VRWS Leadership Interview of the Day
In approaching the 11th edition of the Vacation Rental World Summit, we’re releasing a series of interviews to leaders, key players and highly motivated people in our industry whose companies make a deep impact in our space and will be present at VRWS.
The aim is to get you some insight into these leaders and the company they founded, manage or work for, as well as getting some behind the scenes on their thinking, their motivation and their drive.
DENNIS KLETT
- What do you do for a living and which part of your job do you enjoy the most?
I’m the CEO and co-founder of Lodgify, the all-in-one software for vacation rental hosts and property managers. As CEO, I spend most of my time improving our product. This manifests itself primarily by having deep-dive product discussions with our Product Team to ensure we’re setting the right priorities and implementing the UX in the right and fastest way to maximize customer value. What I I enjoy most is empowering our customers with our technology and seeing them succeed in getting started and growing their vacation rental businesses.
- How does your company innovate or adapt to the evolving needs of the vacation rental space?
It’s quite simple: We always put our customers first and simply listen to their pain points. Providing the best experience to our customers is key — all else will follow. We heavily invest in R&D with a team of 100+ ambitious professionals working hard every day to understand our customers’ needs and continuously resolve their challenges.
- How do you view the various predictions about AI’s impact on society, ranging from dystopian scenarios to transformative advancements, and how does your company approach or integrate AI technology?
For society, the leading minds on the subject of AI seem to suggest an 80-90% likelihood of AI having an extremely favorable impact leading to an “age of abundance” for humanity, leaving 10-20% risk for the dystopian scenario. What is certain is the incredible pace at which AI is growing and that its disruption potential is high, also in travel and the vacation rental industry.
At Lodgify, we want to empower our customers with AI to ensure they will remain successful throughout this disruption. We’re currently focused on applying AI to make it more efficient to run their vacation rental business. Earlier this year, we launched our Lodgify AI Assistant, a GPT-powered messaging tool that enables our customers to generate a response to a guest with a click of a button. When tapped, it analyzes the guest’s message, then quickly drafts a contextually relevant response using information from the hosts’ Lodgify database and various online sources—including details about the property, reservation, policies, nearby attractions and recommendations, and more. The host still maintains full control and can review or edit the AI-generated response before sending, if needed.
This has enabled our hosts to address their guest needs more efficiently while saving significant time, and we are actively working on releasing new features that leverage AI to benefit our hosts’ day-to-day operations.
- What would you like to achieve by attending the Vacation Rental World Summit 2024 in Porto with your company?
We are keen to listen to new emerging challenges of hosts and property managers so we can better understand how to develop solutions to such pain points. Also, we’re happy to connect with industry peers to exchange ideas, broaden our mindset, and get new ideas
- What are your passions, including any hobbies or sports, that you enjoy discussing and sharing with others outside the professional setting?
I enjoy traveling and learning about the different countries’ histories and cuisines. I’m currently very interested in the South East Asia region. I also enjoy hiking and skiing in the Swiss Alps.
You’ll have the opportunity to meet the Lodgify team directly at VRWS in Porto
Not Yet Registered for VRWS?
