are asking for, not just when they're looking for stay, but
0:17
when they're planning their entire trip.
0:19
Search is changing. Guests aren't just typing into
0:23
Google anymore. They're asking ChatGPT.
0:26
They're using AI trip planners. They're getting full
0:30
recommendations, not lists of links, and when AI gives an
0:34
answer, it usually gives 1-2 or maybe three options, which means
0:39
if your brand isn't sighted, you're invisible.
0:43
Today's guest believes this shift is going to fundamentally
0:45
change how short term rental hosts Dr. Direct bookings.
0:50
Gil Chan is the founder of Crafted Today's, a direct
0:53
booking website builder helping property managers build stronger
0:56
brands so they can reduce OTA dependency.
1:00
Today we're talking about AI. Is it a threat, an opportunity,
1:04
or both? And what do you need to do to
1:07
make sure your brand is getting mentioned?
1:10
This is the House Planet podcast powered by House Fully.
1:19
GAIL, thank you for joining us on the House Planet podcast.
1:22
Is AIA threat or an opportunity to short term rental property
1:28
managers who prioritize direct bookings?
1:32
Yeah. Well, it's going to be, it's
1:34
going to be interesting. I think it's it's both.
1:35
It's a little bit of both. It depends on how you look at
1:38
it, how advanced you are, whether or not you're keeping in
1:41
touch with everything. But I think that the host that
1:44
are actively using AI, and I'm not talking about AI to
1:48
regenerate pictures. I'm talking about really trying
1:51
to figure out how to get in front of the right customers.
1:54
What are they searching for, making sure that they're
1:56
creating the right type of content.
1:58
Those are the ones that will reap the opportunity.
2:02
On the flip side, if you're not on that, you're you're
2:05
regenerating content, you're using it for content duration
2:09
that's more fluffy, more markety.
2:11
Those are the ones that are going to invest pretty heavily
2:15
in AI and then start to fall behind where they didn't learn a
2:17
skill that they need to learn. So it's going to be a little bit
2:20
of both. Interesting.
2:24
We'll get on to the specifics of what you need to do to get cited
2:29
by large language models like Chat GPTA bit later on.
2:34
For now, we'll kind of concentrate on the direct
2:36
booking and and where people are getting their bookings from.
2:40
So how likely is it that AI will reduce dependency on OTAs like
2:47
Airbnb and booking.com? It it would definitely will.
2:50
It depends on kind of where you're where you're thinking.
2:53
I think what you're seeing right now is that there's a new way of
2:57
discovering, a new way of planning for your trip.
3:01
And if you think about a funnel, if you think about the usual
3:03
funnel, the top of funnel is where someone is starting to
3:07
think about their next trip and things to do.
3:10
The areas to visit. Those are the areas where you
3:14
will see a lot more disruption. Right now, the people may not be
3:18
going to Airbnb as a first place.
3:20
Typically before you would go on to YouTube, you were to go on to
3:23
Google and then you'll almost like do it as discrete steps and
3:28
then you'll eventually maybe go on Airbnb and book your stay.
3:32
Now what people are doing is that they're now leveraging
3:35
Chachi PT, for instance, to do discovery.
3:38
And if you can short circuit it and you don't allow them to get
3:42
far enough down the funnel and you're providing the content,
3:46
OTAs don't have access to that guest at that point, you're
3:51
circumventing it and you're bringing them down your funnel
3:53
there. So if you can understand the
3:56
user journey, how that's evolving and it's not static,
4:00
it's going to change with time. But if you can really tune
4:03
yourself and think about what do you do when you plan for a trip
4:07
and put yourself in that perspective and think about how
4:09
do I provide the most value for that guest, you're more likely
4:15
to really reap the benefit. And then also kind of like
4:19
reduce the OTA dependency, you'll be able to kind of draw
4:22
more direct bookings in that way.
4:25
Sorry, that was a long winded answer on that one.
4:27
I thought it was pretty, pretty standard, standard length, to be
4:30
honest. So in terms of I'm looking at
4:33
this from Airbnb's point of view now, they've spoken for years
4:38
that they want to be the place where you basically book
4:41
everything. So maybe in the future, you
4:45
won't just book your accommodation through Airbnb.
4:47
You might book your flight, your taxi, your experiences.
4:51
We've already seen them, you know, try to go, go a decent
4:54
length with experiences. Is there an opportunity here for
4:57
an OTA to try and kind of become that ChatGPT for people who were
5:03
booking trips, so that people naturally go there first rather
5:07
than go somewhere else? Yes, I, there is an opportunity,
5:11
definitely there is an opportunity.
