Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / Your Direct Bookings Depend on This AI Visibility Strategy

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Your Direct Bookings Depend on This AI Visibility Strategy · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  Traditional SEO is no longer enough AI search engines like
• 0:05
  ChatGPT and Google Gemini don't show link lists.
• 0:09
  They generate answers and the property management brands that
• 0:12
  get sighted in those answers win the bookings.
• 0:15
  In this episode of Host Planet bite size powered by Host fully,
• 0:19
  I'm joined by Amir Mahajah, CEO of Host AI.
• 0:23
  If you're an Airbnb host, property manager, or short term
• 0:26
  rental brand relying on direct bookings, this episode code
• 0:30
  could completely change your marketing strategy.
• 0:33
  Let's get straight into it. I'm here.
• 0:39
  Thank you for joining us on House Planet Bite size And now
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  every business in the world right now wants to get sighted
• 0:46
  by AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini.
• 0:51
  Now before we get to your tips about how business is going to
• 0:54
  achieve that, just tell us how these AI large language models
• 0:59
  actually work. Absolutely.
• 1:01
  James, first of all, thank you for having me.
• 1:03
  I really appreciate it. Big fan of the show.
• 1:07
  Yeah. I mean, I think that the best
• 1:08
  way to think about how AI actually works is to personify
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  it because essentially we're building these AI machines in as
• 1:17
  a reflection of our own minds and the way it works.
• 1:20
  So think of AI and when it comes to travel as a very eagle trap
• 1:26
  eager travel agent whose job is to purely build trust and to get
• 1:32
  you as a guest the best options possible, right?
• 1:36
  So this super ego travel agent is there to help you find the
• 1:40
  best option for your trip. And then let's talk about how
• 1:45
  this travel agent actually goes about solving that problem for
• 1:48
  the guest and what you as a short term rental brand should
• 1:51
  be doing to be discovered by this AI travel agent and be
• 1:57
  trusted so that this travel agent feels comfortable
• 2:01
  essentially recommending your brand.
• 2:04
  OK, yeah, fantastic. So you've got 5 tips to share
• 2:06
  because everybody at the moment, I mean myself included, host
• 2:09
  Planet, I want to make sure that we're getting sighted as well.
• 2:12
  And of course, hosts and property managers out there,
• 2:15
  when people are searching for short term rentals in X City,
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  they want to make sure that it's their brand that's getting
• 2:21
  recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, et cetera, et cetera.
• 2:25
  So I'm here tip #1 how do they do it?
• 2:29
  Yeah, absolutely. So let's think about the guest
• 2:32
  journey and when it starts, you know, yeah, the guest starts to
• 2:35
  have a conversation with their travel agent about the planning
• 2:38
  their next trip. The way this this works is then
• 2:41
  that travel agent, that very eagle travel agent, starts to
• 2:44
  kind of go out and search the entire web for information.
• 2:49
  So the first most important thing is to make sure that
• 2:53
  you're able to be discovered in the 1st place by them, right?
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  And so that is about making sure that your website is built in a
• 3:02
  way that is very easy for the travel agent to actually read
• 3:05
  the context. So you know, typically websites
• 3:09
  are built for humans, you know, they come through the imagine
• 3:13
  like a website is a house, humans come through the front
• 3:16
  door. AI agents read the blueprint,
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  right. So you want to make sure that
• 3:21
  you actually have very easy digestible content structured in
• 3:26
  your website that an AI agent can read rather than having to
• 3:30
  go through and work complicated code like JavaScript to actually
• 3:38
  bring out that information. So these are called structured
• 3:41
  schema. And so if you're a short term
• 3:43
  rental brands, you want to make sure that you have vacation
• 3:46
  rental structured scheme of scheme of frequently asked
• 3:49
  question structure schema and amenity structured schema.
