STR Global Unlocked with Simon Lehmann: Unfiltered knowledge for the short term rental industry

036: How to Build a Business That AI Can’t Replace | Siddhi Mittal

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In this episode of STR Global Unlocked, I sit down with Siddhi Mittal, co-founder of yhangry, a Y Combinator–backed hospitality marketplace scaling across the UK and US.

Together, they explore what AI-first hospitality really means beyond faster guest messages, automation tools, and surface-level efficiency. Siddhi shares how yhangry is rebuilding parts of the company around AI-native workflows, including an internal agent that reached 75% autonomous bug resolution in under 14 days.

This conversation dives into the future of hospitality, marketplaces, operations, AI agents, customer experience, and human value in a world where execution is becoming automated. We discuss why average businesses are becoming more exposed, why technical competence alone is no longer enough, and why the next competitive advantage may come from judgment, taste, curiosity, trust, and emotional intelligence.


Which questions are answered in this episode?

- What does AI-first hospitality actually mean beyond faster guest communication?
- How is AI changing the way operators, founders, and leaders think about work, value, and execution?
- Why is “being good” or technically competent no longer enough in an AI-native business environment?
- What happens when operational consistency, SOPs, and execution become easier to automate?
- How can hospitality companies use AI to remove manual workflows without losing the human experience?
- Why does Siddhi Mittal believe curiosity, judgment, taste, character, and emotional intelligence are becoming more valuable?
- What can operators learn from yhangry’s AI-first rebuild across product, operations, and customer experience?

Resources

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SPEAKER_00

AI is about to change what humans are actually worth in hospitality. Not in ten years now. Most companies are still treating it as faster. Guest replies, automated workflows, and another chatbot. That misses the real shift in time. Because AI may automate execution, but it makes human judgment, taste, trust, and connection more valuable than ever. Today I'm joined by Siddy Mittal, founder of Why Angry, one of the fastest growing hospitality marketplaces in the UK and the United States, to unpack exactly why.

SPEAKER_01

Character finally matters. AI has enabled you not to be a PA. AI is telling you go be the boss. So human connections and IRL is where the magic is now. AI takes away the crap.

SPEAKER_00

I'm Simon Lehman, 25 years across short-term rental, property management, travel, and hospitality. If this conversation changes how you think about scaling your STR business in this next phase, the link below books a consultation with me. Welcome back to STR Global Unlocked. I'm Simon Lehman, and today we're talking about AI, marketplaces, hospitality, and what actually becomes valuable, then intelligence itself becomes abundant. My guest today is Sidi Mittal, co-founder of Yangri, one of the UK's fastest growing hospitality marketplaces, backed by nobody less than Y Combinator, and currently rebuilding parts of the company AI First in real time. What interested me about Cidi's perspective is that this is not a theoretical AI conversation. This is somebody actively rebuilding operational workflows, customer experiences, and marketplace infrastructure during one of the biggest technology shifts our industry has seen in decades. City, it's great to have you on STR Global Unblocked.

SPEAKER_01

Simon, I'm so excited to be here. Excited for this chat. And by the way, we are actually the largest in UK and US and soon to be global end of 2026.

SPEAKER_00

There we go. City never misses an opportunity. Amazing, and congratulations. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. Before we get going, um, I want to talk about a quick rapid fire and get your thoughts on the following questions. Are you ready for this?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, let's go.

SPEAKER_00

Marketplace or software?

SPEAKER_02

Marketplace.

SPEAKER_00

Most overrated AI buzzword right now.

SPEAKER_02

Agents. One hospitality habit that disappears in the next decade. Oh god, sorry to the industry. A lot of the tech stack. Human concierge or AI concierge. AI concierge with a human in the loop. One found a trait AI can't replace. Speed or death? Speed. With the depth.

SPEAKER_01

Speed.

SPEAKER_00

Would you rather hire the best engineer in the world or the most curious operator in the world?

SPEAKER_01

Curious operator in the world.

SPEAKER_00

What becomes more valuable in 2035? Technical intelligence or emotional intelligence?

SPEAKER_01

Emotional intelligence.

