Unlocking the Short-Term Real Estate and Hospitality Revolution with ZenniHome and Jurny

Transcript:

Bob Worsley:
Thank you everyone for joining us today for our webinar. I'm very pleased. I'm Bob Worsley, the CEO and founder of Zeni Home. And we're pleased today to have Lucas and Bello with us today who's the founder of an exciting new company we're gonna be talking about called Journey. It's a great software platform we're gonna talk about today. And all of you know who I am from our previous webinars, I founded Zeni Home three years ago and we're aggressively growing and aggressively raising money on WeFunder as is Luca, I believe. And so we're excited to get started. So Luca, I'd like you to just give you a chance to introduce yourself to our audience and let's talk about what you're doing. Thank you.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, Bob, thank you for having me here. And like you said, I'm Luca Zambello, CEO and founder of Journey. Journey is hospitality automation platforms that really helps the adoption of complex technologies by unifying them into a single platform and giving our customer access to cutting edge technologies like AI and automation.

Bob Worsley:
Great, a little bit of background about you Luca, you're from Italy you said.

Luca Zambello:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was born and raised in Italy. I actually moved to the US about 14 years ago now. I've been involved in the ospitalti space just a couple of years after I came here with really the excuse of studying but wanted to be an entrepreneur in US. And then a couple of years after I moved here, I stumbled across the short-term rental industry super early on. This was when the at a time where Airbnb wasn't even big yet. And a lot of, especially in the luxury space here in LA, a lot of the rentals were done through brokers. I was one of the first companies that launched a landing page in order to find people online that they were looking for luxury homes. That business did $1.2 million in revenue in year one. So hooked me into the industry. From there, I obviously, the industry evolved pretty quickly. A lot of people. I understood there was an opportunity to promote properties online. A lot of people start moving towards the Airbnb. And so we pivoted the business to a management company, grew and scale that company to almost 300 units across five different cities. And in the process of doing that, I wanted to really automate a lot and streamline the business as much as I could. And that's kind of like how, how the idea of journey came about because, um, I realized that hospitality industry was so far behind. when it comes to technology and the technologies they were able, it was, they are so fragmented, which are different, very hard to make them work with one another. So, so that's how we got to, to launch Journey.

Bob Worsley:
Well, so you've got Airbnb and VBRO and a whole bunch of people out there trying to do this in a single platform. And what you're doing is you're bringing this all together for the consumer and making it super easy for them to do business on any of those platforms.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, exactly. And then at the same time, bringing different technologies like, you know, there's, there's so many new things coming up on the market every day. You have things like smart home technologies, like smart locks, smart thermostats, and, and how do you integrate those into your platform? Right. And then, uh, if you're a hospitality company, pricing is a big deal. So dynamic pricing. Um, so not only the management of this different platform, like booking.com, Expedia and Airbnb. onto a single platform, but also all the tools that you need in order to run those platforms, but also in order to run your operation, like automating cleanings, guest communications. We were talking about AI, which is a big component of our platform today, and how we're leveraging the power of AI to actually automate a lot of these processes. To give you a data point, Just this year, it's predicted that between Airbnbs and hotels, they're going to be spending over $355 billion in operational costs and inefficient operation just this year and just in the US. So the market opportunity and the amount of money that's being spent to run these assets, it's humongous. It's like over a trillion dollars if you look at it worldwide. And a lot of this, the technology they exist, that they can already streamline a lot of these operations are not really mainstream yet. And one of the biggest reason is because of because of the fragmentation that there is in the market and how hard it is to make this different technologies work with one another. I think very similarly, I think, you know, in real estate in general, it's probably pretty far behind. It's very similar to what you guys are doing as well. in terms of streamlining

Bob Worsley:
Yeah, pick up.

Luca Zambello:
things and changing the way things have been done for a long time.

Bob Worsley:
Yeah, people can build a pickup truck, buy a material, build a house, buying a pickup truck with Home Depot materials and a skill saw and go do it. But that doesn't mean it's going to be the most cost-effective way to do it. And I think what you're saying, Luca, is these are large, fragmented sectors, and there's $355 billion of operational costs just in the United States. to have everybody have their own call center, have everybody do reservations, et cetera, and

Luca Zambello:
Exactly.

Bob Worsley:
what if they could be consolidated? I guess you're kind of like Elon Musk, making the Tesla supercharger available to all the other car manufacturers now. He's gonna

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, I mean,

Bob Worsley:
benefit

Luca Zambello:
it's

Bob Worsley:
from that scale.

Luca Zambello:
creating the infrastructure. And I think that's actually like a really good point to AI that there's a lot of, AI is like so overused today. We had this vision of creating this infrastructure for when the AI power was powerful enough to become a very useful tool for companies. But if you didn't build the infrastructure first, it doesn't matter, right? Because ChadGPT

Bob Worsley:
Right.

Luca Zambello:
is great, to adapt it to a specific use case and to use that power to a specific use case, you have to have the infrastructure. If you haven't built the infrastructure, it really doesn't matter and it's gonna be not that helpful. But once you build an infrastructure, it changes completely the use case. And it's a lot harder for an AI actually to be a generic AI, like Chad GP, than being very specific and focused on a specific vertical. If it has the proper infrastructure, the power can be... it can be extremely powerful.

