Hospitable Town Hall, May 14, 2025

Summary

In the Hospitable Town Hall meeting held on May 14, 2025, several key updates and announcements were shared. The session included the introduction of new team members, updates on dynamic pricing and AI features, improvements in the guest verification process, and the launch of a new community platform for enhanced interaction. Hospitable continues to enhance its platform with features like tax remittance expansion, improvements in domain management for direct sites, and more customizable pricing and availability controls. Exciting developments in security deposits and new opportunities for community engagement were also highlighted.

Highlights

• Introduction of new team members Mark and Petra added some fresh energy. 🎉
• Dynamic pricing updates make it easy to try and switch for better user experience. 💡
• AI updates ensure your messages sound just like you, with or without emojis. 📬
• Guest verification process overhaul aims for smoother user experience. 🛂
• Launch of a new community platform promised better host interactions. 🌐

Key Takeaways

• Hospitable town hall showcased exciting updates and new team members. 🎉
• New dynamic pricing feature now available, second largest among hospitable users! 💸
• AI enhancements include better auto-reply and tone of voice matching you! 🤖
• Easier domain management and tax remittance expansion across the US. 🌐
• Guest verification process revamped for smoother booking experiences. 🛡️
• Launch of a new interactive community platform at community.hospitable.com. 🌍
• Coming soon: rule sets for property management, enhancing control. 🔧

Overview

The May 2025 Hospitable Town Hall brought many exciting updates. New team members Mark from Canada and Petra from Berlin were introduced, adding more diversity to the lineup. Mark will be focusing on customer support for the Americas, while Petra will manage the community to enhance connectivity among hosts.

Dynamic pricing has taken a significant leap at Hospitable, now included for all users on various plans without extra charge. Andrew highlighted the feature's ease of use and reversibility. Additionally, users can now personalize their pricing strategies with new rule sets being gradually introduced, ensuring they stay competitive in the market.

Community building took center stage with the introduction of a new platform, community.hospitable.com. Aimed at fostering better interaction and support, it's set to replace the existing Facebook group. The town hall also covered enhancements in AI for better customer interactions, improvements in tax remittance processes, and updates in guest verification, promising a smoother experience.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction In the "Introduction" chapter, the foundation is laid for the themes and objectives of the document. This chapter provides an overview of what the reader can expect in the subsequent chapters, highlighting the key points and setting the stage for more detailed discussions. It aims to engage the reader's interest and provide context for the information that follows.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Welcome and Overview In the chapter titled 'Welcome and Overview,' the speaker greets the audience and introduces the day's town event.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Introduction of New Team Members: Mark and Petra In this chapter, new team members Mark and Petra are introduced. The chapter likely covers their backgrounds, roles, and how they will contribute to the team, setting the stage for future collaboration and integration into existing projects.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Company Structure and Team Focus In a bi-weekly town hall meeting, the company welcomes attendees from various locations and ensures them about the availability of a live stream and recording on their YouTube channel in case of any disconnection. The session begins with updates on the company structure and product developments. Following this, there is a segment dedicated to addressing questions and answers from the audience. Efforts are made to cover all updates within the allocated time.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Product Updates: Dynamic Pricing The chapter discusses how the session is structured to be thorough yet efficient, allowing for questions through a Q&A functionality rather than the chat. The host suggests using the Q&A to keep track of questions effectively. Additionally, the chapter introduces new team members in a town hall setting.
• 06:00 - 10:00: Product Updates: AI Features In the chapter 'Product Updates: AI Features', the team welcomes a new member, Mark, who is joining from the western part of the world, near the Atlantic. Mark is invited to introduce himself, share his location, his role at Atospitable, and some personal anecdotes or fun facts about himself. This marks the beginning of his engagement with the team.
• 10:00 - 13:00: Product Updates: Direct Features and Guest Verification In this chapter titled 'Product Updates: Direct Features and Guest Verification', a customer support manager introduces himself, mentioning his role in leading the frontline team for handling tickets, especially for US-based support. He expresses his enthusiasm for advocating for customers and helping them maximize the use of the platform. The speaker also shares a personal fun fact about his love for travel, having visited 35 countries and being stung by jellyfish eight times, humorously advising against the experience.
• 13:00 - 15:00: Product Updates: Security Deposits and Devices This chapter, titled 'Product Updates: Security Deposits and Devices,' includes a personal anecdote about a painful experience with a Portuguese man-o-war jellyfish, likening it to running a support team in the Americas with a specific focus on the US.
• 15:00 - 17:30: Product Updates: Business Models and Accounting The chapter 'Product Updates: Business Models and Accounting' discusses the addition of new team members to support the company. The text introduces a new community manager named Petra, who is asked to share her location, role at the company, and a fun fact about herself.
• 17:30 - 18:30: Product Updates: Connectivity In this chapter titled 'Product Updates: Connectivity', Petra introduces herself as the new community manager based in Berlin, Germany. Her role focuses on building a stronger host community and enhancing the community experience through various interaction points. Petra shares a personal anecdote about moving to Berlin initially for a short internship and staying for 9 years, suggesting her deep connection and commitment to the community.
• 18:30 - 21:30: Announcement of New Community Platform The chapter introduces the announcement of a new community platform. The speaker shares a personal anecdote about moving out of the country and how people expect them to return. They express excitement about engaging with the community and mention an upcoming announcement related to the community. The importance of hiring a skilled community manager like Petra is acknowledged, hinting at significant developments in community management.
• 21:30 - 23:00: Upcoming Events and Workshops The chapter discusses the growth of the Hospitable team, highlighting that they are nearing 100 full-time employees. A significant portion of the team is dedicated to support-related functions, such as onboarding, sales, customer support, and success functions, reflecting the company's emphasis on support and customer success.
• 23:00 - 26:30: Q&A Session The chapter discusses the significant achievements of the engineering and product teams, highlighting their ability to deliver with small, efficient teams. The session begins with product updates, starting with Andrew's presentation on dynamic pricing. Additionally, a major announcement previously made at the 100 town hall is referenced.
• 26:30 - 27:00: Closing Remarks and Future Updates The chapter highlights the availability of dynamic pricing features integrated into all current plans, including host, pro, and mobile, at no extra cost. Legacy plan users can upgrade to access this feature. The company emphasizes ease of use and seamless integration for current users.

Hospitable Town Hall, May 14, 2025 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30
• 00:30 - 01:00 Hello folks, welcome to today's town
• 01:00 - 01:30 hall. Good morning, good afternoon, good
• 01:30 - 02:00 evening wherever it is you are listening in from. Uh so welcome to today's bi-weekly town hall. Uh as always we are live streaming and recording today's session. So, if you get disconnected at any point, you can head over to our YouTube page, uh, YouTube.com/hospitable and you can watch along there. Also, uh, as always, we're going to kick off with a few company and product updates and then move into some Q&A from the audience. We're going to try and squeeze in all of our updates as
• 02:00 - 02:30 quickly as possible, uh, but still keep them thorough, uh, so we can get to a decount Q&A at the end. We'll try our best, but if you do have any questions throughout, please type them in the Q&A box at the bottom. So, if you go down to the bottom, you should see Q&A functionality. Type your questions in there rather than in the chat. Just helps us keep a track of all the questions that are being asked so we can answer them. And without further ado, I'm going to hand over to PC to introduce some new team joiners. Hello everybody and thank you for joining on this new town hall 101st.
