The New Standard: Why Smart Guest Screening is Essential for Short-Term Rentals with Ela Mezhiborsky of Autohost

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex 

Annie Holcombe  
and I'm Annie, 

Alex Husner  
and we're here today with Ela Mezhiborsky, who is the co founder and president at autohost. I think I did better before we hit play at saying your last name, but good to see you, Ela.

Annie Holcombe  
It's so good to have you here, and apologies from both of us. It's been a long time we've been wanting to have you on. We tried to record a couple of years ago, and something happened, and for whatever reason, it didn't work. So we're grateful that you gave us the time back. But could you tell us a little bit about you and auto host and kind of your journey to where you are today? Yeah,

Ela Mezhiborsky  
it's true. We did try. It would have been a really different, I feel like a breakdown back then. It was a good like, what, three or four years ago? Yeah, yeah,

Alex Husner  
2021, I think we figured it out. Yeah? Wild,

Ela Mezhiborsky  
yes. So my name is Ela Mezhiborsky, you did almost, almost perfect, Alex. And I am the president, co founder of auto host. And then, for those who don't know, auto host is a guest screening and verification platform. So we primarily focused on the world of short term rentals and hospitality, and we pretty much handle everything in the guest journey when it comes to collecting information, verifying the guests, IDs, selfies, credit card payments. We have our background comes from cyber security, so we have a whole underlying part to the platform where we look at fraud cases and validating transactions online, all of that, all that good stuff, and basically work with hospitality operators to mitigate that part of the risk and make the process seamless, so that hospitality operators can really focus on hospitality.

Alex Husner  
Gotcha. Yeah, and gosh, how much has changed within the industry. For almost four years ago, you know to the to this point, but when we had met you, you had actually just won a pretty major award. We were just coming out of the VR may fall conference at San Antonio, and auto host had won the focus right battleground as the Innovator of the Year. And again, some pretty steep competition that was that was exciting, but my gosh, like just thinking back to that time, how different is what auto host is now to what it was then. Would you say

Ela Mezhiborsky  
it was also the first conference coming out of COVID? Yeah, everybody was at a crazy kind of hype to see everyone. And that was a really fun when I met some of, I mean, amazing industry kind of players at that battleground competition. I almost feel like auto host is kind of the projection that we said we're going to be so so much has happened, especially on the kind of technical side, deeper into our integrations, getting embedded everywhere. I almost feel like at the time, it was the early days of us really preaching the importance of guest screening, the concept of, you know, verifying who's walking through the door for your safety, for your guest safety. It feels like the narrative at the time was very much, well, screening is important, whereas now it's table stakes. Now it's we're kind of talking, I mean, of course, you don't want a black box. And now we're talking AI is in the picture. We're getting deeper into what types of fraud can you be facing, or chargebacks a big deal. So we're on the same projection, but just feels like we're pretty much really advancing everything we said at the time we'll be doing. So it's exciting, exciting times. So

Annie Holcombe  
you had mentioned something there that actually popped into my head when we were talking earlier about innovation with AI and with the amount of, I guess, the deep fakes or the false you know, things that people can put out there. How are you going to navigate through that? Because I feel like that that is potentially another layer of the security conversation that we need to be having, that maybe we're not yet, but I'm sure you guys are

Ela Mezhiborsky  
not only that, we are. We have been for a while now, and it's almost like, I like to call it bad AI. I think we're so focused, and it's the hype, it's the I mean, how can we use AI better? And we should be talking about and it's exciting, but there's an element of being kind of also proactive and understanding, okay, great. So we're using it for the better, but the bad actors, and, you know, bad players and those that are looking to exploit loopholes, how can they be using it? So first of all, I think that even back in the day, when we're talking about looking at objective data points, where you screen rather than relying on gut feeling or, you know, fingers crossed is my best, you know, strategy kind of well, I hope nothing happens. And you know you're using your judgment. But that opens the door not only to, I mean, bias, discrimination, and we can go into the ethical side of screening, but it also gives loopholes to sophisticated fraud to very easily trick your staff that is really trained to give the best hospitality possible. So even from before and we were talking objective data points, we were prepping for the fact that we can be blinded by a good cover story. And if before, somebody sent in a message and it sounded sketchy, now with AI, nothing's gonna sound sketchy. So everybody have a really, really good cover story and an incredible looking ID photo that you know to go along with it, and so, so, first of all, we're at constant innovation and staying on top of any type of fraud trends, any ways that I just can be exploited, any new advancements on how to match data points so that, you know, we take, not only that. Photo of the ID, but we look at IP address, we look at whether people hide behind VPNs. There's so many attempts to mask your identity online, which really doesn't happen with your average innocent guest. I mean, Annie will not be a credit card to book a stage just so that you don't pay out of pocket. Alex, might

Annie Holcombe  
you never know I might get a little squirrely.

