How To Really Impress Your Guests and Increase Repeat Bookings

So one thing which I absolutely love at the moment is the amount of tech and the new and exciting things which is happening in hospitality and obviously, Bruce Lee, what we want to do is promote more direct bookings and ways that you as a host can stand out and make sure guests always remember their experience when they come and stay with you. And our guest today helps with exactly that. They really help both with the experience, but also so you can really impress them and get more direct bookings for the future. So this is the Bruce Lee podcast. If this is your first time here, the Bruce Lee podcast helps host with the tools, the tactics, the trainings and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get more direct bookings. Today, we're joined by very special guest. We've got the CEO and founder of Enzo Connect. As Francois, I'm going to be terrible pronouncing this. Francois Guerrero, is that right? You got it. Superb. Okay. So he's here to tell us all about the latest things happening with Enzo Connect. And if you haven't heard of this before, do stick around. You're going to have a great time finding out about this product and how you can get involved and put this into your hospitality business. So welcome along Francois. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me and I love talking about everything book direct and so on. So I know you guys are the OGs in this space. So I appreciate you having the on the podcast today. Thank you. Thank you very much. So just before we went live, we were talking about where you are in the world. But before we dive into the product, which I know everyone's going to be excited to find out about, give me a little bit about your history of, first of all, where you are in the world, your history and how Enzo Connect came to be. 100%. So I'm currently based in Toronto in Canada, originally from France, but raised in England and in the US a bit. So travel to a fair bit with family, which was always an amazing thing. And I did my studies, you know, some people might see me on this and might be like, how old is this kid? It's more about 26 years old. And I started Enzo Connect right out of the university. I studied computer science, cognitive science, focus and computational linguistics, literally working on models like Chatchy B.D. Transformer as we used to call them before OpenAI kind of brought their own version of it. And then did a masters of entrepreneurship at Cambridge in the UK. Enzo Connect was, I was never meant to start a company. It was a pure accident. In fact, I was supposed to go again job like, you know, any normal person after university and figure out what I was going to do. But instead, I started this company out of pure accident because I was in a course and we had to come up with a solution to an entrepreneurial problem. Now I had to be robotics focused and I absolutely hate robotics. So I went up to my prof and I said, can I do smart home devices instead? And he reluctantly said, yes, but he said, you're probably not going to win the $10,000 cash prize at the end of the course. And I was like, wait a minute. There's a $10,000 cash prize at the end of this course. Challenge accepted Mario. I'm going to do everything to win this. I don't think I attended any of my other courses. I just focused on that one. First weekend, my best friend calls me up and he's tells me, friends, while you're trying to become Canadian, you're French and you don't know how to ski. So we're going to go to Multumbleau and we're going to learn how to ski. So it's a Friday morning, early afternoon, and we drive towards Multumbleau from Toronto, which is about a four or five hour drive. We book a vacation rental on Airbnb. Maybe the first mistake, I don't know. And we get an automated message that says, keys under the door, Matt, here's your check and instructions. Have a nice stain. That's about it. We get to the unit, keys frozen under the door, Matt. We finally pry ourselves into the unit and we noticed the heating system was per room. We didn't figure that out until the checkout. So we just ended up staying in the living room where it was warm and we could make fire. And then throughout the state, we're asking basic questions. How do I get pizza delivered in the middle of nowhere, the millennial that I am? How do I do this? How do I do that? And no answer is whatsoever. Five days after checkout, we get a text message from the host saying, we left one of the windows open in the kitchen. Kitchen pipes froze. We owe him $5,000, and he's sending us a small claims court. So that's kind of the birth story of Enzo Connect. We did close those windows message coming in five days after checkout could have been a different guest. I mean, it was a whole ordeal. And we decided to solve the check and problem. So we started with a very, very basic proof of concept. And the idea was everyone has data about them. We know basic information. Now as much as an OTA might restrict emails and phone numbers and such, we know certain key information that should allow you to make the check and process seamless. So we built a very small proof of concept. We actually brought in a door, which I still have right here on my, near my desk. Hey, we are sure there's now to sign it. And we built a proof of concept. We ended up winning the 10 grand. And then I was starting a master's of entrepreneurship. And I was like, part of my French, but fuck it. I'm going to try and do this on the side and see what happens. So that's kind of the birth story of Enzo Connect. Obviously, a lot has changed since day one. I mean, we connected with a smart lock that I don't think exists anymore. So there's a lot more to just smart locks and checking in, if you will, that we've developed. But yeah, that's the founding story of Enzo Connect. That's amazing. What I love about that is you experienced a problem. First of all, can I just say that? Those sounds awful. I mean, like, if they're not calling you during