Latest / Hospitable Hosts / 10-Year Anniversary - Hospitable Town Hall, October 28, 2026

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10-Year Anniversary - Hospitable Town Hall, October 28, 2026 · Hospitable Hosts

• speaker-0: Okay, hello everyone and welcome to today's town hall. I'm Miles here from Hospitals Marketing Team and I'm excited to welcome you to today's Town Hall where we're kicking off our 10th anniversary celebrations and sharing some important industry and product updates. I'm gonna briefly bring up our disclaimer before I pass to our CEO and founder, PC. speaker-2: Thank you. Thank you, Miles, and thank you for the the big news, not the one that you want to talk about, but nonetheless the one that is important to us. Hospitable is turning ten this week. So that's something pretty meaningful for us to be celebrating. And so as Miles alluded to, this is gonna start a cycle of celebrations internally, but also have well shared with you. because for many of you, you've been following us on our journey for quite some time. There aren't many companies in the industries, if you want to move to the next slide, that have grown every year for 10 years. It seems still crazy to me. I need to knock on wood to realize the journey that we've done together with you. We've gone from crisis to crisis, obviously included. And we also have been gaining quite a lot of experience or scar tissue into how to respond to those particular crises. Now We decided to do something special to celebrate that 10-year anniversary with you. We decided that to tell the story in a documentary. So in the past few weeks, several members of a team and industry leaders have been sharing their take on Smart BNB than Hospitable. It's a bit more Netflix style, a bit of a drive to survive inspiration, I believe. but you will get to learn about the company, about the product you use every day. how we tackled those crises and believe me it's been pretty challenging. and also get a bit of a a sneak peek into how we run things inside the company and it a bit of a view onto our culture. it's coming out soon. Gabi Ocreatively is very busy providing a ton of feedback on the on the first fresh. We are not exactly a documentary company, but we felt it was in so important. But we will be celebrating this all year long because we've got We're gonna make it we're gonna make it count. so we won't take over today about it. but we're gonna start by a bit of a confession. The reality is that it's been a little bit more than 10 years already, because the official launch of Smart BNB was the beginning of August. What we're celebrating on October 31st is actually the incorporation. I'm a lawyer in background, so we'll see this is very interesting to me. but it's also is interesting. October thirty first means basically around Halloween, we get to play dress up, we got to wear costumes, and we got to play about monsters. Now let's not talk about those monsters. What's on the agenda today? We'll be celebrating in time later. Let's talk about this industry. we're gonna talk first about verbal and the commission change. this is gonna start tomorrow, and we've released the migration assistant to help you navigate that meaningful commission change. We're gonna talk a bit about the new house rules. Andrew has been starting a conversation with the Airbnb team that we're gonna follow. As well, but has some news about it that you have not heard anywhere else. And we'll also, as usual, share some product updates on the task app and yeah, a few updates on our community and some QA, hopefully later. start with Verbo. So about 30 days ago, Verbo has been notifying you as host that it was increasing its fee. And so starting from October 29th. And there's gonna be a new commission rollout at twelve percent for every new booking, whether they are API connected or not. we've been promising you a migration tool. It's now live, and Andrew and his team have been providing that update. So Andrew is gonna run you through our migration assistant assistant. Hey Andrew. Well just just a bit of a quick note, because you have a fantastic background, right? Are speaker-0: Well speaker-2: you? speaker-1: Yeah, this is a bit confusing. I'm gonna be talking about Virbo, but I'm actually talking from Booking.com headquarters in Amsterdam. I am here. they're actually celebrating a 30th anniversary this year. I think booking.com basically started on a fax machine. the internet was pretty basic back then when they started. but we're here for Travel Tech and advocating for you all and what's important for you to work better on booking.com. but yeah, I'm gonna talk about verbo first. So just to review quickly the the timeline of things, what's happening as we're reaching one of those deadlines. So on September 29th, this was communicated that everyone basically is moving to a 12% commission before software connected hosts were paying 5%, and hosts that were not software connected were paying 8%. so that's now changing. Everyone's going to 12. There are some regional differences. So host on verbo, our verbo partner connection. You are software connected in Europe, Australia, New Zealand. You will not have your commissions changed. So starting from not quite tomorrow, where we've actually been working on refining this timeline on your behalf ever since it was announced. at first it was a two-week window. Starting from October 29th, prices would change. We've been advocating that that's really hard for you to protect your revenue in a two-week period, not knowing when it's going to happen. so we've been narrowing that down. It's looking more like October 30th to maximum November 1st. and we're coordinating with the team to make sure that our updates to all of your listings happen in batches and we can be prepared and raised and increase your your markup rates to match the new commissions as close to humanly possible with that schedule. So that's been an ongoing conversation that we've we've had with Ferbo. but you should start seeing commissions change somewhere in that timeline, October 30th to November 1st. So we'll update you if we get any further precision from that. but many of you would have seen an email from us this week. we shared a link there into the migration assistant. We also are showing this on your new hospitable dashboard in the needs attention section. that's where you'll find that link too after you click through and you you make any edits or you review all your changes. you'll be able to find that link again until the commissions change. there is a deadline on this. You can make edits. up until the basically the end of today on Pacific time. So at midnight tonight on Pacific time in the US, we will be closing edits. We need to lock down your changes and and make sure that that that migration to the new commissions happens without any you know overwrites of data that you where you're not certain that that's gonna happen. So up until that point you can make edits tonight. After that it's gonna be read only and then once the commission change is over, you can again take back freedom to edit your markup rates as you choose in the product where you can today. Okay. So what does that look like? Just to run you through, if you haven't been through it yet, I think close to 25% of our users have already been through this and