5:12
And I, I don't think that it'll be naive to assume that oh, Air
5:16
BB is, is going to go this path and everybody's going in the
5:19
other way and we shouldn't worry about it.
5:20
But I don't think that's, that's true.
5:22
Airbnb is good at pivoting. They're in the heart of Silicon
5:25
Valley. They're good at iterating
5:26
things. There's a bunch of different
5:28
things that Airbnb has tried and has ditched, but they are going
5:34
to spend a massive amount of money to make sure that they're
5:37
leveraging AI to get in front of the guest and really deliver
5:42
that that really that that experience platform that they've
5:45
always wanted to build. I think the, the real point of
5:51
whether or not it's going to succeed or not is do they have
5:53
enough people that will want to try them out?
5:55
Because if you try them out from a from a product perspective,
5:57
you think about it, they have to convince you to try that
6:01
platform for the first time and you have to have a delightful
6:04
experience. If you have a delightful
6:06
experience, you're more likely to then use that same cycle over
6:10
and over again. But if any point they fail, they
6:13
don't get people to even try it. They they fail at making sure
6:16
that they're delivering on the right experience.
6:18
And people start to go to chat PGPT route or they start to go
6:22
in different areas to build the experience that they want.
6:25
They're going to lose that customer for good.
6:27
So they really have to make sure, everybody has to really
6:30
make sure that every part of the journey they're doing it right
6:33
from the marketing side all the way to the product execution
6:36
side of things. And it's a lot of moving pieces.
6:38
So I would pay real close attention on like where they're
6:42
spending their time, where are they trying, are they getting
6:45
adoption? Are people talking about it?
6:48
Those are the signals of whether or not Airbnb is going to gain
6:52
traction on this. Quick pause before we continue.
6:55
This episode is powered by House Fully, a property management
6:58
platform built for professional hosts and managers who want to
7:01
scale smarter. From automation and multi
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channel distribution to industry leading digital guide books and
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direct booking tools, House Fully helps you build a stronger
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scan the QR code on screen if you're watching on YouTube or
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hit the link in the show notes to book a demo with Frank Bosey,
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a huge friend of the show host Planet.
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7:31
All right, back to it. I want to talk Gil about SEO.
7:35
How do property managers need to rethink SEO in this new age of
7:42
AI and Geo? Yeah, there's so many different
7:46
terms they even internally we haven't like converged on is it
7:50
LMEO or Geo, whatever it is, I think what you're referring to
7:54
is how do you make sure that when people are searching on
7:58
check TPT, that your property, your content is showing up
8:02
there. And I think the one thing to
8:04
realize is that all of the LMS are using search engines
8:09
backbone at the very core of it. So those things that property
8:14
managers have been investing into for the last decade, decade
8:18
and 1/2 are still very, very relevant.
8:21
If you do not appear in Google search, you are very unlikely to
8:26
appear and then in any LLM search as well too.
8:30
So I want to like give a little bit comfort to those that have
8:33
been investing in SEO for for so long.
8:36
The one difference is that when you're searching on ChatGPT
8:41
versus what you're searching on Google, the type of what they
8:44
call queries, the questions that are asking are different.
8:48
Very likely when you search on Google, you probably don't put
8:50
more than 3 words in that Omni box there.
8:53
You don't, you don't, you don't put more than 3 words.
8:56
However, when you're having a lengthy conversation and chat
8:59
GPS like oh, I need to go outside and do a web search,
9:03
they're not using three question, three word queries or
9:06
searches. They're often 7 words or longer.
9:10
They're what they call long tail keywords.
9:12
So the folks that have been really emphasizing long tail
9:15
keywords are the ones that are going to really reap the benefit
9:19
for this new wave of LLM search there.
9:22
So All in all, stop optimizing for those really short keywords.
9:28
Start optimizing for answers. Make sure that when you're
9:32
generating content that you're building out your web page,
9:36
you're thinking about what are the types of things that people
9:39
are asking for, not just when they're looking for stay, but
9:44
when they're planning their entire trip.
9:46
If you can capture that in mind, you'll do phenomenally well as
9:50
the industry shifts and as we see more and more adoption of LM
9:55
search. Should the content on your
9:58
website, whether it's your blog post, your about page, all the
10:02
rest of your pages, should they have a lot of questions and
10:05
answers on? Yes, but you have to be
10:08
strategic on like how you want to do it there.
10:12
For us, FAQs are a great way to provide short question and
10:17
answers. But if you're thinking about
10:19
FAQs, you're usually doing that when you're looking for a very
10:22
specific answer for a very specific question.
