Miles: Hi there, welcome to today's episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast. Today's episode is a recording from this week's town hall that we hosted live on Zoom. You can join our next public bi-weekly town hall by heading to hospitable.com forward slash town dash halls. You can always watch past event recordings too in the same place. That's hospitable.com forward slash town dash halls. Enjoy today's episode.
Speaker 9: Okay, hello everyone and welcome to today's town hall. Thank you so much for joining us. And we're gonna get started with a few housekeeping notes before we start today's bi-weekly town hall. ⁓ so thank you again for joining us. As always, we are recording today's session, so if you get disconnected at any point, you can go on head over to YouTube at youtube.com forward slash at hospitable and follow along on our channel there. ⁓ it's worth noting that our recordings are also auto-dubbed in multiple languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, and more. So if you have any issue following along in English, you can watch the recording back there in multiple languages as well. ⁓ so we're going to start off with some product updates from the team and as always move on to some QA from the audience. Without further ado, we're going to briefly bring our disclaimer and then I'm going to pass on to Marina to do a verbal update. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Miles. Hello everyone. So two weeks ago we launched the Verbal Partner Connection, and this is the biggest release of all time for Hospitable. We never launched anything as big as Verbal, and I want you to guide you today to show you where we are at. So we now have 1500 hosts live on the connection today. In January, that was 15. And two weeks ago, we opened it to every host. And I remembered that by the end of the town hall, we already had over eighty hosts who were watching us live, already connected and live on verbal. So in 14 days, that number went from a few hundred to more than fifteen hundred hosts. And we're seeing all sorts of hosts joining. Some of them are brand new to verbal, some of them are upgrading from our legacy connection, some of them are switching to hospitable from other platforms. And those hosts altogether now received over 3,000 reservations so far. And I remember two weeks ago when I came here and we talked about it. I was like super happy with the fact that we had just reached 1000 during the town hall, and it's been two weeks and we already tripled that number. But here's what that number actually matters to you. Because we already processed over 3.4 million dollars in reservations. And this number is not really ours, it's yours. And we so from the host who joined since two weeks ago. Combined, they made already over a million dollars. And the 3.5 is like from everything since the beginning. So the connection was the biggest release we ever had at Hospitable. It was a huge success. And the connection is also very new and it doesn't behave at all like the connection. So it's very normal that you have questions about how things work. So we receive all sorts of questions. Why is a credit card needed? Which credit card do I add? When do I get paid? Which bank account do I get paid to? Also, questions about your calendar. We know that when you migrate to verbal, the verbal calendar stops working because hospitable is now the source of truth for your calendar. So many of you have questions about where do you do I check if my prices are correct? How do I check if my reservations are blocking the calendar correctly? And we want to be able to provide a high quality experience to all of you who are upgrading. So we decided to step back to be able to support all of your questions. And in the meantime, we're limiting upgrades to the new connection. So if you're not on the new connection yet, tomorrow when you go upgrade, we will place you on a queue of users, first come, first served, and we will let you know when it's your turn. Okay, so coming next is Andrew to tell you all about the desk app.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much. Switching gears, let's talk about the Hospitable Tasks app. If you haven't heard yet, Hospitable Now has an English and Spanish language companion app for a giving a dedicated workspace to your teammates who are doing your maintenance, doing your cleanings, and other jobs. You can manage ⁓ their work and they can manage the status of their work from the app, giving you real-time updates in Hospitable, and you can pay them instantly, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly. However, you prefer. So today I have a couple of fun updates to share, and we'll start with a quality of life improvement for your teammates. So image upload in the tasks app is now much, much faster. I'm sharing a technical image, but a very real-world win. So if you look on the left side of the graph, you see those spikes. This is when we got feedback that hey, some of us are having problems uploading images. Some images were taking a long time, like ⁓ at the very extreme edge, like 30 seconds to upload an image. ⁓ what you look at in the graph is like the the worst 1% is that purple line, the worst 5% is that black line, but the average is actually pretty good. It never got too bad. But some people had problems. So if you look at the two arrows that I've dropped on there, those were when we released a couple improvements to that. We did back end compression, we did a different type of front-end compression, and we've basically flattened out those curves. So now your team, your cleaners mainly, should not be seeing any problems. The y-axis there is in milliseconds. Sorry, I said it was technical. ⁓ but you're averaging basically in like the one second category for each image upload. ⁓ so that that feels like a big win. And the other, like I think even bigger quality of life improvement on image upload is that we made it happen in the background. And so if you are a cleaner that's uploading like a batch of 50 images, you can now continue moving about the app, completing the checklist ⁓ on the cleaning. And those 50 images are just uploading the background, not bothering you at all. So technical, but ⁓ nice quality of life when now for the fun stuff. So, what we're releasing today, we are now sharing guest reviews to your cleaners. So, this is a screenshot from the main page of the tasks app, and now your cleaners can see recent reviews, and we're sharing the cleanliness rating. So, what is relevant to the cleaner on reservations that were assigned to them? We're starting with Airbnb reservations, but we'll be expanding this to other channels in the coming days. What we're doing is we're importing the past 50 reservations. So if you've had your cleaner for a while, they've been doing jobs for you. They're gonna get all access to all of their past performance data. And then we're gonna capture everything going forward. And if they tap through to that review section, they're going to see their performance in the aggregate and they can track their performance over time. We want to help you achieve better quality. ⁓ by enabling your cleaners to get that instant feedback. We talked to a lot of hosts when we were getting set up and they were copying and pasting content. ⁓ it's a very laborious task, and you're never going to be doing it in the most responsive way because these reviews come in asynchronously. So we're super excited to be sharing this content. In this view, we're generating snippets of each review and we're using AI to try and pull out the relevant ⁓ parts of that review for your cleaner. We have a specific audience in mind. So if they tap through to any of those reviews, we're going to share them the full content of that review on the next slide. And we highlight again the ports, the parts that are important to them so they can dig into the review. And I think this is this is great. ⁓ this review is actually real. It looks like it's AI generated. It's so kind of over the top ⁓ complimentary. Some of you get these nice flowery reviews from your guests, great. ⁓ but I think it's it's super valuable. We consider I think the level of ownership that we want to have in again, like helping you achieve property quality. ⁓ part of that is equipping your your cleaners. To have more sense of ownership about the results of their job and of the impact. And this will tie in in the future. If you think back to the initial release, we kind of gave more of the roadmap of where we're going with the tasks app. We want to have an automated tipping mechanism based on five-star reviews in the app. So this is kind of the first big step towards that is if we incentivize cleaners and if we can automate the tipping that's happening on that. I think we can make a really big movement in increasing the ownership level on your cleaners, caring about the impact of the job that they do. ⁓ so yeah, this is this is great. There's all kinds like we, as we were developing the prompt to go through and actually pull the relevant pieces, we're looking at a lot of real reviews, and there is so much valuable feedback, especially in the private feedback comment where where polite guests are saying the things they really want to say, but don't want to put publicly on your on your your page. ⁓ so much valuable data that if you were able to action it and get better visibility on that, we're gonna help you in all those things. ⁓ it really will make a difference when we look back over time. ⁓ so we're super excited for this, this, this little feature that I think is gonna have ⁓ a really big impact. So at the same time that we're releasing the ability for your cleaners to see reviews from your guests, we're also giving cleaners the ability to rate the cleanliness of your guests. So this was an idea that came on our radar based on feedback from you all. ⁓ we love the idea. We think it's great. ⁓ so now we're looking at a screenshot of like the jobs, ⁓ the main page for a job, right? So they can see the current reservation, the next reservation, and we're asking them on that page, hey, how did Vladimir do with the with his cleanliness? How was the unit when you arrived? this is great for a lot of reasons. I'm sure you're thinking of those now. Also, like Again, like the the the subtle psychology of this is it's giving the cleaner agency. When they show up and your place is a mess, it's been destroyed, they get at least that psychological satisfaction of knowing that, hey, I'm gonna do a rough I got a rough job ahead of me, but at least I gave that guest a one-star review and the system is gonna like, you know, take that out on them. They don't have that today necessarily. So they get to tap in and give a star rating. That takes them to a page where we ask them a few more questions. So this is a good review, they're giving four stars. And they're we're also putting in front of them those those review tags that are relevant to the clean so they can tell us that they're night neat and tidy, et cetera. So they're helping you write your review of the guest by kind of giving that content. They're going to be ahead of you on the review normally, and you'll be able to have this content when you go to write the review of the guest. On a negative review, same thing. We're putting the tags, ⁓ the review tags in front of them that allow us to tell you, hey, this is what I saw. I saw an unauthorized pet. There's clear evidence of unauthorized smoking, et cetera. So they can be your eyes and ears on the ground. For a lot of you, you're never or rarely in your property, at least your cleaners are. So this is a great way to get better intel from them. Now, obviously the cleaners reviews aren't being sent to the booking platform. These aren't going directly to the guests. ⁓ at the moment, the next slide, please. We're sharing these on the task screen. That's not the best place to do it. This is just rolling out today. ⁓ in the next ⁓ coming days, next week. We'll start putting this in the section in the inbox when you're writing the review of the guest. And you can have the review from the cleaner. You can see what they said about the cleanliness of the guests, and we'll start to introduce workflows. So if you do have a bad review from your cleaner, you might be pausing your automated five star review. You might be pausing your review request for that guest. So there's some exciting things where this is really starting to all come together. And with that, I will pass it to Tim to talk about the guest portal. Thanks, Andrew. Hello, everyone. ⁓ yes. So switching gears to talk about trip insurance. We've been working on some updates and we have made it easier to offer trip insurance to your guests. We have made it easier to set up the process of offering trip insurance to your guests. So we we launched this trip insurance integration at the start of the year. It's been really successful and useful to both hosts and guests so far. It allows you to to change or feel more confident in sticking to your cancellation policy. It protects guests from things like trip cancellation, lost baggage, medical expenses. But it does all this whilst making you money in the process because you earn commission every single time your guests purchase that policy.
Speaker 2: And you don't
Speaker 7: Have to work particularly hard for that commission either. ⁓ still on that previous screen. So it's it's totally hands-off for you. ⁓ our partner, Rental Guardian, handle all the claims and all the supports. ⁓ we automatically handle all eligibility in the guest portal. All you need to do is just direct your guests. And then now on the next slide, ⁓ just to kind of give you a bit of an more of an idea on this the success that some posts are seeing so far. So
Speaker 2: To it.
Speaker 7: We've had one host that has made over $600 from a single trip insurance sale. There are many hosts now who have earned over $1,000 in total commission. Our top host has earned almost two and a half thousand dollars so far themselves. And then on average, ⁓ typically you expect to make about twenty seven dollars commission per policy sold, which actually means it like it's just two sales per month. actually pays for the average hospitable subscription. So it's kind of crazy. So if you join the eight hundred and ninety five posts who are earning from trip insurance just yet, like I said, we have made it easier to start.
Speaker 2: So we have
Speaker 7: Have on the next slide automatically enabled the trip insurance upsell for you. But we've had feedback that that setup needs to be a little bit easier. So that's what we've done. So we have added a new custom code. That's the ones with the two percentage marks. All trip insurance to your account. That includes a link to the guest portal and then verbiage that we know converts.
Speaker 2: We
Speaker 7: ⁓ around trip insurance to it, you can you can do two things. You can add that custom code into your new reservation message. Or even simpler, we have also just created a messaging rule called Trip Insurance for all of you on your accounts that includes that custom code. Literally all you have to do is enable it. And that is how the full trip insurance setup just enable that messaging rule.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. I'm gonna
Speaker 7: steal the screen now to actually just show you exactly what it is that I mean here.
Speaker 2: So here I am.
Speaker 7: Under messaging, ⁓ I'm just gonna go across to custom codes and you will see this one here, bold.
Speaker 2: Trick insurance.
Speaker 7: So basically, what this does, if you don't custom codes is a new concept to you, basically this is just a kind of a customizable tech snippet you insert in your messages that only shows based on whether that condition or not. And here, that condition is just trip insurance is available for this reservation. So we will never show this trip insurance custom code if the guest can't actually purchase.
