Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / You Can't Afford to Be a Casual Airbnb Host Anymore

Transcript

You Can't Afford to Be a Casual Airbnb Host Anymore · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  Competition has increased for short term rentals.
• 0:03
  Pressure on on pricing, pressure on the experience and quality
• 0:09
  that you deliver as an owner, as a host.
• 0:11
  Think about how you're consciously going to stand out
• 0:14
  from the competition. If you're starting an Airbnb
• 0:17
  Business Today, you cannot afford to be a casual host
• 0:21
  anymore. So what does it actually take to
• 0:23
  compete? In this episode, we're breaking
• 0:25
  down the biggest mistakes new hosts make.
• 0:28
  How AI is pending the industry and why being 100% reliant on
• 0:34
  any channel, including direct bookings is not the way forward.
• 0:38
  My guest today is Sean Shirazian, the CEO of Logify.
• 0:43
  This is the House Planet podcast powered by Housefully.
• 0:51
  Sean, thank you for joining us on the Host Planet podcast.
• 0:54
  What do you make of this statement and what do you think
• 0:56
  it means for the STR industry in future?
• 0:59
  You can't afford to be a casual host anymore.
• 1:03
  Yeah, James, well, thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:07
  I think what we've seen across the last few years in short term
• 1:11
  rentals is the competition has picked up quite a bit.
• 1:14
  And this has been from other short term rental owners and
• 1:19
  hosts that have come into the market and in many cases in very
• 1:23
  kind of saturated locations with a ton of STR's now.
• 1:29
  But then you also have hotel competition as well, right?
• 1:33
  I mean, it used to be, I know as a traveler where you used to get
• 1:36
  a great deal on a short term rental when you would travel.
• 1:40
  Now that gap in pricing between a short term rental and a hotel
• 1:44
  in some cases is like eradicated and it's cheaper to go for a
• 1:48
  hotel maybe in some cities and locations.
• 1:51
  And so I think overall the competition has increased for
• 1:55
  short term rentals. It's put pressure on on pricing.
• 1:59
  It's put pressure on the experience and quality that you
• 2:03
  deliver in the accommodation and that which comes with it.
• 2:07
  And so as a result, as an owner, as a host, you really have to
• 2:13
  think about how you're consciously going to stand out
• 2:16
  from the competition across a number of dimensions.
• 2:20
  But it's not like it used to be post COVID in the travel boom,
• 2:25
  where you could easy, you could easily make a buck here or
• 2:28
  there. You definitely need to be
• 2:30
  conscious about how you're going to make that money.
• 2:34
  There's still an opportunity for it to be passive income.
• 2:36
  It doesn't have to be like you're working around the clock
• 2:39
  to be able to to earn this income, but you have to be more
• 2:42
  thoughtful and intentional about how you do that.
• 2:46
  You mentioned hotels and short term rentals and the fact
• 2:49
  there's not much between the two now.
• 2:51
  I was having a conversation the other day and it feels like
• 2:54
  hotels have learned from the success of short term rentals
• 2:57
  and also short term rentals are learning from hotels,
• 3:00
  particularly when it comes to upselling and those kind of
• 3:03
  things. To what degree do you think that
• 3:05
  they're kind of blending a little bit now?
• 3:08
  Yeah, definitely. I think there's, there's
• 3:10
  definitely learning that has been on both sides of it.
• 3:13
  I think the opportunity that we have is a short term rental
• 3:16
  industry to continue to learn from the hotels is really around
• 3:22
  the quality of service and experience.
• 3:26
  You know you're used to, if you're going to go to a hotel,
• 3:29
  get immediate responses to your questions.
• 3:32
  You know, you know the things are going to be clean.
• 3:35
  You know, for the most part in orderly fashion.
• 3:37
  If you have help or questions during your stay, you can get
• 3:40
  answers to those quickly. And I know many hosts do that
• 3:44
  well, But there's some cases where you know the level of
• 3:48
  service and the level of quality that you may be getting at a
• 3:52
  short term rental, there's a gap on that versus what you would
• 3:55
  get at a hotel. So when you combine that with a
• 4:00
  kind of a racing gap in pricing between the two, then it really
• 4:05
  makes for a competitive pressure.