Ela Mezhiborsky  
So it's really that, I think it's the point that the more we rely on that's where the passion is, the more that we're saying you can be objective. So gut feeling is lovely when you're running one or two properties and you're going to meet the person and greet them and shake their head, but it changes a lot whether you're running a hotel, be it with a front desk or not as times progress, or short term rental operation, where you're usually not meeting the guests in person, and that's part of the beauty of it, and that's how we reach economies of scale, but you have like you're leaving a really big gap of who walks through the door. So the more objective, the more tech we're using to kind of screen and scan everything to do with the reservation, the better prepared we are to also deal with the on the surface AI exploits. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
for sure, it's interesting to see too. I mean, there's definitely a lot of different areas that have been more specific and what they're enforcing for STRS now. And one that comes to mind, of course, is Arizona that you have to pass that you're not a sex offender to stay in a short term rental, which I don't believe you have to do that to stay in a hotel. But how has your business changed with some of those more specifics, you know, instances like that, or even just overseas. I know in a lot of the foreign countries in Europe, they have to submit a lot more information about the guests that they're getting actually to the police and local authorities. Have you guys ran into that? And do you help clients with that?

Ela Mezhiborsky  
Yeah, so I mean in the States and in various areas, so Arizona is now bringing it into regulation, but that's just the last one. A couple of years of that change has happened, right? So we have, when I'm talking about the various data points that's been kind of on the list of verifications for a while now, where you we are looking to get all the information about the guests. So for them to submit their ID, we check the list you have travel sanctions, you have sex offender lists, you have no fly list during political events, we're looking through all of those no fly, no zone kind of things where you're not trying to let people putting your company at risk. So all of that gets scanned through the system. Now, if you upload somebody else's ID, it's a real ID, but it's not you. That's also where we're looking, you know, to do whatever we can with your biometric scan and your selfie match, we'll look at your location. So all of these things to really avoid the people that shouldn't be staying in properties, including sex offenders, won't

Annie Holcombe  
be staying there. That's really interesting. So I go down the rabbit hole of spy shows on like Netflix and stuff, and we've watched a lot of that stuff, and you were talking about like the bio talking about, like the biometrics and things of like world events. So do you guys look at situations? So I'm just thinking of like Taylor Swift traveling around the world, like events like that, where there are people that maybe, like, if there was somebody that was flagged as a stalker for Taylor Swift, could that be in your system so that you could know if that person showed up in a rental in a country where she was at like, is your, is your system capable of doing that?

Ela Mezhiborsky  
I love the idea. I don't know that there would be a list idea. If I tell you swift stalkers, there's, there's, there's public lists from every like jurisdiction, and when you do scan, I mean, in theory, would be like any celebrity stuff. So I wish we could do something Taylor Swift specific. But in general, anybody that will be screened should not be allowed to book properties. And yeah, probably

Annie Holcombe  
anything, anything that the police have as public record you can access for a market and know if somebody books like it flags them. Is that correct? Correct? So it doesn't have to be Taylor Swift. It could be anybody, okay? Anybody.