• 3:53
  So that what that means is that it basically packages up your
• 3:57
  content in almost like a Cliff notes matter for the AI to make
• 4:00
  it really easy for it to instantly capture that
• 4:03
  information. And so the easier it is to in
• 4:07
  just the content of your website, the the higher the
• 4:11
  probability that the the website is found by this travel agent
• 4:16
  when it goes out and starts to kind of look for options.
• 4:20
  So the content that you're putting on your website, then
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  let's break this down. So on your about page or maybe
• 4:25
  in blog posts, is it better to have content maybe which asks
• 4:29
  questions and where you have bullet points and where it's
• 4:33
  really simply written. Is that is that what you should
• 4:35
  be aiming for? Yeah, actually that kind of goes
• 4:38
  into my tip #2 but so there's I think let's distinguish between
• 4:43
  how the content is presented to the AI, which is more of a
• 4:47
  technical thing. Then second point is on what
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  type of content you should actually have.
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  But you're absolutely right. I think we found that frequently
• 4:57
  asked questions makes it a lot easier for the AI to find the
• 5:02
  information that they're looking for because essentially the
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  conversation they're having with the guests that they're trying
• 5:08
  to satisfy is a very much in a question answer format, right?
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  So if you kind of put yourself in in the shoes of your
• 5:17
  prospective guests and think about what type of questions
• 5:19
  they might ask their travel agents and try to anticipate
• 5:24
  that for each individual guest profile that you're trying to
• 5:27
  serve in each kind of season. And then anticipate the type of
• 5:33
  answers that might be satisfactory for them and have
• 5:35
  those easily discoverable and digestible by AI on your
• 5:39
  website. That's really going to help you
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  with being cited by them. And I'm really interested as
• 5:45
  well, how is AI search different to more traditional SEO?
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  What do you have to do differently?
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  That's a great question because actually there's a lot of
• 5:58
  similarities and in a way, think of SE OS me as a human searching
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  the web, right? AI search is basically there's
• 6:08
  now an AI assistant sitting between me and the searching
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  activity. So this AI assistant gets
• 6:15
  context for me around what I'm interested in and does the heavy
• 6:18
  lifting. So what it does is I'm, I'm
• 6:20
  going to give it some context about what I'm looking for and
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  understands that context and then try to think about, OK,
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  what are the key things I should search for to be able to find
• 6:30
  relevant information for, for my guest, right.
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  And so basically basically it's about 1020 queries that this AI
• 6:39
  assistant does. And they tend to be much more
• 6:41
  long tailed than what we're used to, right?
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  So if we're, if us as humans are used to searching for, I'm
• 6:48
  looking for short term rental in city X.
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  The searches that the AI does is, hey, I'm looking for family
• 6:54
  friendly short term rentals in city X that's near destination
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  Y, right? And it does 10/20 of those and
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  then it goes and, and just the content of those queries.
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  And then there's a re ranking based on relevancy of that
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  content to that, to the original question and based on
• 7:15
  reliability of the information, which we can then talk about
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  what are the things that you need to do to make sure that a,
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  you're kind of found in that initial search to begin with,
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  right? And then, B, your content is
• 7:29
  relevable so that when the AI does this matching of what you,
• 7:32
  the information it found and what the guest is looking for,
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  you're more likely to be kind of shortlisted by it.
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  And what are the things that you can do to make the AI feel like
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  actually the information that I found on this website is
• 7:45
  reliable and they can, I can trust it.
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  And I feel comfortable putting in front of the my user who my
• 7:51
  job, my sole job is to build trust for them.
• 7:55
  That's kind of really important. Kind of keep in mind,
• 7:57
  essentially today, the most important task of this AI
• 8:01
  assistant is to make sure that you as a user trust them, right?
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  And so that is, I think baked into how they go about and
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  finding information. And then what are the pieces of
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  information that they feel comfortable citing?
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  I'm just wondering, yeah, I mean, if you're a short term
• 8:19
  rental property manager, let's say you're in London and you're
• 8:22
  trying to think of all the questions that potential guests
• 8:24
  might have. Could you go to ChatGPT and say
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  draft me a load of frequently asked questions that guests
• 8:31
  coming to London have and then take that content and basically
• 8:35
  put it on your website? You definitely can.
