From Chaos to Control: AI's Role in Hospitality and Property Management

Julien Redelsperger : « And I am super happy to welcome Luca Zambello. He is the co-founder and CEO of Jurny, which is an AI-driven hospitality platform that seamlessly automates operations and guest experiences. So today we're going to talk about AI, tourism, and hospitality management. Thank you for joining me. How are you, Luca ? »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm great. How are you ? »

Julien Redelsperger : « I'm good. It's going to be a very interesting conversation. So Luca, before we get started, could you please just maybe introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about Jurny ? »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah, definitely. I'm Luca Zambello, CEO of Jurny. I've been in the hospitality industry for about 15 years. Born and raised in Italy, but moved to the US. And that's when I started my hospitality journey, about 15 years ago. Jurny is an all-in-one platform. We're much more than a PMS. We call ourselves kind of like next-gen PMS. And we have a very heavy focus on unifying different solutions to single platforms and enable them with AI and try to automate as many of the moving aspects of hospitality. »

Julien Redelsperger : « When you say PMS, that means property management system. And so what inspired you to create Jurny and integrate AI into the hospitality industry ? »

Luca Zambello : « So it all started when I started in this business. So my first company in the hospitality industry was in the luxury space. I always had an obsession for technologies and scalability and efficiency. And when I was in the luxury business, I realized that that couldn't be further from the truth, meaning that it was very hard to delegate things. So you had to deal with a lot based on personal relationships. A lot based on really me doing the work and not really being able to create something that was scalable. But at the same time, it showed me an opportunity, which was like the rise of Airbnb and a whole new way of doing hospitality. So we shifted away from luxury, I guess, not ultra-luxury, because I realized there was a lot more scalability and tried to find ways to make it as scalable as possible. In the process of doing that, I realized that, first of all, we did it fairly well up to a certain point. We scaled that company to 300 units across four different cities in the US. And we kind of hit a point at which I realized that we couldn't go much further than that. I mean, we could have, but it started to become financially not viable and not making any sense. So hospitality before the short-term rental was very centralized, meaning like you have a large hotel and you have everything, you have economy of scale because of that hotel, so you focus all your personnel and everyone to a single place. Short-term rental is the exact opposite. It's extremely fragmented. And then it inherited the technology from hospitality, which is so far behind. So you have a fragmented business model and then you have fragmented technologies. So the combination of both creates a really horrible landscape to create scalable businesses. In fact, we have not seen major winners in our space. And I realized that the only way to compensate for this problem was to create a brand new technology solutions that existing at a time tech providers, but I think is still very much the case, are not solving for that. And so we started solving that problem firsthand. »

Julien Redelsperger : « So just to clarify, so you work with like Airbnb booking, like all those big brands that do short-term rental. So just to clarify, an owner that puts his or her apartment on Airbnb is not necessarily a property manager. Could you just very briefly clarify what is a property manager and what's his or her role and maybe what's the main pain points that could lead he or her to your system ? »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah, absolutely. So the industry, it's divided in which you have a lot of properties on Airbnb, they're owned by one owner that self-manages. But a huge chunk of Airbnb's inventory is actually managed by management companies. So which means it's like you own a property and then you start renting out, you realize it's a lot of work, so you give it to a third-party management company. Or it's companies that they start acquiring assets or lease up assets in order to rent them out like hotels. Within the short-term rental industry, I think it's becoming much broader than just the short-term rental itself because you start having even boutique hotels that are coming into play or like really short-term rental operators and management companies that are more advanced than typical hotel owners that are taking over some of these assets. You start realizing when you start building a business or scaling a business, or even if you manage a handful of units, it's a lot of work. And a lot of these tasks could be potentially automated. So that's where really technology is coming into play. So coordinating different things, for example, like your calendar. If you're listing, if you're taking direct bookings, you have your own website that takes direct booking, you have Airbnb and booking.com, your properties are listed in different platforms, you want to make sure that all this calendar syncs. Otherwise, you would need to do it by hand. So that's an easy example of what technology should first start solving. But then obviously with the rise of AI, we start going a lot more advanced and with the ability of doing a lot more than that. So that's really where it comes to play, where property managers start needing technology in order to make their business more efficient. »

