[Heather Bayer]

Today I am talking to someone who's been on the direct booking scene for some years now and is the founder of Boostly, which of course is Mark Simpson. We're going to be talking about the recent announcements from Airbnb, we're going to be talking about AI, of course, and as we get through the episode, Mark's going to help you create your own first custom GPT.

This is the Vacation Rental Success Podcast keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information and resources on this rapidly changing short term rental business. I'm your host Heather Bayer and with 25 years of experience in this industry I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new and what will help make your business a success. 

Well hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host Heather Bayer and as ever I am super delighted to be back with you once again. 

Now if you've been anywhere near any vacation rental forums, hey are forums still a thing? Do we still call them forums? Let's call them groups. If you've been anywhere near some of the vacation rental groups lately, wherever you hang out, or you're just scrolling around, you've probably seen the waves caused by Airbnb's latest announcement about services. There's a lot of noise out there, a lot of concern and yes there's a fair bit of frustration. 

So today I wanted to bring someone in who's never afraid to call it like it is and who always brings the energy and insight to match. So Mark Simpson is the founder of Boostly and a long time friend of the podcast. He's one of the strongest voices in the direct booking movement, but today we're not just talking about marketing, we're diving into what's really going on with Airbnb's new services, why hosts are feeling blindsided and what you should be thinking about as you navigate these changes.

Then we're going to switch gears to something a little bit more exciting, maybe? That's AI. Have you ever heard me mention AI before? If not you've definitely not been listening to this podcast. So Mark has been quietly, no not so quietly, building a community of short-term rental professionals who are using AI tools in incredibly creative ways. So from WhatsApp threads to Slack collaborations he's really at the centre of a movement that's reshaping how hosts think about their productivity and their innovation.

And then will we move on in our conversation to talking about building some simple GPTs? You know the kind that can actually save you hours of marketing time each week. And if you've ever felt curious but overwhelmed by AI, Mark breaks it down in his very usual no fluff style. So stick around because this episode is full of real talk. It's got a lot of practical takeaways and I know I'll be inspired. So maybe there's some inspiration for you to get thinking differently about the future of hosting and managing your vacation rentals. Let's get started. 

So I'm super delighted to have back with me once again Mark Simpson from Boostly. It's always lovely to get on one of these interviews and talk with somebody with a British accent. Not that I don't like American/Canadian accents, but you know it sort of makes me feel homey.

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[Mark Simpson]

Homey, I was going to say. Homey, very homey. It is nice. Always nice to chat to you. Especially with right now what we're talking about a lot more which is AI.

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[Heather Bayer]

I know, I know. I said that in my introduction that today we're probably going to be talking about AI and you've never heard me talk about this before, right? Yeah, I think, you know, my husband, my family, they just nod and smile when I come up with the latest, Oh my God, wow! And I get this, Yeah, we're not even going to ask you what you have just encountered, because it's bound to be something that AI's shipping out.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

It's slowly spreading around our household. My 12-year-old uses it a lot. He started off by using it to draw funky Pokemon characters, but now he's like advanced it a little bit more. He's just literally done a little recipe downstairs. He's been cooking and he's used ChatGPT to get it together and to make sure ChatGPT and YouTube to make some little cookies. So it's happening a lot. My wife and I, we're starting to plan on making our next home move, because we've currently got six people living in a three-bed [room] house. And my wife's been going around all the rooms taking pictures and asking ChatGPT what should we do to this to make it more buyable/sellable. And so it's been giving advice and stuff.

So it's slowly spreading. I say at the moment, the most people who are into it are business owners and geeks. Those are the people, those are the two categories, but slowly but surely it's going to start to seep day by day into the general consumer, who are going to be using it, whether they realize it or not. And then when that happens, that's when this just goes like rocket fuel. So we are still so early in this. So even if you're just listening to this, you are still ahead of so many people.

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[Heather Bayer]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, just talk about kids, my 12, nearly 13-year-old granddaughter. I've noticed a GPT appeared in my account that is Arya's 'maths helper'.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

You know, ever since ChatGPT announced that their version has got memory, I kicked my wife and my kids out, because I don't want them getting in the way of what could be a very long relationship that I have with this ChatGPT account. And I want it to be able to just know me, not my six year old or nine year old random.... And the things that my nine year old asks it is mostly Liverpool football club questions. That's pretty much it to be perfectly honest, but I don't mind that. But heaven knows what my six year old is asking it. So yeah, I kicked everybody out. Yeah.

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[Heather Bayer]

And that's something that I've got to do because Mike and I have been sort of sharing our..., we called it our business account. And then I found I was doing a new bio and it came up with, and I neglected to say ignore anything about Mike. You know, Heather has been active in the vacation rental business for 30 years and is a volunteer firefighter!

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[Mark Simpson]

Brilliant, brilliant.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

So yes, yeah, that's something we've got to do shortly. I mean, we're no longer dabbling. Once you start getting serious, you've got to think about these things.