• 8:38
  So I think the more granular and the more specific kind of and
• 8:45
  structured you are about your approach to this, the higher the
• 8:48
  likelihood that you get cited. So what I would do as a short
• 8:52
  term rental brand is start to think about, OK, what are the
• 8:54
  types of guests that I'm serving, right?
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  What is their kind of demographic profile and what are
• 8:59
  their motivations for coming this day at the listings that I
• 9:02
  manage, right? So some of them might be kind of
• 9:05
  there for business, some of them might be for there for leisure.
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  If they're coming for leisure, what are the type of people that
• 9:10
  come to leisure and for leisure activities to the type of
• 9:15
  accommodation that Ioffer? And then once you have that kind
• 9:18
  of detailed guest profile, which is kind of something I'm sure a
• 9:20
  lot of your listeners already do, then think about, OK,
• 9:23
  throughout the seasons, what are the motivations that profile is
• 9:29
  thinking about or solving for when they're time coming to my
• 9:32
  destination? Because that's kind of a really
• 9:34
  interesting thing. And what makes travel
• 9:37
  accommodation a very interesting marketing segment is that even
• 9:41
  though the physical property and the, the actual kind of building
• 9:47
  or unit is the exact same thing, what people are buying is
• 9:51
  constantly changing throughout the year, right?
• 9:54
  And that that makes it a really interesting problem to solve.
• 9:57
  And so you're not, you know, selling a pair of shoes that
• 10:00
  that's kind of almost like the same, serves the same need, you
• 10:04
  know, like travel accommodation is constantly serving different
• 10:07
  types of needs, even though it's the physical thing is exactly
• 10:10
  the same. Yeah, and that means there's a
• 10:11
  lot of different content to create.
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  OK, then I'm here. So tip #2 then, I know we've
• 10:17
  trailed it a bit, but let's say let's get into it in detail.
• 10:20
  No, I love it. So I mean that actually kind of
• 10:21
  we covered that a little bit, but tip #2 is to have highly
• 10:26
  relevant content that is fresh. Freshness is something that the
• 10:30
  AI assistants are kind of very keen on, right?
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  So think about this, this AI travel agent that's very eager
• 10:38
  to gain your trust wants to make sure that it gets you accurate
• 10:41
  information right. And so the way to think about
• 10:44
  this is that this AI has done a significant amount of work to
• 10:49
  actually understand everything on the web already right?
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  Kind of like a, you know, the the London cab drivers that
• 10:57
  really know all the details. So they've actually done quite a
• 10:59
  bit of work, really understanding every nook and
• 11:02
  cranny of the the landscape. But what they know that they
• 11:07
  lack on is fresh information, right?
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  So they have a cut off date that this is the last kind of date
• 11:13
  that actually understood the web or information about the world
• 11:17
  about. And so they're really keen on
• 11:19
  making sure that they are kind of get the latest up to date
• 11:22
  information, right. And so the freshness of your
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  content is very important. So you want to make sure that
• 11:27
  you're constantly putting out information about the
• 11:30
  destination. Now the, the other things to
• 11:34
  think about when I'm when you're thinking about the content that
• 11:37
  you want to make sure that you're representing on your
• 11:39
  website is you want to align it to the stages of decision making
• 11:43
  by the guest, right? So, you know, you're a guest
• 11:47
  thinking about traveling to London, for example, right?
