Do you want to become an Airbnb investor, but don't have enough time to handle host responsibilities on top of your 9 to 5 job? Or, are you currently drowning in Airbnb guest messages, but want to make sure your guests receive the very best communication? If so, this Episode 106 of the Host Coach Airbnb Investing Podcast is for you!  

Today the founder of Host Buddy AI is sharing how his $10 AI tool can free you from 95% of guest communications and give you that time back to live a life that you love. We also explore why you need to embrace new AI tools to stay on top of guest expectations for response time and personalization.

Topics discussed in this episode:

• How to train AI to be a better host than you are
• How to avoid under-serving your guests and losing to your market competition
• The smart way to track and resolve issues in your Airbnb
• Why it is essential to stay on the cutting edge of Airbnb technologies

Host Coach Airbnb Podcast Episode 106 Show Notes:

What Is HostBuddy AI? 

Airbnb property details, past conversations, and it's mirroring your tone solving problems, and saving you a ton of time and money. 

How does it learn all those answers?

It connects into your property management system primarily. So it will see all of your property details such as how many bedrooms, where it's located, all the little amenities about your property. And then it'll also read your past conversations and understand has this question been asked before.

Can  it use that information to answer it in the future?  

It's constantly learning about your properties. You can add standard operating procedures so that it knows how to handle specific situations if it doesn't have that knowledge. Basically its knowledge base is unlimited, so we have hosts that are automating over 95% of their guest communications just by maximizing the host buddy, AI tool. 

Solving Airbnb Guest Messaging at Scale

I will say that since we have integrated Host Buddy into our workflow it has been life changing! We had automated messaging in place, but all of the one-offs across 14 properties add up rather quickly. And I have tried other  solutions in the past and been very  underwhelmed, and it was like a quick plug unplug. This is terrible. It's frightening how inauthentic.

Host Buddy is at replicating what I sound like and the vernacular I use to the level of joy  that it seems to have answering guests.  Our Host Buddy is really happy.... and I'm really happy, so I think it reflects that. I think you said I think it answers better  than me. Oh, absolutely. Because Host Buddy isn't hanging  off the side of a ladder or at a lacrosse game or doing other things in life while trying to service guests. It's a fully focused robot.

Why Airbnb Hosts Created HostBuddy

What problem or gap in the market led you to create Host Buddy? 

We just felt like we weren't serving our guests to the best of our ability because of all those other things that we were involved in. We're trying to scale our business, but we're also people and we need to sleep. And we didn't feel the need to have to hire people to be  available overnight. If there's AI  that can be built that is going to do a much better job than we will and answer much quicker with more detail. Why not be the first to create that solution?

So when we initially created it in 2023, our initial purpose was to solve that overnight communication . From there we realized this can really be applied to any hour of the day and you can teach it anything. Luckily we partnered with one of the most talented software developers that I've ever met, who is our really good friend, and we all live in San Diego together. So we all collaborated on this idea and created it for our own property management business, which is what makes it so powerful. And that's  why I think you said you've tried other solutions  and you just didn't feel that same result, it's because not many AI messaging solutions are focused on the actual quality of the responses. It's just the fact that it can give a response, but it might not be personable and sound like you, and be able to actually problem solve and think. So that's what we focus on from the very beginning, and that's how we've grown it to where it is today. 

Oh, that's fantastic. And to give our listeners a little background, an example of where it's absolutely wonderful. Late at night or any time of day, we have a lot of properties in the mountains, and with wind, weather, power outages happen and the rate at which you respond to someone who's lost power is a  huge indicator of how calmly they're going to  react, and whether they're going to leave or not. So we purposely added power outage specifics for each of our properties down to here's where the power outage kit is. It's a game changer. 

Tracking Airbnb Repairs and Issues

The other feature, other than just the guest responses that has really been impactful for us is action items. As a host, I think you should be concerned about feeling like you're still involved. Potentially feeling like you're detached from the business now because AI is taking over all of your guest communication is a scary thing for some people. Action items were created to ensure that the host stays in the loop.  So if there's something that's going on at your property where the guest mentions  something and the AI doesn't have the necessary resources or knowledge to go and execute a resolution, it's going to generate an action item and that'll get sent to you directly. The important thing is that somebody  is reporting a major emergency and the AI can't fix it for them (ex: drop off more towels or fix a broken bed)yYou're still in the loop on that. And then you can go and figure out the best resolution on your end.  

Why AI Integration Is Essential for Airbnb Hosts To Stay Competitive

What do you think is the biggest value that Host Buddy offers Airbnb investors?

I think it's the power of being able to decide what you want to do with all the extra time and money. If you're substituting human coverage, having somebody on your team for hostbuddy, now you're able to have a ton of extra time and a ton of extra money to go and put it back  into your business or focus on other things in your life. If you're an investor with one property and you just don't want to be as involved as you feel like you are and guests are asking questions 24/7... this is amazing. And the best part is it's going to feel personalized and the guest is going to be taken care of.

I know this is changing a lot in the industry, but initially when you think about AI it doesn't really sound like a hospitable solution, right? It's technology, it's not going to be able to provide the same quality of  responses that I would as a host, right? But once you let that  control go and understand that it's mirroring your tone and sounding like you, and taking care of all the repetitive things that time that you get back is amazing! You can make as many templated messages as you want, but with HostBuddy, everything's personalized and it just makes it feel so much better for Airbnb guests.  I know we feel like we're getting our time back.