So we're going to talk about AI today, but first of all, I wanted to get a bit current with you, Mark, on what's happening with Airbnb. There was news came out with their summer release. What is your take?

....... Before that, before that, I haven't even asked you to introduce yourself to the audience because there may be people out there who don't know Mark Simpson. I think that's unlikely, but give it a quick whirl and give us your give us your one minute spiel.

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[Mark Simpson]

So for anybody who doesn't know who I am, I basically help Airbnb hosts make more money and get more bookings without relying on Airbnb. And I've been doing this for over 10 years now. I'm one of these rare breeds that was born into the world of hospitality, grew up into it, managed to escape for a little bit. But 2011, it dragged me straight back in. And ever since then, I've been involved full-time from running a family business to now helping hosts all over the world, really. And it's an amazing place and where it's taken me. And I've got to speak on stages all over the world. I'm so very fortunate. And yeah.

And so now I'm very much in the AI rabbit hole and just sort of showing people how they can do all of this by using all the cool tools that are available to us now.

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[Heather Bayer]

Oh, well done. That was a really good less than a minute. And if anybody wants to know more about Mark and how he got into the business, I will put a link [in the Show Notes] to the first episode we did with him way back, where he tells his story. And it really is a fascinating story. And I always love to hear these tales of the different ways that people got into the business. So Mark's is a good one.

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[Mark Simpson]

So four or five [podcasts] now, I think, that we've done over time. And we've always been in different locations. Well, you mostly in different locations depending on where you're traveling.

But yeah, it's like my journey. From living in Spain to now being back in the UK. And it's fun. So yeah, go and check out those.

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[Heather Bayer]

Yes, absolutely. So skipping back to Airbnb, they made a recent announcement on new services that they're offering. Why did this stir up such strong reactions from hosts?

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[Mark Simpson]

Yeah, I mean, the big announcement there was... there were three real big announcements. Obviously, they've totally revamped homes. You can see that on their app now when you load it up, they've brought back experiences, which I think is going to be a really good move from them. Obviously, they learned the lesson when they first brought it out and they've revamped it, re-brought it out. And I feel like that's going to be a success. But they also sort of snuck in a third category, which is they're putting a lot of money into this. 

So spent millions of dollars in investment into this. So obviously, they feel like this is going to be a real big play for them. And it's called Airbnb Services.

And this is the one that's got a lot of attention to it from a lot of people. And I think the reason being why, is if you look at it from a boardroom point of view, from a shareholder point of view, when they're sort of putting this together, it makes a ton of sense. Airbnb has only grown about five, six percent in the United States. So it looks from a shareholder point of view, it could be going stagnated. They need to create what they've called these different arms to the business that will generate multi billions of dollars in extra revenue. Services is such a home run, because when people are staying in an Airbnb, staying in your properties, they're already probably going and getting massages. They might be getting photo shoots. They may be using personal trainers, private chefs, you name it. 

They've brought out a selection of 10 to 12 categories. I guarantee they're looking at adding more and more depending on how this rollout goes. And there's a lot of your listeners and your watchers who will already be offering this inhouse anyway. You know, they'll be offering upsells. They'll be offering whatever you want to do with part of your upsell package. 

And the reason why it has caught a lot of attention is that Airbnb are putting all of the risk on the host, all of the risk on the business owner without any of the benefits. If they'd have turned around and gone, Right, we're launching services, we're now going to open up your property to so many other variables as part of the stay, let's just say private chefs. And if anybody books a private chef, brings them into your property, and then for everyone that does, you'll get a little bit of cut of the money. I think everybody would have been fine about it. But they're not.

And, you know, all of the risk is now on the host because there's a very gray area on, let's just say a private chef comes into your property and burns the place down or makes a mark on the kitchen countertop, et cetera. Who is covering that? Who is responsible for that? And it's still a very gray area on that. And that's just one scenario. There's like personal trainers, masseuse, et cetera.

So, yeah, there's loads of risk. There's absolutely zero benefit for you, the host. And so I've been in these Facebook groups, in LinkedIn, on Instagram, just as I always am, just keeping a little eye of what the vibe is going on. And there's a lot of upset people. So for the last sort of three or four weeks, I've been running webinars, live calls, doing posts to showing people exactly how to opt out. If you want to do so, the benefits of opting out. And also as well then, how to then build your own, because there are so many cool, easy ways on how to build your own, if you're not already.

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[Heather Bayer]

Yeah, that was really interesting. It got me really thinking about the idea of services and people coming into your home that you don't know about and liability. Then I recalled talking to an insurance agent here in Ontario.

