Real Women Talk Real Growth: A Conversation with Vered Schwarz, COO of Guesty

Alex Husner  0:04  
Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex. And I'm Annie. And we are joined today with Vered Schwartz, who is the president and CEO of Guesty, Verez It's so good to see you again.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  0:16  
It is fantastic to see both of you as always.

Annie Holcombe  0:22  
We just got to see you a few months ago, in Nashville for the Women's Conference in dorm. It was so great. And I know we got to run into you in the hallways at Varma, your country's had a really rough, you know, had a rough year. And it was just so nice to just be I'm a hugger, to see you in person and just touch you in the flesh and know that you were safe. And you were okay. So how are how are you doing?

Vered Raviv Schwarz  0:45  
Um, well, I guess he's well, and we're all doing just fine. It's been a good year. It's been a stressful year as well. Yeah, we've encountered some things that we're not used to like, you know, some people went on Military Reserve. It was you know, there was anxiety and all that. But again, overall, yeah, fortunately, everyone's safe. And we do have 16 offices around the world. So we all work together and support each other, which is wonderful.

Alex Husner  1:19  
Wow. And you're based in Tel Aviv. Eventually, some someday we'll get over there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We

Vered Raviv Schwarz  1:31  
had a lot of people come to guest civil, which was until the last year it was fantastic.

Alex Husner  1:37  
I was is that the conference that you do? Forget it each year?

Vered Raviv Schwarz  1:41  
Yeah. Our annual.

Annie Holcombe  1:44  
Yeah, we're waiting. We're waiting to find out where the conferences will be for this year. So look forward to that. But why don't we recap. So we had you on the show? Gosh, I guess about two years ago, almost two years ago. It's been almost

Alex Husner  1:57  
almost a day. Today. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  2:02  
But a lot has happened for you a lot has happened for both Alex and I. But why don't we just there might be some people that don't know you and want you a little bit about you and your your journey to where you are with GST? Sure,

Vered Raviv Schwarz  2:16  
so I've been with guests for five and a half years now. So joined a company when we're at people, Jeff, around a round b. And now we're over 700 people in 16 countries, and already did a $280 million in funding. So that was quite exciting as well. And it's been amazing to see the company grow and develop and release new products and features and enter new markets. So it's been an amazing journey so far. And guest is actually my fifth tech company. So prior to that, I was the CEO of Fiverr. a marketplace for digital services. Also took it all the way from 40 people when I joined to hundreds of people and going public when I left it for Getty and three companies before that. So did a lot of the growing and scaling companies taking them public selling companies buying companies. But I really love even looking into the organizations and figuring out the strategy not only of the company and product growth, but also the organization and maturity and growth and scalability, which is something I really love digging into and thinking about.

Alex Husner  3:50  
Yeah, I remember. Yeah, a lot for sure. When we spoke two years ago, we we asked you a little bit more about your career with Fiverr, which was was interesting. And we commented how we had just really learned about Fiverr at that point, because we use Fiverr to get the intro song for the podcast recorded and just just how much remote work has changed the landscape for you know, the workplace and, you know, people across the world but you know, especially with guests, most of your even though you have 16 offices, I'm sure a lot of your employees are remote. So, I mean, how has that continued to change, you know, in this evolution of managing those peoples, those people and how has that changed over the years?

Vered Raviv Schwarz  4:36  
So it's interesting, it's completely different than what it was pre COVID days right. I still think that there's a value to face to face right? I couldn't had any new friends example over the podcast, right, but we could do it in Nashville. So we still try to visit and have events and and really see and feel our team and be there for them. But we have learned to work remote, we have learned to do a lot of things digitally, we have learned to utilize video in different ways and cross collaboration in different ways. And I think what we've learned over COVID, and we still use today is that it actually kind of levels the playing field, if you know what I mean. Because I don't know if you've ever been to a situation where you're in a meeting over zoom. And there are a bunch of people sitting around a meeting room table, and talking and, you know, drinking their coffee and, and eating their cookies and talking amongst themselves. And you have to say, Hey, I'm here.