SPEAKER_00

Wonderful. Excellent. You set the stage already. Um and let's get right into it. The first topic or the first sort of thing I want to talk to you about is the character as the moat, right? The thing that caught my attention was your post around AI collapsing tactical execution while increasing the value of character, EQ, curiosity, and judgment. Explain what you actually meant by that, Cidy.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, Simon. I think this is wow. Let me choose my words and how I go there. So going back to fundamentals, now in the world of AI, everyone has one thing that's very unique. It is their domain knowledge and expertise. And by the way, everyone's scared AI will lose their job, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. People are fearful of AI. But if you forget about AI for a second, there's something unique in this world you are good at. So that is your domain expertise. That's some version of IQ slash your career, etc. Fine. Everyone has that. AI just makes that better. Great. So what we are kind of saying there is someone who's higher IQ, smarter in the industry, will end up training a better AI model because their domain expertise is better, you know? Obviously, great. So the question isn't anymore whether higher IQ or lower IQ for a choice, you'll just go for higher IQ. So this is not about that. The question here is assuming in a world everyone has a domain expertise and AI is helping them use this. What problems should you be solving? Should you be, I'm gonna make this hypothetical, picking wars with countries? Should you be building for a future where everyone is safe? Should you be building a rocket that goes to Mars? Simon, you and I were discussing this on another one of my posts. The choices at this moment are mathematically infinite, which takes us to what matters. So I was very surprised that the president of Anthropic is Danielle Imody. I didn't realize it was that brother-sister duo. She had this post which says the way Anthropic are hiring now, of course they're very high IQ people. Duh. That's not the exciting bit. And of course they're technical. That's not the exciting bit. The exciting bit are they understand that now in this world you gotta pick the right problems. And for that, your character matters. You have to be high EQ, you have to be a good communicator. But most importantly, you have to be kind, you have to be curious, and you have to have sound judgment. And the craziest thing is, people used to call this fluff. And guess what? In the world where code is so cheap, anyone can code now. That's the that's the hilarious thing. I hate the word agents. You can build an agent by asking Claude to make you an agent. Duh. Which means everything else that's in your character matters. And it's it's it's such a good time to be alive because character family matters, you know, Simon? It's awesome.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, look, I could not agree with you more. I'm obviously been around the block a little bit longer than you have. And, you know, it's interesting to see also what happens in the professional service industry and many other industries as well. And and it really seems, you know, I mean, I've been through recruiting processes. I was an executive of a of a CEO of very large corporates. I've been through classical recruiting processes in the past, seeing what the people are looking for. And it's interesting how this is shifting again, and then it's becoming again more human and more tangible uh to the personality traits that people have, and not just being the absolute experts in their fields. And I I really appreciated that that uh post that you you put out there because it really gets the conversation going. And with Anthropic, it was interesting to when they announced what you know what kind of people that they're looking for. And it's interesting now also to see how people are advertising for these for future roles in companies and what they're looking for. And it's you know, for me, it's a it's a bit too late, but I'm glad uh it's coming back to the to the you know to the to the roots uh of a human being. And and I think, but in that ret in that respect, I might I have a question for you in relate in relation to to commoditization. That's something I'm worried about, right? So so the human aspect, I agree, and that's definitely happening. Uh curious and open and whatever is required in a in an environment like that. And I feel that as a professional consultant myself. You know, uh last year everybody felt 20-year-old post-grad could write a strategy paper on Chat GPT, right? And and be and be a consultant. Uh, I tell you what, there is an advantage to have gray hair because the knowledge that I build over time is also I can add credibility, I can add a lot of substance to the output of what we're seeing. But the commoditization of AI is something that I'm worried about. So one thing I increasingly believe is that AI commoditizes competence. And that's deeply uncomfortable for a lot of industries because suddenly being technically good is no longer enough.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

So um because I'm actually an artificial intelligence major, and a lot of people don't know this. And I did that in 2013 from Columbia. I actually started off in technical world. I decided it wasn't fun enough, so I swapped to trading, and now I'm swapped back into tech. So I've I've kind of done a whole circle, but what I realize now being a technical major, I have one thing that a non-technical person doesn't, which is deep understanding of the foundations. And anyone can build agents. I said that line, Simon, you know it's true, everyone knows it's true. Well, 0.004% in the world of people are actually discussing this. So sorry, we are a very small niche right now.

SPEAKER_00

But are we nerds?