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  So first you're thinking about what, well, do I even want to go
• 11:52
  to London or not? So what are the things that we
• 11:53
  can do in London, etcetera. So it's very high level, kind of
• 11:57
  top of the funnel. So I'm a family of four thinking
• 12:00
  about making a trip, thinking about going to London, thinking
• 12:02
  about staying here and doing this, like, tell me if that's
• 12:05
  the right thing to do or not. So you want to make sure that
• 12:07
  you're starting kind of your content at that top level around
• 12:11
  kind of here things to do in London in destination X&Y&Z very
• 12:17
  specific to your persona. If you're a family of four,
• 12:19
  whatever, like here are some of the things to do, then you want
• 12:22
  to go into the next journey or I go where do I want to say if I
• 12:24
  want to go to to London and what type of accommodation I want to
• 12:28
  book. And that's where you want to
• 12:29
  kind of go into the middle of the middle of the funnel and try
• 12:33
  to represent options. And then so this two stages are
• 12:37
  really kind of about blogs and kind of content in that format
• 12:42
  and then the when it comes to actual decision making.
• 12:47
  And now I'm thinking about booking this accommodation.
• 12:50
  Where should I book it? That's becomes about kind of how
• 12:53
  you lay out the pitch on your listing pages, right?
• 12:58
  So now imagine the AI agent has actually found a few listings
• 13:03
  and these listings can be booked on multiple channels.
• 13:08
  Why should they book on your website versus on Airbnb and
• 13:11
  verbal, right? So that's the other type of
• 13:14
  content that you want to make sure that it's very easy, easily
• 13:17
  understood. What is the value proposition to
• 13:19
  you, to the prospective guest that the AI represents around
• 13:23
  why they should come and book directly with you, if that same
• 13:25
  accommodation can be booked kind of confidently on Airbnb or
• 13:32
  Verbal or booking.com? All right then, quick one before
• 13:36
  we get to tip 3. This episode is powered by House
• 13:39
  Philly, the property management platform trusted by professional
• 13:42
  hosts and managers around the world.
• 13:44
  From automation to digital guidebooks and direct booking
• 13:47
  tools, House Philly helps you build a stronger, more scalable
• 13:51
  short term rental business. If you're watching on YouTube,
• 13:54
  simply scan the QR code on screen or hit the link in the
• 13:57
  show notes to book a demo with Frank Bosey, who's a big friend
• 14:01
  of our show and one of the nicest guys in the STR space.
• 14:04
  And remember, host Planet listeners get 2 exclusive
• 14:07
  offers, $500 off onboarding for the property management
• 14:11
  software, and 30% off digital guidebooks for life.
• 14:15
  All right, back to it, Amir. What's tip #3?
• 14:19
  We're proud partners of host Felipe.
• 14:21
  They founded the team as well. So I just want to kind of plug
• 14:23
  that in. Tip #3 So now imagine the AIS
• 14:27
  instance actually found your website and found that you have
• 14:31
  some relevant content that you have for their prospective
• 14:34
  guests. The next hurdle you want to jump
• 14:37
  through is to make sure that the AI agent actually has confidence
• 14:42
  in putting you forward as an option, right?
• 14:45
  So think about this as the cap OK?
• 14:47
  Do you have this travel agent and this senior brochure?
• 14:50
  They want to do a little bit of more confidence building before
• 14:54
  they present that for sure that they've just seen for the first
• 14:58
  time to the guest that they cherish and they want to build
• 15:01
  trust, a trusting relationship with, right?
• 15:04
  So they look at a few different sources and that helps kind of
• 15:08
  build a little bit more confidence.
• 15:10
  And we those the next three tips have to do with that trust
• 15:13
  building aspect, right? The, the most important one is
• 15:20
  word of mouth, right? So this is kind of an
• 15:22
  interesting, what we've seen is that platforms like Reddit and
• 15:27
  YouTube are a very significant source of AI citations, right?
• 15:34
  And so this is about the that travel agent came and found you.
• 15:38
  And then they're like I said, well, that's look, this looks
• 15:42
  pretty interesting. Let me go and see if there's
• 15:45
  other people talking about this brand, right?
• 15:47
  So it goes and kind of searches Reddit.
• 15:49
  It goes and searches YouTube and kind of other conversational
• 15:54
  forums to think about what people are talking about.