Alex Husner  5:48  
Yeah, yeah.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  5:52  
We're all in those, you know, little squares talking to each other, we're all actually have had the same exposure to the rest of the team on the conversation. So in a way, I think it made us collaborate better around the world, especially when you have people in remote locations, they don't feel as remote because everyone's remote all of a sudden, yeah, and we did move back to the office in several locations, mostly the hybrid mode. So we didn't move anywhere to five days a week in the office, we do, usually two days or three days a week in the office. And I think that balance really works well. For us, it allows people to have those interactions and collaborations and meetings in the office and just have a beer together and enjoy each other's company. But they also have that focus time at home where they can and people really know how to manage their time and use that time for like writing and developing your yours and doing things that they should be doing on your own or, of course, communicating with people on zoom around the world, and really utilizing that office time for collaboration. And it works really well for us. And I haven't seen a drop in productivity, I think the satisfaction is actually going up. And people managed to balance the work and their their life, in better ways than before. So I'm really happy with this new approach, I think it's fair to say, yeah,

Alex Husner  7:35  
that's I think the hybrid approach makes a lot of sense for companies that are able to do that, you know, it's like, being home by yourself or wherever your home offices, it does give you that freedom of you know, it's a little bit quieter typically than being in an office setting. But knowing that you're going to be in person with somebody in a couple of days, or some conversations that you might want to wait to have, when you are in person. And I think strategy type things where you just you need that space of, you know, we don't just have an hour zoom, we can sit here for as long as we need to and talk this out, whiteboard it out, I think there's a lot of value to that. So the hybrid hybrid approach is great. I also in my experience this year, and getting to know more of your team have seen, you know, you guys have taken I would say a little bit of a different approach to how you interact with your clients, and that you do it by market. So the market manager is very involved on a, you know, both in the sales side, but then in the implementation, and they're truly like their as their, you know, success manager there forward. I think that's really an interesting way to do it. And it makes a lot of sense. Because I know personally, I don't like when I you know, buy a service, and I love the salesperson, but then they leave and I never see them again, you know, and now I've got a entry level person who's helping me and they can't deliver on the things that the salesperson said, but I feel like that approach has got to have led to higher customer satisfaction.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  8:59  
Definitely. And I think that the challenge at guessing what also makes it really interesting is that we serve so many types and sizes of companies, right? We have customers with one, two or three properties. We have customers with 10 and 20 properties. And we have customers with hundreds or 1000s of properties. And not only that we have them in different geographies right around the world. We have them in Australia, we have them in the US, we have them in Europe. And even in terms of their persona, they're not all the same. So if you think of the the people that have been doing this for 50 years, and then the young tech savvy ones that have just started their business in the last couple of years, they're completely different. They they look for different things. They want a different onboarding experience. They want a different interaction. with their tech vendors even. So I think we really learned to tailor our approach to those different customers and different personas to give each customer the level of service and level of interaction they need. And they want, which was, was challenging, it took us time to really craft it. And I'm really happy with where we are now. And I think the customers are feeling it.

Annie Holcombe  10:28  
It's one thing I love about you guys is you're always innovating and you're iterating on things. And you're really trying to think of like new ways that you can approach the business. To you to your point, you know, you're looking at what the personas and what they want and what they were, what their desires are for their business. And you guys have added a lot of different tools and things within sort of the guests the portfolio, I'm really interested because the one that's I'm learning more about is the stay sense, the amplify stay sense. It's working with a lot of the DMOS and CVBS. And Alex and I both in our markets where we live, Panama City Beach and Myrtle Beach, we did a lot of work in both of our organizations there. And so we have a we have a fondness for assisting the CVBS and the chambers of commerce and all of those GMOs. And so I was curious how you came to that technology and why you felt like that was a good decision for guests it to add that component.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  11:24  
So it started with the acquisition of state sense that led by force David and Gotti over here.

And so came back, started off with the the like, the localized OTA approach that he came with, like the smoky mountains.com, and so on. And just brainstorming and innovating around it, we found that there's a real need for those organizations that you know, they have the need, they have the right audience, and they don't have the right technology to innovate and do it in a scalable way. Hey, actually, what we're doing here for smoky mountains.com, we can do exactly the same for them with some iterations, of course, actually required a little more iteration than we thought originally. start interviewing the potential customer, you understand that? Oh, they also need this and they need that. Yeah. But we thought it, you know, it's a huge market. There's a need, no one did it before no one offered them a tool that really meets those needs. And then at the end of the day, everything connects, right? Because they're connecting to the property managers and their local communities. And those local communities get to know us as well. And hopefully, there'll be additional synergies as we go along, which we really believe in. Yeah,

Alex Husner  13:02  
absolutely. When the destination wins, all the people that are part of it, when to and this is definitely something that I've seen, in my experience here in the Myrtle Beach market, that this is a very competitive market. But I think all of us got on board many years ago, it started way before even you know, my generation of leaders, but they realize, you know, for all all of us to market individually is an expensive thing. And the more that we can Co Op and pool resources and back in Myrtle Beach and actually started as golf holiday, which that was the local coalition of golf packagers, and the golf courses that got together. And that really just fueled that sense of innovation between these businesses and the destination that previously could have looked at each other as as direct competition. And at the end of the day, we're all competing. But on a larger scale, we're competing against other destinations when people don't always have to come back to Myrtle Beach or Panama City Beach or the Smokies. In fact, all three of those compete against each other. So what can we do as an area to really elevate what that experience is for the guests? And how is that communicated to them in the marketing and it just, it creates much more of a sense of community and place, I think in the business sense. And we've certainly seen the benefits of that. So we're excited to continue to, to watch what sense does and I think it's a great investment that you made and bringing them on board for those, if