We were discussing weddings and people having weddings in properties and not letting the host know they were having a wedding, you know, we'll rent this property for six people and then midweek we'll bring in 50 more. And this insurance agent was telling me about an incident that happened where a wedding took place in a property with a host absolutely unaware that this was occurring. And an outside officiant came in and that officiant walking across the landscaped, or less than landscaped yard, because we don't have much landscaping here, thankfully, tripped over a tree root and fell and severely broke his ankle. He then sued the property owner and the property manager and he won. Well, they settled for a large amount of money. Unfortunately, both the property owner and the property manager were insured. So it all got settled away from them.

But the stress that was involved was massive and no amount of the manager or the owner saying this person was essentially trespassing on the property. But the fact that they had been invited by the guest changed everything, apparently. And as soon as I saw services and I thought these people are coming in and you just said maybe they, you know, they light a fire, they do something. But what happens if they hurt themselves? If they trip over a rug, which, of course, you know, Justin Ford would say you should not have any dangerous rugs. But what happens if they trip and they slip and they smash their head and do something really nasty, they could sue the host and the manager.

And it just blows me away. So, I mean, I'm guessing Airbnb have these insurance aspects of it in place. But do we know that?

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[Mark Simpson]

Well, it's like I say, it's very grey. It's 100% grey. And if you were to call your Airbnb support manager, account manager now, unfortunately, whatever message hasn't been passed down properly because you call three different people, you get three different answers at the moment. It's the same thing with the off platform policy. You speak to three different people, you get three different answers. And, you know, it's obviously going to happen in such a big company. The message isn't going to get passed right. That's why it's so, so grey at the moment. And so this is why it's super important to opt out.

And the good news is, it is really easy. Number one, you call your agent, your Airbnb agent, just call the help desk and just say, hey, I want to opt out. B, you back yourself up by sending a message via the app or via an email. And number three, in your house rules, you put some very clear text just to say that you do not work with any third-party agents. You do not allow services. What we've done is we've actually, with the beauty of ChatGPT, we've created some really strong wording that you can use.

If we've been spreading it around the communities, we've been spreading it around the Boostly community. If anybody would like a copy of it, easiest thing to do, send me a message on Instagram. It's @boostlyuk, B-O-O-S-T-L-Y UK. Send me a message that just says Airbnb Rules, House Rules, Rules. Just one of those. Send me that and I'll know what you're talking about and I'll send you the document. If you don't use Instagram and if you would prefer to get it on email, just drop an email to mark@boostly.co.uk. I'm more than happy to share with you what we're sharing and it is working. 

Another thing that no one's really talked about as well is the review. We all know how important reviews are for our business and our industry. We live and die by them. Let's just say another example. Again, say that the guest has a massage that comes into your property, has a really bad massage. Whether you like it or not, the guest will associate that massage with their stay and your property. And when they come to leave a review, they will mark you down for it. And if you think that won't be the case, I have had a guest leave me a 3* review. Love the property, Mark was brilliant. Family was fantastic. Everything was great, but it rained for three days straight! I was like, I cannot control the weather.

So if a guest is complaining about rain and marking me down for rain, they're going to 100% mark you down for a bad massage. 

And just very quickly on the opt-out, I've talked a lot about opt-out. I've shown people how to opt-out. The first kickback and the first throwback to me is, but Mark won't Airbnb mark me down on the algorithm if I opt-out. Again, we've had it agreed and double agreed by several people, experts, Airbnb themselves to say it is totally separate. If you opt-out, it will not affect your ranking on Airbnb in any way, shape or form. So it is safe to do so.

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[Heather Bayer]

Oh, that is great. That was great, because I have not heard that you could do that and not be penalized, because I've just seen the questions. A lot of questions. Am I going to be penalized by doing this?

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[Mark Simpson]

I think that what's going to happen, and we have to vote on our feet here. This is one of the things that they're testing to see what the sentiment is. I mean, guests will love this. Guests will love this. I've seen a lot of people talking about it. And LinkedIn, if we go outside of our hospitality bubble, the other tech bros are absolutely loving this. But from a host point of view, if you do not like this, you cannot just go, oh, I don't like this. You've got to actually do something about it. You have got to message and opt-out. And if enough people opt-out, I feel like that is where we get the attention. Now, this is not to slay Airbnb, obviously. We love Airbnb and all that good stuff. But if there's something that you do not like, we have to do this as a whole. It can't just be me talking about it. We all have to do it, because I think what will happen is they'll become a little toggle. And they'll ask if you want to opt into it or opt out. You are automatically being opted in in 250 cities around the world.

And yes, if you go on to Airbnb now, like I literally did before we came live, I had a look and there's been more and more services are being added, photography, massage, et cetera. There's still nothing in my local town, but I can look at the city of Leeds, which is nearby, Manchester, Liverpool, they have them. And there's more and more being added all the time.

So again, just to cover your back, follow those three simple steps, opt out via phone and message, put it in your house rules, and it covers your back. But then the good news is, and this is what I love, is that Airbnb have done the research, $100 million plus of research. You now know, and they've given you the category of what it's called. It's no longer going to be called upsells. It can be called services. We have redesigned all of our Boostly websites to mirror this. So when you come onto a Boostly website that we design, in the menu bar at the top, we've got rid of all of the clutter and we've just kept Homes, Experiences, Services. And now we're showing people how to build your own version with people that you can vet, people that you recommend, but most importantly, if a guest books their services, you get a little bit of money as well. So it's worth the risk.