• 02:30 - 03:00 I think that makes it be. So first of all uh we are welcoming Mark who is joining from I want to say the western most part of the world uh this side of the Atlantic. Anyway uh Mark now is the time when you should join stage and tell us who you are where you're based what you're going to be working on atospitable and yes maybe sharing an anecdote or a fun fact about you Mark. Thank you BC. Yeah I'm Victoria BC
• 03:00 - 03:30 Canada. Nice to see everybody here and uh you know it's my second week here. Very excited to get started hospitalitable. Uh like PC said, I'm customer support manager. Anything sport related, especially US-based, uh I'm going to be a go-to guy leading the frontline team getting their tickets. I'm there to advocate for our customers and help you get the most out of your platform. So, I'm super excited for that. And fun fact about me, I love to travel myself. Been to 35 countries and in those countries, I've been stung by jellyfish eight times. So, uh do not recommend that. But it was a blast
• 03:30 - 04:00 traveling. What was the worst What was the worst sting from a jellyfish? Uh, it was a Portuguese manavore. If anybody's familiar with those, they were not very nice. Felt like a 100 beast stings all across my legs and uh yeah, it was not fun. So, okay. Well, hopefully it's not as painful to be running a support team in the in the Americas. We wrote US but obviously it's covers for uh for all of the Americas but mostly there is a US dimension. Uh so yeah good luck Mark
• 04:00 - 04:30 you'll be staying with us on the chat right to see what customers are doing and our thinking. Um so we're very happy to to have you joining the new team support team and the company. Uh we're having somebody else joining her name is Petra and she's going to be joining as a community manager which is another role. So yeah, Petra, please tell us where are you based, what are you going to be doing at Hospitable, and maybe share a fun fact about you. Hi everyone. Uh
• 04:30 - 05:00 Petra here. I'm a creation born and raised and I'm based in Berlin, Germany. Um so I'm joining as a community manager and I'll be here to grow our host community, build stronger connections and improving your hospitalitable community experience across various touch points. Um so interesting maybe fact is like I I moved to Berlin originally for 10 weeks internship and I still after 9 years I haven't had a conversation with my
• 05:00 - 05:30 family that I actually moved out of country. Um so it was a smooth smooth exit still they're still waiting for me to come back any moment now. Um but yeah super excited to be here and looking forward to exchanging with you and meeting you all. we would want to leave Berlin. Okay. And you we have an announcement related with community a little bit later. So please stay tuned. There is a very clear reason why obviously we hired a great community manager like Petra. Um and just wanted
• 05:30 - 06:00 to zoom out a little bit because you are familiar with the new people that we're presenting you every other week. These days we're getting closer to 100 people working full-time for hospitalitable. And you can see here a bit more that the breakdown. So there's really a massive number of the team that is working on support um support related functions including on boarding. It's really between sales and customer support and success functions all together. uh with
• 06:00 - 06:30 also a lot a lot of packing power I want to say around engineering and product uh considering everything that we're able to ship uh with small very uh intensive teams. Um so yeah to get started we are going to have we're going to launch now the product updates. Um and yeah first is going to be dynamic pricing with Andrew. Good luck Andrew. Hello everyone. If you are not here for the 100 town hall, you might have missed that. We made a big announcement.
• 06:30 - 07:00 Dynamic pricing for everyone. By that we mean it is embedded inospitable. It is included at no additional charge. If you are on any of the current plans, host, pro, and mobile. If you are on our legacy plan, you don't have to use it, but you are welcome to upgrade to a new plan and get free dynamic pricing included in your account. We made it as easy as possible to get started and try. If you are using a current dynamic pricing integration, you don't have to
• 07:00 - 07:30 disconnect it. You can try us on one, sum, all of your properties without doing anything else. It just works and we made it completely reversible. So, if you try it out and you don't like it, you can turn it off and we'll restore it exactly as it was before you turned it on. Um, so yeah, I encourage all of you if you haven't yet, please look at it. So two weeks ago we shared this chart to say hey this is what our user base looks like at the moment as far as dynamic pricing is concerned. We think everyone kind of needs these things. A lot of you
• 07:30 - 08:00 are doing this manually. Um so I just wanted to give you an update on this chart since our last town hall and we are currently the second biggest dynamic pricing provider now in hospitalitable and we've been able to take that uh number of people not using dynamic pricing down to only 30% now. So not bad after 2 weeks. I realize some of you this is a big decision. It might take some time. Uh a lot of you have booked um office hours with us or one-on-one sessions to just go through questions. We'll probably do another Q&A uh coming up soon, but you can also rewatch the
• 08:00 - 08:30 Q&A that we did previously on our YouTube channel just to get uh up to date with it as well as we've got a lot of resources in the help center so you can learn about this. Um but we've gotten lots of good feedback. We've already made some adjustments to our global model based on that feedback. we're now a little bit more reactive to local events and demand and a little bit more biased towards your historical data. So, if you already tried it and it wasn't quite right, um we're going to be adjusting to your feedback over time. So, come back uh and give us another shot this week, next week, uh as we
• 08:30 - 09:00 release some some new features. So, moving on. Again, when we talked about this previously, we said this is the first version. We designed it to be dead simple. For some of you, this was too simple. um you only have three three factors basically to tell us at the moment and two of them are optional. So you tell us your base price an optional minmax price and it's designed to run on autopilot and be data driven and we let you always be in control so you can always do manual price overrides. Um but
• 09:00 - 09:30 again some of you are um wanting to have a little bit more personalization on top of that. Um and so we're going to start talking about how uh the first way that we're going to do that. So, in addition to manual updates, we're going to be looking at rule sets. And if you've used rule sets on Airbnb before, you are probably familiar with this. They they work similar in some ways, different in others. So, these are custom date ranges. We're going to color code them on the calendar so you can tell what kind of strategy you've implemented, so it's it's trackable and traceable. Um,
• 09:30 - 10:00 they're going to work cross channel different than Airbnb. So when you say update your men's day for uh a weekend or for your high season, that's going to apply to all of your connected channels. So we become the source of truth for that rule set as well. Um for dynamic pricing, this will give you the ability to set a custom base price, min price and max price for any date range that you want. So a lot of you said, "Okay, my Fourth of July weekend, my Christmas, you're not quite as reactive as you as as I I want you to be." That's fine. we