your stay to encourage you to obviously book direct next time, or just to make an impression, then obviously that I take it, you're not going to leave a fantastic review, especially after that text and about the window. But when it comes down to Enzo Connect, and you experiencing that problem, I love the fact that you've just gone out there and just went, you know what, this needs solving. You know, this is a clear thing that needs solving. And it might be a case of, first of all, you experiencing it, but then also at the perfect time, because the tech is now there. There's some we always say to hosts who are worried about leaving OTAs that there's so much tech out there that you can do so many things that other hosts 20 years ago, five years ago, couldn't even do, you know, and that's the great thing. What would you say is the experience from, I guess? So if you had Enzo Connect when you were checking into that Airbnb, what would your experience have been like? Well, you know what? I'll tell you what my experience was a week ago. I went to Montreal for a festival, not very professional with me. I wish I could tell you it was a work trip, but not I went out and partied at Oceaga. And I decided to book one of our clients' properties, called Simplicimo, out of Montreal. So same destination, different client. And I got to check in using our platform. And what was really cool about this is we drove from 6 p.m. and arrived at 1 a.m. and the check in was smooth. So I got the information at the right time. I got what we call a boarding pass, which is kind of a web app that encompasses all the different links that you would usually send to guests. So things like guidebooks, upsells, verification, check in information, smart logs, all in one branded and designed in your way, kind of web app, no downloads required or anything like that. And I got to check in. And the process was smooth. It was step by step, picture by picture, check in instructions with the last element being a unlock door button, unlock the door, took a shower, went to bed, and then went and partied for the weekend. So it was a great, great experience. Also a great way for me to see certain items of the check and experience that were not the way I would want it to be. So noticing that, you know, an integration with a particular smart log generates six digit codes instead of four digit codes. I should have had that off the whole time. So just being able to understand how clients use our platform, what are some limitations, what we could improve. But definitely, I think it would have made the check and experience any upsell part way more convenient. So if you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boosley and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only on niche, but could be in your location as well. Boosley has helped over 2,000 hospitality businesses all over the world, increased their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boosley, b-o-o-s-t-l-i.co.uk or slash call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team. One of the things which you mentioned before is that people set up these automated emails. And I'm one of the people who are now going to stay somewhere. I don't want to be getting like seven different emails and trying to remember, oh, let me scroll up looking for checking information. And I've been guilty of that when I first set up, I said, I need to tell them everything right now. And that was like, throw an up information on one big long email. And inevitably, what do people do? They get there, where's the key box? Oh, that's annoying. I'm not able to do that as well. I mean, fuck you, I'll do that. But this is a great thing about having a place where they can go and access all this information. And you also mentioned the upsells as well. So how would it work for us as a host? What do we need to do? How much effort does it take to set up something like Enzo Connect? What's the time involved, I guess? So I'll take a step back and I'll give you a bit of the story behind the boarding pass and how we got to that point because this was developed a year ago and it's evolved so much from all the client feedback that we've gotten. When we first started, it was really just collecting data and a guidebook and not a great guidebook at that to be quite honest. So we've developed it since to account for more. When we first started Enzo Connect, we actually started off as a unified messaging platform with different AI capabilities, not ChatGPT at the time, although now we've finally launched Enzo AI, which is ChatGPT in your inbox. And it was a basic inbox with text, email WhatsApp and Airbnb message, something which at the time was lacking from many property management systems. We would centralize the information, create different automations and we would focus a lot on the concept of if this then that. So if the guest sends this kind of message or if this happens or if that happens then send a message. What we realized, this was about a year, year and a half ago, is people were setting up a ridiculous amount of workflows of these conditions and logic for their guest experience. And effectively, it wasn't actually reducing the amount of questions guests had. It was just automating their tasks of sending out messages, but not necessarily responding to the overwhelming number of guest questions. And so the idea shifted from, well, let's not think about automating guest messages. Let's think about removing them completely. Why is it that when I book a hotel, I don't interact with anyone until I show up to the property. If they're not self-check-in, then I have a front desk to just get my ID and get the key and so on. But I don't have any questions. And that comes to two things. Trust. And the way operators communicate with guests. And so the idea was with this web app, our goal is to remove all of those questions so that it's all answered already and it's kind of a self-serve model. So the boarding pass is a web app super configurable using the same if this and that