The Type of Airbnb Host Host Buddy Works For

You also have an option to deselect the conversational analysis from the past months. If  you are somebody who feels like maybe you had someone on your team  or felt  like you weren't good, doing a good job yourself as a host and you want Host Buddy to start from scratch, it can do that. It's still going to do a really good job by taking all your property details and all of your specific things about your property, and solve all those little things that you might not thought that it could. 

That's a good point too, where we've had a couple instances where perhaps our past knowledge base didn't contain this information. We haven't touched on this yet, but you can then go in and train Host Buddy if it answered something a little bit differently than I would, or had something  mixed up. In our situation it was the location of a flashlight, which is very cabin specific. It was great to be able to make that tweak and know going forward it will be perfect every time. 

You can also do test conversations too. So before you have this full conversation with a real guest, you can be the guest in a test conversation and say, Hey, where's the flashlight? And it'll give you an answer. If it's not giving the correct information, you'll be able to see that and quickly correct that and then knowledge base.

Test Personalized Airbnb Messaging That Feels Human

How many short-term rental investors is Host Buddy currently helping? 

The fact that you converted me - I'm pretty anti-bot other than my Roomba and sort of was drug into this test  and could not be happier  with Host Buddy, as I've said prior. If you converted me, you could pretty much count on converting the rest of the known population. You may not know this, but we've talked about hostbuddy in a past episode and the basics of how to use it to handle the guest messaging. And we've talked about a few other features today. Can you tell us what new features we can look forward to being added? 

New Features Coming Soon

A lot of our recent updates have involved the smart inbox and adding additional connectivity into WhatsApp and open phone and things like that. We've also created action item custom categories. We have default categories like cleaning  and maintenance, guest requests, things like that... but now you can create a specific category for anyone who's mentioning a power outage and all of those specific power outage messages go straight to a specific service contact.  Very simple  example, but the amount of different things that you can do with that is pretty crazy. Some of the newer things that we're doing are going to be based a little bit around upselling, so through our smart templates, you're able to market to existing guests that are staying at their properties, reach out to them a year later over text or over email and say, Hey, I'd love for you to come back and stay at our property.

The Future of Airbnb Technology

Wow, that's mind blowing! So you're living the high tech edge of the industry and I'm curious if you have any predictions for the future of the short term rental industry. 

I really think that not only are hosts going to be more capable of using AI and more willing to adopt it, but I also think that the guests are going to feel more comfortable potentially knowing that AI is responding to them. Why? Because I think the thing that they really care about is that they're getting  the best answer, whether that's from the human or from an AI that's responding to their message about how to work the air conditioner at 3:00 AM. The odds that a human's really there  and going to answer seconds is pretty low.

I think that if hosts do implement AI and the more comfortable guests are getting to feeling like they're taken care of regardless of it's a human or an AI. I think that's becoming more commonplace. I think the hosts that  do use AI are a lot more advantaged than the ones that aren't. Moving into 2026, you're going to see a lot more adoption of AI in the hospitality space, whether that's AI messaging, AI systems, or AI agents for any other tasks in your business. I think it's becoming more common

Airbnb Hosts Not Adopting AI Are In Trouble

The hosts that aren't using AI are going to shortly be very disadvantaged because all of their guests that they're hosting are used to getting such pleasant AI responses, right? So now there's going to be  this really big gap of the fantastic personalized  AI responses that are very prompt and quick and detailed versus the bland delayed response from a hassled human Airbnb host.

We're  pretty on top of Airbnb technology, and I didn't know about it till this summer. And that's the job of this podcast, is to introduce the best possible tools to our listeners so they can get started or scale faster. And outperform their competition,.

Advice for Airbnb Investors

What advice would you give medium sized portfolio investors. 

I think you reach a point where you start to realize that It's really difficult to maintain your quality as you scale. I think as hosts, most people get into it with the idea of maintaining the quality and maintaining the customer service and the personal touch. And you slowly lose that once you start to introduce a lot more people on your  team. You're a little bit more out of touch with the quality you're providing.

I think always just staying on top of the new technology that's coming out. Maybe not being like the Guinea pig in the first round of everything that comes out. But following  and listening to people joining groups and hearing about the different tools that people are using and following what works, I think is always really important. Because the quicker that you hop on these things, the quicker you're able to save money and time, it's gonna be very visible in your business the way that you can reinvest  it.

That's excellent advice. Jay.

Host Buddy Free Trial

How can our listeners get in touch with Host Buddy if they wanna sign up, learn more, play with the AI?

Hostbuddy.ai is the website. We give a 14 day free trial to  anyone who is signing up. You can also have a free demo if you want to hear more and sit with one of our amazing customer service managers and learn more about how Host Buddy would specifically fit into your short term rental business, because we understand everyone's business is different.

Even if you don't think that Host Buddy can take care of all of your messages, because you haven't given it enough information yet, that's fine. You can slowly add more details and fill in the knowlege gaps. You'll get action items about those things it doesn't know how to answer like: do you want to handle this early check-in? I don't want to  lie to them and say that it's available. That's an  opportunity for you then to go in and you can decide whether or not Hos tbuddy's going to respond to the guest in that moment or just defer straight to you and not send anything. It's highly customizable. The cool part is right when you start, it can automatically automate 60% of your messages atleast and then you can start adding additional things after that. 

So there you have it. You now know how a $10 a month tool can free you from guest messaging, improve your guest experience, and Airbnb reviews. You also learn why hosts who embrace AI tools are going to rapidly outpace their peers who don't in terms of success and guest satisfaction.

If you love our advice and want some help on your Airbnb investing journey - we'd love to coach you! Set up a free 30-minute Airbnb coaching call here.