Shahar Goldboim: The AI revolution: changing lives and the STR industry

Transcription The Ultimate Guide to Short-Term Rentals is available to download for free from our website. This valuable resource is sponsored by HostHub. It is 66 pages long and features a wealth of knowledge for short-term rental investors, hosts, property managers, and industry professionals. It is overflowing with valuable hosting and management insights from industry experts. Learn about crucial topics, including how to craft the perfect listing, photography amenities guest communication property management dynamic pricing and direct booking gain invaluable knowledge on leveraging data mastering social media promotion and adopting eco-friendly practices learn the secrets to effective cleaning and maintenance efficient monitoring and upselling strategies to maximize profitability. Additionally, learn about critical areas like mortgages, insurance, regulation, and tax, ensuring you are well-equipped to navigate every aspect of your short-term rental journey. Head to holidaycottagehandbook.com to download this valuable resource today. hello and welcome to the holiday cottage handbook podcast the platform which helps you become the best and most profitable short-term rentals manager i'm your host james varley and today we'll be chatting to another special guest from the str industry shahar goldboim is the founder and ceo of boom a cutting-edge ai-based property management system Now, our goal here at HCH is to share everything you need to know about buying and managing short-term rentals. Whether you're a host, investor, or property manager, to get the most out of our platform, make sure you head to the website. It's HolidayCottageHamburg.com, where you can sign up for our newsletter and download our free e-book, which offers a comprehensive guide to buying and managing short-term rentals. Also, make sure you follow us on social media. We're active on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube. You can get all the links from our website, holidaycottagehandbook.com. HTH Financial Services provides access to the best holiday-let mortgages on the market. Its team of award-winning brokers provide an unrivaled service, whether you need your first holiday-let loan, a remortgage, or a financial product like life insurance or will writing. The team can also help you secure a range of other products, including residential, buy-to-let, expat, and HMO mortgages, along with bridging finance and equity release. To get in touch with the team, call 0333 1234536 or email advice at hchfs.com. You can also visit the website for further details, hchfs.com. Thank you for listening to the HCH podcast. It's time now to welcome our special guest. Shahar Goldboym is the founder and CEO of Boom, a cutting-edge AI-based property management system. Shahar, it's a pleasure to welcome you to the podcast. Thank you for joining us. Pleasure being here, James. I really like your show, so feel honored being over here. Oh, fantastic. That's what we like to hear. All right, then, let's start with you, your journey in the short-term rentals industry, because I know you've been, well, you are an owner, a manager, and now you've set up this amazing platform. So tell us about your STR journey. Okay, STR journey. So actually, I did a startup for real estate prior for me joining to the vacation rental sector. And while I was doing this startup, I was a broker to real estate. And I bought one of my friends to his parents. We bought a fancy house in the community called Eastern Shore in Miami. And he came to me and told me, you know what, Shachar? My parents are not going to move in and I want to do it as Airbnb. I told him, what Airbnb? I'm doing a startup. Leave me alone. And at the time, I was learning about the Lean Theory. So I told him, you know, let me think about it for a day and I'll come back to you. So I found a company in Australia that can actually implement like an empty picture, like interior design on top of empty picture. And I told him, you know what, I have an idea. Let's let them put interior design on top of that picture. Let's create a listing on Airbnb. See basically what the result it will bring. And let's take it from there. And then we advertise it on Airbnb. And as soon as we advertise it, we started to get a lot of reservations. My wife, she was the regional manager of P1 and she's really talented in her skills of design. So I asked her, do you want to design your own? So she's like, hell yeah. And this is actually how I got into the vacation rental sector. And then we had a lot of investment, meaning I had like a flip that we've done and we bought a multifamily. And then we started like converting a lot of these properties into vacation rentals. And once I was doing that, we started to have a management company. And when I ran into the management aspect of stuff, what we found out that We had a lot of deficiencies, meaning we didn't find answers. So we started with the, so I took, Gesty had the title to be the PMS, which was 2017, beginning of 2017. And all of the owner financing, all of the P&L of the property, all of that aspect was really hard for me to do, to gather all of the information. So we started building technology. And then I said, you know what, let's build a tech-enabled company. And we started building technology, and we found a lot of deficiencies. Meaning, for example, one of our properties, like when did we change the air filter to the AC? We didn't know. Like one of my customers asked me, so we said, okay, we need a task management tool. And from here to there, we started building and building and building and building technology in order to set up this thing. And this is my entrance to the vacation rental sector. Fantastic. I love how it's grown organically. You kind of started out by accident, really. And then you've kept finding these issues and