[00:00:00] Jason: So part of the vision was providing a technology stack that was plug-and-play out of the box, ready to go. This means you don't need to start with a PMS and then go find your dynamic pricing provider, and then go find your smart lock provider and then go. You know, find your housekeeping and maintenance provider, and then integrate all of that and train your staff on 4 or 5 different systems.
[00:00:20] Each 1 of these properties has 10 different Wi-Fi passwords and I guess is asking for that Wi-Fi password. Sure. You could reference them to a guidebook or wherever you have it, you know, posted in the listing or the property. But if you're going to answer that guest, you typically have to reference a document somewhere, a knowledge base before you can answer that question.
[00:00:41] The does this instant. Um, so you're cutting down your response times by literally 80%.
[00:00:47] Having a blast, gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee likes Bruce Lee cause it's so hard and the T is loose leaf. Making up those rhymes, don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you better put it directly.
[00:01:00] Um, here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.
Intro
[00:01:04] Liam: Welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is a podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence. So you can go out there and get yourself some direct bookings. I'm Liam Carolan, I'm Mark Simpson's co-host, and this is the spotlight series on the Boostly podcast, which dives into services, businesses, and people that you need to know about as a hospitality owner today, we're talking about AI, we're talking about hospitality, and we're talking to.
[00:01:29] About our very special guest company called Jurny. So we've got Jason Lopez. He's the senior director and business development at Jurny. And you can go and check them out at Jurny. com. Welcome along, Jason. Thank you for joining me.
[00:01:43] Jason: Thank you, Liam. Happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.
Jurny the elevator pitch
[00:01:45] Liam: So Jason, for those who haven't heard of Jurny, do you mind giving an elevator pitch as to who you guys are and what problem you solve?
[00:01:54] Jason: Yeah. So Jurny is the first AI-powered, uh, property management software in the space, uh, for short-term rentals and vacation rentals. So we were born actually as a management company ourselves, uh, 6 or 7 years ago, um, went through, you know, a lot of heartaches, uh, with some of the some of the tech in the space.
[00:02:16] Um, we originally started out managing luxury villas, our founder, Luca, um, managing luxury villas in LA. Um, spun that off into a management company right around the same time, uh, as Lyric and Sonder and those companies, um, grew to about 350 units under management and six different markets across the U.S.
[00:02:34] Um, and 1 of the biggest barriers to entry and the biggest barriers to scale was technology. Um, so that's kind of how Jurny that's the journey to Jurny began. Um, we started building some tech in-house. Um, and, uh, really that, that's how the technology was born. Um, when we started bringing it to markets, other hosts and property managers.
[00:02:55] Liam: Talk us through a little bit more of the kind of AI. How did that journey come in? What, when did you go, do you know what? I just need to get good at the AI side of
[00:03:05] Jason: things. That's a great question. I think AI caught a lot of people off guard, uh, last year, late last year. Maybe in November or December of last year, I think people started to 1st take notice.
[00:03:15] Um, we released our 1st version in December of last year. So I think, um, we were already kind of ahead of the game, um, from a lot of other, uh, you know, a lot of other companies in the space and a lot of other AI companies just in general. But, um, we started to take notice. Luca, myself, our CTO, we're all tech enthusiasts, so we've always, um, you know, we always have kind of a pulse on what's going on in technology and are always looking at ways that we can, um, leverage new technology and innovative ways, um, to be more efficient and more productive.
[00:03:49] And so that was the main motivation when we first just AI. Um, and it starts to snowball, right? We 1st built a chatbot. Um, then we started to build some, uh, review responses. Um, personalization came from there. Now we're looking at doing things with data with AI. So, um, that's that's kind of last year is when we 1st, uh, began incorporating officially into the product.
[00:04:14] But, um. But have been kind of in tune with it. I would say for the past year or two.
How is AI going to help hosts?
[00:04:18] Liam: For hosts who are listening to this podcast going, well, how does AI help me in my business? You know, I'm busy with doing changeovers. I've got guests to talk to and all this stuff. How is AI realistically going to help me?
[00:04:29] Can you put into words why those hosts should care and how it can help them?
[00:04:35] Jason: Yeah. So, um, just, just the kind of low-hanging fruit, um, is conversations with guests, right? Um. That is typically one of the biggest areas of, like, labour-intensive areas for, uh, property managers and shorts and rental hosts.
[00:04:53] Um, so if you think about leveraging AI, a lot of people think they think, you know, the AI is convenient. It's a convenience. It's not necessarily a must-have. But if you're managing, let's just say 10, 10, 10 listens, not a huge number. Um, and each one of those listings has a different, let's say, Wi-Fi password may not be the best example because of a lot of hosts.
[00:05:16] Typically standardize that, but, um, let's go with that. Right. Each 1 of these properties has 10 different Wi-Fi passwords and a guest is asking for that Wi-Fi password. Sure. You could reference them to a guidebook or wherever you have it, you know, posted in the listing or the property. Um, but if you're going to answer that guest, you typically have to reference a document somewhere, a knowledge base before you can answer that question.