Ela Mezhiborsky  
Okay with Taylor Swift, in specific, the types of risk really ended up being moms taking their teenage daughters and getting too drunk. Oh, anecdotal stories. It's not the real crime and fraud was problematic. Jury tells, but it was the more kind of gray area of full compliance, here and there, but it wasn't anything crazy, but some cities saw very crazy traction. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
I think Leo from why, I can't remember the name of their company now, superhog, former superhog, he talked about some things like that when there was the hendus and the bachelor parties that there was some misbehavior and some crazy stories of like, you know, people's stiletto heels being stuck in a in a stove or something. You know, people just, just behaving very

Alex Husner  
badly well, and you never know, I love his point. He always says, you know somebody, you might be a great guest when you go away with your family, but now you're going on a girls trip or a guy's trip. And you know, you vacation differently depending on who you're with, but understanding who those guests are is certainly important. We all know that, and

Ela Mezhiborsky  
them knowing that they're liable for their stay and they went through that type of information is also really valuable, because they're just like something about the check mark of my ID is on file, my credit card is there. A security deposit. I signed agreements. I agreed to house rules and so on. It's valuable. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
yeah, absolutely. Now, and we just saw we were just at the track next event in Nashville a couple weeks ago, and got to spend some time with a couple of your teammates there, Roy and Cam, and they were telling us a little bit about kind of the new direction that you're going in a way of, you're working with more companies on the supplier side, too. So wanted to hear a little bit more about what, what you got going on there.

Ela Mezhiborsky  
Yeah, that's a really, really exciting part of where we had it. So we've, like we mentioned, we've been kind of in operation since, I mean, 2019, going back. And so we really started by working with direct clients and and operators. So SMB is larger enterprise, and we're integrated through many of the of the PMS is in the space. But in recent years, we really saw the need of so many, be it guest experience or PMS is that are going with a direct type of a channel, where other platforms that are parallel to us, would want to be embedding things like auto host or other types of services? And it was interesting, because so for so long, I feel like I was on the in that equation of, you know, do you go all in one solutions or dedicated build? There was so much to say about, you know, auto host being a standalone platform, and our direct clients are enjoying everything to do with customizing their entire screening process the way their team uses it, business rules, customizations and so on. But there really was a business case made for a much more core product, and for that core product, we slowly saw that the systems that we're integrated with, just want to offer it on their own. And we don't necessarily need to create a whole client profile and have customers become direct. So there's actually been a lot of really exciting work done on our tech side, for both, I mean, our API capabilities and a really impressive SDK, just developers toolkit for embeddability. And so we're working with a lot of operators now where tech vendors basically want to be offering auto host just as a module in their system. And so what we are extremely passionate about and is the fact that we don't have to impose minimum unit requirements or look at size of clients, because really, now it's a matter of for the basic screening, making sure you're safe. Have all the guests go through that verification you know you dot your i's and cross your t's. You know that you have on file whatever you need, and that you're safe letting go of the door code, of the check in instructions and so on. It's really exciting to see that come through, not just as integration, but just being the embedded solution on on platforms. I mean, Enzo has been offering it for a while, journey, hospitable, a handful of other players, and we're and we're growing and getting into more of the PMs and guest experience apps. So that's really, really exciting, that we want to be able to show our kind of small, medium players that, you know, whichever platform you're using, you can just go ahead and enable auto host. And I see a very near future where for guest verifications, I mean, it's going to be the the basic, bare minimum requirements, so you can opt out of it, but the default should be that every guest should really be submitting their ID, agreeing to the rules you make sure that they are who they say they are. And so I'm excited for that next phase. Yes,

Annie Holcombe  
I imagine that that gives you scalability on a level that you wouldn't have if you were trying to do all these custom integrations. And so I know that next pack says something that we've talked about is, like having that marketplace mentality. Because, you know, I think for vendors in this space, where we struggle, is to being, being able to get to all of those independent operators or people have, like, bespoke systems. And so if you are part of something that you don't have to have, you know, you don't have to impose these minimums. You don't have to impose these, basic requirements, you are able to get out to the masses a lot quicker. And I imagine for you, that's been great. So out of curiosity, I can't remember when we first met you, like, how many partners you had in your platform, but where are you at right now in terms of users? So we're,

Ela Mezhiborsky  
I mean, Cam growing. We're pretty much integrated with all the major PMS is out there. I believe we process about, I want to say 50,000 reservations a month, okay, which is a really impressive graph, a lot. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the mission from from the get go, was really to offer that protection layer to the industry, so that pretty much, I won't even say shift, but enhancement and strategy to to go more to the tech vendors is really just the next step. And, you know, putting our money where our mouth is and making it available. So the growth has been really impressive, and and the integrations are really a part of it. So, I mean, and you touched on just tech so the tech stack argument we have, you know, the best technology out there, and we pride ourselves in the quality of integrations, but at the end of the day, the operator that isn't very tech savvy or doesn't want to navigate all those integrations, we really so much value in them just having the core the brain of auto host without the bells and whistles. And you know, if you need the No Fill solution, and just like I need them verified and good to go. It made a lot of sense to start getting embedded more and more and being the kind of the solution of choice on

