From Booking to Checkout: How SuiteOp Streamlines Guest Experience and Operations with Simon Seroussi

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie, the real woman of vacation rentals. I'm Alex and I'm Annie, and we are joined today by Simon Seroussi, who is the co founder of SuiteOp, Simon, it's so nice to see you and to meet you today. Thank

Simon Seroussi  
you so much for having me. It's great to to be on been following you guys for many years, so it's awesome to finally get on here.

Annie Holcombe  
Well, great. Well, we're excited. And as we mentioned off camera, Terry White spoke very highly of you and your technology. And so whenever Terry White speaks, I mean, he's, you know, you gotta listen. You gotta let go check it out. So I reached out to you and just we're really fascinated to hear your story. So why don't you give us a little bit about your journey in vacation rentals, because you said you started out in the in the property management side of it, and tell us how you got where you are now.

Simon Seroussi  
Yeah, absolutely so. And by the way, 1010, Ontario, he's, he's everything he says needs to be, needs to be either put on a wall or paid attention to carefully. Very grateful that you mentioned us. So I think our journey started. It's actually almost more than a decade ago. I was back then living in New York, in living what many consider the early 20s dream, in a tiny studio, overpaying for rent. And I'm French, so every time I used to go back home in France to visit family, I effectively left an empty apartment behind. And it was always heart wrenching to leave what felt like an empty hotel room, because you're, you know, back of napkin math basically told me I was paying $70 a night to leave, to leave an empty home at all times. And, you know, that's that's exactly around that time in which I discovered actually Airbnb, initially, the company was pretty young back then. I think they were, they were probably doing $30 million of revenue versus, think $11 billion billion and and a lot of people saw it as like a great way to travel. I also saw it as like a great way to make real estate more efficient. It just seemed crazy to me, all the empty real estates in the United States, I think, like more than 10% of us, homes are empty. So it led me to start hosting, initially as a as an individual host, and eventually a turning point a couple of years later, when myself and a co founder, Joy Manuel, also French, started a and launched a property management business based in based in the northeast, based in Philadelphia, short term rental brand by the name of so sweet. And from the get go, we wanted to take a different approach that I think a lot of our competitors, which was to try and take everything in house. We wanted to really understand operations, you know, from housekeeping all the way to up to to to maintenance and guest experience and and around that same time, I was actually building software for for hotels company called Travel click, because of a pioneer in the space and and and so travel was sort of everywhere in my life, and and I wanted to understand the operational side of things a lot more what hotels, what short term rental operators and vacation rental operators actually went through every day because I was, I felt like it just really only had one side of the coin. And so we built that business, bootstrapped and grew it, but when we started hitting the 100 ish property Mark, I think we we learned something pretty crucial, and it's the fact that it's, it's, at the end of the day, it's, it's a human capital heavy business, and the fact that it is is so wonderful, but it's also what makes it so hard to scale. You know, when your team grows, especially if you're spread across many locations, like vacation rental operators are adding more staff. It's not just about hiring. It's about managing an operation that becomes increasingly complex. And so given like our tech backgrounds, my co founder and I, he's an engineer and a mathematician, I'm more of a digital product person. We both love technology, and we really see it as a way to augment human capital, like improve what humans can do, enable humans to focus on things that are actually really rewarding, as opposed to repetitive. And we figured out that there must be some great tools out there, so we tried a lot of things out there. And don't get me wrong, I think there's a lot of fantastic solutions. We're lucky to be in a space where there are just so many innovators, both on the operation side and on the technology side. But I think the issue we had, especially at a certain scale, was that best in class solutions, they might they might speak to the PMs, but they didn't really talk to each other, and so you had, on one hand, a property management system that did, you know, a good job at managing your inventory and your bookings, but when it came to screening guests, managing communication, smart devices, tasks, everything else in your operation, once the booking actually comes through, you had all those softwares that sort of, you know, didn't, didn't necessarily keep. Communicate. And sort of felt like having all those really smart people in a room who all like spoke almost a different language. And so, you know, we started thinking that there could be something that we could do about it. And that's how sweet up was born. It started as an internal tool, but it actually ended up built, helping us grow the business from 100 units to almost 400 and then over the last 14 months, it grew into something much bigger and its own, its own company. And so I think, you know, we are technologists at heart. So I think we really know what operators needed to scale without losing their minds or losing their margins. So we built the product that we wish we had. It's a it's an operations and guest experience platform that effectively takes takes care of everything that you need to handle operationally after your booking comes through. And for guests, it's also a seamless experience. So you get a beautiful, branded portal that has everything the guest needs to know, and much more, you have a screening process that was really rethought from the ground up, so that it's not so much of a frustrating experience for guests, but actually one that enriches their their booking experience. And then we also handle things from smart devices all the way to operational to an operational platform to keep the team in sync. So your guests, your field operations teams, your office staff, nobody's sort of left wondering what, what needs to be done. So, yeah, that's, that's how sweet up came to be over the last last year and a half or so.

