HostAI Review

Our team here at BNBCalc has had our fair share of experience handling guest communications. It’s an area we like to focus on as Superhosts since we believe that it reflects the level of quality that your short term rental provides. It acts as a gateway for booking or reservations and is your main method to connect with guests.

It can be easy to maintain a high level of guest communication if you’re only focusing on a handful of rentals. However, once your vacation rental business starts to grow, it can quickly become too overwhelming to handle them all. Tools like HostAI claim to help ease the burden and automate your guest communication process. But, does it actually work?

Today, we’ll see how well it works. Join us in our HostAI review to see how it can help manage guest communication and handle messaging services for your rentals.

Best HostAI Features and How Hosts Can Use Them for Their Airbnb

AI Messaging: We think it goes without saying that this is HostAI’s most useful and coveted feature. Their AI model is trained using the information you provide. This includes listing information from your connected property management software, guidebooks you upload or import, and general conversations. You can share specific listing information like house rules, policies, wifi access, and other FAQs that you’d like the AI to learn. When it comes to personalized suggestions, the AI can also search for relevant recommendations like nearby restaurants, popular tourist spots, malls, and activities. All of these can be edited or removed as you please.

Unified Inbox: HostAI combines all of your message directories into one giant inbox. This can make guest communication easier and more accessible instead of having to juggle through multiple apps to reply. Through here, you can also approve, edit, or reject AI-generated replies if you turn this setting on.

Automated Upsells: One feature we’ve found incredibly helpful are the automated upsells that the platform provides. This makes it easy to fill in gap periods, that are identified by the AI as well, and extend discounted rates for extensions for your existing guests. It can also follow up on these upsell messages, based on the rules you’ve set in terms of timing. We’ve found that it’s a great way to secure extra bookings at the last minute, while still maximizing your revenue potential.

Task Management: HostAI can identify urgent tasks based on customer messages or reviews and delegate these tasks to the respective teams. It can be as simple as guest pricing negotations to more urgent ones such as safety concerns or broken items. The added optional notifications to your messaging systems like Slack is a huge benefit since it ensures that it gets to the right person on time.

Chat Sandbox: If you’re worried about how the AI responds to guests, you can check it out yourself using their Chat Sandbox feature. It creates a secure environment where you can put yourself in a guest’s shoes and test the AI messaging for yourself. This way, you can guarantee relevant answers for the most common messages you’ve received, and even test the limits of the AI. We’ve honestly spent a ton of time using Chat Sandbox, mainly because we were curious if we could stump the AI.

Urgency Filters: This goes hand-in-hand with the task management capabilities of HostAI. Of course, the AI can’t handle everything by itself. Using the Urgency Filters, you can create tags for specific topics that you’d manually like to address and reply to. We’ve used it for guest concerns like refunds, items that aren’t properly working, unsatisfied customers, and other more niche and sensitive concerns.

Voice AI (Beta): Some guests simply prefer to settle their concerns with a call. Well, HostAI can help with that as well. Their new Voice AI feature can learn from how you or your team communicates with guests and answer phone calls the same way you would. It also offers a recording of the call, along with a transrcipt in case you’ll need to review it. The feature is still in Beta, but it’s one we’re definitely excited to see and hopefully implement in our rentals in the future.

HostAI Pricing: How Much Does HostAI Cost?

Let’s move on to the costs associated with using HostAI. They offer really simple plans for Superhosts like our team members, property managers, and enterprise-level clients.

• Superhost: Costs $12 per listing per month and supports anywhere from 1 to 10 rentals. It includes everything HostAI has to offer.
• Property Manager: It is cheaper at $10 per listing per month for 11 to 50 listings, with access to all of the HostAI features.
• Enterprise: This plan is perfect for STR business owners with large portfolios, catering to those with 50 or more listings. This plan doesn’t have a publicly available price, but HostAI offers discounts for all of your needs. Make sure to contact them directly for more information.