Alex Husner  
No, I love that. And I think, you know, Andy and I are definitely firm believers in collaboration over competition. And it just it makes sense, you know, for you to be able to grow and scale, to do that through all these relationships. And, you know, the companies that you kind of work side by side with for many years here. So I think that's really cool, and a great way to do it, investing

Ela Mezhiborsky  
in the tech, which is really, really exciting, I know. So you guys know Roy very well, and Roy's so he's my co founder, he's the CEO and CTO of auto host. But Roy comes from the cyber security space. So for us to look at, you know, the bare minimum, you know, I'm equating it to, like, Beware of Dog versus actually having a dog, it's one thing to ask for for an ID, and you can upload a picture of your cat, but it's a whole other thing to actually go deep to the level of, Is this a real ID or not, and is it the person who they say they are, and like does it match all the other data points, and with all the more sophisticated fraud and AI being such a big factor, we get to keep investing in The Tech itself, rather than try to expand horizontally, and, you know, compete on the guest experience side, because there's so many beautiful apps out there. I love our guest portal, but is it the prettiest one? I mean, it's great. You can use another one too. And we really, really care for the screening part to be, to be effective across all those platforms, so that any operator, whatever it is they use, is kind of protected by auto host, which would make us really proud.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, what's the next leveling up of auto host? Because, you know, you're helping everybody screen their guest. And I think again, going back to the earlier, the AI component is going to throw a lot of leg balls in the air, like you're gonna have to, you know, really be cautious of that. But what do you think that auto host can be doing? Or, I guess, in the future, are you looking to expand into other I mean, you're doing vacation rentals, and I guess hotels as well. You mentioned, are there other scenarios where you see this technology being deployed?

Ela Mezhiborsky  
Yeah, so the big picture, one day potentially, could be to kind of expand beyond hospitality. There's a handful of industries that are really adjacent to us. So you have the long term market. Now we're dipping our feet there because we have so many operators that play in the whole short term slash long term space. So their long term screen us. You have long term tenants. You have anything from car rentals and cruises and airline and so on. So just so many transactions are moving online. Then in our bigger picture vision. We're not specifying hospitality. We're just looking at validating those transactions. So if we can have any exchange between two people be trusted online, that would be a huge win with where we're going. I just feel like hospitality is such a unique was such a unique starting point for us, because you're not just exchanging, you're not just buying a shirt, and it's not just did the payment go through or not. You're giving keys to a property, and something happens behind closed doors, and you're liable for it, be it from your ethical, moral or legal responsibility. You care about your pocket for sure. Chargeback sucks, but there's also so much more and kind of hospitality, you know, keeping its name, and it's such a beautiful industry that, I mean, yes, we will be expanding, but I think that at first, in terms of, you know, if we can make sure that any reservation in hospitality is properly screened, just like maybe, you know, you used to be able to drive without a seat belt or fly without a passport, but that's long gone, and not the responsible way of doing things. It's really where I see hospitality going.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, absolutely great answer too. I'm curious for your thoughts on I mean, it was probably right around 2021, I think when we were probably at that conference, and Simon lemon said to Annie, and I said, Take a good look around, because a lot of the suppliers that are here in this vendor Hall, they won't, they won't be here next year, or the next year that there's just going to be a lot. There was so much overlap in product and just, you know, people that came up with something during COVID, and then, you know, realized, well, you know, the software already offers that. But what is kind of your take on consolidation within the type of tech that you do or that you guys offer in the industry? Like, where do you see that going? Is it going to is there going to be more consolidation, or is it going to be continued development of just all these different products? And people have to figure out which one they want. I want. It's