Alex Husner  
Wow. Very good. What a great story. And we were talking about before we hit play. And we hear this story time and time again, that a lot of the best tech in the industry, it comes from people that they built it because they had a need, right? And so to be able to understand that that's typically the softwares and systems that stick around and have the, you know, the most adoption, and your customers really loving what you do, that's it's because you have that understanding and you're building it for what really needs to be done. So I think that's really cool. But just looking at your website, I mean, you guys, it's, this is actually, I mean, this is far more than just a guest portal. I mean, you're connecting a lot of different parts between the smart home technology as well. So maybe you could just kind of take us through, like, some of the main points of the system.

Simon Seroussi  
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I think what we what we realized was, if you offered some of those solutions in isolation, you can get, you can get great products, and for many people, that works, but ultimately you there are ways to connect to those things, to both elevate your operation and your guest experience. And too often we see those two things as distinct and so sweet. Op today has, you know, three main modules, as I like to call them. One is around IoT, you know, the Internet of Things, anything related to smart devices. And that's going to be not just locks and not just thermostats, but even devices beyond that, lights and a couple of and a couple of other device types and and the goal here isn't just being able to push codes that start at check in and potentially expire at checkout. That's sort of the baseline of what we do. It's it's how do you enable the management of those devices and other automations around those devices that enable you to manage them more easily, because ultimately, as an operation scales you you know you may start with one Smart Lock for property, and then you're going to add another one for your back door. Then you may add thermostat, then you may add smart TVs. And then as you scale and scale, you have a lot more devices than you have properties, and it becomes a bit unwieldy. They get disconnected, they go offline, they need to be replaced. And so how do you actually manage the main maintenance of those devices? And that's where other modules in suite up, like sweet keeper, which is sort of our task management module can come in play. Our second most, I think most widely used one is around guest experience that's split into guest screening and a guest portal. I think the word guest portal can take different meanings in the industry. We really tried to build a digital hub where the guest has everything they need to they need in order to have a wonderful stay, all the information at their fingertips, but also that augments the other parts of suit up. So for example, a guest can get on their guest portal and utilize all the smart devices that are available to you. So now your smart thermostat isn't just enabling you to push exactly the right temperature that the guest would want 30 minutes before check in, enabling a comfortable stay, but it's also something that a guest can control from their mobile device using a web app all throughout their stay. Similarly, the guest screening portion of sweet op isn't just going to be about, you know, identifying guests and potentially problematic guests ahead of time. It's also going to be about collecting exactly the right data from the guest in order to improve automatically their guest experience. So if you know that it's a family coming, you're going to feature particular upsells in the portal if you if the guest is having a particular issue. So you can launch automations that are going to that is going to display particular information in there as well. And so really, I think what's what's unique isn't just similarly, having, like, all those, you know, three core modules next to each other, but it's what they do when they all interact. And that's that's when the magic of sweet ops starts happening. And ultimately, we're, we're building towards a vision where, where a product can really help you run your entire operations.