trying to deliver solutions. I mean, when you did start out, did you really have much idea of what you were doing and what you were getting yourself into? Or has it kind of been a real learning journey throughout? Yeah. a huge learning journey meaning because it's like when you work like in McDonald's or you work in a place then you have a system and you multiply the system so I work like in a business I understand the logic of it and then I'm taking it but To be a vacation rental owner, like you really need to be a master of a lot of aspects. So for me, I've been in real estate from 2008 as an investor, as a broker. So all of the element of return or it's a good investment, not a good investment was really understood to me. But all of the other aspects, not so much. So to manage a home, to make it, to maintain it, there are so many factors, right? Like you need to do sales and you need to do marketing and you need to do owner relations and you need to create maintenance, like landscaping, pool. all of the maintenance aspect of the house, when you need to take care of the AC, clean air ducts. There is so many stuff, like marketing, owner relations, owner... Really, like I think it's one of the most complicated business, meaning when you start with one property, it's one thing. But as you grow, the problems are growing. And to do it in scale, it's really hard. And when you think about it, let's say you have an hotel. So a hotel will have 300, 400 rooms, one area. It's much easier to handle when having like one property here than two miles away another property. Or when you have like in a hotel, you have 200 square foot similar product, meaning maybe you have three, four different types, same furniture, same everything. Over here you have 3,000 square foot homes, 4,000 square foot homes, totally different distribution. And it's the cleaning aspect of it, the maintenance of it, like moving into traffic and spend time on the roads in order to do it. It's a much more challenging business. If you could go back to 2017 and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be? buy more real estate because the real estate market in the Florida really was booming. So currently like design PR manager, $150 million of properties and under the syndication, we have around $40 million under the fund. In a way, I would buy more properties because I would make more money and a lot of the concept of syndication I would do. And yeah, that's a big move that I would do that will make it much more than I now, but also more involved in the community and more involved in reaching out and more involved in... giving content and getting content in, I would say. Yeah. If somebody came to you and said, I'm going to set up my first rental and I need some advice, what would you tell them? I can give a lot of advice, but I think let's start from the first thing. The first thing you need to create, like a lot of time people will buy $5 million properties and we'll put a gram of furniture inside. And that really affects the ADR that you can do in the house. I would also tell them what your initiative, meaning if you have one property you want to manage, I would prefer giving it to a management company. And if you're an investor, go invest and let a management company manage your property and focus on buying the property rather than the management aspect of it. So, like, be focused on what your passion is, in other words, because it's definitely not an easy job to manage vacation rental properties. It's a twat. Yeah, and you have to wear so many hats, don't you? You know, one minute you're dealing with guests, the next minute it's communication issues, then you might have maintenance plumber. It can take up a lot of your time if you let it. Not if you let it. Even if you don't let it, just stuff that's coming in your way. It's a 24-7, basically, business that you need to make guests happy. That in the end of the day, you're... Your success depends on the happiness of your tourists. So you have to deliver because if you don't deliver, your review will affect your ADR. And it's a domino effect, right? That everything has to work right if you want to be successful. Because as a guest, you will go into Airbnb, Booking.com, whatever it is, whatever channel. And the first thing that you do is looking at the review, meaning I will look at the property, I will look at the review, and then I will decide. So picture needs to be great. Review needs to be great. And when the guest is coming to the property, it needs to at least be in the expectation to what he wanted to have when he booked the place. So you have to have the experience, like what he had in mind to what you presented. So, yeah. Yeah, managing those guest expectations and hopefully exceeding their expectations. That's the ideal. So in terms of delivering a great guest experience, how do you achieve that? So that's exactly why we went into the AI PMS that we are delivering is our value is to take the day-to-day operation away so you will be able to focus on the guest. Because as you said, as a host, You need to deal with so many stuff, right? The maintenance of the property, the communication, the sales, the owner relationship, the owner acquisition. And there is so many facets that you need to handle. So our point is, In general, my point is business is to create value. I want to create value for you. And where I see a boom creating value to customer, which are the property managers company, is to make their life easier and to create visualization of everything that's going on. So to move the day-to-day hustle away from them. And by that, actually focus on the important thing, which is a guest experience. That leads nicely into Boom. So just tell us about the platform, why you set it up, and also focus on the AI aspects. I think that's one of your unique selling points. How does that help you to deliver such a great product? So