ChatGPT for your holiday home business: 10 innovative ideas

To be successful as a vacation rental owner or manager, it is important that you keep on top of new trends. Current trends, as well as innovative tools and software, can be key to the growth of your short-term rental business. For this reason, it is likely that you, upon learning of the existence of ChatGPT, have wondered how this product can help you optimize and maximize your holiday rental business. After all, the heated discussion around ChatGPT presents itself as one of those tools that could profoundly revolutionize the way we live and work.

Implementing ChatGPT in your business could help you gain an edge over the competition, reducing time needed for certain tasks and improving your results. But how? We have collected 10 ideas on how to use this innovative tool for your vacation home and short rental business. But first of all, what is ChatGPT and how does it work?

How does ChatGPT work?

ChatGPT (from Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a powerful language model developed by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company. Made public in November 2022, it is part of the so-called GPT-3 models, which are based on unsupervised machine learning. Using a deep learning technique known as transformer, ChatGPT analyzes and understands the meaning of text prompts (requests or commands). This chatbot is designed to generate a response in a human-like language. In simple terms, you can ask ChatGPT questions and it will answer you.

But how can you use this tool to optimize your short-term rental business? Once you have activated your free account, you can ask ChatGPT to write content, give you ideas, translate texts, do research and much more. It will, in a matter of minutes, analyze the information available on the web compatible with your request and give you a result whose level of accuracy will often leave you speechless. All this, in 95 different languages.

Of course, there are limitations. The most important one is that, to get exactly what you are looking for, you have to enter prompts as detailed as possible, specifying the writing style, format and purpose of the answer you want to receive. Let’s look in detail at 10 scenarios and ideas for using ChatGPT for your vacation rental.

Create the perfect listing for your target audience

Whether you are a novice holiday vacation rental owner or an experienced manager, ChatGPT can help you create the perfect listing. This way, you’ll be able to attract more guests and increase the number of bookings, and therefore your revenue.

1. Ask ChatGPT to define your target audience

In all likelihood, before opening your short-term rental business, you did a more or less thorough market analysis. Is your holiday rental located in an area with a high flow of tourists? What is the typical person who is interested in visiting the area and why? What are the high and low seasons? These are some questions you may have asked yourself.

Now, you can ask ChatGPT to do this research for you. By analyzing thousands of results available on the web, this chatbot will help you save time and find insights that you might have missed. After this analysis, you will be able to define your specific target group and customize your communication and offer.

2. Write an listing optimized for booking portals

Once you have obtained more information about the typical tourist in your area, you can set up your listings accordingly on the different booking portals. Whether you advertise your portals such as Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo, you will need an effective title and description to attract potential guests.

And let’s be honest, writing an innovative and catchy title for your rental property can be a daunting task. This is where ChatGPT comes to the rescue. You can ask it to provide you with five examples of titles for your holiday home based on the profile of the typical tourist. Clearly, you will need to be very precise about the type of rental you offer (ChatGPT cannot know whether you rent rooms or a villa with a view!) and the format required (e.g. title for a booking portal). In addition, you can ask the chatbot to also write the text of the listing, specifying its length and the aspects you want to highlight.

The result will not be perfect and you will probably have to tweak the text here and there. Nevertheless, it will mostly be in line with expectations and will save you a lot of time.

Optimize your holiday home website

In addition to the various booking portals, it is important that managers and owners of short-term rentals have a direct booking website. This way, as a host, you will be able to set up and define the branding of your holiday home, adding detailed and personal text to complement your photos. Furthermore, you will be able to receive direct bookings without costly commissions from the various portals (convenient for both host and guests).

Many channel manager softwares, including Smoobu, offer holiday home owners the possibility of building a website without any pre-existing web design knowledge. Whether you choose this option, use a content management system (CMS) or code your own website, ChatGPT can make your life easier.

3. Ask ChatGPT to write SEO-optimized content

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) allows you to optimize your website for various search engines, such as Google. In fact, the latter follow an algorithm that allows them to identify reliable and quality content, presenting it on the first page of searches. This way, the web user will quickly and effortlessly find the information he or she was looking for. If your short-term rental website is optimized for SEO, you are more likely to appear among the first page of results and be chosen by your potential guests. Less than 10% of people actually make it to the second page of Google.

The website offered by Smoobu already has been optimized for SEO. But, if you plan to create additional content, for example blog posts about the area, events and activities offered, you can ask ChatGPT to optimize the texts for you. For example, you can tell ChatGPT::

“Write a 500-word SEO-optimized article on the origins of Thanksgiving.”

4. Code your website with the support of ChatGPT

If you have decided to code your website yourself, you can take advantage of the help of ChatGPT. Please note that this program is not advanced enough to code an entire website on its own. If you want to use it to speed up your work, you will first have to know the programming language you intend to use. In addition, you will have to be very specific about the directions given. Here are five things you can ask ChatGPT to do:

• Research libraries and frameworks from which to extract the code you are looking for.
• Code specific plugins for the CMS you have decided to use.
• Help you optimize custom design elements.
• Suggest ideas and examples of JavaScript code for interactive elements.
• Find and fix errors in your website code.

