Condo-hotels and resort-style properties sit in a tricky middle ground. They are not traditional hotels, but they are not quite vacation rentals either. Many still run on hotel tech stacks, charge hotel-style commissions, and operate with hotel-era assumptions.
Meanwhile, guests are increasingly searching on vacation rental channels, homeowners are asking why they cannot find their units online, and off-site managers charging half the commission are pulling inventory away.
In our February First-of-the-Month bonus episode, we sit down with Emmanuel Lavoie, CEO of Jetstream, to unpack why so many condo-hotels and resort operators still resist distribution on channels like Airbnb and Vrbo, what it really takes to service this category well, and how AI is starting to reshape channel management.
Episode Chapters
00:00 – Welcome to Alex & Annie Podcast
01:34 - Leaving a 10-year engineering career for travel tech
03:49 - How a Canadian OTA accidentally became a channel manager
08:56 - Why resorts still hesitate to embrace Airbnb and Vrbo
12:16 - What full-service channel management actually includes
12:16 - Why a $10B company chose service over cheaper tech
13:59 - Off-site managers are winning the homeowner battle
16:18 - The challenge of selling non-unique inventory on Airbnb
23:42 - Why one listing with 300 reviews beats 50 identical listings
30:35 - Building an AI-powered guest communication system
34:34 - Using AI for listing content creation at scale
38:38 - Empowering frontline teams as AI champions
42:32 - The human side of AI disruption
44:11 - Where Jetstream is heading next
Connect with Emmanuel:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuel-lavoie-5b89b924/
Website: https://jetstreamtech.io/
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