Annie Holcombe  
And in looking at, and again, on your website, I was looking at like the PMs systems that you are connected to right now, it kind of speaks to me that you're looking at more of the host profile, not a large scale enterprise size property management group. Is that, would that be a fair assessment of where you are right now?

Simon Seroussi  
So actually, I mean, what that's, that's, what's quite interesting about the platform is it's a platform that's definitely still built for scale, but we found that originally was actually intended largely for larger hosts. The first host that ever joined the platform had a couple 100 units under management. But what we what we actually quickly realized is that I think you have a new type of individual hosts that may manage one, 210, five homes, and they want to get things right from the start and set themselves up for success, for potentially growing their business. They're not, you know, they may be happy at five today, but they may want to grow it to something more. It's still potentially something they do on the side next to a full time job. It could also be their home and their families as home they're managing, but they want to be able to give themselves the most freedom by having tools that automate a lot of the things that would be redundant otherwise, and getting time back, either for their personal life or to improve the guest experience. And so we have those kind of hosts that represent probably about 30% of people using sweet up. But I would say the majority are professional operators with, you know, anywhere from our average current operator, no unit count on the platform per user is about, is about 85 and that's, again, pretty wide, wide range, from from one property all the way to all the way to to 1000 plus.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, that's, that's, that's good. Like I said, at first glance, it just looked like, okay, it's kind of, you're in that, that other side of things. So it is nice to know that you can scale up to to the larger operators. I notice on here that you're talking you look at, I mean, it's just cool to see all the technology that is connected to this, but you're going to be doing, I guess, the booking engines and things. So are you looking to integrate, like, I work at a channel manager, I'd be curious, like, Are you looking to integrate a channel manager within your platform?

Simon Seroussi  
Yeah, so we're not looking to necessarily handle the inventory and availability and rates of a business, you know, like whether it's pricing, whether it's like managing your inventory the way a PMS does it. But I think what we found is direct booking. The great booking is something obviously crucial. It's been a topic of conversation for years. Back then, when I was working at travel click in 2016 I was building products for that as hotels. And that was, that was a top one concerns, like, we're paying 20% to OTAs. We need to do something better and and I think back then with hotels, you didn't have that many great direct booking solutions today, which I think vacation and short term rentals. You have solutions, but they tend to fit, often, one mold. So it's if you're an operator with unique homes and assets, then potentially your pmss Booking Engine will work really well. But if you're an operator with different assets, maybe apartments in the same building as well as unique homes and you want to merchandise that in a bit of a unique way, you often don't have flexibility in sort of out of the box booking engines. And so our booking engine is going to connect to the pmss that we integrate today, and pmss will integrate to in the future, enabling operators to have another option. The main, I think, reason also we're diving into the booking engine world is because we believe that direct bookings is where loyalty starts, and it's where loyalty can also be like built on. You can have a guest that book on Airbnb, but obviously what you're going to want to do is build enough of a branded experience and personalized experience that the next time they come, they want to book direct and so the booking engine is actually going to be, for us, the foundation of what's going to become a loyalty program, and probably one of the first in the industry, enabling any size operator to launch more loyalty around around their brand.

Annie Holcombe  
Very cool. I know that's a hot topic right now, and our dear friend tyanne Marson cam and she's been working on something, if you haven't talked to her, definitely, definitely need to talk to her. She's really working on some loyalty things. But that's, that's kind of like the one piece of the puzzle I think people haven't been able to figure out,