HostAI also offers a free trial for everyone who wants to check out their product first. The free trial grants access to their full suite of messaging and guest communication features, allowing users to explore their services before making a decision.

If the initial free trial isn’t long enough for you, we’ve partnered with HostAI to sweeten the deal for you. You just need to use coupon code BNBCALC to get 30 days of free HostAI usage. Terms and conditions apply.

HostAI User Experience

Our overall experience with HostAI has been pretty great. To be fully transparent, we already use HostAI within our 27 home portfolio here at BNBCalc, so we are quite familiar with the interface and general use cases of the platform.

However, even when we first tried it out, we found it incredibly easy to use and set up. In case you ever get lost or can’t figure out what exactly you should do, they have a whole library of demos and guides to help you find your way back in no time. This is something we truly did appreciate from the platform. You can also book a HostAI demo before you sign up to learn more about making your way around the platform.

HostAI’s integrations with popular PMS help the AI learn the important information about your guests can make interactions more meaningful. This includes listing information, check-in and check-out times, and it even pulls nearby spots in case guests ask for any recommendations. Of course, the AI can only be as good as the data you present it with, so having all sorts of valuable information to train it with is crucial.

We’ve also had some fun, maybe a little too much fun, playing around in the Chat Sandbox feature, pretending we’re guests to see how the AI responds to common and more niche questions. It did pretty well and didn’t need much human intervention to send meaningful messages. We also like that it doesn’t just spit out messages and you can approve, edit, or straight out reject messages before sending them out.

Another particular feature we really liked on HostAI was the urgent tags and integrations with Slack and WhatsApp. Receiving our notifications directly on these apps have made it easy to keep up with urgent tasks that require our attention and monitoring with guest communication while keeping our team in the loop of what’s happening.

HostAI Reviews From Across the Web

Our time with HostAI has been pretty great. However, like with most things in life, it might not be the same for everyone. So, to keep it fairly representative of various experiences, we’ve gathered a handful of comments left by verified HostAI users across the web. This can help you get a better view of the platform, outside of our HostAI review.

• Tyler H says this about the HostAI: “Thanks to Host.Ai, we're no longer glued to our phones! Now, we can focus on creating memorable experiences for our guests while enjoying peace of mind. Happy guests, happy hosts!”
• Daniel left this review: “Excellent service paired with quick and helpful feedback make HostAI a standout choice. I highly recommend it to any host struggling with guest communications.”
• Eli S claims this: “Host AI manages my everyday, repetitive tasks as a vacation rental operator through an intuitive user interface — freeing me up to push my business forward.”

It seems that most users have been pretty satisfied with HostAI’s platform. Many claim it as a well-priced tool that helps improve and automate their vacation rental guest communication system, freeing up more time for other tasks. There weren’t too many complaints, aside from having more room for improvement, requests for additional features, and the lack of a dedicated mobile app.

HostAI scores an impressive 5 out of 5 stars on Capterra, reflecting the very satisfied comments left by users. While the sample size is definitely on the smaller side, there’s still no denying that the ones who have left reviews have thoroughly appreciated the product.

Final Thoughts

Well, our HostAI review ends here. It’s pretty amazing to see how AI can improve and automate your guest communication for your rentals. There’s no denying the capabilities of the platform and can be a game-changer for busy hosts. We think HostAI has a place within your STR business, especially if you don’t have anyone dedicated to managing your messages yet. While it can’t be fully autonomous and requires human intervention from time to time, it can still help hosts save a lot of time, especially when answering repetitive questions.

Intrigued about using HostAI? Be sure to use the code BNBCALC at checkout to get 30 days of free usage.

If you’re considering starting out your own Airbnb rental or just looking for a new addition to your portfolio, we suggest checking out our BNBCalc property analysis tool to give you an insight into properties on your radar. It can help you make data-driven decisions, based on what active rentals are already earning, allowing you to get an idea of not only revenue but also expenses, and paint a fuller picture of your potential investment.