Vered Raviv Schwarz  14:26  
you think about is just like our entire community. Yeah, we compete with each other. I'm talking about the host, of course, but we have common causes. We want to advocate for our industry and for local experiences and for more business to our communities. And I think it all ties together, the advocacy efforts, the demos that we just mentioned, having the local government bodies advocate rest as well, and give them the tools to do that. I think it all really works well together and where we want this industry to go.

Alex Husner  15:09  
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we wanted to get your thoughts on the Women's Summit that we were all just at that was yet again, another amazing conference, but also wonderful to see you. You speak and just wanted to get your thoughts on, you know, what, what your experience was, and why that conference is so different, because I think we, we can talk about it, but it's always great to have somebody else that kind of put ideas through and see their take on it, and just why that's such a special event.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  15:41  
Yeah, and people don't get it. You know, I told the door, several members that came to the Women's Summit after I told him Ed Verma, yeah, have to come. And they said, Why do we have like, what's the experience, experience it to understand and it sounds so lame, but just really something about the focus of it. I think there's more focus on on personal growth, and learning how to advance as a person not just as an entity, so it's not just although there were like, the content was very professional, it was a lot about managing your property management, business, etc. But a lot of it was about how you grow as a manager, as a leader, as an intrapreneur. How do you communicate and collaborate with other people in your industry? And I think that, because it was more limited, and because we're all women, something about the transparency is always different there about the willingness? I think, all in all, we're really a very supportive industry. Even men, okay. Oh, yeah,

Annie Holcombe  16:58  
for sure. Yeah.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  17:01  
are okay. But I'm saying it's a very, it's a supportive industry in general, with some exceptions, but generally, but still, with the Women's Summit, you felt a sense of commitment to really be there for each other and help each other. And I have always believed in female mentorship and networking and being there to help each other because if we don't help each other, who will write it, we can't complain about how difficult it was for us when we were young, and then not step up to help our sisters when they need a break in their future career. So I think there was just something about that willingness of everybody to be there for each other to assist to support, but even seen competitors talk to each other and compare notes and find ways to work together. Even some of our competitors, you know, and some of them are my best friends after the last couple of women's Semmens. Because we're all people we've all made, you know, great development in our career, we have things to share, and some things that you can share about leadership and strategy are, you know, you can share it with your competitors, and you can still both benefit from it. Right. So it's just a different approach and just coming in learning about revenue management, and, and marketing. It's, it's really about how to develop as a person in a business. That's the way I felt.

Alex Husner  18:49  
And I think that, you know, just conferences in general, it doesn't necessarily have to be the women's conference. But I think there is definitely an interest in bringing more of that content to the forefront in any of these because at the end of the day, if you are not doing well, internally, you're not going to be a good revenue manager or marketing director or general manager or any position. And, you know, I think the health of all of us are mental physical health is a very important part of the success of the businesses we represent. And, you know, some of the our most popular, most downloaded episodes have been ones that are really not about vacation rentals, at all, that they're more about that side of things. And it's just interesting to see, because there just typically is not a lot of that content that's shared. And, you know, I seek that information out. But for people that don't necessarily know where to go, the conferences typically are not the place to, you know, feel that motivation and inspiration to lean into professional growth, but I'm hoping to see more of that. I think that should be almost its own track of, you know, personal development and, you know, just just getting in the right mindset.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  19:55  
I agree and sometimes you're not even aware of how much you can help others with the Things that you feel are obvious. I had that a few times in my career when people came for me to for advice. And I said, Oh, it's just basic stuff of doing 123. And they said, Wow, you changed my life, you really opened my mind now. And I said, Oh, that was so simple. And to just share that with someone that is, you know, 10 or 20 years younger than you and just haven't gone through that journey yet. And haven't you know, made those milestones and decisions that I've just been through. So it's just easy to give, you know, that

