[Heather Bayer]
This is the Vacation Rental Success Podcast keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host Heather Bayer and with 25 years of experience in this industry I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new and what will help make your business a success.

Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host Heather Bayer and as ever, I am super delighted to be back with you once again, now sitting back in my own home studio back in Canada. We did the long four-day drive back up from Alabama a few days ago and everything went really smoothly and it was really nice to get back home again and getting everything set back up again in my little basement studio. I'm going to be doing some work on it over the next couple of months to make it a little better, improving my sound quality, lots of things coming up.

We've got a couple of new podcasts being launched next month and I'm really excited about that. More on that to come. We will be sharing that over the course of the next week or so. So that's super exciting for us.

Heading off to the VRNation Conference in Austin in a couple of weeks time. I'll be doing a presentation which I'm really excited about called Trust Me and it's about the competitiveness between property managers and co-hosts and how to overcome it. And this is going to be no ordinary presentation. The theme of VRNation this year is 'Out With the Old and in With the Bold' and I'm super excited that we're doing something completely different for our presentation. No more standing up and just talking about the slides that everybody can see. It's getting so outdated. So I've heard from quite a few other people who are going to Austin, to VRNation, who are also upping their game in presentations.

Mike wrote a brilliant article about presenting on LinkedIn recently. I will put a link to that in the Show Notes, because you really should go and have a look at that if you are ever thinking of pitching to VRMA or any other conference in fact where you're looking to get your pitch accepted. You've got to think outside the box these days. I mean with AI there is so much you can do alongside getting more audience engagement, because I think that is the key now. Anyway enough of that you'll be hearing more about that over the next couple of weeks.

I hope to be recording directly from VRNation when I'm there, because it's going to be such a super event.

Anyhow today we are still talking AI and I just wondered, have you ever looked at your property management system and thought, You know there has to be a better way. Talking about, you know, same old same old property management systems haven't really changed much over the years. They all do the same thing, they do it in much the same way. Some have way more bells and whistles that you'll never use than others. My guest today did ask that question. There has to be a better way and he not only thought that, but he went out and built it.

So I'm really thrilled to welcome Shahar Goldboim to the show. Shahar is the CEO and he's the founder of Boom which he calls AIPMS, or the world's first AI-powered property management system. And I've taken a look and, you know, it's more than just a shiny new piece of tech. It's a platform that's created by property managers for property managers. So we've heard  this before but this feels different. It's built from real life frustrations and long hours and what Shahar says it's this relentless desire to deliver true hospitality while still staying sane. I know that feeling, I've been a property manager too. So in this conversation we're going to dive - I'm using that ChatGPT expression again. We're going to dive into Shahar's journey from the time he was helping a friend list a family home on Airbnb to scaling a $150M portfolio at his company called DesignedVR and moving from that to launching Boom with his brothers and a close-knit team of industry insiders and AI experts. But this episode is not going to be just about the tech, it's about trust and it's about empathy and what it really means to bring humanity into the age of automation.

So we talk about using AI not to replace the personal touch in hospitality but to enhance it. Shahar breaks down how the AI can handle the mundane, so property managers can stay present for those make-or-break guest moments, and we've all had those. And yes we even get into some very cool examples of how Boom can actually read emotional cues in messages and adjust its responses accordingly. And this is not science fiction it's really happening right now. It's reading when somebody is angry or frustrated and responding appropriately. So if you've ever felt the stress of wearing too many hats, or wondered how to keep up the pace of change without losing the heart of your business, you're going to love this episode.

So you've heard enough from me let's get into the interview.

So I'm super delighted to have with me today Shahar Goldboim from Boom. I remember the first time I saw Boom I was judging at the Shortyz Awards back in, I think, 19...? That is dating me...., 2023 and that's when I first came across Boom, and I was blown away by it. I'd been out of the property management business for just a couple of years and I thought, Oh my gosh, I wish we'd had this for the time that I was using property management systems over all those years.