that can dynamically change based on conditions. So if it's an Airbnb reservation, I don't need to do ID verification. But if it's a direct booking, I need a safety deposit and ID verification. Things that Airbnb offers as an OTA that I can offer as a direct booking channel. So being able to tailor the experience according to different conditions and then running the guest through that guest journey. So it's through what we call our guest journey editor. Literally, you just go through every stage of the guest journey and you set these things up. So booking confirmation. What do you want to do? Prechecking. What do you want to do? What do you want to say? What kind of upsells you want to have? Checking. And we just run through the whole experience, hit a button that says go live and that's it. And you're done. And then you just obviously have to actually manage the guests and the rest, you know, through our inbox, your PMS or any other tools that you might be using. So that's kind of the setup that you will. I mean, it sounds fantastic, especially I'm so glad you mentioned the difference if somebody books direct because we have speak to people all the time who have got their direct booking websites being set up. And one of the biggest questions is, hey, how do I protect my place when I get a direct book? And you know, it's the biggest thing, Airbnb will cover me. How do I protect myself? And you go, well, you don't have the same thing like air cover, but what you do have is you're making a huge percentage more, you know, you can, you can usually charge a little bit more or you're more likely to get guests. But then there's lots of ways to protect yourself and take an ID, get an signed year, your terms of stay, sometimes, you know, the security deposits, things like that. And just making that flow as easy as possible is just so important, isn't it? And I think that's the number one thing is if you can take that vessel out of the transaction with the guests, the more likely it is they're going to book with your direct next time. And you know, if they're also having an experience like you've mentioned where everything's in one place, they'll remember how easy it is. And I've had an experience of this recently, where you go and stay somewhere. And if it is easy, you left with such positive image that you just get, do you know what? I'm going to go back there again. I really enjoyed that. That took the hassle out of everything. And to add to that, I would say, you know, it's about making it configurable for those kinds of bookings and providing that optionality. But it's also, and this has been our strength, I would say, it ends up connected is, you know, you talked about there's a lot more tech vendors coming out in the space. And this is a good and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it gives you optionality. But it's a bad thing because it gives you optionality. And that means you have to do research and you have to figure out which one's the best for your business and so on. And so what we've done at Enzo Connect is we're trying to become Switzerland in this sense. So we connect with your PMS, we connect with your payment gateways, we connect with your smart locks, but we also white label providers that you've already worked with. So instead of replacing your verification tools, we white label super hog, we white label auto host and we allow you to choose when to use different platforms based on different conditions. And so that you can offer the existing solutions that you have, but in a connected manner, hence the name Enzo Connect. So yeah. You mentioned some spectacular tech that people can use just then and it's great to see that it's not replacing, you know, because this the worst thing now is that people are worried about, oh, does this kind of take the place of this or does this, you know, there's this so much tech and they're worried about having, you know, overwhelmed by choice, like you say, of different tech companies, but also going, well, how much do I really need to stack? Well, actually, using Enzo Connect, you can pick your favorites and really stack in that way, which is cool. You mentioned AI and I'm so glad you did earlier on because one of my questions is what's new, what's exciting? And what is what's happening in the world of Enzo that, you know, what does the future hold? So what I'd love to expand on is what is that AI technology now? And what things could be planned? Is there any sort of gems that you can drop as to things that you'd love to have in the future? For sure. Well, I'll say, you know, the concept of chat GBT and any messaging platform is going to become just a normal thing. So whether it's your PMS, whether it's a specific messaging tool that you're using, or Enzo Connect, or whatever the concept of chat GBT is going to be in every one of these platforms. The way we integrate and the way we operationalize, if that makes sense, chat GBT is what's going to make certain platform stand out from the others. And the way Enzo Connect we developed it is using the same concept of this conditional logic. When you put in a chat GBT button in an inbox, it's basically using its 2021 or 2022 data to generate a response. Now, some might be a bit smarter. For example, host-weight launched one, which is a bit smarter, and it's going to look at the property details. You're check-in, check-out, name of property, and so on. Where Enzo is going to take it to the next level, or where we have taken it to the next level, is we're looking at these different workflows and the content in your guidebooks and your upsells and your fees and everything. And we're drafting responses that aren't about providing the information to the client, but about educating them to keep using the boarding pass to find this information. So I'll give you an example. A guest asks about a check-in time. Well, your standard property check-in time is 4 p.m. Chat GBT gets fed this information. It would just spit out check-in times at 4 p.m. Maybe add a little, you