Annie Holcombe  20:38  
without and I also think the, the one thing that we've talked about with about the women's conferences is that safe space, to be able to share challenges, questions, fears, that I think sometimes as women were coached to, like, put those aside, they're not they don't have a place in business. But the reality is, like, we, we struggle as moms, we struggle as, as wives, like we struggled trying to have it all. And I think that sometimes just being able to know that you can go and say like, I'm just struggling and not and have that safe space to have, you know, to get feedback or to get advice or to even just just to just be I think that that is so important for everybody to find a place to be themselves and not feel that they have to always be on stage so to speak, or they're trying to be something maybe that they're not to fit into a mold and find their their path and their space. And the women's conference for me has has just been so heart heartwarming to be able to your you know, to your point also you share things that you think are no one else is going through, or no one else has gone through. And all of a sudden you find that like 10 of the 12 people sitting around you have experienced the same or worse or better or but the all of it to share it to make each other better. And everybody wants to walk away. And I think the energy, it was interesting, because we talked to several people about how it went from the women's conference immediately over to dorm and so all the everybody was in the ballroom and like you walked out of the ballroom, and all of a sudden there was like all these men, and it was like, where did they come from? And it just really shifted the whole vibe, not in a bad way. But it was just like there was this just really strange space that we were in a great space that we were in. And then it just completely changed like abruptly and it was like, oh, wait a minute, how do we navigate through this and it flowed great. And it was wonderful. I just feel like maybe it would be better served the other way do Dharm first and like send the guys home? And then like, let

Vered Raviv Schwarz  22:33  
me take off my boots and right. Yeah, yeah, like armor and be exactly,

Annie Holcombe  22:39  
exactly. Not in a bad way, though, that

Vered Raviv Schwarz  22:42  
I have to give it again to Amy she Oh, the best conferences ever, and just makes it all feel so special. And but yeah, you're right, I think it is the fact that we, we can be more vulnerable, we can, you know, be more transparent, we don't feel like we have to prove anything to anyone and makes the dialogue different.

Alex Husner  23:12  
And one thing I notice too, or for myself at least is all these conferences, especially especially when they're far enough apart, like the women's conference that it was two years since we went to the last one. But it becomes kind of like an introspective journey. If I remembered this year, what I where I was and what I was thinking two years ago, and it's like, God, that I feel like a different person now than I was then. And you know, it's it's, it's a good reminder. But I also have learned too, that a lot of the things that you hear from somebody at one point in your life are going to hit you differently at a different point in your life based on things that experiences that you've had. And there are some things that you know, Amber hurdle always talks about, you know, pulling your your seat fully up to the table and making your voice heard and not, you know, always voicing your opinions in meetings. And I always believed that and felt that and I think I've had experiences now that I understand why that can be that can be hard for a lot of women and but you in those moments that I've experienced that I think back on when I thought that I could always do that, you know, and it's like, it just it's kind of like a reality check of we're all constantly evolving and things that maybe we thought before we had under our toolbelt that can change depending on your environment and circumstances. So having these events is a good way to just really kind of process some of those things mentally and share that with other people have, you know, we're all human at the end of the day and we're all sensitive and we're all trying to grow and be better versions of ourselves, but that also takes a lot of different evolution in the process. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  24:57  
so on that I think is a good segue evolution. So going back to guest D, some more evolution some things that you guys have added, you announced some some new things today that we wanted to kind of dive into and you've got the guests IE per host, it's Gifty light, is it? Is that correct? Am I saying Right? And then also, you've got some AI tools that an AI, I'm still on the fence about I that kind of freaks me out. But I'm willing to, I'm willing to listen. But tell us about all the new things that you guys have going on? Sure.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  25:29  
So first of all, we just announced gessie Lite, which is a new solution, a new a new package within the the guest he platform for a host of 123 properties mostly. So it's, I'd say it's very similar in terms of the look and feel and tools to guests, the Pro that we all know and love. But it's really tailored to a smaller user that has more basic needs and wants to start off and really focus on automations and ease of use and just be more effective and productive with their time. But it features the great tools because it pro like the guests the inbox, and direct integrations to Airbnb and booking in verbo, and marketplace tools of all partners, and payment solutions, and so on and so forth. So it really gives you a very robust solution tailored for the those with just a few properties. And it's very easy to sell since you're already on the guest platform to just scale up as soon as you grow. So now you've been really successful, you grew to 10 listings, you want more robust solutions, you have different accounting needs, you want to connect to more channels, you want to have a more lucrative revenue management strategy, you can just upgrade by a click of a button to to get the Pro. And then hopefully to get the enterprise all the way listings. But I really believe that this makes our solution even more holistic than before, because it's all just the same familiar tools and look and feel and same customer experience, which makes it very, very easy and productive. So that we're really proud of it was a lot of work. And we still have 50 for hosts we didn't it's still there, we didn't sunset it or anything. But we wanted to have this bundled, it really allows you to move seamlessly throughout the guest T journey as you grow. And I think a lot of customers will just find it the right fit for them. And in terms of AI, I was on defense on that for a long time I'm not anything I'm a stay at. But as as time goes by, you're really understand that it just makes you so much more effective and productive and, and also the technology has advanced to you know, do just amazing things. And I think I don't get me even started on everything thing in the world about it. But what we've done is, and we already have some plugins and integrations with partners on our marketplace, but we really wanted to build an AI tool that is native to the guests the platform. So our own data science team has developed the the we call it the guest T reply API that is integrated within our inbox and just gives you the suggested responses to all guest inquiries. And we've got in the pilot stage to 98% correct responses, which is crazy, you know, it's because it's really an amazing fit. So we already have those responses in multiple languages. And it's based on your history. So once you plug it in, or switch it on, it just reads your entire history so already knows your response style and the type of language you usually use and the types of responses you've used for your guests before so it's, it's sounds and looks very natural and very you when you start to use it and we are going to enhance it some more with mood sensing and an additional you know, tools and variations that will allow you to do more with it and just currently you have to just click to have the response but it will just respond automatically at a later stage. And it says so many hours in the day for you just allow cause you to even reduce headcount or not hire and of course, sleep full nights and in the middle of the night, so we're a big believer in the AI ability to really allow us to communicate better. And the next phase is also for marketing purposes and other purposes. And I think we'll all have to adapt an not very long time from now, because that's the future that's where people are going that I think you're already reading more and I more AI than you think. Many people are using it. So many of us, even our employees just makes just saying, it saves me so many hours in the day, because even if you just use it for the basic text, and then you still, you know, yeah,