So we're going to be talking a lot about AI, property management systems, and hospitality.

So I'm delighted to welcome you, Shahar. Thank you for joining me.

[Shahar Goldboim]
I'm delighted to be over here and thank you so much for the kind words. It's really amazing to hear.

[Heather Bayer]
Well, at that time, back in 2023, in that judging capacity, I like to really go in-depth and find out about the people that are behind the company. And so when Alex Husner said to me, would you like to interview Shahar? And I said, absolutely, this is great. And I feel like I know him already, but my audience may not. So you've got such a great back story to where you are today with Boom. Can you just share a bit with everybody how you actually got in to this business in the first place?

[Shahar Goldboim]
As a vacation renter. I'm a broker and real estate investor from 2008 and an entrepreneur in nature, I've done a lot, a lot of stuff. But in 2016, I was doing a startup to real estate to find returns in the market. And the friend came to me while I was doing that and he was telling me.... I'm also a broker to real estate. So I was purchasing for his parents a house in Eastern Shore, which is a fancy community in Miami. And he was telling me, you know what, my parents decided not to move to the house. So I was telling him, great that they decided what's the connection to me. He told me I want to do it in Airbnb.

I told him, okay, let me think about it. I told him, let me think because I'm involved with a lot of stuff. Let me think how we can do it really quick. So I found a company in Australia that can implement interior design on top of empty picture. It was 2017. So I told him, you know what, let's take the picture of the house. Let's take the address of the house, implement the furniture on top of the empty picture, create a listing on Airbnb. Let's see the result, take it from there. So I was telling him, so we did it and all of a sudden we received like reservation after reservation after reservation.

So I told him, I told my wife - she's really talented - I asked her, do you want to design a home? I think we have a business over here. She said, well, yeah. And then we designed the home. We told all of the people that did reservations out that we are sorry that it got flooded. So we put like different furniture. Actually, it was looking better than what the original picture were. And this is how I got into the business. And I had like a flip that we got stuck with. So we changed it to an Airbnb and then we bought a multi-family that we changed to an Airbnb. And all of a sudden I have a management company.

So I've done like basically we started doing that and I use the PMS. I found it to be inefficient in all of the capabilities that we have. So I said, you know what? The startup will move it basically to be a tech enabled company and we'll build from there. So we build tools and we grew that company design. We are two companies that manage around $150 million of properties. So this is how I got into it. And around two years ago, I said, we build like an amazing technology. Why we won't give it to the world. So I found a way how I can basically put myself out of the company and we built the first AI PMS known as Boom.

[Heather Bayer]
And it's not just you and your wife. It's a big family company, right? You've got other family members involved.

[Shahar Goldboim]
Yeah, so it was my wife and my younger brother Alon. We built DesignedVR. And when we decided to put out Boom to the market, we also asked my older brother to join. He used to work in enterprise level technology, really high level. He worked in Red Hat, in Cisco, and he's a really early adopter to AI. Today, I think, he's at a high level in the world in his understanding of AI, not just in the level of the products that we are pulling out to the market, also in the way we develop and all of that element.

So Moran joined. And Yuval and his son as well, which Yuval is the first. So me Alon and Moran are brothers. And we have Yuval that is VP of R&D, that is a friend of Alon from age 10. And we have Idan that is a friend of Alon from age of 21, meaning just to give the background, Yuval is like a friend of 26 years. I know him from little age. Idan is a friend for the last 15 years. And we have Nitzan that also used to work in DesignedVR, the COO of DesignedVR. So we have a lot of element of family, friendship, and a lot of also understanding of the industry, meaning around 60% of the workers in Boom used to work in DesignedVR. So our ability to understand the market is huge with a connection to technology of that aspect.

[Heather Bayer]
I think that is so important to have that experience in property management and bring that into an area where technology is right at the forefront because the theme of this is it's part of our AI series that we're doing over the course of this six weeks or so. But we also want to be talking about hospitality, not losing sight that hospitality is what this business is all about. It's where we started with hospitality.

