Everything AI in Travel chats to Shahar Goldboim of BOOM

(0:00) A I in the bin we [music] go. Got that AI on the T flight to booking trips in a (0:07) snap with a [singing] roll. (0:16) Welcome to another episode [music] of the Everything AI in Travel podcast where we hear from the makers, [music] (0:22) shapers, and buyers of AI technology in the travel space. Here's your host, Tony Khan. (0:32) Hey everyone, welcome to another Everything AI in Travel podcast. And today we're going to dive into the world of vacation rentals and how that (0:40) intersects with AI and particularly in the area of PMS's or property management systems. And I've brought in the (0:49) foremost expert at the moment in the world in that space. Welcome to the show, Shaha Goldin. (0:56) Pleasure to be over here, Tony. (0:58) Thanks, mate. Really appreciate you you calling in. You're down in Miami and I had a look through your bio and it seems like you've spent most your life down in (1:07) Florida and working in real estate or doing other property management work. (1:13) So, it sounds like you've got a good feel for the problem of the property manager. (1:17) Yeah, I would say so. like meaning real estate from 2008 did like hundreds of million dollar of transactions as (1:25) investor as a broker got into the field of vacation rental actually in 2017 (1:32) actually it's interesting in 2016 I've done like a startup to find returns in the real estate market at the time a (1:39) friend came to mine to me and told me hey remember the house that we got to my parents in a fancy community in Miami (1:47) they decided not to move to it and I want to do it Airbnb and I told him great that you want to do it Airbnb (1:55) what's the connection to me and I told me everything that look good I told him you know what let me think about it and time I was learning about Zelin theory (2:04) and I slept on it the night and I found a company in Australia that can actually implement interior design on top of empty picture I told him you know what (2:13) let's take the picture of the house the address of the house we implement like the interior design we'll put a listing on Airbnb, see the result and take it (2:21) from there. So we put it on Airbnb and all of a sudden we receive reservation after reservation like oh we have a business. [laughter] (2:28) So [clears throat] my my wife she's she's really talented. I asked her do you want to design a home? She's hell yeah. So we told everybody that booked (2:37) the house that it got flattered or something and it's a new furniture. Long story short, like the house was really successful and as I said before, I was (2:46) really dealing with a lot of real estate, right? So, we had a flip that we stuck with that we changed to vacation rental and I bought like a multif family (2:54) on the ocean that we changed to a vacation rental and all of a sudden we have like a management company that we are running and we grew up like this (3:03) company to companies that manage around $150 million of properties. I also created a fund uh that deployed capital (3:12) around $50 million in the southeast of Florida and Tampa area. Long story short, why I'm saying all of that, we (3:20) build it as a tech enabled company. And basically, when we're looking at the solution, the tech solution, it's from (3:28) many heads, right? It's from the management aspect. It's from the investment aspect. It's from the (3:34) brokerage aspect and really look at everything as one ecosystem that needs to be done. I also forgot to say that we (3:42) also build a construction company and a cleaning company. So really all of the shebang for sure. Yeah, it sounds like you're totally fully integrated and that (3:51) probably took you a while to build that up. Like when you started with those first initial properties and was almost accidental that you landed yourself in in the vacation rental industry, (4:02) were you just running things manually? (4:03) Were you just doing it on spreadsheets or did you go out and seek out existing software to see how it worked to solve your problems? How did you how did you (4:11) solve that problem? So in 2017 when we got in I immediately saw you know what (4:17) there is a I need a PMS. So we use it we used a property management software at (4:24) the time and on top of that we started building our own tools. So I moved the startup team that I had for the return (4:32) that I told you in the startup and we moved it basically to develop a tech enabled company. So a lot of time for (4:40) example when we use a property management software back in 2017 I was really angry like to understand where (4:47) everything coming from. So we started from the owner portal and then we started with a lot of investor and one investor came to us and asked us when (4:56) did we change air filters to the ASU and I'm looking at alone my brother he's looking at me don't know so we build a (5:04) task management tools and all of the tools that we build was from a need because we couldn't find so we couldn't (5:11) find we build and that was basically a layer on top of the property management software to complete it in a way up (5:20) until to the point that we completed everything and everything was a channel manager and then we moved it and with a (5:27) change of AI it's basically change all of the aspect but I