Speaker 2: Is Matt's or And ⁓
Speaker 7: This message just basically explains hi, you know, just a heads up on basic trip insurance. Anything goes wrong with your stay, illness, delays. We we do offer this plan for you that you can purchase. ⁓ it includes ⁓ coverage for these things, medical coverage, trip cancellation, like I've mentioned. Just go to the guest portal, take a look, and just a little bit of explanation on accessing the guest portal.
Speaker 2: ⁓ So this is
Speaker 7: Actually looks like. Like I said, you can just add this to your messaging, play with the copy if you want. But what we've also done is we have created this trip insurance messaging rule. It contains that custom code. Right now that's due to be sent five minutes after a new reservation is accepted. Play with that timing if you want, scope it to various channels. It really is just that simple, enabling that messaging rule. Just to kind of give you a little bit of an example of what that actually looks like in practice. So here is Marina has chosen to stay at Emily's apartment next year. It just kind of fills in that information with the actual guest portal link. All Marina would need to go then and do is access that guest portal link, go into the guest portal, start the trip insurance flow. ⁓ That's it. Genuinely, if you like money, please just go and enable.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: that messaging rule. That's all you need to do. Everything else is taken care of. I'm gonna relinquish the screen now and then pass over to Patrick to talk about some integration updates.
Speaker 2: Yes, hello altogether. I mean, next up. Perfect. Thank you. ⁓ we have today something really exciting. We have today more than eighty partners in our partner system ecosystem. So which is really exciting to see. And today, please next slide. We're gonna add seven more partners to our ecosystem. And we're getting quite a lot of like new ⁓ partners to want to integrate with us as well. So today I actually want to highlight two of them. ⁓ SDR loophole, what basically helps host track and rental work hours for tax reporting and creates CPA-ready records for possible SDR tax benefits. Really happy to have them on board as well. And going over to HostReady. basically helps hosts stay on top of changing short-term rental rules. So everything around like licenses and permits and it spots them directly for you before it becomes a bigger problem. So very happy to have a finding board and we're gonna add more in the future. So hi and welcome to the hospitable ecosystem. Thank you so much. And I'm giving over to Emily.
Speaker 5: Thanks, Patrick. Alrighty, I have two small but impactful updates today on the mogul side of things. First, we'll start with a live preview of commission. So when we first launched owner statements, configuring the commission agreements was pretty simple and straightforward, but it's been nearly two years. We have added a lot of capabilities since we first launched. You can change your rate per channel, you can have your owner pay the host service fees or not. You can charge a flat rate commission, you can charge owners' tax on commission, you can report fees, net or gross. It can do a lot. Frankly, this resulted in a pretty long and complex commission agreement form that supports a ton of scenarios, but takes a lot of brain power to understand on the surface without the context of a real reservation to kind of ground you. So it was about time that we gave some more attention. To this part of the experience, a really critical part of setting up your owner statements and invoices. You're gonna see a lot of improvements to the commission or management agreement as a whole over the next several weeks, but we've gone ahead and shipped the live preview of commission in the meantime. So when you're configuring your commission agreement, you can choose a real reservation to preview while you do so. This allows you to see and more importantly, understand how the calculations will actually work. As you create your commission, not by the time you're like 10 clicks later. On a totally different note, we have also recently released guest reviews in the owner's portal. This was ⁓ believe it or not, not timed with Andrew's announcement of guest reviews in the Task App, ⁓ but kind of fun. So if guest reviews are enabled in your owner's portal permissions, your owners are given full transparency. We're going to be spotlighting one really amazing review on the dashboard, and your owners can view more reviews if they would like. When they do that, they'll have full transparency, including visibility into private feedback and any public replies. Like everything in the owner's portal, this is permission-based. So if you're already using the owner portal, do not worry, we did not turn this on for you. We know that you'll want to think this over and do it yourself. ⁓ You can do it when you're ready under your business in the owner portal tab. You can turn it on for all portals and like any other portal permissions, you can even override it for specific owners if you need to. For any new portals created moving forward, this will be on by default, but again, you can turn it off. A quick note before we move on from this, ⁓ we have intentionally started with the full transparency option. We know that that's not for everyone and that's okay. So if you don't want your owners to see that private feedback, we totally hear you. We're open to introducing some more controls in the future, but that's going to take some time. So until then, those of you who are on board with the full transparency option can take advantage of this now. Next, we will hear from Miles covering events.
Speaker 9: Perfect, thank you very much. ⁓ and just before I get onto events, I'm going to talk a little bit about success. ⁓ so Just a ⁓ reminder, if you have any questions about today's feature updates or questions about how to get the most out of Hospitable in general, you can go ahead and book a call with our customer success team. You can scan that QR code or hit that link to do so. And our customer success team will be able to help you get help with getting set up and you know strategies for success and workflows and more within Hospitable. So please go ahead, scan that QR code if you would like to book a one-on-one session with our customer success team. And now I'll go on to events. So we have a few events upcoming for you in the next week or so. So in tomorrow's live customer success workshop, we'll break down the operational playbook used by successful property managers and professional hosts to create a business that runs smoothly, delivers an exceptional guest experience, and continues growing without requiring them to be available. 24 7. Whether you're managing a single property today or actively growing your portfolio, you'll learn how to build a foundation that supports long-term growth. So please go ahead and scan that QR code if you're interested in registering for that event. That is tomorrow at midday Eastern time. So that's 6 p.m. Central European time. Next up, next Thursday, we have our monthly office hours with Brandon, our resident ⁓ accountant, our accountant in residence, this is title. And if you would like to ask him any questions on your processes around accounting and your reporting requirements and how Hospitable is helping, you can go ahead, scan that QR code and join that session. It's an open QA, so come armed with any questions that you have for Brandon. And as always, we'll be back at the same time, same place in two weeks for our next town hall. So a reminder as always to scan that QR code, get them added to your calendar so that you never miss an update from us again. And Just before we finish on community, we have one more thing to call out. A final reminder here that our MCP build-a-thon is still open and closes on Sunday. So you can connect your preferred AI agent to your hospital account, shows what you build, and you could win $500 in hospitable credits. So go ahead, scan that QR code to learn a bit more about that contest and have a chance to win. And Finally, I'm now gonna hand over to P C for a host token update. PC
Speaker 1: Yeah. Funny about that MCP and build-at-on thing. We're on a second episode of the build-a-thon while another competitor and I received some messages and DMs about a competitor saying they are the first to leave to an MCP. Well, we're gonna have a lot more implementation of MCP and users using MCP than that competitor. ⁓ anyway, ⁓ we are a different company at Hospitable. ⁓ nice to meet you if that's your first time. I'm PC, I'm the CEO and owner, ⁓ but nonetheless, I'm not doing this on my own, and I have an entire team and great investors. Do you know who they are? ⁓ That's you. So, with that new money that you get out of trip insurance, you can use it ⁓ for use ⁓ for investing into hospitable. That will be for the next slide. So this is a host token which is a proxy to our stock, and you can own ⁓ a bit of ⁓ a bit a bit of hospitable. You've seen the ⁓ skyrocketing price of that token in recent months. That was too correct because this was way too cheap. ⁓ for you to be investing. So great on everyone that was an early adopter. You are every single one of you, including those that are investing tomorrow, are still gonna be massively early adopters to to hospitable. So yeah, five hundred and thirty three percent year over year with a valuation today of 267 million. ⁓ For the people that have been used to this, there is no plan adjustment correction and like has been the case for the previous month. That means every month as the business keeps growing The valuation discounts keeps increasing unless we have massive investment. But the business is always gonna grow faster ⁓ than the investment. But I don't know, maybe you can prove me wrong. ⁓ so it's basically ⁓ stable at this point. The if you are new to it and you would like to be investing into hospitable, why would you not want to make money off the sale of your ⁓ of your property management software? Go to invest.hospitable.com. You will have to do some identity verification. If you're based in the US, you need to show evidence of being an accredited investor. If you don't have a letter coming handy, which is not often the case, you should go to accredited.am so that you can ⁓ you can get that letter. It's the best service I've found. ⁓ I want to thank John because John just asked ⁓ just ⁓ started received this letter just two days ago. That's been approved today. So now John can invest ⁓ into a speedable like two hundred and fifty of you. ⁓ and yeah, make hospitable ⁓ community-owned company by the team with by the by its customers, ⁓ and basically sharing the proceeds whenever that works. That's totally different than any competitor, any alternative ⁓ that you see in this space. So ⁓ yeah, you may compare that with SpaceX. This is ⁓ this is basically way before the IPO, way before the PUP and all those kind of things, and we're delivering real value to everybody. But hey, I'm ⁓ giving financial advice, so I should probably stop there. Please, Miles, come and save me. Because I think I need to stop. We're going live now onto the QA segment, which is the best.
Speaker 8: We're
Speaker 9: Perfect. Yes, thank you very much, PC. Okay, so ⁓ as he said, we are moving to QA. So if you do have a question for us, you can go ahead, head down to the React button at the bottom of your screen. And in there you should find a raise hand button that tells us that you want to come on stage and ask a question, at which point I will invite you on stage and ask you to unmute. That's very important. ⁓ we need to be able to hear your question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just just one thing before while we raise it are people raising hands, I want to answer a question live on the QA from Jacqueline. ⁓ and Laurent is typing an answer, so it's probably can be great. But this is a recurring question about the verbal partner connection. Does the new integration work with a verbo yearly subscription? ⁓ and the answer is yes, yes, absolutely. ⁓ you're still gonna need to add a credit card ⁓ to pay for any kind of cancellation fees that may be added. ⁓ there is no change to your agreement with Verbo ⁓ on the the modality of the connection ⁓ with hospitable. So you can absolutely ⁓ go ahead securely ⁓ connect to Verbo as ⁓ hospitable to Verbo, and there is no change to ⁓ the legacy subscription you have with them. It's it's been a popular question on on on other groups. So ⁓ yeah. Miles?
Speaker 9: Okay, thank you very much. ⁓ okay, Rebecca, we are inviting you on stage first. Hello, Rebecca.
Speaker 1: Hello Rebecca. Great. We how can we help you today? Don't think we can hear you right now.
Speaker 9: You're unmuted, Rebecca, but your microphone is not working, it seems. I'm going to come back to you in a minute. ⁓ if you play around with ⁓ disconnecting and reconnecting your microphone, we'll see if ⁓ we can get you back shortly. ⁓ allowed to talk just as I muted. Sorry, Rebecca, try one more time.
Speaker 5: Can you hear me now? Excellent, got it. Okay, I'll try to be quick. A couple things. A couple weeks ago I tried to do VRBO integration and it hung up and it took eventually we got one listing live and I tried to do another listing and add it on. I'm in Mexico, so I think that is part of the problem. This time it got an error message at the end and it just it doesn't proceed. So I don't know ⁓ what the best way to continue getting support for that is.
Speaker 1: Yes, perfect.
Speaker 5: The other questions I have are regarding the other sorry. The other questions I have regarding are ⁓ if ⁓ timeline in terms of WhatsApp for being able to send WhatsApp messages to your cleaners and your support people. And those are the two main things. And I'm gonna mute myself so you don't hear my little ones screaming when I find the unmute button.
Speaker 1: This is fine. We didn't hear any small ones. In any case we're we're all having I mean many of us have families. ⁓ so bless them. Andrew, you want to take one of those?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I I can take the second question. I'll take the first if anyone else wants to as well. But ⁓ regarding the second question on WhatsApp integration, ⁓ it's not actively being worked on right now. I think we're proceeding with ⁓ SMS as a new ⁓ communication channel for hospitable. ⁓ that's now live in a pilot phase, and we're kind of learning from how that's gonna work in the inbox. we wanna then take SMS to cleaners if that's valuable. I think the cleaning messaging actually in the task app needs it needs a lot of attention. ⁓ to begin with, maybe that will include WhatsApp one day. I think there's some open questions from us about what WhatsApp means to you as a host. Do you are you talking about WhatsApp for business where you wanna have a business account and you can unmute and and tell me when you when you have a chance. ⁓
Speaker 1: Yep. We can hear you. I can hear you.