Bob Worsley:
So let's talk about connecting to apps like Airbnb. Used to be, you know, you get an API and work a little bit and pretty soon you've scraped and you can talk to it. Why would someone want to come to Journey versus Airbnb? And how will your interface, your user interface and everything work? And will there be any latency or any issues? being able to do everything they can do on the Airbnb site directly.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, I mean, it's, um, I think having the real, having a very powerful API connection is extremely important. And, and to, and to really develop a strong connection is the key here. Cause I think that a lot of people integrate with the Airbnb. First of all, Airbnb doesn't allow anybody to integrate with them. So you have to go through a pretty stiff approval process, but even if you do so, It's all about how well you integrate with them. And their API is honestly one of the strongest in the industry. So it really allows you to manage almost everything you wanted to manage outside of Airbnb, but it's about them creating tools that facilitate this management. So for instance, we talked about right now, guest communication was one of them, of course. So like having automated check-ins, check out information, but also the AI that can handle full conversation with guests. having a place for Q&A for specific properties or specific units so that the AI knows what to answer to specific questions and really put things into context. But at the same time, you have tools like reservation, review management, which is extremely time consuming. Just be on top of reviews, answering negative reviews, knowing how to answer. You have to put somebody that knows what they're talking about because you have to really take your emotion out when you're answering reviews. There's even a small operation handles hundreds of reservation per month, a hundred of reviews per month. Just being on top of that, it's a full-time job even for a small operator, let along with a larger operator, right? We're talking about thousands of hours just for that. And then resolution is not a big deal. And a lot of, a lot of companies that have been in space until now, they have not looked there. They just looked at automating the communication part a little bit with automatic tools, but not even AI. So. So this is kind of an example of what you would be doing. And obviously we go also all the way to pricing management and having dynamic prices and the changes based on seasonality and what time of the year it is and how your occupancy and all that. So that's, and that's the trick of combining all of that into a platform that is easy to use. Because until now a lot of tools existed, but they were. so hard to make them work one another.

Bob Worsley:
Okay, so now you've, I'm sure you've got a hockey stick going in terms of revenue because you're connecting all these things and people would rather go one place than VBRO, Airbnb, et cetera, et cetera. So how fast is your company growing and how much Airbnb business versus VBRO, how's that looking in terms of revenue?

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, I mean, our strongest integrations, it is with Airbnb. So majority of the business of hosts come from there. But our goal is to become a hospitality platform for anything that is, anything from hotels. We already have hotels, but anything from hotels to short-term rentals, there shouldn't be any reason why you would need a different platform, to be honest. And a lot of the short-term rental businesses are now start trying to monetize within the hotel industry and vice versa. So you need to have... platform that allows us to do both. We just launched a premium product. In terms of users, we three-axe our users in three months. We have into the thousands now of hosts on our platform, which for young platforms is really not hard because technically B2B, so it's having the hockey stick on a B2B business is not as easy as you probably know as well.

Bob Worsley:
Yeah.

Luca Zambello:
So yeah, we're extremely excited, growing pretty fast. But I think more importantly, we are about to really change how things have been done. And I think the real true potential of our platform is gonna show very soon as the AI becomes more powerful. And I think this is something that a lot of people don't consider, but AI doubles in power every three and a half months. So we're really like, the technology is improving exponentially, which means that if you're already building infrastructure, soon you're gonna see things that you can even imagine. And we're just less than a year away, I think, from food disruption. So that's what we're the most excited about.

Bob Worsley:
So in a year, you think AI can kind of drive itself and things we can't even imagine it will be doing that

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, in

Bob Worsley:
we

Luca Zambello:
many ways,

Bob Worsley:
couldn't even have

Luca Zambello:
yeah,

Bob Worsley:
thought

Luca Zambello:
in many

Bob Worsley:
of.

Luca Zambello:
ways already is, but in a year is going to be exponentially a lot better. And if you put things in perspective, if you take an IQ of 90 or IQ of 180 are very, very different. But

Bob Worsley:
Mm-hmm.

Luca Zambello:
from 90 to 180 is just double, right? And if you consider that we're probably sitting around the 9100 number right now in terms of IQ, if you could put an IQ number for... For AI, in some specific cases, well above that, but let's say 100. So if you were to double, even if it were to take a year, you're gonna have some very, very powerful tool.

Bob Worsley:
Luca, what's one thing that's kind of surprised you that AI's taught you already?

Luca Zambello:
Uh, it's, it's just as right now is really as good as you can. Like you have to think outside of the box to where the sandwich through potential. So it really forces you to think outside of your normal thinking because we're so used to things being linear and things be, uh, one plus one is two, right? Uh, and, but here's very much different. You have to think outside of the box. You have to think. Uh, a way of doing things that have not been done before. It's not regular programming. It's, it's really about, and a perfect example of it is like, if you think about. When you, when you use a prompt, you can go and chat GPT for, and then I have a very basic prompt and you're going to get a very basic answer, very generic, that is not that good, but if you, if you know how to work and create a proper prompt, your result and results are going to be sometimes shocking. Like my favorite prompt is. This is what I'm trying to do. Ask me 15 questions so that you understand how to execute that task at your best. And you will see the difference in the results that you're gonna be getting.