let you lead with question for sure now what did the PMS landscape (5:35) for vacation rentals look like in 2017 because a lot of people are hobbyists they might have one or two properties and so I'm always quite curious actually (5:44) fun fact I had a vacation rental once upon a time down in Nicaragua. This was 2009. We're actually the second ever (5:52) property on Airbnb in Nicaragua. So, it was right back at the very beginning. (5:57) And actually, my wife forced me to sell that place because she hated managing it. So, I've lived the I've lived the hell vicariously through that (6:06) experience. But, what was the we didn't go looking for any software. We were just figuring it out based and we only did Airbnb and VBO and just did it out (6:13) of our inbox. But, what was the solutioning like at that time? There are a lot of options in in 2017. It was like you had guest (6:22) and you get host away. That's the one that I ran into. The unified inbox at (6:29) the time was really helpful and the distribution obviously. But that kind of was a landscape, right? It's like it was (6:37) mostly like distribution and unified inbox. This is what the landscape looks like at the time looked like. And to be (6:46) honest till today what is a property management software meaning each company plays on sync and for me like the word (6:56) is changing right like when you think about it PMS is how it's built you have the property management software and (7:03) then you have like many solutions that connected to it right you will have your guest portal and you will have your pricing algorithm and you will have so (7:12) on and so on you basically finding yourself working on different tools and similar thing like that is in our like (7:21) SAS environment right when we're looking at SAS and we look at the business your bookkeeper will work on Quickbooks (7:29) and your handyman will work on Monday and your marketing person will work on HubSpot and in reality what happening (7:36) that the people on top of that tools actually managing the company right so if your bookkeeper doesn't have an invoice what he will do he call, email or text the handyman, hey, (7:48) send me the invoice, right? (7:51) And in reality, it's really disconnect like you have the program and they are disconnected and on the top you have the person that doing the communication in (8:00) order to run a company. We believe the world is moving into a word of bus which is business as a software where (8:07) everything is combined. So the data is moving the AI have a capability basically to control all of that because (8:15) think about also about the property management software today is they have a built-in of AI meaning now I put (8:23) [clears throat] like an AI chatbot and you're asking can I do an early check in how can I give you an answer if it's not (8:29) connecting to your task management and see if there is a restroom or like a toilet or a shower that needs to be (8:36) fixed if somebody did a late check out if the cleaning was over meaning all of the data sitting in different areas that (8:44) everything needs to be structured for the AI to really work right. (8:49) Yeah. And so is your therefore solution which is quite new right so you are post generative AI boom so starting now as a (8:56) AI native company and is that kind of part of your solution is to like start with kind of the capabilities of what the AI can do and then build all the (9:05) sections around it so that the AI is pretty much controlling what's happening I I don't think it's before or after (9:12) it's the capability of structured data in levels that you can get any information that you want from the data. (9:23) You can ask any suggestion that you want and you can do any action that you want. (9:28) So the agentic AI have to be connected to all of these data sources and obviously we build like the software. So (9:37) we are three brothers. Me and Alon my younger brother build the software and the tech enabled company in Moran which (9:45) is a world expert in AI came as soon as we are split the companies around three (9:52) years ago when we decided hey we have an amazing solution for tech solution and want to be in. So our mindset from (10:00) beginning with AI was to build it with AI. So the way that the data seats the way we are looking at stuff and (10:08) obviously like with AI we are living now in a really disruption like meaning like (10:16) it's what happening is crazy. So we also learning as we go to to to the capability. It took me a while to (10:24) understand that we have an infrastructure change right. So you have electricity, you have water, you have internet, everything is infrastructure (10:32) and AI is becoming the infrastructure of intelligence. So we will have many products that will connect to the grid that will be different like exactly like (10:41) electricity when you have a TV that you can connect or you have an AC that you connect. So it's different capabilities. (10:47) Same thing with AI with our capability to how to use intelligence. Yeah, for sure. (10:54) Yeah, you mentioned data there and data in this case seems like it comes initially from the human. So if we take the example that you had before, okay, (11:04) you've got a request into a chatbot saying, is there a chance I could check in early? That sounds like me. I do that all the time. And to get the data, you (11:12) need the cleaner to have basically ticked off that they've done the job and that they've exited the property or whatever. That's a human involved. And often they're kneede in their core work, (11:22) which is like just getting the place cleaned and getting on to the next one and maybe forgets to tick it off. you know, in your system and through identic (11:29) processes. Is there a solution to that where the bot would then set up a process and go, "Oh, it's not marked as (11:37) clean yet, but maybe I'll shoot a text message to the lady or or the gentleman that's cleaning and then they could just send a message back to me and then I've (11:44) got my answer and then I can reply to the client." Is that kind of how the flows might work? (11:49) 100%. 