know, green to it and a little, because as to make it sound better than just check-in times at 4 p.m. But that's pretty much it. What happens if a guest purchases an early check-in? You've just told them now that check-in is at 4 and they're now going to complain saying, but I thought I purchased an early check-in. And now you have to manually intervene, kind of useless to have chat GBT in this case. And now you just put in more work and frustrated the guests. So the way we're going to look at it is we're actually going to go through all the conditions and see, okay, was this a direct booking? Yes. If it's a direct booking, he's offering this upsell, these guidebooks, this type of verification has the guest gone through the verification. Yes. And it's going to go through the whole workflow before it drafts a response. That way, you're not providing check-in instructions if the guest isn't verified. You're not, you know, sharing the wrong check-in time. You're providing the right information about, you know, restaurants in the area, not ones that we just randomly found on Google that are outdated in any case. So that's the current iteration of Enzo AI. Additionally, we have things like sentiment analysis, which allows you to then create conditions to say, if the sentiment of a conversation is going well, let's remind a guest to leave a review. And where we're taking this, and then we're fairly transparent about our roadmap. I'm hoping to eventually just make it a public roadmap, to be honest, is more and more people are like, great, Francois, but this is still a saved reply. So it pops up as a response, and I have to click send. Can you just send these responses for me? They're working. So just send them for me. And we're getting there, but we want a certain accuracy rate before we send them out. And the goal is to gradually bring the industry towards a comfort level of chatbots that will be acceptable. And what I mean by that is, instead of just launching a chatbot that responds to questions where one in three are wrong, and then you get mad at us for sending the wrong response, it's creating again a condition saying, well, if it's the evening, and I'm not available respond, because it's better to get a response even if it's wrong than anything. So that's kind of the next iteration of where we're taking Enzo AI, and then the final version is take care of it all for me, and just answer these guests for me if you will. Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two Boosely books that we brought out, the book, direct playbook, and the book, direct blueprint are two of the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon. For just two pounds, you can grab both of those books right now. The foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the blueprint, and then for 101 marketing tactics, that is in the playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon, now just type in book, direct playbook, or the book, direct blueprint, and we'll see you on your side. I'm genuinely excited, and I know I say it a lot on here, but I'm excited because when the world of AI is crashing into the world of hospitality, and we're at this kind of crossroads right now where you can do these awesome things, I mean, like you say, the tech is already there to answer questions, to just pick out a thing, a point if you're listening, but what if it picks out the wrong information, or like you say, they've just purchased something unique to their stay, you know, you check in or some sort of upsell. And what you've described there just sounds perfect for the future in general, you know, that is what we want. And as host to listening to this, I certainly, when I started out, I was worried about, well, what happens? I need to sleep, right? What happens if people got questions when I need to sleep? Well, they haven't to wait until the next day. Well, in the future, they won't have to wait, you know, and again, even with things like guidebooks and things like that, I mean, we use just a straightforward, within more hospitality businesses, is that link-well information is on. But the trouble with that is, guests still ask questions, you know, they still ask the questions, even if it's the very first thing on the link with the Wi-Fi code, which people would rather be without water than Wi-Fi these days, still will ask, what is the Wi-Fi? And that's where having that automated response is so important. So I'm excited to see that develop along. I mean, it's about providing as well the whole concept of AI, and I have a friend who always says this, Evan from Adaptive, is AI won't replace humans, but it'll replace those who don't use it. And I think that's really a powerful statement, because it's not about, you know, hospitality, one thing that I love about this industry is the human connection in the industry, whether it's between vendors, partners, or guests, or owners, property managers. I mean, think about the number of property managers and hosts who interact with other competing property managers and hosts and share tips and tricks, even though they're actually competitors, it's a very collaborative industry. And the concept of human touch is extremely important. But what I like about short-term rentals over hotels, in that sense, is there's an understanding that technology is here to assist your operations in order to scale, because you're not managing a building with all the same concept, with all the same check and instruction. Your managing properties where every guest is different, every owner is different, every property manager is different, every unit is different, everything is different. So providing flexibility is key, and AI will understand the nuances that you won't be able to understand, because you just have too many things going on with too many variances. So, yeah, long story short for Enzo AI. I mean, yeah, absolutely right. I mean, can you imagine if you were just getting into the industry right now, or if you're host thinking, oh, I just need to refresh