VRS686 - Don't Let AI Be the Box on Your Shelf

Heather Bayer (0:01)

For years, I've been talking about the lack of really good Vacation Rental Education. I'm pleased to say that Simon Lehmann has launched his STR Academy, and I'm one of its founding ambassadors. I'll tell you what it is and who it's for in the middle of today's episode. So make sure you stay with me.

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'm super excited to be back with you once again. I have no introduction today because no introduction is needed for my guest, who is back on the show again. I can't remember how many times it is, Jodi Bourne, but you are definitely a regular now and it's great to have you back.

Jodi Bourne (1:24)

Thank you. Thank you. I love being back and I have no, I meant to count and I keep forgetting. I don't think there is a way to count.

Heather Bayer (1:31)

But yeah, I can.

Jodi Bourne (1:33)

Let's have Claude count while we're on the channel.

Heather Bayer (1:34)

We'll have Claude count.

Jodi Bourne (1:35)

I'm going to do that right now.

Heather Bayer (1:37)

There you are. When Claude comes back momentarily, you can tell me how many times you've been on.

Jodi Bourne (1:43)

Some of them were on their own podcast, Cottage.

Heather Bayer (1:48)

No, it's always been the same one. It's always been Vacation Rental Success.

Jodi Bourne (1:51)

Oh, has it? Okay.

Heather Bayer (1:53)

Yeah. I am thinking that maybe I retire this one and rebrand and restart as AI in Vacation Rentals or something. That's a good point.

Jodi Bourne (2:06)

Yeah. You have to be catchy. It's very hard to get a podcast audience too. I would just rebrand what you've got rather than start over because I have a podcast that keeps baby trickling along, but I am relaunching it as well. And I went through the motions of doing a new podcast. And then when I was speaking to the experts, they were like, no, you go back and just dig up what you were doing and start going.

Heather Bayer (2:32)

So yeah, there's a lot of history here.

Jodi Bourne (2:34)

Anyway, tons of history.

Heather Bayer (2:37)

Anyway, we are talking, guess what, about AI today, but we're talking about the state of AI adoption. And I want to share with everybody how this idea for doing this episode really started. And that was, I was on my way down to Mikes in the card. You remember we had that on-off, on-off with cell signal because rural Ontario is much the same as rural Texas. And so you quite understood why I would trail off out and come back 10 minutes later.

But you were talking about, and you're going to have to remind me of this, you were talking about talking to a potential client or a client you already have. Oh no, I know what it was about. You were doing some promotion for a product or a course or a...

Yeah, I had a training camp. A training camp. And you asked a lot of questions. And one of them really resonated with people. What was it?

Jodi Bourne (3:32)

I don't know now which one you're talking about.

Heather Bayer (3:34)

No, you're talking about the one where they said, where the question was about starting with AI.

Jodi Bourne (3:41)

Oh, and they were...

Heather Bayer (3:43)

And it was the most answered question or the most popular question.

Jodi Bourne (3:47)

It was the most answered question. And the result was that they had not even started or they had just barely even touched it, gotten intimidated, gotten scared, it didn't work. And they just jumped right back out at it and have never tried it again. And that was surprising.

Heather Bayer (4:07)

It was the same week that I'd had a meeting with somebody in this industry, has been in this industry for seven or eight years, is in a senior management position. And she said, oh, she said, I opened Claude about six months ago. I wasn't quite sure what it would do for me. And I closed it again. I haven't really touched it since. And she was just using ChatGPT for, as most people do, as just secondary Google. And so with those two stories, I thought, let's talk about this. Let's talk about what we've come across in the last six months or so of talking to people, talking to clients, and figure out where we are really one year on from the Vacation Rental Managers Association Conference in, where was it? Las Vegas in 2025, because VRMA in Nashville has just finished. And I'm wondering if that gap is still there, because last year in Vegas, I did an AI skills lab with Bart Sobeys.