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[Heather Bayer]

Yeah. And I think I should bring up this topic of insurance again, because I think this is something that you would have to, you also talk to your insurance company about. And, you know, that's maybe something I can, for our US audience, talk to Nick Massey of Proper Insurance about, because I know he's probably jumped on that one.

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[Mark Simpson]

Yeah. Well, I'm amazed that more people aren't talking about this. I truly am.

You mentioned Justin Ford earlier, Proper Insurance, I'm amazed that I have not seen it. And I do look everywhere. And I've not seen more and more people talking about this. Maybe they don't want to piss off Airbnb. I don't know, but I'm just saying to a point where, again, this needs to be talked about because my worry is, is that six months down the line, 12 months down the line, there could be something that happens and the host, if they just had that little bit of education, if more people were talking about it, then they could have protected themselves. So yeah, it's definitely something that we need to be more wary of.

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[Heather Bayer]

Yeah. I mean, it's dear to my heart because having been a property manager, I know that if there is any claim on insurance against a host, the manager also gets brought in, you know, they deliver claims to everybody that may possibly be involved. You know, the host, the manager, the cleaner, the maintenance man, they'll spread it around a bit like spaghetti against the wall. Something will stick somewhere and somebody will pay it up. Or they'll find somebody that's not insured. 

And that's a whole other topic for those who simply rely on Airbnb's host insurance. Just a little plea from me, that that does not mean that you are fully insured to rent your home to third-parties, to other people. And I think this Airbnb services just brings in this now at another level of risk.

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[Mark Simpson]

100%.

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[Heather Bayer]

Yeah. Okay. Switching gears.

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[Mark Simpson]

Let's talk about something fun.

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[Heather Bayer]

Let's talk about something fun. Let's talk about AI. You've been diving deep. I know you've created a couple of communities. There's the WhatsApp community. Yesterday, I came out from under my bucket where I've been lurking ever since you invited me into that AI WhatsApp group. I've been sitting there. I've been reading all the messages and thinking, Oh my gosh, I'm not experienced enough to jump in and make a comment. But in fact, there are people in there that are just starting out with this and really interested to find out what's going on in the AI world as it relates to short-term rentals and vacation property management. And so I did, I took my head above the sand and I made a post.

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[Mark Simpson]

It was amazing to see. It was amazing to see. I mean, like we've got, we've got everybody in there, from Graham Donoghue of the Sykes group, who is very much into this, from hosts that are literally just starting to dabble. And we've even got people in there - so it's basically the group that I created called Geeking Out On AI. And I've got friends from other industries that are in there and everybody, and I always say there's no silly question.

And I love seeing people jump in and share an image they've created. And we've got a chap called Chris Poulter, UK-based, very smart individual. When I talk to him, I feel like my brain is just going like a hundred miles an hour because he is so bright on this. And he's trying to obviously create businesses around this. And yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing to see what we can, we can see in there. And it's in an AI WhatsApp group at the moment.

We've also got a little Slack community going. Again, if anybody would like to be a part of it, even if you just want to be a fly on the wall, then just again, send me that email. I'm more than happy to give you the link.

But yeah, it's, it's good. It's, it's great. I'm learning loads. There's loads of tools that we can play with in there. But yeah, it's just good to be talking about it with a group of other people. And it's not dictated by LinkedIn algorithms or Facebook algorithms or Instagram algorithms. It's just in there. It's a group chat and you can scroll up and down and catch up when you want.

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[Heather Bayer]

Yes. I was sitting there prepping for this, this morning and my phone's going ping, ping, ping, ping. And I thought, oh yeah, that's actually was you messaging me.

But quite often it's just something else that's coming up on that WhatsApp group. And I've learned from it and it sent me down some rabbit holes and some very useful rabbit holes. So, can you share any of the more innovative and maybe surprising ways members are using tools?

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Yeah. So I feel like a lot of the time what I'm getting from it is, I'm probably at that level where my knowledge is maybe going six to seven out of 10. And for me now it's about trying to stay ahead. So how can I keep Boostly and my personal growth ahead of the curve? So whatever way this pivots, then I'm ready to calculate on it. So one of the things that we've, we've recently done is we started to use make.com, M-A-K-E.com. And make.com, the best way that I describe it is it's like Zapier on speed. It's so much more than what Zapier is. And I love Zapier. I've got a pro-pro account. I feel like I've got 40,000 zaps running every single month. And it does a lot and it's definitely helped me automatize a lot of what we do at Boostly, but make this taste to the next level so we can.....

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[Heather Bayer]

Can you just give a quick breakdown, a very simple breakdown in eighth-grade language of what make.com is and what it does.