SPEAKER_01

We are, we are AI nerds, and anyone who's aware of what's going on or knows agents is a nerd. However, so just to go back one point, so the only caveat is if you are technical, you understand the foundations around programming. And anyone can learn that. For example, if if I studied philosophy in college, I would learn some of those basics, you know, and that's quite quite useful to have in life. So that is one thing a technical person has. However, I am hearing things from domain experts that are wild. I'll give an example. And I can't take names because these are like, you know, close friends and like really smart people because no one knows where what's going on with AI. Someone in finance, like really high up, was like, oh damn, like this is such a fun thing to do. I can't believe AI will take this away. And I just looked at them and I was like, but they're not taking it away. If you are very good at, let's say, some X, Y, Z in trading, that is your domain expertise. You should be building an AI twin to automate the grunt work and you should just be doing the strategic stuff, your domain knowledge. And I was like, oh my god, AI has enabled you not to be a PA. AI is telling you go be the boss. And I understood in that moment that if someone really higher who is really smart can have this opinion, everyone's confused, everyone's threatened. And yes, so I go back to what you just said. Being technical is not enough.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. And these are my words. I mean, that's where I'm I'm I'm having a rebirth right now, uh, exactly because of that. Because, you know, I've gone, I've got 20 years in the short-term rental industry, and I'm basically bringing all that content now into my digital brain, and then I can just, I mean, this is this is incredible, and the output is amazing. So I can literally duplicate myself and still do, and now I can do what I'm having fun with doing, such as podcasts and conversations. And and Simon 2.0 is doing all the work because that's what I've trained to model, all my transcripts, all my videos, everything that I've produced over the last eight years is now sitting there and and it's endless, right? And this is giving me so much additional credibility with with the human aspect and the experience of things with people. So I could not agree with you more. So let's move this towards hospitality a little bit further. I think hospitality historically uh rewarded operational consistency and reliability. But if if reliability becomes automated to the point that we just discussed, then suddenly the premium moves somewhere else, right? And it moves towards taste, judgment, trust, storytelling, emotional intelligence, and human connection. What is your thought on that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I agree. This is podcast, it's so easy. So I guess just to add to that, 100%. What we're talking about is like a world which is like AI slash human connections IRL. That's the thing. Whether you're an AI, whether you're in human connections, you should be sitting in the intersection of this. Because now one thing has not changed and will not change. People want the best product service, they want it at the best value for money, and they want it as quickly and efficiently as possible with doing the least amount of work. Best, the cheapest, the fastest. That's always been true. If you look at Uber, that's why Uber got famous. If you look at Doordash, of course that makes sense. If you look at why Airbnb has arisen, of course. Same with why Hingry. So, but what's fully changed to your coin Simon with AI? It's not necessarily now about a cool marketplace, about brands. Guess what? There are going to be a trillion agents spawning this earth very soon. And agents are going to be doing people's shopping. By the way, my open core bot is called Leo Jarvis. And my best friend is at Y Combinator, Dismere, and he's built a company called Use Allowance that allows anyone's agents to have a personal credit card so they can shop anything in the world safely. Which means in a couple of days, I will never shop for groceries, flights. Even my private chef from Y Hingree will be booked via my Leo Leo journalist, my personal assistant, via a card. Because why would I do it? It's so annoying to do this work, which means the new world is here. Agents will do all this stuff. Instead of focusing on fluffy, fluffy things that people do, you gotta now build the best product, which is the greatest value for money, and get it to your customers the fastest, whether the customer shopping or it's their agent shopping on their behalf.

SPEAKER_00

Insane. But anyway, we'll we'll get to that. Uh if not now, then definitely in the future as well. And uh I'll be I'll be uh calling you very shortly um to go a little bit deeper here. But but honestly, you know, one thing that I'm concerned in I think I think average average becomes dangerous in an A in an AI native world, right? So would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I have some like very uh like what's that word, like hot takes here that people might hate on, but yes, I agree.

SPEAKER_00

So let's talk about the AI native rebuild, right? So you've talked about rebuilding why angry at AI first, right? And now that sounds fantastic on LinkedIn, obviously. But but operationally, what does that actually mean? And let's get into this a little bit deeper.

SPEAKER_01

Um okay. So I actually will give you a couple of use cases. I'll make it concise so people can actually dig deep later. Um, I did a talk in SF for one day, just three weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00

San Francisco.

SPEAKER_01

San Francisco, yeah. And this was after Gary Tan, Tom Blumfield, and this was in front of like 750 alumni of YC. It was accelerate with AI. Everyone's an AI pill. By the way, if you're in the matrix, you're AI pill. Simon, stop calling yourself a dinosaur like you did before. You're as AI pilled as it gets, okay? So I think one thing is quite important because I want to address this. A lot of people listening might be feeling like they're dinosaurs or middle managers or oh my god, they're done.

SPEAKER_00

Scared as well.

SPEAKER_01

And guess what, guys? Every like everyone is scared. I have spoken to, I have spoken to founders of AI, first companies that are scared. So, guys, everyone, chill out. Like, no, no scared. Let's be curious for this podcast. What I told, what I shared with YC, I will share three use cases. I shared a lot. So, what what we are doing at Y Combinator here are three, let's say, AI native use cases. Number one, building an AI native product. Why is this important? The old marketplace model is dead. It takes so long. And the thing is, it's amazing. Like, we're still the best chef company in the whole world at this point. But I'm bored of our website. It's like it takes too many clicks. The customer chefs go back and forth. So, guess what? An AI native product that can connect you to the chef in just five questions, give you an instant match. You can book it. That's what a traveler is looking for. That is what we're gonna deliver. Number one. And by the way, we've already launched the beta. Graham from Science has tried it in UK. So it's it's there, okay? It's out there, but you go.

SPEAKER_00

That's a good indicator.