and made changes if you need to. Sometimes you just need to review and be and be confident. There are a couple things you can do from the first screen we'll basically explain what's happening again. There are links here to a very detailed help article if you want to dig in more. There are links to our terms and conditions if you want those kind of details about what we're doing on your behalf. And you have the ability on this first screen to say, no thanks. I will manage my own markup rates. Please don't change them on my behalf. Our plan, if you don't do anything, is to change your markup rates on your behalf, whatever you have today, we know what the delta is, the change from today's commission to the new commission rates. And we will change the proportionate amount on your behalf, unless you tell us otherwise, this is your opportunity to opt out or to change. In a different way. So if you go on to that first the second screen, then we're just gonna show you what is basically your your default markup rate across your listing. Some of you have dis different listing markup rates. So we show you what your basically your default rate is to help you understand the concept, what's changing, compare it before and after, and you can change the recommended default rate on this screen. when we move forward, then we ask if you want the supply to your feeds. Now this is only for hosts whose fees we can control. So if we are your source of truth on your listing fees, that means you are on the verbal partner connection. We offer you the ability to opt in. This is not an opt out. You need to opt in to say, hey, I recognize that a now a 12% commission on my say $250 cleaning fee is $30 missing. You can take this opportunity and say, I need to actually increase my cleaning fee, for example, or any other fee by that same rate. We'll do that on your behalf if you'd like us to, you can opt in for that. If you're on the legacy connection, we don't manage your fees. You need to do that on verbo. But you should understand what's happening and that commissions do apply to fees. Last screen then is if you want to review them at a listing level, if you do have different for whatever reasons, have different market rates for different listings, you can do that. You can also opt out of a listing level on the screen. This is basically your review and confirm. You can open up any row here, expand any row and see a detailed example before and after. you can dig in if you don't want to. This is just a review and confirm screen. You hit okay. After that, yeah, like I said, we're gonna lock your your rates until end of night tonight. And then we'll make those changes as close to humanly possible to the commission changing on verbos so we protect your revenue. And that's how that's gonna happen. Pierre, you wanna come back on on stage? speaker-2: Yes, thank you very much for those this run through the migration assistant. Obviously you all know that basically starting from tomorrow, the twenty-ninth, and in the some some period that follows, Verbo will be coming will become the second platform to pass most of the cost of running the marketplace to the host. And we gotta be clear and transparent on behalf of them. And this is obviously seen as a protective measure for booking platforms. When a guest sees one bundled price for their stay, they don't see what the platform is costing them, so they have less reason to look around for a cheaper option, like of course booking direct. Now, we've also heard this week about other measures driven by security, by privacy, by improving the guest experience, as much. As protecting platform from disintermediation. That's really going to be a word we're going to keep on talking about in the next few weeks and months. So we've been starting a conversation with Airbnb about those changes. And Andrew has a few important updates for everyone, including the date of enforcement for host connected to a property management software. Andrew? speaker-1: Go ahead. Okay. So yeah, just covering the basics here, October twentieth. Airbnb announced some policy changes to house rules, contracts, guest information. unless you somehow stayed offline for the last eight days, you've probably heard about this and you probably have had some feelings. November twentieth is the date that it applies to every booking for hosts that are not connected to property management software. And here I think is the new information for us. software connected hosts, you all, have a different date. that would be March 1st. So we have quite a bit of time. If you're using Hospitable, you're connected, you're a software connected host. And Airbnb has confirmed that in writing. API partners like us have until March 2027 when the next version of their API comes out. And API connected listings won't receive any warnings before February 28th. you may Still see some education from Airbnb about your request, your house rules in the meantime. but an enforcement for software connected hosts will not start until March first. So there's nothing to panic about today. we can use the next four months to prepare because this is coming. So I first want to thank all of the hosts who commuted who sorry, who contributed in the community and gave great context to how this will impact your business. You believe it will. you told us mainly how unique your properties are. You have pools and hot tubs. Several of you have lakes on your properties. You have septic tanks. You have properties in bear country. We compiled and shared that feedback with our contacts at Airbnb. they sent us writ written responses to a lot of your feedback. And we still have several open questions and and we're seeking more clarity with them. We're meeting with them later this week. And I assume this will be an ongoing conversation that we can share updates with you as we know more. So jumping into some of what changed then specifically on the policy side, house rules. Now you have seven standard rules. So max overnight guests, quiet hours, events, pets, smoking, commercial photography, lockup at checkout. Everything else goes under what's being called requests. And requests, they can also be understood as instructions, but they have to be reasonable. You have 600 characters to explain them during stay. So during stay request, you have 400 characters for checkout requests. Reasonable basically means, yeah, anything that is a lot of effort, anything that could be considered work for your cleaner is not reasonable. You can't ask guests to put sorry, you can ask guests to put dishes in the sink. They can gather used towels, they can sort trash into indoor bins, they can turn off the AC when they leave. Those are all reasonable. Requests, things that Airbnb has communicated, can still stand, but you can't ask them to wash those dishes, strip those beds, start laundry, or take trash off site. Now, they will consider the type of listing or state and the relevant local factors. So they may grant exceptions based on your situation. For example, in fair country, which you shared with us, it is reasonable to ask guests to dispose of trash in an animal proof container. if you are in an area with local drought related water restrictions, you can ask guests to limit showers, et cetera. So some of this is is obviously being felt out as we go. On the contract