Bob Worsley:
Wow. So how do you price your units on, how do people price their units on your system? I have a pretty good portfolio of Airbnb properties personally. We have on a given night, it could be, you know, $5,000, $6,000 of rental per night. So how would I use Journey on my property?

Luca Zambello:
It's super simple, super streamlined. But if you already have an existing Airbnb account, the connections, we developed a one-click connections. So you can just connect your account. You log in inside of your Airbnb account after you sign up with us, and all your information will be automatically imported, and it will be done basically in minutes. So super straightforward. And then obviously, depending on which tools you want to utilize, if you want to utilize Dynamic Crisis, Guest Purification System, Cleaning Management app, then there's some more implementation processes and some more setups that you will need to do. But if you already have an Airbnb account, it's super, super straightforward. Yeah, and it's very

Bob Worsley:
So you'd.

Luca Zambello:
interesting, actually. Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
So you'd have everything that you have on Airbnb ported over right away. And then are you telling me that beyond the Airbnb functionality that they loaded, that was loaded into your system from their system, there's like how much more, is it 25% more I can do with Journey or is it 100% more? Tell me what else I have. that Airbnb can't do for me.

Luca Zambello:
Well, Airbnb main job is being a distribution platform. And so that's what they're great at. And that's what they're focusing on. They have, for instance, a dynamic pricing tool, but that's their pricing suggestions are never gonna be what it's best for you. It's what's best for them. And I love Airbnb, but that's the business they're in, right? To make you sure that you're priced competitively. And then you, people would choose Airbnbs over hotels. And

Bob Worsley:
Mm-hmm.

Luca Zambello:
so there's not really many tools to automate things. So you have to do all of that outside, like the connectivity to different smart home devices. Like we talked about smart thermostats and automatic smart locks where code changes automatically every time. There's a guest checking in and checking out, automatic guest communication, guest verifications, automatic. AI communications, review management like we talked about, and all of this different set of tools that cannot be done by utilizing that platform. Then let alone if you want to connect more platforms like booking.com and Expedia, you're going to have a whole problem with syncing this information and making sure this information match and you'll have a unified calendar that shows you all your property at a glance and then automatically can manage occupancy. on those units. And

Bob Worsley:
And

Luca Zambello:
it sounds

Bob Worsley:
so

Luca Zambello:
interesting.

Bob Worsley:
does the information,

Luca Zambello:
Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
does any information from your platform make its way back to Airbnb if

Luca Zambello:
Yeah,

Bob Worsley:
needed?

Luca Zambello:
it's a two-way connection and correct. Yeah,

Bob Worsley:
Okay,

Luca Zambello:
that's the

Bob Worsley:
great.

Luca Zambello:
whole point. Like if you're messaging a guest on our platform, the message shows up on the Airbnb platform and automatically if our AI is answering, that message just shows up on there. From a user standpoint, if the user wants to stay on Airbnb, they're only seeing Airbnb, they don't even know you're using this automation platform. They just, in fact, it's in a way, I don't know if you're familiar with the Turing test, but it's when a person talks with AI and they don't even know that they're doing it. In fact, we've done that already several times, which is pretty good. So from a guest perspective, actually, the experience increases, which is really cool. But I'm also

Bob Worsley:
So

Luca Zambello:
interested on...

Bob Worsley:
one of the big things is cleaning. One of the big things, Luca, after people leave is cleaning. Tell me

Luca Zambello:
Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
how your cleaning app works. If you have a fleet of women or workers that can come in and clean after am I connected to them and I'm kind of deploying them and getting them on it immediately, how does that work?

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, so our goal is not to do everything, but to be connected and have the deepest connection with the tools that allow you to do that. So like for instance, like for pricing, the dynamic pricing is not done by us, it's done by a company called Wheelhouse. But their whole solution is embedded into our system. Same thing is for cleaning. We've been working with a company until now, but we're about to launch a new integrations with companies called Terno. And they handle a lot of that. They even have a marketplace for cleaners. So people can find cleaners and book them on demand if they need to. Or they can manage their own fleet of cleaners if they have a larger operation right there on the app. And it creates automatic scheduling. And then you can build specific checklists for all these cleanings. So you will have a very precise... to do and then when that to do is done, you will receive a notification when our system that has been done is done based on like based on the instruction, they follow the instruction that you give them. And then we also are building a rating system that is connected directly from when a guest rates you connected to that specific cleaner that clean that property so that you can have a ranking system as well built in the background.

Bob Worsley:
So how do your smart home features connect? And if you could wave a magic wand, what kind of controls would you even want to work with?