And AI has come in as an adjunct, as something to complement the hospitality. So that's where I want to go now. You know, hospitality has always been about creating meaningful human connections.

So in talking about AI's ability to complement rather than replace this element, how do you see it used to enhance human hospitality without losing the warmth and authenticity that goes with traditional hospitality?

[Shahar Goldboim]
So you were a property manager, and you understand how hard it is to be a property manager.

[Heather Bayer]
Spinning plates, lots of spinning plates.

[Shahar Goldboim]
A lot of tedious tasks that you have to do. You have to do bookkeeping, and you have to do marketing, and you have to delegate tasks, and you need to be 24/7 with a guest. And there is so many aspects, like to be a construction sometimes, and there is so many factors that you have to do that sometimes that we are losing our meaning, which is creating hospitality, is to creating the touch, to create this meaningful point, is to be there when you actually need it.

So where AI coming into place, as I see it, is moving this tedious task, so I will be able to focus on the client. If I'm asking you what is the Wi-Fi code, or like a lot of like questions that is not really touch, it's informational, right? So how can I move that?

So when you ask me, oh, my God, I stuck, and I don't know what to do, I'll be there for you because I don't have 100 other tests. So if we're looking, for example, in communication level, I have Tier 1, I have Tier 2, I have Tier 3, I have Tier 4. So when you need me at Tier 3, I want to be there for you.

So if all of the Tier 1, Tier 2 moving away from me, I can be there over there for you. And a lot of times, the hardest thing in vacation rental till you get into a certain scale is you need to wear so many hats, right? Like it's running organization because it's not the most profitable business.

Your margins are not that high. And how do you do it with the amount of people? So that's how I see AI coming in, is giving you more margin, more scalability, and really focusing what we are really good at, to bring amazing hospitality.

[Heather Bayer]
I love that concept. The concept is that in using AI better, then we give ourselves more time to devote to the core part of the business, which is the hospitality. And as you're talking, I'm thinking back to my years of those questions, those constant questions, what's the Wi-Fi password? How do I get the washing machine to work? The temperature on the hot tub is too low, what can I do to make it better?

And I mean, for years, I think, we just kept churning out the answers as somebody would call or email. And then we went into, Okay, why don't we create a list, an FAQ list of all the questions we've ever been answered? And we did that manually, so that when somebody got that question, got a question, they could send the guest to a list, which really wasn't very hospitable, in fact. The guest has asked the question, which means they made a connection, and now you're sending them somewhere else. Thanks very much for your question, here's where you can go and find it.

So you've made that connection, then immediately losing it by sending them elsewhere. So now I see that with AI in place, they can continue that connection. Am I right? Is this how it's working?

[Shahar Goldboim]
For me, it's always making the guest feel that he gets everything that he needs, in the speed that he needs, and when he needs a touch, I'm there for him. When he doesn't need it, I'm not there, right? So it's like, I don't want you to be there till I want you to be there. And when I want you to be there, I want you in the second that I want you to be there to be there. And how do you do that? So that's exactly what AI is giving you the capability to do.

[Heather Bayer]
So you've spoken about AI being able to recognize emotional cues and respond with empathy. How close are we to AI that it can truly understand the guest's mood and adjust its responses? There's got to be limitations to that.

[Shahar Goldboim]
So we're already there. Like we already captured the level of the fun. We call it the fun level of the guest.

[Heather Bayer]
You call it the fun level?

[Shahar Goldboim]
So you have the fun level of the guest, and in the CRM you will have staying/angry. So when our people in customer support that's working on Zoom can see who is staying/angry and can go into it. So if my AC, for example, is not working, obviously I'm not happy, right? And like how the process and for the element of the answer you understand how angry the person is and doing all of this analysis.

[Heather Bayer]
So how does that... Give me an example. How would the difference be in a response from somebody who's just making a simple inquiry to somebody who is coming across as clearly frustrated that they're not getting the answer they want?

