Have You Tried This AI Tool for Hosts? Hostaway AI
Hello hello
How was your week?
Good, bad, wavy?
Mine was productive and a bit wavy. And cold! I love cold...
In the spirit of last week's newsletter on how PriceLabs AI roasted me, I am continuing this guinea pig series.
So I was recording another training video, this time on Hostaway, the Property Management Software that we have been using for 3 years now.
And there are a couple exciting updates. And promising.
Hostaway just released AI Replies under their Inbox tab.
The best part of this AI replies is that it gets trained on your exact messages and history of your messages, how you replied in the past, how you handled past guests, what your specific responses were related to thermostats, door locks, amenities, etc.
Once the AI got trained on our messages, it produced 12 rules for AI that covered check-in and check-out responses, what kind of tone it should be using in replies, rules to apply when guests ask about discounts, or rules around long-term stays.
I checked every rule it generated and it was very accurate to exactly what we typically respond.
For example, here is the very first rule regarding the tone of voice it generated (I didn't type any of this - it was all automatic!)
Here is another rule that got generated regarding check-out instructions:
Notice how nuanced the rule is.
The AI was trained on enough of our responses to understand how, why, and what we typically respond.
You can also add other rules for the AI to craft responses.
Here is the demo by Hostaway so you can better visualize it.
I am so impressed.
This will make hosts' lives even easier than before for messages that are not covered by automated messages.
Now the second one!
Under Hostaway's Hosting Quality tab, you can find Reviews Quality and AI insights.
I tried it too and it was amazing. The AI analyzed reviews with all our past guests and provided a summary of the things we can improve.
Even though we are always trying to improve the properties, I immediately noticed a couple things that slipped away.
It also brought back memories of when we got our first 4-star review, which happened after 100 5-star reviews and I freaked out.
I think this could be useful for both property managers and owners to quickly find opportunities for improvement and act on those.
If you are an owner who uses a property management company, you can ask them to generate such AI insights provided this tool is available on the PMS used.
The reason why this looks very promising to me is the following:
We as hosts have some manual tasks left - just a few - that such AI could potentially handle in the future in Hostaway or similar PMS:
Analyze sentiment of the messages and decide whether to send the last message about asking for a review. In our case, if we have a bad experience with a guest, we pause this message manually currently. (Not every PMS allows you to pause individual messages, by the way).
Offer personalized experiences in the area based on the person's preferences - actually, with AI messages, I bet I can create a rule to send specific lists of things for hikers, winery explorers, and families with kids types of guests.
Offering discounted stays on adjacent days. If the guest booked from Dec 15 to Dec 17 and you have a gap on Dec 18, the AI could send a message - hey, we would love to offer you Dec 18 at 20% discount. Just as an example.
It should be easier to host with all these tools developing and releasing their updates.
I am excited and hopeful.
Hope you too.
One thing that I constantly try to remind myself is not to overuse and to keep the personal touch that feels human no matter how many apps you are running behind your stay.
Does your PMS have some exciting AI tools? Curious to learn more!
Just hit reply to this email. I read every email and I love hearing from you.
That's all for today.
Have a wonderful week ahead and do something fun!
Till next week dear readers.