Alex Husner  30:54  
your spin on it.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  30:56  
Whatever it is, for your articles, for your email for your contract for whatever. I think we'll see more and more usage of it. And I don't think it will, you know, a lot of people are scared, oh, my God, will bots rule the world and we want anything to do. So no, I just think it makes our, our employees, our teams, smarter, more effective, more productive, and they can focus on the things that matter, right? You still need live interactions with people, guests still want to feel you, but use it for the right things not to just answer random questions in the middle of the night.

Alex Husner  31:38  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's about utilizing the time of your reservation staff or whoever it is that's answering these repeated these questions. But I think it also it increases the level of professionalism for these property managers that I know one thing that we always struggled with when I was at condo world was, you can have somebody that is excellent on the phone. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're great at typing out responses. And so we got a lot of chats on our website, and very high volume of chats. And this is pre AI. So we had built out multiple different templates to answers that we know we were regularly getting. And that helped. But you know, it's like a lot of that still. Net that's now AI has taken that overview, actually, for some of those basic questions, you really don't need a person operating that I mean, they can be more focused to taking the phone reservations or working with properties or whatever it is, the businesses case may be, but I think it's going to level the or it's going to level up the professionalization and how we all appear in our communication, which is definitely a good thing. You know, it needs to be done. Yeah.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  32:47  
And I think it moves beyond the basic bot, which is something that we've all seen for a while to really making you better, responding better and more thoroughly, and giving the full answer to your guests rather than just saving time while we're at it. But the idea is not just to give those bots answers that, you know, are like, then that's not what I wanted to know, right?

Annie Holcombe  33:16  
Yeah.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  33:19  
Time ties into the guest experience that you want to be sure that you can really adjust the tone and make the guests feel actually more welcomed more pampered by responding with the ride and full response to the guests. So it's not just like moving them to a robot. It's yeah, giving them more information in a better way with all the images that you need to attach and whatever it is that you need to give them the full, holistic response for what they're looking to see.

Alex Husner  33:53  
Yeah. Where else do you see AI making an impact in our industry? Because I mean, the way that I've looked at it for this past year, for sure is definitely on the messaging side who could see an immediate impact that'll have but where else do we go from here? Now I've heard people talk about how AI is going to be able to simplify even PMS changes and different things of that nature and more operationally, but what are your thoughts on the future for?

Vered Raviv Schwarz  34:17  
Yeah, so first of all, in development, we've already made use of certain AI tools. So you can just, again, make even software iterations and onboarding and all those parts better at training and education, of course, you have a lot of tools now that just make you you know, a better teacher or a better instructor and just allow you to automatically go through a lot of materials in a way that it's not just reading but really getting through tutorials that are tailored for your needs. In terms of marketing, of course, there are a lot of tools that allow To personalize your messaging, and your communications, and must, you want to carry across in better ways to different audiences, and even target them better. And even with revenue management older, you know, all the tools out there, the dynamic pricing tools actually use AI for certain adaptions and learning the trends in our industry. So there are actually more uses of it that are actually out there already, that sometimes we're not even aware of.