10:25
But if you're doing a lot more discovery open-ended stuff, long
10:28
form content is much better. So you're when you're thinking
10:31
about all the great things to do in the Smoky Mountains for a
10:35
family of four, that's a blog article where you can put a lot
10:41
of what they what we call listicles.
10:43
It's a great way for you to generate content that is
10:46
structured in a way that LMS like to see it.
10:48
So those are some of the tactics that you can kind of use to
10:52
answer question. But All in all, just think about
10:54
what is the depth of the answer that someone was looking for and
10:57
how do you make sure that you're providing it better than anyone
11:00
else, better than anyone else? You really quality is so
11:04
important. I think a lot of folks think
11:06
about quantity, quantity, quantity.
11:08
It's so easy to generate content with AI, but again, put yourself
11:13
in front of the guests, put yourself in their shoes.
11:16
Think about they're planning a trip to your destination.
11:19
What are they looking for? And how do I make sure that my
11:22
website is structuring a way to answer those types of things?
11:28
But you say that people can create a lot of content using
11:32
these AI large language models now.
11:35
And about maybe a year ago, something like that, people were
11:38
saying a lot of the advice was around, yes, you can use ChatGPT
11:42
to create a blog, but that's not necessarily going to get you
11:47
LLMS citing you because they know that it's been created by
11:51
AI. So if you are using AI to create
11:55
blogs, do you still need to edit it or can you go backwards and
11:59
forwards with the AILLMS and say, look, create this in a way
12:03
so it is going to get crawled and crawled and sighted?
12:07
Where do you stand out? Do we still have to have that
12:10
human input where we're editing things to make sure that it
12:13
still seems natural? You definitely should.
12:17
You definitely should. And this goes with any business
12:19
there. When you're when you're showing
12:21
up, you want to make sure that you're showing authentically.
12:24
And one way to do that is like, OK, if you're using LMS to
12:27
generate blog content, read it over and make sure that it feels
12:31
authentic to you. Because what you're trying to do
12:35
is you're trying to one appear in the search query.
12:39
Someone is eventually going to go to ChatGPT, land on your
12:43
page, and then they're going to read that article and that
12:48
article. If you need to make sure that
12:50
they stay on the page, that they're what they call dwelling
12:53
on the page there. If someone reads your blog and
12:56
feels like, oh, this is AI generate, I'm going to bounce.
12:59
Google is not going to continue to send traffic to you.
13:03
So at the very end of the day, that feedback cycle is important
13:07
to give Chachi, BT, Google, Bing signal that this person is
13:12
providing valuable content That I think is the core of it.
13:16
There's debate on whether or not Google filters out AI content
13:20
and pulls that out and devalues it there.
13:23
But All in all, if you're generating any type of content,
13:27
spend the extra time and effort to massage it, to make it feel
13:31
authentic to you, to put your brand voice in there.
13:34
And yes, you can do that very early on with system like with
13:37
prompts and say, this is my ideal guest avatar.
13:40
This is how I speak and give it a lot of content.
13:42
You should do that stuff, but make sure that you're reading it
13:44
through. And again, picture yourself as a
13:47
guest. Would you appreciate the content
13:49
here? So this episode will go on
13:52
YouTube, it'll go on Apple and Spotify.
13:56
We'll put a blog, we'll mention it on social media.
14:00
My next question really revolves around how important it is,
14:04
especially if you're a property management business and you want
14:07
to get cited by these large language models.
14:10
How important is it to be on different channels like YouTube,
14:14
like maybe the Chamber of Commerce, like educational
14:18
platforms like Host Planet, for example?
14:20
How important is it to have quite a a big footprint if you
14:24
want to get cited? Yeah, that's a really good
14:27
question. I think that's kind of goes back
14:28
to down like one of the previous questions we talked about of
14:30
like fundamentals again, LLM and search engine optimization for
14:36
LLMS is rooted on SEO, the traditional SEO there.
14:40
So if you think about it, Google, they still do this today
14:44
for all of their websites. Your page has some authority
14:48
score. Google knows how reputable it is
14:52
and the way that it signals this is, are people sending traffic?
14:56
Are they linking to your website from their website?
14:59
So if you have your Google business review, if you're on
15:02
YouTube, your Instagram, your Facebook page, all of those
15:06
Chamber of Commerce, any of the marketing like destination
15:11
marketing organizations, those types of things, when they're
15:15
linking back to you, you're telling Google, I'm not just
15:18
this new business that just appeared out of nowhere.
15:21
I have reputation. I have other sites that have
15:25
reputation that is linking back to me.
15:27
So those things are really, really important.
15:32
We've heard for many years that content is king.
15:36
Is it even higher than King these days?
15:41
Yes, I, I would think about as that.
