Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / 5 Reasons Your STR Needs AI Right Now

Transcript

5 Reasons Your STR Needs AI Right Now · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to House Planet Bite Size, the podcast
• 0:03
  brought to you by host Planet and Housefully.
• 0:06
  My name is James Farley, the founder of House Planet, and our
• 0:08
  goal is to share everything you need to know about buying and
• 0:11
  managing short term rentals. Today's guest is Cole Rubin from
• 0:15
  Conduit and he's got 5 reasons why vacation rental hosts should
• 0:19
  be using AI. Okay, real talk now for all you
• 0:22
  hosts out there, you know that moment when you guest messages
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  you again with hey, what's the Wi-Fi code?
• 0:28
  Or you're staring at 5 different calendars wondering if you've
• 0:32
  accidentally double booked the cottage.
• 0:34
  Yes, we've all been there. That's why here at Houseplanner,
• 0:38
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  Control Center. It handles bookings across all
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  the big platforms, syncs your calendars to ensure there are no
• 0:48
  double bookings, automates guest messages, and even creates these
• 0:52
  really slick digital guidebooks that stop all the repeat
• 0:55
  questions. Honestly, it just makes your
• 0:58
  life easier and keeps your guests happier, helping you
• 1:02
  achieve those all important five star reviews.
• 1:05
  And here is a little bonus. If you're a House Planet
• 1:07
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• 1:12
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• 1:16
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• 1:18
  notes and use the codes Planet 500 for the PMS and House Planet
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• 1:27
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• 1:30
  from Housefulie. He will show you how it all
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  works. Less stress, more bookings
• 1:37
  sorted with Cole. Thank you for joining us on Host
• 1:47
  Planet Bite Size. You've got 5 reasons why STR
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  hosts should be using AI, so take it away with reason #1.
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  Hey James, thanks for having me. First reason why operators
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  should be using AI is fast responses equal better reviews.
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  Guests expect their demands to be met near instantly in today's
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  day and age. So having an AI agent that can
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  instantly respond accurately should translate into better
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  reviews as well as more inquiries accepted if they're
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  asking questions on the when they inquire for the property.
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  Yeah, fast review's so important, and certainly with
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  the OTAs, right, Because they're judging you and scoring you, and
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  if you're responding to guests quickly, they're going to score
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  you higher and potentially you're going to be seen by more
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  guests. Yes, so you should be getting
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  better communication scores from current guests, converting more
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  guests because when they inquire, their questions are
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  answered instantly. And then overall another side
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  effect is you should be ranking higher on the OTAs due to your
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  reply speed. And in relation to making sure
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  that your replies are getting through quickly, as a host, how
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  can you do that? You can do that by using an AI
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  tool that knows all the information about your business.
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  So when a question comes in, the AI looks at the knowledge base,
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  the context it has access to, and generates the response back
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  to whoever messaged you. All right, so that's one reason
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  to be using AI then. Reason #2 Colt.
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  Your team gets freed up to focus on higher leverage tasks within
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  the business. The team does not need to be
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  answering the Wi-Fi questions. Check in time, the door codes,
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  All very easy stuff AI can handle.
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  Take off their plate and let them go.
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  Focus on higher leverage tasks. Accounting, optimizing the OTA
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  listings, converting more homeowners, whatever that may be
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  should free their time to go focus on some some more higher
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  leverage output tasks within the operation.
• 4:00
  We spoke to Graham Donahue recently from Sykes Holiday
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  Cottages. I think they're the biggest
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  property management company in the UK, managing about 36,000
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  rentals, and they're implementing AI throughout the
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  business. And one thing Graham always says
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  is I want AI to give each of our employees a superpower.
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  Is that the way you approach it kind of running an AI business?
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  Oh, definitely. Even if you're not implementing
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  AI per SE to try and reduce headcounts, it can make the
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  existing team tennis more effective.
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  And that same team you have today, whether you have, you
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  know, 100 listings and you're trying to scale to 500, maybe AI
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  plus the existing team gets there and you don't have to hire
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  more people as you continue to scale.
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  Superb. OK then, Cole.
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  Reason #3. Reason #3 is short term rental
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  managers historically have information in lots of different
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  places and just they haven't built a fully robust company
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  knowledge base. This is another indirect side
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  effect of setting up an AI tool is to train the system you need
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  to feed it all of your information.
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  So at the end of that you have an agent that's trained to
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  answer all your guest messages as well as an internal source of
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  truth that your company can chat with.
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  Search through to find questions across the whole business.
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  Yeah, I guess by using AI or a large language model, the more
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  you use it, the more information you feed it, I guess the more
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  effective it becomes for your business.
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  Definitely, and some AI tools like Conduit actually grow.
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  The knowledge base grows as the team responds to messages that
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  the system didn't know. So guest asked a question that
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  is nowhere to be found in the knowledge base onto it's not
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  going to make up a response and assume something.
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  It's going to escalate it to a human to respond manually and
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  would treat that escalation as an opportunity to learn more
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  about the business and add it to the knowledge.