Simon Seroussi  
yeah, I think it's a challenging piece because, you know, unlike big hospitality brands that may have global presences or nationwide, it's, it's, it's like. Easier for Marriott to say, you know, you get points with us if you book in Texas, and then the next time you travel around in New York, you're going to get points as well. And you can use those points all across those locations. When you're a an operator, whether it's a family run operation or a larger operation, and you operate in one particular city or one particular area, how do you drive a loyalty program that works there? So I think we're, we've been asking those questions for a couple of years. We launched a beta loyalty program with so sweet about, you know, our first company about four years ago, and it's built on the PMs, you know, using a lot of the native PMS functionalities and but leveraging it in a way so that when a guest books, they create a profile on your website. There's already an attachment there. They're accumulating stays and nights, and then they can unlock unique benefits as a result. And I think we have to rethink what those benefits are. It's not necessarily an earn and burn point system that you would see in like traditional loyalty, it's maybe more, you know, I've stayed with you before. This time around, I automatically get a free early check in, or, or I get, you know, a welcome package. And how do you then tie all those pieces together? Well, potentially with a guest portal or with a task management to inform your team that those things may be, may be occurring, and that you can, you can action on that.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, no, that all makes complete sense. It sounds like you guys have really thought this through in a very thorough way. So you're not just answering one part of the equation, but really looking at it holistically. I am curious. Said you worked at travel click and back in those days. So way back in the day, they had acquired Z direct, I don't know if that was part of when you were there, but yeah, that was the email marketing program we used for years, and then became part of travel click. So definitely familiar with that whole operation there and got them, and they became behemoth within the industry. So you probably got to see some pretty cool stuff, and learned a lot in those days, I would bet,

Simon Seroussi  
yeah, and I think in many ways, like what we're witnessing now is a lot of what they were doing. It's like, to your point that travel hook initially started as a business intelligence tool and then added direct reservations product and what we call the CRS in the hotel space, which is basically a PMS. And then, to your point, they were eventually, they were like, Okay, well, how do we, how do we bring guest loyalty, guest experience into that? And so they acquired Z direct and and try to tease that together with their existing stack. I went through, yeah, it was quite an adventure at travel click, when, when I was there was a private equity owned company. I went through a sale to another successful sale to another private equity owned company. Equity owned company, and then ultimately joined Amadeus, the European travel giant, stayed there for about a year, and then decided that the startup world was more. Was more my thing?

Alex Husner  
Yeah, very different, though, right? I mean being that's a big corporate America tech to know what you do, I imagine you probably like what you do now, a little bit more, a lot of lot more freedom, at least, to be able to build all the things that you've seen that could be better over the years is just really fulfilling, I would

Simon Seroussi  
imagine, for sure. Yeah, no, I think, I think what was interesting is, like, I think a lot of what we're experiencing in the vacation rental space mirrors a lot what hotels experienced 510, years ago, and we're seeing, I think this, the professionalization of the space, obviously in short term and vacation rentals, is leading to operators starting to ask the same questions that hotels that have faced increased competition and or regulation and other similar challenges sometime back, were asking so I think we're seeing an interesting intersection of the two industries there. And in fact, I think COVID only accelerated that, because hotel groups now are thinking this vacation rental thing is interesting. I want a piece of that, you know. And you see Marriott successfully launching Marriott homes and Villa you see hotels launching soft brands in this space. And I think you see the opposite too, right? We have a lot of customers at speed up, one beachside VR, to name a few, that are like building that started building incredible vacation rental portfolios, and they're now also doing successfully boutique hotels. They have a boutique hotel thing in Savannah. They have a couple in Florida. And so you're seeing that intersection, the two spaces, I think, in a really special way.