15:43
Now, if you think about inventory, we often think about
15:47
properties being our inventory in the new wave of AI and how
15:52
people are searching for things, your content is now your new
15:56
inventory. So the better the content that
15:59
you have, the more likely that you're able to draw people in
16:02
there. So that's the way to think about
16:05
your content is like your content is your product there.
16:07
This is the thing that you should be feeding into it.
16:10
And you're trying to gain that trust.
16:12
You're trying to gain that that volume of traffic onto your
16:16
website because search, that traffic that's coming from
16:23
Chachi BT is 9 times more likely to convert than a Google
16:29
searches. So if you're able to get in
16:33
front of the right folks, you're providing valuable content
16:37
they're clicking through on your website.
16:39
That is one of your warmest leads.
16:42
You've gained a lot of trust with them.
16:45
You are providing content that is valuable.
16:48
The next logical step is, oh, I now know where to go.
16:52
I know how to take care of my kids.
16:55
I know all the tips and tricks. I'm going to look for my stay.
16:59
Where are they already at? If they're already on your
17:02
website, you are in a very, very good place.
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18:24
We know that ChatGPT is thinking a lot about advertising on the
18:29
platform and is testing it out and seeing how it's going to
18:32
work. How is that going to change the
18:35
game that? One's hard, I think it's too
18:40
early to tell, but I think that one thing that we'll see is that
18:45
just like how you can buy ads on Google, you can buy now ads on
18:49
ChatGPT. And if you play that well, if
18:52
you know how to run ads effectively and you therefore
18:56
you extend your reach and you start to run ChatGPT ads really,
19:00
really well, you could really benefit and gain or find that
19:03
put yourself in front of that customer there.
19:05
But I don't know if you saw the recent meme of ads feeling like
19:10
a little bit too inserted. There's a Super Bowl ad from
19:14
Claude that Claude was bashing on ChatGPT where someone's
19:18
searching for something and now they're getting fed an ad there,
19:20
which feels very unnatural. I think the the more effective
19:26
way, kind of like how traditional searches really make
19:30
sure that you're providing content, valuable content to
19:33
your customers, and the organic will go much further than the
19:37
advertising side. The advertising is great if
19:39
you're looking for short little bumps, if you're trying to fill
19:42
a weekend gap and you're trying to fill a certain things.
19:45
Ads are really good at getting fun of someone right when you
19:48
need them to. But I don't think that it's the,
19:51
the be all and end all and who knows where, where it'll take
19:53
us. There are other LMS like Claude
19:57
that is against ads. They're really, really against
20:01
ads because they're thinking about how do I, how do I provide
20:04
the best value in the most authentic way?
20:07
How do I make sure that we're providing what people are
20:11
looking for and not just inserting a company in front of
20:13
them. So.
20:14
There's, there's different ways that even I think within the AI
20:17
industry that they're they're thinking about.
20:20
I mean, once a model kind of gets to know you, if you have a
20:23
lot of conversations with it and perhaps there's an advertiser
20:27
that would suit what you've been asking about.
20:29
Do you think we'll get to the stage where you might get an
20:32
alert from ChatGPT saying, hey, you were asking me last week
20:35
about flights to Manila, here's some great deals.
20:39
Yes, absolutely. I I think you're, you're hitting
20:42
on something that's that's really important is that large
20:44
language models knows you better than even traditional Google
20:48
search and Google search. It uses a lot of other data
20:52
points. It knows what websites you visit
20:55
there, but it doesn't really know the intent and what you're
20:59
trying to solve there. And with these large language
21:02
models, Chachi PT clawed perplexity.
21:05
It knows exactly the problem that you're trying to solve.
21:08
You're telling it what you want to do.
21:10
And it's very plausible that if you are someone that's trying to
21:13
get in front of that customer, you can serve ads.
21:16
But again, like I mentioned, if you're investing in getting in
21:20
front of the customer, providing value and answering those
21:23
questions, you can get almost free traffic if you do it right.
21:31
And it's something that you have to nurture over time.
21:32
It's not going to happen right away.
21:35
I remember when I was setting up this platform and I've mentioned
21:37
this a few times on podcasts, but there was a marketing line
21:41
that I read in a book and it said make it free and make it so
21:46
good that people can't believe it's free.
21:49
And that's how you build an audience.
21:51
That's how you build an ecosystem.
21:54
And it's a very similar mindset now in in this new AI world that
21:58
we're living in. If you create quality and value
22:02
that's useful to people, you will they'll reap the rewards.