• 4:07
  And so I think the area where we can learn again is on quality
• 4:11
  and the service that you get at a hotel, which is consistent.
• 4:15
  You mentioned that hosts have got to do a bit more to stand
• 4:18
  out. How do they do that?
• 4:20
  What would your top tips be to hosts who really want to stand
• 4:24
  out among the competition? I think the number one thing
• 4:29
  that you should do is really think about your brand as a, as
• 4:35
  an accommodation, right? Who are you going after?
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  What types of travellers are you catering towards, you know,
• 4:40
  families, are you catering towards business travellers?
• 4:44
  What kind of price point are you?
• 4:45
  Are you premium? Are you more in the middle?
• 4:48
  Are you kind of affordable and budget?
• 4:50
  And then, you know, I would, I would formulate the answer to
• 4:54
  those questions based off your competition.
• 4:57
  So based off your location, based off the number of STRS
• 5:00
  that are in your neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods,
• 5:02
  based off the hotels that are in your surrounding neighborhoods,
• 5:05
  where do you see an opportunity to create a positioning to stand
• 5:09
  out so that you can say, hey, look, there's actually a gap
• 5:12
  here in the market for housing for family travellers that are
• 5:17
  wanting to be in an urban location close to family
• 5:20
  friendly restaurants. That's what I'm going to go
• 5:22
  after. So everything I do as far as my
• 5:25
  listing description, as far as the pictures I take, as far as
• 5:29
  my direct booking website, as far as my pricing is all in line
• 5:33
  with that positioning and that branding and that target
• 5:36
  traveller that I'm going after. Most hosts just kind of come
• 5:40
  into it. They go straight to commodity
• 5:43
  level attributes pricing in a number of bedrooms.
• 5:47
  I have these sorts of things where you're not going to stand
• 5:49
  out on commodity attributes, so you're going to stand out by
• 5:53
  being clear about who you who you are, what you stand for and
• 5:56
  who you cater for. Quick pause now.
• 5:58
  This episode is powered by House Fully, which helps professional
• 6:01
  hosts and property managers run more efficient short term rental
• 6:05
  businesses with powerful PMS tools and industry leading
• 6:08
  digital guidebooks. If you want to streamline your
• 6:11
  operations and deliver a better guest experience, simply scan
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  the QR code on the screen if you're watching on YouTube, or
• 6:18
  check the link in the show notes to book a demo with a big friend
• 6:21
  of the show, Frank Bosey. And don't forget House Planet
• 6:24
  listeners get 2 special offers, $500 off onboarding for the
• 6:29
  property management software, and 30% off digital guidebooks
• 6:33
  for life. All right, back to it, when you
• 6:36
  hosts enter the market, what are the most common mistakes you see
• 6:40
  them making early on? I think the a few few of them,
• 6:45
  one is they come in and they again they, they kind of don't
• 6:51
  really address these questions we just talked about, which is
• 6:54
  thinking strategically about where is there a gap in, in the
• 6:58
  market as far as travelers, Where's a gap when it comes to
• 7:01
  the supply of housing and accommodations that are in my
• 7:04
  area? And then who am I going to go
• 7:06
  after relative to the opportunity that's there.
• 7:08
  So really clarifying that often times I see new hosts, they come
• 7:13
  in, they go straight into airbnborbooking.com or VRBO and
• 7:16
  say, OK, I'm getting my listing up there, right.
• 7:18
  I'm going to get my pictures, I'm going to get the description
• 7:21
  of my listing. I'm going to think about
• 7:22
  pricing. But there's a few steps that you
• 7:24
  should think through before you even do that, which is the ones
• 7:27
  that I just mentioned. I think the other thing to, to
• 7:30
  think about as you do that is really related to your, your
• 7:36
  kind of direct booking channel because yes, you need to be on
• 7:41
  the major marketplaces and that's incredibly important.