Luca Zambello:
Right now we're being limited to smart sensors. So things like, I don't know if you ever heard of noise aware or Minit. Those smart sensors measure noise levels to make sure that you don't have neighbors or other guests next to it complaining. If the noise decibels are too high, there's not much message they can send to the guests. And then things like smoke detectors and stuff like that. So all of those are connected. Plus you have the connectivity with smart thermostat and to control room temperature, we have a gas mobile app as well. When guests want to use it, they don't have to use it, but if they want to, they can use that to control room temperature. We can preset room temperature based on the same guests returning. And then we also have a digital... connection to digital locks, all the major brands for digital locks. There's a couple that were not connected yet but will be connected soon. And yeah, so that gives you the ability to... Our system actually automatically sends a new code for each guest and that code only works for the length of the stay of that guest. And if you have multiple access, so let's say that you have a main door and then a final door, that code will work for both doors as long as they are connected. to the internet and you have a smart IoT connection basically.

Bob Worsley:
So one of our features that we have is being able to be off-grid.

Luca Zambello:
Yup.

Bob Worsley:
So we use Starlink for connection. But for example, this morning I looked at my utility bill last month in Mesa, Arizona, where we are. We had the hottest day in the history of the world in Mesa yesterday for our temperatures. The high was 119 and the low was. in the 80s and the average temperature was the highest in history for this area. And so if I wanted to really minimize or work off grid, I only used 10 kilowatts of power last month because we have solar, we have inverters, we have batteries. What can you do with your system that would help me live off grid?

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, no, it's, well, we can help with power consumption because you can technically turn off AC between guests or heater between guests, right? And just turning on when you know that the guests is checking in, that definitely can help. It's not our core focus, I'll say today, but it's definitely a capability that we have. And it is something that has been requested by, especially large property owners. because then it's our matter. Like how much they're spending on a per unit days. So yeah, like we definitely

Bob Worsley:
Uh huh.

Luca Zambello:
have capability. I would say it's not our core focus, but that's the whole point. And I think in future, even by enabling AI to control some of these things, you will have that even more automated and streamlined.

Bob Worsley:
So how would multifamily buildings appeal to your user base?

Luca Zambello:
What we have?

Bob Worsley:
We have a 90.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, we

Bob Worsley:
We have

Luca Zambello:
have

Bob Worsley:
a

Luca Zambello:
a...

Bob Worsley:
90 unit building we're building. And we have a span panel out of San Francisco, which makes the breaker box all electronic. And

Luca Zambello:
Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
there's an app to control everything on the panel. So how could our multifamily building appeal to your user base if we have 90 units in the building and we have span units in every unit? How... How could you help us in this particular building?

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, I mean, the platform was actually originally built. That's what we, we were operators in multifamily, urban markets. So we operated boutique hotels and short term rentals in that in multifamilies. So, uh, all the connectivity. Of. Like from, from the main door all the way to final door helps streamline, especially the, the walking of guests in and out, especially if you have mixed between long-term and short-term noise monitoring system. it's must have when you have multi-units. So the whole IoT connections is really helpful for that. And then this is going a little bit maybe too much in details, but there's a difference between units and units type. So if you have a single family, it's a unit. And if you're only listening on Airbnb, it really only matters, mainly only matters units. But if you start listing your property as a whole, you're going to have a lot of the units that are going to be identical or very much similar to one another. So you're going to have a lot of two bedrooms that look the same and a lot of one bedrooms that are going to look the same. And so you can create a single unit type for that list of properties. So all the settings are the same for those properties. Acrobaty can be managed better and I think more importantly, they can be distributed as hotels as well. On Airbnb itself as well. than you think that they're doing, but also as well on booking the comics media, you actually perform better when you're listed more of a as a hotel style than a single property. So.

Bob Worsley:
Okay, great. So if you gave an elevator pitch on Journey, what would it say, Luca, to give you a chance here to kind of summarize your thoughts?

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, I mean, really what I said in the beginning is like, we are an automation platform with a vision of bringing complex technology and making them accessible to the industry as a whole. That's our ultimate goal. And as we say, our mission is to bring hospitality to the age of AI and automation. So that's our goal. It would be great to hear

Bob Worsley:
And you think that...

Luca Zambello:
also. Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
Is hospitality, in your opinion, lagging behind the industry, the let's just say the AI frontiers? Do you find hospitality being a little old fashioned? You go to some hotels, like I'm in one right now, and here's my key. My wife uses her phone. The old, some places are still giving you a key to get in and turn it in when you're done. So do you find the hospitality industry is pretty antiquated?

Luca Zambello:
Very antiquated. I think everybody is running a bit behind when it comes to AI in general, but the hospital has been running behind for a long time. And yes, I think everybody had the experience of checking in and having to wait in line and not really finding any value on that check-in process whatsoever. You just want to go to your room, you've just been traveling, you just want to check in and still baffle by how many... in how many hotels, even expensive hotels, you have to really wait in line for sometimes 20, 30 minutes. So if you go to Vegas, New York, big cities, it's like during conferences and stuff like that. It is absolutely insane. But that's just the first layer that people see. That inefficiency transfer over to everything. They transfer over from the office management, the back-end office. Like a lot of people on the front-end office, there's a back-end office, but it's massive. And there's a lot of, all those inefficiencies are just as bad in the back end office. So the room of improvement is massive. And I think until now they've not been forced to innovate. But I think what happened is that once you, yeah, it's so powerful. And then when you combine it with automation, you're going to have now new operators that are going to adopt these technologies and be ahead of the rest of the industry. And they're going to be so much ahead of the rest of the industry that the industry is going to be forced to move forward. So we never had this breaking point. And I think we're right there. And this is what's gonna force also the larger hotels until now they're done. I have to give credit here to the short-term rental industry because there's so much more I had than the retail industry. Like it's not even close. And still there's massive room of improvements there. But at least the innovation is coming from there. I think that is one of the reasons why we focus on that industry prior to. to other industries.