SPEAKER_01

Number two, the very first thing I did when I was on maternity leaves four weeks in when I got hooked to open claw. I went into the company, I taught everyone agents, I asked my dev team to build KP or Chef Company, kitchen porter, like their little assistant. KP's job was to be the autonomous bug fixer. You know, Simon, like everyone has like two little engineers and like too little time to solve all the bugs flying around. So guess what KP does at Y Hangry? Within less than four days, I sent them a benchmark target of 70%, which means 70% of all bugs need to be fixed in one go by this agent without any human involvement. And guess how many bugs we solved? 25 bugs pass at a 75, 70% success rate in less than four days. And guess what? We have shipped more stuff than the whole of last year. It's crazy. If I had to quantify that, firstly, I can't. It's like 100 to 1000x. Like Gary Tan tried to quantify this in um SF. It's wild how much the output slash outcome can change for an engineer. I'll give you one last example because this is a fun one. It's giving away secret sauce, which everyone loves. So my domain expert is explaining AI in plain English, like programming fundamentals to anybody. So I decided my service to the world will be teaching people AI. I then used that passion and service and brought it into Y Hingri and the vacation rental industry. So across April, I went through every single conference. I pitched them a simple thing. I was like, I'm not gonna sell my my my company white hingree. I, as City, will teach you how to use AI, earn more dollars, and save time. And guess what? I'm gonna do that without charging you. These things cost like 10k, 20k if I run an event in London for free. It's not free. I got every single conference slot, every single one of them. I got all these people saying, Oh my god, my mind is blown. And guess what? I just care about every individual person, exactly Simon, like you, realizing they can just do the creative work, earn more money, save less time. And especially as a woman, I reconnected to my roots of AI when I was on Matly breastfeeding. Like it's impossible to have time. So guess what? I used voice to code. I literally don't touch my laptop. I'm on my phone. I use WhisperFlow, which is 4x faster voice than text. I use Claud Code on my app. You can end-to-end build stuff, launch stuff simply on your phone using your voice. So to anyone out there that feels like they can't do it, I'm just gonna have to tell you. I really you can. You can. I'm such an optimist here. You can. I'll teach you how to, okay? Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Before we go further, uh, one thing I want to talk with you about what you just said earlier. Uh, last week, Eric Schmidt uh was at a conference in Arizona um having uh a speech which you know a lot of these people do, you know, Bosniak and other people. People uh you know, go to this university, all these uh incredible people who have shaped this world, making uh making speeches to the students at the end of the year, right? And now they're being booed out. They're being booed out uh in in a like I just saw that on the news um a couple of days ago, especially Schmidt. He was booed out because now the students they're fearing their future and they that they can't find jobs and and are really worried that these tech giants just stimulate everything that includes Musk and everybody else, and and Zuckerberg and Meta uh, you know, just fired 16,000 employees uh as well. I mean, it's you know that's reality and that's what's happening. Is is that justified? I mean, you know, the good thing is you just had a child, so that seems that you're pretty positive about the future as well, but you know, still.

SPEAKER_01

Oh my God. So I missed a lot of this. It's so fascinating. And I think you know what my first reaction was here? Of course they're gonna be less jobs. What do you mean? If one agent can do the job of like hundred or infinite employees, why the hell do you need that many people doing stupid like manual work? You don't. So why are you booing people for what's like a very obvious, inevitable tech change? However, again, I think what we come back to is the human emotion of fear rather than leaning into what the hell is possible. Guess what, Simon? Like, okay, I'll and I'll give example people here of how you should reframe your thinking and why this is the best time to earn money in this world, if you are curious. Number one, apply to things like YC, just start something of your own. You'll get half a million to play with and build a whole new world. When I flew to YC, I was like, shit, should I raise a couple more companies? Like, because I can build so much stuff, you know, I have so much time suddenly. Number one. Number two, if you in your heart know you're not a founder, you're not an entrepreneur, I get it. It's very scary because you want someone else to employ you. Breathe. The first thing you need to do is breathe. The second thing you need to do is figure out your domain knowledge. And I have a very simple tip here. And Simon and I can play a game here, actually. Oh, I'll do it on Simon. This is good. Okay, so Simon, I'm gonna ask you a question that everyone in the audience should ask themselves.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Normally I interview, but we'll let this happen.

SPEAKER_01

Just this one, yes, because it's gonna be useful. Okay, so the best way to figure out your domain knowledge is not to ask yourself what you are good at, to think what is what will my friends, peers, and let's say industry vocational say I'm the bloody best at. So you answer it and then I'll answer it, and then we'll tell the audience how they figure out their own domain expertise. So, Simon, what will everyone in the industry you think say about you if they had to tell Simon what your domain expertise is?

SPEAKER_00

I know literally everything about short-term rental on a global basis.

SPEAKER_01

There you go. It makes so much sense. It's obvious. That's why we're here on this podcast. It makes sense that everything you do. And okay, great. And I think for me, if I had to say you know, I genuinely think I might be world class at speaking about very difficult technical concepts in plain English and making it very simple because it is very simple. And for me, that is like the mix of all the technical, and then adding all the EQ. Yeah, like I'm world class at it, and that's what I'm doing on conference stages, that's what I'm doing with events, and that's what's right. So basically, this guy, so now everyone listening, just close your eyes, imagine your closest peers, people who hate you. But if someone asks them, what is what are you the best at, that's your domain expertise. And guess what, Simon? Once you know your domain expertise, level up in AI, use Claude. Literally ask Claude how do I use you? Claude will tell you how to use Claude. That's how fucking easy it is. And let's go. Like, if you are scared and you don't know how to use AI, you are just an AI skeptic. And I don't want to speak to you. You gotta be an AI curious person, take the lead, and then I will teach you, and and the world is amazing.