why did I create Boom? I created Boom actually started from design VR. It started from being a property manager and running to issues that they didn't find technologies that can fix that problem. And then my understanding around a year and a half ago is that the market is so fragmented, meaning as a property manager, you need to work with seven, eight different platforms. And it creates frustration with your team. It's creating loss of data. And the cost is really high, meaning now I need so many aspects. And these products are connecting with API, but they're not really connected, meaning the data is not in front of you. And how do you create all of this visualization? How do I know? For example, I wrote a post on it on LinkedIn. How do I know? I used to come to a house and somebody would tell me, hey, Mr. Shakar, how are you? And I'm like, oh, this is a nice guy. But how do I know if he's a good cleaner or not a good cleaner? Like, how do I take the reviews that he's getting and matching it to the tasks that he has done? How all of this system are connecting with each other? How, like, for example, an owner is looking in his P&L and looking like a thousand dollars to replace something or to fix the wall. And he's like, oh, these guys, they take too much money. A thousand dollars? Why a thousand dollars? And then the manager is saying, everybody else was charging $2,000 for it. Why is getting angry when I charge him $1,000? So create the P&L and to be able to see videos and picture connected to it and have the system of the task management connecting to your P&L and to create visualization of all of that, everything connected together is huge in your ability to create a product. And this is what we've done. In Boom, we understand operation in scale. We grew up from there, so we're understanding it. And as for matter of AI, I see how many people you need to run that operation, and they are really talented people. And how do I take these people and let them, like the workers, the amazing workers that we have in the industry, and instead of them being all the time busy and busy on repeatable action that's happening, that means thoughts, yeah, but it's repeatable. It's not touching the guest experience. So for that, we build all of the AI component and not just in the customer support, customer support, sales, operations, revenue, Our looking ahead is like bookkeeping and so on and so on. All of the online aspects, we want to really help companies grow and be better. Who's the ideal customer for Boom? Who is this service really for? I would say that for anybody, but the thing is that we are focusing on mid to large companies that understand the problem because they are in scale. When you're in scale, the problem becoming bigger, the issues becoming more problematic. And that's why they understand the pain now. So currently that's a customer that we are working and really appreciate what we are doing. But, yeah, in the end of the day, also the small customer, when he has one property and he's going to sit with his wife for a dinner and all of a sudden he's getting called off the clock toilet or like where the paper towel is. So helping this one is definitely a mission for us in the future. So I would say currently differently as a mid to large sized company, but in the future, definitely also that. When the mid to large sized companies start using Boom, what are the differences that they notice straight away? What do they tell you about the platform that's really beneficial for them? I guess everybody have a little bit of different pain to what they are focusing in. So in the owner reporting, in the analytics aspect, in their ability to reduce manpower. For example, companies a lot of time don't have somebody at nighttime. to answer sales inquiries and all of that because of the lack of inquiries. But at the same time, you can have an inquiry for $20,000 coming at 2 o'clock in the morning and you're quick to answer that. So a lot of people using our AI are amazed by the results in all aspects of Boon because we really do stuff differently. In terms of AI in the short-term rentals industry, how much more AI are we going to see over the next few years, and what is its potential when it comes to managing short-term rentals? So we just started. Like, AI is really a huge change. We will see it in all aspects of vacation rental, as I said before, from customer support, sales, operation, revenue management, bookkeeping, marketing, and so on and so on. I can keep going. It will just touch any aspect that we know. And what do you think the landscape will look like in maybe five or ten years' time? Do you think it's going to fundamentally change the way people manage vacation rentals? There are fundamentals that won't change, meaning we want to give the human touch. We want to give the human feel. But our ability to create it will be different. So the fundamental is not going to change. The way we do it does. And to be honest, to run a property management company is really hard. And it's not as profitable in a way. And it's really confusing. I'll explain why. As a property management company, you collect 100% a lot of time of the money coming in. We're giving you like a wrong perception of what you have a lot of time to. And then your payroll is really high. And your assumption is you see the numbers and you're like, oh, I have a lot of money. But in reality, normally 20% of it is what's coming to you. And then you have a lot of the payroll and a lot of the staff. And as you grow as well, it's hard. It's hard to do hiring. It's hard to, as bigger you are, the more problematic you have. And how do you take a vision into life? So I think we'll have will create a win-win-win situation in the future where with AI, guests get a better service. They get more touch point with the property managers. That's why they're more happy, more happy customer, better