100%. like you need to do also based upon GPS tracking like you see the (11:56) person getting away so you will know it's not in the house but if you didn't basically click that it's clean maybe it's an emergency and basically like you (12:05) want to do the verification of that yeah 100% (12:08) very good very good and are you still running a property management business and basically eating your own dog food by running that on your system or have (12:17) you moved out of property management now and concentrating just solely on on the PMS building. So I sold the company (12:24) around four months ago to a company called Casiola which are leaders in the vacation rental sector in the US and (12:32) they are working on boom happy days double happy days got a got an exit and got a customer can't get better than (12:40) that and how's that feature set how's that feature set evolving now I see look at a lot of your stuff on LinkedIn and (12:47) it seems like you're quite in touch with your consumers and they seem to be driving your road map. (12:53) We have a really clear idea. That being said, my mentor in life teached me that my ears always have to be open and even when I was running a management company, (13:04) it was important to me to talk with a cleaner to understand their angle. And a lot of time when you're doing stuff in (13:11) life and you don't have the angle, you don't understand the issues. So, we understand where we want to go and we (13:18) understand what we want to do. That being said, always listen as we go in order to do the adjustment and the (13:26) finetuning that needs to be done. (13:30) For sure. And is part of the agentic process here interfacing with other software or are you building your own (13:38) channel manager for example or is your piece of software just interacting with an existing channel manager to get data and bring it back? (13:47) So I I'll explain it in this way. (13:49) Everything that we do I'm looking at a complete cycle meaning let's take for (13:55) example task management. So I'm telling like a cleaner hey go and (14:03) clean this house. Then after that I need a property manager inspector to make sure hey you know what it was done (14:10) right. Then this payment needs to go the payment to the owner portal as a P&L as (14:17) expense that's going over there. It needs to go into the trust accounting to make sure that it was basically split (14:25) right. It need to go into payment to the to the contractor after it. It needs to have reconciliation in the bank against (14:35) it. And then I need to have the KPI of the person how much time it's taking to clean compared to other what's the (14:43) review score that he got basically on this cleaning and that basically complete like a cycle that also the AI (14:50) then can see okay this cleaner is good he's not good should I send him to the other mission or shouldn't I how can I (14:58) transfer knowledge base so if somebody is cleaning really fast like how do I transfer his capability to other what (15:05) he's doing right that he's able to clean so fast and to be able to get the review. So, it's always like thinking (15:13) how do I complete all of the cycle within our product. Yeah, for sure. That sounds really good. (15:19) I guess one of the problems with being all encompassing is that people have some tools that they like already. Yeah. (15:26) Or even if they don't like them, they've built their own mental or internal processes to deal with the inefficiencies of them. So they have a (15:34) process, it works for them. And so there's both mental switching and then actual switching costs like to go from (15:41) something that you already have into something new. I'm sure you must hear this all the time from prospective customers. (15:47) 100%. So I'm looking at it is what is core and what is outside. So for example in pricing algorithm we have companies (15:54) that we are using like wheelhouse beyond price lab in matter of website. I don't mind them using a different like website (16:03) because for me that's the out but the in we want them with us because we believe that this way they will be able to (16:11) function much better and much better product and we can't win them all like in the end of the day you can drive a (16:18) Subaru you can drive a Tesla and different car different capabilities but yeah we believe that with our product (16:25) like it's a gamecher in the way you manage a company. (16:29) Yeah for sure. And is there a certain size of management company that you're looking at as your