• 10:00 - 10:30 really shouldn't be that reactive. If you're really aggressive on the global global model, you need to tell us that that personalization and we think rule sets is the best way to do that. Um, in addition, we have some other factors besides just dynamic pricing controls. Uh, some of your availability rules including restricted check-in and checkout. Um, and discounts. Now, discounts are the only thing there that is Airbnb only. Um, and we're giving you new functionality within discounts. Uh, so we now have length of stay discounts on Airbnb where you can tell us a custom
• 10:30 - 11:00 length of stay and and any discount uh percentage that applies to that. So I'm going to now pass to Ben, our front-end developer that's been implementing uh these uh rule sets, and he's going to give you a walkthrough of what this looks like in production. This is not available for all users just yet. That's going to be coming soon. We're going to roll this out a little slowly. Uh so please be patient uh as this touches a lot of the product and we want to be super careful about um making sure that everything is working tiptop. But without further ado, Ben, please. Thank
• 11:00 - 11:30 you, Andrew. Hello everybody. Um yeah, so just making some of that a bit more visual. As Andrew mentioned, we are working on adding rule set support. Um and again, as Andrew mentioned, this is not currently available to everybody. It's not in production. uh I'm demoing it on production so it does exist. It is real. Um but yeah, we are we are gradually uh improving this and starting to roll it out to uh a wider audience. Um so I'm going to start with the more boring bit. Uh the definition of a rule set, what's kind of in a rule set? Um
• 11:30 - 12:00 for those of you who are familiar with Airbnb, you've probably seen or used rule sets before. Um and this should not look too uh foreign to you in that sense. Um, so a rule set is kind of an easy way to control your pricing and availability uh from uh for specific dates on your calendar. Um, and so you can see here just in setting up a rule set, you can obviously name a rule set. I've got one here which is 10% price uplift. We define a color uh so that you can see that rule set on your color on your calendar which we'll come back to in a minute. Um, and then there's
• 12:00 - 12:30 basically a bunch of controls on a rule set, things that rule sets could adjust for you. So you can see in this case uh they fall into pricing and availability. Uh we've got standard pricing adjustments. So these are pricing adjustments that will apply when you're using standard pricing on hospitalitable. So not using dynamic pricing. Uh so you can uh tweak the um the price uh the base price if you like um on uh on those dates. Um but also for dynamic pricing. So, as Andrew mentioned, if you're using our dynamic
• 12:30 - 13:00 pricing engine, um this is going to allow you to kind of fine-tune and tweak that, play with that a little bit more, uh and actually make adjustments to dynamic pricing on specific dates, on specific properties. Uh so, you can see here again, simple example, I've set up a 10% increase, but you can define admin prices, as max prices. Um and as Andrew mentioned as well, we we talked about rule sets uh coming from Airbnb. we will be importing your rule sets from Airbnb if you have any. Um, but you can also
• 13:00 - 13:30 create rule sets within Hospitable. Um, so it's not just an import only. You can create those in Hospitable. And what makes these even more powerful is that they actually affect all your platforms underneath. So if you create a rule set, um, that's going to fan out to Airbnb, Booking.com, Verbo, Direct. Um, so it kind of fans out to everything. Um the exception to that as Andrew mentioned is discounts which are still Airbnb only. Um so you can come in here you can set up length of stay discounts instead of
• 13:30 - 14:00 last minute discounts and you can set up early bird discounts. Um but yeah again uh we've added something to length of stay discounts. So these were previously just weekly or monthly. Uh so we now have the ability for you to define uh custom stay lengths. Uh so that's going to be a new thing coming with uh with rule sets. And of course, you can set up multiple. So it could be 10 nights, 20% for example. Um, on the availability side, you can also set up trip lengths. So for example, min day, max days, you can break that down by nights. So you could
• 14:00 - 14:30 say a min day of two, max day of seven, but on Sundays, I want that to be five, for example. So you've got that kind of fine grain control if you need it. And if you don't, we just kind of give you the the kind of simple base settings there. Uh and similarly for restricted check-in and checkout, if there's specific days that you don't want guests to be able to check in or check out, that's something that you can control on the rule set. So that's probably the more boring part. That's the kind of definition and structure of a rule set. When it comes to the calendar, um so the rule set
• 14:30 - 15:00 itself doesn't belong to properties or dates. Um so a lot of you have probably seen this calendar before. This is our single property calendar. U just using a test property that we've got here. Um, and yeah, this probably looks quite familiar to you. Um, but as we're adding more complexity to the calendar, we're starting to introduce this concept of layers. Um, so this you probably haven't seen before. Um, so restricted check-in and checkout, we've been showing on the calendar for a while now. Um, we're now making that a toggleable layer. Um, so
• 15:00 - 15:30 you'll be able to turn those on and off depending on what you want to see. Um, but probably the the slightly cooler one in my opinion at least is rule sets. So when I toggle this, I'm going to see those colors that I've defined for those rule sets against those dates on this property. Um, so yeah, just a very kind of quick visual view of like what rule sets uh are applying to to which dates. Um, we obviously don't stop there. You need to see a little bit more detail than that. So I can tap on these dates and in the in the sidebar here, I can see some details about that rule set. I
• 15:30 - 16:00 can see kind of a summary of the the rules that are applied on there. I can remove it. I can edit it. I can add new ones. all that kind of stuff that you'd expect. Um, if I select multiple dates, it kind of tells me I've got various and I can just override those. So, I don't have to go and remove all the individual ones and then set up a new one. I can just straight up override them with my 10% one. And it takes a minute. We're still working on this, but um yeah, there you go. That's been updated. So, yeah. Um, rule sets layers
• 16:00 - 16:30 on the single property calendar. Um to go one step further uh we know a lot of people spend a lot of time in the multical and typically want to apply rule sets across multiple properties at the same time. So that concept of layers that I just introduced also carried across to multicaler. Um so you can see we've got the same layers here. It's actually going to remember your preferences as well. Uh so when you set these preferences they're going to be sticky. They're going to carry across calendars. So if you set rule setters on on one it'll carry over to the other
• 16:30 - 17:00 one. Um, and yeah, I can see those same colors representing those rule sets on this calendar, too. Um, and to give you an example of something I can do, find some clear weekends. So, I've got some Fridays and Saturdays here. I can, as you're probably familiar with, you've been able to do this before, I can multiple select across multiple dates, multiple properties. Um, but I can actually throw rule sets into that as well now. So if I want to update the weekends for uh this group of properties I've selected, I can hit apply a rule
• 17:00 - 17:30 set by my test 10% uplift. Again, takes a set, but you can see those rule sets updated on uh those dates. So yeah, those rule sets uh in a quick nutshell. As I mentioned, we're still working on this and uh we will start to roll this out uh open coming weeks. Um yeah, I'll hand you back over to Andrew, I think.
