Vrbo and Jurny Join Forces to Automate Short-Term Rentals

Hotel and short-term rental management platform Jurny integrated with vacation rental site Vrbo.

The integration lets hosts set up and manage listings on Vrbo’s 2 million-property site via Jurny’s centralized dashboard, according to a Monday (Oct. 30) press release.

In addition, Jurny is unifying multiple booking channels and communication streams, including Airbnb, Booking.com, email, SMS, WhatsApp and chat, into one inbox to fully automate guest interaction with artificial intelligence (AI).

“Having the most robust and streamlined inbox in the industry isn’t just a feature; it’s a game-changer for our customers,” said Jurny founder and CEO Luca Zambello in the release. “By pairing this with industry-leading AI capabilities, we’re not just managing conversations; we’re elevating the entire guest experience. In today’s competitive landscape, the ability to respond to guest inquiries quickly and intelligently is more than a convenience — it’s a necessity.”

With AI, the release added, hosts can take contextual data from the guest’s entire journey and “offer unparalleled personalization and automation.”

Earlier this month, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky discussed his company’s use of AI as part of a broader campaign to improve the vacation rental platform.

“We need to get our house in order,” Chesky said at the time. “We need to make sure the listings are great, we’re providing great customer service and we’re affordable. And I’ve told our team that we can get back to creating new and exciting things once we’ve fixed that foundation.”

For example, the technology can also help spot problem guests, such as those who hold house parties in violation of Airbnb policies.

“We’ve used machine learning techniques to look at the last billion and a half guest arrivals and see which yielded a party and which didn’t,” Chesky said. “If you try to do this through a human eye, you might not notice any patterns, but AI can look through over a billion data points, find a lot of similarities and create a rule set.”

Meanwhile, PYMNTS Intelligence found that automation can alleviate the hospitality industry’s labor shortages by augmenting or replacing key roles.

“Can Automation Solve Labor Shortages in the Hospitality Sector?,” a PYMNTS and LS Retail collaboration, found that 70% of hotel operators plan to add, upgrade or change their property management systems in the coming year.