Annie Holcombe  35:35  
So I am something I thought of when you were talking about all this because I think like, the AI is going to be very impactful for the people that are going to use guestkey light because those are people that they're they might be trying to scale slowly, but they're not gonna be able to hire staffing, they're not gonna be able to hire copywriters, they're not gonna able to hire these things. So a great tool to have in the in in the in the system. But I was thinking, one thing that Alex and I are pretty passionate about, aside from mentoring we talk a lot about that is making sure that people when they're entering into the business, that they have access to education. And so I was curious for you like within the guest, the light, are you going to have any embedded training modules or anything available to again, somebody starting out and saying, like, I just want to know where to go for information. And I say that Alex and I did a panel a couple of weeks ago, and it was very much on the STR side of the business. So a lot more of like the urban operators, people would just a rental here, rental there. People had, wanting to know all kinds of things, but it was very interactive. And the overarching theme just seemed to be like people just don't know where to go for that information, how to get educated, where to access it. So do you see guests, it being kind of a guest, he like being a conduit to be able to provide and give these operators access to information, and would you see yourself partnering with, you know, maybe like the vamos or any of these associations that that provide education to embed that in there to, again, bring them into the business with the right framework to be successful.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  37:03  
First of all, I'm a big believer in education, and really creating that Academy. For people that want to be in the industry and succeed in it. We already have guest Academy as part of the guests, the website and the guest, the Pro Tools, we we give a lot of knowledge and information, we share a lot of videos and a lot of articles. And we're definitely going to enhance that AI does allow you to scale it much faster. Like you don't just have to, you know, now you can just write a text and feed it to an avatar and create an amazing new video tutorial without a lot of work and without having to shoot it over again. Because I forgot the last sentence and sharks. Let's do that again. It's just it's so much easier to create videos now and to to create those tutorials and make them more interactive. So definitely, we're working on a lot of tools around that, then we'll see more and more of that within our tools.

Alex Husner  38:12  
Yeah, very cool. Well, that's, that's exciting. I actually, I just recently did a demo with Jared last week. So I could see a little bit behind the scenes. Because, you know, I will say, you know, certainly being out this year doing market visits, there were more and more people that they're like, Oh, I just signed up with St. Or I'm going live tomorrow, like, gosh, you guys hit it strong this year, which is super exciting to see. And it was fun to see all the developments that you have. And they just it seems like your company has also been very open to listening to the feedback of, you know, where what needs to be done. You know, there's never with any PMS. It's always a constantly evolving product. But, you know, listening to the users and building for what is truly needed. But also doing it in a modular fashion where if you don't need everything that guest he has Why pay for it? Right? I think it's very smart to have it that way. And I've heard some people say not not about guessing, but just in general that, you know, why would I want to have to, you know, pay for everything I add on it's like, well, if you don't do it, that way you're paying for Anyways, if you're buying something that it's all included, you're paying all for it. So this actually allows you that flexibility just to bring on the things that you want to use. And as long as you've got a product like st that's, you know, open AI that can talk to other things that they might want to integrate. You know, that's it's a pretty easy barrier to entry. Yeah,

Vered Raviv Schwarz  39:34  
though, I do think that sometimes people are not aware of all the software fees and you know, licenses that they're you're taking on and they think oh, I'm just paying for three vendors and all of a sudden if they really check they in different vendors, right and they have all these add ons and tools that they don't really consider a part of their PMS or the platform but they're paying for We're at separately. So we do try to even a marketplace approach, working with our wonderful partners is about just making sure it is easy and seamless to work, and have everything you need in one bundle. And you can play with those bundles. And think if you need to everything are part of it. But it should work seamlessly together once you do use it. So, again, sometimes you do have to think, Do I really need to pay for those three things separately? Or can I bundle it and get a better a better deal if I find them all with the same vendor. But we really believe in the openness and innovation of our industry. And by having so many different players in so many different tools. You we all learn from each other and try to create the best of breed for our customers and understand that some of them have a need for something more basic, and some robust. We've put a lot of in invested in trust accounting, for example, had the North Carolina certification fall, which was a big deal for us. Because, yeah, we know that some customers really need that. But again, some customers don't. And they don't need to really get into that. So sometimes even if you're saying I want the most, like strict accounting rules, great. But do you really need that you understand what it entails? Think about it for a minute before you use something you might not need to use, right. But that's just one example there. There are really so many tools out there and so many ways for us to improve ourselves and improve our business. Yeah,

Alex Husner  41:42  
I've got one other thing I noticed this year to a lot of companies, if they're in that mode, that they're looking to switch software, in a lot of cases, it's it's a service issue that they don't feel like they're getting the service and support that they want, but also that they don't even really realize all the capabilities of the system that they have. And so sometimes it's the grass is greener on the other side, you know, approach but how do you guys make sure that your customers are utilizing all the things that they can to prevent that from happening?