22:07
Yeah. And I think that that's that for
22:08
me that that applies not just in the kind of the marketing
22:12
tactics, but as an entrepreneur, if you think about the world as
22:16
one that you can serve others and and I think a lot of hosts,
22:21
that's our mentality. We are there to serve our guests
22:24
there. And if you don't ever take off
22:27
that hat, you're always thinking about how do I serve that
22:29
customer? How do I deliver the best value?
22:32
That goes a long way both on your marketing, on your
22:34
business. But I, I I truly think that that
22:37
is a characteristic to live by. It's the way to do it, people.
22:43
Let's talk about direct booking websites then.
22:44
Obviously this is right in your wheelhouse.
22:48
What does an AI ready direct booking website actually look
22:54
like? Yeah.
22:55
This one's changing so, so fast. Since September of 2025, so it's
23:03
probably 5-6 months, we have made 150 changes on our
23:09
platform, 150 releases. About 30% of those releases were
23:15
SEO and LMEO related. We're constantly thinking about
23:20
what does the search engines look for and how do we make sure
23:25
that we're providing it what they need in the way that they
23:28
wanted so that our customers, properties and sites show up in
23:34
search there. And one of the biggest things
23:36
that we've learned, or there's actually many different tactics,
23:40
but one, make sure that you're found in the 1st place on
23:45
traditional SEO. So, and there's mainly 2, you
23:49
want to open Google search and you want to show up in Bing.
23:53
For so long, people have ignored Bing.
23:56
Bing has always been this like secondary, almost like not used
24:01
search engine. Maybe only the hardcore
24:04
Microsoft fans would use Bing as a search.
24:07
But ChatGPT is funded by Microsoft, they are one of the
24:13
same. And ChatGPT doesn't use Google
24:18
as their primary search engine, they use Bing.
24:21
So if you are not registered with Bing Webmaster Tools, you
24:27
are not going to get shown in Chachi BT.
24:30
So I think the one important thing is make sure you're you're
24:33
registered with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster
24:37
Tools. Those are the two critical
24:39
things. Because if you don't get that
24:40
right, all of the other things that you invest in doesn't
24:43
matter. Outside of that, there's a lot
24:46
of things that you need to prepare your website for so that
24:50
when Google, when Bing serves your page to these large
24:54
language models, that they can grab all the content that they
24:58
need in the right way. Large language models don't read
25:02
the page as a human would read it.
25:05
When you go to a page, you see the search bar, you see titles,
25:09
you see all the pretty pictures. That is not how a search engine
25:13
wants to read your page. Definitely not how large
25:16
language model reads your page. They read it as the structure
25:20
data that is not shown to the user.
25:24
So on our side, we have made significant amount of changes to
25:27
make sure that one, we're understanding what the
25:30
specifications are and two, that we're adhering to the
25:33
specifications. For instance, when you're on a
25:36
property page, you'll have a hero, a gallery with a bunch of
25:40
different images. You'll have how many bedrooms of
25:42
the count, maybe the city that it's in and all the amenities on
25:48
the bottom with a bunch of check marks on which which amenities
25:52
it has. That's great for me and you to
25:55
be able to kind of like digest and get inspired by all the
25:58
pretty pictures. But a large language models once
26:01
that nested in a very structure format, they want all the
26:05
amenities listed out under the amenities.
26:08
So if you ever take a look at any of our, our web pages,
26:12
you'll see behind the scenes, we structured the data really,
26:16
really well. And we've tested over and over
26:19
and over again. And we're constantly testing it.
26:22
And we'll remove things, we'll add things and we'll really try
26:25
to figure out what are the types of things that these search
26:28
engines or these large language models are looking for.
26:31
And we're making those changes and we're testing.
26:32
And then we're, and the nice thing is that because we build
26:35
it as a platform, we get to make that change across the board for
26:39
everybody all at once. We're not having to install plug
26:42
insurance. We have analytic scripts that
26:44
helps us understand, OK, do we make a change that positively
26:47
impacted 1 customer or the whole entire group?
26:50
What is someone doing that we can start to really like make it
26:54
a platform wide feature. So the way that we've
26:57
architected really helped us ramp up on how fast things are
27:03
changing. Fascinating.
27:06
How can AI improve conversion on direct booking websites?
27:14
Back to what we're saying earlier, search engines or LLM
27:20
traffic is converting 9 times more likely.
27:24
So the way that you would think about your direct booking
27:26
website is less on really, yes, you want to have your properties
27:31
on there. But I think it's more important
27:33
nowadays to have content that drain people in.
27:36
And now they're coming in middle of funnel.
27:40
And so when they land on the website, they're really
27:42
intentful. They're, they're looking for
27:44
those types of things and you're trying to push them to your
27:47
property page. So when you're writing your blog
27:49
articles, include your properties in there and you're
27:51
trying to kind of drive them through.