Bob Worsley:
So that's why you're predicting that AI every three months is going to be so doubling or whatever that any year you think will hit that magic point where maybe what Airbnb has done but never translated to hotel industry, there's so much ahead that the pain will be so great. that the hotel, the hospitality industry will finally have to make a step change in behavior

Luca Zambello:
Absolutely.

Bob Worsley:
to get current.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, exactly. And the three and a half months prediction is not my Stanford University paper. Just want

Bob Worsley:
Mm-hmm.

Luca Zambello:
to point that out. It's not that I think it's there's a lot of there's massive paper and a lot of smart people behind that statement.

Bob Worsley:
Great, okay. Well, one of the things we're hoping to do is that people, I have friends, Luca, that have a villa in eight countries and takes property management and cleaning and how do you live in eight places, right? You have a place in London, you have a place in Rome, you have a place in Paris, in New York City and San Francisco or Coronado down in San Diego. point, our vision is that people will stop spending those many, many millions of dollars, and they will start to maybe put a Zeni home in each of those areas. And when they're not there, they can actually do an Airbnb of that property. So it's paying for itself. And when you do want to be there, you just basically block out the schedule so you can be there. Um, exactly what the facilities will be where you're going and enjoy the

Luca Zambello:
Yep.

Bob Worsley:
country and why you're there instead of having this big nightmare of property management of many, many homes, second, third, fourth, fifth homes. Um, so how, how would we use, uh, how could Zenni home use journey to encourage this kind of, I have a second home or third home or a fourth home in all my favorite places. And

Luca Zambello:
Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
I can afford it because it's $150,000.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, first of all, I think what you're doing is so amazing because I've had in my journey in the hospitality industry and the property management, I always thought that probably the best way to monetize things from this industry is actually ownership. But

Bob Worsley:
Mm-hmm.

Luca Zambello:
ownership is so expensive. So I think you're fixing a massive problem, different problem, but a massive problem also in the real estate. vertical and I wish a solution like yours existed already when I started working in this space because by analyzing data and looking at data, we understood that sometimes opportunities in the markets are sometimes a perfect place, perfect time. You want to move in quick and real estate is everything but quick. So having a solution like that, which also would use larger reduced investment, it's amazing. I think there's a massive opportunity outside of what you said, I'm kind of opening apprentices, maybe a little bit of a tangent, but I think there's a massive opportunity for this industry because for the first time, you can look at hospitality very differently because of Airbnb. Like before you had,

Bob Worsley:
Mm-hmm.

Luca Zambello:
opening out was not a small task.

Bob Worsley:
It

Luca Zambello:
But

Bob Worsley:
was

Luca Zambello:
Airbnb...

Bob Worsley:
expensive.

Luca Zambello:
can be operated especially because of a lot of this technologies are being adopted. It can be operated profitably even with a handful of units, sometimes even just a single unit. And so I think having the ability to deploy units in different locations in a price effective way, it's a massive opportunity for the whole market. And if you look at it, like there's tools like... one of them is called Airbnb, where you can look at emerging markets. And a lot of times, these emerging markets on Airbnb don't make a lot of money because there's not a lot of inventory. And this is a great way that somebody can really look and build the inventory on top of that. So I absolutely love that. And to answer your question, sorry, I went on a long answer. And to answer your question specifically, I mean, again, like our platform is extremely easy to use and can absolutely do what you talk about. So, and I think I see a big opportunity for our companies working together to create this solution, not just for what you guys are achieving, but combining the two can become extremely powerful.

Bob Worsley:
There's a cool company we've watched called Wander.com. I don't know if you followed them, but

Luca Zambello:
Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
they are sourcing or they're buying some of their capitals going toward buying these cliffside, beachside, really amazing, scenic places. Have a Tesla waiting, have Starlink for you know, so you can do a work remote. in this amazing place and have all the things you would need to get around a car and workspace, et cetera, broadband. So we just think that could be a really super cool expansion of what we do, work on some of these super cool places in the world. But all the software to make it work and make it really easy to do sounds like you could provide to us.

Luca Zambello:
Absolutely. Yeah. And it actually would be interesting to learn a little bit more in details. Like, it sounds like that the production of these units is extremely scalable and quick. So I'd like to learn more. I think the audience probably wants to learn more about that. The cost, like how quickly can those units be deployed? And also what type of technologies do you include? What's your approach with? with smart home technology.