• 15:56
  It's almost like eavesdropping on the kind of conversation,
• 16:00
  right? And so you want to make sure
• 16:03
  that if there are folks that talking about your destination
• 16:06
  on Reddit or or YouTube, you're they're represented as an
• 16:11
  option. And what's the reason these AISS
• 16:14
  is actually reference these conversations because they're
• 16:17
  very much like human. You know, it's like people
• 16:20
  talking to their friends. It's very authentic.
• 16:23
  And so that's why it's so attractive to them.
• 16:27
  And so if you were there actually pitching your brand,
• 16:30
  it's not going to work as much. They're the the Reddit folks
• 16:33
  with instantly kind of flag it and delete your comment.
• 16:39
  So that it's almost like kind of a wasted effort.
• 16:41
  What you want to do is go participate in these in these
• 16:45
  forum and engage people in good faith, right?
• 16:48
  And as part of those conversations, if it happens
• 16:52
  that you're, it's a natural kind of opportunity to represent your
• 16:56
  business and brand and your listings, that's a good thing to
• 16:58
  do. And because then that get picks
• 17:02
  up and gets picked up by the AI assistant assistant as it goes
• 17:06
  and does this research to figure out if you are a reliable
• 17:10
  source, right? So word of mouth and basically
• 17:15
  making sure that you're part of that conversation that the AI
• 17:18
  assistant use drops on is a very important lever to pull if you
• 17:23
  want to get cited by AI. Yeah, I mean the AI wants to
• 17:27
  check that you're legitimate. And it's interesting.
• 17:29
  It's a conversation that I have a lot with our partners now in
• 17:32
  the STR space. I say, look, you know, Host
• 17:35
  Planet can help you because if you're mentioned in our blog
• 17:38
  posts on our YouTube channel and if we're sharing helpful
• 17:42
  education, that's going to help your footprint, it's going to
• 17:45
  help our footprint when we want to get sighted on these models.
• 17:48
  So it's yeah, it's good. It's good to hear that.
• 17:50
  And it's, it's the same, it's the same basically for any
• 17:52
  business now, including short term rental house and property.
• 17:55
  I guess the AI just wants to make sure that you've got a
• 17:58
  proper web of content really and that you're like you say, a
• 18:01
  reliable actor. OK, then I'm here.
• 18:05
  So tip #4. So tip #4 actually you're
• 18:08
  absolutely right about host planners.
• 18:09
  And so tip #4 is about expert citations.
• 18:14
  So expert citations means if I'm an A travel agent, right and I
• 18:21
  want to build trust that this brand that I found online is
• 18:24
  actually a source, a reliable source in addition to word of
• 18:28
  mouth of what users are talking about on the Internet, I would
• 18:31
  try and find reliable sources of authority.
• 18:35
  Podcasts are a great example of that.
• 18:38
  Articles, blogs that are written by kind of experts in travel are
• 18:44
  another source. And so list of souls like kind
• 18:48
  of here is like 10 brands in London that really drive good
• 18:52
  short term rental experiences for their guests.
• 18:55
  These type of content we've seen actually inform the citations a
• 19:00
  lot because again, we're saying, OK, I trust that that writer and
• 19:07
  if that writer is referencing that, then by by kind of
• 19:13
  connection, I can trust the brand, right.
• 19:17
  So getting featured in podcasts, getting featured in articles was
• 19:25
  important for SEO. It's also very important for AI
• 19:30
  discoverability. It's all boiling down to trust,
• 19:33
  isn't it? The AI's got to trust you to
• 19:35
  cite you. That's kind of the bottom line,
• 19:37
  it seems. Yeah.
• 19:39
  So essentially AI needs to find you right, which is about you
• 19:43
  need to have a very kind of easily readable website and you
• 19:46
  need to have relevant content and then once advised, you needs
• 19:49
  to trust you, which is about word of mouth citations and the
• 19:53
  5th tip tip and kind of last but not but not least a very
• 19:57
  important one is reviews. So what your past gets talked
• 20:01
  about you right. So if you like, I can kind of
• 20:04
  dive into that now. Yeah, let's.
