Hey STR owners - what app do you need that doesnt exist yet?

[Mark Miles]

I was talking with some friends who are app developers about how far STR has come in recent years thanks to all the great new apps and software that help everyone out (MailChimp, YourPorter, OwnerRez, AirGMS, Guesty, etc). We were wondering - what is something you still do manually with STR that would be really helpful to have an app or software to automate it for you? What's the next wave of technology still to come in the app space?

[Mike F.]

@Mark Miles

STR apps market is flooded right now- just like many other industries. I worked on the enterprise side of marketing automation, so I understand a lot of the challenges.

For me, the perfect app would be a combination of in-bound and out-bound marketing to act as a front office concierge that covers the entire customer journey from looking / booking to check-out.  It would,

a.  Have 100% effectiveness for sending routine messages (Thank you for booking, check-in instructions, etc...)

b.  Have enough AI to be able to scan through my Guidebook to intuitively answer guest questions (where's the hair dryer, what's the lock combination, what time is checkout)?  For the AI, bayesian monte carlo markov chain machine learning would probably get you 80% of the way there.  It's similar to Next Best Offer that Pega Systems sells.

c.  You'd have to run the numbers to determine if y'all could make this into a profitable business model.  If it actually worked and simplified my life, I'd pay $50-$100 per property per month for it.

If y'all are testing the waters, I'd recommend the following,

1. Make sure that you are domain experts. The app developers should STR for a bit (to include Schedule E and C with accountant) to really understand the customer (me)). For instance, you should know why I suggested both E and C and what the implications are.

2. Pick one thing and do it really, really well. It sounds simple, but it's increasingly hard to do with DevOps and constant updates to APIs.

3. Being the "Hub" is difficult, so don't build extra crap. Chasing extra features is a race to the bottom. If you're going to put yourself in between a Mailchimp / Wheelhouse in order to market email campaigns or real time pricing with AirBnb / VRBO, then make sure that you stay out of the way of their code. Don't be the middle man.

-Mike