SPEAKER_00

You know, I I love your energy, I love your approach. I wanna get, I mean, look, I could not agree with you more, right? And that's so exciting as well. Even at the old age of me, I'm thinking this is the most exciting time ever, and it's changed my life incredibly just the last six months. But we won't dwell on that. Let's get a little bit more practical, my dear. I think most companies today are basically duct taping ChatGPT or Claude onto broken systems and calling themselves AI native, right? And and I think that also corresponds to our audience in the short-term rental industry. So, can you share some thoughts about and let's be practical in terms of this STR industry and how you see that?

SPEAKER_01

So, guys, number one, and I think this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, like if you work at an AI company, whether it's AI native or not, and if you don't know how to use whether it's Claw or Chat GPT, and let's say build the agent and understand why, you aren't really an AI company.

SPEAKER_02

No.

SPEAKER_01

Because by the way, AI company means every single workflow in the company has been automated, a brain has starting to form, and everyone in the company is being trained by upper management and encouraged to learn and grow every day. At Y Hingry, for example, every week it's weekly AgenTec Labs. What I mean by that is I just rock up with a pen and paper. I asked someone to describe a problem they have in the company. For example, one of our wonderful customer Rex is called Sudeep. He was an ex-chef, then he was like, I can't use tech. He's amazing as a customer support. He sits in India. Now he's building agents suddenly. He's hooked. And I was like, okay, Sudeep, like what's okay, Sudeep, explain what problem do you have? And one day he's like, Man, I'm so stressed. Like, here are five different things. This is a resolution. I said, okay, relax. Write down your problem step by step. That's a skill. Put that into Claude, ask Claude to tell you how to build an agent of this, create a feedback loop. We'll do XYZ. And basically, Simon, we're teaching. We're teaching everyone in the company. Because guess what? I will tell you a couple, okay, one main thing. We don't have time for a couple. One main thing. Everyone is going to have a different learning curve. And you got to respect that to a certain point. And by the way, you are obviously you can be completely ruthless and say, my company, everyone who's non-technical goes. Only technical people with the same understanding of programming language build. Fine. I'm not going to do that. For me, domain expertise of the customer support team matters. So guess what? I want to train them. So let's say they start at 20% AI knowledge. The engineers are at 60%. That's fine. As long as all of us are just learning, sharing, growing every day, that's a great place to be. So the advice to everyone in hospitality is I don't want to hear you guys are dinosaurs because you are the most exciting industry to be a part of. You're actually touching humans. And everyone, and by the way, software is done. Software is being eaten left and right. And the best thing is why Hingree suddenly isn't the most exciting company in 2026? Because we touch humans, and so does hospitality, which means, guys, we all have to embrace AI. Everyone has to be curious, be taught by upper management. And also, no workflow should be manual anymore. If I hear things like I was updating my CRM in HubSpot and I hated my life for 30 minutes, why don't you have an agent doing that? It's so simple.

SPEAKER_00

You know, I'm a passionate chef, so I love cooking, right? Just to get there. I mean, that's why I always complain about the the blunt knives in the uh short-term rentals and the and the shitty kitchen equipment when I when I arrive.

SPEAKER_01

Have a lot to talk about.

SPEAKER_00

We we do. We'll do that another time because I'll take all my knives with me when I travel. Um because I hate it. I hate it like a passion. You know, I and that's one of the things that I've become very, let's call it famous for that I talk about kitchen knives and the fact that these knives don't even kill a dead dog. Okay. So uh let's move on. Uh, talk about marketplaces and hospitality. So it's still early, and you you you know, you come from marketplace and consumer behavior rather than traditional hospitality as well. So when you look at the hospitality from an outside, uh, which obviously you're not anymore, but what feels outdated when you look at hospitality from where you're coming from?

SPEAKER_01

Oh God. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you don't have 10 minutes to answer, but sure, sure.