• 17:30 - 18:00 Hey, sorry. I thought Andrew might pop his head in real quick. So, uh, hey everyone. I'm Ari on the AI team. I'm filling in for Nick today to give you some AI updates. So, first up, uh, we have, uh, the knowledge hub, um, and basically a knowledge hub like, uh, sorry, an autopilot like feature, um, for the knowledge hub. So this feature will work for you in the background and continuously fill your knowledge hub with um missing uh information so that
• 18:00 - 18:30 you can spend less time managing your properties knowledge. So how does this work? Well, whenever you use suggest with AI and you make an edit to one of the um generated messages, AI will then analyze that edit that you made and extract new knowledge um that is missing from your knowledge hub. Often these um additions are quite small and specific um things you wouldn't necessarily add to a guide book that you might have uploaded to your knowledge hub. Um but a a great example that I saw come by earlier is um there are uh there are
• 18:30 - 19:00 more kitchen towels in the bottom drawer next to the kitchen sink. Something super specific but great if a guest in the future asks um a question about kitchen towels, right? So um you can find these uh newly generated um knowledge of items in your knowledge hub alongside um your existing uh sources there and this feature is already uh generally available as of this week. Um so just keep using suggest with AI continue making edits um when the AI doesn't quite get it right and your
• 19:00 - 19:30 knowledge hub will continue to learn. Next up we have um auto reply uh delay mode. So auto reply usage has continued to grow. Um but the feedback that we've continued to hear is that some users want to test and monitor the AI for some period of time before fully committing and having it send messages um automatically. So delay mode uh allows you to sort of supervise the AI and check what it has scheduled to send. Um so it kind of gives you this time
• 19:30 - 20:00 window to check um edit and cancel any generated messages. Um now as the name delay mode implies if you don't do anything after that delay is over it will send the message. Um delay mode has been yeah released already as part of auto reply and is available on the mobile plan. Uh next up we have um push notifications for issue detection. So u issue detection has been available to mobile users for um some time now
• 20:00 - 20:30 already. um it identifies uh when a potential issue has been detected um from um a guest inside of a conversation. Um but so far um any detected issues were only presented in the inbox um and in the conversation views. Uh but now we're also going to be sending uh push notifications via our mobile app um which will take you directly to the relevant conversation to ensure that you can act quickly on any guest issues. So, if you haven't already downloaded the hospital app, now is a
• 20:30 - 21:00 great time to do so. Um, last but not least, um, on the AI side at least, uh, we wanted to give you a heads up on a project, uh, that we're currently actively working on, and that is tone of voice, or, uh, in other words, trying to sound more like you. Um, we've uh heard your feedback and seen the data that a fair amount of suggest with AI messages um don't quite sound the way you want them to and therefore you edit them slightly before sending. So they can be too formal, they can be too long, uh the
• 21:00 - 21:30 greeting or the sign off are missing or aren't worded in the way that you want. Um there's too many or too few emojis. Uh or my favorite, you don't want any emojis and instead want old school emoticons. Right? All of these preferences are great and um are what make you sound like you. So therefore, we're working hard to try and capture these preferences and these nuances to ensure that suggest with AI and auto reply uh sound much more like you. Um we'll be shipping and iterating on this
• 21:30 - 22:00 feature over the next few days and weeks. Uh so we hope you notice an improvement on that front. Thanks very much. That's all for me. Okay, great. on to direct then um and starting with an update on tax remittance for direct premium. Um so if you're new to our town halls um we are giving an update on this pretty much every town hall because we've made it a priority this year to um expand the jurisdictions where Hospitable is remitting sales and lodging tax on
• 22:00 - 22:30 behalf of our direct premium hosts. Um, and we're doing this with our accountant and residents, Brandon, and our goal is to help save you from the administrative burden of having to figure out and file your taxes each month or each quarter. So, our goal here is to get to all 50 states and we're also working on expanding remittance in the local jurisdictions as well. Um, but to give you an update on where we are, as of May 1st, we are now remitting for a few new
• 22:30 - 23:00 states. So those states include Florida uh for all sales tax, New Jersey for state sales tax, Utah for all sales tax, and Alabama for state lodging tax. And then on the up next list, which I hope will be exciting because I've saw a couple of folks asking about Georgia and North Carolina in the chat. Um but next up, we're working on New York, uh Georgia and North Carolina. So, um, we'll have an update for you with more
• 23:00 - 23:30 details on our next town hall. Um, but we'll likely be remitting in those states coming June 1st. Um, and you can also check our support documentation to see how taxes are handled in your state if you have more questions. And, uh, next up, an update on domains. So, we've been making some improvements to how you connect your custom domain to Hospitable with the
• 23:30 - 24:00 goal of making it easier for you to get a custom domain connected to your direct site. So now when you're connecting an existing domain, you now have the option to either let Hospitable manage your DNS for you, which we recommend, especially if you've purchased that domain um from GoDaddy or NameCheep or whatever provider um specifically to use to connect to your direct site. Um or you can continue to use your
• 24:00 - 24:30 existing DNS provider. But if you do let hospitalitable manage your DNS for you, all you'll need to do is make one update with your domain provider to update your name servers to point them to hospitalitables and then we will automatically update um your DNS records for you so that you don't have to do that manually. Um and if you're like, I have no idea what a name server is or what DNS records are, um don't worry about that. We walk you through the process of exactly the values you need to update as you're connecting a new
• 24:30 - 25:00 domain. Um, and we also have support documentation for you as well. So, we've made it easier to connect an existing domain, but now as of today, um, our uh our engineer Aaron has been doing his best to make this available for town hall, but it'll likely be available uh later this evening. Um, you're going to be able to actually purchase a new domain from hospitalable. So, if you don't have a custom domain yet, um we're making it even easier to get that linked up to your c to your direct site because you'll be able to purchase a new domain
• 25:00 - 25:30 from hospitalitable um and then from there we'll manage everything. We'll bill you for that domain and you can um we'll obviously update your DNS records for you automatically or you can manage your DNS from hospitalitable as well. So, we've been focused on making it easier to connect domains to your direct sites. Um, but we'll also be adding additional functionality for custom domains beyond just connecting them to direct sites, including sending emails from your custom domain. So, more on that
• 25:30 - 26:00 soon. And then next, um, an update on guest verification. Um, so, uh, we've been talking about this the last couple of town halls, but, um, we've been hearing from you, our direct premium users, a lot of a lot of feedback on the guest verification experience. It just needs to be better. Um, we've heard that it's not in easy or intuitive for guests to complete guest verification. And too
• 26:00 - 26:30 often um our direct premium hosts were waiting on the direct support team to review verification before you could just accept that reservation. And I want to make it clear that that guest verification is a very important component to direct premium because it's what allows us to provide you with damage protection. It's what allows us to uh protect you from fraud and from chargebacks. But we it should not be something that causes an overwhelmingly
• 26:30 - 27:00 negative guest experience and it should definitely not be something that deters a good guest from from booking at your property. So, um we've been working on rebuilding guest verification. Um we've been partnering with a new ID verification provider with the goal of providing a smoother experience for guests as they go through the process of uploading their ID and a selfie. And we are giving you more control um by requiring review only in the cases where
• 27:00 - 27:30 there is a high level of risk or high probability of fraud. Um and then everything else it's up to you to decide whether or not you want to accept that reservation. So this is live now for um our beta users and there's a lot of you. So, we've been able to over the course of uh the last week and a half, two weeks or so, ramp up to about 40% of our uh volume. And so far, we're seeing pretty good results. I want to share some of that here. Um in total, since we've rolled this out
• 27:30 - 28:00 over the last 2 weeks, we've had about 337 verifications um completed since the beginning of the roll out. We started kind of slowly and started adding more reservations each day just to make sure that this was working well. And we're seeing right now that about 90% of verifications are getting approved automatically um or going to you for review. So only 10% of verifications are coming to our support team right now um which is
• 28:00 - 28:30 higher than where we were before um quite significantly. And we also think we can get this number up higher um because it includes tests right now which we're doing to to test the the review process. Um so we're hoping to get that closer to about 95%. And on average it takes guests about 5 minutes to complete verification. Um and this is a number that we're tracking because if guests have issues and they need to retry um uploading their ID or their selfie that
• 28:30 - 29:00 obviously makes the session a lot longer. Um, but we've also introduced clear instructions into the verification process. So, the goal there is that the guest can get a good clear image first um on their first attempt without having multiple attempts. And so, we're we're making sure that that number is staying low and it's not taking guests a long time to get through guest verification. So, so far results are looking good, but we're still um working on this. So, next up on our our roadmap for guest verification, um we are continuing to
• 29:00 - 29:30 fine-tune our risk assessment, we'll be adding additional data to that risk assessment like payments data for example. The goal there is to continue to cut down on the number of reservations that need to go to our support team for a review. Um and then also um over probably the next the course of next week we will be continuing the roll out um so rolling out to all direct premium reservations and then from there if you are using our ad hoc guest verification
• 29:30 - 30:00 to vet your guests your OTAA guests we will also be um rolling out the new guest verification for ad hoc as well. Um, and then the next thing we'll be doing, which has been highly requested, um, is we're going to start allowing your returning, already verified guests who book through your direct booking website to skip the ID verification process by verifying themselves with a one-time passcode um, instead. So, if you have returning already verified
• 30:00 - 30:30 guests, you can have them skip guest verification today by creating a custom quote, but we're going to make it easier from for them just to book through your direct site. um and still skip the ID verification as long as we can verify that they are who they say they are with a a one-time passcode. Um okay, and then I think next I'm going to bring on Tim to give an update on security deposits. Thanks Abby. Hey everyone. Uh so yes, our new security deposit feature is now in beta for all direct premium users.