Ela Mezhiborsky  
a good question. And I remember that I spoke to Simon too, and it was like there was, like that hype. I think that we saw some companies kind of, you know, names wind down and disappear. So that's kind of happening already in terms of consolidation. I mean, I think that at least in our perspective, we've worked so hard to be able to find the strengths and and weaknesses of every company. So, you know, even in the world of screening, I mean, it's wanting to to collect ID so that you have it on file and you've done your check mark. But it's another thing to to kind of go deep into preventative measures. And you know, you don't want to be in the news with a sex trafficking scandal, and you don't want to be right into those things for prevention. So I think that our approach to to really empower the screening side and be able to offer that. I mean, SDK is just a way for any operator to embed the. Screening in their tool, I think that there is some consolidation. You can see, pretty much of you don't have to choose one or the other. So in some pieces, we can be joining forces and pretty much giving the best solution out there. And if you know, some companies offer the preemptive and some companies are more focused, focused on your plan B or your insurance side of things, or, you know, keeping kind of a well rounded picture of all of it. I would love to see more consolidation in terms of area of expertise wise, we are working with a lot of vendors out there to pretty much be that provider of the screening side so that everything else can run smoothly, including going, you know, into the different PMS and guest experience apps.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, so on the hotel side of things, I was just thinking, because the hotel side, to me has, I don't want to say they've lacked this, but it feels like the vacation rental part of the industry is definitely honed in on the need for having this security in place, and you take it almost take it for granted that you go to a hotel and you're just as safe. And Alex and I were just in Nashville, and there was a situation where I had gotten off an elevator and somebody followed me to my like down the hall, and thankfully, somebody else on the elevator sensed that this person might not be on the up and up and act. So they took me to my room to make sure that I got in my room, and then this person left. So in thinking about that later, it was like, okay, this person somehow convinced everybody in the elevator that he didn't need to put his key to get on the just very trusting of it. And so we put ourselves in harm's way in a hotel where we might not do it in a vacation rental. So how have you seen the adoption of hotels in your tech to say, like, yeah, we definitely need to put that in place. Or do you think that maybe they're not adopting it, because by doing that, it admits that they have in they have some security flaws? It's a

Ela Mezhiborsky  
really good question. I think it's moving in the right direction, but I wish it was for the reasons that you're saying. So I think that there's a false sense of security just for the mere existence of a front desk. Now, a desk, the staff is not qualified to tell a fake ID from a real one, or nobody's stopping people at the elevator. So this example you're providing is really serious, and it's interesting to see that, yeah, when you're sharing a house, as you see and your family on Airbnb or our booking.com or Expedia, whatever is your booking, but when you're going to a hotel, you're exposed to so many people. What we do see with front desk is that they are doing the shift, but not for the ethical or moral reasons, but because they're moving away from front desks. So better screening is being introduced sometimes, not even intentionally. Sometimes they just want to avoid the person at the front desk looking at IDs, so they're bringing in the automated solution. So I feel like automation and scale is their top priority, and it's it's a money game. I like that. The result is that people get vetted better, and I think there's still a long way to go. Feel like short term rentals kind of had to do that were being exploited. So it's nice to drive the, you know, drive that change the hotels are going there. You mentioned things like, you know, sex offender stuff, hotels are a big problem there. And slowly across the states, I don't know if the world is catching up as fast, um, I know in Europe, not so much. I was talking to Deborah Abby, and she was saying, that's a big problem. And, you know, America is leading the charge, but even the US, so many states are bringing in, you know, mandatory courses and awareness, just because there's been cases of just front desk personnel pretty much letting in what is clearly, clearly sex trafficking. But they didn't either know how to call it, choose to call it. So that awareness thing is being raised, probably because the problem became so big.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, I remember a few years ago, I was at a conference, and I want to say it might have been at Verma in maybe sanitary it was a conference anyway, and they were talking about, in Florida, there's, there's a, there was a mandate by the governor several years ago that hotel workers had to go through training when they started front desk, like they had to be able to recognize the signs of sex trafficking. So the people at this conference were talking about, like, how do we introduce this to the vacation rentals? And so it was, it was interesting, because it's like, that was a training module, not an actual service. Like, what you're providing is more of a deeper service, to be able to cut it off before it becomes an issue, instead of just recognizing when it's already under your nose. And I think that that's kind of like you catch it before it becomes a problem. But like, in Florida, that's just a huge problem. And I think, like, I live in the part of the state where I've read articles about the amount of trafficking that goes from like Orlando over to Texas, where they're bringing you know, where people are coming in illegally from the southern border, like there's that trafficking that's going through this part of the state, and like they're stopping at these roadside motels, and these people just are not aware and paying attention, because, again, front desk is in one part of the building, and the you know where they're checking it, or where they're arriving in the room is a completely different part of it. So they don't have any way. To really stop this. So I think, you know, you kind of can bridge that gap. And I do hope that hotels that are listening to this, because I know we have some hotel people that do listen our podcast will will recognize that there, there's value in it, and it's safety for everybody. And I think at the end of the day, if everybody had these, these in place, it would just make us more aware of what's what's happening and try to really stop some of this bad behavior that has become so prevalent. Yeah,