SPEAKER_01

What I was gonna say is this reminds me when we went to Dragon's Den, and Deborah Meaden apparently invests a lot in restaurant, and she was like, Oh god, she has done so much restaurant stuff, and hospitality is a nightmare to be a part of. And she said she wanted to invest in my co-founder and I because we were talented individuals, but she decided not to because she just said, I've been burned by hospitality. And by the way, hospitality means so many things. Travel, restaurants, like you know, Simon, why hangry? However, what's outdated in hospitality is this people, and this is actually a little bit contrary to what we said earlier, but all this nuance, everything's the same. It doesn't operations are hard, and it's always been very hard because it's labor-consuming and labor is expensive. That's always been true, and labor also means mistakes happen, which is why hospitality is a very hard place to make money. But now in 2026, operations is significantly simpler, and it's significantly, and so by the way, just if we stop there, if you're a property manager, you have the potential to do two things to unlock a shit ton of dollars. One, look at all of your admin process, every single thing that you touch that costs you time, automate the shit out of it using AI. And if you don't know it, find someone, pay them. Cause you can pay someone $5, 10k right now and save yourself literally millions within like a couple months, right? And number two, get ancillary revenue and like just stick it on. Hey, dollars, like upsells, and all the stuff the industry is talking about. Don't be shy. Like, I went to VR Nation and only two property managers in a room of 50 Simon raised their hands saying, I offer upsell. And in my AI teaching session, and one of the managers was like, the question I'm most confused about is why the hell are US not offering upsells? Because it's it's free dollars. So those are the two ways to make more dollars.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's crazy. One thing I keep saying on this podcast is that, and and you already started touching on this, hospitality underestimates massively distribution and customer ownership as well. And you know, while you're providing some of these hooks already in terms of operations and where the opportunities lie as well in automating and everything else, let's touch on on the topic of distribution and customer ownership and how is that going to evolve?

SPEAKER_02

Woof. Fascinating.

SPEAKER_01

So I think, oh God, I what I the rabbit hole I'm not going to fall under is like the OTA, I want to build my own car. But like I think this industry loves that, and it's been talked about enough. So let me do a separate, different take to it. Because guys, you all have discussed that enough. The different take is this. Just let's just go back very simply to where demand comes from. Let's say, let's use America, because America is even easier than UK. Most of it's OTA. I know that a lot, a large chunk is OTA. Where does OTA demand come from? Google, right? Like Google was like the big dog in the old, had the old guard. Now the guards are switching. Which means Google guards are switching to LLMs, which is guys, LLMs is just ChatGPT, Anthropic. No one else knows in the real world what Claude or Gemini, etc. And slowly they will, but all of the demand is going to come from Google, and the new ones are ChatGPT, the Google AI, etc. People are still searching. And now, by the way, two sorts of customers are searching. People are still searching, and then their agents are searching. Like my open crop bought video jarvis is like, oh, I want to book a hotel. So guess what? You just have to be bloody visible everywhere. And it's easier now, because guess what? Chat GPT and LLMs actually don't want to show Airbnb. They want to show local suppliers. And I am saying that as a marketplace, but it's true. Why do you think Airbnb is hired like a CTO from OpenAI, et cetera? Which means if you are a property manager, let's say, you need to be all over your content being readable to LLMs, ensuring your product is instantly bookable by the search engine. There are two different things LLM visibility and LLM bookability. LLM visibility will get you new customers directly to your website. LLM bookability will allow agents to find your website. That's it. If you can do both, you get to own your life and make a lot of money and not worry about what's changing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I totally agree. And as you said, you know, you can make this a large conversation. I I um I was um maybe silly enough to make a LinkedIn post a couple of days ago about it. And uh yeah, let's let's move on uh about this topic because people are very, very opinionated. And I mean I totally agree with you, CD. I see it exactly the same way. And you know, the fact of the matter that already 37% are searching through LLMs is quite impressive when it comes to travel, right? So I mean, it and and you know it's clear that the OTAs are not giving up without a fight and they have the inventory anyway. So let's talk about the AI and human experience. That's what you are all about. That's the core, right? So one paradox and keep coming back to this is AI may actually make human experiences more valuable. And I think that's where short-term rent gets you smiling, gets you excited, of course. And that's where short-term rental sits at the freaking forefront of the hospitality and travel industry because you know the human touch and everything else is still uh so important and potentially becoming more important. Because if every service becomes automated, um then generally memorable human interaction becomes rare, right? And and rare things become premium. Was that a good sales pitch for your company?

SPEAKER_01

Oh my god. I was just gonna say, are you just pitching my Henry to the property managers because they get us? Like, are you just doing that for me?

SPEAKER_00

No, we don't want to talk about your company, but this is what this industry is about, right? So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Look, I think when you were saying all of that, I just I I you know the visual I was having in my mind, which everyone would love. Imagine you are on like a vacation with your closest family or loved ones. Maybe you can afford a beautiful villa in Ibita or Tuscany. It's literally seven days. You have your kids, your mother-in-law, you have, I don't know, a couple of friends, you have a chef that's the mother-in-law might be a stretch, but well, people apparently take mothers-in-law, like you know, instead of nanny, because it's like a win-win. So it's a it's a pilot keeping hack. But um, you have a chef every day making you food, so you are freed up to actually have memories with your babies. You're actually spending more quality time because you're not stressed about food and eating and activities because you can just be in the moment, you can read your book, you can be spiritual, whatever. Everyone has some version of this fantasy that they're living all of their lives for assignment. Funnily enough, everyone's working hard, making more money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So now, and I totally agree. I didn't even know what STR meant a year ago, by the way, vacation rentals. I just, I used to just be like, people are going to book Airbnbs, and I used to call everything Airbnbs, and then this I came into this industry. So now I say vacation.