[Shahar Goldboim]
So it will be in two aspects, right? It's like, first of all, what's the issue that you're experiencing and what's the language that you are using? And also the difference of the language to the level of the person. So some persons speak in a certain way of language, and other ones speak with another way of language, and how does the change of tone in what is right in compared to who he is. So it's in three levels, you can look at it.

[Heather Bayer]
Oh, that's... Yeah, this is way beyond where I was when I left my company. And I'm sure... Somebody said to me recently about... Are there any books out there on AI in short-term rentals that I could read? And I said, well, nobody's going to write a book on AI in short-term rentals because it will be superseded within weeks, if not days. So, you know, what is the point of that? So, yeah, it is moving on so fast.

Can we talk about staffing? Let's talk about the people involved in the business because we hear, so am I going to be replaced by AI? Is a reservationist going to be replaced by the AI? There's a fear of job displacement. How do you respond to that?

[Shahar Goldboim]
I think when you're working in the vacation rental industry there is a lot of stress level because you're doing so much stuff and it's 24/7. So my ability is to have much better work-life balance to that matter because I don't think it will change. It will change the element of scale and we need really good people in our organization. And your point to run an organization that will be with smaller amount of people but everybody will be unique in what he's doing. So if you're really good in what you're doing you're not going to be replaced. The ones that are going to be replaced, the ones that are not good because as we talked before, like the human touch is so important.

It's so important that if I'm really frustrated and I need to talk with somebody, I need to talk with somebody and I need somebody expert that will be able to answer my need and I need somebody expert, don't have 100 different calls on his waiting list but he will be focused with me. And I think that's kind of where the frustration lays. Like when you're getting stressed is when you know that you need to do stuff that you're not getting to and that's mostly when you're getting stress on your shoulders because if you've done everything that you can do and you're feeling good about what you've done, you won't have stress.

So I think it actually will improve the life of people and everything that I'm looking at, I'm looking at excellence and I want in my environment people that are A players and I want to be surrounded by the A player. So the C players, they have a problem. The B minus players, they have a problem. And that's how I feel about it.

[Heather Bayer]
Okay, so when you're talking to companies, when you're talking to them about introducing Boom to them and to their staff. Do you ever talk about how, I'm going back to Pascale Bournet again from Irreplaceable and he says that every employee should know what AI is and what its benefits are. Are there educational initiatives?

How do you think that property management companies should be training their staff to make sure their teams are well versed in AI and its potential advantages rather than have them coming in and being more distrustful of it? Does that make sense?

[Shahar Goldboim]
So I think you can start with a policy that you don't ask a question before you ask your GPT the questions before you're asking your staff in a way. So that's the first way to implement it, and understand the capability of it. For example, today before I'm asking ChatGPT much more than I'm asking Google, probably 95% will be ChatGPT and 5% will be Google.

So when you're doing this kind of policy, people understand the capability of the tools. This is how you implement within your organization. And creating automation. So you can start with a co-pilot, make people feel, okay, it's not auto. You need to approve it. And you can see the accuracy basically of the information that is of the answer of the AI. And it's like not using the internet or not using a computer. AI is becoming an infrastructure. It's becoming like electricity, water, like internet. And you have to use it and you have to implement it. And what you asked me before, it's not that AI going to replace employees. Companies not using AI will be replaced by companies that do. So this is how I'm looking at it.

[Heather Bayer]
Yeah, it's interesting. One of my earlier jobs in the 1990s I worked for Reader's Digest in England and they were just introducing computers. I do remember back to that time and it was like, oh my gosh, this is so new. And we were very distrustful of it at first. But it very quickly turned into, well, we can't do without this. And this is the same thing that's going to happen. My job at Reader's Digest in customer service was writing letters for the managing director so that he didn't have to write his letters. And I would sit there for an hour or two with a single letter composing this perfect response that would be signed by the managing director but written by me.