Ela Mezhiborsky  
and it's not either or. I mean, you need your first line of defense. Need to work kind of to be proactive and do things before the stay. A lot can be eliminated and mitigated by demanding that a reservation isn't a black box, especially in the criminal activity. So I mean innocent damages or intentional damages. They suck, and you can protect with that, both with initial security deposits, vetting your guests, agreeing to rules, damage control, you know, insurances afterwards. All of that should be in place, but it's really that mix of act proactively, know who's walking through the door, so that they don't think like it's a free for all in a black box for whatever type of activity there. I think training of staff for short term rentals as well. Even when you're communicating, there's ways to, you know, I mean, door locks, noise sensors and noise sensor sounds very different when it's a party starting or when there's escort services happening in the room. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
yes, yeah, you're getting and that's important to

Ela Mezhiborsky  
flag those and be aware of it and for the team not to just dismiss it. Well, if the payment went through, we're good. No, you're not good. It's interesting, because

Annie Holcombe  
I think, I think it goes through some of the conversations that a lot of people I had yesterday actually with somebody about, you know, we're in hospitality, and this sense that everything can be done with no touch, and, like you said, a black box, and just everything just be so technology based that you don't think about the human factor of it all. You need to have both pieces of it. And there's, there is just that. I mean, it's like, how do we how do we not protect our staff? How do we protect our investment? But how do we protect our guests? I mean, at the end of the day, it's like, we want to protect all the people, and you have to think that the think that the human component is far more valuable than the monetary component of it all. And this kind of answers all of those questions. I think, yeah,

Ela Mezhiborsky  
yeah. I mean, even cleaning stuff should be, I mean, they're, they're right, no matter how not hands on of an operation you're running. Somebody walks into that unit, somebody sees the, you know, the usage of facilities, and how the place is looking and and seeing the guests. So there's ways to to be on the lookout to get the training that's necessary to make sure that, you know, our industry isn't getting exploited. Because, I mean, trafficking is a really difficult topic, and I'm extremely passionate about I think that we should own up to our responsibility, we, by no means encourage it, but we enable it without meaning it's a place to do something. And then short term rentals is, unfortunately, that much, I wouldn't even say easier. It's a really big problem with hotels, but short term rentals with with an operator OR staff that isn't trained is that much easier to exploit,

Alex Husner  
right? Yeah. I mean, that's such a good point that you make. Just because there's a front desk doesn't mean that it's any more safe. Those people don't know what they're looking at when they're looking at an ID. I mean, on one hand, I'll say the two sides of the story. But if I'm at a hotel and I order the Door Dash or something, I always ask them to bring it to my room because I don't want to have to walk down in the lobby past the front desk. But at the same time, I understand why the hotels that don't allow that don't right, you have to have a room key, but it's like, there's no there. There's no, like, consistency across the board as to whether people can just get up into rooms at hotels, or if, like, you actually have to be a guest and have a key. But I feel like, you know, our industry has taken such huge strides, as far as you know, trying to eliminate a lot of these risks, because we had to, in a lot of cases, from regulations and other things. But do you ever foresee auto host or technology like you guys getting into hotels? I mean, could hotels ever have something just at the front desk, like what you have that it is actually putting it through a scanner before somebody checks in 100%

Ela Mezhiborsky  
and that's already active. So it's not, it's not a big part of our model, but there's a handful of operators that they pretty much touch on that hotel experience. Even, you know, the mid houses. There's a handful of hotel chains in in Prague that we were working with, so they have pretty much like a kiosks at the front desk with the auto host module. So there's things that get enabled on that front so if they didn't do the verification in advance, they can do it at the door. There was one in Chicago. So hotels are doing it. And there's, I mean, the line is getting very, very blurry. I mean, Airbnb, you know, short term rentals is no longer Ella renting out in her second bedroom. The hybrid models are doing it faster, and then we're seeing traditional hotels, absolutely catching up.