SPEAKER_00

Not on this podcast.

SPEAKER_01

Not on this podcast. However, as a person, you just want to be on your vacation in your beautiful rental, spending time, love, amazing time with people you love. And if you have the money, how much ever you have, you should want to get back your time. Time is the most precious commodity right now because you can spend your time doing anything. So if you are someone who has an hourly rate of $500, you should probably spend $20 for to get someone else to do a chore that you shouldn't be doing, you know? Which means I'm with you, Simon. It's all about human connections, it's all about AI automating away the crap that you don't want to deal with. And and guess what? Every vacation rental that will now invest in ensuring the guests feel so special. And I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about maybe you're sure. It's like a horse riding or it's like a chalet with something so beautiful. That's what's gonna make you stand out. That's what the guests want, and and that matters because that's what the magic is. So human connections and IRL is where the magic is now. AI takes away the crap. That's how we that's how we should talk about it, you know.

SPEAKER_00

So let me summarize that for you. Um, in in in my view, and I could I again I could not agree with you more. I think we we may move into a world where AI handles efficiency and and the humans become the emotional infrastructure of our services, right? And and I think that makes me very happy and and and and think about, you know, we have a long way to go. And and it it's interesting. And I'm reading a lot of different books uh about AI and and and the renaissance already from Sach Cass. I thought that was an incredible book to think about how is that all gonna come around. Before we wrap this up, I want to talk about uh foundership in the AI era, and that's you know one of uh your other expertise, Ciddy, uh, for you to talk about as well. As you said, you know, you didn't know about STR. You were still um talking about Airbnb before you joined this industry, uh, which absolutely is the Kleenex, and we're not the Kleenex of this industry. Um vacation rental has been around um since the Stone Ages because we shared caves with each other. Um so the sharing economy was not invented uh by the dudes in San Francisco. Uh we've done it uh a long time before that. But anyway, um so let's talk about foundership in the AI era, right? You're building one of the most, you know, you're building one of the most unstable technology moments we've seen in years, right? What kind of founders actually win this environment? I mean, we have clearly seen that, you know, you have an enormous amount of energy, and you and I had the opportunity to meet a few times at conferences as well, and and you know, you being around you is like, okay, it's very intense, uh, but we we appreciate you on that. But still, there's a lot of other people out there who think about, hey, this is gonna be so damn hard.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Right?

SPEAKER_01

So I think to simplify, obviously, not everyone is looking to build a hundred billion company. Yeah, that's where my mind is at now. So why don't we step back and say what sort of founders can be successful? And everyone has a different level of success, which I actually really appreciate people knowing. Someone could be wanting to build a 100k lifestyle company, that's a huge guy, life-changing thing for them. So, guys, to anybody in your life, actually, now what matters is eight, knowing your domain expertise. So I know in my company I am best at fundraising. In my company, right? I am best at perhaps podcasts, I am perhaps best at building product, I am best at going to B2B conferences and pitching for a slot, whatever. You just need to know what you are good at, domain expertise. Number two, there is an ROI to time because time is finite. So apply the Pareto principle. If you don't know what It is all it means is 80 20. You just gotta focus your time on the 20% highest leverage states. Let the 80% of the crap slip. Simon will rephrase this very eloquently in a second. All that means is you on a daily basis, you can choose to automate, let's say, I don't know, invoice creation. Or you might get an opportunity in that 10 minutes to earn a million dollars to do a deal. Do the deal. Do this little stuff later. On a daily basis, you can do anything. Don't do anything. Choose what problem you solve and be very mindful. And then lastly, that's how the podcast started. As long as you are empathetic, kind, or curious, guess what? You are already in the top 0.004% of the people in the world that even know what's going on. If you're listening to this podcast, you are so far ahead of this curve. And I'll give you one trick open up any LLM, Chat GPT, da-da-da-da-da. Say this one line. My goal is to make X money in the next 12 months. Fill in the X with like a crazy number. For me, it's like a billion. For you, it could be one million. I don't know, whatever this is. Then say, do reverse prompting. Tell your LLM, ask me three questions about myself, my company, what I like, what I dislike, and my strengths. And then tell me how to make that. If you just do this, you're immediately probably going to save money and no earn money, take it up. Yeah, oh my god. There you go. That's a free one-on-one lesson, but it's so easy. It's simple. It's simple. It's not easy, you're right. It's simple.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Before I let you go, uh and you can enjoy your beautiful family and uh and and do some other things on a beautiful Saturday that we're recording today, which is great for you to make that time as well, because we have so many things to do, right? Uh uh makes us maybe not as efficient. Uh, but I love these hacks as well and and and these recommendations. Uh, they're just so simple. And you just need to start somewhere, right? I mean, that was interesting at VRMA Executive last week, uh, where I was moderating a panel uh for people who have built uh their social truth layer on top of their PMS, uh, super sophisticated. And then we did round table conversations uh afterwards about you know how do you go about AI and introducing that into your business, and then you know, we had folks on the table who basically never even made a prompt in their life, right? So so we're really like we're far apart and we just need to get on with it. And uh it's it's actually it it makes you addictive. I mean, I can show you all the books that I have, you know, the AI edge. And it's like, why are you reading books? As like, you know what? This makes me feel grounded. And this is the AI edge to get uh better in sales and everything else. I love it. It's a book. I can hand it in my hands, and you know.