• 30:30 - 31:00 Just to remind you a little bit of the feature. So it's fully automated. Um, we will automatically manage, collect and release the deposits. We will handle all the guest communication, including showing the deposit amount and the dates in the booking flow, as well as various email reminders to the guest to avoid any surprises or awkward conversations with your guests about deposits. Later on, you'll have full visibility of the
• 31:00 - 31:30 deposit in the inbox. So, we'll show you whether it's been collected yet, uh the dates, the amount, uh and you'll have the option to to charge the deposit there as well, should you need to. Um you also don't need to worry about chargebacks since we are handling all of the payment processing for you. Uh and then finally, you can set your own pricing with it. So, it will cost you 2% of the deposit amount irrespective of what that deposit amount is. if you'd like to use the security deposit feature
• 31:30 - 32:00 um on the next slide. So, make sure that you have the experimental features toggle on in your settings under preferences. Make sure you're on direct premium uh and then head to the pricing page uh of the property you'd like to collect a deposit on. Input an amount and then we will take care of everything else. Um that is all for deposits. Passing over now to myself, I believe.
• 32:00 - 32:30 Yes, devices. Hello. So, couple updates here. Uh a couple quick ones. So, first buffer settings uh for thermostats are now live. So, whereas previously a thermostat would switch uh onto occupied mode 2 hours before checking. Uh you now have full flexibility to configure that how you see fit. um you know if you have a property that needs more or less time to reach that comfortable temperature if you want to optimize to energy savings
• 32:30 - 33:00 energy usage you have kind of full full remit there um if you want to edit that 2 hours so uh go to your occupied preset uh and then just select the time and the image on the screen there shows you how to do that next then um along the same lines uh some fixes and updates to uh presets themselves So, we will now validate um that all of the thermostats scoped to a specific preset have the right HVAC mode um or
• 33:00 - 33:30 are compatible with those set points. Uh so, for example, if you attempt to scope a thermostat that can't actually go below 60° to a preset that has a set point below 60°, we'll let you know. Uh we'll tell you what's wrong. Uh and we will promp you to change that. Uh this will then ensure that uh all your thermostat schedules get set correctly and we will switch the device at the right time pre and post uh check in and
• 33:30 - 34:00 checkouts. Uh that's all for now. Uh moving on to Emily. Hey everybody. All righty. Last month we announced a new concept under operations called my business. This is for our mobile plan users. Uh businesses give you a way to tell us more about how you actually operate and group properties together accordingly. So think of businesses similar to how you might actually view like your legal entity. Each business will be able to have
• 34:00 - 34:30 business level configurations for accounting, for branding, and more. So you really want to organize them with that in mind. Um and as of a couple of weeks ago, we're now supporting all three common business models. So we originally launched with just owner and manager. Owner, meaning you own this property and self-manage. Manager, meaning you're managing this for other people. Um, and we've also just recently launched an arbitrage business model. So, if you're renting properties and managing them yourselves, you can select those for those properties. You can
• 34:30 - 35:00 create as many businesses as you need and choose a business model for each. Um, and you can always make changes, but we do encourage you to be thoughtful here. Um, if you manage 10 properties, for example, for other people, you probably only need one business to represent the that manager business of those 10 properties, unless you have a valid reason to separate them. Maybe you have five of those properties in Canada and five of them in the US and you want to do your accounting a little bit differently. In that case, you might want to split them up. So, because we
• 35:00 - 35:30 now know a little bit more about your business, you can go to the next slide. we can actually give you the features that you actually need to streamline your business operations and not give you the things that you don't need. So for example, all three business models are going to get access to our accounting features. Uh that's relevant to everybody. Uh but if you manage for other people, if you're a property manager, you're going to need owner management features like owner statements and soon owner portal. So creating a business with the manager type is something that you are going to need to do if you're a manager and want
• 35:30 - 36:00 access to statements and portals moving forward. So if you're on mobile, I'd encourage you to go ahead and set up your businesses today because it will be the foundation for everything moving forward. So next, a little bit more about accounting. Previously, we offered accounting features that were really designed for property managers, people who managed on behalf of others. But now accounting is available in hospitalitable without QuickBooks uh being needed. And it's actually tailored to your specific business model. So,
• 36:00 - 36:30 because you can create a business and tell us how you operate it, we can actually do the accounting that best fits that business model. Um, we're using a cash basis accounting methodology. You can read more about this in our help articles. Brandon, our accounting and residence has put together a lot of great content there. Um, and uh, yeah, so we're doing cash basis accounting and offering you a native profit and loss account. So, again, you don't need QuickBooks connected to do this. You just need to be on mobile and have a business set up and voila, your profit and loss report
• 36:30 - 37:00 is available to you. We've gone ahead and backdated this to January 2025 and we'll be doing that for a limited time so that you can have the entire calendar year uh covered so that next year tax season will be easy. Um, we've also introduced a new concept where if you're a manager, uh, and you have statements, you can actually mark those as paid so that we know when to account for the money that's changing hands between you and your owners. And next, uh, we still will have
• 37:00 - 37:30 QuickBooks, don't worry. So, for those of you uh, who have Well, okay, let me start over. So before QuickBooks was only available or designed for people who are property managers. Now we've taken another look and we're kind of relaunching an upgraded QuickBooks integration that's designed for all business models. So we'll be relaunching that on Monday is the plan and this is really for people who are already using QuickBooks and want to continue to do so. This is
• 37:30 - 38:00 you've got a bookkeeper, you've got an accountant, you've got your systems in place, you're happy with how it's working, and you want to continue doing that. This is for you. Um, it's also for you if you are using a cash basis accounting method and want to continue doing that. If you are one of our handful of users who'd already connected QuickBooks before when it was designed for property managers and maybe you're not a property manager or you'd like to go with the upgraded integration, we'll be reaching out to you um individually
• 38:00 - 38:30 to help you with that uh support over the next couple of weeks, help you with that transition. Okay, last but certainly not least, just wanted to give a little tiny sneak peek of the owner's portal. This is actually in progress. We're building it now finally. Um and an MVP will be coming in June. So we'll be launching this with a a beautiful we have a designer now and you can tell um a beautiful owner's dashboard where your owners can see uh a consolidated view of
• 38:30 - 39:00 all the properties that you're managing for them. They'll be able to view and download their statements and get granular if they want diving into the individual line items of that statement. um and eventually uh give them the option to view a calendar uh optionally book stays and block dates if that's something you'd like to allow them to do. Um so we're really excited about this. It's in progress now. If you haven't upvoted it already, you can so that you'll be the first to hear about our progress there. And if this interests you and you'd like to learn a little bit more about it, you can book a