Vered Raviv Schwarz  42:14  
That's a really good question. First of all, it's we don't always succeed. Yeah. It's about the onboarding process to really invest. And first of all, understand the client's need assured that they get exposure to all the tools they can use, get the education sessions, and then sometimes you know, don't need to start with everything, you need to start with the system setting, see that everything's working for you. And then we talk continue to talk to your customers and produce certain add ons and enhancements that they can use and explain how that would save them money increase occupancy, increase guest satisfaction. Sometimes you don't want or you can they just everything at once. But we really care about our customer relations, and have those continuous talks to them about you know, and and more and more education within the guest Academy and within the tools that we provide our customers to really allow them to study and understand how they can improve their business through the use of technology in different ways. But I'm sure that some of our customers don't utilize everything they can for their business still. And it's it's our job to help them get there.

Alex Husner  43:38  
Yeah, I guess the communication, you know, once once they get, it's a lot all at first, when you integrate with any software. So it's like, from the beat from the get go. It's a lot to take everything in. But as long as that kind of continuous communication and bringing in the different things they haven't utilized yet, you know, that's just one, it shows that you're committed to still being their partner as they go through this evolution with the software, but also, you know, keeps them up to date with new things that you bring on board to that wasn't part of it when they first signed up. So it sounds like you guys have a good approach to it. Yeah,

Vered Raviv Schwarz  44:10  
I mean, we do see our customers really grown with us. And that, to me, is the sign of our success and their success and the fact that we're helping them get there. The amount of time I heard from customers saying I would never get here without guestkey and that's what makes me so proud. Like customers started with five listings right. And now you have 300 listings or even 2000 listings that we have customers to start with us that will and and grew to over 1000 listings and to me we feel like we are partner a true partner for them throughout their journey and enable their success by giving them the tools and even the business you know, advice and just even giving them the benchmarks and what we've learned from other customers and even connecting our customers in joint relationships. So they can help each other creating that community for our customers to really learn from each other and grow. I think that carries a lot in terms of what they eventually accomplish. Of course, it's I mean, they're great. And they're hard workers and are innovators and you're doing wonderful things. But really giving them old tools and exposure sometimes to things they weren't even aware of, in terms of, you know, how to implement revenue management strategies, and how to diversify their marketing channels to increase occupancy, and how to communicate with their customers and retain them in different ways. All these are things that you learn throughout your journey with us, hopefully, yeah.

Annie Holcombe  46:00  
I wanted to pivot and kind of have you put on your crystal ball lenses and tell us what you think. You're learning. You guys are frozen for me. That's weird. Can you hear me?

Unknown Speaker  46:14  
Yeah, okay.

Alex Husner  46:16  
I can hear you. You're not moving. Yeah, you

Annie Holcombe  46:18  
guys are present for me too. You

Alex Husner  46:20  
might need to leave or leave the stage and then come back in.

Annie Holcombe  46:24  
I'll try that. Okay.

Alex Husner  46:27  
We'll edit this out. Obviously.

Annie Holcombe  46:29  
Not letting me do that. I can't even stop here. Now. You might

Alex Husner  46:34  
have to like, close it out completely. Yeah. Looks back. Okay.

Well, this has got great so far.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  46:49  
Never tell myself. Yeah,

Alex Husner  46:51  
you're doing great. It's a good feeling to you, when you can hear customers say like, I couldn't have done this without you. It's like, okay, that's that's the fulfillment at the end of the day beyond everything else that we're beating our heads against. But yeah.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  47:10  
Yeah. And the thing is that even Yeah, we did create friendships with customers and customers. To us. And even, you know, I get to advise customers even about, you know, personal stuff. And yeah. In the workplace. And their careers sometimes yeah.

Alex Husner  47:37  
Sure, everyone wants to pick your brain about that, because it's such a great career. Am I there? Yep, you're back?

Annie Holcombe  47:50  
What happened? I couldn't even it wouldn't even let me shut it down. So it was something with Chrome? I don't know. Wouldn't it was weird. Um, so yeah, start from the scratch of that. Yeah. So I wanted to I wanted to have you look forward to the future and see what you think the year is going to look like? And I ask that what there has been a lot of prognostication, if you will about the consolidation of technology, more consolidation within the management companies, what are you seeing? What do you think the the year is going to end up looking like for everybody?