Speaker 5: I don't know. How do I unmute? Can you hear me? Okay, great. yes, what's in Mexico, people don't use texting because it costs them money. So WhatsApp is like texting. ⁓ and what I do have a WhatsApp business account and was just curious about, and I know many other hosts in other countries use WhatsApp business also. So just using that instead of SMS to communicate with cleaners, with property I'm an owner, or to or like property managers or people who are helping you with the property. ⁓
Speaker 7: Cool.
Speaker 5: Many guests. So the first thing I do when someone books is I make a WhatsApp group with the guest and my support people so that if I'm not available, they can answer and help them to get in to clean for problems, whatever.
Speaker 7: be something that's not accessible to us through like an official integration, right? To create that group chat. So that's
Speaker 5: Is there any way to just make it a little bit easier for us to like have a button that takes you to WhatsApp or that it for example, you can make your own app that just sends things to WhatsApp. Even if it's not a two way communication, it could send stuff out. Just curious in terms of but I know you guys have a lot of priorities, so I get it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, it's it's one of our most highly upvoted ⁓ feature requests on WhatsApp. I think we're just in the phase now where we're trying to validate things that I think are similar with SMS and there's a whole lot of other things to validate that are different ⁓ on WhatsApp. And so it's it's helpful to even hear this like little bit of feedback you're giving me. ⁓ I think there's something there. I I can't really give you an ETA right now, but it it is something we're we're gonna be working on.
Speaker 1: I I think you're probably very ⁓ much ahead of the curve. ⁓ by having a WhatsApp business account. ⁓ there is I think WhatsApp business we can integrate with, what we cannot do is sending text messages from sending WhatsApp messages from your phone number, or please give us your phone number and your phone. And that's basically a bit of a limitation. So there was a lot of work, a lot of discovery. ⁓ And yeah, the the other part if I may say is that ⁓ that's free for you to use. That's not free for businesses to be using ⁓ with integration. So that's that's another component to that. ⁓ and and and there is also yeah, so WhatsApp is ⁓ the international ⁓ leading ⁓ messenger you also have, ⁓ taking that into account in the US where it's basically ⁓ text messages only and then you you talk with someone in the continental US and that doesn't resonate at all. ⁓ so we are exploring both. We have a pilot for the SMS and we've done some discovery on WhatsApp and ultimately decided it might not be the the best ⁓ the best usage over time so far. On the on the verbo for Mexico, which was your first question, ⁓ so wh where exactly where is there a problem? Was that on our user interface or was that on ⁓ on verbo's user interface?
Speaker 5: It was at the end of the integration when you go to add well, actually sorry, it is integrated. It's when you go to add a property and you choose one of your properties that's already in hospitable that you want to go live on VRBO. At the end of that process, there was a long error message about currencies and pesos and not available in these countries, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Okay. I think that might be a current may maybe that's a currency thing. I mean ⁓ Marina, I don't know if you want to to come on stage because you have a theory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I need to check your account, Rebecca. I'm going to do it right after here. I have a feeling that maybe you don't have a Stripe account attached to those. Yeah, I'll take a look and then I'll message you after the town hall.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: To be met. Thank you. Perfect.
Speaker 9: Thank you very much for your questions, Rebecca. ⁓ okay, ⁓ we're gonna switch gears and move on to Jenny. Hello, Jenny, welcome on stage. ⁓ low.
Speaker 5: Hi. Yes. Can you hear me now?
Speaker 1: Perfectly. Or can we help you today?
Speaker 5: ⁓ I'm having trouble with direct booking. ⁓ I've I just rolled that out and I have had two people that tried to book a reservation and neither have been able to complete their verification process. ⁓ and I found out that those emails are going to their spam folder. How do I fix this? Cause that's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: Okay. Abby?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess the issue that you were saying is the guests weren't completing guest verification because the email prompting them to do so was going to their spam.
Speaker 1: The
Speaker 5: As far as I understand, all I know is I've had two people and neither one has been able to complete the process and finally I got a hold of one today and he said, I never got an email. All I got was twenty four hours later saying you didn't verify your ID and he said, I think it went to my spam folder.
Speaker 2: Okay. I think we'll probably have to take a look at that specific example from your guests. we we do try to make sure that the emails, like we track the deliverability rates and stuff and make sure that those aren't going to spam if we can. But I'll have to look at your specific examples and and see what happened there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Kit how how do I get help with this? Because otherwise it the the direct booking is completely worthless. If two out of two chances that I've had to have a direct booking reservation have failed because of this, I'm not gonna keep hoping for the best. How how do I get it resolved?
Speaker 1: Jenny, I I th I think we can provide a bit of reality check here. If you have basically been using that for a test reservation, may may have they been local to your property? Because they would be flagged automatically basically as high risk, and therefore that we trigger review. There is really a narrow pop ⁓ a narrow part of gas verification that basically will be ⁓ escalated to our team for reviewing with SOPs and processes that are basically happening. So what Abby is doing is that she's gonna she's offering ⁓ with your help. To investigate on what's actually happening, because we would absolutely be expecting a guest that secures the that goes to the process to be receiving an email if they don't perfect the if they don't update their ID. There is also a continuous experience where basically they are performing the booking and later they're doing a guest verification. And that gas guess verification is simple, it's a liveness check, it's an upload from your from your passport. It's expected to be taking less than three minutes to to do so. ⁓ so if a guest doesn't complete that and drops off, then it swees gonna be impacting the ability to to do something ⁓ at all with the reservation. So we are offering to to help you here, Jenny. ⁓ we have processes about those guest verification. I assume that you're using direct premium, so we're gonna get back to you and and understand what what's happening. If anything, that's an opportunity for us to be improving our product. There is also gonna be a bit of a product consideration here. Is that if we are sending the email follow-up while the guest is verifying, it doesn't help either. It actually adds confusion. ⁓ and so the guest may need some time to get their passport, to get an ID verification. ⁓ and this is a third party product. So we don't know exactly ⁓ where they are in the process right now until we basically hear from the from the ID update. ⁓ so we're gonna check ⁓ and see and see what's happening.
Speaker 7: Jenny, something that might give you ⁓ better confidence too. Like, okay, like two of two is a small pool. It's a pretty established product, like it's not a new feature. So I think we're gonna do something over fifty million dollars of bookings across all of our customers on on the direct premium product this year. So it is working. We're not aware of any kind of like major gaps in in the product right now. Let's let's investigate and see what we find.
Speaker 5: ⁓ okay, there must be a setting that's off because I actually personally know these two people. They would not be in any universe considered a high risk booking. And
Speaker 1: They may be because they're local. They may be flagged because they are local. There is there is a component where it's not just about the guests and their their criminal history. We also do that. But it's basically the fact that for this reservation they're high risk because they may be local to your property.
Speaker 5: One one is local and one is not. And and then here's the other thing. I sent them both ⁓ the Airbnb link and they just booked no problem. So it it feels like something is set up on my end that is making this much harder than it needs to be for somebody to actually make a reservation at my property.
Speaker 9: Jenny, ⁓ we've got your contact details. I think Abby's gonna follow up directly with you afterwards ⁓ and we'll get to the bottom of it for you. ⁓ we're unable to troubleshoot the exact issue right here, so we'll we'll follow up and get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 5: Right. But my problem is nobody's above like I'm on this call because I feel like this
Speaker 1: Thank you. You are with the CEO, the director of product, the product manager in charge of the direct. We have your contact details. We're gonna need to let you ⁓ to let you fix this problem and to fix this problem. You have some great help from the chat from Kevin. The domain is likely an issue. If you have a so a s specific domain, it's it also sounds like maybe the guys didn't want to do it at all. This is the kind of thing that we have been investigating. So, Jenny, we're gonna take this offline and we're gonna get back to you. Okay. Thank you very much. And we are gonna get back to you, Jenny. We are in it. We are in this transaction. We want that booking. And boy, there is one thing that cannot stand is basically us being expected to block reservations. When we do, it's really because there is something serious. Like there, IB and would have and our team would have plenty of stories where we blocked a reservation because it really would we really felt that we were protecting our customers at this point in time. So yeah, we're we're a serious business and we want to give you serious money. ⁓ next one. Right, Miles?
Speaker 9: ⁓ yeah, I'm gonna struggle with this name, swanky texture properties. Swanky texture. ⁓ inviting you on stage now to ask your question.
Speaker 1: Hello. How can we help you today? Perfectly. Yep. ⁓
Speaker 4: Hey, can you hear us? Okay, so we were looking very, very much forward to being able to pay the cleaners ⁓ through Hospitable. And on our end, it was an absolute disaster. ⁓ right now we currently have about ⁓ $330 that are ⁓ trapped, if you will, in the ⁓ the payouts in the marketplace. And I've I've kind of gone back and forth with you guys a couple of times to just figure out my cleaner on her on one of my cleaners on her end says that we're using the app. they just have no idea how to link up their bank accounts to be able to ⁓ receive payment from us. And then on our end, we just told them we'll go back to the manual process. But ⁓ I've gone back and forth with hospitable like probably about 10 or 12 emails, I would say, and we just cannot figure out. How to get the money out of the marketplace account ⁓ and then to stop the the task so that the cleaning fee isn't automatically deducted because it's it's just a mute point, right? Because we cannot pay through hospitable. Any ⁓ insight?
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 7: So okay. I mean, first of all, I I can jump on your account. ⁓ end of day here, but tomorrow ⁓ I can get your money out tomorrow for you. ⁓ not a problem. ⁓ if you wanna stop the task rule, you can basically take out the payment by setting it to zero dollars. ⁓ you can also I think disable the payment now and there. but ⁓ yeah, otherwise I need to I need to look at your account and figure out ⁓ maybe some of the past tasks we just need to say that like check the we can move the task into paid off platform and that will free up the money from your account and then you can kind of move on until your cleaner is able to get the bank account linked. ⁓ we do have a new onboarding flow in the in in the task app now that does make that easier to link a bank account. ⁓ but yeah not everyone's gonna gonna manage. ⁓ so yep.
Speaker 1: ⁓ yeah, I'll follow up with you.
Speaker 4: Okay, ⁓ that sounds great.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much. Thank you.
Speaker 9: ⁓ great. Okay. ⁓ moving on now. ⁓ inviting Jazz on stage. Hello, Jazz.
Speaker 1: Hello Jazz. How can we help you today? We cannot hear you just yet, you are unmuted, but maybe there's a problem with your mic. Going on once.
Speaker 9: Twice?
Speaker 1: Twice?
Speaker 9: Okay, ⁓ we'll circle back to you jazz in just a second. ⁓ we'll try Mandy next. Hello, Mandy.
Speaker 1: Hello Monday. Perfectly well.
Speaker 9: Hi, can you hear me? My question is very quick, ⁓ because I already answered in the chat. So the trip insurance is guess facing, but what if they cancel doing ⁓ like, you know, after my firm cancellation policy, you know, after thirty days, I assume I get paid and they get their money back, right?
Speaker 1: That's the point. Yes, you you absolutely got it. So it's a way to secure your own reservation and the payouts. And the guest basically is paying it they are the one paying a pr ⁓ product with reinsurance to ensure that they can cancel for any reason on top by passing your ⁓ your cancellation policy. So that means it's that insurance that's gonna pay them ⁓ the amount for for the reservation.
Speaker 9: Okay, then second very quick question is, my booking that coming from verbal, ⁓ somehow it seems like it cannot collect the security deposit. Is the security deposit only on Airbnb booking? ⁓ can you help me with that?
Speaker 7: It's it's not working on the new verbal partner connection just yet. Abby, did you have any updates on where we are with that?
Speaker 2: ⁓ no, I was gonna say the same thing and that we are working on making it work for for Virbo in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 9: So in that case, how can I collect security deposits from the booking that come from verbal? Even though I check hospitable should be the one who collect them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right now for for if you're on the verbo partner connection, you would need to collect a security deposit from the guests some other way, which we know isn't great. So yeah, there is unfortunately no way to collect that security deposit payment through hospitable right now. We will have that soon. ⁓ and we're also working on ⁓ the ability to actually send or request money for verbo partner reservations as well. So you could request a secure deposit or any other like ad hoc fee from the guest that way as well.
Speaker 7: So you've got a couple of weeks to to wait ⁓ and come up with a solution. In the meantime, if you need it, but we'll have you ⁓ very soon. Was there anything else, Mandy?