Julien Redelsperger : « And so now today with that kind of technology, property managers can use a software to manage what, like reservation, so calendar, guest communication, invoicing, maybe like what does it do ? »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah, exactly. So those are kind of like the PMSs that I mentioned before, property management system, that's exactly what they were solving for at first, right ? Making sure the calendar syncs, allowing you to integrate with different other solutions like a dynamic pricing software or I guess verification system or things of that nature. And yes, like you need it for reporting and all of that. So it's a management software, right ? Like if you're running a restaurant, you're probably most likely going to need one. I think we're... But that was just as far as it was going up until now. But we saw that opportunity and started to actually create automations and ways to make businesses a lot more scalable versus just the basic tools that I guess like everybody needs, right ? And we saw that within the guest communication, we saw that within the guest management, which takes huge amounts of resources. And we saw that with the rise of AI. So we understood that, especially with the rate of improvements of AI, you could start managing far more than what most people talk about, right ? Like it's chatbots. This goes much further than that because you can now start managing things like reservation management, issues that actually a guest has. So troubleshooting. So if a lock has a problem, maybe you can troubleshoot the lock because the lock is connected to your software and so on. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Okay. So did you create Jurny? Was it like AI by design or did you add an AI layer after the creation of the company ? »

Luca Zambello : « That's a very good question. So we understood that AI eventually was going to come to play. We just didn't realize that it was going to be that fast. But luckily when we realized that we were still in the building of the solution. So at first, Jurny tried to solve one thing before even AI, which was solve for the fragmentation. So as I mentioned, there's so many individual tools that can do different things. And these tools have not really been working well together with one another because the API connection, so the connectivity between your property management system and these tools has always been poor because that's just been the industry standard. People didn't have, this company didn't really have an interest to build very strong connectivity with one another. They all chose the option of a marketplace, which means like having multiple different tools available. We chose a different strategy, which was more like Apple style of like a finite marketplace, which is making sure that anybody that is within our solution has to be on much higher standards and so the connectivity needs to be much stronger. Why we did that is because we want to centralize data and all this information and as an experience as a user, like you're using a single tool to manage everything versus managing it from 20 different or a dozen different dashboards. So that was the first thing we did. And that happened to be, I guess, almost like by chance, like a really, really, really good thing that was needed in order to implement AI into our solution. Why is that? It's because I think a lot of people don't see that yet, but having a centralized source of data and a centralized place in which you can control multiple different functions is key to build automations with AI. Because up until the point you're just a chatbot, it's one thing. But when you get past that, when you want to actually start taking actions and do things, it becomes a lot more complicated for AI to actually do things. So for example, let's say that you want to enable your AI to create a refund. If that AI does not have access to or the ability to issue a refund, it's useless, right ? And let's say you want the AI to be able to move a guest from one unit to another because there was an issue and you have as a protocol, "Hey, listen, if there's an XYZ issue, you need to move this guest from one unit to another." How do you do that if you don't have access to availability to what units you can give it access to, to the access control system of that second unit so it can share the code ? So that connectivity component is huge. It's actually one of the most important pieces. And so that's where I think a lot of people are underestimating what creating, building infrastructure and connectivity really means for AI. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Okay. So I understand you're like the one-stop shop for property manager for short-term rentals. But could you please give me a couple of examples on how AI is integrated and what's the value of AI in that case ? What does it do ? »