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[Mark Simpson]

Yeah, so for example, I feel like if you see or hear anybody talking about AI agents, AI agents is like the new buzzword and you see a lot of people talking about these AI agents. Basically, it just means workflows. So there was a tool that I used to use back in the day, IFTTT [if this then that] it was called. So 'if this' happens, then, you know, if this happens, then do it. And these workflows are basically what make.com are all about. So, for example, a trigger will be if something happens.

So I'll use it as a scenario how we're using it. So the trigger is, a demo call is booked at Boostly. Okay, that is the trigger. Our CRM sends the trigger just to say, right, that a demo call is being booked. And there's an expression that gets used a lot in sales, which is called speed to lead. And we have at Boostly an appointment setter. And the appointment setter is based in America. And when a call gets booked to speak to our specialist about working with Boostly, their job is to call that lead and just qualify them to make sure that they understand fully what Boostly does. And then we've got to make sure that they are qualified to work with us because not everybody is suited to work with us. Now, the appointment setter is fantastic, but they only work a couple of hours a day. They have to do things like sleep and have life and stuff. And sometimes we get calls that are booked, depending on the time zone or where they are in the world, it could be one o'clock in the morning. And our appointment setter, as good as they are, they're asleep at one o'clock in the morning.

And so we miss an opportunity to speak to the host who wants to work with us, so that when our specialist speaks to them, it's a really cold call. So the call can go one of several different ways depending on the person and what they think of Boostly and what they know about Boostly. So we have got make.com programmed in. So when a call gets booked, the make.com triggers. And then what we're able to do with our workflow is that we have programmed in another bit of kit and another software called Retel.ai. And Retel.ai is a voice agent. So this took us about a day to program. 

So it's an AI agent. We train the voice. So I could voice clone it on my accent, which is very hard to do because I've got this weird Yorkshire English accent that's lived in America, lived in Australia sort of accent thing going on. So a very scraggy accent as I call it, which we decided not to do. And so we had a lovely British accent that we called Laura. So Laura AI will then call the person who's booked a call within two minutes. So just at the point of them booking the call, doesn't matter whether it's one o'clock in the afternoon or one o'clock in the morning. Whenever they've booked it, then the call goes in. They have a call and they've got a script and all of this is done in Retel.ai. And the script is a very simple, just making sure that A, they understand what Boostly is, ask a couple of questions. And the AI is trained to have a very human conversation. In fact, out of the hundred calls that it's done, only a handful of them have said, are you a robot? Which is really cool.

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[Heather Bayer]

That's awesome. That's awesome. I need to hear this.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Yes. Well, book a call at Boostly. So the call isn't to sell, right? I truly don't think that any AI agent is there to actually sell a product or a thing. But for triage, it's phenomenal. And again, we mentioned Graham Donoghue at Sykes. He has got his version for Sykes for customers asking questions.

I literally took conversation with Graham and built this with his son, actually, Joe Donoghue. And we built this at Boostly. And the cool thing about make.com is that the call happens, the transcript, because of the workflow, then gets sent to our specialist, it gets sent to our appointment setter, and all of the notes get left in our CRM. So when our appointment setter starts work, we'll see the conversation that's happened.

And if they want to deep dive into any other questions, they can then contact the host and just give a quick call, give a text and just say, hey, you said this to Laura, but can we just delve in a few bits more? And then Paul's got those notes as well. So when Paul gets on the phone with our host and Paul's our specialist, he's got everything that he needs.

We know the host is being qualified. And it makes the call so much more effective, so much so now that the success rate...., so the close rate of our calls have jumped up to about 70%, which is really good, because it was averaging about one in three, so about 33%. So it means, we've got better quality calls, the host is more aware of what they are when speaking with Boostly. And that's just one way that we've been using make.com. And I could never have done that with Zapier.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

That's amazing.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

I discovered Make through our group chat. There's a couple of other high end workflows, but Make is the one that we've been using.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Yeah, that's fantastic. Yes, we've, we're exploring it right now, because we've just been using Zapier. And then, of course, beyond that is n8n, which I was talking to a developer the other day..., So I only work in n8n. And I'm thinking, if I'm going to get a developer to do some work for us on agents, which we're doing right now, I need to understand what's on the back end.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Yeah, I had to learn it as well. And I wanted to say, I got to a point where I was with AI, where I was just like, right, there's all of this overwhelm. I'm just going to wait for Google or Apple or Amazon or whatever. They're just going to build it into my device. Right? And I was going to wait for that, unless I could have somebody that would create it for me. And luckily, I met Graham's son, Joe, and he helped build that out for me. He used Make as his one of choice. And, you know, a couple of videos, quick watch. He was able to explain it. And I'm aware of it now. So he's passed it back over to me and I'm using it. And if I can use it, anyone can use it, because we've got a couple of different scenarios now where we use it, not just for triage and a call, but we've got a couple of others. So again, make.com is good. And it's not just for voice, you can have other things. But I feel like that's the best way for me to describe it is how we're using it. So it's like Zapier, but just the next level.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

OK, I want to step back a bit because people listening might be thinking, well I'm still out here thinking I haven't got a clue. I'm just using ChatGPT as Google, basically. So if we're going back to that level, which is absolutely brilliant and you can use ChatGPT as Google, essentially. But what's the next step up? And I mean, for me, it's creating GPTs, but doing it in the right way. So can you give us some idea of how to create...., let's go with what a GPT is and then how to create a simple one for just a specific function.