side, only for a legal or HOA homeowners association requirement, monthly stays, Air Baby Lux listings, or optional amenities like a golf cart, for example. You will need to upload any contracts that you want your guests to sign in your listing settings. Airbnb will not make guests sign or enforce them. Collecting the signature is on you, on us. contracts for any other reason have to come down, basically from the March 1st deadline. a few countries get an exception, Australia, Brazil, and Germany are gonna get different treatment. ID and personal data. Only where a law or again an HOA requires it, or to sign an allowed contract. And disclosed under request before booking. That's a pretty important part. Everything has to be called out front in the listing. anything that you do in your messaging that is not consistent with what's on a listing will potentially get you in trouble. you can check ID in person at check-in if you said so up front, but you can't keep a copy. Same for age minimums. Checking ID at check-in is fine. Asking before check-in needs a legal or HOA reason. Fines, no host fines. Smokey included. Documented cleaning or other damage costs go through air cover. Paid optional amenities like a golf cart or pool heating are fine as long as guests can decline. If a guest breaks a rule, you can cancel without penalty, and Airbnb can suspend repeat offenders. If one of your requests doesn't comply, it's going to be flagged in your listings editor and you get one appeal and a person at Airbnb will review it. So many things still to be figured out. I think some open questions on our side. Does an insurance requirement count as a contract exception? You guys raised that question. It's a good one. will there be exceptions for professionally managed API connected hosts who disclose agreements before bookings? What proof satisfies required by law or HOA? what happens if a guest refuses to sign an approved contract? Unanswered. We're meeting Airbnb again tomorrow and we'll share with you what we learn. Switching gears to another policy change. Guest phone numbers. So Airbnb is obviously fighting phishing just like other other every other platform. And this is something coming out of that. In the US and Canada, when hosts and guests are in the same country, your software gets now a temporary number. It works until two days after checkout. Everywhere else, we won't receive the guest phone number. You and your guests can still find each other in the Airbnb app. smartlocks. Aren't really going be in affected. We still get the four digit codes to the last four digits of the guest real number. other lengths of codes will have have random numbers. But it's one more piece of the guest relationship moving inside the platform. So what you can do, obviously, in this time you have, you can review your house rules, look at the standard settlement rules, look at reasonable requests. you can start to get the feedback again inside Airbnb on what they consider reasonable. If you do require ID checks or info agreements, start to disclose that on your listing so the guests can see that before booking. You can start to investigate your local laws, your HOA rules, any building rules that you have, and document them and keep that proof. Get that ready. Share your specific cases in the community. we will continue to monitor that, we will continue to update. Airbnb about the feedback you you you have and the good questions that you raise. otherwise you've got four months, so it's not time to panic. With that, I'll hand back to Pierre. speaker-2: Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much, Andrew, for sharing all of this. I obviously have to say that those are not obviously our policies. So we are discovering the content just like everyone else, and we're trying to navigate those changes. Now, the information that you receive from Andrew is practical, but I think we are asking ourselves a little bit what the hell is going on in this industry. obviously we kind of know where this is going. This industry is being aligned to hotels. There is driven by guest expectations of privacy and standardization. But hotel check IDs and they sign agreements every day. they are able to offer a stay with no surprises because they have guests, they have staff on play in place and they can enforce their own rules. By the way, it's basically A normal expectation to be signing an agreement on for your ID at a hotel. speaker-0: So speaker-2: There are definitely quite a bit of questions that are being raised and have been raised on community and threads everywhere. It's been really the theme of a week so far. But the OSC is asked to trust the guest and they cannot verify anymore. This is a thing that's being taken away. That changes very much the equation of the two jobs that the platform is having to do. It's in charge of the distribution, which is bringing guests to your home, and it's in charge of making this transaction safer for the host as much as it is for the guest. With those changes, I think the most meaningful way to express it is that hosts are deprived of a way to verify that trust. And it's the fundamental of every trust system that you need to be able to verify to trust it properly. The platforms have the ID for the guest. The problem is that they are not made accessible to host when they have a need for it. Hotels have a right to verify, but they're unable to do so at their own discretion. There, for some reason, for host, there needs to be a law. So we're gonna be testing quite a few ideas with booking platforms. We want to be cognizant of the need for privacy of the guest, but we also cannot accept that hosts are in a place where they would When they would really need a verification oriental agreement, they would be deprived of this. We'd be calling this the trust in escrow principle. Something we're gonna test. So really it's the first time I'm talking about it. The idea is that in the transaction, the guest is gonna trust the platform and the platform is verifying the guest, but the host is left without any means of accessing that data or verifying themselves. now the reality of ID verification or rental agreements from a pure comp a pure commercial standpoint, they add friction. I don't think any host is particularly happy about the process of asking for ID verification, no more than they're happy about doing the retail support whenever an agreement needs to be signed. actually funny, I see Anthony here in the chat. a few weeks ago, he asked me about basically a guest that wanted to go through a needed to go through a very ID verification process and understanding, well then What are the what is the process? What is the time ending up? This has friction. Nobody wants to be doing that. Just the same on our own direct booking platform, 99.8% of direct bookings are booked directly without the host actually viewing the ID. The job of trust is not to have the ID in front of you. It's to know that there is an ID available whenever there's gonna be a breach, whenever you're gonna need it. We're gonna try and experiment with a way where the without disclosing the data to the host, without the host disclosing the data, without every anyone being in breach, you still can access the ID, we still can have the full copy of the rental agreements, so from from when you need it, without