Speaker 9: ⁓ so so I would just have to request a security deposit manually at the moment, right? 'Cause both of them are not available right now, like requesting fee through hospital or yeah. So I have to do it manually.
Speaker 7: Just for the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 9: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Okay. And I want to say that Mandy Mondi is not alone and I've taken screenshots of other questions about the about the security deposit ⁓ to be able to address that gap as quickly as possible. okay.
Speaker 9: Okay, Jazz, we're gonna try again. Let's see if we can get you live. Hello, Jazz.
Speaker 1: Okay. Here we go. Yes, we can hear you now.
Speaker 3: Okay, awesome. ⁓ so two quick questions. One, I'm having a problem with my booking dot com connection. ⁓ for some reason the calendar got closed. I'm not sure if it happened on booking dot com but I'm not seeing it on this site and I can't basically I they can't book anything because the calendar is saying that it's unavailable and when I contact them they're saying that I have to ⁓ fix it on the management ⁓ software. So that's the first question. The second one is if you have reviews off ⁓ Airbnb dot com, are you able to upload them to the direct booking ⁓ platform?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take the second one, and you take in the first one, Andrew. Sure. This this spicy one. so to answer your question, can you use Airbnb's reviews and content on your direct booking website? The answer on that is gonna be no. ⁓ Airbnb on their terms of condition asserts that it is their intellectual property that they collect from their guests during the during the process. ⁓ and they basically are banning you ⁓ from using it on another property, such as direct. ⁓ so the good thing is that on our side We so first of all, we are compliant with that setup, so we're not putting you at risk. We also obviously are collecting guests ⁓ reviews from your direct booking ⁓ website. So basically those are your reviews and they can be used to advertise for your ⁓ direct booking ⁓ website. There are ⁓ maybe some some work that we can we can do on that, ⁓ but the fundamentally the bottom line is that Airbnb reviews are for Airbnb's use only. ⁓ And now Andrew on your on your first question.
Speaker 7: I mean I'm not gonna be able to give any specifics ⁓ on the call live, Jazz. ⁓ but I'm sharing a note now in the and the team that manages the booking.com connection that we can and jump in and find any support ticket you might have open and and try and get to the bottom of it for you.
Speaker 3: Okay. So I think maybe I wasn't clear on what I was asking for the second question. So originally I had a problem connecting my direct booking what do you call it? Like URL name. So I was taking like ⁓ direct bookings but not with the direct booking site if that makes sense. And I have reviews from that. They're not off of Airbnb. They're direct bookings, but ⁓ the site just wasn't working. So I'm asking if I'm able to is there a way to upload your reviews ⁓ in that manner? Not anything from ⁓ Airbnb?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can appreciate it's a bit shady, right? Okay. But all of a sudden it clears a path, right, Abby? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just gonna say I think that's interesting ⁓ to be able to upload your your reviews to your hospital posted site. That's not something you can do right now. ⁓ we will collect as long as you if that booking is like a direct booking in hospitable, we will actually prompt your guests to leave a review. So we will automatically collect reviews from your direct guests and those will go on the website. ⁓ so you'll get some reviews that way. But I think yeah, g giving you a way to source reviews from from other places is something we could look at for future too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have to be mindful that on the on the second great idea about uploading a review, like we also We we want to have a great partnership with Airbnb and not receive season desist about you ⁓ about or about us hosting a drug booking site that would ⁓ not be not be compliant. ⁓ so I don't think there is ⁓ I'm I'm I'm gonna I think we're gonna talk about it, but I'm not sure there is a lot of property modern software that would offer ⁓ that ⁓ that capability of uploading the features. It's kind of a recipe for for a disaster, if I if I'm honest. Okay. ⁓ thank you thank you jazz for for raising those those points.
Speaker 9: Okay. time for a few more here. So Dala inviting you on stage. Hello, Dalla. Do you have a question for us?
Speaker 1: Hello Dalla. How can we help you? You're on stage now, you are unmuted, but ⁓ we cannot hear you yet. ⁓ Perfectly well. Okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'm doing the ⁓ I'm doing the verbo integration. I have seven properties on my verbo account, but when I go to finalize the setup, it pulls in eight properties. It pulls in one property that is one of my owners that she has her own verbo account. And so I don't want to go forward with it, you know, ⁓ with that one property on there.
Speaker 1: That's ⁓ that's a pretty valid reason. So that's one of the reasons why we we kind of want to take a chance and looking ⁓ looking at that ⁓ a bit in more depth. So ⁓ yeah, we ⁓ I think we're gonna we're gonna get back to you to to understand really what what's going on. ⁓ Okay. Because ⁓ yeah, there there there is I think an I mean I I I w I will not commit. I I don't know if Marina can be on stage because there are sometimes an unexpected number of property that can be returned, but I'm probably hallucinating it as well. ⁓ so there There were problems with archive properties, for example. I I don't know if that's still relevant on the part-on connection. ⁓ but yeah, I think we can go back to ⁓ to verbal support to understand why that listing is added. Unless Marina, you you have a theory on this already.
Speaker 2: No can you repeat
Speaker 1: No, okay. There is a there are seven properties expected to be imported, and there is an eighth one that ⁓ is ⁓ from an owner on another ver on another verbal account. So I think the the the theory I would have is that it's probably one that was created a long time ago, was never set live, ⁓ and maybe ⁓ what we would call like a phantom ⁓ photom property, an archived one. Can it I mean, yeah, we l let's just say we're gonna we're gonna look into this and give you a a bit a better confidence, but I think this is under your account, it it it is not gonna contaminate with another verbal account. So I think the the first ⁓ intention is that it should be totally fine to be integrating all eight properties and then you basically mute the the eighth one so that it doesn't have to be within ⁓ within the scope ⁓ in any case. But
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, it's an active property that I manage. It's not a I mean, I don't want to mute it. It's it's an active property. So what I
Speaker 1: Why w why so in that case it should work. It should it should be the one you it should be one you import if it's an active one.
Speaker 5: Well, it's just it's I had sent her a link. I had sent the owner a link to for her to integrate hers. And then I went to integrate mine and I logged into my verbo under my account to in order to do mine. And that's, you know, hers popped up. So like I don't want to integrate hers on mine. I don't I don't know if it makes a difference really, but don't want like the I don't want the monthly fee to be on my account. The Virgo fee.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I
Speaker 5: You know, hers needs to be separate, just like all my other owners are separate.
Speaker 1: Right. And and she and she has an account, a variable account that is already separate and it is connected to to your speedable already? Yeah. Okay. Well we we as I said we we're gonna look into that. I think that's basically the only safe answer I can give you.
Speaker 2: Are you logged into her account when you are
Speaker 5: No, I I I logged into her account in order to send her the link and I don't even think I needed to. But then when I was ready to do mine, I logged into my Verbo account and then did the integration on mine. But I did that for like three different owners. ⁓ only hers is the one that's showing up under mine.
Speaker 2: Okay. I'll take a look into that as well.
Speaker 5: Okay, so I can ⁓ expect to hear from you guys or something. Okay. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah. ⁓ Kelly in the chat is also saying that there is ⁓ the same problem with owners and verbo, but that's I I'm not sure what it is. ⁓ okay, we're gonna take one last one. ⁓ I kind of feel like I want to share an update about those emails that were flocking to spam. But there we we have records of everything that we send and we know when something is delivered, not delivered, flagged in spam, and seeing that they were delivered. ⁓ so we're gonna keep on investigating. on the on that problem with the direct booking guest. Okay, last question from ⁓ from David.
Speaker 9: Yep, invite you on stage, David. Last question of the day. How can we help?
Speaker 1: Hello, David. Can I mute yourself? Perfectly. How can we help you today?
Speaker 7: Hello guys, can you hear me? Okay, so there's already a person answered this question, but I just want to like ⁓ redouble asset.
Speaker 1: Voice confirmation. Go ahead. It should be easy.
Speaker 7: ⁓ we're ⁓ we're having an issue with BRVO integration because ⁓ previously before we ⁓ migrate to the new BRVO from the legacy, we c we pre approved ⁓ on the BRBO application. Basic basically we need to log in ⁓ on a property before we can pre approve ⁓ an in inquiry or a leg or a guess. But now since ⁓ these properties we have has been ⁓ fully managed now by hospitable. We cannot pre-approve them in the VRBO. So yeah it ⁓ but the issue here is that the pre approved button is not showing on our end when there's an inquiry of a guest that needs to be pre approved. So
Speaker 1: ⁓ on the variable dashboard you mean. On the variable application.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know Marina if you can give an update on the support for per approval, if it's a a restriction from ⁓ But yeah, anyway, you ⁓ Marina, yeah?
Speaker 2: No, I I have to look into it to understand better how how the dynamics work for pre-approval and and API connected hosts.
Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. ⁓ it it I mean what's what's the what's the idea behind behind ⁓ sending the pro approval to ⁓ on on a guest ⁓ for for you? David? ⁓
Speaker 7: Okay. ⁓
Speaker 1: Technically it doesn't prevent a guest from sending a request to book.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but the thing here is that ⁓ that's how how we usually do. We ⁓ when there's an inquiry of a guest, then we do pre approve it in the B R B O and then you know.
Speaker 1: Systematically do so, I guess.
Speaker 7: Yeah. ⁓ but right now in hospitable it's it is not showing. But yeah, when we when looking back at BRBO it shows that it is showing that that to make changes ⁓ to this reservation, use your property management software which is hospitable. But I don't know why it doesn't show now.
Speaker 1: So it may be simply because we're not supporting that feature just yet. So that's basically what Marina is going to be checking. So in that case, that might be a gap on our on our side. I mean, we've heard, for example, about security deposit earlier and that we are gonna be actively working ⁓ working on. ⁓ you also flag very nicely the the ping pong that happens between verbo and the property manual software. ⁓ I think yeah, Marina flagged earlier in the you know, section on ⁓ providing updates to the verbal partner connection that ⁓ we're having issue we're having a rather ⁓ conversation with host that for example flag that the calendar doesn't work on the dashboard and it's not expected to be working actually. ⁓ but that's that's basically one of the things that's causing a support some support load. ⁓ it's also ⁓ yeah the the totally different experience ⁓ of host ⁓ s we we're doing our best but ⁓ yeah there are some things and some limitations that we have to navigate around. ⁓ on the on that verbal integration to make sure that it's as as close to what you what you would like and then we can we can possibly do. But yes, so in any case what I want to say and to you and to everyone listening in, because we're gonna close the this tunnel now is basically we're still very actively working on verbo and that part of integration along with so many other things. I don't know if you spotted some of those, like for example the task the task app and the ability to continually work under on a the checklist plus the payments of your cleaners and escalating now reviews for your guests and from your cleaners as well about the stays. So that's I think it's gonna flow very nicely in relation with, for example, ⁓ security deposits. ⁓ so you can file a claim faster ⁓ whenever there is ⁓ a guest ⁓ a guest issue. ⁓ but yeah the the work is never done. Nonetheless, I want to say the main message ⁓ that I would like you to keep out to to keep out of the sys tunnel is that This verbal partner integration is very differentiated and very special to us. There's a lot of output into it. And we we've done basically a third of our GPV in the last week with a million dollars from very recent connections. So we we're very confident that it is that it is working. There's just something that we're discovering along with verbo that means okay, we're gonna throttle things a little bit for now and basically make sure that. the the support load that this is creating on all of our customers is not disproportionate. So we can be stronger, ⁓ including on the on the interaction with with you guys whenever you're having a question. Because this is also a lot of change. ⁓ So we need to to be with you on that on that journey. I know some of you raised their hands and probably want to ask quite a few questions. I did say last tw last and all that basically you can reach out to me by email, but I I don't think I've send my I've sent my email. So pc at hospitable.com. I'm not necessarily gonna be the best at responding it, but I will be flagging everything internally ⁓ to make sure we can we can fix those things. So send your email to pc at hospitable.com and I will do whatever I can to fix ⁓ to fix the issue and in the case here your feedback. ⁓ so thank you so very much and we'll meet again. ⁓ the June ⁓ july seventh, right? That's what we're doing? No? Sorry, Miles, you were trying to communicate with me, but that's too complicated. Never mind. St stay tuned with the emails, it's actually gonna be a lot better and more reliable. Thank you everyone. See you in two weeks, same time, same place. Juice just ace. Okay. Bye.