• 7:44
  But as we see now more and more with LLM search and travel
• 7:49
  search being disrupted in our own behavior changing quite
• 7:53
  dramatically. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm looking
• 7:56
  at multiple different sources before I get a sense of like
• 7:58
  where I'm going to stay. And so not only do you want to
• 8:02
  be clear about your brand and who you're for on the
• 8:05
  marketplaces, but then ultimately also on a direct
• 8:09
  booking channel, being clear about that as well.
• 8:11
  So that if I'm using my AI agent to travel search or I'm doing it
• 8:15
  myself in in ChatGPT or in cloud, I can I can see that from
• 8:20
  multiple angles and multiple sources.
• 8:23
  How important is it to have systems in place from day one?
• 8:29
  You know, I obviously I'm biased on this one, but it's, it's
• 8:33
  incredibly important. And I, I think, you know, I, I,
• 8:38
  I think for, you know, we, we focus and logify on the
• 8:41
  independent host. So I think there's definitely a
• 8:43
  wide spectrum of, of independent hosts that we see.
• 8:46
  But ultimately, what we know generally happens is that the
• 8:52
  level of bookings and occupancy rate that you can get just from
• 8:56
  1 channel doesn't satisfy the hunger and the ambition of our
• 9:00
  hosts and our owners and that what we see across the, across
• 9:04
  the industry. And so they're very quickly
• 9:06
  thinking about, OK, well, how do I get more bookings with, with
• 9:09
  less effort, right? Yes, I want to increase my
• 9:11
  occupancy rate relative to what I wanted, but I also don't want
• 9:14
  it to be a pain. And so systems like property
• 9:19
  management software is, is there to really kind of solve that
• 9:23
  pain point and that problem. So when we think about the
• 9:27
  customer metrics for hosts that matter the most occupancy rate,
• 9:32
  you know, average revenue per night, overall revenue that
• 9:34
  you're getting, time spent on your on your rental systems and
• 9:39
  software help you in each one of these dimensions.
• 9:43
  It's really thinking about what's going to be your tech
• 9:45
  stack to support you when it comes to managing your rental.
• 9:48
  Is is is super important. It feels like we're past the
• 9:52
  days of just putting something on Airbnb and learning as you go
• 9:56
  along, and I'm sure there'll be people listening to this
• 9:59
  thinking I'm starting out and I want to try and get direct
• 10:02
  bookings from day one. What would your best advice be
• 10:06
  to those people? I think it's important to
• 10:09
  understand that the channels that you have are kind of like a
• 10:15
  band or an orchestra. Like they, they, they're going
• 10:17
  to work together and they're going to play an amazing song
• 10:20
  and music, but they all serve a different purpose and role and
• 10:24
  you need all of them. So I think often times hosts get
• 10:27
  into the, into the market and space and they're like, hey, I,
• 10:30
  you know, I want the majority of my bookings to be direct.
• 10:33
  Yeah, that would be great. But especially when you're
• 10:35
  starting out, that's very, very difficult.
• 10:38
  And so you need like an assortment, a diversity of of
• 10:42
  channels to help support one another and they can complement
• 10:45
  one another. So being able to have a good
• 10:48
  volume of bookings that are coming from the marketplaces
• 10:52
  that you can build relationships with those travelers and with
• 10:55
  those guests for potentially future repeat bookings and then
• 10:59
  vice versa, right? And so I think it's really
• 11:02
  important that you you don't put all of your eggs in anyone
• 11:05
  basket when it comes to channels, whether that be direct
• 11:08
  or the marketplace is and having a portfolio play, because that
• 11:12
  portfolio play will ultimately help you rise overall on, on
• 11:16
  your, on your bookings. I'm sure there are people out
• 11:19
  there and I know there are property management businesses
• 11:21
  out there that really pride themselves on the direct
• 11:23
  bookings and they want to be at 100% direct booking and some are
• 11:27
  either there or very, very close to it.
• 11:29
  Why is that potentially a bit of a problem?