ADR, better occupancy. the property managers will do much better work and we will be able to create a growth with the people that they have, but don't need to hire so many more people. So they will be more profitable and with less, more of the fun stuff rather than knowing stuff of the day to day. So more happy people in the organization. And on the third side, we have the investors or owners that will have more money. So they will be more happy. So win, win, win situation. We'd definitely be happy with a bit more money. That's for sure. So AI is one key trend in the STR world. What are the other trends that you think house and property managers need to be aware of? So, First of all, it's a really localized business. So the knowledge center that you have from the place that you are as a property manager, the knowledge base is super, super important to create your growth. Another thing that trends that they see that all of the industry should put an eye on and we should all united together in order to prevent it is what's happening in the legislation, what we see happening in New York, what happened in New York, what we see happening in Barcelona. right now edinburgh scotland and it looks like a trend and we really have to figure out how we are fighting against it as as a whole as organization yeah it's so important isn't it that uh everybody kind of comes together and unites really and i guess we have to focus on the positives of short-term rentals and to and to promote that story a hundred percent, a hundred percent. Absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, we're seeing it all the time, aren't we? We've got the furnished holiday lettings tax regime here being changed in the UK. And I think the challenge now is to get those stories out there. It's one of the reasons why I set up this platform to try and fight back a little bit against this media narrative of always being a little bit negative, you know, Airbnb party house next door and taking properties away from from locals and that kind of thing um we're creating so many beautiful stories so many like tourists are coming in we create so many work for people if it's cleaning people maintenance people we create economy we create like a spread of the money through the city when when you think about zoning for hotels, so the tourists that are coming, just spending the money in one spot. When you have Airbnb, vacation rental, the money is spread all around. And I agree, meaning we are creating more issues, meaning in matter of security, in matter of noise, in matter of trash. We do do that, but the question is how we are solving this problem. So, for example, in Design VR, we created a security team. So if we have an issue, we have a security team that's going to the place. We have monitoring devices like cameras outside of the houses and sound trackers in order to prevent all of that issues from happening. happening and I think the communication between the authority and the property management company create a beautiful thing and also opportunities for business so think about it instead of let's say Miami instead of me having security team now you have a business of security that gives that service to property management companies in Miami so the hassle is not going on the police it's going on a company that gives that Exactly like what Ken Monkey is doing, for example, in the United States, which I think is great. All of the aspects of, and it's a small thing, right? Take garbage in, take garbage out, and that's all you need to do, or take extra garbage in. But when you're doing it in scale, it's becoming a hard thing, just that one minute action to do it. So them doing it really helps the industry. So a lot of the difficulties that we are suffering can create business opportunities to companies to come in. But through this conversation, this actually can happen. Yeah, I mean, the solutions are out there. And if the property management companies or the industry generally speaks to local authorities, then we can work out a way of making sure that this works for everybody. You know, if the local authorities say, okay, well, we want to register everybody. We want to know exactly what's going on. We're going to have minimum health and safety requirements. everybody has to have a noise monitoring tool everybody has to take care of the trash and the garbage and if you have that tick box and everybody agrees and they're doing things professionally then there's no reason why short-term rentals can't continue to be beneficial to the economy and that's of course like helping the local authorities as well a hundred percent a hundred percent and and and the thing is we need to unite it like in meaning like OTAs and technologies partners and property managers and organizations of workers, cleaning, maintenance, and everybody as a whole needs to come together because it's a fight of all of us in the end of the day 100% all of us together it's all of the ecosystem together and it's hard like you know when you look in Barcelona they have 10,000 licences that they give do you know how many empty apartments you have in Barcelona I bet it's a lot more than that So it's all about political and agenda and to push anger, but we should... They should hear our voice and should hear our stories. Yeah, it's become a very easy target to scapegoat, I think. You know, holiday lets in this country, short-term rentals in other countries, you know, saying, oh, these are the reason. Airbnb is the reason why nobody can buy a home anymore. But it's a lot more nuanced debate than that. It's not as simple as that. And, you know, you don't often get simple solutions to complex problems. And housing is a very complex problem. 