Podcasts
VRS664 - Building Two Businesses With a Small Team and a Smart AI Habit
This Episode is Sponsored by Lodgify
If you have been thinking about building your own direct booking channel and reducing your reliance on the OTAs, Lodgify is worth a serious look. It brings your booking website, channel management, guest messaging, and unified inbox into one place. VRS listeners can get 20% off yearly and bi-yearly plans with code VRS20, valid through June 30th. Visit lodgify.com and use code VRS20 to get started.
It has been over two years since Kerri Gibson was last on the show, and a great deal has changed. The Chalets Hygge brand has expanded into Experience Hygge, an umbrella that now also covers a roadside motel four hours away from the original property. It is a seventeen-room hospitality business with daily turnover, walk-in guests, and an operational rhythm that has almost nothing in common with the chalets that built the brand.
Kerri and her partner Philippe Pichette took on the motel in 2024 and have spent the past seventeen months renovating it while keeping it operational. In this conversation, Kerri talks honestly about what running two very different businesses with a small team actually looks like, how she has stepped back to let her chalet team grow into their roles, and where AI has earned a permanent place in her week.
She also speaks plainly about her seven-year history with Lodgify, her direct booking strategy across both businesses, and the move she has been quietly making from ChatGPT to Claude. There is something here for anyone running a lean hospitality business who is curious about AI but does not want hype.
About Kerri
Kerri Gibson is the co-founder of Experience Hygge, a Quebec-based hospitality brand that includes Chalets Hygge - six Scandinavian-style chalets in the Eastern Townships, and Motel Boutique Hygge, a renovated seventeen-room roadside motel in Charlevoix. A trained CPA, Kerri spent twenty-two years in technology for tax and accounting software, including testifying at the White House twice on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, before leaving corporate life in 2017. She and Philippe have built the business from a single renovation project into a two-property hospitality brand with a 70% direct booking rate at the chalets and a motel that has climbed from 9% to 50% direct bookings in three months.
Key takeaways
- Short-term rental operations and motel operations have almost nothing in common. Different guest expectations, different cleaning rhythms, different communication windows. Assuming they are similar is the fastest way to get the motel wrong.
- Stepping back from being the bottleneck in your own business often unlocks the team you didn't realise you already had. Kerri's chalet operations grew once she stopped doing the final inspection herself.
- AI does not have to be advanced to be useful. Kerri describes herself as being at the "toddler stage" of AI adoption and is still saving meaningful time on guest communications, marketing, and now accounting.
- If you have built a profile in ChatGPT over months of use, you can transfer it to Claude in about ten minutes. Ask ChatGPT to tell you everything it knows about you, review it, and paste it into Claude as a starting point.
- Direct booking is a strategy built from multiple channels - website, social, tourism boards, partner marketing, influencer relationships - not a single tactic. Kerri runs the same multipronged playbook at both properties.
- Choosing technology is about finding the partner whose mission and roadmap match how you want to run your business. Kerri has been with Lodgify since the end of 2018 and credits their transparency, customer focus, and public roadmap.
Resources and links mentioned
Kerri's businesses
- Chalets Hygge
- Experience Hygge
- Motel Boutique Hygge - linked from Experience Hygge
Tools and platforms mentioned
- Lodgify - PMS, website, channel manager
- ChatGPT and Claude - the two AI tools Kerri uses
- QuickBooks and Zapier - the accounting automation stack she is building now
- Enso Connect - guest services platform
Previous VRS episodes referenced
- VRS477 - A Masterclass in Hospitality: The Sweet Success Story of Chalets Hygge Elite Hosts
- VRS541 - Inside Power Partnerships with Kerri Gibson - Secrets of Successful Collaborations
Other
- Everyday AI podcast - Kerri's recommended listen for AI tips for small business
- Heather's 2006 book - Renting Your Recreational Property for Profit (available on Amazon)
Connect with Kerri Gibson
Kerri loves hearing from people in the industry. Reach out to her through any of the channels below.