• 39:00 - 39:30 call with our friend Brian. Um he is our customer success lead on the mogul team. so he can give a lot more information on what the owner portals is going to do and support you through an upgrade if that's something that you're interested in. All right, off to connectivity updates. Okay, I was just in the Q&A and forgot I was back on connectivity. The team has uh been busy with rule sets. Uh so just a couple short updates. Um listing
• 39:30 - 40:00 creation. So, Booking.com, uh, we are able to automatically create listings now and we just rolled this out to all hosts. So, if you would like to be on Booking.com and you are not yet there, um, swing by your property page and you'll see this nice um, box uh, with a new feature there and you can start and have a listing live in a matter of minutes. Next up, uh, we were one of the design partners on Booking.com's latest feature uh, for booking requests on Booking.com. uh initially you could not
• 40:00 - 40:30 actually communicate with the guests. This was very hard. It's basically an inquiry where there was no messaging capability. So we were part of the pilot and so some of you have had access to this but most of you not. Now it's available to all hosts. So you can tell because it's not available to all guests yet. It's actually only guests that have the Booking.com iPhone app. Um you'll be able to tell in the inbox if that send button is active. If it's disabled that means that the guest can't support it. If it's active, it means you can actually have a conversation during that
• 40:30 - 41:00 that booking request window before you accept. Of course, any accepted reservation with Booking.com has messaging capability. So, just a a small update there on request to book and booking.com. Awesome. And back over to me. So, um I want to briefly talk about community. So, obviously as a company, Hospitable loves community. Um, so we're obviously quite a transparent company as we can see from today. We're sharing all of our company and product updates. Uh,
• 41:00 - 41:30 we also obviously love to gain feedback from hosts. Um, you know, we're listening to you in the chat right now. We're listening to your Q&A. Uh, and we're understanding, you know, your challenges and the problems you're facing and we want to act on those. We also love to connect hosts with other fellow hosts so that you know hosts can help each other solve problems that they're facing in their area of the country of the world and with you know SDR regulations or bad guests whatever it may be. The challenge that we currently have though is um as some of
• 41:30 - 42:00 you may know we have a Facebook group um which has I think a little over 4.3,000 people in it um all existing customers of ours. Um, but we do have some challenges with our Facebook group. Um, the trouble is with it being on Facebook. Um, a lot of our own team has trouble accessing it themselves. Um, if they try to spin up an account uh to access it because they don't already have a Facebook account, it might get marked as spam by Facebook because they haven't added any friends yet, unfortunately. Uh, and we also have a challenge of even host themselves uh
• 42:00 - 42:30 potentially not being able to access it because they don't have Facebook or they don't want to create a Facebook account. Um we also miss lots of interesting content that gets posted. Um comments from all of you get absolutely buried. Um we struggle to actually show the correct answer on threads. If someone asks a question, our comment can get buried um because of the algorithms and essentially it's a very limiting format that we're playing with here. So what's the solution to that and how do we grow a better community? Uh obviously we've
• 42:30 - 43:00 introduced Petra today who's going to be our new community manager. Uh, and what's the reason for us hiring Petra, I guess, um, is what we're trying to answer here. So, we're introducing a new community platform, community.hospitable.com. So, please go ahead, check it out. Come say hello on our new community hub. Uh, and this is going to be a place for you to come and ask questions about hospitable and hosting in general. Um, it's a chance to ask us questions. It's a chance to interact with our team. Uh, and it's a chance to ask questions to fellow hosts
• 43:00 - 43:30 as well and share your best practice tips. It's obviously going to be the place for lots of product updates and also lots of interesting other content. Um, exclusives to the community will be coming soon as well. So, if you're interested in checking out, please go ahead go to community.hospable.com. It's a place that's going to be growing more and more over the coming weeks. This is the official launch today. We've had a few uh beta testers in there already. Um, but go ahead, get logged in. You can use your hospitable account to get logged in. Um, so some of your information, uh,
• 43:30 - 44:00 such as name, uh, will be kind of pulled across for you. Um, but go ahead and and fill out your profile, say hello, introduce yourself, and start asking questions. Um, the first 100 hosts that register with the community will get a special badge on their uh, profile as well, just to show that they are one of the community founding members. So yeah, go ahead, please. Um, go to community.hosp.com, say hello in there, and check it out. And next up, um staying on the microphone here, I'm just going to share a couple of events that we have coming
• 44:00 - 44:30 up as well. So, in the interest of the community, uh we are bringing back a few more host and toast events. Uh we want to do more and more of these and we want to do more than just the US. We've done some in Australia. We've done some in the UK um in the past few months. Um we're doing a few in the US next month now. Um and we want to expand even further in the future. So, more dates and locations coming soon. But next up, we have Orlando, Atlanta, and Charlotte on our road map. So, June 4th, June 5th, June 6th. Um, if you're interested in coming and meeting some of the
• 44:30 - 45:00 hospitalitable team in real life, and also meeting some fellow hosts, it's a great opportunity to come and interact with us there, say hello and and chat, you know, like I said, with fellow hosts in the area. Um, the Orlando event, we will actually be supported by Booking.com. They're going to be there as well. Uh, just to say hello to their team. And also for Atlanta and Charlotte, we're going to have the True Vy team there. Um, so you can ask them questions as well if you've got questions for them. So hopefully we see you there. Scan the QR code to head to our Eventbrite page to get yourself a ticket. And just a couple of other
• 45:00 - 45:30 things, um, online events that we have coming up. So next week we have a special AI powerup workshop. Uh, you might see Derek, our VP of sales and partnerships in the chat. um he's going to be running this session next week and this is going to be a real chance to kind of um get your um hands dirty with AI and understand all the latest features that we've uh been releasing to help you kind of automate more processes. Make sure you're getting use out of all those new tools that we've been released that have been shared today and in past town halls. Um so
• 45:30 - 46:00 please do come and check out that uh workshop that's going to be May 21st at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time, 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. So that's next Wednesday. And as always, we're going to have another bi-weekly town hall in two weeks. And without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and move on to um our Q&A. Um so, as always, we do have some important links there. If you have any further questions that we don't manage to get to, you can check those out. And if you do have a question for us that you'd like to ask on stage, please go
• 46:00 - 46:30 down to the react button at the bottom and click the raised hand. And then we'll be able to invite you on stage to ask your question. Okay, have to navigate to navigate. Meanwhile, transitioning. I'm really happy that we now have a community on community. Please trust the community that coming from the region of community in France and don't go on WhatsApp group that are coming from scammers whose domain name for the email addresses at daupload.com which is a strong
• 46:30 - 47:00 indication that you being targeted uh to farm some Airbnb accounts, some identifier, some phone numbers that then they can exploit. Uh that's really something I'm really sad to notice that has happened in the chat. Really concerned. The idea here is that on community.pitable.com hospitalitable.com you are able to identify actual genuine hospitable users and people on the team that otherwise would be very reluctant to communicate on Facebook that can communicate with you all directly. Uh so that's much