Speaker 9: Okay, hello everyone and welcome to today's town hall. Thank you so much for joining us. And we're gonna get started with a few housekeeping notes before we start today's bi-weekly town hall. ⁓ so thank you again for joining us. As always, we are recording today's session, so if you get disconnected at any point, you can go on head over to YouTube at youtube.com forward slash at hospitable and follow along on our channel there. ⁓ it's worth noting that our recordings are also auto-dubbed in multiple languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, and more. So if you have any issue following along in English, you can watch the recording back there in multiple languages as well. ⁓ so we're going to start off with some product updates from the team and as always move on to some QA from the audience. Without further ado, we're going to briefly bring our disclaimer and then I'm going to pass on to Marina to do a verbal update. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Miles. Hello everyone. So two weeks ago we launched the Verbal Partner Connection, and this is the biggest release of all time for Hospitable. We never launched anything as big as Verbal, and I want you to guide you today to show you where we are at. So we now have 1500 hosts live on the connection today. In January, that was 15. And two weeks ago, we opened it to every host. And I remembered that by the end of the town hall, we already had over eighty hosts who were watching us live, already connected and live on verbal. So in 14 days, that number went from a few hundred to more than fifteen hundred hosts. And we're seeing all sorts of hosts joining. Some of them are brand new to verbal, some of them are upgrading from our legacy connection, some of them are switching to hospitable from other platforms. And those hosts altogether now received over 3,000 reservations so far. And I remember two weeks ago when I came here and we talked about it. I was like super happy with the fact that we had just reached 1000 during the town hall, and it's been two weeks and we already tripled that number. But here's what that number actually matters to you. Because we already processed over 3.4 million dollars in reservations. And this number is not really ours, it's yours. And we so from the host who joined since two weeks ago. Combined, they made already over a million dollars. And the 3.5 is like from everything since the beginning. So the connection was the biggest release we ever had at Hospitable. It was a huge success. And the connection is also very new and it doesn't behave at all like the connection. So it's very normal that you have questions about how things work. So we receive all sorts of questions. Why is a credit card needed? Which credit card do I add? When do I get paid? Which bank account do I get paid to? Also, questions about your calendar. We know that when you migrate to verbal, the verbal calendar stops working because hospitable is now the source of truth for your calendar. So many of you have questions about where do you do I check if my prices are correct? How do I check if my reservations are blocking the calendar correctly? And we want to be able to provide a high quality experience to all of you who are upgrading. So we decided to step back to be able to support all of your questions. And in the meantime, we're limiting upgrades to the new connection. So if you're not on the new connection yet, tomorrow when you go upgrade, we will place you on a queue of users, first come, first served, and we will let you know when it's your turn. Okay, so coming next is Andrew to tell you all about the desk app.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much. Switching gears, let's talk about the Hospitable Tasks app. If you haven't heard yet, Hospitable Now has an English and Spanish language companion app for a giving a dedicated workspace to your teammates who are doing your maintenance, doing your cleanings, and other jobs. You can manage ⁓ their work and they can manage the status of their work from the app, giving you real-time updates in Hospitable, and you can pay them instantly, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly. However, you prefer. So today I have a couple of fun updates to share, and we'll start with a quality of life improvement for your teammates. So image upload in the tasks app is now much, much faster. I'm sharing a technical image, but a very real-world win. So if you look on the left side of the graph, you see those spikes. This is when we got feedback that hey, some of us are having problems uploading images. Some images were taking a long time, like ⁓ at the very extreme edge, like 30 seconds to upload an image. ⁓ what you look at in the graph is like the the worst 1% is that purple line, the worst 5% is that black line, but the average is actually pretty good. It never got too bad. But some people had problems. So if you look at the two arrows that I've dropped on there, those were when we released a couple improvements to that. We did back end compression, we did a different type of front-end compression, and we've basically flattened out those curves. So now your team, your cleaners mainly, should not be seeing any problems. The y-axis there is in milliseconds. Sorry, I said it was technical. ⁓ but you're averaging basically in like the one second category for each image upload. ⁓ so that that feels like a big win. And the other, like I think even bigger quality of life improvement on image upload is that we made it happen in the background. And so if you are a cleaner that's uploading like a batch of 50 images, you can now continue moving about the app, completing the checklist ⁓ on the cleaning. And those 50 images are just uploading the background, not bothering you at all. So technical, but ⁓ nice quality of life when now for the fun stuff. So, what we're releasing today, we are now sharing guest reviews to your cleaners. So, this is a screenshot from the main page of the tasks app, and now your cleaners can see recent reviews, and we're sharing the cleanliness rating. So, what is relevant to the cleaner on reservations that were assigned to them? We're starting with Airbnb reservations, but we'll be expanding this to other channels in the coming days. What we're doing is we're importing the past 50 reservations. So if you've had your cleaner for a while, they've been doing jobs for you. They're gonna get all access to all of their past performance data. And then we're gonna capture everything going forward. And if they tap through to that review section, they're going to see their performance in the aggregate and they can track their performance over time. We want to help you achieve better quality. ⁓ by enabling your cleaners to get that instant feedback. We talked to a lot of hosts when we were getting set up and they were copying and pasting content. ⁓ it's a very laborious task, and you're never going to be doing it in the most responsive way because these reviews come in asynchronously. So we're super excited to be sharing this content. In this view, we're generating snippets of each review and we're using AI to try and pull out the relevant ⁓ parts of that review for your cleaner. We have a specific audience in mind. So if they tap through to any of those reviews, we're going to share them the full content of that review on the next slide. And we highlight again the ports, the parts that are important to them so they can dig into the review. And I think this is this is great. ⁓ this review is actually real. It looks like it's AI generated. It's so kind of over the top ⁓ complimentary. Some of you get these nice flowery reviews from your guests, great. ⁓ but I think it's it's super valuable. We consider I think the level of ownership that we want to have in again, like helping you achieve property quality. ⁓ part of that is equipping your your cleaners. To have more sense of ownership about the results of their job and of the impact. And this will tie in in the future. If you think back to the initial release, we kind of gave more of the roadmap of where we're going with the tasks app. We want to have an automated tipping mechanism based on five-star reviews in the app. So this is kind of the first big step towards that is if we incentivize cleaners and if we can automate the tipping that's happening on that. I think we can make a really big movement in increasing the ownership level on your cleaners, caring about the impact of the job that they do. ⁓ so yeah, this is this is great. There's all kinds like we, as we were developing the prompt to go through and actually pull the relevant pieces, we're looking at a lot of real reviews, and there is so much valuable feedback, especially in the private feedback comment where where polite guests are saying the things they really want to say, but don't want to put publicly on your on your your page. ⁓ so much valuable data that if you were able to action it and get better visibility on that, we're gonna help you in all those things. ⁓ it really will make a difference when we look back over time. ⁓ so we're super excited for this, this, this little feature that I think is gonna have ⁓ a really big impact. So at the same time that we're releasing the ability for your cleaners to see reviews from your guests, we're also giving cleaners the ability to rate the cleanliness of your guests. So this was an idea that came on our radar based on feedback from you all. ⁓ we love the idea. We think it's great. ⁓ so now we're looking at a screenshot of like the jobs, ⁓ the main page for a job, right? So they can see the current reservation, the next reservation, and we're asking them on that page, hey, how did Vladimir do with the with his cleanliness? How was the unit when you arrived? this is great for a lot of reasons. I'm sure you're thinking of those now. Also, like Again, like the the the subtle psychology of this is it's giving the cleaner agency. When they show up and your place is a mess, it's been destroyed, they get at least that psychological satisfaction of knowing that, hey, I'm gonna do a rough I got a rough job ahead of me, but at least I gave that guest a one-star review and the system is gonna like, you know, take that out on them. They don't have that today necessarily. So they get to tap in and give a star rating. That takes them to a page where we ask them a few more questions. So this is a good review, they're giving four stars. And they're we're also putting in front of them those those review tags that are relevant to the clean so they can tell us that they're night neat and tidy, et cetera. So they're helping you write your review of the guest by kind of giving that content. They're going to be ahead of you on the review normally, and you'll be able to have this content when you go to write the review of the guest. On a negative review, same thing. We're putting the tags, ⁓ the review tags in front of them that allow us to tell you, hey, this is what I saw. I saw an unauthorized pet. There's clear evidence of unauthorized smoking, et cetera. So they can be your eyes and ears on the ground. For a lot of you, you're never or rarely in your property, at least your cleaners are. So this is a great way to get better intel from them. Now, obviously the cleaners reviews aren't being sent to the booking platform. These aren't going directly to the guests. ⁓ at the moment, the next slide, please. We're sharing these on the task screen. That's not the best place to do it. This is just rolling out today. ⁓ in the next ⁓ coming days, next week. We'll start putting this in the section in the inbox when you're writing the review of the guest. And you can have the review from the cleaner. You can see what they said about the cleanliness of the guests, and we'll start to introduce workflows. So if you do have a bad review from your cleaner, you might be pausing your automated five star review. You might be pausing your review request for that guest. So there's some exciting things where this is really starting to all come together. And with that, I will pass it to Tim to talk about the guest portal. Thanks, Andrew. Hello, everyone. ⁓ yes. So switching gears to talk about trip insurance. We've been working on some updates and we have made it easier to offer trip insurance to your guests. We have made it easier to set up the process of offering trip insurance to your guests. So we we launched this trip insurance integration at the start of the year. It's been really successful and useful to both hosts and guests so far. It allows you to to change or feel more confident in sticking to your cancellation policy. It protects guests from things like trip cancellation, lost baggage, medical expenses. But it does all this whilst making you money in the process because you earn commission every single time your guests purchase that policy.
Speaker 2: And you don't
Speaker 7: Have to work particularly hard for that commission either. ⁓ still on that previous screen. So it's it's totally hands-off for you. ⁓ our partner, Rental Guardian, handle all the claims and all the supports. ⁓ we automatically handle all eligibility in the guest portal. All you need to do is just direct your guests. And then now on the next slide, ⁓ just to kind of give you a bit of an more of an idea on this the success that some posts are seeing so far. So
Speaker 2: To it.
Speaker 7: We've had one host that has made over $600 from a single trip insurance sale. There are many hosts now who have earned over $1,000 in total commission. Our top host has earned almost two and a half thousand dollars so far themselves. And then on average, ⁓ typically you expect to make about twenty seven dollars commission per policy sold, which actually means it like it's just two sales per month. actually pays for the average hospitable subscription. So it's kind of crazy. So if you join the eight hundred and ninety five posts who are earning from trip insurance just yet, like I said, we have made it easier to start.
Speaker 2: So we have
Speaker 7: Have on the next slide automatically enabled the trip insurance upsell for you. But we've had feedback that that setup needs to be a little bit easier. So that's what we've done. So we have added a new custom code. That's the ones with the two percentage marks. All trip insurance to your account. That includes a link to the guest portal and then verbiage that we know converts.
Speaker 2: We
Speaker 7: ⁓ around trip insurance to it, you can you can do two things. You can add that custom code into your new reservation message. Or even simpler, we have also just created a messaging rule called Trip Insurance for all of you on your accounts that includes that custom code. Literally all you have to do is enable it. And that is how the full trip insurance setup just enable that messaging rule.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. I'm gonna
Speaker 7: steal the screen now to actually just show you exactly what it is that I mean here.
Speaker 2: So here I am.
Speaker 7: Under messaging, ⁓ I'm just gonna go across to custom codes and you will see this one here, bold.
Speaker 2: Trick insurance.
Speaker 7: So basically, what this does, if you don't custom codes is a new concept to you, basically this is just a kind of a customizable tech snippet you insert in your messages that only shows based on whether that condition or not. And here, that condition is just trip insurance is available for this reservation. So we will never show this trip insurance custom code if the guest can't actually purchase.
Speaker 2: Is Matt's or And ⁓
Speaker 7: This message just basically explains hi, you know, just a heads up on basic trip insurance. Anything goes wrong with your stay, illness, delays. We we do offer this plan for you that you can purchase. ⁓ it includes ⁓ coverage for these things, medical coverage, trip cancellation, like I've mentioned. Just go to the guest portal, take a look, and just a little bit of explanation on accessing the guest portal.