That's a nice starting point.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

A nice starting point.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Yeah.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

So I feel like GPT people get confused with ChatGPT. So because of how obviously it's named and whatnot. But I mean, the best way to describe this ChatGPT and the GPTs.

So general ChatGPT, when you open it up and you chat, just playing with it without doing anything, you are chatting with the latest model. So let's just say it's v4.4.0, because that's the one that people are mostly using now and you ask a question and the advice it will give back to you is generic. Okay, it's going to go out into the world and bring back the information that is generic. It's not trained on anything specific. So a GPT means that it is trained on a specific core subject matter.

So it's free to do, easy to do. There's a section on the left hand side that's the taskbar. On the left hand side there will be GPTs and you've got two options. Number one, when you open up GPTs, there will be like an app store for GPTs. So you can go in there if you want to search for anything. So for example, I mentioned that we're looking at buying a new house at some point. There was a GPT for the UK buying advice. So it's an actual part of ChatGPT, a GPT that I can use for free that has been trained solely on buying a house in the UK. And I can ask it questions and it's not going to give me the latest advice from America or Canada or Australia or wherever in the world. It's going to be based on the UK. Okay, so you can either tap into one that somebody else has created. 

There's other cool GPTs that I've discovered for YouTube. So I'm using this specific GPT for YouTube advice for thumbnails, for titles, for intros, for scripts. This is all free. You don't have to pay for this. And again, it's really cool for that. And we're also using them for Instagram captions, Instagram titles, Instagram ideas, you name it, there's a GPT for you. The other thing that you can do is you can create your own. And the best thing, and I'm going to assume that the majority of people that are listening to this are going to be hosts themselves, or property managers, is you can create a GPT for one of your properties. So for example, when you open it up, you've got a chance to train that GPT. 

If you're using, let's just say, if you've got SOPs, so standard operating procedures makes life super simple. You can just put it into a PDF, upload the PDF, you can upload up to 20 documents, I believe. So you can upload any Touch Stay digital guidebooks that you have, any SOPs that you have, you can just, for this one property, you can just upload it and plug it all in. So that way, when you ask it a question, the answers it will give you are based solely on that property.

Now what you could do is when you want to publish it, you've got three options. Number one, private - just for you. That means only you and your account can ask it questions. Number two, you get a public link. So the only way that somebody would access it is with a link that you would get for it, like a unique link for that GPT. So that means you can, for example, share it on a message, a text message, digital guidebook with your guests as they're about to check in. And number three is sending it to the App Store for the GPT store. I wouldn't feel like you need to do it for that for any reason, shape or form. But that is a super, super simple way for you, because then what you can do is that you can give it to guests, you know, you can train it so that if a VA, say you're using a VA and you're training up a VA, and they've got a question, we will say, Well, ask the bot.

There's so many different ways that you can use it, but it's such a simple, simple, simple route. And again, I wouldn't do it for all of your company. I would do it for individual properties that you have underneath your property management.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Yeah. And for me, it goes back to renting out my own properties and having a drawer in the property that had a whole stack of the manuals for the stove and for the dishwasher because everything had the troubleshooting in it. I mean, this was before you could actually go search and find the PDFs for each one online. But now you can just simply upload all of those PDFs, find those PDFs, upload them into your GPT. And then if a guest has, you know, something's not happening properly on, I mean, I've got one of these, oh, what do you call it? The stove top that is automatic.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

I know air fryers and that's about it. My knowledge.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Yeah. Induction. So I've got an induction cooktop. And time and time again, I mean, I've had it for about a year now, but it still blows me away that I press a button and nothing happens. And I still go back to the troubleshooting guide quite often. So if you've got a guest and that happens, they've got it immediately on hand. They can say, I've got a problem with this cooktop and this is the problem. And the GPT will go to that part of the guide and find the results.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

And the guests can even video call as well. So I mentioned before in one of our previous episodes that my Alfie is a budding little entrepreneur. He's 12 years old. He's started up his own 3D printing business. So it's called magical models and he's got an Etsy star and he's loving life. But this 3D printer that he's bought, it breaks a lot. I don't know the first thing about fixing a 3D printer, but all we do is we literally open up ChatGPT. And before we know it ChatGPT is telling us what to do. And it's just by putting it into video mode and pointing it at the printer, which again, it's massive. It saves hours of searching on YouTube and whatnot. And yeah, it is very good. And, you know, I mentioned that we're still away a ways, but it's happening where the general public will soon have this available more.