• 20:06
  Go for it. Yeah.
• 20:08
  So the fifth one is about reviews.
• 20:09
  And so, you know, in short term rentals, we all know how
• 20:12
  important reviews are Typically those, a lot of those reviews
• 20:17
  are captured by big platforms. And so you, what you want to do
• 20:21
  is make sure that you do two things #1 the reviews that
• 20:26
  you've done such a hard work out of capturing by serving these
• 20:31
  past guests. Well, they're reflected on your
• 20:33
  website as well. And then the second thing is you
• 20:35
  make you want to make sure that you build an independent source
• 20:38
  of reviews, right through sources that are trusted by
• 20:45
  these AI assistants. So Google business profile
• 20:48
  reviews are incredibly important.
• 20:50
  You know, Trustpilot, we've seen a lot of reference for.
• 20:54
  And so, you know, you want to make sure that there are other
• 20:57
  third party sources outside the OTAs that are building a kind of
• 21:03
  a strong review profile for you, right?
• 21:05
  That kind of gives you the independence.
• 21:07
  Unfortunately, first party reviews aren't as reliable
• 21:11
  because it's harder to verify by the AI.
• 21:14
  You know, it's harder for the AI to say, well, I'm seeing there's
• 21:19
  this five star review on your website, but is that kind of
• 21:23
  generated by AI itself or is that actually a person behind
• 21:26
  it? So normally my recommendation is
• 21:30
  actually showcase third party reviews on your website and link
• 21:33
  to the source. So that kind of helps to solve
• 21:38
  that reliability a little bit more.
• 21:42
  Makes a lot of sense. I mean, it's so many wonderful
• 21:45
  tips there and I'm sure a lot of people will find that really,
• 21:48
  really useful. Just before you go, please give
• 21:50
  us the lowdown about your business, host AI and where
• 21:53
  people can find out more information.
• 21:56
  Yeah, absolutely. So host AI is an end to end
• 21:59
  integrated platform to solve direct bookings for short term
• 22:02
  rental brands. So we offer white label
• 22:05
  storefronts that are AI powered for short term rental brands
• 22:08
  that does a lot of things that just discussed automatically so
• 22:11
  you don't have to kind of worry about it yourself.
• 22:14
  We do marketing and we so running advertising on behalf of
• 22:18
  short term rental brands to make sure that they get exposed to
• 22:21
  new guests. And we run automated e-mail
• 22:24
  marketing that are hyper personalized for individual
• 22:27
  guests. So it doesn't feel like
• 22:30
  marketing, it feels like you're building a relationship with the
• 22:33
  past guests and to help them bring back and stay with you
• 22:37
  again and this time directly. So we want to essentially build
• 22:41
  a growth function in a box for short term rental brands so that
• 22:45
  their direct bookings is put on autopilot and solved in one go.
• 22:52
  Sounds good and what's the website?
• 22:54
  Gethoseai.com. All right, check it out and
• 22:57
  we'll put all those details in the show notes.
• 22:59
  Amir, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you for joining us on
• 23:02
  House Planet Bite Size. I appreciate it.
• 23:04
  Thank you for for having me. Really enjoyed the conversation
• 23:07
  James. Now I want to ask you, if
• 23:09
  someone asks ChatGPT right now best vacation rentals in your
• 23:14
  city, would your brand show up? Drop a comment below and tell
• 23:19
  us, are you actively building AI visibility or are you still
• 23:23
  relying on traditional SEO? Because in 2026 and beyond, AI
• 23:28
  search is going to drive a growing share of travel
• 23:32
  discovery. All right, that's it for this
• 23:33
  episode of Host Planet Bite size.
• 23:35
  If you found this useful, hit like subscribe and share it with
• 23:39
  another host or property manager who needs to understand AI
• 23:43
  search. New episodes drop every single
• 23:46
  week. Packed with practical STR
• 23:48
  insights to help you grow your business.
• 23:51
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• 23:55
  Until next time, happy host.