Luca Zambello : « Number one thing that we saw is that guest management is something that was taking huge amounts of resources from all these management companies, right ? Like if you want to provide good service, you need to do 24/7 guest support. And it's extremely expensive to do 24/7 guest support, especially to do it properly. That's one thing that we observed. The second thing is we saw how rapidly AI was evolving. If you were to build the proper infrastructure today already with the current existing LLMs, you can be for many cases more accurate than humans. Big misconception, by the way, that it's not the case, but in many cases it already is. And I can go into more details on why that is. And so guest management is not just talking to a guest, but it's also having the ability to, for example, follow protocols. So for example, a guest is having an issue. Most companies have a protocol on how they want to handle that issue, okay ? Based on how upset the guest is, either give a refund or propose a discount or offer them a free night. And so this is stuff that AI can handle for you. On top of that, AI now can already escalate issues and understand the importance of an issue and have the ability to escalate to an actual human. So for instance, you now can have one person that is the manager that used to be the manager of your guest support, and that person can handle almost the entirety of the business before you needed seven people to handle that first layer. Now AI can do that. And we're actually taking that a step further to sometimes even help the manager to full-on solve some of these issues that arise. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Okay. And what's the feedback of the property managers you're working with ? What do they tell you about AI ? At first, were they very excited about it or were they, I don't know, scared ? »

Luca Zambello : « They're so early on, it's like early adopters, but it's amazing. So the technology is evolving super rapidly, but also adoption is. And I think overnight you're going to have so many people starting to realize how big this is and then jumping on this. But to give you a data point that was very interesting, that three months ago, we had less than 5% of every single customer on our platform using full autonomous mode. Full autonomous mode means, by the way, it's in beta, it's not even fully done. It means that you let AI handle full-on guest communications and you don't even interact. We have usually a system mode, which means you go on and the message is already pre-filled for you, but you can edit and send it. But that was less than 5% three months ago. And six months ago, it was less than 1%. Now it's 30%. We did not push this. I mean, obviously we talk about AI a lot, but we didn't say, "Hey, go try full autonomous mode." No, no, no. This is people. Some of our customers, which I didn't even know of, straight up don't even have a guest support team anymore in some of the cases. They 100% let AI handle everything. So that's pretty insane. »

Julien Redelsperger : « And so what's the type of technology that you're using for AI ? Do you build your own AI with a team of data scientists or data engineers, or do you use pre-existing AI tech or tools ? »

Luca Zambello : « And here's a thing that's not a common misconception. I think the money is not in the LLMs or in general in AI models. I mean, it is a game, but it's going to be played by... I mean, Elon Musk just raised $6 billion, right ? That's the type of money you really need to play that game. And we're not interested whatsoever in that. We're interested in leveraging existing technologies that constantly evolve. So our job is to build the infrastructure that I was telling you about. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Okay, so you are not an AI company. You are a tech company that uses AI. »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah, I mean, let's define what it means being an AI company, right ? Because technically speaking, I mean, if you're using an LLM to run almost the entirety of your software, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. You can call it however you want, but I think building an infrastructure for AI and then having your whole business running on it, I mean, I define it as an AI company, but some people can define it however they want. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Okay. And so if you're using existing tech or LLMs, how do you work with data privacy and confidentiality ? Because I assume clients are communicating somewhat personal information to property managers sometimes. How do you deal with that ? »

Luca Zambello : « A, even when you train for the data you're using, there's ways of not recording those information, right ? You can choose which information you want to record and which you don't want to. But also at the same time, that's an army's conception. They think that LLMs record everything and that they save a database of all those information, but it's really not very much how it is. They just take a collection of different information and try to create a logical path with those information. So it's not that if AI reads a credit card information, it's going to remember that credit card information, unless you specifically train it to do that. So I mean, we're not concerned about data privacy and we're very much on top of that. »

Julien Redelsperger : « So what does AI change for the client ? If I'm renting a cottage with Airbnb, for example, well, a couple of questions here. But first, do I know that I'm talking to an AI as a client ? »

Luca Zambello : « No, you don't, most likely, unless our customer decides to disclose that. »

Julien Redelsperger : « And what's the value from the client point of view ? »