ICP? Like how small (16:36) an operation is it feasibly or fiscally possible to work with boom? (16:43) So right now our ICP is companies that will have more than 50 properties. Our average customer will have around 100 (16:50) doors. We do have companies that have 30 and up, but we are still not in a point (16:57) of smaller ones. probably around a year from now also we will be able to serve this kind of clients but right now that's our focus. (17:07) Yeah for sure. And what's your geographical reach look like in your customer base? Are you mainly working with US customers who are close to you (17:15) in your time zone can triage problems quickly that they have or have you already expanded overseas? (17:21) We are already in 20 countries, five continents. We are moving fast. our ability to to build like a really flexible system allowing us to do it (17:30) because we can be in any language, any currency. So give us like a lot of capabilities. (17:36) That being said, now we start to deepen within the 20 countries that we are in and we don't want to expand more (17:44) to more territories. So that's super impressive. And the company itself, are you bootstrapped at the moment? Are you funded looking for funding? How's that looking for you? (17:55) So in the beginning when we started we did a safe where the former CEO of Hilton invested in it. Goldman (18:03) Properties that Biz Winwood and the saw in New York invested and we completed a (18:09) series A of $13 million around four months three months ago. Four months ago fantastic. (18:17) So for me it's a lot of like how do you connect the knowledge right? So we got the biggest hospitality guy. We got one (18:25) of the biggest real estate guys. Also I didn't mention but we got Gary that sold this company to Google. So the highest (18:32) tech basically aspect our investor is really like their focus (18:39) on vertical SAS. So this it was really important to me to bring like the best one to allow us to get to where we want (18:48) to get and also within the company you know a lot of time tech company build top down but not down up. So it was (18:57) really important for me to involve this knowledge of property management. So we have Chad Blackenship that used to be (19:05) CRO of Vitriz one of the biggest companies in the space. We have Alex Yusner is in the marketing side that used to be CMO of CAGO. (19:15) So it's really involve it's really important to involve the tech with the understanding of the difficulties of the (19:22) industry. I found it to be really helpful when you want to build fast and smart. (19:28) Very you sound like you assembled just an incredible team of both investors and advisers. And obviously investors are the best type of advisers cuz they're (19:36) they're backing you with their money and not just the knowledge. Congratulations on that. What's the competitor what's the competitor landscape look like for (19:44) you? Is this like a highly competitive area? I guess most of my research or what I've written about in the newsletter has been more on the hotel (19:54) side where I know of companies that are doing similar things but specifically for hotels which are a bit of a different beast to to vacation rentals. (20:02) on the vacation rental side itself like what's the what's it look like in terms of competition? (20:07) In terms of competition we have keyh holders right. So if we want somebody to work with us we need to take the key but (20:13) as for the product we are really giving different capabilities. I I would say that our competition are the property (20:21) management software in the end of the day. They are the key holders and are they bringing AI into their operations? Is that kind of how they're trying to head this off? (20:32) Yeah, but at the plugins they talking about it, but I don't see any movements that even we did like for example on the (20:40) communication aspect that our AI agent already take companies to 80% we're moving 80% of their communication away. (20:50) That's what we've done a year ago, year and a half ago. Now with them we develop (20:56) a gentic AI that I haven't seen to be honest not in our industry and not in any other industry what we are currently (21:04) working on. I haven't seen nothing like that. Competition will come and people see what you do and then they will do (21:13) and that's the nature of life. Our position is to be always leading and always thinking ahead and always be (21:21) ahead of the game because yeah very good and like [clears throat] from my knowledge this industry is heavily (21:28) reliant on the OTAAS it's not a lot of kind of brands have built like their own web presence or whatever they might have (21:35) a functionary website or similar but it's very difficult to drive direct bookings is that part of kind of the mix (21:43) of what you hope to bring or you just working with the OTAA systems. (21:49) So you're talking with me and you understand when I was a property manager I was a manager of fund I was a broker I was a manager I had a con like (21:57) construction company cleaning company so the answer for that we're looking at everything as a whole our biggest point (22:05) is to create value so where I can create value and where I see that we create value that's where we want to be so if (22:14) we feel that we can create the value we definitely