Annie Holcombe  
Interesting, very cool. Well, Ella, one of the things we like to ask all the people that come on the show, and you've now that we've known you for a couple of years, you know a lot of people that we know, and you're engaged in a lot of things going on, but do you think that there's something in the industry right now that maybe we're not talking enough about? I mean, I. Obviously, I think that, you know, I just, let's do an interview that you did about the, you know, human trafficking and stuff, and that is so important. And I do think that we've been neglecting talking about that. But is, are there other things that you think that we're missing the mark on?

Ela Mezhiborsky  
Trafficking is a big one I'm passionate about. I think that we're doing a great job increasing that awareness. The other one would really be what, you know, the bad AI conversation, so you don't know what you don't know. And I would love to bring up more awareness and kind of the spotlight into how you can get exploited. So I think that this isn't like an immediate, you know, this month thing, but in the coming little while, we're doing whatever we can on the tech side, but even just, like education kind of saying, Hey, before, I mean, jump on the bandwagon, like, do whatever you can, let's bring AI into everything. But also, let's increase that education and awareness on what our guests are doing with AI. There's talk about, you know, booking kind of optimization and algorithms and how you can optimize your listings, but on the safety side, and you know, we're gonna keep preaching that word of caution. I would say that as we get excited about what everything that AI can do, just really important to also keep in mind what can be done with AI to exploit us, how our team needs to be trained, and what tech tools we could be using. So you mentioned, you know, the human touch that's always gonna stay there. That's the beautiful part of hospitality. I mean, I don't think we just want, you know, hotels that are boxes, you need the people element, but decide where. So there's areas where tech and kind of the more objective way of looking at things would be a lot more valuable, and then focus the human efforts and other things. So combating AI would combating bad AI, that is will not that feeling and and kind of human judgment, so we need to be better prepared for it. Yeah. Great

Alex Husner  
answer. Yeah. Great topic. Here's another one from the vault. So this was we actually we remembered on our 200th episode that we used to also ask everybody back in the day. We probably asked you this a few years ago when we tried to interview you, but we used to ask our guests, and I think we should ask it more of what is what you do you know, through auto host and in your career, what does that say about Ella and your just, just you as an individual? So

Ela Mezhiborsky  
many things I mentioned to you guys that I just came back from a trip to the Azores Islands in Portugal, and just, I've always been passionate about travel, like of all industries on Earth. This is the one where your discretionary income goes towards that. I mean, business travel is great, and you know, a lot of companies are making money of that as well. But just in general, the world of travel, it's such a fun space that we get to be in. So what it says about me? I mean, I'm doing whatever I can to stay in it. So yes, I'm on the side that is on the safety and protection and risk, but that just because, I mean, part of my friend, shit hit the fan when I was running operations, and we had to develop this, right? We used all the tools out there, but then when we saw that gap, that's how auto host came about. And, you know, I used to run a property management company we spoke about too. So it's almost like I like being in that industry. I like being the guest. I like being the host I like working in the tech that empowers this industry. So, you know, the better we can kind of keep it safe and beautiful and avoid the bad apples. I think would be something that I'd be proud to, you know, do a big check mark with my life. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
well, you certainly are. So I think you're doing that for sure. But Ella, so good to finally catch up with you again. And we were just so excited to get to see Roy and Cam last week. And that's kind of how we all got back together here. So thank you for coming on. And when will we see you? Are you going to any other shows coming up this year?

Ela Mezhiborsky  
I'm going to do my best to there's a few April ones. We're still kind of finalizing thing, but I'd love to see people in person. And so yeah, to do some more interactions. Thank you for having me. It was way overdue, but I'm glad we got to do this. Yeah, if anybody

Alex Husner  
wants to reach out, Ella, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Ela Mezhiborsky  
So LinkedIn, probably I am happy to connect. I love you know, be it auto specific or anything I can get involved with. So always just, I mean, reach out, and I like to talk to people in the space.

Alex Husner  
Awesome. Great. If anybody wants to get in touch with Annie, and I you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com and until next time, thanks, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai