Scaling Hospitality Through Automation with Alexander Limpert (RentalReady / GuestReady)

00:02
Kristian Lupinski:
Welcome back to Pillow Talk Sessions. I’m Kristian Lupinski, joined as always by my co-host, Jessica Gillingham.

00:07
Jessica Gillingham:
Thank you, Kristian. And today we're joined by Alexander Limpert, Co-Founder and CEO of both RentalReady and GuestReady. Alex brings deep insight into the intersection of hospitality, short-term rentals, technology, and mid-term rentals.

00:26
Kristian Lupinski:
We’ll be diving into the rise of flex living, how operators are navigating the push toward hotelization, and what it really takes to build trust with both guests and property owners.

Alex, welcome to Pillow Talk Sessions. It’s great to have you on the show. Before we jump into today’s conversation, maybe you can give us a bit of background on you, RentalReady, and GuestReady.

00:45
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show. I’m Alex, the Co-Founder and CEO of GuestReady and RentalReady.

I started GuestReady almost 10 years ago and it’s been a great journey. The industry has evolved massively, and so have we. Over the years, we’ve scaled GuestReady across seven locations with around 4,000 units. We’re now the largest short-term rental manager in Western Europe in urban areas.

To scale the business, we built RentalReady, our PMS, which has become one of the most comprehensive short-term rental PMSs in the industry — AI at its core. Over time, we received so many requests from other operators to open it up that we eventually did.

01:38
Now RentalReady empowers many other property managers to grow their businesses and hopefully scale to the same levels as GuestReady. That’s something I’m very excited about because I love empowering small and mid-sized entrepreneurs.

01:55
Jessica Gillingham:
Brilliant, Alex. And you and I were reminiscing recently that we’ve known each other pretty much the entire 10 years — Abode Worldwide is also turning 10 soon, and I think you were one of my first calls when I started the business.

I still remember being on a boat in the middle of Greece answering the phone to you. Over the years we’ve seen each other at events, I’ve had you on different panels, and I always really enjoy talking with you.

It’s quite a journey you’ve had — growing GuestReady into one of the largest operators in Western Europe and then building tech on top of that. Why did you go down both routes? What do you think you’ve learned and what do you bring to the table from the tech side?

02:40
It’s not uncommon for operators to build tech, but you’ve done it successfully. Tell us more.

03:01
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, thanks. And I remember that first phone call as well — I was in Amsterdam at the time, funnily enough. Amsterdam was actually where we had our very first two properties, though we never scaled beyond that. Luckily we had more success elsewhere.

To your question — before GuestReady I was in food delivery, which is a very different industry but equally operational and logistics-heavy. At Foodpanda, where I was a Managing Director, we realised restaurants were great at cooking but not at delivering. To improve the customer experience, we had to go one level deeper into the operations — and to do that, we needed strong technology.

03:51
We built apps for restaurants, for riders, for end customers. Property management is similar: tons of moving parts — cleaning, linen, maintenance, guest arrivals, owner communication, you name it. If you want to scale that, you need strong tech.

So that was the starting point of our tech journey. At first, we didn’t assume we had to build everything ourselves. We tried third-party PMS solutions. They worked for the very early days, but we found that most PMSs focused on distribution — the online side — not the operational complexity.

04:43
So we began building on top of them: an owner app, a task-management app, a guest-messaging inbox, maintenance tools. Eventually we’d replaced every part of the PMS… and suddenly we’d built our own full suite. That was the beginning of RentalReady.

When other operators saw it, they asked us to open it to the market — and now it’s a business in its own right.

06:21
Jessica Gillingham:
It’s definitely not for the faint-hearted to build tech, but you’ve done it incredibly well.

And I love what you said about food delivery changing the way we eat — and how you brought that operational thinking into property management, which historically started from hospitality rather than systems and processes.

07:12
Alexander Limpert:
Exactly — and that's a very good point. We actually underestimated that in the early days. We knew operations and tech were needed, but we didn’t fully appreciate how much the hospitality mindset needed to blend with that.

Over time, GuestReady has become far more hospitality-led, while RentalReady is a pure software company.

As an operator, you need hospitality and strong systems. You don’t need to build the tech yourself — that’s why RentalReady exists — but you do need the mindset to use great tech effectively.

00:02
Kristian Lupinski:
Welcome back to Pillow Talk Sessions. I am Kristian Lupinski, joined as always by my co-host, Jessica Gillingham.

00:07
Jessica Gillingham:
Thank you, Kristian. And today we are joined by Alexander Limpert, who is the Co-Founder and CEO of both RentalReady and GuestReady. Alex brings deep insight into the intersection of hospitality, short-term rentals, technology, and also mid-term rentals.

00:26
Kristian Lupinski:
We will be diving into the rise of flex living, how operators are navigating the push toward hotelization, and what it really takes to build trust with both guests and property owners.

Alex, welcome to Pillow Talk Sessions. It is great to have you on the show. Before we jump into today’s conversation, maybe you can give us a bit of background on you, RentalReady, and GuestReady.

00:45
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show. I am Alex, the Co-Founder and CEO of GuestReady and RentalReady.

I started GuestReady almost 10 years ago and it has been a great journey. The industry has moved a lot, and so have we. Over the years we have scaled GuestReady to seven different locations and around 4,000 units. We are now the largest short-term rental manager in Western Europe in urban areas.

To scale this business we built RentalReady, which is our PMS. It has become probably one of the most comprehensive short-term rental PMSs in the industry, with AI at its core. Over time we have had a lot of requests from the industry, from other property managers, to open it up to the market, and that is what we did a couple of years ago.

01:38
Now RentalReady is empowering lots of other property managers to grow their businesses and hopefully scale to the same levels as GuestReady. I am very excited about that because I love empowering small and mid-sized entrepreneurs and helping them grow their businesses.

01:55
Jessica Gillingham:
Brilliant, Alex. And you and I were reminiscing recently that we have known each other for almost the whole 10 years. Abode Worldwide is also coming up to 10 years and I think you were one of the first calls I had when I started Abode Worldwide.

I still remember being on a boat in the middle of Greece, answering the phone to you. Over the years we have seen each other at events, I have had you on different panels, and I always really enjoy talking with you. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

It has been quite a journey that you have had, growing GuestReady to being one of the largest operators in Western Europe and then also becoming a software provider and tech solution.

02:40
Why have you gone down those two journeys, and what is it that you think you have learned and that you bring to the table from the tech side? Because being an operator, you are not the first or only one to develop tech, but you have done it really successfully. So tell us a little bit more about that.

03:01
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, thanks. And I do remember that first phone call as well. I think I was in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam was actually the city where we had our first few properties, the first two, but we never scaled beyond two properties there. It was not a very long journey for us in that market, but luckily we have been more successful in other cities. That is my memory of that first conversation with you.

Going back to your follow up question. Maybe let us take a step back. Before GuestReady, I was in food delivery, which is a completely different industry, but it is also very operational and very logistics heavy. You need to coordinate a lot of different moving parts, the same way property managers do.

At Foodpanda, I was Country Managing Director.

03:51
We only had a platform that connected restaurants with the end consumer. Similar to how OTAs like Airbnb and Booking.com connect guests with their hosts. What we realised is that restaurants are good at cooking the food, but not very good at delivering the food.

So if you wanted to make it a better experience for everyone, you had to go one level deeper and actually take care of the operations too. To do that, we realised we needed strong technology to coordinate all the different aspects. Apps for the restaurants, apps for the riders, apps for the end consumers.

We saw that in our industry, in short-term rentals, it is essentially the same. As an operator, you have so many moving parts that you need to think about. The cleaning, the linen, the maintenance, the guest arrivals, the owner communication, and so on.

04:43
If you want to scale that, and we knew from the beginning that we wanted to scale, we needed to have really strong technology. So that was the starting point of our technology journey.

We never said that we absolutely had to create this technology in-house from day one. We said, let us look at what is on the market. We actually started off by leveraging third party technology and a third party PMS. That worked well at the very beginning.

But then we realised that a lot of PMSs on the market were focused more on helping you market on different OTAs, more on the online aspects, because that is what software companies naturally focus on. They did not really capture all of the offline elements of property management and the relationship with the clients.

05:38
So we started to build on top of the PMS. An owner app. A task management app for cleaning and maintenance. A really good guest messaging inbox, and so on.

Sooner or later we had replaced all of the elements of the PMS, and we had built our full suite. That was the beginning of RentalReady. Whenever we talked with others about our technology they were quite excited and asked us if we could open it up to them. Back then it was just internal software, but we eventually made that step and opened it up to the market. That has now become a separate journey that has been very successful for our clients at RentalReady and also for us.

06:21
Jessica Gillingham:
It is not for the faint-hearted to build, is it. But you have done it successfully, which is fantastic.

And I just want to reflect on something about the food delivery experience. Food delivery has changed the way that we eat out or eat at home. It has been revolutionary all across the world in every kind of community.

You brought with you to property management an understanding that you needed to think about processes and systems and technology, rather than just what typically property managers might start with, which is the hospitality piece and being very guest focused, rather than systems, process, operations focused. That is really interesting.

07:12
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, and I think that is a very good point. That is probably a point that at GuestReady we underestimated a bit in the beginning. We knew that we needed to have these processes, these systems, this technology to scale.

But on top of that, and you are absolutely right, you also need the hospitality mindset, the true care for the guests and also for the owners. Only if those two elements are brought together as an operator can you really scale and be successful.

That is why the journeys of GuestReady and RentalReady have over time separated more and more. Originally we saw GuestReady more as a tech platform, a sort of proptech platform.

08:06
Jessica Gillingham:
And it is not very fashionable anymore to call a hospitality business a proptech.

08:12
Alexander Limpert:
There are different ways to look at it, right. But our journey has moved on the GuestReady side much more into the hospitality side of things, and on the RentalReady side it is a pure software play.

Those two elements need to be combined. As an operator you really want to be hospitality focused. You also need to have the processes and systems in mind, and for that you need to have good technology. But you do not have to build that in-house.

Luckily now there is RentalReady, which truly understands operators and is built from an operator mindset to support other operators.

09:01
Kristian Lupinski:
I was going to jump in and ask you, AI is a big game changer here in all sectors, not just hospitality. It gives way to a lot of automation. It frees people up from having to sit and type and do paperwork so they can actually offer more of this hospitality, more of that service style.

How do you decide what should be automated and what needs that personal human touch. And where have you seen this technology make the biggest difference day to day.

09:34
Alexander Limpert:
AI now is very good at language. That is the obvious first part that everybody is talking about and that we have also addressed with RentalReady.

At RentalReady we have, to my knowledge, been the first PMS to integrate with OpenAI. That was over two and a half years ago. Back then it was a button to create an AI response. It took a very long time to load and it was very expensive from a cost perspective to reply through the API.

Over time it has become so powerful. Now we are in the third version of our AI assistant, called Maya, in RentalReady. The AI, for each guest message, checks if it is confident enough and if it has all the information to reply, and then automatically replies if it is confident.

10:35
If not, then it raises the ticket to the team. On top of that we do the review replies. We do a sentiment analysis of the guest sentiment and then, based on this guest mood, we can trigger different events.

For example, if the guest is happy, you definitely want to chase them for a review. If they are not so happy, then maybe you leave that chaser out. Things like that. Smart automation.

It has been super powerful. We can do audits of all the reviews and create a report for the owners, which they really appreciate. So there is a lot around language.

I am sure there is a lot that can be done on pricing. That is not the area where we invest as much, because there are really good tools out there that focus on that.

11:33
But there is a ton to be done. Also on coordinating different aspects of maintenance and cleaning, for example. I think voice AI is maybe not as good yet, but I see a future where maintenance providers are called by an AI and coordinated by an AI. That might be the future.

12:00
Jessica Gillingham:
Alex, I moderated you on a panel in Croatia at VRM Days recently, just a few weeks ago, and it was a tech panel.

I believe one of the questions that I asked the panel was around AI changing the way search and discoverability happens. This was before Google announced its new Google Trips search, which I know is just in the US at the moment, but it has just been launched and it is changing the way people are discovering and finding properties.

You had quite an interesting answer and I will remind you of it. I think you said something along the lines of, you were not concerned because you have the inventory, and if you have the inventory you do not need to be concerned necessarily. I may have that slightly wrong.

12:48
But do you still feel that way. I think AI is changing the way we buy anything now and the way we find anything, not just vacation rentals, short-term rentals, properties. It is changing the way we buy, consume, and find products.

I just wonder what your take is on that and whether it is the same answer you might have given in Croatia.

13:13
Alexander Limpert:
I would stick with that answer. In the end, as you say, we are discovering products differently and we might be booking them differently, but in the end, if it is a good product, it will still be bought.

It might not be through an OTA. Maybe it is directly through ChatGPT or your personal AI travel assistant. Whatever it is, it will still be booked.

One thing I would imagine is that AI is becoming very good at knowing your preferences and understanding different trade offs. Maybe there are more favourable booking options when going through Airbnb or Booking.com or any other OTA. That might make it harder to get direct bookings.

14:21
But as long as the conditions are best when booking direct, then I think AI would probably want to go that route eventually. So I think my answer still holds true.

14:24
Kristian Lupinski:
Sticking with technology, I have one more thing to ask you about that we found quite interesting, and we spoke a bit about it.

You said GuestReady has made more than 10 acquisitions, while RentalReady enables smaller businesses to operate more efficiently. Do you think technology will level the playing field, or will scale still be the defining advantage in the years ahead.

14:44
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, and I think that is a crucial question. I am very interested to see how it will play out.

On one side, as you say, there are economies of scale and there are benefits of having scale. Better access to capital. A more distributed workforce that can split the work more efficiently, and so on. There are definitely these advantages.

On the other side, as you say, technology empowers smaller players more. For example, with RentalReady we are empowering smaller property managers not just with booking and listing on different platforms, but also by automating the entire payment cycle, including payouts to their hosts and splitting between their own share, hosts, and even providers.

We can do a triple split, fully automated.

15:50
With RentalReady, we can take care of guest messaging 24/7 for them. We can automate the task assignment for cleaning and so on, and also the check in process if there are smart locks or smart ways to enter the property.

A lot can be automated and I think, for tech savvy small property managers, they can now run a business much more efficiently.

I see this as a bit of a parallel to e-commerce. We have Amazon, a huge global player that is incredibly strong and has a very good offering. On the other side you have Shopify, which is also one of the largest tech companies globally, empowering small and medium-sized e-commerce players and giving them the best tools to actually compete with a player like Amazon.

16:44
I see RentalReady a bit like that. The Shopify for short-term rentals, empowering local entrepreneurs and helping them compete with the large companies.

16:53
Jessica Gillingham:
I want to move on to a different topic now, Alex. On this podcast we have interviewed quite a few operators from the serviced living sectors. Build to rent, co-living, multifamily.

One of the things we talk to them about is the hotelization of real estate. The changing expectations of tenants and residents, and the changing way operators are delivering their service offering. There is more of a focus on experience, more of a focus on service, more of a focus on just that little bit extra than you might typically have in a rental unit.

We have also had student operators on. You are on the other side of it in that you come from the hospitality side.

17:43
I believe you also have a mid-term rental offering. Do you also have a long term rental offering. And do you have any thoughts on whether the hotelization of the way we live is what we are really seeing, or whether it is just a term that gets used and thrown around.

18:03
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts that come to mind on this topic.

I always describe it as a blurring of the lines between hotels and long term rentals. Maybe a couple of decades ago you had only two options. Either you stayed short term in a hotel, or you stayed long term in an apartment that you rented long term or bought.

Now you have a lot of options. From weekly, to monthly, to yearly. Serviced living, co-living. It is really great to see all these different options.

I think what is driving that is that more people live a more flexible lifestyle. We are becoming more mobile. We enjoy that flexibility. Many people want to live an asset light lifestyle. I include myself in that.

18:59
Maybe this is also more specific to bigger cities and less so to smaller cities or countryside. But in bigger cities like London or Paris or similar cities globally, many properties are furnished. You do not have to buy furniture, you do not have to invest in these assets.

On top of that you have more service offerings now, and that is also something that we provide at GuestReady. We are not in the 12 months plus space, we are not in true tenancy agreement territory, but we do offer anything up to 12 months where people just arrive with their luggage and they have everything in the property.

They can organise cleaning through us. They have all the amenities in the property, fully equipped. So yes, we definitely see that people appreciate that convenience.

20:03
They do not need to organise utilities, change contracts, buy new things for the kitchen and so on. That is definitely much appreciated and I think it will become a bigger part of the market.

20:19
Kristian Lupinski:
And on top of that, you mentioned it being a lifestyle thing and a shift in lifestyle. Do you think this is just for the next 10 years, or is this the way we are going to live now. Are future generations not going to want to settle down, buy a house, anything like that. Is their life going to be about being able to have this flexibility moving forward.

20:43
Alexander Limpert:
I think it is a lifestyle shift. I do not think this will be for everyone. I think it will still be for a minority of people in the end, but for a growing minority.

Of course, if you have a family and kids going to school, you are probably not going to change where you live every couple of months. But for younger generations and for those that are a bit more flexible in their setup, I think this is very attractive. The demand will grow and the offer will grow in this segment.

It is very clear. I think it is only going to go in one direction.

21:20
Jessica Gillingham:
In terms of markets that you operate in, and by the way, I do not think I have ever told you this, but I live next door to a GuestReady property.

In Europe, what do you see as the nuances across the markets you operate in. Is one particular market more difficult than another. I am also thinking from a legislation point of view. Where do you see the growth, or where are you most excited about.

21:54
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, good question. And I also hope that our guests always behave well next door to you as neighbours. If not, then you know who to call.

Jessica Gillingham:
Yes, they are perfectly fine, thank you.

Alexander Limpert:
Thank you, that is what I like to hear. They have a good manager looking after them.

In terms of markets, it is interesting being in different markets. I have observed over the years that there is always one market that is doing better and one market that is doing a bit worse, and then it changes again a couple of years later. It comes and goes in waves.

22:51
Regulation might tighten, then change again. Supply might increase, then there is oversupply. A few years later, people leave the market again and there is undersupply. There are always these dynamics.

It is helpful to be in different markets. It also brings complexity, of course. It is easier to operate in just one market. But in terms of dynamics, it is helpful to be in different markets and hedge a bit between them.

So I would not say there is one market that stands out. Each market has its own dynamics and its own regulation. That is what I would say on this topic.

23:23
Jessica Gillingham:
In terms of legislation and regulations, what is your view on it. What do you think is a good solution for the industry.

23:33
Alexander Limpert:
I do not think there is one single good solution. The way I see it, often short-term rentals are being blamed for housing shortages and I absolutely do not agree with that notion.

Typically it is cities that are very popular for long term living and also for short term visiting that have a housing shortage. The only way we can solve this is by building more in these cities. That will also help economic growth and create jobs in these cities. Not by just regulating and restricting more and more.

24:17
I also agree that there needs to be some limitations. Ideally, it needs to be reasonable.

I do not think we can just completely forbid short-term rentals. Reasonable legislation can be nightly caps, or a contingent of the number of properties that can have a licence.

There is definitely a need for this product. It is very helpful to have a flexible stock of apartments that can be rented on a more flexible basis rather than always needing 12 month contracts. As we said, there is a growing demand for that and it is not going to go away just because the offer in a specific city goes away.

25:16
Of course there should not be complete freedom to operate as short-term rentals without any rules. There needs to be some sort of control.

I think it makes sense to understand which properties have a licence or are registered for short-term rentals. I think it makes sense for cities to have that overview. But I do not agree with completely forbidding short-term rentals.