Luca Zambello : « You're just going to get an answer right away and your problem is fixed right away. Or at least you know that somebody is aware of your problem and the problem is going to be fixed when it can be fixed. But I think in hospitality, a very important thing is to know that you have support and know that you're being heard immediately. You don't have an issue, you just want to make sure that someone knows and is aware of it. There's nothing worse than trying to check into a place and then you message your host because you can't get in and nobody answers you. That's the worst possible experience you can give someone. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Or maybe the host has an emergency or is not available, it could be anything. »

Luca Zambello : « Whatever the reason is, maybe you're checking in at 3am, he's not awake. That's just simply the worst experience that you can have. Well, having somebody answer you and fix the problem immediately is the best experience you can have. So I actually think not only it can save you an insane amount of money as a host, but it can also make you more money and increase the guest experience and guest feedback. We actually have seen that as a data point specifically on how it's increased reviews. So our AI can handle review management, which means that AI can answer reviews, both negative or positive. So it creates more engagements with the customer. So it's really elevating what somebody can do. It's an enhancer, a huge enhancer. »

Julien Redelsperger : « And so when we prepared for the podcast, you told me that without any software, one property manager can manage up to five units maximum because it takes a lot of work and a lot of time. With some software and a good system in place, a property manager can manage up to 20 units. And with AI-powered software like Jurny, it could be one for 70 units. And in the future, maybe you told me one for 500 units. »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah. »

Julien Redelsperger : « It's crazy, right ? »

Luca Zambello : « It's insane. It's insane. And obviously, it's gonna be dictated from how well it's set up. As we're developing this system, we realize more and more that you're gonna have to create different protocols and different processes for this AI. But it's just the same as you having to manage people, right ? You can increase productivity of people by how well you train those people. And AI is very much the same. And we have cases in which we think already on our next release within this year, we're gonna get up to 200 and very much within the next 12 months, it's gonna be up to 500. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Are you sometimes afraid that you're gonna put property managers out of a job ? What is it gonna change for property managers ? Because technically, they're gonna have less work to do ? »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah, I think it's also not a misconception. I think, yes, AI is gonna full-on substitute some jobs, like 100%. It's gonna disrupt, massively disrupt a lot of industries. But every time you have an increase in efficiency, this has happened over and over and over and over in history, more jobs were created, right ? Being a content creator or an influencer was unthinkable 20 years ago, because cost of production were absurd. Now you can just own a smartphone and make content and become an influencer, become a content creator, right ? That's a perfect example of what it means to increase efficiency, right ? Once you, and AI is just gonna exponentially do that. So it just means that the smart management companies can be a lot more profitable and a lot more scalable and create better experiences. But it also means that there's money they're gonna be saving from, or making more money by using this technology. They're gonna reinvest in the business to try to out-compete each other or to outgrow each other, to try to offer better solutions for guests. I think overall, many people are gonna be benefiting from this. And also, increasing efficiency means the cost may go down. So maybe people are gonna be able to travel more. So you need more homes. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Yeah, that's super interesting because you're saying like the cost of operations are gonna be lower. So maybe we could see the price of the rental units maybe as well, like decrease. »

Luca Zambello : « Absolutely. Yeah. And you see that over and over, right ? With the development of technologies, efficiency goes up. Yes, it is unfortunate some jobs are gonna be disrupted. I mean, I think being, but also a lot of the jobs are gonna be disrupted. There's a lot of jobs that people don't want to do. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Do property managers need to be tech-savvy or know about AI in order to use your system ? »

Luca Zambello : « Outside of Jurny, I think anybody should be aware of AI. And if you have a somewhat modern job, you need to know how to use an operating system. You need to know how to use Microsoft. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Sure, but I mean, like, do you need to code to know how to code ? Do you need to know how to like, you know ? »