Bob Worsley:
Well, we're trying to, Luca, we're trying to have whatever, when I was the founder of Skymall when I was 35, we would have a meeting one day a month on the first Thursday or so, like Sharper Image, Richard Thalheimer did as well. And we would let people bring the coolest new thing, the coolest gadgets, and try to sell us on why that should be in the next catalog, the next sequence. And we wanna do the same thing here, For example, I was just in a shop, a lab, looking two months ago at a senior monitoring system where there were sensors that could tell you if the person's got out of bed or how long they were in the bathroom. Even had a toilet that measured your temperature and your urine stream. And it could do your blood pressure. It could do a stool sample even. And so you think about all the sensors that could come in the next five, 10 years. And if those were deployed in a home, in the factory, and we had the kind of technology that you have, just imagine how, hey, somebody has fallen. Someone went in the bathroom three hours ago and didn't come out. Someone never got out of bed this morning. Somebody didn't open the fridge today. And I mean, these are all things that would tell you that your loved one that maybe is staying alone in a room somewhere, something's not right. And that we need to send somebody out there immediately to see what's going on. So to me, all of these kinds of technologies, senior care, obviously smart locks, Google Home, blinds that open and close automatically with time of day or direct sunlight. I mean, we're looking at all of this, including atmospheric water harvesting so that you can get some drinking water if you're remote. We're trying to be off grid with some units.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, that's amazing.

Bob Worsley:
So how do you solve sewer issues? We're the only homes, I think, in the world that are being built with gray water and black water plumbing systems in every home. So

Luca Zambello:
And

Bob Worsley:
your

Luca Zambello:
think

Bob Worsley:
shower.

Luca Zambello:
about the opportunity. Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
Yeah.

Luca Zambello:
Think about the opportunity of being off grid and running short on rentals. I think that's, that's the ultimate dream to be deployed, to be able to deploy in almost any location. Um, that's

Bob Worsley:
Yeah,

Luca Zambello:
the opportunity. It's, it's, it's massive. Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
you have people to go to Amagiri in Page, Arizona, and spend five, six, seven thousand a night to be able to feel like they're right in this almost Martian landscape

Luca Zambello:
Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
and get their mind away from everything else that's crazy in the world and just kind of become so shocked visually and feeling-wise that you're in a different world.

Luca Zambello:
See

Bob Worsley:
So

Luca Zambello:
ya.

Bob Worsley:
that's what you want. You want to be remote where there's nothing. And then how do

Luca Zambello:
That's

Bob Worsley:
you have

Luca Zambello:
amazing.

Bob Worsley:
a comfortable place that is intelligent enough that allows you to live comfortably in an off-grid location?

Luca Zambello:
And so walk me through, I think a lot of people will be interested in this, like the deployment of this units, like what does it go into it? Like how does somebody say, okay, I want to create this like destination in the middle of nowhere, what goes into it?

Bob Worsley:
Well, let me show you really quick. I'll just share a screen here real quick and show you what,

Luca Zambello:
Should have done the same for the platform. Think of that.

Bob Worsley:
yeah, for sure. I'm just gonna scoot down here to a screen that shows, first of all, we believe that space should be multi-purpose space, but let me go to a little thing here that answers your specific question. First, we only need nine piers in the ground, concrete piers. A crane sets the first box on those piers. Second box skirts it, puts the deck down. The lid comes up out of the unit. You put your brise soleil. You're done on the front. Solar comes on it, if that's what you want. You connect utilities if, in fact, you're on grid. It takes a couple of days on the inside to do what we call the mate line. And anything that crosses the mate line has to be kind of adjusted. And you're done. You literally move in. So

Luca Zambello:
Wow.

Bob Worsley:
the idea that this could be done quickly and deployed. And imagine these are 28,000 pounds each module with furniture in them. So if you had a Huey helicopter or something, like you're moving a container, a military is moving a container or a tank or something. You could move this to the top of a mountain where there's no roads. And you could literally, um, hike to it or put your skins on and, and take your skis up there, uh, hike up in there in the snow. And this could be

Luca Zambello:
That's

Bob Worsley:
literally

Luca Zambello:
amazing.

Bob Worsley:
in the middle of nowhere off grid.

Luca Zambello:
And just as a curiosity, how does the, and maybe it's going too much into details, but how do you manage, because I know for instance, when I originally went to Tulum, there was a lot of these hotels were off grid. And now it's changed in just a few years, but how do you manage the electricity? Obviously you talked about solar panels, but like, how do you manage sewage and other things like that?

Bob Worsley:
Well, there's pretty standard things like put a septic system in. The sewer can go into that, but the beautiful thing that we do is with black and gray water systems, we can take your shower, your dishwasher and sinks, and we can go to a gray water with a four or $500 Amazon filter, charcoal filter. It can go to any plants and water. use the water again for some other purpose

Luca Zambello:
That's amazing.

Bob Worsley:
on site. And then we've just been working with a German company called Busa Engineering, and they've been doing this for 20 years in Europe at campsites. They can take raw sewage, black water sewage, and with microfiltering in a bioreactor, they can get to drinkable water, which I wouldn't drink, but they can get to drinking quality water. And so we're putting those two ideas together between gray water, black water, and the BUSA system. And we think we can build a home in Phoenix, Arizona where there's not a 100 year certified water supply. And you could literally for 98% of the time reuse every drop of water that comes into your home. And imagine how much less water we would use in the world if we had 98% that could be reused for your plants

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, it's

Bob Worsley:
and

Luca Zambello:
amazing.