Speaker 2: ⁓ So this is
Speaker 7: Actually looks like. Like I said, you can just add this to your messaging, play with the copy if you want. But what we've also done is we have created this trip insurance messaging rule. It contains that custom code. Right now that's due to be sent five minutes after a new reservation is accepted. Play with that timing if you want, scope it to various channels. It really is just that simple, enabling that messaging rule. Just to kind of give you a little bit of an example of what that actually looks like in practice. So here is Marina has chosen to stay at Emily's apartment next year. It just kind of fills in that information with the actual guest portal link. All Marina would need to go then and do is access that guest portal link, go into the guest portal, start the trip insurance flow. ⁓ That's it. Genuinely, if you like money, please just go and enable.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: that messaging rule. That's all you need to do. Everything else is taken care of. I'm gonna relinquish the screen now and then pass over to Patrick to talk about some integration updates.
Speaker 2: Yes, hello altogether. I mean, next up. Perfect. Thank you. ⁓ we have today something really exciting. We have today more than eighty partners in our partner system ecosystem. So which is really exciting to see. And today, please next slide. We're gonna add seven more partners to our ecosystem. And we're getting quite a lot of like new ⁓ partners to want to integrate with us as well. So today I actually want to highlight two of them. ⁓ SDR loophole, what basically helps host track and rental work hours for tax reporting and creates CPA-ready records for possible SDR tax benefits. Really happy to have them on board as well. And going over to HostReady. basically helps hosts stay on top of changing short-term rental rules. So everything around like licenses and permits and it spots them directly for you before it becomes a bigger problem. So very happy to have a finding board and we're gonna add more in the future. So hi and welcome to the hospitable ecosystem. Thank you so much. And I'm giving over to Emily.
Speaker 5: Thanks, Patrick. Alrighty, I have two small but impactful updates today on the mogul side of things. First, we'll start with a live preview of commission. So when we first launched owner statements, configuring the commission agreements was pretty simple and straightforward, but it's been nearly two years. We have added a lot of capabilities since we first launched. You can change your rate per channel, you can have your owner pay the host service fees or not. You can charge a flat rate commission, you can charge owners' tax on commission, you can report fees, net or gross. It can do a lot. Frankly, this resulted in a pretty long and complex commission agreement form that supports a ton of scenarios, but takes a lot of brain power to understand on the surface without the context of a real reservation to kind of ground you. So it was about time that we gave some more attention. To this part of the experience, a really critical part of setting up your owner statements and invoices. You're gonna see a lot of improvements to the commission or management agreement as a whole over the next several weeks, but we've gone ahead and shipped the live preview of commission in the meantime. So when you're configuring your commission agreement, you can choose a real reservation to preview while you do so. This allows you to see and more importantly, understand how the calculations will actually work. As you create your commission, not by the time you're like 10 clicks later. On a totally different note, we have also recently released guest reviews in the owner's portal. This was ⁓ believe it or not, not timed with Andrew's announcement of guest reviews in the Task App, ⁓ but kind of fun. So if guest reviews are enabled in your owner's portal permissions, your owners are given full transparency. We're going to be spotlighting one really amazing review on the dashboard, and your owners can view more reviews if they would like. When they do that, they'll have full transparency, including visibility into private feedback and any public replies. Like everything in the owner's portal, this is permission-based. So if you're already using the owner portal, do not worry, we did not turn this on for you. We know that you'll want to think this over and do it yourself. ⁓ You can do it when you're ready under your business in the owner portal tab. You can turn it on for all portals and like any other portal permissions, you can even override it for specific owners if you need to. For any new portals created moving forward, this will be on by default, but again, you can turn it off. A quick note before we move on from this, ⁓ we have intentionally started with the full transparency option. We know that that's not for everyone and that's okay. So if you don't want your owners to see that private feedback, we totally hear you. We're open to introducing some more controls in the future, but that's going to take some time. So until then, those of you who are on board with the full transparency option can take advantage of this now. Next, we will hear from Miles covering events.
Speaker 9: Perfect, thank you very much. ⁓ and just before I get onto events, I'm going to talk a little bit about success. ⁓ so Just a ⁓ reminder, if you have any questions about today's feature updates or questions about how to get the most out of Hospitable in general, you can go ahead and book a call with our customer success team. You can scan that QR code or hit that link to do so. And our customer success team will be able to help you get help with getting set up and you know strategies for success and workflows and more within Hospitable. So please go ahead, scan that QR code if you would like to book a one-on-one session with our customer success team. And now I'll go on to events. So we have a few events upcoming for you in the next week or so. So in tomorrow's live customer success workshop, we'll break down the operational playbook used by successful property managers and professional hosts to create a business that runs smoothly, delivers an exceptional guest experience, and continues growing without requiring them to be available. 24 7. Whether you're managing a single property today or actively growing your portfolio, you'll learn how to build a foundation that supports long-term growth. So please go ahead and scan that QR code if you're interested in registering for that event. That is tomorrow at midday Eastern time. So that's 6 p.m. Central European time. Next up, next Thursday, we have our monthly office hours with Brandon, our resident ⁓ accountant, our accountant in residence, this is title. And if you would like to ask him any questions on your processes around accounting and your reporting requirements and how Hospitable is helping, you can go ahead, scan that QR code and join that session. It's an open QA, so come armed with any questions that you have for Brandon. And as always, we'll be back at the same time, same place in two weeks for our next town hall. So a reminder as always to scan that QR code, get them added to your calendar so that you never miss an update from us again. And Just before we finish on community, we have one more thing to call out. A final reminder here that our MCP build-a-thon is still open and closes on Sunday. So you can connect your preferred AI agent to your hospital account, shows what you build, and you could win $500 in hospitable credits. So go ahead, scan that QR code to learn a bit more about that contest and have a chance to win. And Finally, I'm now gonna hand over to P C for a host token update. PC
Speaker 1: Yeah. Funny about that MCP and build-at-on thing. We're on a second episode of the build-a-thon while another competitor and I received some messages and DMs about a competitor saying they are the first to leave to an MCP. Well, we're gonna have a lot more implementation of MCP and users using MCP than that competitor. ⁓ anyway, ⁓ we are a different company at Hospitable. ⁓ nice to meet you if that's your first time. I'm PC, I'm the CEO and owner, ⁓ but nonetheless, I'm not doing this on my own, and I have an entire team and great investors. Do you know who they are? ⁓ That's you. So, with that new money that you get out of trip insurance, you can use it ⁓ for use ⁓ for investing into hospitable. That will be for the next slide. So this is a host token which is a proxy to our stock, and you can own ⁓ a bit of ⁓ a bit a bit of hospitable. You've seen the ⁓ skyrocketing price of that token in recent months. That was too correct because this was way too cheap. ⁓ for you to be investing. So great on everyone that was an early adopter. You are every single one of you, including those that are investing tomorrow, are still gonna be massively early adopters to to hospitable. So yeah, five hundred and thirty three percent year over year with a valuation today of 267 million. ⁓ For the people that have been used to this, there is no plan adjustment correction and like has been the case for the previous month. That means every month as the business keeps growing The valuation discounts keeps increasing unless we have massive investment. But the business is always gonna grow faster ⁓ than the investment. But I don't know, maybe you can prove me wrong. ⁓ so it's basically ⁓ stable at this point. The if you are new to it and you would like to be investing into hospitable, why would you not want to make money off the sale of your ⁓ of your property management software? Go to invest.hospitable.com. You will have to do some identity verification. If you're based in the US, you need to show evidence of being an accredited investor. If you don't have a letter coming handy, which is not often the case, you should go to accredited.am so that you can ⁓ you can get that letter. It's the best service I've found. ⁓ I want to thank John because John just asked ⁓ just ⁓ started received this letter just two days ago. That's been approved today. So now John can invest ⁓ into a speedable like two hundred and fifty of you. ⁓ and yeah, make hospitable ⁓ community-owned company by the team with by the by its customers, ⁓ and basically sharing the proceeds whenever that works. That's totally different than any competitor, any alternative ⁓ that you see in this space. So ⁓ yeah, you may compare that with SpaceX. This is ⁓ this is basically way before the IPO, way before the PUP and all those kind of things, and we're delivering real value to everybody. But hey, I'm ⁓ giving financial advice, so I should probably stop there. Please, Miles, come and save me. Because I think I need to stop. We're going live now onto the QA segment, which is the best.
Speaker 8: We're
Speaker 9: Perfect. Yes, thank you very much, PC. Okay, so ⁓ as he said, we are moving to QA. So if you do have a question for us, you can go ahead, head down to the React button at the bottom of your screen. And in there you should find a raise hand button that tells us that you want to come on stage and ask a question, at which point I will invite you on stage and ask you to unmute. That's very important. ⁓ we need to be able to hear your question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just just one thing before while we raise it are people raising hands, I want to answer a question live on the QA from Jacqueline. ⁓ and Laurent is typing an answer, so it's probably can be great. But this is a recurring question about the verbal partner connection. Does the new integration work with a verbo yearly subscription? ⁓ and the answer is yes, yes, absolutely. ⁓ you're still gonna need to add a credit card ⁓ to pay for any kind of cancellation fees that may be added. ⁓ there is no change to your agreement with Verbo ⁓ on the the modality of the connection ⁓ with hospitable. So you can absolutely ⁓ go ahead securely ⁓ connect to Verbo as ⁓ hospitable to Verbo, and there is no change to ⁓ the legacy subscription you have with them. It's it's been a popular question on on on other groups. So ⁓ yeah. Miles?
Speaker 9: Okay, thank you very much. ⁓ okay, Rebecca, we are inviting you on stage first. Hello, Rebecca.
Speaker 1: Hello Rebecca. Great. We how can we help you today? Don't think we can hear you right now.
Speaker 9: You're unmuted, Rebecca, but your microphone is not working, it seems. I'm going to come back to you in a minute. ⁓ if you play around with ⁓ disconnecting and reconnecting your microphone, we'll see if ⁓ we can get you back shortly. ⁓ allowed to talk just as I muted. Sorry, Rebecca, try one more time.
Speaker 5: Can you hear me now? Excellent, got it. Okay, I'll try to be quick. A couple things. A couple weeks ago I tried to do VRBO integration and it hung up and it took eventually we got one listing live and I tried to do another listing and add it on. I'm in Mexico, so I think that is part of the problem. This time it got an error message at the end and it just it doesn't proceed. So I don't know ⁓ what the best way to continue getting support for that is.
Speaker 1: Yes, perfect.
Speaker 5: The other questions I have are regarding the other sorry. The other questions I have regarding are ⁓ if ⁓ timeline in terms of WhatsApp for being able to send WhatsApp messages to your cleaners and your support people. And those are the two main things. And I'm gonna mute myself so you don't hear my little ones screaming when I find the unmute button.
Speaker 1: This is fine. We didn't hear any small ones. In any case we're we're all having I mean many of us have families. ⁓ so bless them. Andrew, you want to take one of those?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I I can take the second question. I'll take the first if anyone else wants to as well. But ⁓ regarding the second question on WhatsApp integration, ⁓ it's not actively being worked on right now. I think we're proceeding with ⁓ SMS as a new ⁓ communication channel for hospitable. ⁓ that's now live in a pilot phase, and we're kind of learning from how that's gonna work in the inbox. we wanna then take SMS to cleaners if that's valuable. I think the cleaning messaging actually in the task app needs it needs a lot of attention. ⁓ to begin with, maybe that will include WhatsApp one day. I think there's some open questions from us about what WhatsApp means to you as a host. Do you are you talking about WhatsApp for business where you wanna have a business account and you can unmute and and tell me when you when you have a chance. ⁓
Speaker 1: Yep. We can hear you. I can hear you.
Speaker 5: I don't know. How do I unmute? Can you hear me? Okay, great. yes, what's in Mexico, people don't use texting because it costs them money. So WhatsApp is like texting. ⁓ and what I do have a WhatsApp business account and was just curious about, and I know many other hosts in other countries use WhatsApp business also. So just using that instead of SMS to communicate with cleaners, with property I'm an owner, or to or like property managers or people who are helping you with the property. ⁓
Speaker 7: Cool.