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  Base Superb. OK, then reason #4.
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  The AI can look at your calendar, find orphanites, gap
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  nights, and upsell open nights at maybe a discount to existing
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  bookings to make sure your calendar is fully optimized.
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  Yeah, great tip. And it's something that that
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  I've definitely done manually in the past is where you see that
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  extra night and you've got guests either side.
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  You might, if you've got time, send a message to the guest
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  who's due to check out or, or usually it's the one checking in
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  early. You say, hey, do you want to, do
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  you want to come a little bit early and you know, just pay
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  that kind of early checking fee or the extra night.
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  But with the AI you can you can just set up that, set something
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  up, set up a an alert and it will do it automatically.
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  Definitely. And it's not even just gap
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  nights, early check insurance, late checkouts.
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  Someone requests an early check in.
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  There's no same day turn in the calendar properties clean.
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  Yeah, you could come early. It's $40.
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  There's the link to do it. They check out and have like
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  maybe a workflow after that where it goes and calls the API
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  for the door lock updates that sends a Slack that you just sold
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  an early check in. Sky's really the limit.
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  If you have a platform that has, you know, webworks access other
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  tools and you can build these workflows that not only automate
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  the messaging, but the preceding actions that happen with that
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  message across the business. Yeah, it's, it's important to do
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  these things because in my experience, you'd be surprised
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  at how often people say, do you know what?
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  Yeah, I'd love to check in a day early or five or six hours
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  early. So, yeah, definitely worth
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  having these these automations set up.
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  All right then, Cole reason #5. The last reason this one's
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  predominantly for the larger operators is they can make sure
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  that their brand voice rules and policies are consistently being
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  carried out throughout all the messages across different
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  regions, franchisees, brands, departments.
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  However they're segmenting these larger orgs.
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  You train the system once on the policies.
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  Policies change, you update in the system and you can be sure
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  that every support agent is carrying out the correct tone of
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  voice and rules set up for the business.
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  Yeah, having that brand tone of voice, so, so important. 5
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  brilliant reasons there, Cole. Thanks for sharing those.
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  Now, before I ask you about how AI is taking over the vacation
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  rental industry and taking over the world, tell us a bit about
• 8:32
  Conduit and where people can find out more information.
• 8:35
  Of course, Conduit is a platform to build AI agents to automate
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  conversations. We work with a ton of people in
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  the hospitality space, hotels, lots of short term rentals all
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  around the world. It's our largest industry,
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  directly integrated to Airbnb, all the major PMSS, and you can
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  find more information about us at Conduit dot AI.
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  Superb. OK, check it out.
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  We'll put all those details in the show notes as well.
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  So crystal ball time, how do you think AI is going to be
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  affecting the vacation rental industry in five, maybe 10 years
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  time? 5-10 years time, I think it's a,
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  it's a very safe bet to say that every single business, not even
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  just within the short term rental space will have some kind
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  of an agent on the back end of their conversation channels
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  talking to their customers. So I'd say like the people that
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  are adopting it now are definitely setting themselves up
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  for success to kind of future proof the business.
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  But it's just clearer than ever that this is going to be
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  something that's a part of every single business that talks to
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  customers. And I'm sure there'll be a few
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  hosts and property managers out there who might be a little bit
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  frightened about AI and, and don't really know where to
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  start. If you were talking to them and
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  advising them what to do, what should they do to kind of like
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  train themselves a little bit and and start finding out what
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  AI is all about? Well, I mean, I think it it also
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  too comes to the businesses at a certain scale, like a, a host
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  with a couple properties like it's, it's probably not worth it
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  for them to set up AI because they're not out of scale yet
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  where that that really matters. And a lot of the systems too,
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  like cost a certain amount of money where the out the gains
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  from the system are probably not doing enough to the the bottom
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  line, given just the size of the business goes to say like any
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  business, small or large can work with AI.
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  Just generally like the ones we've seen move the fastest are
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  the larger orgs and just thinks to future proof yourself.
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  I mean, it's just I mean using ChatGPT asking it like tools to
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  be using. It's really just keep keeping
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  your finger on the pulse of like the new stuff that's coming out
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  and not being afraid of it. I think there's like a lot of
• 11:00
  similar that AI and the robots are kind of going to take over,
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  but in a lot of cases we're seeing that the AI is more
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  hospitable than some humans. That's good to hear.
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  We don't want a Terminator situation, do we, Cole?
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  It's been a real pleasure. Thanks for joining us on host
• 11:16
  Planet. Bite size of.
• 11:18
  Course. Please tell me James.
• 11:20
  All right, that's it for today's episode.
• 11:21
  My thanks to Cole for joining us on today's show and sharing
• 11:24
  those essential tips. Remember, this podcast is
• 11:27
  brought to you in collaboration with House Philly, which is
• 11:30
  trusted by short term rental professionals across the globe.
• 11:33
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• 11:50
  the link in the show notes or head to housefully.com.
• 11:54
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• 11:57
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• 12:00
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• 12:04
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• 12:06
  That's it for today's episode. Until next time, happy hosting.