things? Well, what a great time to be involved in hospitality. And like I said, it is one of the friendliest places that you can get a start of business is very forgiving as well to a certain degree. One of the things which I've followed from a chap called Daniel Priestley, he talks about AI in a way where he can replace so much, but he can't replace community. And I think that's the one thing with hospitality, there's a huge amount of community and people involved, isn't there? So, is there anything else you'd like to share about Enzo Connect, or bring people's attention to any sort of wow moments, or anything about that that you'd like to share? Wow moments. I mean, we'll announce one very soon. I can't say anything about it, because I'm under strict NDAs, but September 30th is when we'll announce the wow moments. But over on me, no, we're a tech vendor in the space. We're always happy to have conversations with property managers. We're more focused on scaling operators than hosts. So, you know, it doesn't mean we restrict the number of units that you have to have, but our pricing does start a bit heavy for the ones in 10 units, if you will. And the real reason is just because, you know, we're not a host platform. Like, if this is a side hustle, and you're just, you know, doing it as a side thing, it's not really, we're going to be too much for you, you know, like, hostfully hasn't, no, hostfully touched the touch state of the guidebooks. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Hostly, I'm touched a both guide. I'm going to have guidebooks, things like that, you know, web apps, they're amazing. Companies, we actually get in bed host, host, hopefully, or touch state guidebooks in Enzo. So, again, yet another reason why we try to connect with everyone. But we're really focused on that, you know, what I'm growing the number of units. And I'm trying to create different rules. And I'm just facing death by a thousand cuts. That's where Enzo connects shines. But all in all, no, I mean, AI is going to be prevalent in every tool that you use. So picking the right systems that fit your business needs is, I think the next chapter for a lot of operators in this space is understanding what that guest journey looks like and where they want to take it. Yeah. Nice. So in a moment, we're going to share how people can go and find out more about Enzo Connect. But just before we do, we'd like to have a fun question. Now, I know the answer to this because we were talking just before we went live. But where was the last spontaneous stay you went and had and why? So I just had my first PTO last week, first time I hadn't seen family in a long time. And I got to go sailing in La Rochelle with family, which was the coolest thing ever. Get to learn how to sail. And funny enough, there was actually great cell service on the boat. So I even got to take a couple demos from a sailboat. Now, it's not the most convenient when you're doing a demo and you're just rocking like this between the dog because they think you're drunk and then you have to explain, no, no, it's just the boat. But it was a great time. That was a fun time. That sounds amazing. And as you say, home is in France originally. So yeah, very, very nice. What is the number one karaoke song? You mentioned you go out festivals parties. What is the number one karaoke song that you go to as your one of choice? That's a great question. You know, I'm a big fan of funk music, jazz music. That's kind of my my go to style. So I'd say, but also like, oh, right now I'm on the sitting sitting on the dogs of the bay. I forgot the name of the artist. It's running right now. So that's not really that vibe. I don't know. Good song. Reason. I don't know if you know that one. That one. That was far straight afterwards. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't know. Not a big karaoke guy. I can't sing. Most people who do karaoke can't. Awesome. So, Francois, thank you for this. If you can, first of all, share how people can get in touch with Enzo Connect, come and follow you. And then if you can finish with your piece of advice that you'd like to leave everyone with, that would be awesome. For sure. So, Enzo Connect super simple. You can go on our website, EnzoConnect.com. You can always reach out to me as well. If you want to learn more and so on, I'm a very accessible founder, if you will. So first name dot last name at Enzo Connect.com. Our pricing is available publicly. You just need to fill in a form and it'll show you. You can book a demo with our team. We've put in a lot of effort on trying to make it as self serve as possible, despite, you know, having to go through certain processes so we can best explain what we do. And then my go to motto, which I know in a few languages, that's how much I say it all the time, is every problem has a solution. I know it's kind of basic, but whenever you're kind of feeling overwhelmed and you have all these things that you need to do and just back to the ground zero of every problem has a solution, let's just calm down and figure out how we solve this. So in French, to the problem of the solution in Russian, each problem is literally a shame. I say it in every language I can speak to to get this going, you know. We can say the Bruce Lee podcast is now multi-linguistle. So yeah, thank you so much, Francois. I love that as well. It's a great piece of advice. And ultimately, this has been so much fun. I love finding out about new technology. And I know there's lots of people who go and check out those links. We will put them around, however you're watching this on the podcast or YouTube, Facebook, wherever you are watching this. I know there's lots of places that you can put your attention and we really thank you for spending it with Bruce Lee. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. Go out there and get yourself some more direct bookings. We'll see you on the next show. Bye for me and bye for Francois. Francois, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks very much.