Vered Raviv Schwarz  48:21  
So definitely, I continue to believe in consolidation in the industry, we've seen quite a lot of that, in tech and within the host community. I think there's really a question of a generation coming and going, and we do, I see more and more of, you know, the, the older generation of property managers thinking of, okay, maybe it's time for me to move on. Or maybe it's, I'm not really into that, like new digital experiences we're seeing around here. And it's time for me to sell my business. So we're seeing some of that. We're seeing some of, you know, the just the power of consolidation, when you have 2000 properties, you can do things you can get, you know, prices that you could get deals that you can get with 200 properties. So there are some advantages of consolidating and being under one big roof for some of them. And some of them just prefer to believe in their lifestyle, their style of business, their style of hosting, and guest experience, and would want to continue and I think there's a place for everyone on the host side. And then on the on the tech side. We also have witnessed a lot of acquisitions in the past couple of years. And we've also seen a lot of private equity come and acquire some of the companies in our industry, and they're definitely not there to just get into the short term rental industry and stay there, they're probably going to look to additional ways of consolidating and rolling it over and whatever. So I think we'll definitely see more movement and changes in the industry as a result of that. And more consolidations, that makes sense, because especially when times are a little more rough, a lot of the small tech players just cannot survive without additional funding. It's difficult to get funding at the moment. So some of them are just forced to sell, unfortunately, and some of them are just like, doing the math and saying, Okay, what are my chances to get 10x devaluation I'm getting now, after a few more years of hard work? Not that big? Why don't I just saw that? So I think it's, we've seen a lot of people that didn't plan to sell two years ago, because it was hype, hype, hype, and, yeah, I'm gonna have a billion dollar company, all of a sudden, get in touch with reality, say and say, Okay, I really need to start thinking as a business, and where do I see my business growing too, in the next five years? And what is the alternative of selling now getting some money to start a new venture or just to join forces and being a safer space compared to where where I am as a small tech startup that doesn't know if they have future, a year from now. So for all those reasons, we'll see consolidation. And also because it makes sense, it doesn't make sense for industry to have 1000 Different tiny tools. Many of them competing with each other, on the same audience that also in some cases, are pretty nice. So the entire total addressable market is not that big. So just in terms of like, the PMs, yeah, we have a total addressable market of 10s of billions of dollars. All right, there's a place for a few of us there, I'm gonna go to all the niche solutions for you know, smart home automation or logs, or, you know, I don't want to name any, you know, specific industry, but you get my drift. So, let's say their total addressable market is just a few hundreds of millions of dollars, it doesn't make sense, they'll have to consolidate and, you know, attack that audience together in a more focused way. It just doesn't make sense for them to continue under. Yeah,

Alex Husner  52:44  
I think I mean, the consolidation is a good thing. I remember on your Episode Two years ago, you talked about how, you know, guests, he was really trying to stay in their lane of like, this is what we're good at. And we're going to continue to iterate on the PMs, but we're not going to go out and build locks, and all these different things that aren't really part of our skill set. But when you partner with those companies, and it makes sense to if consolidations happened, maybe it happens on that type of relationship. But, you know, there's, like you said that the addressable market is different depending on which sector that you're actually in. And, gosh, when you go back to vrma, in New Orleans, I guess it was post or No, San Antonio, thank post COVID. There were so many vendors there that had never been part of the ecosystem before. And I remember Simon Lehmann walking around with Annie and it said, Take a good look around girls come next year, the year after, most of them won't be here. And there are a lot that are not around anymore. But it's going to be an interesting year, both for the property managers and for the tech companies to see how things go. But you know, at the end of the day, you've got to have great tools that are supporting you. And making those decisions is a very important thing for the good times and the bad times. Yeah,

Vered Raviv Schwarz  53:59  
and I mean, there's also a lot of consolidation for the right reasons, because you want to be an industry leader, because you want to have that economies of scale, and just makes it easier when you're bigger. So I definitely, and you know what, it also makes a better product and a better service for a client. The bigger you are, the more you can give back to your clients to the product innovation. You can't do that when you're in survival mode and just, you know, trying to find the next customer and, you know, work on the next bug. So I think it's the natural maturity of any industry, I guess. And then we'll see it at our industry as well. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  54:45  
Nice to see. It's nice to see companies like yours and leaders like you've lighting the way for everybody to go down the right path to share and again, provide tools for people to be successful, whether they're just starting out or they're an introvert. Highs company that's been around for years. And I think everything that you guys have done, you've done methodically, and you've done with intention, and you've done from listening to your customers. And that's just so important.

Vered Raviv Schwarz  55:11  
So much. I appreciate that feedback. Yeah, absolutely.

Alex Husner  55:14  
Well, we look forward to seeing you for at this year on the show circuit. I'm sure we will get to see you here soon. And certainly all the team from guessing but wishing all of you the best of luck this year. In the meantime, if anybody wants to reach out to talk to you or learn more about gessie, what is the best way for them to contact you?

Vered Raviv Schwarz  55:33  
They can contact me on LinkedIn, and they can reach out to me through gifty.com and the contact information and I'll be sure to reach out back to each and every one of you.

Alex Husner  55:47  
Okay, great. Well include that in the show notes. And if anybody wants to get in touch with Andy and I, you can go to Alex and any podcast.com And until next time, thanks for tuning in everybody.