27:54
And if you can get that right and iterate and test different
27:57
things, you're more likely to convert much higher than someone
28:03
that found you on Google search. What role will AI agenda play in
28:11
trip planning? I mean, we've, we've focused on
28:14
this quite a bit, haven't we? But I mean, it seems that this
28:18
is the way everybody's going now.
28:19
And I mean, even anecdotally, really, you speak to people and
28:24
even people you might not expect to be using ChatGPT that much.
28:28
They're like, Oh yeah, I start on ChatGPT now and I, I ask them
28:32
exactly what I need. Family of four with a dog I want
28:35
to see view. Yeah.
28:37
So we've done a lot of changes and I, I agree with you that
28:44
large language models, these, these LMS are changing the way
28:49
that you plan for trips. You're not searching broadly
28:52
anymore. You're almost, and I, I tried
28:55
this myself recently. I'm, I'm planning a trip to
28:57
Japan in, in less than a less than a month.
28:59
And I use LMS to do our entire search.
29:04
I wish I could fly into where do I, which areas to stay with a
29:08
family of four, with two young kids.
29:11
I'm being very, very specific on the things that I'm I need and,
29:15
and want. And then I go into all the
29:18
different. And right now it's still
29:19
fragmented. There's still not a good
29:22
coupling between these large language models and searching
29:25
for the right stay. They still haven't figured it
29:28
out yet. So that's ever evolving there.
29:30
So I'm still going on the different OTAs, the different
29:35
direct booking websites and trying to figure out like what
29:37
is the right spot. So I think that there is a big,
29:39
big opportunity there. But I, I think one thing to, to
29:45
keep in mind is that when you're, when you're providing
29:49
content there for, for folks visiting your website, you one,
29:52
you want to make sure that it's a value there.
29:55
But one of the things that we've invested is when someone's
29:58
already familiar with your brand and they're planning the trip,
30:02
how do we make it easier for someone to discover the right
30:07
property there? So you have an intent full
30:10
guest, for instance, they're looking for a stay.
30:13
Maybe they started the search on Chachi PT and they found you
30:16
eventually on your website. How do you make sure that they
30:18
have they find the right property at the very end of the
30:21
day? And so we're doing a lot of
30:24
testing, a lot of learnings on OK, we got some on middle
30:28
funnel. How do we build the right
30:29
booking experience there? So as of last November, we filed
30:33
the patent and we actually brought in AI search on to the
30:39
page. So instead of someone going to
30:43
HEBT and trying to find the right stay for their specific
30:48
group and their specific intent, we've actually now brought that
30:53
on to the web page. Because if you've already got
30:55
them on to your home page and they're there and they're now
30:57
looking across, maybe you have 20 properties, maybe you have
31:00
60, maybe you have 130 properties.
31:03
How do you make sure that they're finding the right ones?
31:06
And that's a challenge. And it's always been a
31:09
challenge. And quite honestly, a lot of
31:12
people have been doing it the way they've been doing it
31:14
because that's how it is like on Airbnb, you put in what market
31:17
you want to go to, what dates you want to travel to and how
31:20
many people are there. And Airbnb through their
31:23
algorithm will try to find the right property that meet stack
31:25
criteria. Maybe they they know what you
31:27
clicked on previously, but with large language models, you have
31:31
this new capability of understanding intent.
31:34
So what we've done on our direct booking websites, and we're
31:36
rolling this out for some of our largest customers right now,
31:40
rather than having that search bar, we're having that same chat
31:42
experience on your home page. So you can say I'm going to take
31:47
a trip with our two young kids and their grandparents.
31:51
We want to be close to the mountains.
31:53
Our kids are five and seven. We need something that's ADA
31:56
accessible. You have such meaningful
32:00
information to help them find the right properties.
32:03
You're not going to have to have them check a bunch of check
32:06
boxes because they might not know what they're looking for.
32:09
And So what we've done and is we've taken that and we're now
32:13
able to go through 120 properties all at once and try
32:19
to figure out which are the right properties to serve and
32:22
then prioritize them so that when they're looking at it
32:25
either in a list or in a grid or on a map, that they're seeing it
32:28
with the highest priorities, the property that fits in the best
32:31
very up top. And what you're trying to do is
32:33
trying to get them to convert. So we filed a patent for this in
32:38
November and we're rolling this out.
32:40
And the one thing I'm super excited about is when you know
32:45
what their intent is, you can market your property
32:48
differently. So what we've done is rather
32:50
than showing the normal 500 character short description,
32:55
we're changing the short description based on what they
32:58
search for. So we may say 4 bedroom cabin
33:04
right next to the Great Smoky Mountains ADA accessible one
33:08
floor property. You can then give that guest
33:12
confidence that this property needs them the best.