25:30
Kristian Lupinski:
And on that, how do you approach markets that remain unclear or in flux. Do you wait for clarity, or do you build adaptable operating models from the start.

25:43
Alexander Limpert:
We always play by the rules. We look at the rules as they are and then we stick to those rules.

In a market like Dubai, for example, it is very easy to get a new licence, so we can help owners to get new licences. In a market like Lisbon, there are no new licences, at least for now, so we work more with the existing licences that are available.

In a market like Paris, there are clear nightly caps for primary residences. Then there are commercial properties that can be rented year round. We do both of those. Our software also supports those different models.

26:34
That is how we approach it. We simply adapt to the local markets and their local regulatory realities.

26:34
Jessica Gillingham:
Let us talk about owners a little bit now, because your primary customer is the owner rather than the guest, is that right. How do you build trust with them and differentiate.

Owners are looking at things like legislation. In the UK for example, things like the Renters Reform Bill. Longer term rents are looking less attractive for landlords who have long term tenants.

How do you approach owners with GuestReady and build that trust with them.

27:10
Alexander Limpert:
Firstly I would say it is the eternal question. Who is the more important party, the owner or the guest. For RentalReady, our most important customer is the property manager.

For GuestReady, the journey has been that initially we only saw the owners as our main customer and we optimised everything for them. We just listened to them and whatever they wanted, we said yes, because we saw ourselves more as a platform.

I think now at GuestReady we see ourselves more as an advisor to these owners. An advisor that sometimes says things that maybe an owner does not want to hear. For example, that they need to invest in their property.

28:05
Where initially we would have just taken properties as they are, we now have very clear standards of what we accept and what we do not accept. In the end, this is for the benefit of the owner.

We know as operators what works in the market and what does not, and what works for guests, because we are not operating in a vacuum. We are competing against so many thousands of other short-term rentals. We are not only competing against short-term rentals, we are competing against hotels, aparthotels, and individual hosts who might host people in their spare bedroom and provide a super personalised service.

We are part of this whole spectrum of options. As operators, we understand that we need to stand out with our offer.

28:59
We need to deliver the best service to guests. We need to have the best reviews and the most attractive offer. Only then can we truly deliver value for our owners too.

That is what savvy owners understand. Their product will only work if it works well for the guests, because in the end it is the guests who choose where to spend their money. They have so many options.

We need to attract guests to us and to our owners. We need to advise owners so that they have a strong offer. That is how our thinking on owners versus guests and what we have to do for them has evolved over the years.

29:39
Jessica Gillingham:
Yeah, that is quite a shift.

I have a question and you may already do this, but I am not aware that you do. Apart hotels and actually running hotels as well. In those cases you just have one owner. On paper it is a lot more simple.

Is that part of your game plan, to go more into the aparthotel and hotel sector as well.

30:03
Alexander Limpert:
For GuestReady that is definitely a big part of what we are doing now. We are seeing more and more demand from professional investors who do not just invest in one unit, but invest in entire hospitality buildings with 10, 20, 30, 50 keys.

They are looking for an operator and we are ideally positioned to support them because we have proven that we can run even individual units across a city efficiently, professionally, and profitably. Managing entire buildings is much simpler. You have much more control.

We can be extremely efficient. We can just take this building and plug it into our infrastructure with no additional overhead needed. A traditional hospitality operator always operates on premise. They always allocate fixed resources to each individual hospitality asset.

31:05
We do not have to do that. We have the whole infrastructure and the whole technology already and we can seamlessly plug in these new assets.

That is something that these investors understand, that we operate more leanly, we deliver a great guest experience, and we deliver great yields for them. So it is a big part of what we are doing.

This is also driven by regulation. Regulation in Europe and in most markets globally is only becoming stricter. At some point we will probably reach a limit, but for now it is becoming a bit stricter every year.

That, on the other side, opens opportunities for professional investors to invest. The more restrictive a market, the higher the ADRs, the higher the RevPAR, and the higher the yields can be. That is what these professional investors understand and that is what we see happening now.