Speaker 5: Many guests. So the first thing I do when someone books is I make a WhatsApp group with the guest and my support people so that if I'm not available, they can answer and help them to get in to clean for problems, whatever.
Speaker 7: be something that's not accessible to us through like an official integration, right? To create that group chat. So that's
Speaker 5: Is there any way to just make it a little bit easier for us to like have a button that takes you to WhatsApp or that it for example, you can make your own app that just sends things to WhatsApp. Even if it's not a two way communication, it could send stuff out. Just curious in terms of but I know you guys have a lot of priorities, so I get it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, it's it's one of our most highly upvoted ⁓ feature requests on WhatsApp. I think we're just in the phase now where we're trying to validate things that I think are similar with SMS and there's a whole lot of other things to validate that are different ⁓ on WhatsApp. And so it's it's helpful to even hear this like little bit of feedback you're giving me. ⁓ I think there's something there. I I can't really give you an ETA right now, but it it is something we're we're gonna be working on.
Speaker 1: I I think you're probably very ⁓ much ahead of the curve. ⁓ by having a WhatsApp business account. ⁓ there is I think WhatsApp business we can integrate with, what we cannot do is sending text messages from sending WhatsApp messages from your phone number, or please give us your phone number and your phone. And that's basically a bit of a limitation. So there was a lot of work, a lot of discovery. ⁓ And yeah, the the other part if I may say is that ⁓ that's free for you to use. That's not free for businesses to be using ⁓ with integration. So that's that's another component to that. ⁓ and and and there is also yeah, so WhatsApp is ⁓ the international ⁓ leading ⁓ messenger you also have, ⁓ taking that into account in the US where it's basically ⁓ text messages only and then you you talk with someone in the continental US and that doesn't resonate at all. ⁓ so we are exploring both. We have a pilot for the SMS and we've done some discovery on WhatsApp and ultimately decided it might not be the the best ⁓ the best usage over time so far. On the on the verbo for Mexico, which was your first question, ⁓ so wh where exactly where is there a problem? Was that on our user interface or was that on ⁓ on verbo's user interface?
Speaker 5: It was at the end of the integration when you go to add well, actually sorry, it is integrated. It's when you go to add a property and you choose one of your properties that's already in hospitable that you want to go live on VRBO. At the end of that process, there was a long error message about currencies and pesos and not available in these countries, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Okay. I think that might be a current may maybe that's a currency thing. I mean ⁓ Marina, I don't know if you want to to come on stage because you have a theory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I need to check your account, Rebecca. I'm going to do it right after here. I have a feeling that maybe you don't have a Stripe account attached to those. Yeah, I'll take a look and then I'll message you after the town hall.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: To be met. Thank you. Perfect.
Speaker 9: Thank you very much for your questions, Rebecca. ⁓ okay, ⁓ we're gonna switch gears and move on to Jenny. Hello, Jenny, welcome on stage. ⁓ low.
Speaker 5: Hi. Yes. Can you hear me now?
Speaker 1: Perfectly. Or can we help you today?
Speaker 5: ⁓ I'm having trouble with direct booking. ⁓ I've I just rolled that out and I have had two people that tried to book a reservation and neither have been able to complete their verification process. ⁓ and I found out that those emails are going to their spam folder. How do I fix this? Cause that's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: Okay. Abby?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess the issue that you were saying is the guests weren't completing guest verification because the email prompting them to do so was going to their spam.
Speaker 1: The
Speaker 5: As far as I understand, all I know is I've had two people and neither one has been able to complete the process and finally I got a hold of one today and he said, I never got an email. All I got was twenty four hours later saying you didn't verify your ID and he said, I think it went to my spam folder.
Speaker 2: Okay. I think we'll probably have to take a look at that specific example from your guests. we we do try to make sure that the emails, like we track the deliverability rates and stuff and make sure that those aren't going to spam if we can. But I'll have to look at your specific examples and and see what happened there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Kit how how do I get help with this? Because otherwise it the the direct booking is completely worthless. If two out of two chances that I've had to have a direct booking reservation have failed because of this, I'm not gonna keep hoping for the best. How how do I get it resolved?
Speaker 1: Jenny, I I th I think we can provide a bit of reality check here. If you have basically been using that for a test reservation, may may have they been local to your property? Because they would be flagged automatically basically as high risk, and therefore that we trigger review. There is really a narrow pop ⁓ a narrow part of gas verification that basically will be ⁓ escalated to our team for reviewing with SOPs and processes that are basically happening. So what Abby is doing is that she's gonna she's offering ⁓ with your help. To investigate on what's actually happening, because we would absolutely be expecting a guest that secures the that goes to the process to be receiving an email if they don't perfect the if they don't update their ID. There is also a continuous experience where basically they are performing the booking and later they're doing a guest verification. And that gas guess verification is simple, it's a liveness check, it's an upload from your from your passport. It's expected to be taking less than three minutes to to do so. ⁓ so if a guest doesn't complete that and drops off, then it swees gonna be impacting the ability to to do something ⁓ at all with the reservation. So we are offering to to help you here, Jenny. ⁓ we have processes about those guest verification. I assume that you're using direct premium, so we're gonna get back to you and and understand what what's happening. If anything, that's an opportunity for us to be improving our product. There is also gonna be a bit of a product consideration here. Is that if we are sending the email follow-up while the guest is verifying, it doesn't help either. It actually adds confusion. ⁓ and so the guest may need some time to get their passport, to get an ID verification. ⁓ and this is a third party product. So we don't know exactly ⁓ where they are in the process right now until we basically hear from the from the ID update. ⁓ so we're gonna check ⁓ and see and see what's happening.
Speaker 7: Jenny, something that might give you ⁓ better confidence too. Like, okay, like two of two is a small pool. It's a pretty established product, like it's not a new feature. So I think we're gonna do something over fifty million dollars of bookings across all of our customers on on the direct premium product this year. So it is working. We're not aware of any kind of like major gaps in in the product right now. Let's let's investigate and see what we find.
Speaker 5: ⁓ okay, there must be a setting that's off because I actually personally know these two people. They would not be in any universe considered a high risk booking. And
Speaker 1: They may be because they're local. They may be flagged because they are local. There is there is a component where it's not just about the guests and their their criminal history. We also do that. But it's basically the fact that for this reservation they're high risk because they may be local to your property.
Speaker 5: One one is local and one is not. And and then here's the other thing. I sent them both ⁓ the Airbnb link and they just booked no problem. So it it feels like something is set up on my end that is making this much harder than it needs to be for somebody to actually make a reservation at my property.
Speaker 9: Jenny, ⁓ we've got your contact details. I think Abby's gonna follow up directly with you afterwards ⁓ and we'll get to the bottom of it for you. ⁓ we're unable to troubleshoot the exact issue right here, so we'll we'll follow up and get to the bottom of it.
Speaker 5: Right. But my problem is nobody's above like I'm on this call because I feel like this
Speaker 1: Thank you. You are with the CEO, the director of product, the product manager in charge of the direct. We have your contact details. We're gonna need to let you ⁓ to let you fix this problem and to fix this problem. You have some great help from the chat from Kevin. The domain is likely an issue. If you have a so a s specific domain, it's it also sounds like maybe the guys didn't want to do it at all. This is the kind of thing that we have been investigating. So, Jenny, we're gonna take this offline and we're gonna get back to you. Okay. Thank you very much. And we are gonna get back to you, Jenny. We are in it. We are in this transaction. We want that booking. And boy, there is one thing that cannot stand is basically us being expected to block reservations. When we do, it's really because there is something serious. Like there, IB and would have and our team would have plenty of stories where we blocked a reservation because it really would we really felt that we were protecting our customers at this point in time. So yeah, we're we're a serious business and we want to give you serious money. ⁓ next one. Right, Miles?
Speaker 9: ⁓ yeah, I'm gonna struggle with this name, swanky texture properties. Swanky texture. ⁓ inviting you on stage now to ask your question.
Speaker 1: Hello. How can we help you today? Perfectly. Yep. ⁓
Speaker 4: Hey, can you hear us? Okay, so we were looking very, very much forward to being able to pay the cleaners ⁓ through Hospitable. And on our end, it was an absolute disaster. ⁓ right now we currently have about ⁓ $330 that are ⁓ trapped, if you will, in the ⁓ the payouts in the marketplace. And I've I've kind of gone back and forth with you guys a couple of times to just figure out my cleaner on her on one of my cleaners on her end says that we're using the app. they just have no idea how to link up their bank accounts to be able to ⁓ receive payment from us. And then on our end, we just told them we'll go back to the manual process. But ⁓ I've gone back and forth with hospitable like probably about 10 or 12 emails, I would say, and we just cannot figure out. How to get the money out of the marketplace account ⁓ and then to stop the the task so that the cleaning fee isn't automatically deducted because it's it's just a mute point, right? Because we cannot pay through hospitable. Any ⁓ insight?
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 7: So okay. I mean, first of all, I I can jump on your account. ⁓ end of day here, but tomorrow ⁓ I can get your money out tomorrow for you. ⁓ not a problem. ⁓ if you wanna stop the task rule, you can basically take out the payment by setting it to zero dollars. ⁓ you can also I think disable the payment now and there. but ⁓ yeah, otherwise I need to I need to look at your account and figure out ⁓ maybe some of the past tasks we just need to say that like check the we can move the task into paid off platform and that will free up the money from your account and then you can kind of move on until your cleaner is able to get the bank account linked. ⁓ we do have a new onboarding flow in the in in the task app now that does make that easier to link a bank account. ⁓ but yeah not everyone's gonna gonna manage. ⁓ so yep.
Speaker 1: ⁓ yeah, I'll follow up with you.
Speaker 4: Okay, ⁓ that sounds great.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much. Thank you.
Speaker 9: ⁓ great. Okay. ⁓ moving on now. ⁓ inviting Jazz on stage. Hello, Jazz.
Speaker 1: Hello Jazz. How can we help you today? We cannot hear you just yet, you are unmuted, but maybe there's a problem with your mic. Going on once.
Speaker 9: Twice?
Speaker 1: Twice?
Speaker 9: Okay, ⁓ we'll circle back to you jazz in just a second. ⁓ we'll try Mandy next. Hello, Mandy.
Speaker 1: Hello Monday. Perfectly well.
Speaker 9: Hi, can you hear me? My question is very quick, ⁓ because I already answered in the chat. So the trip insurance is guess facing, but what if they cancel doing ⁓ like, you know, after my firm cancellation policy, you know, after thirty days, I assume I get paid and they get their money back, right?
Speaker 1: That's the point. Yes, you you absolutely got it. So it's a way to secure your own reservation and the payouts. And the guest basically is paying it they are the one paying a pr ⁓ product with reinsurance to ensure that they can cancel for any reason on top by passing your ⁓ your cancellation policy. So that means it's that insurance that's gonna pay them ⁓ the amount for for the reservation.
Speaker 9: Okay, then second very quick question is, my booking that coming from verbal, ⁓ somehow it seems like it cannot collect the security deposit. Is the security deposit only on Airbnb booking? ⁓ can you help me with that?
Speaker 7: It's it's not working on the new verbal partner connection just yet. Abby, did you have any updates on where we are with that?
Speaker 2: ⁓ no, I was gonna say the same thing and that we are working on making it work for for Virbo in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 9: So in that case, how can I collect security deposits from the booking that come from verbal? Even though I check hospitable should be the one who collect them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right now for for if you're on the verbo partner connection, you would need to collect a security deposit from the guests some other way, which we know isn't great. So yeah, there is unfortunately no way to collect that security deposit payment through hospitable right now. We will have that soon. ⁓ and we're also working on ⁓ the ability to actually send or request money for verbo partner reservations as well. So you could request a secure deposit or any other like ad hoc fee from the guest that way as well.
Speaker 7: So you've got a couple of weeks to to wait ⁓ and come up with a solution. In the meantime, if you need it, but we'll have you ⁓ very soon. Was there anything else, Mandy?
Speaker 9: ⁓ so so I would just have to request a security deposit manually at the moment, right? 'Cause both of them are not available right now, like requesting fee through hospital or yeah. So I have to do it manually.