Improve communication with guests

One of the most important aspects of your short-term rental business is communication with guests. Whether it is verbal or written communication, providing all the necessary information and making your guests feel welcome and comfortable is essential. By doing so, you will provide your guests the unforgettable experience they were looking for and you will probably receive a great review at the end of their stay.

Smoobu allows you to automate communication with guests by unifying the messages received on different portals into one place. Adding ChatGPT to this and you are assured great results with minimal effort.

5. Ask ChatGPT to write your emails

Working in the short-term vacation rental industry is hard and you’ve surely found yourself having to write a large number of emails to your guests. From booking confirmations to thanking them after their stay, on average a holiday rental owner/manager sends between 5 and 7 messages to their guest. Various holiday vacation rental softwares, such as Smoobu, offer you the possibility to automate these emails. This means that once you have written the text, you only need to indicate when it should be sent.

If you want to improve your communication, however, you will want to create templates adapted to different targets. For example, you might want to greet an elderly couple differently than a family with small children. With the right commands, ChatGPT can help you prepare these emails, considering different target groups and styles (e.g. formal or informal). Here are some examples of messages ChatGPT can write for you:

• Booking confirmation
• Message with basic check-in, stay and check-out information
• Message providing a link to access the digital guest guide
• Email template in response to frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• Welcome message or card
• Thank you at the end of your stay
• Message to ask your guests to leave a review
• Newsletter with news, discounts and upcoming events

6. Respond appropriately to reviews

Guest reviews are one of the cornerstones of your short-term rental business, as they define your reputation as a host both on the various booking portals and on the web. However, responding is often not easy, especially when it comes to negative comments and feedback. Luckily, ChatGPT is able to provide a polite and respectful response in any situation that will, in some cases, allow you to avoid bad feedback.

You can ask ChatGPT to provide you with ten examples of thank-you responses to positive reviews and use them from time to time to make your communication more dynamic and personalized. Even for negative ones, having more options will help you put together the appropriate response.

7. Find ideas on extra offers for your guests

One way to get extra income as a holiday home owner is to provide extra offers, e.g. breakfast, beach facilities, basket with local products, etc. If you lack ideas about possible extra offers suitable for your holiday home and area, try asking ChatGPT.

Once you get suitable and interesting answers, remember to mention them on your website. If you use Smoobu, you can add these additional options to your personalized, digital Guest Guide. This way, they will be able to select the services that suit them and pay you directly.

If you want to learn more, take a look at our article on Smoobu’s digital Guest Guide.

8. Research local events and attractions with ChatGPT

Often, as a holiday rental owner, you will find yourself in the situation where you would like to provide your guests with additional information but, being short on time, you decide to leave it alone. For example, you might want to provide information about the area from a geographical, culinary, cultural and other point of view.

ChatGPT can take care of both researching and writing the content you want to offer, all in a matter of minutes. Once the chatbot has finished its work, all you have to do is copy and paste the text onto your website, your newsletter and/or your digital guest guide. Once again, you will be able to offer an incredible service without having to spend hours on it.

Give your social media a boost

If you are looking to expand your holiday rental business, you might decide to focus on social media such as Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. On the one hand, these platforms give you the opportunity to connect with a very large audience. On the other hand, they require time and dedication. In most cases, it will take you several posts at regular intervals before you start to see the first results. ChatGPT can help you in this area too.

9. Get ideas for suitable posts for your target group

Imagine you want to set up an Instagram account for your holiday home. To gain credibility, you will have to create at least a dozen posts or reels in a short time. Especially if you are not super tech savvy, coming up with effective ideas for your posts could take some time. You can, for example, research your competitors and see what kind of content they have created. Or, you can ask ChatGPT to do it for you.

That said, it will be up to you or the digital marketing agency you hired to create content for your social account. ChatGPT, unfortunately, is not able to create visual content for now.

10. Ask ChatGPT to make a list of influencers suitable for your business

Nowadays, influencer marketing campaigns are a winning weapon for many businesses. If you’re considering implementing this strategy for your short-term rental business, you can enlist ChatGPT’s help in finding the ideal candidates to promote your holiday home on their communication channels.

If you want to receive satisfactory results, you will need to be very specific in your requests. Your influencer’s audience will have to be similar to your target group in order for this marketing strategy to bring effective results. Explain to ChatGPT:

• What type of influencer you are looking for (micro, mid-tier or macro, depending on the number of followers).
• What influencer niche you need to work on (travel, fashion, interior design, parenting, etc.).
• What language you want to use (if most of your guests are from Germany, you might consider a German influencer).
• What age group to consider (as a general rule, your audience identifies with influencers who are of a similar age to themselves).

To conclude: why use ChatGPT for your holiday home business

The short-term rental market is expanding and often, to be successful as a holiday home owner, you will need to implement specific marketing strategies. Only then will you attract the attention of your potential guests and stand out from the competition.

ChatGPT can help you out by saving you a lot of time in devising, writing and optimizing content. Of course, being a relatively new product, it is not yet perfect and can sometimes provide inaccurate answers. You will have to make sure to make accurate queries and adjust the results according to your own specific accommodation business and tastes. But the benefits of ChatGPT are undeniable. Our suggestion is: try it out and evaluate it yourself!