32:03
Kristian Lupinski:
You mentioned briefly regulations and consistency. I wonder about the brand. How do you maintain brand consistency when the inventory spans multiple ownership structures, property types, and local regulations. How do you keep that on a level playing field so that this is what we do and what we stand for.

32:21
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, very good question. Our ambition is not to have a brand where every property and every room looks exactly the same. We are the opposite of that.

Our premise and ambition have always been to bring the best of a home together with the best of a hotel as GuestReady. To mirror the local character of a local home and bring that to guests, but with a professional service layer that you would expect from a hotel on top.

Why are short-term rentals doing so well. Because many people do not want to stay in a cookie cutter type of hotel where every room looks exactly the same everywhere around the globe. They travel because they want to have a local experience.

33:14
Therefore, our ambition is not that every place looks the same. Our ambition is that we have different properties that all live up to a certain standard, and then we bring our service levels on top of that. That is our ambition.

That is also why earlier I said our standard of what we expect from properties and from owners, in terms of their investment into the property, has only become higher over the years. That supports our brand standard.

33:47
Jessica Gillingham:
Excellent. It feels kind of refreshing to hear you say that rather than, we must be like hotels and everyone must know exactly what to expect when they arrive at one of our properties.

Obviously guests will expect a good service and all the amenities listed, but it might be a very different property each time, as long as it is what has been promised to them. It is a brand promise, I guess.

34:17
Alexander Limpert:
Yeah, and I think that is the key word. As long as what is promised is delivered. It needs to be very clear. The expectation management is key.

In the end, guest delight is just the difference between their expectation and reality. Hopefully reality is at or above the expectation. That is what we are working really hard towards.

We are not looking to oversell what the property is. There are some truths about each property that we need to highlight.

Maybe a property is perfectly located, but because it is so perfectly located it might be a bit loud at night. If you are a very light sleeper, then maybe this is not the best option for you. We want to highlight this truth.

35:09
Or it can be a great property in a great location but it is on the fifth floor without an elevator. If you are travelling with light luggage, a backpack only, it is perfect for you. If you have heavy suitcases, maybe it is not.

It is just about making this very clear. That is something that we have done a lot of work on over time.

35:24
Jessica Gillingham:
I think that is a perfect place for us to come to an end, Alex. It has been great speaking with you, so thank you so much for coming on.

I do not know, Kristian, do you want to finish us out with the last question.

35:37
Kristian Lupinski:
Yeah, absolutely. One more important final question for you, Alex. Any last thoughts for our audience. And, of course, if people are interested in finding out more, where should they go.

35:47
Alexander Limpert:
Thank you for the chat. It has been great.

As we talked about, everybody is excited about AI and so am I. There is one part I did not mention, which I am very excited about. The way we built RentalReady, with the property information at the heart of RentalReady, accessible to AI.

Originally we built it this way because, as a large operator, GuestReady had the need to have all the property information, which as a small operator you might be able to hold in your head. We absolutely had to put this into the system in a very structured manner.

For example, when we onboard a property at GuestReady, we put down over 200 pieces of information. That is how we built RentalReady, with a very sophisticated data architecture.

36:36
Our team, for example in guest communication at GuestReady, where we have over 30 people, can always access all this information without ever having been at the property. The cool thing now is that AI can access this information too.

What I hear sometimes from other operators is that the system they are using, or the systems they are using, are not really talking to each other very well. The way we have built RentalReady is with the data at the heart, flowing to the different parts of the system. The task management, the owner app, the guest messaging system, and so on.

All of that is accessible by AI. I think that gives us a unique advantage to unlock more efficiency through AI than some other systems that were not built this way. That is something really cool.

37:31
I hope we can harness this power and I am very excited about all the things we are going to build in AI going forward, and how we can empower small operators.

If you want to find out more, check out RentalReady and GuestReady on our websites. rentalready.com, guestready.com, and also follow us on LinkedIn.

Thanks again for having me on the show.

37:55
Jessica Gillingham:
Brilliant, Alex. Thank you.

37:57
Kristian Lupinski:
And that wraps it up for today’s episode of Pillow Talk Sessions. Thank you so much for joining us.

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