Annie Holcombe  
I just spent several days down in Orlando meeting with partners. And Orlando is one of those, like really, really strong hybrid markets, where the companies are sitting in both spaces. And it was interesting, because one of the groups I was meeting with, the groups I was meeting with the head of the revenue team, he comes completely from the hotel side. So he's like, this is my first, like, foray into vacation rentals. He's like, I'm still learning so much, and it's I had started in hotels, went to Vacation Rentals. Like I told him. I was like, there's so many similar similarities. But to your point about like, COVID, one of the. Things that I noticed is that some of the technology that was able to be built during COVID Actually catapulted vacation rentals ahead of ahead of the hotel side, specifically where you're related to, like revenue management tools and content, like managing content and so it, what I find is funny is that the PMS is that we work with as an example. On the VR side, they manage content, so we can grab that content and send it to the channels. But on the hotel side, content is managed completely separate from the PMs, and so they're so hotel people, you think about vacation rentals, have a tech stack that's crazy, like hotel people really do. I mean, I was talking to this group, and they, they're they have like, four channel managers. They have two content systems. They have different PMS for every property. And it's just like, it's, it's, it's Bedlam, like it's complete chaos. To try to think that you can get anything done. And so I feel like vacation rentals is a little further ahead in some areas. But to your point, we're all, we're all going through all the same things, just at different, you know, different, I guess, different pace.

Simon Seroussi  
Yeah, yeah, I would add contactless technology to that. Like, I think, like, vacation rentals really heralded that, like, 510, years ago, it was so rare to be able to complete a pre check in before booking into a hotel, and actually be able to, like, either walk straight to your room and skip the front desk or get your key in, like, less than 30 seconds without, without a line outside. I think, you know, COVID obviously accelerated that people wanted contactlessness, like contactless, like, you know, experiences. Now we're back to yearning for the complete opposite, but, but that obviously led to, I think, yeah, technology being built there that highly influenced the hotel, the hospitality, traditional, like hotel, hotel industry, in ways that, that, that I think, was, was really unexpected. And I think, you know, the other part of the equation is, is, you know, since obviously after 2020 we saw a boom in vacation rentals, right in 2021 we saw a slowdown in 2020 we saw a boom in 2021 increased competition. But I think, like a really important thing to that operators have been and I think really facing over the last few years is obviously increased competition and professionalization, as well as just increased guest expectations. You know, back in I would say 2012 when you hosted on Airbnb, you would just put a home with a bed, and then you made money, and people were willing to pay more than when they were willing to pay for a hotel, because you had a kitchen, and it felt more homey that that those days are sort of over, I think, and you now you need operational discipline, and you need to really, you know, guests are expecting the same types of touch points and services they would when they're booking hotels, because they're because I think we're finding that guests are booking both. You don't have necessarily. You have some people that will exclusively book vacation rentals and short term rentals, but you have a lot of people that are now just alternating between both, and the mix of that is leading to expectations also greatly changing. And I think that's why there's a new wave of software, which I think sweetheart is part of trying to help operators get that discipline and being able to have incredible guest experiences that match that of like great hotel brands, but also like Highly measured and calculated operational discipline.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, it's something that's not talked about enough in the industry, of just understanding what the guest journey truly is and mapping that out. And I see a lot now in my consulting business, you know, if a company is using a PMS and their email automations go out of that system, and they haven't looked at them in a few years, a lot of cases, and it's like, they're, you know, they're getting an email from, you know, the automated confirmation email, but then they're getting a text message from breezeway, and then another app over here, they've got a download, and it's just, it's overwhelming. And I think, you know, that's the hardest part of this industry. Is just like, you know, companies, there's their property management companies, they should be managing properties. They shouldn't have to be a CMO, a CTO, and have to know all these different things to be property managers, but it's like, there's so much just choice that's out there. And I think Annie, I told you this story the other day, I was at the dentist, and they this was kind of like an old school kind of dentist, that they did everything by pen and paper. And I was in there, and they were all kind of stressed out, because they've just implemented technology. They had a iPads and stuff. And he was telling me about, you know, the onboarding process and how it's just so stressful. And I said, you know, how many, how many systems did you have to evaluate? And he said, One, there's only one like, all the like, that makes it a lot easier. Sounds great, certainly not the case in our industry. But So talk us through a little bit. Like, what does it actually look like if a company is using sweet op, I guess books a reservation? What does the guest see on the other side? Like, where does sweet op come into that process?