having the PII concern that is otherwise existing with marketplaces. It's basically the the very first thing that I believe we can do to try and handle this this policy change and facilitate the hosting, knowing that you will have a recourse if something is happening. Next slide is gonna be protecting over policing. So another kind of principles. Whenever you have rental agreements or house rules, a lot of hosts are policing the behavior of the guest. you cannot do this, you cannot do that, etc. We've we've all learned it. sometimes it seems disproportionate, sometimes there is a good reason for it. And as a guest, you are left on basically deciding what you want to do for yourself. It's add friction again. marketplaces and platforms don't lack that friction. And so there needs to be a different model to protecting the properties. And the successful models do not involve the guest at all. We've been anticipating this change of paradigm already, and you heard us talking about insurance. So this will now be entering into our product. Which brings me to Protect. This week we're starting a pilot with a first group of hosts. For an everyday cover that will protect you when linen are soiled or whenever you need you have some damage at your property. It doesn't require any involvement from the guest, even knowing about the identity of the guest. This is protecting hosts in their business. For 10 years, the platform made it safe for strangers to stay in each other's home and they're kind of owning that part of the job back now. You need a third party that's gonna be having your back. And it's gonna separate the commercial objectives of securing more transactions with a guest from the protection of your properties. So you're gonna hear a lot more from us in this on the coming weeks. And then there is Direct. there's been a lot of things happening behind the scenes at Hospitable on Direct, but we may have lacked in being very visible about it. Our mission on Direct is to make it as convenient as possible as it is to host on a platform. But the reality is that while we're doing this, Direct is still growing in competitiveness when you compare that with booking platforms and alternatives. On a direct booking, you can offer your guests the best price. It's your guest, it's your rules, it's your agreement, your ID check, and it's your direct relationship. Hospitable carries the hard part for you: the payment, the lodging taxes, and the protection. Now you can have to expect a lot of vendors in this industry are going to be pointing All their energy at Direct over the next few months, and it's good. Direct needs to be grown. It's too small a part for so many of you. There is a lot, there is a big, big buy to grow. So the booking platforms know that, and they are protecting themselves from the new paradigm, which is this agent-first discovery. It's already commonplace. We see that over your reservations and your booking, every booking platform. is now rather every reservation is basically now being discovered outside of SEO, outside of Google search. It's an agent that is willing that is booking your stay. The booking platforms are racing to own the moment a guest starts searching, and more and more that is going to be turning to be an AI agent. So a good agent will be looking for cheaper places to stay the same property, but it will only pick it if that booking is effortless. So We've started some development of that train of thought. We will be announcing it more, I hope, in the next in the next few weeks, by the before the end of the year. And there will be a lot more coming to help discover your direct booking websites and to make it to facilitate agent search. so that they can check availability, get real quote, and hand over directly to the stay. that is where it's coming up together. An agent needs a guest it can trust, a booking it can complete without friction. And that I think is the bet that we have to take as an industry to own the relationship that we have with our guests. Now, there is one thing one thing that we can indeed you help with. Lodging taxes. This is very often what makes first of all short term rentals acceptable. to the places where we host, but it's also the convenience of using a booking platforms when they are remitting taxes for you directly. we are, as far as I know, the only one to intend to catch up on this. We are collecting and remitting logic taxes on direct booking. In a few days we'll be probably we'll be paying millions to local jurisdictions near you, jurisdiction after jurisdiction. Now, we have a problem, and I think I'm been growing a bit impatient about it in the past few days. every time that one of those jurisdictions is reaching out to us, we are being registered very, very quickly, and we're very happy to do so. But whenever it's us reaching out, we need to make a case about being registered and paying taxes because we're not a traditional property management company. We like to keep that separated if we're being honest. we're not a major booking platform. And so it's we're a little bit in the messy middle. It takes a lot of explaining to say just to say who we are. So Petra, our head of community, will be reaching out to host in some jurisdiction where we feel we're stuck. and we're gonna ask you to contact as the resident those authorities so that we can help. That authority collect taxes on your behalf and help you, of course, in the process. So please, whenever that's coming out, take five minutes to make that call, five minutes to send an email, because we know that's basically gonna be making a ton of difference for a ton of you. we have quite a few targets for jurisdictions, most of them, most of them are in Florida. Texas and California. And we want to basically be speeding it speeding things up when it comes to remitting taxes. You will never find people more excited to be paying taxes than the team at Hospitable. So this is a bit high level. We don't have anything for you to do or change right now. But those are the principles that basically we're gonna go work towards in the next few months because the industry needs it, the industry demands it. And we still need to be solving a lot of those problems as a property management software. Now, on interesting product updates, I'm gonna hand over to Abby, who's having some updates to our task app. Good luck. speaker-4: Thank you. Okay, so if you joined our last town hall, you saw us launch inventory management for the TAS app originally to our beta audience, but now today it is available to all hosts, pro and mogul customers. And how this works is your cleaners can now report on supplies as they finish each job. And they don't need to use a complicated inventory form in order to do this. They just walk through your property. speak in their own language as they go and tell the TAS app we're low on coffee pods, filters, and the hand soap is complete completely empty. And we turn that into a supply report like the one you see on the screen, which then becomes an inventory report for you to review from Hospitable. Once you've reviewed and approved, your cleaner can restock the missing items and if they buy something, they upload a receipt. And you can also reimburse them right away from hospitable. So your cleaners get paid back quickly and you have a clean record of every