We are weeks away from Amazon launching Alexa Plus and Alexa Plus is basically going to be powered by Claude and these Alexa devices that we have, you'll pay a bit of a premium on it, but it will be powered by Claude and powered by AI. So when you ask Alexa a question at the moment, the answer you get is like me talking to my two year old, you know, but it's going to get better. And just imagine in your property, if you'll have an Alexa device powered by Alexa Plus, you'll be able to properly talk to it and it'll be trained solely on the property and where you are, et cetera. So it's going to become massively more known very, very, very soon. So the way that you can get ahead of everybody else, the better. Yeah.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

I mean, it is multiplying. It's like a virus multiplying so quickly and so many iterations of it. It is difficult to keep up.

You are going to show us something. You are going to demo something. And I'm really interested in this, because I'm still not quite sure what it is you're going to demo.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

So what I brought to you was a very simple GPT. So something that he's trained solely on a specific topic. So I wanted to demo a more advanced version of a GPT.

So I've used a company called Delphi, D-E-L-P-H-I, Delphi.ai. And what Delphi has done is it has created my digital twin. So there is a digital twin now of Mark Simpson and it's a specific domain that you go to. So it's not on the GPT store. You can go to it at any point. It's free. And at any time go to Boostly.co.uk forward slash B-O-T, bot. And you can chat with me. And this bot, this digital twin is trained solely on me.

So it's the books that I've published, every single YouTube video, and it's about a thousand YouTube videos now. Every podcast that we've done and we're closing in on 800 podcasts, every blog post, everything that we have done. Everything that I've put out there its trained on. And you can text it. You can video call it and you can text. You can actually call it as well. So I wanted to give you a super quick demo. Now we were going to do video, but we couldn't share it. So instead, I've got my phone and it's going to be right here.

And I just wanted to give you an idea of what we could do at a bit like an advanced level. So you're going to be able to have a chat, Heather, with my digital twin. So hello there.

I want for you to say hello, please to Heather. 

‍

[Bot}

Hey, how can I help you? 

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Did you hear that?

‍

[Heather Bayer

I did hear that. Yeah. 

‍

[Mark Simpson]

There you go.

‍

Okay. So please say Hi to Heather. 

‍

[Bot]

Hi, Heather. Lovely to have you here. How's everything going on your end? 

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Did you hear that?

‍

[Heather Bayer]

I did. 

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Okay. So can you please give advice to a host or a property manager who would be interested in getting one or two direct bookings this weekend? What's something they could do? 

‍

[Bot]

If you're looking to snag one or two direct bookings this weekend, here's what I'd suggest. First, tap into your existing network, send a quick email or message to past guests, letting them know you've got availability and maybe even.......

‍

[Mark Simpson]

So that's going to go on for a while there. So you can do cool things like that. And then what you can actually do is, if you were to sort of speak to it and give it like some  context, you could say, hey, so my business is called X, Y and Z. I've got this property that sleeps five peoples. I've got a pretty big email list. Could you craft together for me an email to send out to somebody?

It will personalize it for you and your business. And I've had lots of people chat with this over the last year. There's lots of people. And I see all of the friends that come in because I get an email, a daily digest of the conversations that are going on, because it helps me create content because people say what they're struggling with, et cetera. And I've had people speak to it in Spanish, in French, Portuguese, German, and, you know, it speaks back, Spanish, Portuguese, German. So it's really, really cool for me.

It's amazing. And then obviously for a host, they can get hold of Boostly 24/7.

And it's like I say, totally, totally free. But that's like the more advanced version. So with a little bit of editing, that'll look really cool.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Well, I'm surprised at how many people aren't using voice just with general ChatGPT. You know, I think voice comes with the pro plan, doesn't it? I don't think you get a voice on again.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Twenty dollars a month.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Yeah, that's it. I was talking to a company recently and she said, Oh, no, we don't have the paid plan. And apart from that they're sharing, all the people in their business who are using ChatGPT are sharing business information that is then not private.

Yeah, I did encourage that......

‍

[Mark Simpson]

It's the best investment. I feel like it's truly out there at the present moment in time for twenty dollars a moment. And it doesn't matter which sort of large language model you choose, whether you want to go down the route of OpenAI or Claude or whatever you want to do. But it truly is like a really big investment. And what you get back is massive. Like so I think I feel like by now, if you tune into this series, you've at least dipped a toe.

And what I wanted to do on this episode is obviously come on and share a little bit about Airbnb services, but also as well show the cool things that you can do within GPTs and voice video. It's phenomenal and just be able to train your guest as well and how to use it would be pretty cool.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

So what would you say is the first thing that somebody..., we've got a listener here who hasn't..., maybe this is their first episode, who hasn't dipped their toes. What is the  first thing that they should do, apart from buying the twenty dollar version of ChatGPT?