Simon Seroussi  
Yeah, yeah. And I think, by the way, what you shared around. The guest flow and the guest experiences is such an important thing that that can be second thought. And it's because I think a lot of the software out there focuses on distribution, like getting the booking in right, or pricing right. Those were, like some of the biggest softwares that came out of the last two decades and but everything that happens after that's when 90% of your team is that's when 90% of the effort is. Now, it's not to say that revenue management and marketing, they're crucial, crucial. But when you have 300 homes, you don't have 25 marketers, but you do have 25 housekeepers, and I think like building software that can be utilized by the rest of the operations is, is, is a lot of what we're as much as it is as guests, is a lot of what we're trying to do, and connecting those two. And so the way we do this from the guest experience perspective is, so when, when an operator uses suite up. The first thing to note is, I think we recognize that every operation is different. Operators are high touch, concierge level type of service with $1,000 a night. Homes in the mountains and others do $100 a night. Affordable rooms in urban areas, and there's, there's a bit of everything there, and there's a bit of different services. And so we want to be able to first offer a product that someone can configure to fit that. And so what that means is, when a guest books and someone is using sweet up, we can utilize either some of sweet ops native messaging or a lot of the PMs native messaging to be able to get the portal in front of guests. And I'm insisting on sort of PMS level messaging. It's because a lot of people don't want to add another unified inbox through their tech stack. And just like you said earlier, if they start, if a guest starts getting a text from one software and an email from another, and where does the guest answer, how do you make sure everything in one place? It's a bit unwieldy, especially at scale, but frankly, at any size. So so we want to be able to meet the operators where they already are. So if they're using the PMs messaging to send the message and to manage that, that's fine. They don't need to they don't need another platform. They don't need to onboard something else there. And so all we do is we provide them guides, and we help them set up, alter a little bit their existing messaging to include a portal. That portal is going to be fully white labeled. In terms of enterprise options, here we have multi white label options. So if you have like, five brands or multiple boutique hotels and a vacation rental brand, you can have different different links with for different portals that that portal is should be sent as soon as the guest books. And I think that's where sweet up is a little bit different than potentially other experiences. We want the guests to be able to interact with it as soon as they book. And we want to provide value as soon as they book, so they get the link, they open it, they're going to be invited to complete a pre check and flow. But they don't have to complete it right away if they want. They can skip it and enjoy a lot of value in the portal. And that value comes in three main ways. They first have access to a local guide, beautiful map view the ability to see what's around the property, from restaurants to museums, that can be entirely configured in just a few minutes, by by by the property manager ahead of time. And it can be enriched with even smart call to actions like make a reservation there, etc. And we think it's really important to show this as soon as the guest books, because if you show it a week before check in, they've already made their plans, they've already booked their restaurants, they've already planned their trip with their groups of friends or family. So the guest gets access to that. They also get access to information about the property, the amenities, various things, how tos, et cetera. And being able to see this immediately, it gives the guests the clarity that if they have a question during their stay, this is where they can look. And I think ultimately, like, you know, guests would rather have information at their fingertips than have to message somebody wait for an answer and exchange two three messages unnecessarily for you know how to use this very complicated remote control for this older TV or this projector, for example, right? And then the third value that they get is going to be upsells. So there is going to be an entire section with upsells that's going to be both upsells you can deliver yourself, such as you know, you can you can sell a welcome package. You can sell, really, anything you'd like that would make sense for your operation. Upsells that are also like where they don't require as much operational uplift, early check ins and late checkouts. And we make this quite special with sweet up. For example. You know, we can display specific upsells depending on who the guest is, what the availability is like, and we can approve, or auto approve specific upsells based on specific rules as well. And because we have an IoT module, if an early check in is approved, the code and on the lock can be auto adjusted to function at the early check in time, for example. So this is where, sort of, again, we bring automation so that you don't need to have a human you know, once an upsell, an early check in is approved, go to another. Software change the time of the log from 4pm to 1pm and then make sure that it works and communicate that back to the guest. Those are things that I think aren't enriching to anyone's role and and that a software can Can, can easily, should, should be able to easily handle the guests while they're accessing the while they're accessing all of this, have a constant reminder that the pre check in is effectively pending and that they need to complete it in order to seek to unlock their check in instructions, and so they can complete that pre check in, which is fully customizable based on who the guest is. Again, I may not want to require an Airbnb guest the same that I may want from a direct booking guests, I may have a bit more fraud risk for a direct booking guest because I'm handling the payment, so I would actually want more fraud protection there. But at the same time, it's also a bit of a VIP guest, and I want to potentially ask them specific questions that are a bit more unique to that stay, to provide them with that more personalized experience. And so you can personalize that pre check in as and as soon as it's completed, check in instructions are released. The Guest Access is all smart devices in the property, obviously, with some some still like blocking here, where they can't turn on, turn on the lights or unlock a door before check in starts. And in that experience, while it's happening on the guest side is progressively enriching your operation, and that's because the guest is going to share things like their estimated time of arrival or their estimated time of departure, and so on the on the operation side, if you know that you have 30 check ins that day, and one of your housekeeper just called out, but you now know that a guest is checking out at five and other three other guests are checking at 11pm you can utilize that data operationally in your task management. So that's that's sort of how it flows from the guests. They can use that portal all the way till checkout. After check out, the portal becomes a bit of your advertising platform for your direct booking engine. You know, essential data related to the stay is hidden, but it's still going to display things like how to how to book direct and encouraging, encouraging those, those returning guests, to do so in the future. So that's how, sort of the back end and the front end front office functions can can be linked effectively. The portal is sort of that central part of operation and and then it flows through your tasks. It flows through your, your IoT module, and your and your various devices there,