• 11:34
  As far as having too many direct bookings, look, I think anytime
• 11:40
  you have all of your customer and and kind of traveler and
• 11:45
  guest acquisition concentrated in one source, there's always a
• 11:50
  risk of that. And the risk to that right now
• 11:53
  is that that gets completely disrupted by LLM search, right?
• 11:56
  That gets completely disrupted with how we are all searching
• 12:00
  these days and using these tools.
• 12:03
  And So what if tomorrow all of a sudden all of this direct
• 12:07
  booking traffic that you were getting for a variety of
• 12:09
  reasons, whether you have great SEO or whatever that looks,
• 12:12
  looks like gets upended completely.
• 12:15
  And a number of us in the SAS industry that are seeing it from
• 12:19
  a different angle have seen that, right.
• 12:21
  A number of us SAS companies and products that have had
• 12:23
  incredible SEO and the majority of their traffic coming from
• 12:27
  organic have been completely disrupted by LLM Search.
• 12:31
  And so just as we as companies need to have a diversity of
• 12:36
  acquisition channels so that we're not overexposed on risk,
• 12:40
  you as a host also maybe you think about diversity to hedge
• 12:44
  against any potential risk that may happen.
• 12:46
  If you want to learn more about what's actually working in this
• 12:48
  industry right now, whether it's tech, revenue management, guest
• 12:52
  experience, upselling or AI, the House Planet Roadshow is coming
• 12:56
  to Auk City near you. Tickets are just £40 each and
• 12:59
  available now from our websites and they scan the QR code on
• 13:03
  screen if you're watching on YouTube or hit the link in the
• 13:06
  show notes to find out more. What are you doing as a business
• 13:10
  to make sure that the LLMS are recommending what you're doing
• 13:15
  rather than your competitors? Yeah.
• 13:18
  So, you know, this is a a pain point that we share with our
• 13:23
  hosts because Logify as all of you know, the industry has been
• 13:28
  been impacted this and, and one of the things that Logify has
• 13:32
  been historically really strong at and continues to be is all
• 13:36
  the content generation that we have out there that really helps
• 13:39
  to educate hosts on how to manage a short term rental, how
• 13:44
  to make money in this space, how to understand about the latest
• 13:47
  regulations. Well, we've seen that that
• 13:50
  content distribution and consumption has changed
• 13:52
  dramatically. And so how prospects hosts are
• 13:57
  finding out about Logify and then getting to us and then
• 14:00
  converting the path in the journey looks very different
• 14:03
  than it did a couple years ago. And we're learning a lot about
• 14:07
  how do we how do we adjust based off of these new flows and these
• 14:11
  new journeys that we're seeing. And we're taking those learnings
• 14:14
  that we're having actually baking it that in into our
• 14:18
  customers workflows when it comes to their direct booking
• 14:20
  website. So when it comes to you just
• 14:23
  give a simple example, when it comes to FA QS, FA QS are one of
• 14:29
  the things that LLMS love, right?
• 14:31
  LLMS love structured content and being able to understand like a
• 14:36
  set of questions instead of responses as they are as they're
• 14:38
  doing the searching. Well, we're helping our
• 14:41
  customers with their direct booking websites when it comes
• 14:44
  to like FAQs being a critical part of that and then eventually
• 14:48
  helping them understand when it comes to like SEO and Geo
• 14:52
  generative engine optimization. This is where you're standing as
• 14:56
  far as your optimization. Here's where you've got
• 14:58
  opportunity to be even more optimized in the new era of
• 15:01
  search. Yeah, it's really interesting
• 15:03
  and it's a conversation that we have a lot of host planet with
• 15:07
  potential partners and sponsors. And we say, well, look, by being
• 15:11
  on our podcast, you're going to get exposure on YouTube in our
• 15:15
  pages. It's a trusted educational and
• 15:17
  media platform. It's going to help you.
• 15:19
  And we're having these conversations like, right, OK,
• 15:21
  we're having a collaboration together, right?
• 15:24
  When we do a blog, if we do a blog on our site, you need to do
• 15:27
  a blog on your site as well. Let's tell the LLMS that we're
• 15:30
  working together so they can see this clear link.
• 15:33
  So yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing really how things have
• 15:36
  shifted in, it feels like a really, really short space of
• 15:40
  time. Like literally in the last six
• 15:41
  months or a year ago. This is, this is the, you know,
• 15:44
  the, the way people are searching for everything has,
• 15:46
  has completely changed. Let's let's talk about tech
• 15:50
  then. So I mean, how much does the
• 15:51
  right tech stack actually change the way a host runs their
• 15:56
  business? And what do you think the right
• 15:58
  tech stack looks like in 2026? I think, you know, if you think
• 16:04
  about anything you do in your personal life or your
• 16:07
  professional life and you think about the, the tech that
• 16:10
  supports it, I think we can all think about examples of when we
• 16:14
  had the right tools and the right stack and, and what our
• 16:17
  life was like doing that particular task or workflow and
• 16:21
  what it was like when we had like incredible set of tools
• 16:26
  and, and tech stack. It can be night and day.
• 16:30
  And so it's the same thing for hosts that are thinking about
• 16:32
  how do I, how do I get the most of my rental, both as far as
• 16:36
  getting more bookings, but also ultimately doing that with less
• 16:39
  effort. And I think, you know, one of
• 16:42
  the great advantages of a property management software
• 16:45
  tool is that, you know, for many of of the big players like us
• 16:51
  that are out there, it's an all in one solution, right?
• 16:54
  So it's not like you're needing to get a plethora of point
• 16:58
  solution tools and then connect these tools together, which end
• 17:02
  up in fragmentation, where ends up in ultimately you having to
• 17:06
  spend more time going into different tools and, and
• 17:10
  stitching the data together. And so that's one of the biggest
• 17:13
  benefits. And, and where I'd say host to
• 17:15
  think about is ideally trying to get all of your needs solved
• 17:20
  with one tool that is fit for purpose for your profile.
• 17:23
  Because there are number of tools that are more catered
• 17:26
  towards large property managers. There are number of tools that
• 17:29
  are more catered towards independent hosts that have a
• 17:31
  couple listings like ourselves. And so you know, each of these,
• 17:35
  their ease of use, the complexity of the feature set is
• 17:37
  going to be vary quite a bit and so you need to be thoughtful
• 17:40
  about that. How are you utilizing AI at the
• 17:44
  moment and how is AI going to change your platform over the
• 17:49
  next year or so? Yeah.
• 17:51
  So across the customer experience, we're applying AI
• 17:57
  and so if I kind of just walk you on a journey of the customer
• 18:01
  journey that they would come on and and coming through to logify
• 18:05
  when you sign up for a trial. Actually let me start even
• 18:08
  before that. When you land on our website
• 18:11
  today, we have AAI avatar that greets you on our website and
• 18:17
  it's there in the bottom right hand corner to because we know
• 18:21
  to the point earlier on we get traffic from a number of
• 18:24
  sources. These prospects may be in
• 18:27
  varying degrees of the consideration set of, of logify
• 18:30
  and PMS. And so we really want to help you kind of get to the
• 18:34
  information that you're looking for or get your question
• 18:37
  answered as quickly as possible. This AI avatar experience allows
• 18:41
  us to do that in a super seamless, natural way with
• 18:45
  prospects that are landing on our website.
• 18:48
  Then let's say you move forward and say, hey, there's something
• 18:50
  interesting here. I want to do a trial with
• 18:52
  Logify. Well, when you enter the trial
• 18:54
  experience with Logify, we give you the option to get an, A demo
• 18:58
  overview of the product with an AI agent.
• 19:01
  And this is 100% customized and bespoke to your needs.
• 19:06
  So the AI agent will understand and tell me about how many
• 19:08
  listings you have, what are your goals, how experienced you are?
• 19:11
  Are you coming with any kind of experience in listing on
• 19:14
  marketplaces or not? And then based off of that, it's
• 19:18
  a bespoke tour and overview of how Logify works and how it can
• 19:23
  best meet your needs. And then let's say you've
• 19:26
  converted to being a customer. We offer on boarding accession.