• 47:00 - 47:30 better than Facebook on that angle. Okay, Miles back to you. Sweet. Thank you very much. And we do have a hand raised Rajesh. I'm going to invite you on stage. Do you have a question for us Reesh? Hello. How can we help you? Maybe an accidental one. Okay. Um, we do have someone else. I'm going to uh remove you for now. Reesh. Let us know if you do want to come back on. Natasha inviting you on stage. Hello
• 47:30 - 48:00 Natasha. Hello Natasha. How can we help you? Hey guys. Um, quick question. First of all, congratulations and thank you for all of the features that I know your team has been working hard behind the scenes to bring to life. Um, just had a question on the feature that would allow us to send one time to schedule one-time messages because I know I we talked about it before like sometimes I might have like just a oneoff message for a
• 48:00 - 48:30 guest and you know two weeks from now like hey someone from the city is going to be inspecting and walking around they won't disturb you. It would be nice to be able to put a date and the time for that to go out in the future. Hey, Natasha. Um, I saw that feedback come in. I don't know if you submitted it this week or if someone else also submitted it this week, but it's it's been a a common topic that I've seen recently. In transparency, we're not working on it now, but like I we we've
• 48:30 - 49:00 seen that and we know that there's demand for it. So, I do think we'll get to it one day. Um, if you haven't already, upvote the feature request. I can find it and post it in the chat so that you can stay tuned on our progress. Beautiful. Thank you guys. Awesome. Thank you for your question, Natasha. Okay. Um if you do have a question, remember you can raise your hand uh using the react button. Um I can see there is one person in chat that has not managed to do that, but um hey or
• 49:00 - 49:30 hi, I'm inviting you on stage now if we can. Hello. Hi. Hi everyone. Can you hear me? Yeah. Hello from Los Angeles. Thank you for all your uh war guys. I really feel like a big family here. Um, a question is, uh, is there any way for me to control still control my Airbnb schedule directly through the Airbnb app, uh, and then have the and then still give the authority to hospitalable to control my, uh,
• 49:30 - 50:00 schedule? Cuz right now sometimes I want to do something very specific with Airbnb schedule and I have to mute my calendar with hospitalable and then control my calendar and then go back and then unmute it. Is there any way for me to still control my Airbnb schedule or it has to be one one one way? What do you mean by your Airbnb schedule as a clarification? For example, I want to go to my Airbnb and I want to change a price. I want to open a dates and and right now it's limited. Give me like a
• 50:00 - 50:30 little notification. It's limited because the hospitalitable. Okay, got it. Andrew, you showing yourself you want to get it? Sure, I can take that. So um hi the the idea is that when you're software connected on Airbnb that hospitalitable becomes your source of truth. So we should be able to do those edits for you if you want to open and close a date if you want to change your availability rules. Those are limited in Airbnb when you're connected to us but we give you the capabilities to edit
• 50:30 - 51:00 those values on hospitalitable. Is that not working for you or have you just not maybe found that option? Uh it's working but it's not as smooth as I wish to. I mean, honestly, it's a little bit easier on the Airbnb app. Like, it's easier to mark like specific dates like from here to there. I can roll I can just roll with my finger through the through the dates. It's a little bit more complicated with the hospitalable for example. This is just a really uh rare situation. I had a VBO booking that
• 51:00 - 51:30 blocked the hospitalable uh and my and my Airbnb schedule, but then the the guests cancelled and I moved them around. Anyway, I had I had to open the calendar on my Airbnb and I wasn't able to do it. So, I had to go through the hospitalitable. Anyway, I I guess there is no way for me to control both at the same time. That's my question. No, no, that's a clear thing is that basically hospitalitable becomes a source of truth that basically we represent to Airbnb the the latest state of your calendar.
• 51:30 - 52:00 So that whenever there is a booking a guest that is attempting to book one of your properties Airbnb is actually checking onospitable to make sure the dates are still available. That basically is a guarantee that we can have against any double bookings. Now you're flagging an issue about Verbbo and that's probably just a latency thing. It's just basically the fact that we have not received or processed the update from Verbbo in time to be able to unlock the date the the the dates on your Airbnb calendar in the first place.
• 52:00 - 52:30 Um now this regarding the status of a verbal integration uh we've shared an update I think two weeks ago that we are starting the development of a verbal official integration which would be let's say a lot easier uh to be managing for everybody and just as well uh make it really compelling to use as a source of truth. Um it's not something that we really have been advocating for for the first eight years of operation of a company but now we realize that actually it's pretty much a disservice uh to
• 52:30 - 53:00 basically have you update uh pricing availabilities across multiple platforms um because we cannot basically process all the pricing updates or availability update that you have on your BBB calendar and then propagate those in verbbo on a timely in a timely fashion which is one of the problem we also uh faced. So that's why there is in our view a compelling argument to make those adjustment directly on hospitalitable as the source of truth as we are in contract with Airbnb booking agod and
• 53:00 - 53:30 obviously with your direct booking website uh to show their accurate pricing and accurate availabilities at this point in time. Okay, I get it. Thank you for the answer. Uh another quick question I have is about the schedule messages. Is there any way for me to do a time? Cuz I wasn't sure. I I wasn't sure if I would see it. I know I'm able to do it before the check-in, after the checkout. Do you have an option to do a specific time
• 53:30 - 54:00 relative relative to the checkin? Relative to the checkout? Uh in in general the schedule messages, is there any way for me to that's yeah, sorry to cut you off. that's closer to the request uh that we had previously which is to schedule a one-off message at this particular point in time because if you set the date and the time this is basically probably a message you schedule for one uh reservation for one conversation is that correct there is a way for me to set up the exact time because I I wasn't sure if I I saw it maybe I missed something there
• 54:00 - 54:30 that that's something that we I've heard about multiple have heard about and that's something that's currently not we are not actively working on but I think down the road that's probably something that we can we can work towards which is a one-off message tied with a specific reservation. Otherwise, if you set the date specifically, then it means that it's a one-off message if it is otherwise they may be like bulk messages that you can send. That's synchronous still. Andrew, you you wanted to add something. Yeah, maybe I I think he's
• 54:30 - 55:00 asking to set a time for a scheduled regular recurring message. So descend at 5:00 p.m. in the time of his property. So there is a way to do it. Okay. Cuz I wasn't able to see it somewhere there. I missed it. I think it is. Yeah. Okay. Message it. Yeah. Awesome. Good. Thank you very much for your questions. Thank you. Um sorry I just got you off. Um I was clicking as you started talking. Apologies. Um so I
• 55:00 - 55:30 have someone else in the chat that I'm going to bring on stage. Um, Anna, welcoming you on stage now. Hello. You have a question for us? Some reason. Um, I know how to do it on Zoom, but I just don't have the option. So, I don't know what that was about. It just says hide reaction. It says hide reactions or show reactions, and then I click on it, and nothing pops up. So, sorry about that. Um, I do have a question. Uh, so this was actually I was going back and forth with Verbbo about
• 55:30 - 56:00 this. my calendars are showing up as red, like conflicted on Verbbo. Uh, and they're basically saying they couldn't help me. So, I I wasn't sure if that's like because I have the PMS connected to it that it's showing up as comp as conflict. Uh, when it's a reservation on Verbbo, when my calendars are synced via Airbnb, um, and then I go to connect my Verbbo calendar, it shows up as conflict even though it's a reservation on Verbbo. I don't know if that makes sense.