Annie Holcombe  
does it? So for the guest standpoint, is this all like internet based, so that it's not an app, they just, it just goes to a web link, and it's all done there, right?

Simon Seroussi  
Yeah, it's going to feel like an app, but it's not going to be an app. So no downloads required. There is a you can download a PDF. So some guests you know may like, may want a PDF option,

Alex Husner  
feeling like they have something. Some

Annie Holcombe  
folks also have homes

Simon Seroussi  
that are like, more remote, and they may be less connection there. And so there is a clear option in the portal to download your check in instructions as a PDF, so that when you get there, if somehow there's absolutely no internet, you're still fine. Everything's locally saved on your phone. So we we've sort of thought through some of those interesting use cases as we've onboarded customer with those interesting use cases.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah. So how many, how many customers are using the platform right now? A

Simon Seroussi  
couple 100 operators today, we've, I think we've, we've intentionally, over the last year, have had very measured growth. Our goal has been just building really the best product we can and to do so, I think we intentionally curbed how many demos we wanted to do and how many people we wanted to only on the platform. We used the last year because, because I think, as I shared, like, every business is different. And so while we were operators, we didn't want to just assume that we knew everything. And we've met so many operators that that have such different operations since and have been able to build a product that is flexible enough to get, to get, you know, practically any operation on boarded, from boutique hotels with 50 rooms to, you know, operators with 500 homes in that don't have any reception or internet on site. And so we've sort of learned those different use cases and built the product accordingly.

Annie Holcombe  
And so where do you where do you see this going from here? Is this something, are you planning to go international? Is it just staying in the States? Like, what? Where do you want, or where are you focused on, I guess, for the next year?