1,000% is how many apartments you build, how many houses you build, and there is so much basically into it. And when you look at Barcelona, for example, number one economy growth and economy generating is tourism in Barcelona. How you're fighting against it. So yeah, your apartment, let's say it will cost less, which is not going to affect anything with $10,000. But let's say It will happen. You will make less money. So you will have less money to pay for the apartments that cost less. So I really don't understand it, to be honest. Yeah, we see this a lot, don't we, of people in tourist hotspots complaining and campaigning against tourism it's kind of biting the hand that that feeds you and i think trying to kind of campaign for some sort of ban or change it's a little bit problematic and uh you know we've seen this a lot in in spain recently especially in like the canary islands and the balearic islands of communities campaigning against tourism and saying they want a different way of doing things because the economy is dominated by tourism. Well, I would probably say like, be careful what you wish for, because if tourism comes to an end, then how are you going to pay for anything? Exactly. Yeah, we will see what happens, but definitely important that our industry unites and tells the positive stories of short-term rentals. HostHub is a top-rated property management platform for short-term rentals. 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And right now HostHub is offering a 14 day free trial to any host or property manager who would like to try the platform head to housetub.com hch for further details list your upscale vacation rental property with smiling house luxury to reach thousands of affluent and discerning travelers across the globe smiling house is home to more than 9 500 properties in 52 countries and 300 destinations worldwide from beachside villas in St. Barts to exclusive apartments in Dubai and opulent chateaus across Europe. Head to smilinghouse.ch for details about how to register your property with one of the leading OTAs in the luxury short-term rental space. Search and Stay is the holiday rental platform made for property owners. The Australia-based online travel agency prides itself on being owner-friendly and guest-focused. Hosts and property managers who use Search and Stay can list, book and manage properties for free, with the site only charging a minimal, affordable rate for each confirmed reservation. Search and Stay is committed to being the most affordable holiday rental booking platform for both hosts and guests. Head to the website for further details, searchandstay.com. Okay then, Charles, we've got a few questions to finish. Your favourite brand in the STR world, apart from your own, of course. I have many, but I think scale, doing amazing work in the convention, in the community, in uniting a property manager. And I love, love, love their mission. And I will pick one more if it's possible. Of course. I think a big problem in the industry is hiring. And I think Better Talent is doing amazing work in screening, getting the talent, do the matching to the company. And I think they are unique in their approach. So these two companies are really doing amazing work. Brilliant, brilliant shout out for scale there, Damien Sheridan and the team. And the other one was better tell, did you say? Better talent. Better talent. Yeah. Unbelievable person. Yeah. And the company. Better talent as well. Brilliant. An individual in the STR industry you'd like to give a shout out to and why? Yeah. Andy Fenner really blew my mind in his way of looking at the industry. What we talked about spreading the message, he did something that really clicked in my mind. And when we talked, he was telling me, We have around 4 million hosts in the world. We support around 50 million workers. These 50 million workers have around 20 friends. we can get to a one billion reach. And if we all reach out and create social media content, think about the effect that we can create worldwide. So meaning if Airbnb is doing it, it's one entity, right? But if we're doing it as a whole and take it as a mission, and exactly what we talked about, how do we spread our stories? How do we push it out? So he really clicked something in my mind that was, wow. And it's an idea that I would like to really push and understand how we are doing it, because this is a big mission for the vacation rental industry. Great shout out there for Andy Fenner from UK Short Term Accommodation Association, I think, off the top of my head. Final question then, Shahar, your number one lesson learned since founding Boom? that we currently now is the biggest disruption to ever happen to humankind, which is AI. And this is going to revolutionize everything that we know. And I'm happy to lead the industry towards that. Wow. Big words to finish on revolutionizing, not just the short-term rentals world, but humankind. Shahar, thank you so much for your time. It's been a real pleasure. Same, same, same, James. Really loved it. Great to chat to Shahar Goldboim there from Boom. For further details about this state-of-the-art AI-powered property management system, head to boomnow.com. That's just about it for this episode of the HCH Podcast. Thank you very much for listening. If you like what you've heard, you can help our platform massively if you subscribe, rate and review the podcast. For more free education, tips and trends related to the short-term rentals industry, head to our website where you can sign up for our newsletter and download our free e-book. It's HolidayCottageHamburg.com. If you need any mortgage support, make sure you check out HCH Financial Services. Their team of brokers have access to their very best holiday-let products. You can also help with other property finance. Give them a call on 0333 1234536 or email advice at hchfs.com. You can also visit the website for further details, hchfs.com. Finally, if you'd like to get in touch with the show, you can email me directly, james at holidaycottagehandbook.com. That's it for now. I'll speak to you soon.