And now I look at it and I think, well, that could have been...., I would have had a brand voice of this man, this managing director and I would have just given this brand voice the letter of complaint and seconds later I would have a response in his brand voice, in his own voice. So yes, it's just about, I think for people with this type of change, it's encouraging them to go through the fact that this has happened over and over and over again through our lifetimes.

Some of us have been around a lot longer, so we've seen more of these changes and the changes are coming quicker now. But yeah, that is a great response that you made. So thank you for that.

So let me talk about trust. I've been talking to a number of people about trust recently and the fact that it plays such a critical role in hospitality. And particularly when we're looking at direct bookings, somebody's making a direct booking, they've got to be trusting the company that they're making that direct booking with. Yet AI faces skepticism when introduced to guest interactions. How are property managers and hospitality brands actually using it in a way that strengthens rather than diminishes that guest trust? Are we beyond the point now where people are looking at response that comes back to them from live chat or from an email?

Are we looking beyond the time that we said, Oh, that's AI generated?

[Shahar Goldboim]
So it's getting better as we go. Like all the time it's getting better and it's not a lot of times they won't notice, right? So if they are working right, they won't notice. The only thing that you're not is, hey, you know what, it's so good. And I understand everything. So if it's so good and I understand everything, I don't have a problem with it, right? So and also how you take AI and you make it the voice of the company and the feel of the company and the touch of the company.

[Heather Bayer]
Yeah, how do you do that? How do you make it the voice and the touch of the company?

[Shahar Goldboim]
So you look at conversations that happened for the last five years of the company, so you understand the tone, you understand the policies, you understand basically all about them and you can also modify it. So this is how you understand by reading and the thing is when you're doing it you understand that also a lot of time when you have 30 customers to support, not everything is aligned, because it's really hard also to go all over the Chat and understand who is doing your job right, who is not doing your job, right? Or if so, so actually with AI you have much more capability of control, because what I say and then you can modify it.

[Heather Bayer]
So we basically understand the DNA of the company Okay, so it's about introducing the AI to your brand and making sure it understands it inside and out. It's all about the data, right?

[Shahar Goldboim]
It's like, what are my data sources, how they sitting and how I have capabilities to do it. And then I'm able to do all of that stuff it's also about the connection between the stuff, right? Because if I'm like... Let's say I'm asking for an early check-in and let's say I just have an AI chatbot, so if it's not connecting to your task management, how can you know if you can allow an early check-in if I need to do a service called to fix the toilet, or to fix the shower? How does it know that everything was completed? How does it know that I didn't have a late check out? So everything needs to be connected to be able to have the information to give.

[Heather Bayer]
Okay, so let's just touch on loyalty, because you know loyalty is everything in hospitality particularly with direct bookings. That's one of the things you want that there may a guest may come via an OTA, but then you want to connect with them directly and have them book direct with the company the next time. How does AI strengthen that loyalty and retention? What features are there that does that?

[Shahar Goldboim]
At the end of the day, what is loyalty? If I'm driving and I see a Starbucks I go to Starbucks because I know what to expect when I'm getting into this Starbucks. When my kids see Chick-fil-A they want to stop in Chick-fil-A because you know/they know the products that they are going to get and the consistency that you are going to get, so at the end of the day loyalty is equal to consistency, and knowing what you're going to get. So if I have an AI that's working really good, I know the consistency that I'm going to get and that's the loyalty in the end of the day. And you can also look at stickiness and what is the stickiness if somebody received like an amazing service, he wants to be back. And where I can give like an amazing hospitality when I can touch, when I can touch when I have time, so if I'm empty time and I can touch and I can think about the experience of the guest and I can look at the experience of the guest, then I can touch.

[Heather Bayer]
So what it comes down to is, if you're alleviating the stress, preventing some burnout and creating a healthier work environment for your staff through AI then they have the time and the passion to deliver the best service ever, best touch-like service

[Shahar Goldboim]
And a smile right? And do it with a smile and when you are coming with a place to just you see people smiling and happy and not pressured, it's fun and it make you feel welcome and it make you feel that you want to come again.