• 19:31
  You know, we have the option both with the human, our human
• 19:34
  team or human agents, but also with an AI agent.
• 19:37
  Let's say you're pressed for time and you really want to just
• 19:40
  get just get going. Now you can do that.
• 19:43
  We have AI across the actual product functionality.
• 19:47
  You know, the main one, which we know is a is a a big pain point
• 19:52
  on messaging, right where where LLMS can do an incredible the
• 19:55
  job when it comes to suggesting replies, suggesting messaging to
• 20:03
  really save time in that part of the workflow.
• 20:06
  And so these are just a few examples of where we're applying
• 20:11
  it, but we're definitely continuing to build on that and
• 20:14
  then also taking the learnings from.
• 20:17
  These points in the customer journey to kind of say how could
• 20:20
  this can come to life actually as a Co host experience that
• 20:24
  sits on top of the product. Because we know that some of our
• 20:27
  customers especially that are on the go.
• 20:29
  A lot of our customers love our mobile app and and and
• 20:32
  experiencing this on the go, having a a much more natural
• 20:36
  interface that we can help customers with that way as well.
• 20:41
  I had a call a few weeks ago. I don't think I'm breaking any
• 20:43
  confidences here either with a couple of guys who are building
• 20:48
  what they believe is kind of the next generation of PMS, which is
• 20:52
  completely AI powered. And the property manager comes
• 20:56
  along and basically prompts it for exactly what they need,
• 21:01
  whether it's pricing, whether it's availability, whether it's
• 21:04
  integrations, etcetera, etcetera.
• 21:07
  So basically building the exact tech that you need rather than
• 21:10
  using a PMS which has lots of different tech and different
• 21:14
  features, but you might not use maybe 6070% of them.
• 21:19
  My question is, how do you think the PMS space is going to evolve
• 21:23
  over the next few years? Do you expect to see something
• 21:26
  like this where you know property managers basically
• 21:28
  build exactly the tech they want?
• 21:30
  Yeah. I, I mean, look, it's such a
• 21:34
  amazing time to be working in tech, right?
• 21:37
  So both as a builder on this side of it, to be building tools
• 21:41
  and building experiences when you have the type of tools at
• 21:45
  your fingertips now, it is incredible.
• 21:48
  And then from a customer standpoint, the benefits that
• 21:52
  you can get from this are incredible, right?
• 21:54
  Again, if we go back to our own behavior and I think about how
• 21:58
  I'm using Claude for cowork or how I'm using it to build
• 22:03
  prototypes or how I'm using it to interact with the team and
• 22:06
  and summarize insights, it has completely changed my life and
• 22:10
  significantly improved it in a way that I can never imagine
• 22:14
  going back to the old way. And so when you look at that and
• 22:17
  you say, wow, that's incredible. Yes, there's no question that
• 22:21
  that lowers the barriers to entry as far as number of
• 22:25
  startups that are going to come. And we're seeing this whether
• 22:28
  they're coming out of Y Combinator or the ones that you
• 22:30
  spoke to. And so and that's great.
• 22:33
  That's great for customers, it's great for the industry.
• 22:36
  It kind of raises the the bar keeps us all on our game when it
• 22:40
  comes to, you know, driving real value to customers.
• 22:45
  You know, our where we're focusing obviously around this
• 22:50
  is how do we leverage what's unique to logify, right?
• 22:54
  How do we, how do we compete with all the new competitors and
• 22:58
  others that are going to be applying AI?
• 23:00
  And really what it comes down to for us is we've been in this
• 23:05
  space for 13 years. For 13 years, we've been
• 23:08
  exclusively focused on serving the needs of independent hosts
• 23:11
  and small scale property managers.
• 23:14
  We have nearly 30,000 customers, over 100,000 listings all around
• 23:19
  the world. And so when you look at the
• 23:22
  context, the data, the experiences that have fed the
• 23:27
  engine of our customer experience all these years, we
• 23:31
  are pointing that towards a world where that feeds the
• 23:36
  experiences of Logify tomorrow in a rapid way.