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Go and grab the version. And I would go into the settings and there's a bit where you can customize it. So you can customize it and basically fill it in based on you. So train it on you, which is big because it's got memory now. And then just make a point of every day just for five, ten minutes to just ask it questions, you know, anything that you can think that can come to mind and just let it roll. Let it go. And then once you get a little bit more confident with it, once you've use it for a week, start to have a little look around the GPT store, et cetera.

You know, there's so many ways that you can use it. It's phenomenal. And just go and maybe download and install a GPT that's already on the store. Then look at creating your own and then just add into it. Just spend like five to ten minutes every day just having a play with it. And, you know, now at Boostly, for example, we have the pro account. So the one that's above we pay two hundred dollars a month. And we have our team in there because we've got it now using the Codex. We've got it using operator. We've got it doing deep research and all those cool things that we're using it for. And every single member of our team, because the majority of our team are in Pakistan and the Philippines behind the scenes in the dev [development] part of Boostly. They never respond to an email without it running it through GPT just to check on spelling, grammar, making sure it sounds friendly, polite, et cetera. And, you know, not one person, not one customer has pulled them up and gone. This is done by GPT. 

Our customer satisfaction is the best it's ever been. Our NPS score is the highest it's ever been. And the amount of tickets that we are getting through. Bearing in mind, we have a thousand tickets coming every single week, because of the level of customers that we have, the amount of people that we have, nearly a thousand websites. We can fly through these now a whole lot quicker because of ChatGPT.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Yeah, that's terrific. It's amazing to see how far the business has come over the years, Mark. And, you know, I fully applaud you for what you've put into it. And now how you're developing, you know, weaving AI into every, every part of it. So how if somebody wants to get in touch with you, you have mentioned your email, is that the best way for them to connect with you?

‍

[Mark Simpson]

The easiest thing, like if you want a copy of the Airbnb how to opt out, just send me a message on Instagram. @boostlyuk is by far the easiest on Instagram. Send me that message.

Just say Rules, House Rules, Airbnb Rules, and I'll get that to you. If you don't use Instagram, you really don't like it, then you just drop me an email, mark@boostly.co.uk, and maybe a bit longer to reply, because as you can imagine, my inbox gets a little bit crazy nowadays.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Okay, I'll make sure that that's on the Show Notes. We could talk forever on this. I will head back to the WhatsApp group and I haven't yet got into the Slack group. I will send  the email address to you.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Jump on in. If anybody else would like to jump in and be a fly on the wall, again, just send us an email or Instagram. I'm more than happy to send it over.

The only thing that I ask, and I let Heather off, but I just ask you to just jump in and engage. Have a chat. Ask a question. There is no silly questions in the group, and so we've got a real good group. Like I said, the level of people that are in there, we've got the founder of Journey in there. We've got so many people in there that are just phenomenal people. It'd be awesome to have more people in. We're at about just under 100.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Yeah, and I see a lot of people in there who've been on the podcast in the past. Rachel Gainsborough, she's in that group all the time. She was on the podcast a year or two back. We weren't talking about AI, but she has a huge amount to offer.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Yeah, massively. We speak a lot, Rachel and I, about things behind the scenes and whatnot. It's great.

I love seeing how people are adapting to it, and I feel like we are still so early in this vicinity. There are so many people that I look up to, and I don't think they're even using it. If you start now, just spend 5-10 minutes a day, you will truly be ahead of 99% of your competition.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Yeah, and if I can do it, anybody can.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

That's what I've been saying. If I can do it, I'm an idiot. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

I've got a very addictive personality. If I latch onto something, I will go all in on it.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Yeah, I think we probably share that trait. 

Mark, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Always a pleasure to have you on to talk about direct booking and now AI.

I'm sure we will be back again at some point in the future.

‍

[Mark Simpson]

Anytime, more than happy to. Thank you very much.

‍

[Heather Bayer]

Thank you so much, Mark Simpson, yet another AI-infused episode. If you are listening to this, of course, on the STRAIT Chat podcast, then you will be completely expecting it to be fully on AI. And for those of you listening, thinking, well, what is the STRAIT Chat podcast?

It is a podcast that is just devoted to AI in short-term rentals. I'll put a link to it in the Show Notes so you can go check that out. So it is just focused on AI and that is all.

Okay, that's it for another week. Maybe we'll come back next week with something that is not related to AI. But the fact that AI is infused into just about everything we do these days, it's hard to keep it out. But we'll see. We'll see. 

Anyhow, thank you, as always, for being with me. It's always just so great to sit here in my little basement studio and know that you're out there listening to me. It makes it feel all worthwhile. So if you get a chance to write a review on whatever platform you are listening to this on, that would be really great. The more good reviews we get, the more people come and listen to the shows. So thank you once again for tuning in, and I'll see you soon. 

It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the show notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you. And I look forward to being with you again next week.