purchase with no need to deal with outside payment or banking apps and no shoebox or folder full of receipts. the best part about this is that there's nothing for you to set up either. So the next time your cleaner opens a job in the TAS app, they'll see supplies and the reports that they create will show up under inventory for you. So you don't need to spend a whole weekend or week trying to set this up. You just need to have your cleaner give it a try on their next turnover. and we have many of you already reporting your supply levels, have many of your teammates reporting their supply levels in the TAS app today. So we pulled some data so we could share what supplies are coming up the most. there's not really any surprises here, I think. Maybe. most surprising thing is that coffee beats out toilet paper for the number one spot. but it's really the the simple things like this, like a a guest running out of coffee or toilet paper that can cost you a five star review. So now your cleaner can catch it before the guest does. also available now, your team you can pay your teammates by credit card. so this works in two different places. the first is when you reimburse your teammates for supplies that they purchased to restock the property. And the second is when you actually pay them for completing the job. So if you rather pay your teammate for tasks by credit card instead of by bank account, you can do that now today as well. you can use the card that you already have on file with Hospitable. And you can also add different cards if you want to pay for tasks or rules from for different properties from different cards. And once you approve the payment, the t your teammate will get paid within two business days. credit cards do carry a 3.9% service fee. and this is available in the US only for now. that is it for the TASS app. On to Patrick, I think, to talk about integrations. speaker-5: Thank you, Abby. Cool. Hi everyone. Patrick here from the partnerships team. And today we're welcoming three new partners to Hospitable. first up, we have Wimstay in channels, and imagine it's a Monday morning, you're enjoying your pumpkin latte, checking your hospitable calendar on your phone, and then you notice, Well, I don't have a a lot of bookings right now. So, well, there goes the relaxing morning, I would I'd say. But in the meanwhile, someone else might think we could really use a weekend away, no? So that's actually where Wims Day comes in. It's a booking platform with more than five hundred thousand listings, focused on helping Travers find last minute getaways and also help host, obviously to fill those empty nights as well. On top of that, you can also agree on discounts with Wimstay to make those available nights even more attractive. their fees are like three percent commission plus a three percent payment processing, so altogether we end up with like six percent as well. So in a nutshell, Vimsay handles in the booking, the payments, and the reservation appears inhospitable, and you manage to stay as usual, from guest messages to cleaning tasks, all inhospitable as well. Next one, we have Aquamind in operations. So you now got the booking and you guest arise on Friday, drop stepbags, heads straight to the pool, only to discover the pool is freezing cold. And there comes the first message. Hey, how do we turn on the pool heating? Wouldn't it be also nice if the water was already warm? So that's where actually Aquamine comes into play. So Aquamind connects your supported pool and Sparkement to your hospital reservation, and it can also preheat it before arrival and switch the heating off at the checkout as well. And the cool thing as well, guests receive like a simple Aquamind link through your hospital message to control the pool and also the star. But also just to be sure for you guys, you set the temperature limits and the timer in Aquamind as well. So there's no extra need for them, and you don't have to share any kind of passwords. with the guests as well. And finally but not least, we have bookkeeping RE, impressional services and also accounting. So the guests had an amazing stay, but you still got the payouts and expenses to sort out. That's where bookkeeping or e comes to help. They're a US based bookkeeping team, you give them V only access to your splitball reservations and also payouts. And they keep your books organized in QuickBooks online. So don't worry, you don't have to download another app. It's it's a team doing the bookkeeping for you as well. So we have three different new partners to make your hosting a little bit easier as well. So we have WimStape, helps feel like empty nights, we have Aquamine, gets the pool ready, and we have bookkeeping already takes care of your books as well. You find all three on the Hospitable Integrations page as well. And before you jump off as well, there's also more. We're sending some special offers through the community under partner benefits section to share more in the upcoming dates as well. Please send next one. Yeah, and I thought I was gonna share some updates about direct booking because with all this noise that's happening, I was in LinkedIn yesterday. It's very interesting right now. So just to share a little update on the direct booking partners. So right now, which channels we have and also to help you to get more books as well, is like Travina, we have Halfi, we have EC BY BYO, and also Stay as well, where you can list also your direct bookings. And available soon, and I don't know, Krachu, if you see the CEO on LinkedIn posting already. Savvy is gonna go live soon as well. I don't want to put a date on it, but it's coming very soon. And also I saw in the chat as well some questions about how we can make it more visible. We have great partners that can help you to boost your direct booking or create direct bookings. So I think you all know Jill from Crafted States, we have DTravel, we have Book of Heaven, and we also have Boostly. And there's many more in our marketplace. So please check them out. And if you have any questions, you can always come to me. about them all in the community and I'm happy to jump into it as well. So giving over to trust accounting though our amazing Emily. speaker-4: Thank you, Patrick. Alrighty, I'm excited to share that we're now inviting qualified hosts to participate in the private pilot of our very own trust accounting features. So if you're living in an area or hosting in an area rather that requires trust accounting, you know it can get pretty complicated pretty fast, but Hospitable is working to make trust accounting a lot simpler. You'll connect your trust accounts bank feed or import bank account. Statements and match those transactions with your owner statements so that we can generate reports that are ready for your accountant or your auditor. We are opening a private pilot for eligible property managers in Australia, which has some of the strictest trust accounting requirements, and in the United States as well. So to participate, you must be on the MOGL plan and already publishing owner statements. It's helpful if you're already managing a trust account as well. To do that, you'll book a 30-minute call. I'll share the link to that next with Ethan Brown from our team, who is graciously staying up at very odd hours to have calls with US-based property managers