[Heather Bayer]
Yeah, I've heard just over this last six weeks or so while I've been doing this series and a lot of skepticism from people saying, Well it's going to take the human touch away.

We are 100 focused on Hospitality and now I'm seeing from this conversation with you. It was there all the time, but I can see how clearly AI can be looked at in a very different way in terms of creating space for employees, for team members to do what they should be doing and that's keeping guests and owners happy.

[Shahar Goldboim]
Exactly. Exactly. That's what we are here for and again, it's not everything it's not technology. It's a mix of human with AI like it's just giving us more time. We are better in what we are doing.

It's a stress relief But you need to have this amazing leaders in property management to be able to create. In creating like this experience because AI can take the tedious tasks away, but it will never give the hospitality, as a rule, that we can touch.

[Heather Bayer]
Yeah, exactly so what about businesses that are hesitating to invest in AI because of concerns about cost and ROI, so you must have some compelling business use cases where you've seen AI delivering measurable revenue growth. Can you talk to that?

[Shahar Goldboim]
Yeah, so I'll give you a small example. So if you have your night shift, let's say from 12 am to 9 am or 8 am, and a lot of companies won't have a salesperson at that time, because they had two inquiries, one inquiry, no inquiry. Why should I have basically a person on that time, right? Depending on the size of the company and all of that. So if I have an AI sales agent that can be there all the time, any time, so then the night shift can be gone, right? And I can answer somebody in 10 seconds when he's sending an inquiry at two o'clock in the morning, and if I'm the only one answering back, probably I will get the inquiry in, right? So this is one example, right?

It just came to my head, but there are so many that you can look at it and in the end of the day in everything AI is such a money saver. And as we continue prices will go down rather than up where salaries are going up. So your ability to do it is your ability to survive. It's like a company saying, You know what, I'm not going to be on over the internet, OK? So you don't want to be over the internet and you don't have a business, right?

We have like we are the fraction of the time probably in the biggest disruption probably ever happened to humankind happening now. So if you will take a look and you want to compare it..., let's compare it to the industrial revolution. So the industrial revolution, basically we had farmers, most of the people were farmers, and so we had the industrial revolution that changed basically to a totally different workplace. This took us more than a 100 years or 150 years of revolution. That going to happen now in five to ten years

[Heather Bayer]
That's a good segue into a post on your website, a blog post, which was what it's going to be like to be a property manager in 2030? So, not everybody would have read that post, so tell us about what it's going to be like then.

[Shahar Goldboim]
It's exactly what we talked about, just more extreme. So your ability to move your tedious tasks, like bookkeeping, marketing, accounting. How do I basically move all of these tedious tasks that is happening are being done. And how I can be relaxed and enjoy and basically be with my guests, enjoying with my guests, and it's capturing everything that we talked about prior to this. We are going to see a lot of changes and we are going to see changes also with labor. We're going to see changes with robots with AI. We're going to see so many elements basically changing. I just saw a video of Boston Dynamics robots and the capability of the robot of smoothing and basically moving like a person. In all  aspects, meaning like a professional person in his capability to do Capoeira [Afro-Brazilian martial art and game] and the ability to move all of his body. So you understand?

Okay, if I'm installing AI capability in it, it's meaning that he will know how to do stuff - unclog the toilet!

[Heather Bayer]
I was just going to come to that, because that was always the thing, you know, when you've got a property that has five bedrooms and it's got five bathrooms. That is five toilets to clean and that comes to the top of the list of some people about the real downside of being a property manager. And I love that idea that maybe you just dispatch your robot to go clean the bathrooms.....

[Shahar Goldboim]
..... and do the pool and do the landscaping and now you will have guests that will have 24/7 cleaning, so they don't have to clean their dishes and they will be able to have their laundry done and there is so much more capabilities, right? So now it will move into financial in the end of the day. What's it cost and how much it cost me?