33:15
So on the back end, we're doing a bunch of analysis.
33:18
We scrape through all the property information and we're
33:20
trying to then understand with each property what are their
33:24
sweet spots, What are they really good at?
33:27
And so we're ranking them in the back end so that when someone's
33:30
searching for it, we're trying to align the two and then
33:33
changing the guest experience. So when they do land on the
33:36
property, the recommendations that show up, the descriptions,
33:40
eventually maybe even the picture order may change.
33:43
So that's what we're thinking about as like the new age and
33:46
how AI could change the way that you show up for the guest when
33:52
they rate a book. Looks amazing.
33:55
And yeah, a brilliant way of thinking about it.
33:57
And as you were talking there, I was thinking it feels like with
34:00
ChatGPT and AI, you might actually get to the property
34:05
which is actually the best fit for what you need.
34:09
Whereas perhaps with Airbnb at the moment, they're showing you
34:13
the property that you're most likely to book, as opposed to
34:17
the one which might actually be best for you.
34:20
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right.
34:23
And we think about as like as hosts, we're here to make sure
34:27
that when people are travelling, they have the best day.
34:30
So always keep that in mind. And as we're building
34:32
technology, that's what we keep in mind.
34:35
And if you can do that really well, you'll convert higher, you
34:37
have more repeat guest, they'll talk about you to others.
34:42
Like that is to me the ideal booking experience.
34:46
And if you can capture that guest once and they had that
34:49
great experience, you're providing right recommendation.
34:51
This is actually what I'm really excited about.
34:53
Say you know someone is putting in there.
34:55
We're trying to take a couples retreat and we're trying to be
35:00
by the lake and they're on your website and they're giving you
35:03
all this information and they tell you it's their anniversary.
35:06
We're now then going to store that into the booking details so
35:10
that when your PMS is recording that booking, you can now pass
35:14
those booking details back to your team.
35:17
And if imagine that, you know, it's anniversary, you do
35:20
something special, you put out a bottle of champagne, you put a
35:22
chocolate there. Maybe you sprinkle like flower
35:25
rose petals on the bed. That is really intentful.
35:30
Like that is really meaningful. If a host took care of me like
35:34
that and I didn't tell him I didn't ask for that, the next
35:39
time I'm I'm looking, I'm going to look for that for that same
35:41
experience there. Imagine I'm celebrating
35:44
something different. I'm celebrating my honeymoon
35:45
next time. I'm celebrating our baby moon,
35:48
our first trip with the family. If that guest, if that host took
35:52
care of me and they're in the destinations that I want to go
35:54
to, I want to be served that way.
35:58
Yeah, it feels like, feels like the world's getting a lot
36:00
smarter. You know, you can remember it
36:01
wasn't that long ago when kind of Google takes over the world.
36:05
And I can, I can actually remember somebody saying to me,
36:09
Oh yeah, Google's great and, and stuff, you know, I can find what
36:12
I need, but I want to actually ask a question and get an
36:15
answer. And now we're here, we're there.
36:18
It's it's already happened. It didn't take that long.
36:23
What mistakes are STR brands making with AI right now?
36:29
Are you obviously, you know the STR space really well.
36:34
What do you kind of cringe about?
36:37
There's there's a wide range of spectrum that I think there's
36:41
one of the folks that haven't touched AI, they haven't used
36:44
it. They don't use on a daily basis
36:47
and that's quite honestly quite a few quite a quite a big bunch
36:50
here, like a lot of us that are in tune with AI we're starting
36:54
to benefit from and we talked about and how great it is, but
36:56
there's still a big majority of folks that are lagging behind on
37:02
that. So like, and I know hosts are
37:05
like that and it's not necessarily because they're,
37:08
they're allergic to it, they're just, they're just not
37:10
comfortable with the technology. They haven't tried it, they
37:12
haven't got hooked yet on those things.
37:14
So like, one thing is I would encourage folks, if you're not
37:17
using AI in any meaningful way, start to use it.
37:20
Don't use it as a glorified Google search.
37:22
Like that is one way to to use AI.
37:25
But if you're using AI to meet your business objectives, those
37:29
are the ones that are going to benefit from it.
37:31
And so like that's like one group.
37:33
Then there's another group of folks that are using AI to
37:36
generate content. And I think the one mistake is
37:39
that when you turn through quantity of content without
37:44
really understanding what people are doing and how you can
37:47
provide value to it, then you start to really dilute your
37:50
brand there. And so like my encouragement and
37:53
like my, my cringe moment is like really make sure that when
37:57
you're using AI and you're and you're using AI to show up to
38:00
your guest or whoever you're trying to convert, make sure
38:05
that you're providing value to them.