[00:05:39] The AI does this instantly. Um, so you're cutting down your response times by literally 80%. Um, these are the metrics that we've measured and that we are seeing. Um, so, uh, that's just the lowest-hanging fruit. Um, then if you think about kind of where we're going in the future, being able to just ask AI conversationally to do things for you, like an assistant, for example, hey, block the calendar from this date to this date.
[00:06:04] Or schedule a clean on unit, you know, 100 for tomorrow morning, um, things, things of that nature, or even analytics like, Hey, um, compare the revenue of October of this year versus October of last year, where did my bookings come from in those months? Um, and so these are things that AI is very good at just fetching and, and serving up to the user very quickly.
How do AI and Jurny help with direct bookings?
[00:06:26] Liam: How can AI and with Jurny, how, how will that help direct bookends? A lot of the people listening to this are hosts. We're about getting direct bookends here at Boostly. How will AI in general help that? And then how does, how does Jurny, uh, help with the direct bookend side of things?
[00:06:44] Jason: Yeah.
[00:06:44] So I think for hosts, property managers, anyone in real estate, really investors. Anyone really in real estate or hospitality, um, you want to maximize for efficiency and profitability and it allows you to do that very well with limited resources. So I think from that perspective, that's something that, um, people need to be paying attention to, um, you can, you can leverage artificial intelligence to drive personalization in terms of marketing in terms of.
[00:07:20] A lot of the things that you guys talk about on your podcast and your books. Um, so I think that's, that's, you know, again, talking about low-hanging fruit, I think that's, that's 1 of the, 1 of the places that people can kind of start exploring and experimenting with AI. And then in the future, I think we're going to see a lot of other cool things like, um, well, we're already starting to experiment internally on, on, for example, marketing, um, matching up.
[00:07:45] Using AI to match up personas with specific ad sets. And so these are all things that are, that are happening now already today.
What are the full services covered?
[00:07:54] Liam: So in terms of the journey being AI and a PMS, can you talk us through what that kind of, what the full services kind of cover and, um, you know, does it do everything a normal, I say normal PMS does?
[00:08:10] Jason: That's a great question. So we, no, it doesn't. We started as, um, with, with a different PMS with a different concept in mind for technology in the space. We talked about the barrier to entry and, and 1 of the biggest hurdles being the technology, um, and, really setting up that proper tech stack to be able to scale.
[00:08:32] So, part of the vision was providing a technology stack that was plug-and-play out of the box ready to go. This means you don't need to start with a PMS and then go find your dynamic pricing provider and then go find your smart lock provider and then go. You know, find your housekeeping and maintenance provider, and then integrate all of that and train your staff on 4 or 5 different systems.
[00:08:55] Um, and then potentially even more because sometimes those systems don't work out and then you have to rip and replace them. So, um, the main kind of vision when we 1st started was a unified system that. You know, did it do it all and once? So, so that that that allowed us to build a system that from an infrastructure perspective.
[00:09:19] Is going to allow for more scalability going forward because all of the data is centralized within Jurny as opposed to being siloed on different platforms. And so that's that's part of also the power of of the I, once we incorporated the, it has access to all of this data, which is centralized in the platform.
[00:09:38] So it doesn't. Um, so it's already going to be leaps and bounds ahead of kind of anything else that, uh, you can plug into maybe an existing system, for example. Um, but that was kind of the philosophy when we started and then empowering that system with an I, um, kind of came later, but has very much become.
[00:09:58] A driving force.
[00:10:00] Liam: How can we get in touch with you? Where should people go to follow you on the journey?
[00:10:04] Jason: Jurny dot com www dot Jurny dot com. J. U. R. N. Y. dot com. Um, we're also on LinkedIn tick-tock, but our website is the best way to reach us.
[00:10:15] Liam: Well, and as ever, however, you consuming this media, that link will be somewhere around this media, whether it's YouTube podcast, you'll be able to find that link.
[00:10:25] So that leaves us with the last question, which is, is there any advice or a motto or a mantra that you've been given? That has helped your journey.
[00:10:34] Jason: So my mantra, whenever I need to tackle something difficult is maximum effort. Yes. I stole it from Deadpool. Um, but I love it. It's kind of, I don't know.
[00:10:47] It just gives me that, that extra oomph to go and
[00:10:50] Liam: go get it done. Awesome. Thank you very much for sharing yours. For sharing Jurny and sharing your journey as well. So, uh, that's great. And thank you too for listening to this on the Bruce podcast. We know there are lots of places you can put your attention.
[00:11:03] We appreciate you putting it with Bruce Lee. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Having a blast. Gonna get it
[00:11:09] Jason: on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, led Bruce Lee. 'cause it's so hard on the teas loose loosely, making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.10