be over there. I do think that there going to be disruption to (22:22) OTAA as well. For me, from a level of a tourist is like where my trust leaves, (22:28) right? So, I'm going to Airbnb. The reason I'm going to Airbnb to book or to Booking.com or whatever OTAA is that I (22:36) know that when I will get over there, I will find properties that let's say I want to go to Chicago or New York or Aruba, I know that I will go into Urban (22:45) India and find like a product over there that will fit me and when I'm getting it, I have a mother and father that if something is happen somebody will take (22:54) care of me. So my trust basically right now sit with the OTAA. I believe that the trust also will move to an agent (23:01) that will know me better and will know how to judge where should I buy it from, (23:08) what will be the best price, what will be the best fit for me and it will present it for me. So I think there will be a fight on like where my trust fits (23:17) and we'll need to see like where it's going. Another big aspect that we will see it's moving from filters. Now, when (23:26) I want to book a travel, I'm going into Airbnb. I'll put I I want to go like in Christmas time, so the 23rd to the 1st, (23:34) I want to come to Miami and I want something that won't cost me more than $600 a night or something like that. And (23:43) we move to a much more open text. I want to fly for a Christmas to a place that (23:50) is max two hours away flight from my home. I would like to go with my kids. I would like to have activities near the (23:58) hotel walking distance that will be really interesting for them. I want to have a view to the ocean. I want it to be pet friendly. It's much more of an (24:07) open text with it giving you an ability for discovery. I'll give you an example. (24:11) For example, me and I took the kids and my wife to Thanksgiving to New York to do like a long weekend and all of the (24:19) days were planned and we were like super fun. The third night it was really super cold. We were on 31st and 5th and I (24:28) said, "You know what? Let's go to Starbucks to [snorts] readjust. We are Miami. We're not used for the call. (24:34) Let's see what's up." So, we're sitting in Starbucks and I'm going to chip in. (24:38) I'm asking him what can we do? We are in 31st and 5th and what will be fun activity to do? He told me we have (24:45) Korean town on 32nd and there are a lot of karaoke places over there. So I said, (24:52) "Hey, cool karaoke. Let's try to do it with private rooms." And we found ourselves in the karaoke in a private room. We never done this kind of (25:01) activity. And the kids had a blast. So the ability to discover now will be much (25:08) bigger than before. Take that into destination. Take that into experience that you can do. And yeah, so you want (25:17) to be over there as a company and you want that the AI will be able to to trigger that and to offer it to whoever looking. (25:25) Yeah, for sure. So do you see a time where Boom can connect one of your clients directly into the LLM as a (25:33) response? Is that kind of what you're hoping? (25:36) 100%. We have also a website builder basically two companies who definitely will want to push them on the LLM to be able to book 100%. Yeah. Fantastic. (25:46) Fantastic. And actually I was in New York just before you were there and I actually stayed in the exact same area. (25:52) So I was at [clears throat] the I was at the Arlo Nomad just around the corner and we walked through Korea Town many times but didn't actually stop for karaoke but I know exactly what you're (26:00) talking about. So that's good. We're running out of time. Thank you so much for the insights that you've shared today. We got about 4,000 odd executives (26:07) of travel companies listening to this show. What can they do for you? What can you do for them? Who are you looking for to connect with? How can I help? (26:17) Always like to interesting idea, (26:19) interesting people. I like to share ideas. I like to to collaborate. So, (26:25) anybody that finds information interesting and attached to it and think alike, I would love to be in contact. (26:33) For sure. What's the best way for people to connect with you? LinkedIn is a really good way. (26:39) Perfect. Excellent. Hey, thank you so much for your time today and sharing a little bit both about the vacation rental space and and your solutions, (26:48) your agentic solutions to help solve some of the many problems that exist in that area for those who have to run those businesses. Super fascinating. If (26:56) you're listening out there and you've heard something today that you might want to dig into deeper with Shaha, get into contact with him and I'll put his (27:03) LinkedIn profile into the show notes for you. Thanks for your time today, Sha. It was the It was a pleasure. (27:10) Perfect. Perfect. That's it for another show. We're getting to the end of the year. There might be just one more show after this one, but thanks everyone for listening in. If this is the last show, (27:20) hope you've had a great year and we'll be back next year and bigger and better than ever. Thanks for listening in and we'll see you on the next one. (27:27) Thank you. (27:33) [singing] below. Taking flights to and fro, booking trips in a snap with simple chatbot flow. A I a reopane. [singing]