Speaker 7: Just for the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 9: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Okay. And I want to say that Mandy Mondi is not alone and I've taken screenshots of other questions about the about the security deposit ⁓ to be able to address that gap as quickly as possible. okay.
Speaker 9: Okay, Jazz, we're gonna try again. Let's see if we can get you live. Hello, Jazz.
Speaker 1: Okay. Here we go. Yes, we can hear you now.
Speaker 3: Okay, awesome. ⁓ so two quick questions. One, I'm having a problem with my booking dot com connection. ⁓ for some reason the calendar got closed. I'm not sure if it happened on booking dot com but I'm not seeing it on this site and I can't basically I they can't book anything because the calendar is saying that it's unavailable and when I contact them they're saying that I have to ⁓ fix it on the management ⁓ software. So that's the first question. The second one is if you have reviews off ⁓ Airbnb dot com, are you able to upload them to the direct booking ⁓ platform?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take the second one, and you take in the first one, Andrew. Sure. This this spicy one. so to answer your question, can you use Airbnb's reviews and content on your direct booking website? The answer on that is gonna be no. ⁓ Airbnb on their terms of condition asserts that it is their intellectual property that they collect from their guests during the during the process. ⁓ and they basically are banning you ⁓ from using it on another property, such as direct. ⁓ so the good thing is that on our side We so first of all, we are compliant with that setup, so we're not putting you at risk. We also obviously are collecting guests ⁓ reviews from your direct booking ⁓ website. So basically those are your reviews and they can be used to advertise for your ⁓ direct booking ⁓ website. There are ⁓ maybe some some work that we can we can do on that, ⁓ but the fundamentally the bottom line is that Airbnb reviews are for Airbnb's use only. ⁓ And now Andrew on your on your first question.
Speaker 7: I mean I'm not gonna be able to give any specifics ⁓ on the call live, Jazz. ⁓ but I'm sharing a note now in the and the team that manages the booking.com connection that we can and jump in and find any support ticket you might have open and and try and get to the bottom of it for you.
Speaker 3: Okay. So I think maybe I wasn't clear on what I was asking for the second question. So originally I had a problem connecting my direct booking what do you call it? Like URL name. So I was taking like ⁓ direct bookings but not with the direct booking site if that makes sense. And I have reviews from that. They're not off of Airbnb. They're direct bookings, but ⁓ the site just wasn't working. So I'm asking if I'm able to is there a way to upload your reviews ⁓ in that manner? Not anything from ⁓ Airbnb?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can appreciate it's a bit shady, right? Okay. But all of a sudden it clears a path, right, Abby? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just gonna say I think that's interesting ⁓ to be able to upload your your reviews to your hospital posted site. That's not something you can do right now. ⁓ we will collect as long as you if that booking is like a direct booking in hospitable, we will actually prompt your guests to leave a review. So we will automatically collect reviews from your direct guests and those will go on the website. ⁓ so you'll get some reviews that way. But I think yeah, g giving you a way to source reviews from from other places is something we could look at for future too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have to be mindful that on the on the second great idea about uploading a review, like we also We we want to have a great partnership with Airbnb and not receive season desist about you ⁓ about or about us hosting a drug booking site that would ⁓ not be not be compliant. ⁓ so I don't think there is ⁓ I'm I'm I'm gonna I think we're gonna talk about it, but I'm not sure there is a lot of property modern software that would offer ⁓ that ⁓ that capability of uploading the features. It's kind of a recipe for for a disaster, if I if I'm honest. Okay. ⁓ thank you thank you jazz for for raising those those points.
Speaker 9: Okay. time for a few more here. So Dala inviting you on stage. Hello, Dalla. Do you have a question for us?
Speaker 1: Hello Dalla. How can we help you? You're on stage now, you are unmuted, but ⁓ we cannot hear you yet. ⁓ Perfectly well. Okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'm doing the ⁓ I'm doing the verbo integration. I have seven properties on my verbo account, but when I go to finalize the setup, it pulls in eight properties. It pulls in one property that is one of my owners that she has her own verbo account. And so I don't want to go forward with it, you know, ⁓ with that one property on there.
Speaker 1: That's ⁓ that's a pretty valid reason. So that's one of the reasons why we we kind of want to take a chance and looking ⁓ looking at that ⁓ a bit in more depth. So ⁓ yeah, we ⁓ I think we're gonna we're gonna get back to you to to understand really what what's going on. ⁓ Okay. Because ⁓ yeah, there there there is I think an I mean I I I w I will not commit. I I don't know if Marina can be on stage because there are sometimes an unexpected number of property that can be returned, but I'm probably hallucinating it as well. ⁓ so there There were problems with archive properties, for example. I I don't know if that's still relevant on the part-on connection. ⁓ but yeah, I think we can go back to ⁓ to verbal support to understand why that listing is added. Unless Marina, you you have a theory on this already.
Speaker 2: No can you repeat
Speaker 1: No, okay. There is a there are seven properties expected to be imported, and there is an eighth one that ⁓ is ⁓ from an owner on another ver on another verbal account. So I think the the the theory I would have is that it's probably one that was created a long time ago, was never set live, ⁓ and maybe ⁓ what we would call like a phantom ⁓ photom property, an archived one. Can it I mean, yeah, we l let's just say we're gonna we're gonna look into this and give you a a bit a better confidence, but I think this is under your account, it it it is not gonna contaminate with another verbal account. So I think the the first ⁓ intention is that it should be totally fine to be integrating all eight properties and then you basically mute the the eighth one so that it doesn't have to be within ⁓ within the scope ⁓ in any case. But
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, it's an active property that I manage. It's not a I mean, I don't want to mute it. It's it's an active property. So what I
Speaker 1: Why w why so in that case it should work. It should it should be the one you it should be one you import if it's an active one.
Speaker 5: Well, it's just it's I had sent her a link. I had sent the owner a link to for her to integrate hers. And then I went to integrate mine and I logged into my verbo under my account to in order to do mine. And that's, you know, hers popped up. So like I don't want to integrate hers on mine. I don't I don't know if it makes a difference really, but don't want like the I don't want the monthly fee to be on my account. The Virgo fee.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I
Speaker 5: You know, hers needs to be separate, just like all my other owners are separate.
Speaker 1: Right. And and she and she has an account, a variable account that is already separate and it is connected to to your speedable already? Yeah. Okay. Well we we as I said we we're gonna look into that. I think that's basically the only safe answer I can give you.
Speaker 2: Are you logged into her account when you are
Speaker 5: No, I I I logged into her account in order to send her the link and I don't even think I needed to. But then when I was ready to do mine, I logged into my Verbo account and then did the integration on mine. But I did that for like three different owners. ⁓ only hers is the one that's showing up under mine.
Speaker 2: Okay. I'll take a look into that as well.
Speaker 5: Okay, so I can ⁓ expect to hear from you guys or something. Okay. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah. ⁓ Kelly in the chat is also saying that there is ⁓ the same problem with owners and verbo, but that's I I'm not sure what it is. ⁓ okay, we're gonna take one last one. ⁓ I kind of feel like I want to share an update about those emails that were flocking to spam. But there we we have records of everything that we send and we know when something is delivered, not delivered, flagged in spam, and seeing that they were delivered. ⁓ so we're gonna keep on investigating. on the on that problem with the direct booking guest. Okay, last question from ⁓ from David.
Speaker 9: Yep, invite you on stage, David. Last question of the day. How can we help?
Speaker 1: Hello, David. Can I mute yourself? Perfectly. How can we help you today?
Speaker 7: Hello guys, can you hear me? Okay, so there's already a person answered this question, but I just want to like ⁓ redouble asset.
Speaker 1: Voice confirmation. Go ahead. It should be easy.
Speaker 7: ⁓ we're ⁓ we're having an issue with BRVO integration because ⁓ previously before we ⁓ migrate to the new BRVO from the legacy, we c we pre approved ⁓ on the BRBO application. Basic basically we need to log in ⁓ on a property before we can pre approve ⁓ an in inquiry or a leg or a guess. But now since ⁓ these properties we have has been ⁓ fully managed now by hospitable. We cannot pre-approve them in the VRBO. So yeah it ⁓ but the issue here is that the pre approved button is not showing on our end when there's an inquiry of a guest that needs to be pre approved. So
Speaker 1: ⁓ on the variable dashboard you mean. On the variable application.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know Marina if you can give an update on the support for per approval, if it's a a restriction from ⁓ But yeah, anyway, you ⁓ Marina, yeah?
Speaker 2: No, I I have to look into it to understand better how how the dynamics work for pre-approval and and API connected hosts.
Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. ⁓ it it I mean what's what's the what's the idea behind behind ⁓ sending the pro approval to ⁓ on on a guest ⁓ for for you? David? ⁓
Speaker 7: Okay. ⁓
Speaker 1: Technically it doesn't prevent a guest from sending a request to book.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but the thing here is that ⁓ that's how how we usually do. We ⁓ when there's an inquiry of a guest, then we do pre approve it in the B R B O and then you know.
Speaker 1: Systematically do so, I guess.
Speaker 7: Yeah. ⁓ but right now in hospitable it's it is not showing. But yeah, when we when looking back at BRBO it shows that it is showing that that to make changes ⁓ to this reservation, use your property management software which is hospitable. But I don't know why it doesn't show now.
Speaker 1: So it may be simply because we're not supporting that feature just yet. So that's basically what Marina is going to be checking. So in that case, that might be a gap on our on our side. I mean, we've heard, for example, about security deposit earlier and that we are gonna be actively working ⁓ working on. ⁓ you also flag very nicely the the ping pong that happens between verbo and the property manual software. ⁓ I think yeah, Marina flagged earlier in the you know, section on ⁓ providing updates to the verbal partner connection that ⁓ we're having issue we're having a rather ⁓ conversation with host that for example flag that the calendar doesn't work on the dashboard and it's not expected to be working actually. ⁓ but that's that's basically one of the things that's causing a support some support load. ⁓ it's also ⁓ yeah the the totally different experience ⁓ of host ⁓ s we we're doing our best but ⁓ yeah there are some things and some limitations that we have to navigate around. ⁓ on the on that verbal integration to make sure that it's as as close to what you what you would like and then we can we can possibly do. But yes, so in any case what I want to say and to you and to everyone listening in, because we're gonna close the this tunnel now is basically we're still very actively working on verbo and that part of integration along with so many other things. I don't know if you spotted some of those, like for example the task the task app and the ability to continually work under on a the checklist plus the payments of your cleaners and escalating now reviews for your guests and from your cleaners as well about the stays. So that's I think it's gonna flow very nicely in relation with, for example, ⁓ security deposits. ⁓ so you can file a claim faster ⁓ whenever there is ⁓ a guest ⁓ a guest issue. ⁓ but yeah the the work is never done. Nonetheless, I want to say the main message ⁓ that I would like you to keep out to to keep out of the sys tunnel is that This verbal partner integration is very differentiated and very special to us. There's a lot of output into it. And we we've done basically a third of our GPV in the last week with a million dollars from very recent connections. So we we're very confident that it is that it is working. There's just something that we're discovering along with verbo that means okay, we're gonna throttle things a little bit for now and basically make sure that. the the support load that this is creating on all of our customers is not disproportionate. So we can be stronger, ⁓ including on the on the interaction with with you guys whenever you're having a question. Because this is also a lot of change. ⁓ So we need to to be with you on that on that journey. I know some of you raised their hands and probably want to ask quite a few questions. I did say last tw last and all that basically you can reach out to me by email, but I I don't think I've send my I've sent my email. So pc at hospitable.com. I'm not necessarily gonna be the best at responding it, but I will be flagging everything internally ⁓ to make sure we can we can fix those things. So send your email to pc at hospitable.com and I will do whatever I can to fix ⁓ to fix the issue and in the case here your feedback. ⁓ so thank you so very much and we'll meet again. ⁓ the June ⁓ july seventh, right? That's what we're doing? No? Sorry, Miles, you were trying to communicate with me, but that's too complicated. Never mind. St stay tuned with the emails, it's actually gonna be a lot better and more reliable. Thank you everyone. See you in two weeks, same time, same place. Juice just ace. Okay. Bye.