Luca Zambello : « No, absolutely not. And that's a beautiful thing of AI. Actually, coding is going to become less of a needed job because AI will be able to do that for you. Not so much the case for us, actually, our job is to make sure that the way you interact with AI is as easy as it can get. And it's going to become human-like interaction as much as possible. I think that's also what's very cool about AI. I give you a sneak peek of something that we're building on. Building is the fact that you can enable, on a release that we're doing, AI to actually watch what you're doing on the screen and be able to talk to AI. So for example, AI itself can guide you through something. If you don't know how to fix something or you're having an issue with the software, so it will be like you're instantly jumping on a screen share call with a super tech-savvy person that knows everything about the system. So these are some of the stuff that are going to happen. Usability is going to become a lot easier. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Okay. And so if we think about the future, how do you see AI changing the landscape of the hospitality industry in the next decade ? »

Luca Zambello : « I think it's going to massively change it in many ways. I think it's going to make Airbnb a little bit, which made it very easy to get into hospitality. You can rent an apartment and all of a sudden you're in the hospitality industry. Before you had to buy a hotel and run it or be a management company for hotels, a lot more complicated. So I think it's going to in some ways lower the barrier to entry, especially for the tech-savvy people. But I think also one of the things it's going to do is that it's going to be massively leaving behind the people that don't adopt this technology. This is going to happen across almost every industry, but I see this happening, especially in hospitality where oftentimes people are being resistant to new things. And again, we started with the example before, right ? Using technology versus not using technology today is somewhat of a difference, but it's going to become 10, that times 10. »

Julien Redelsperger : « So maybe an AI system can improve the ratings of a place or the comments may be better for the owner or for the property manager. »

Luca Zambello : « If you're going to properly use AI, and I say this within the next even 18 months, and you're a property manager that fully adopts this technology and knows how to leverage it properly, you're going to be making twice as much money as everybody else. And you're going to have one-tenth of the cost of everybody else. It's just going to put you at a massive competitive advantage compared to everyone else. »

Julien Redelsperger : « So I know you don't work for Airbnb or Booking, but do you think it is a good time, still a good time to own and rent property on this kind of platform ? Because we can see legislation, specifically in Europe, but also in other parts of the world that are going, you know, like it makes it more difficult to rent these kinds of places. »

Luca Zambello : « I think you just have to up your game a lot more than you. When I go into this industry, it was easy to make money. Right now it's not. But it doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means you have to know more what you're doing. And I just don't think it's going to go anywhere. I just think you just... That's just a result of industry maturing. More regulations and higher barriers to entry. That's very typical of any industry that matures. »

Julien Redelsperger : « And so today you told me that you work with like major platforms like Airbnb, Expedia, Booking. How does AI play with this kind of partnership ? Like, what's the role of AI in this partnership between your platform and Airbnb, Expedia and Booking ? »

Luca Zambello : « So each platform has two main focuses with partnerships, like with their partnerships, is a increase the amount of units that are being listed on their platform and be making sure that these units are of good quality. So we can help with both because we make our management companies that they're run on our system a lot more scalable, a lot more profitable. So they grow quicker and they can provide better guest experience. So they're only interested in the end results of point A, point B. How we do it is obviously they think it's fascinating what we're doing. And I think there's going to be very, very soon a big focus on that from their side as well. There is already an AI, but it's from a completely different perspective. They're thinking more from a guest experience and from a research, how you look up for a place and how you can find new experiences. But I think the shift is going to eventually come into what we're doing as well. »

Julien Redelsperger : « And so just to clarify, you don't need to be on Airbnb to use Jurny. You could be like an independent property manager or owner and still use your system, right ? »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah. Or you can do all of them. You can be on all those different platforms. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Any success story you may want to share from a property manager that someone using your system that noticed a major shift in the way he or she operates ? »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah, actually, we have many. I think some of the ones that I even shared before, like to me, it's so mind-blowing how some of these customers have told us like, "Hey, we didn't build autonomous mode to be used immediately. It was clear, it says beta version. Be careful if you use it." But to me, just having people saying like, "Hey, this has changed my life. I am way more scalable. I'm way more free. I can sleep at night because I know the AI is answering my messages." We have multiple feedbacks like that. And then all the way into larger companies, we have a property manager that manages many units. I cannot disclose the actual number, but a lot of the case studies that we ran were with him. That is productivity just skyrocketed. It's one person every 50 units in terms of guest management. Obviously, that's not including cleaning. And with him, that's where we're working on the project from one every 200 and on the next release. And he says the time that he gets to that magic number, one every 200, that's where he's going to just put a lot more fuel into the gas and grow his company. »

Julien Redelsperger : « And so what's the next step in terms of AI and hospitality management ? What else are you going to automate ? »

Luca Zambello : « Well, it's a continual process. We're working on things like upsales and the ability to have a communication with a guest and knowing where they're geolocated and just having a referral program with some of the partnerships. So it's an ability to really make extra revenues. A big component is going to be the customization of these different agents. So we have different agents that do different things. And so the ability to create customization of those and bucket different units for different teams. So basically, you build your own team and you assign to that team a specific bulk of units and that team knows how to handle things in a very specific way for those units. So how to handle refunds, how to handle specific guest communications, how to handle frequently asked questions. So you can technically build almost an infinite amount of teams to do that, which is pretty awesome. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Okay, perfect. And so maybe one last question for you, Luca, what's your market today ? Are you only working in the US ? Are you in Canada ? Are you in Europe ? Like, where are your clients ? »

Luca Zambello : « So right now, mainly North America. So US, Canada, Mexico. We're starting to get a lot of traction in UK and we have huge demand in Europe. We just had some limitations in terms of payment providers and different regulations and stuff like that. So the second market we're launching is going to be Spain and also the whole Latin market. »

Julien Redelsperger : « So today your system mainly speaks English and Spanish, I guess. »

Luca Zambello : « The AI speaks almost any language, but the website is only in English right now. The whole system, like if you go and log into our system, it's only in English as of now. »

Julien Redelsperger : « That actually, yeah, it makes me think of something like if you have a guest from a country and that guest, like a foreign country, and that guest doesn't speak English, for example, he could use like AI to communicate with the property manager, even if he's not able to speak any English word. »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah. If you go and talk to one of our property managers today, like in the same day, you happen to book a home that is hosted on our system and you send a message in French, the system will answer you back in French. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Okay. Same thing with the majority of the most common languages. »

Luca Zambello : « Okay. Well, that's interesting in terms of, you know, inclusivity and diversity as well. »

Julien Redelsperger : « All right. Perfect. So thank you very much, Luca. So at the end of each episode, the guest must answer a question posed by the previous guest. After that, you'll have the opportunity to ask a question for the next guest. Are you ready ? »

Luca Zambello : « I'm ready. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Perfect. So here's your question, courtesy of Sam Bogot, who is the CEO of Axel, a company that specializes in video assets management for TV shows and studios, as well as content creators. We can listen to his question right now. What is your answer as to how many years to AGI and why ? »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah. So there's different, I think people define AGI in different ways, depending on who you ask. But yes, if I quote Elon Musk, they asked him that question, I think a few days ago, and he said next year. I think that's a bit optimistic. I say within the next five years. But it's the ability of having AI improving itself. It's a big one because then you can create exponential improvements. And I've seen that. That's already happening in some ways. So we're not too far. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Did you already think of like business case for you in the hospitality management with artificial general intelligence ? »

Luca Zambello : « I mean, for us, our job is to pave the roads, right ? Like as I said, like I think the LLM companies or large model companies are building the trains and I think the opportunity for a lot of entrepreneurs is building the railroads. And that's exactly what we're doing. We're building the railroads for AI in hospitality. And the more this system advance and become sophisticated, the better and stronger our solution is going to become. »

Julien Redelsperger : « Okay, perfect. Well, so now Luca, that's your turn. What question would you like to pose for the next guest ? »

Luca Zambello : « Yeah. So I want to ask, what is the most significant challenge you have faced in your career and how do you overcome it ? »

Julien Redelsperger : « Perfect. Well, well done. Well, thank you very much, Luca. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today. »

Luca Zambello : « Thank you for joining me. »

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