• 56:00 - 56:30 I think I can hear you. I think maybe someone from a support team will be able to to help if I can summon one right now or in any case I would basically want you to flag uh this to the support team which I'm sure you've already done and I can check internally SK that's internally so that we can we can do this specifically. Okay, perfect. Another question was for direct bookings. Um I think I was talking to someone in the chat. They said that for direct bookings, the money that gets collected
• 56:30 - 57:00 from that one specific property doesn't goes into a default account. Essentially, it doesn't go into its own property account. I've never had a direct booking, but I will shortly. So, I just want to make sure that it's all set and that I have um everything ready to go for when I do start accepting direct bookings. Yeah. So, so for direct, you can set up multiple payout methods and assign them to properties. So you have to have a default, but if you need to have different uh if you need to have payments go to different bank accounts, you just set up different payout methods
• 57:00 - 57:30 and assign those to properties. Oh, perfect. Okay, great. And then another question that I had was since you guys are doing dynamic pricing now, uh will will it be comparable to price labs, meaning will I be able to completely obsolete price labs as far as being able to check my competitor's pricing on uh hospitalable? Okay. some some some questions there. We're going to be a different model than Price Labs always. Um we've had a lot of people already that we're taking daily
• 57:30 - 58:00 calls with customers right now to do that and we've had people switch off of Price Labs. We've had people decide that it's not quite what they would like to see yet. Models take different opinions. Um I think our model is really trying to focus on occupancy. We might be slightly less reactive to things in price labs. But the good news is you can always preview our pricing. You can compare it to what you're seeing and you can decide if it's a good fit for you. if you don't feel like it's a good fit, it might be a good fit a few weeks from now when you have more controls. Um, as far as having more kind of graphs and being able to
• 58:00 - 58:30 look more at your comp set, I can't comment on that now. Uh, we're considering what else we can do as far as like next steps. Um, but the the very concrete next steps for us are rule sets, which are rolling out, starting to roll out next week, and then some version of advanced controls so you can take a bit more of a personalized look at your pricing. We don't know exactly what those will look like yet. We're still kind of learning from from host now. Um, but those will be the next two things that we're focusing on uh for for dynamic pricing. And those rule sets will go obviously will work across all
• 58:30 - 59:00 platforms including Verbbo because I know Verbbo doesn't necessarily have rule sets. Yeah, except except for the discounts. It's just we're going to we control your your calendar in Verbbo, right? So we can make that rule set work in Verbbo. It doesn't count as a rule set in Verbbo. It's just how you instruct to Yep. Great. Okay. Perfect. Thanks, guys. And again because we're going to have probably the same question just the footnote is that um we will import your Airbnb rule sets move it within hospitalable and then push those
• 59:00 - 59:30 uh rule sets the the price net of rule sets to your other uh booking channels. So that means the place where you're going to be managing your rule sets are going to be within hospitalitable. So you can have the comprehensive pricing view directly which means also you won't see rule sets on Airbnb except discounts promotions that basically we cannot as an API provider pro push directly over to Airbnb. Um so that's just something I wanted to share as a precision. Uh once
• 59:30 - 60:00 sets are imported you can manage them directly within those. That's why it's so important that we basically get it right and can replace uh that feature set across the board. Will we be able I think that's kind of what you just said, but I just want to confirm. We'll still be able to uh on Airbnb do the discounts and promotions. Yes. Perfect. Okay. Because those some of those because there is yeah it's a specific rule set and some of those can only be created for example on on Airbnb in the first
• 60:00 - 60:30 place. They cannot be managed on the PMS for obvious reasons. Okay, cool. Okay, thank you Anna for your question. We can have one last one with Ted Stevens that basically raises and bringing on stage now. Ted, hello Ted. Hello. Ted, quick question. Um, have you guys changed the refund uh the way it's done? Uh, I have a guest
• 60:30 - 61:00 who is a military. They already booked and used it was used. We give a 10% discount and I was going to try to refund the 10% of their nightly rate and I'm confused. Is it is it has it changed? Can I still do that? That's on a direct booking website. I'm sorry. Is that on a direct booking website? Uh, no. I think it's Airbnb. I I don't remember. I I'll have to go back and look, but I believe it's Airbnb.
• 61:00 - 61:30 Okay. Um, did we change? Should I do it there or should I do it I mean I I was using hospitalitable to do refunds because it was honestly it was simpler. Uh now Airbnb has changed where they only want you to change the you know the entire uh you know change the entire booking and you know they're trying to control what you give people refunds for. But is there not just give 10% back to these to these people or do I need just go
• 61:30 - 62:00 through Airbnb? I I don't know. Is it going to be just done by a special offer or so before the booking has been completed if that's if you want to give them a refund post booking? I think that's going to be by way of iteration or or that's then going to be sending them money back on the resolution center. Um which is probably a bit of a thing. Um, I think that that's I feel like that's the the only way it's going to work. Uh, um, and the resolution center then is not uh, API
• 62:00 - 62:30 integrated at all. So, there's no way for us to to be doing any work on this. Okay. At this point in time, at this point in time, but I'm really looking forward to an update by the end of the quarter with Airbnb sending us that we can request money or or basically or refund money directly within a in an API way so that our product can integrate with that. Um okay okay okay thank you if if you need if you need any help um sorry to be leing to that direction but send an email to supportospitable.com or contact us on
• 62:30 - 63:00 live chat uh so that basically we can check for you if everything is working correctly if you feel that it's not the case okay thank you very much but thank you thank you Ted okay uh thank you everyone for attending thank you for your questions uh no now this panel didn't a big gigantic announcement. We can only do that once in a while. Nonetheless, uh we are going to be talking for the next town hall about a few things that we
• 63:00 - 63:30 really been working towards again for quite some time. Most of the things are not new, but they come in a bit of they're going to come in a bit of a different flavor that's going to make them significantly more useful uh across the board. So, we're going to talk about rental agreements because oh boy, I'm fed up about those Facebook post. Can I say it? I'm fed up. We're going to have fable fields. We're going to have fable fields. So stay tuned uh for an update on that in the next two weeks from now. Uh we're going to have upselles hoping for a clarification from Airbnb policy
• 63:30 - 64:00 by this time which we're confident is going to come uh to provide a safe hour for operators on what is allowed within Airbnb, what is not allowed with what is allowed outside of Airbnb. Um because we've heard some good feedback from our contacts that they understand they don't want the experience to be subpar on Airbnb for scale operators. Um the other thing is security deposits. So something that is in beta right now for direct premium. We're going to have
• 64:00 - 64:30 some big announcement uh for that two weeks from now. And yeah, I think that's it. Miles, is there something else that I forgot? Oh, like owners bottle just a quick footnote mention because I don't think owners bottle are not interesting to anyone, right? That's just yeah, a bit of an afterthought. No, it's not an afterthought. Okay, so stay tuned. Two weeks from now, uh that's going to be the 28th of May. Uh same place, same time. In the meanwhile, meanwhile, I will be on community. That's not my full-time job
• 64:30 - 65:00 when I'm doing something else. Um thank you very much. Have a great rest of your day. Fantastic having you. See you.