Bob Worsley:
other things. And right now we're watering plants. Today in Phoenix, Arizona, we're watering our lawns and our plants with drinking water, which makes

Luca Zambello:
That's

Bob Worsley:
no

Luca Zambello:
amazing.

Bob Worsley:
sense.

Luca Zambello:
Well,

Bob Worsley:
So

Luca Zambello:
yeah, it's

Bob Worsley:
that's

Luca Zambello:
amazing what you

Bob Worsley:
why

Luca Zambello:
guys are

Bob Worsley:
we're

Luca Zambello:
doing.

Bob Worsley:
running out of water. Yes.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, exactly. That's awesome.

Bob Worsley:
So there's a lot to be done there. We were big fans of Starlink. We used Starlink to get broadband remote. We're big fans of PV with batteries and inverters. Again, I used 10 kilowatts last month in Phoenix, Arizona in the hottest month of the year. I've only used seven kilowatt hours this month because we're on a solar system battery inverter and only tagged the grid when you absolutely have to.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
So. We're going to deploy all these great smart home ideas, all these cool things that are coming, including your software. We think it would be amazing to manage remote, re-manage your property, open doors, closed doors, manage temperatures and all that. Instead of everybody's got their little app on your phone, right? So here's the next app and here's the security app and here's the camera app. And wouldn't it be nice if everything was in one place? and you could just manage everything from journey. I think it makes a ton of sense.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, I think we're due for consolidation and anybody can consolidate multiple different solutions. Just streamline easy to use solutions is going to have quite a bit of an advantage. And I absolutely love what you're working on because I experienced it first hand how complex, especially the development and deployment of building of new units. It's our anything that is as far as real estate. And it feels like real estate is all not just hospitality, it's so far behind. And I think that the step to innovation is just going to be all the sudden, because there's been a lot in between solutions, but it's been hard to widely adopt it because the advantages were not so great. But I think when you come in and you can really... Sometimes three, four, or sometimes 10X improve what currently exists. That's when really the job happens and things get widely adopted. So extremely exciting times.

Bob Worsley:
Well, you've got automobile manufacturers that had their own systems and wouldn't use even Apple or Microsoft. And then they slowly adopted, you know, CarPlay and things like that. But just think of a journey, lay a wrapper that every car could use for everything, radio, everything in the car, even autonomous driving or whatever, something more like a Tesla.

Luca Zambello:
Yep.

Bob Worsley:
And. then bring every car up to that standard quickly. That's kind of what you're doing here. You're allowing all these different platforms to look like one thing and be managed with AI and everything and learn, and then be able to do that. And what we're trying to do is build homes like cars in factories and have

Luca Zambello:
Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
robotics and everything allow them to be flexible without having a certain floor plan. The space should be multipurpose and whatever you need it to be at the time is what the room should be. It's a master bedroom

Luca Zambello:
I

Bob Worsley:
or it's an office

Luca Zambello:
could not agree

Bob Worsley:
or

Luca Zambello:
more.

Bob Worsley:
it's a living room. And then with technology, people can feel like, well, this is super easy living. It's not expensive living. I can travel the world with my extra dollars and then feel very comfortable wherever I'm traveling. that I'm living in the same cocoon of technology, which is what you do for me, for us.

Luca Zambello:
Absolutely. No, definitely. It's extremely exciting. And I think really, you guys are going to change the way that this has been done for a long time. So excited to see what's

Bob Worsley:
Well,

Luca Zambello:
about to come.

Bob Worsley:
Luca, there's been some people asking us questions here real quick.

Luca Zambello:
Yes.

Bob Worsley:
So Scott said, I would like very much for Luca to address the direction of short-term rental market as a whole. I own properties in Arizona. I have very high quality properties and occupancy is down this year versus last year. seem to have peaked at the end of 2021, early 2022, and is going to absolutely be survival of the fittest going forward. And they wanna hear your thoughts about the last 18 months.

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, well, so I think. It's, we need to put things in perspective because like last year was, uh, the pandemic was a black swan event, but also last year travel was, was a black swan event, um, because you had so many people not being able to travel for so long. And so what happened is that everybody started traveling at the same time. And, and so when you are, you start having like off the chart numbers. And if you start looking at tools like AirDNA, it looked like that the industry was going to grow insane percentage of month, like year over year, right? But the reality is that data was skewed by the travel boom. But what that caused also, you have a double effect. One you had this travel boom. Second, because it became so profitable last year, a lot of people came into the space. And so you had an increase in supply as well. So you're both coming here at the same time. So One thing if I can say is you look compared to 2019 data, we are actually following a pre-normal, pre-pandemic growth trend. So I wouldn't say that the hospital is down at all. It's definitely down from last year, but again, because the data was skewed. But that being said, I think that's why people need to be looking into how can you streamline whatever you're doing. You said it right. Sometimes the survival of the fetus happened and the pandemic was even worse. But people that really takes out emissions and streamlining their own operations as much as possible. Those are going to be the people that are going to have a competitive advantage. Also, it really comes down to the business model. And I know it's a bit off of our discussion of the topic, but I used to. I used to. When I built my management company, I was going after models called master leasing, which is leasing to sublease. And that's a high risk, low margin business. But owning, it's completely different. If you look at data properly, there's so many markets still, even when you don't have a great market where profitability can be very high. And I think looking outside of the box with solutions like Zenit Homes, like... That's, and the ability to potentially own can very much change the game. So you have to look ahead where the direction is going. Or Portuguese are always going to be there. It's not an industry that's going to go away whatsoever. It's going to keep growing, maybe grow a little bit less. And, and it's, we're definitely going through an adjustment period, but it's not, it's definitely not the end of it or, or the peak of a bubble for sure.