• 23:40
  So that if we hear on a sales call that someone didn't sign up
• 23:44
  for Logify because we were missing a feature, how that
• 23:47
  insight gets fed automatically into a backlog that potentially
• 23:52
  could get built by AI agents in the future to improve that gap
• 23:56
  that we had in the product. So for us, it's all about speed
• 24:01
  to learning and speed to use all of these insights and to use the
• 24:05
  skill that we have to be able to continue to improve the customer
• 24:08
  experience. What are the biggest
• 24:11
  opportunities for hosts and property managers in this new AI
• 24:15
  world over the next few years? I think the, you know, the
• 24:21
  biggest opportunities are it is going to, I'm very optimistic
• 24:26
  that it's going to have a tremendous and transformational
• 24:29
  impact on the things that they matter most about saving time,
• 24:33
  not spending so much time on managing the rental, improving
• 24:36
  occupancy, improving your overall revenue you're getting
• 24:39
  generating from your rental. Now there's no question that in
• 24:42
  the early days it's going to be a lot of trial and error, right?
• 24:45
  There's going to be some tools out there that are, are working
• 24:49
  well for your, your use case and your workflow.
• 24:52
  And that's all good. You may be building your own
• 24:54
  custom apps yourself because you, you kind of like are
• 24:56
  skilled in that and have interest and you're plugging
• 24:59
  that in with a few other tools and that's great.
• 25:02
  So I think this is the this, this like chapter that we're in
• 25:06
  is about experimentation, it's about pioneering, it's about
• 25:10
  trying a number of things out to see what works.
• 25:12
  Because ultimately, you know, this is this is true in a lot of
• 25:15
  cases, but everyone's case is so unique, right?
• 25:20
  As far as where they are as a host in their in their life
• 25:23
  cycle, where their property is, what the competition looks like
• 25:28
  in that location, what their goals are.
• 25:30
  And so what's amazing about this future state of tech is you can
• 25:34
  get to a spot where you can build one of one experiences
• 25:39
  where you can be incredibly personalized in the tools and
• 25:43
  that they fit like a glove to your use case and your needs.
• 25:46
  And so I'd be constantly be experimenting because I think
• 25:49
  the opportunity to drive impact in these areas is massive.
• 25:54
  Just before you go then, Shawn, give us the lowdown on Logify.
• 25:57
  Who are you built for? Who are your target customers
• 26:00
  and where do people need to go to find out more?
• 26:02
  Yeah, absolutely. So Logify is a property
• 26:05
  management software. As I mentioned earlier, we are
• 26:08
  focused on independent hosts and small scale property managers
• 26:12
  all around the world. You know, we've got nearly
• 26:15
  30,000 customers, over 100,000 listings that we represent and
• 26:20
  really focus on helping our customers get more bookings with
• 26:23
  less effort. And given the profile of, of
• 26:26
  customer that we go after, it's incredibly important that we
• 26:29
  build an easy to use experience, right, that works
• 26:31
  out-of-the-box. There's not complexity, we
• 26:34
  totally understand. And most of our customers are
• 26:37
  coming straight from they were just on one, one marketplace
• 26:40
  like Airbnb and, and we're their first stop when it comes to
• 26:44
  using a property management software.
• 26:45
  And so we need to make that incredibly easy, which is what
• 26:48
  we've been focused on, you know, the, the whole history and what
• 26:53
  we'll continue to be focused in on.
• 26:55
  And this is where AI is just going to be a massive
• 26:57
  accelerant. Exciting times ahead and we'll
• 27:01
  put the links to Logify in the show notes.
• 27:03
  Sean, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you for joining us on the
• 27:06
  Host Planet podcast. Thank you, James.
• 27:09
  Now over to you. If you're watching on YouTube,
• 27:12
  drop a comment and tell us. Do you think the casual host era
• 27:16
  is over? And if you're just starting out,
• 27:19
  what's been your biggest challenge so far?
• 27:22
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• 27:25
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• 27:28
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• 27:36
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• 27:39
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