SPEAKER_01

I love physical books, by the way. I read so many a year. The only way to read books for me is physical copies.

SPEAKER_00

There we go. So, what doesn't survive? What parts of hospitality do you think simply don't survive the next decade?

SPEAKER_02

Very simple question. All the bad software.

SPEAKER_00

Repeating myself, what parts of hospitality do you think simply don't survive the next decade?

SPEAKER_02

Oh god, Simon, like there will be so many things.

SPEAKER_00

I think I can get you, I can get you started. Let me get you started. You know, this is super simple for you, CD. You live in a different world than me. But anyway, you know, one thing that doesn't survive in hospitality that gets you going, trust me. You arrive at a hotel, and then the lady gives you pen and paper, and then you need to fill in your details for for for tourist tax, for tourist tax, and it takes forever, right? And then you need to fill in your number plates, and you don't remember them, so you have to go outside, look at your number plates of your car, you come back in again, and they said, Oh, by the way, uh, our Wi-Fi, you need to pay for it. We have different uh you know categories.

SPEAKER_01

Um, okay. Just to be clear, yeah, my answer was going to be before you said this, Simon, 95% of all the quote unquote things that make customers unhappy will not survive simply because there will be people that arise and then solve this problem so simply that everyone else will be forced to solve it too. So, yeah, everything that you just said, it it bothered my ear to the point where I was like, I wouldn't even painful. I wouldn't even put myself in that scenario, but that's super painful. And actually, it's a waste of time. If the other way to look at it is it's a waste of time and life for everybody. Like, why is there someone there asking someone to fill a paper when they can be doing a more exciting job? They could be training AI with like, ooh, the scenarios. They can be talking to someone about their grand grandkid. That's a more exciting way to spend time than weird admins. So yeah, you're bang on, Simon. None of that will survive.

SPEAKER_00

What does the winning hospitality company actually look like? What does the winning hospitality company actually look like?

SPEAKER_01

So winning, we're talking at a scale of 100 billion, 1 trillion. Actually, we already have like close to 100 billion. So there is actually no real hospitality company that's 1 trillion, funnily enough. So the answer here is someone who's building, we've already discussed this, not just for humans, but for the agents, and they have everything, they are optimizing only for the customer and how they feel. So the customer of the hospitality company will feel like they are the only ones in the world and so special. Like, for example, you know, when you like if they actually, I don't know if you know this, like I don't know if the average person knows this. You probably know this. If like a butler looks after you and makes you feel super special and says, hey, madam, what do you like? These are your preferences. It's like for you, it makes you feel so unreal. That's what companies need to be doing at scale. Using AI and humans to make every single customer that touches them feel so special, that's the company that's gonna win. And it's all gonna be about the feeling they give to the customer that touches them.

SPEAKER_00

That's why we're in hospitality, we bring the human back into life while AI takes care of the rest. So, how better could I summarize our conversation? You know, one thing I really took away from this conversation, besides your energy and your enthusiasm and your huge heart as well, is that AI may not primarily be technology story, right? It may actually be a human value story, because if intelligence becomes abundant, that what becomes scarce is judgment, taste, curiosity, trust, empathy, and character. And I think hospitality is about to discover that much faster than expected, right?

SPEAKER_01

I think it's finally time. It's so funny, but I think it's finally time for hospitality to be respected for what they do really well. So, guys, this is our time. This is an exciting time to be in hospitality.

SPEAKER_00

City, this was absolutely fascinating. Thanks everybody for listening to another episode of STR Global Unlocked. If you enjoyed this conversation, please make sure to support the channel, follow STR Global Unlocked on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, LinkedIn, and all major podcast platforms. Thank you, CD. You have a wonderful weekend, and I'm looking forward to seeing you very, very soon.

SPEAKER_01

Likewise, Simon. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

Before we wrap up, a quick thank you to today's sponsors, Pickle, Breezeway, Pricelabs, and Avivo, for supporting this episode of STR Global Unlocked. If this episode got you thinking about where property management is heading next, especially with AI, automation, and more intelligent operations, then the next question is how do you actually turn all of that into a more profitable short term rental business? That is exactly what we covered in our previous episode, where we talked about revenue management, pricing strategy, and why profitability in short term rentals is becoming much more intentional. Click on that episode now.