all the way from Australia. So bring your business details and trust bank account details, and you'll connect everything together on the call. If you meet those requirements to participate in the pilot, here is the link to book with Ethan. and we will be sharing all of the links that we've shared in today's town hall over in the community later as well. So if you don't grab this link now, don't worry, it will not go away for you. All right, I'll hand it over to Petra for some updates about our community. Thank you, Emily. Hi everyone. So we launched community last year in May, and we have been growing since. Next slide. Thank you. So in community we have over 7,000 hosts, we have over 2,000 posts, 11,000 replies. But what matters there is actually the content and the value that help where hosts are helping one another. So we recognize it, we see it, and we also want to celebrate it. So to do that, we have been rewarding our top 10 community hosts who have been the most engaging and most helpful every month with the host tokens. in the amount of $1,000 distributed among 10 people. But we always thought, okay, this is just gonna be start, we wanna expand it because contributing on the community platform is not the only way how people help one another. And this is why today we're launching hospitable rewards. They are available today. They are available in five countries for now. It's only for legal requirements. So we're gonna be adding more with expanding our legal documentation, but we're gonna start with the states, UK, Canada, Australia, and France. so what are rewards? So basically, you're gonna be collecting points for what you've already been doing. So one thing is contributing in the community, helping one another. Second is growing, what means attending town halls, attending webinars, or testing product features that you haven't checked out yet, but maybe you need a little bit of a nudge. And also advocating what means sharing your success stories, referring to other hosts, and spread the word about hospitable. So, what to do with those points? We are offering you two options for redemption. One is SVAG, so we designed Hello to Gabby who's clicking slides. she's amazing one behind the creative things. So kudos to her. we designed some super nice swag exclusive for our community. So this is not something you can get as a merch on the conferences or it's just in the community, and also we offer you as an alternative, you can reduce your subscription fee for a specific month when you have enough points to redeem it for a cashback. And if you wanna get started, just heads to rewards.hospitable.com. It's gonna leave it actually lives within the community, so you need to be part of community to access it. there is a little opt-in, and once you're in, your collecting is gonna start immediately. So people who are already on this call, you're gonna get rewarded for you're gonna get points for being here. So just continue doing what you have been doing, and on the way collect some points and either redeem it for what you find more fun for you. So that's from me and over to Miles. speaker-0: Perfect. Thank you very much, Petra. And yeah, just one quick update from me. Just a reminder, as always, thank you obviously for joining today's town hall. And we want to see you at the next one. So we do these every two weeks, same time, same place. so if you want to make sure that's on your calendar, go ahead, go to townhall.hospitable dot com and you'll be able to add it to your calendar so you don't forget to join us. the next one will be November eleventh, Wednesday usual time. And of course, all of the links from today's session are there townhall.hospitable.com and a summary of QA that we're about to go into and all of the information that we've talked through today. So if you're lost on something, missed part of it, kind of want a recap, go there and you'll get all the juicy information that you need. Okay, I think we have a nice little bit of time for some QA now from the audience. So as always, join the conversation if you'd like to go on stage and ask us a question now's your chance to go down to the react button bottom of your screen click the raise hand and at which point I'm gonna go through see a list of people I'll ask you on stage and I'm gonna need you to unmute so that we can hear you ask your question. So go ahead folks if you've got question for us now please raise your hand. Okay, awesome. Laura inviting you on stage. You are our first blow. speaker-2: Don't be shy. Hello Laura, how can we help you today? You need to unmute yourself because right now we cannot hear you. speaker-0: You might have turned off your microphone because you look unmuted on Zoom, but we don't hear. speaker-2: Yeah. speaker-0: Okay, we'll come back to you next, Laura. And we'll try someone else for the time being. so we're gonna move to Alpha Apex Hopes. Hello. Hey, good afternoon. Can you guys hear me? speaker-2: Yes, thank you. speaker-0: Okay, perfect. Calling in from Atlanta. So my question is in terms of the pricing markup tool, and I understand why it's there, but for those of us who use external pricing tools such as Price Labs, wouldn't it make sense to Do the markup there because that's where we get our pricing insights. For example, if I have $100 a night on price labs, but then make a 15% markup for Airbnb via hospitable, Airbnb shows $115 a night. However, all the market insights that I get from my property on price labs is based on $100 a night. speaker-2: And speaker-1: The the dynamic pricing industry is totally aware of the existence of markup rates. It works the same across almost any property management software. The expectation from the pricing software is that this happens. and yeah, we've talked with many of them. They know about it. It's kind of a yeah, they get the actual booking data, right? So what the final price was for the booking, and they know the markup rates are there and they just kind of it works out. So it's the markup rate is owned by the property management software. That's that's how it works. speaker-2: Yeah. I if I may, the the the prices that are generated by dynamic pricing engine is basically reflecting the demand at a particular date. It does not have an opinion as to the platform where the booking is gonna happen. so this is where the job of the property manual software. If you change your rate directly on on a on your dynamic software, it would be undifferentiated of the channel. We'll be receiving 100 from Priceless, we'll be pushing 115 to Airbnb, we'll be pushing 120, whatever, to Verbal or to other channels. And the idea is that the demand is basically spread pretty homogeneous fashion across different platforms. And what you need to do is basically cover your prices, cover your the the the commission, but also you can have a strategy about which channels you prefer. and where do you want to make a little bit more for the same dollar of of the of the of the total the total price of the of the stay. so I'd really encourage you to not adjust the dynamic price in your property, but let the distribution be handled directly where it is, which is on your PMS. and they feed on the data from across the platform to detect the demand and what is a a good commercial price. speaker-1: Let's say anyone that's commenting in the chat that they're