Around 100 million people currently use ChatGPT, and as that number grows, the impact of artificial intelligence will be felt across almost every industry you can think of.
Travel is no exception, and in fact, travellers are already using AI to compare prices, get recommendations and plan and book ideal trips from start to finish.
And it’s not only guests who are turning to AI for help. As we’ll cover in this article, hosts and property managers can use AI tools to update and improve their listings, stay competitive and increase profits.
In this article, we’ll explain:
- Why guests are using AI to book dream trips
- How hosts and property managers can optimise their listings using AI
- Other ways to use AI tools for vacation rentals
How AI is revolutionising travel
More and more people turn to AI tools like ChatGPT for help and advice, including to plan and book dream vacations.
While chatbots have been around for a while, the advanced, conversational abilities of ChatGPT bring another layer of personalisation to the experience.
With a tool like ChatGPT you can plan an entire trip, and this could be a great way of creating bespoke travel plans.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that companies such as Expedia have started to get in on the trend. The travel group has developed a ChatGPT plug in meaning guests can start a conversation with an AI assistant from within the Expedia app. This AI assistant can then help with hotel and property recommendations, experiences and tourist attractions to visit at their destination.
Guests can then automatically save hotels and recommendations from the conversations to their own trip planner, and get more personlised recommendations, price tracking and virtual assistance as well.
This may become a bigger trend in the travel space with more travel apps and booking sites integrating AI tools to help guests design every aspect of their trips.
Check and improve your listings with AI
AI isn’t just for guests. It can also help you optimise your listings, get more bookings and revenue, improve the guest experience and manage your business more efficiently.
One powerful way for property managers to use AI is to analyse and improve your listings.
With Powerhost’s Check My Listing tool, you can analyse your Airbnb listing and spot opportunities to improve it.
The free tool will inspect all aspects of your listing, including:
- Completeness of your profile — Writing a good host bio is important to build trust with guests
- Quality of your photos — Your listing should have plenty of high quality photos to show off your properties
- Amenities — Tick off as many amenities as you can to increase your chances of appearing in searches and getting bookings.
- Reviews — Your reviews are one of the most important decision-making factors for guests, so it’s important to get your ratings as high as possible.
Once you’ve submitted your listing, you’ll get a score for each different section of your listing and profile, along with personalised tips on how to improve.
Powerhost customers will benefit from a built-in listing checker that uses AI to analyse listings on every channel and provides constant opportunities to improve.
The benefits of using AI to check your listings
If your listing is missing information or isn’t completed to its full potential, you could be missing out on bookings.
The key to getting more bookings and increasing your revenue could be a few simple changes that will make your listing perform much better in terms of ranking and conversions.
For example:
- With all amenities completed, you have more chance of appear in filtered searches
- Having a fully completed description and bio helps build trust with potential guests
- High-quality, professional photos will increase your chances of getting bookings.
The tool will remove any mystery or doubt about how to improve your listings by scoring each section and giving you detailed tips and recommendations on how to make any aspect of your listing better.
Other ways property managers can use AI
As well as optimising your listings, there are other ways to use AI in vacation rentals.
Set accurate prices
Automates Revenue Management.
Complements Dynamic Pricing Tools.
Dynamic pricing tools like Beyond Pricing and Wheelhouse use AI to help you set the best prices all year round to maximise bookings and revenue.
These tools analyse historical booking data, seasonal trends, local events and competitor prices to recommend the optimal rates for your properties.
You can allow the pricing tool to adjust your prices automatically, or just review the suggestions and set your own rates.
Message guests easily
You can use AI to quickly compose and send messages to guests.
Powerhost’s Smart Guest Communication tool allows you to automatically respond to guest questions using Quick Replies, and set up automated messages to welcome guests, provide check-in details and more.
Improve your listing using AI today
If you want a quick and easy way to analyse your listings and discover opportunities to improve, try Check My Listing today.
You can improve your listings in three simple steps, all you have to do is:
- Go to Check My Listing
- Paste in your Airbnb URL
- Get your results in seconds!
Once you’ve received your scores and tips, you can start implementing changes to improve your listings and increase your conversions.
When you manage your listings through Powerhost, you’ll get an automatic built-in listing checker that will analyse all your listings and give accurate suggestions about how to improve each one, across all channels.
With Powerhost you can list on 50+ channels, manage your listings and guest messages from one place, and even publish your own vacation rentals website.
Enables reinvented Revenue Management.