Simon Seroussi  
Yeah. So I think, I mean, what's really magical about technology is, is the reach that you can have. And we've been really lucky to have customers almost all over the world. We have customers ranging from Asia Pacific, Australia, Southeast Asia, all the way to South America, North America and Central and Eastern Europe. We even have some customers in North Africa at this point. So I think we're touching on almost every continent, and that's been really just fortunate. Our growth has been referral and word of mouth people. Use the product. And what I love about this industry is that operators help each other out. That's that's in large part due to, just like the nature of the industry. You're, you know, you, if you, if you operate properties in Kansas, why wouldn't you share tips with an operator friend who operates in another town? So ultimately, I think there's, there's really great word of mouth in this industry. That's how I got here, right? Terry? Terry,

Annie Holcombe  
exactly.

Simon Seroussi  
So that's how we've been growing. And our ambitions for the next year are going to be we definitely want to focus on the, I think, the vacation and short term rental market first. If we if we have a lot of more boutique hotels along the way, as we've had, that's great. It's a plus, but I think it's the space we're in is so interesting. It's changing so fast, it's growing so quickly, and it's a space that we're my co founder, and I and team is really passionate about. So we're going to continue growing with a bit of a focus on the US, but the platform is being used across the world, and we never close our door to somebody who's gonna who knocks on it.

Alex Husner  
Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. I love that. Well, super cool to hear all about sweet op. I think that's you speak very intelligently about the product. Obviously, know it very well, but really, really cool. What you guys are doing one question that we like to ask our guests, especially if it's somebody that we don't know and want to get to know a little bit better. But I better. But what's something in the industry that you don't feel is being talked about? Enough,

Simon Seroussi  
great question. So I think that in general, there is a lot more collaboration on the operator side of things that there potentially could be on the vendor side of things. I think that vendors in this industry, there's often an unspoken tension between property management systems and point solutions, or point solutions between them. And I think I think ultimately it's one it's a large enough industry there's room for a lot of people. That's what's beautiful about it. It's also an industry that's growing 10% year over year. So I think in general, if there could be more open dialog between vendors, to enable themselves, to uplift each other and provide better services to their customers. And that would be something that would be extremely helpful. And I think it's there's often conversations around how to improve the end user's experience, the operator experience or the guest experience, but that starts, you know, and in a lot of those conferences, that starts with the quality of the service that a vendor can provide and and so I think that there's definitely more that can be done there.

Annie Holcombe  
That's a great that's a really great answer. And being a vendor, I if you, if you're having problems and like, we should talk, but I agree with you. I think it sometimes it sometimes it gets so competitive and there's and because there's been such large investments made in some organizations, it becomes very siloed in terms of in terms of what they're doing. So I tend to agree with you there. I think there's a lot more opportunity than you know, for us to work together than separately.

Simon Seroussi  
For sure, yeah. For sure, yeah, absolutely, yeah. It's a big space. And I think we're just scratching the surface too. We're just, there's, there are new, incredible markets that are growing really fast, like South America and even Southeast Asia, that most American vendors are barely, you know, barely addressing. So I really think that we probably would do all better that way than then, then trying to work from behind closed doors. More

Alex Husner  
agree? Yeah, no. Totally agree. Totally agree with that. Well, this has been awesome, Simon, so, so great to meet you, and I think you guys are going to do great things. So this is exciting. You're you're not new, but you're kind of new ish on the scene, so hopefully we got you in front of some some interested prospects here today. But if anybody wants to reach out, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Simon Seroussi  
Yeah, I mean, feel free to reach out to me directly by email. Simon@sweetheart.com you know, schedule a demo. Schedule some time. My demos, I can just tell you now, are not your typical. I think any of my customer can speak to that sales qualifying call where I ask you 50 questions and then pass you on to someone else. I'm going to take, you know, an hour or two, if needed to be three hours to to understand your business and show you the platform and every you know, explore all the different ways in which in which we can potentially help. So we'll spend, we'll spend as much time looking, looking at what we can do for you, as much as looking at the platform in general.

Alex Husner  
Awesome. Well, that sounds great. Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com and until next time. Thanks for listening, everybody.

Simon Seroussi  
Thank you so much. Thanks, Alex. Thanks. Any

Annie Holcombe  
Thank you.