So in Miami to clean a house which is 4,000 square feet, you will look at around $600-$650, right? And let's say you have five cleaning a month or you're around $3,000 for paying for cleaning for the house. $3,000 in a normal interest rate look at around $600,000 for 30 years fixed around 500 dollar for each hundred thousand dollar So when you look at it about it this way now, I can buy a robot for six hundred thousand dollar, right? That I can put in the house and it will be equal to the cleaner Just that now the house can be clean 24/7, so I can charge more money than what they charge the guests before, because I have an option now to clean the dishes every day, to make them breakfast to make them dinner to do the laundry, to do the landscaping, to do the pool, right? And this is also a don't cost so I can set it for more money. So now in $3,000 I can do seven eight thousand dollar, so I guess it all depends on financial capabilities also insurance because some guests are invariably.... somebody can take a baseball bat and start beating the robot

[Heather Bayer]
Yeah

[Shahar Goldboim]
But we will live definitely in a really interesting world and it will be the financial aspect of style the connection of stuff.

[Heather Bayer]
So yeah well, as long as hospitality remains a human capability and something that is still carried out by humans.

I was talking to Matt Landau this morning about going down to Rocky Point to visit the Casago team and walking into the reception at Encantame Towers, which is the big resort there, and the Casago team were on the reception desk and as I walked in the door they all three looked at us with beaming smiles and said welcome and, you know, that had such a profound impact. That's something that no robot can do

[Shahar Goldboim]
Unreplaceable, unreplaceable, but again, we want to move the tedious tasks and to create a better experience, so move that and the human touch, the feeling, the ability to talk with somebody and, by the way, with the robots maybe it won't happen in five years. Maybe it will happen in 15, but one thing's for sure, it will happen. That I can tell you for sure. So it depends on the time that it will happen and how much time it will take but for sure we see it right so It's like understanding where we are going and understand the actions that we are doing In order to go towards the future in order to be relevant in order to be there And as the end of the day, there is nothing like it has there is nothing like from somebody that you like or you love, and there is nothing like getting from your daughter a kiss on the cheek. There is nothing like that. No robot can replace it. It's like it's what we want.

We want to smile. We want to laugh. We want to enjoy and that's basically what we want.

[Heather Bayer]
That is a good point to close out this discussion. I think that was perfect, but before you go Shahar I'd love you to tell us a little bit more about Boom and the difference between Boom and traditional property management software.

[Shahar Goldboim]
So I touch with that that I really don't know what is a PMS because every PMS have different tools that they give. So the biggest difference between like so we build an holistic solution that everything is connected, so your ability to control your business that's first of all understanding KPIs for each person in your organization, how good it is meaning what are the review scores that my cleaner gets, how much time it's taking to clean?

How much time it's take me to answer a Chat? Who is my best salesperson? How's my AI agent doing compared to my regular agent? So all of the aspects of measuring your business and your ability to control your business Now how everything is connecting. So let's say I have a task, how is the task connecting to the P&L of the property, right? So understanding all of that mechanism. So we build basically complete tooling under one platform, which is holistic and everything talking with everything. So we have a project management and now the product management you can create yourself any flow that you want. So let's say if I get a house in then I need to do a licensing, I need to do budgeting,  a design budget for that, and all of the aspects of each person your organization what he needs to do. But every mission depends on different missions and some can operate in parallel. So how's the project management connecting to the task management that's connecting to your financial, that's connecting to your KPIs of your people. How's your trust accounting connecting to your operating accounting and basically everything talking with everything with the flow and AI. So we're not looking at AI in matter of OK a chatbot. I'm looking at the AI as your worker and how the worker is talking with another worker and all of that element that everything talking with everything and implementing AI into it and your capability to see the analysis of all of that understanding the business intelligence of everything that's going on. This is Boom.