38:07
Make sure that you're being authentic, that your brand is
38:09
coming through there. So like that is like the one
38:13
area. And I think like the more
38:14
advanced folks I'm really excited working with a lot of
38:17
these big marketing teams are thinking about AI and thinking
38:20
about the new wave search. That's like the group of folks
38:23
that I love doing these beta tests with.
38:27
We're trying out different things out there and who knows
38:31
what will stake, but those innovators, those people are
38:36
thinking about what is the right hospitality experience, I think
38:40
those will go so far. They'll fail fast, extremely
38:44
fast, but they'll grow also really fast too.
38:47
Yeah. I mean, you were saying what is
38:49
it, 150 changes that you've made since September?
38:52
Where on earth are we going to be at the end of 2026 and into
38:55
2027? Speaking of Fast forward, what
39:00
does direct booking look like in, let's say, three years?
39:03
I would usually ask these questions and say five years or
39:05
10 years, but three years seems long enough in this crazy fast
39:10
AI world. I think the vision that I
39:13
assured where hosts can really show up in authentic ways while
39:18
leveraging AI is where we're going towards and we're not
39:22
there. And I think that we're just in
39:24
the very start of it. But I do imagine a world where
39:28
you have a relationship with the guest and it's a very personal
39:33
relationship. You can understand their intense
39:36
with every single travel. You're able to anticipate what
39:38
they need. We have systems in place to make
39:41
sure that we can deliver this experience at scale.
39:45
I think 2-3 years, that's when we'll start to see that become a
39:49
bit more mainstream. Over the next 18 months, it's
39:52
really going to be a lot of trial and error and trying to
39:54
figure out what technologies don't exist.
39:56
Because if you imagine being able to provide a very curated
40:01
experience because you know why they're visiting, there's still
40:05
a lot of technology that needs to be there to fulfill upon that
40:11
magical experience. How do you make sure that your,
40:14
your, your cleaning crew knows exactly what to do?
40:17
How do you make sure you manage all that?
40:19
Like PMSS are going to have to change to feed in all that
40:22
information and pass that over to whatever tools may be
40:25
available outside. Think about the marketing
40:27
experience, the way that you send out emails and what people
40:31
get. If you know what they did last,
40:33
how they left your review and you're using that in your e-mail
40:36
marketing copy, that's going to be a very magical experience.
40:40
I see this a lot in SAS companies already, because SAS
40:44
companies are very, very forward thinking.
40:46
There's tools like Clay that helps you understand each
40:49
individual user and what are they doing on social media?
40:54
Where are they talking about? So when you're doing outbound
40:56
reach, it's feels very personalized.
40:59
That's the power of AI. And I think that that is going
41:01
to find its way to hospitality in many different ways.
41:04
But All in all, I think what's not going to change is that
41:10
property managers are always the successful ones, are always
41:13
going to look for ways to serve their customers the best, and
41:16
the technology will follow that vision.
41:21
It's all going to boil down to hospitality as usual and it's
41:26
it's not quite solving all our cleaning issues yet.
41:30
But yeah, we're not quite there yet.
41:34
Gil, before you go, then just give us the lowdown on crafted
41:37
stays and where people can find more information about you.
41:41
Yeah, Crafted Stays is a direct booking platform.
41:43
We try to make it easy for you to build really beautiful, but
41:47
probably more importantly, high converting websites.
41:50
You can get your website built in 1520 minutes.
41:55
But definitely like we talked about on the show, we're
41:58
spending a lot of time thinking about not just how we saw direct
42:02
booking websites in the past, but what the future of booking
42:05
experience looks like and how do we support this new vision, how
42:10
to deliver the right hospitality experience.
42:12
So I'm really excited to really be a pioneer in this space.
42:17
And the good thing is that since we build it as a platform, we
42:21
try different things. We learn about how tech TPT
42:23
once, once their data, we can roll that change out to
42:27
hundreds, thousands of people or property managers all at once.
42:32
And that's why we're able to make 150 changes so quickly in
42:37
the last six months. So we're rapidly evolving.
42:41
Exciting times, Gil, it's been a real pleasure.
42:44
Thank you for sharing your wisdom on the Host Planet
42:46
podcast. It was a pleasure to be here.
42:48
All right over to you. If you ask ChatGPT right now,
42:52
best vacation rentals in your city, would your brand show up?
42:57
Drop a comment below and tell us, are you building for AI
43:01
discovery or are you still relying on traditional SEO and
43:05
OTA traffic? Let's start the conversation.
43:08
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