putting their markup rates in price labs, that's not going to work for you. If you're connected to hospitable, we get one base price from any dynamic pricing software that comes in. It's not going to get if your markup rates are in the dynamic pricing software, it will not work that that's as you intended. speaker-0: Perfect. Okay. Thank you very much, both PC and Andrew, and thank you for the question. Okay, Adina inviting you on stage to ask you a question. Hello. Hi there. my name is Adina and I'm from Colorado. I have a question. I'm used hospitable for a client of mine who owns ten's properties. I have my separate email address to log in, but obviously, you know, he's set everything up. I'm currently working on bringing on a new client for which I want to set up a separate hospitable account and start paying the pro level for that because my goal is to grow that account and and have multiple clients. My question is how can I keep my eye on messaging and notifications at the same time on the phone if I'm have two separate accounts. speaker-2: Yeah, I think speaker-0: Makes sense. speaker-2: No, the the task completely makes sense and it's totally cringe on our side to still work in this way. so I I I share the the the same embarrassment. I I thought that maybe some time ago there was some there was some work on it. So I don't know, Andrew, if you can help me there. I don't think there has been any change. Yeah, sorry for that. So right now, unfortunately the requirement is to have two different accounts, but we totally hear the the frustration and we would love to give you a chance to consolidate those accounts. other ones. So one where you are a secondary user and another one where you can run your your own business as a as a primary user. Definitely. speaker-0: Okay. Okay. So what you're saying is that in the prime my primary account is going to be maybe the new one that I plan to grow and then somehow use the secondary account or just to be able to log in or switch accounts within the hospitable. Is that what speaker-2: I I think right now we require still a different email address whether you are a secondary user and if you are a secondary user, you can be a secondary user across multiple hospitable users. So you can switch teams, but then if you are a primary user, you can only be a primary user for that team. And so therefore the the thing in our code base is fundamentally like you cannot be a primary user on one email and then a secondary user on another. team. So that's why there is there there is, and I'm I agree with you, guys. But there there is so far, that's the reason why so far there is this difference. So you can have one account where you are a secondary across multiple clients and one account where you are the primary user for for yours. speaker-0: Okay. Is that something you guys are working on? Or could do you think something in the future that's gonna be? speaker-2: I I I think I I share that with you. I I don't think we can give you a timeline right now. I I think we we sharing the frustration. is the engine the team is hearing it and I think there is an abundance of documentation on the on the on the problem. we know it's definitely a vulnerability. Right now we you know we worked on a on a great roadmap two weeks ago and that changed. So we're not gonna commit into the future. Thank you very much. speaker-0: It I'll keep an eye out for it. Thank you. speaker-2: Yeah, ple please do, please do. speaker-0: Okay, thank you for your question. Moving on to Sam. Hello Sam. Welcome on stage. You have a question for us? speaker-2: Hello Sam. How can we help you? You do need to unmute Sam. speaker-0: Okay, we're gonna pause on Sam and we'll try our next person. So Bill, trying you instead. Bill, do you have a question for us? Hello everybody. Thank you. Thank you, host hospitable team. You guys are awesome. I have two questions. Number one for Andrew, since you're there at the booking dot com headquarters, is the communication that we talked about on one of the last meetings regarding where they're not sending messages. To priceline and kayak and all the rest. Is that on the agenda during your visit? speaker-1: Yeah, I actually talked to one of the people randomly on the they call it their B2B team. and yeah, so basically what I was able to learn today in a very short chat was it's the obligation of the distributing channel. So priceline in this example to integrate in a different messaging API to pull the messaging that we've sent to booking.com. So it it's basically on that distribution partner. It doesn't seem like booking.com is necessarily enforcing a messaging integration on that side. So I need to keep pulling on that thread. but yeah, I I did I did see your comments in the community and I did I did bring that up and we'll we'll have to keep yeah, pulling until we get a more definitive answer on on how that's done. speaker-0: I I really appreciate it. We get three, maybe four or five guests per month that show up with no communication. And of course they're blaming it on us when they show up. So they're they're they're getting to our properties and they're already not happy. speaker-1: Okay. I'm gonna reach back out to you and and get some maybe some reservation IDs as an example and that'll help me escalate it with booking. speaker-0: Absolutely be happy to share those. And one more question with regards to calendars and e calendars. I put this in the the tech thing where you voted up. I don't I don't know the name of it. the parent-child calendars that we're sharing with other OTAs, it's not showing up blocked dates. for instance, if if it's parent-child and it's blocked in hospitable and you can see it on the child. That is not going out to the OTAs as block dates. I recently had two double bookings because of it, and that's what brought it to my attention. if that can be addressed technically somehow in the future, that would be great. speaker-1: Okay. Thank you for flagging that. Yeah. So feedback.hospitable.com is the place where you can make those requests. And I will go find your request now and see what we can do about that. speaker-0: Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. okay, so we're gonna try Sam once more. hello Sam. speaker-1: Hey. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: Yes. So we speaker-1: So we are a boutique hotel. we currently we just recently added bookings.com, but we do Airbnb and then obviously our hospitable. we're probably 50-50, I would say, as far as on online bookings, between you know our website and Airbnb primarily. but I would say about 90% of our bookings overall come over the phone. they contact us due to the fact that ID verification seems to be a pretty tough issue for people based on you know what type of phones they have, things of that nature, because the positioning on the ID to be able to do the ID verification check. Is that something that we can eliminate? and then I have a second question after this that pertains to our location as well. speaker-2: Talk to talk to me more about the the the I we're talking about ID verification struggles and issues coming from gas in the experience. speaker-1: When they're trying to scan the ID in, so we're a contactless hotel. And when they're trying to scan their ID in, they're having a lot of struggles with that. And so we'll get people that'll come in at like, you know, 10, 11 o'clock at night. They'll scan our QR code at the front counter or on the door. and then they'll come in and we have a seating or lounge area to wait for them, you know, where it goes through the processes and the prompts. and with that, they're they're really struggling. We're getting a lot of hatred or negativity from people because they have to scan their ID. For one, when it doesn't go through, they're feeling like it's maybe a fraudulent or something of that nature. or two, they're just they're struggling with it. And I think it has to do with, you know, the guests that I have, they're like 55 to 80. And so they're not as maybe tech savvy potentially as someone else. speaker-2: Yeah. I by by the reference to QR code, I guess you're you're not using hospitable for those ID verification, are you? speaker-1: So no, when you click the QR code, it'll take them to the hospitable website. It'll take them to our website and then they book through hospitable. We're trying to drive them directly to the hospitable site so that way we eliminate Airbnb fees and things of that nature. speaker-2: Okay. No, okay. Good. So and then as part of this, for the direct booking process, they have to provide their IG verification. Okay. Yeah. Ivy, you want to clarify, I mean respond. speaker-4: Yeah, I was just talking to to another host about this on an office hour call and we actually looked at some data on and how many guests are able to complete guest verification successfully because we we totally get that that it's a friction point and we have a vested interest in making sure you secure about booking as well. So we want to do everything that we can to eliminate or reduce that friction. But it is a requirement because it allows us to provide damage protection for you. And it also allows us to provide the chargeback protection. And Anthony just dropped a comment in the chat, which is I think very true, is that some of that that friction is some of it is good. It helps prevent bad guess. We see fraud more often than you might even imagine. and so I think it is some some dose of friction is important, but. We also don't want it to prevent you from getting a booking from a good guest. So I think the data that I looked at last time was 95% of guests that that go through guest verification will complete it successfully. There is some drop-off there. I I'd be curious to see if there's anything we can look at to help figure out where that drop-off is, but it's it's not something that you can bypass for direct premium because it's what allows us to provide the protection that we do. speaker-1: Yeah, well, for us, I I will tell you it's we're not seeing ninety-five percent success rate. I probably filter three to four calls a day because of it. speaker-4: Okay. Yeah, we we we'll take a look at your account to see what issues guess you're running into. speaker-1: we and then we've also had issues with getting payouts and stuff from hospitable as well, which I I've got an email thread that I started via this call. hoping I can get somebody to get on on board with me on that. But my last question was so we are in a historic area on Route 66, and we put an indoor art gallery inside our our hallways. Is that something that we could link? as add-ons, because we sell those paintings and things of that nature off the wall or pieces of artwork if somebody wants to purchase something of that nature. Is that something that could be added through hospitable as an add-on ticket? speaker-4: Yes, you you could add those as upsells into your guest portal. and so guests would need to go into the guest portal to purchase that item. what's not possible today is the ability to like have a generic link into the guest portal. There's a specific link for each guest reservation. So you would want to make sure that you're sharing that link to the guest portal in your messages so that they know. that if they like any of the art on the wall, they can go into the guest portal and purchase it. we've gotten a good amount of feedback to have a generic link so that you could just put a QR code on your property. It's something we'd we'd love to be able to do soon. But for now I'd recommend making sure all of your guests have a link to the guest portal through your messages and then they can go in there and and purchase that way. speaker-1: Is there someone who can send me information on that? So that way I can review that more to see what that's about. speaker-4: Yes, I can send you an email with more information on that. speaker-1: Okay, thank you. speaker-0: Cool. Thank you very much, Sam. And yeah, I see Kevin is already on that thread helping you out with your question around payouts. So I'm sure he'll get that sort of view. Great. so I PC might tell me otherwise, but I think that we might have to end it there for today because we're already a few minutes over time. speaker-2: Okay, we we we're gonna end it there because every every good thing has to come to an end, right? so yeah, if you have any message or any other questions that have not been answered, please go ahead. You can send me an email, pc at hospitable.com. You should know the domain name. just two letters, PC. and I will be making sure that this is escalated to the appropriate person in the company. that may not be me. so what have you heard today? there's definitely a lot for us to be processing and to be navigating. We are in the same boat as you. I think there may be rumors that somehow we get a heads up on those policy changes, etc. We we definitely do not. we receive the email probably a bit sometimes a bit later after you've been notified. So we are to navigate those changes. I think the the strength of the speedable of for across those past ten years is that we went through a lot and and we're we're still there. We've still been able to navigate challenges in the industry, some far worse than what we're observing today. And I think we're still fundamentally in our DNA a company that wants to innovate. We want to be a little bit different and providing a ton more value to our customers than what alternatives might be looking at. So now I think the equation has changed a little bit. It's not a mandate that we thought we had. but we're gonna answer. and that is basically that the software that you use to run your properties and your reservation and converse with your guests is also gonna have to help you trust those guests so that your your business with your short-term rounds is sustainable and you can happily do continue those operations. So we're gonna have some more updates obviously on this in the in the future channels. I can say that the next one, Miles, November 11th, right? So damn, I'm doing one thing right. November 11th, and this is one where we're gonna release our we're gonna start releasing our product protect product. so you're gonna s some of you will see that in the navigation bar. this is coming up real soon, and we're very excited about it because it is fundamentally a guarantee to help you navigate those changes without the policing, protection without the policing. so yeah, this is this is an interesting development for for hospitable but also hopefully for the industry and you as well. Thank you so very much and see you same time, same place in two weeks. Bye bye.