[Heather Bayer]
How's the learning curve? I ask this question because in my 20 years as a property manager, we did transition twice, and one of those transitions was a disaster. The next one was painful but we made it. But that that was maybe 10 years ago, so I'm sure things have changed dramatically since then.

[Shahar Goldboim]
Change is always hard. Let's start with it because it's something new. So you're coming with it with a little bit of fear. You don't know how it's going to be. But our point is to make it as easy as we can. So we will start moving you to the channel manager and then we'll start touching all of the points. So we'll move to the guest portal, to the store, to the task management, to the accounting. And basically touch each part and basically teaching you. We see it as a major point that our client will be happy. We put a lot of emphasis on the implementation on the customer success. In the end of the day the customers are coming to us. They're our partners. Their success is our success And our capability to understand their difficulties.

I am a property manager... I was a property manager. Most of the team in Boom were property managers, so we understand the suffering, we understand the pain. So I think it's really important because we are related, so we understand and We build this way and we are there to help our clients, our partners, to be successful in what they do

[Heather Bayer]
Sometimes I wish.... No, I was going to say sometimes I wish I could have had my time over again. No I wouldn't have that time over again, because I would do so many things differently and I'm not sure I'd have the ability to do that But certainly to be able to start again and start from an AI focus standpoint. I think it would be just a no-brainer now; it's a different world.

[Shahar Goldboim]
You know, when we open a presentation with a customer we open a WhatsApp group, so they can get an answer two minutes after they write, so there's no ticket - Oh, we'll get back to you in 24-hours. We're getting back to you in minutes. Like when you're in need we want you to be over there, like a lot of the time. Like when you are not clear, right? Like what is the hardest thing is that I don't know when they will answer me I don't know when they will come and like when you're approaching it and you are communicated and you know, so it's different

[Heather Bayer]
It sounds great and I will make sure that all the information on Boom is put on to the Show Notes As well as a link to Shahar's LinkedIn profile. Go there, have a look at the newsletters because that's where I first started to learn more about your business and how you interact with your clients. So all that information is going to be on the Show Notes.

Shahar, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you. I get so excited about the potential of AI in everything, and you made me think that perhaps I could do this all over again and do it in a very different way.

So thank you.

[Shahar Goldboim]
It's been such a pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversation and thanks for having me.

[Heather Bayer]
Well that was a brilliant conversation. I love talking about AI, you know this you've been hearing me talk a lot about it over the past six weeks or so as we've been really getting into and exploring different aspects of what this technology is doing for us now.

So I'm so grateful to Shahar for joining me and sharing that story behind Boom and how it's helping property managers shift from being overly burnt out to being more balanced and why it's time we stop seeing AI as a threat and start embracing it as a tool for better hospitality. So if there's one thing I took away from this chat it's that the heart of our business hasn't changed, it's still all about connection and trust and delivering exceptional guest experiences. But now with these AI tools like Boom we've got a chance to do all of that with less stress more focus and I think a little bit more fun than we used to have.

So if you're curious to learn more, head over to Boomnow.com. You can go there, you can request a demo and see how the platform works in real time and of course I've dropped a link into the Show Notes, so you can find it easily.

So as always thank you for spending your time with me today if this episode got you thinking or helped you breathe a little sigh of relief, can you share it with someone in your network who might need it too. And don't forget that the previous five episodes have all been about AI and I teased a little bit at the start about a new podcast that's coming out soon. I'll give you a little bit more information, one of these podcasts is going to be called 'STRAIT Chat', that's Short-Term Rental AI Technology Chat, STRAIT Chat. I love that, and I actually made it up. I didn't even ask ChatGPT to do it for me. So STRAIT Chat is going to be a new podcast which is just about AI for the short-term rental business. So as soon as we got that organized I will be putting out information on LinkedIn, but if you want early access to it just send me send me an email and I'll make sure that you're first on the list to hear about it.

So until next time, keep being curious, stay open to change and keep putting hospitality first as ever. Take care folks see you soon.