Bob Worsley:
Are there markets though, Luca, that you feel are most at risk and markets that are best situated to grow?

Luca Zambello:
Well, I think, I think, we're by markets specifically, were the ones that got hit the hardest and the one that recovered the slowest, but now are the ones that are doing okay, because there's many markets that are actually up and doing great. We see a lot of data like markets like, for example, Dallas or Austin, there's, it's pretty strong, but then you have vacation places or like post pandemic vacation places. You have, they are markets that came out of nowhere. Here in California, you have a location like Joshua Tree. Out of nowhere, it became extremely popular and nightly rates were through the roof. And if you bought a home during that peak, obviously right now, or are renting a home, sub-renting a home during that peak, obviously right now, probably your numbers are not going to be great because you bought at the worst time. But if you would have bought it during the pandemic, you would have made insane amount of money. And I know people that they have. A lot of it is timing and looking ahead and not just looking where the numbers are today, but where they will be tomorrow. Post-pandemic everybody wanted to be outside of the cities, away from people, but is it still going to be a market, is it still going to be strong, but is it going to be as strong? That's the question you have to ask yourself.

Bob Worsley:
So I think you just nailed it. I think you said anything is kind of a boutiquey place and away from the city. Uh, became super hot and those are going to slow down, um, and

Luca Zambello:
Yep.

Bob Worsley:
get back to market reality where things like Dallas, Austin, Phoenix, you know, uh, everybody knows Phoenix is lovely for six months and they're here for spring baseball and the super bowl or whatever. So that'll settle down into a nice. a nice situation going forward. So getting away after COVID is probably a bubble, and that will settle down. And the normal

Luca Zambello:
Exactly.

Bob Worsley:
routine places everybody's always gone to, Anaheim for Disneyland, whatever, it'll always probably recover and be just fine.

Luca Zambello:
Exactly.

Bob Worsley:
People are asking how many Zeni homes will be produced annually. Our page facility will probably be max out at 1,000 units out of the current facility, 70,000 square feet. But we're looking to expand there to be able to do several thousand more there. And each new factory will probably be in the neighborhood of 3,000 to 5,000 units a year. So that's a lot combined that we could do nationally. There's John's ask, this is more for you, Luca. Will people create housing timeshare cooperatives with computer-based residency placements using AI? It empowers us to move around in a network. And I love this idea. We've been trying to think, Luca, of how to create a new, more elegant timeshare model because

Luca Zambello:
Mm-hmm.

Bob Worsley:
people that got into them tried to get out. Legally, they couldn't get out. So how

Luca Zambello:
Yeah.

Bob Worsley:
do you create maybe with your tool, computer-based residency placements using AI, how cool would it be to actually create a whole new brand of time sharing?

Luca Zambello:
Yeah, and I think it can be the cool thing is that can be built on top of our platform, right? Like we can definitely provide you the tools for that. And we have large projects, one large project actually in Mexico. Can't show the name yet, but that's exactly what they're looking to do. A more modernized time share, ability to predict when is the best time not to stay at that place. So when the person is not there, actually short-term rentals people are staying there. and they're making money and they're making cash flow. And actually creating a positive cash flow time share for yourself, basically, or just a smaller group of people where when you're not staying there is actually creating cash flow and it becomes an investment property that you can also use. So it's definitely a growing trend. And I think a lot of that, the technology already exists, the data already exists. One of the latest integrations also we have done is with Zapier. We just launched it and that allows people to export the data as well. And in real life, like real time, right? So it's like live data and you can also, so we have companies building their own models on top of our own platform to extrapolate the data that they need for their specific use cases as well. So, so

Bob Worsley:
Well,

Luca Zambello:
yeah.

Bob Worsley:
I like that because it sounds like what Wheelhouse does to you, does for you on dynamic pricing. Somebody

Luca Zambello:
Mm-hmm.

Bob Worsley:
will come up with maybe this new AI driven timeshare model that can just be plugged into your platform and everybody benefits from it immediately with this super cool cutting edge way of doing timeshares on top of an existing business model.

Luca Zambello:
Absolutely.

Bob Worsley:
There's one other question. One of the questions, one more comment here, since we're right at the hour. We wanted to remind everyone that Journey is launching publicly in 10 days on WeFunder. You're still in your private period. We've been out there for a month and a half. We certainly would love everybody to support both of our companies on WeFunder. Be part of the cutting edge future. Imagine being able to be part of Journey that's writing technology that's better than the existing people are using out there and way better than hospitality offers today and have that cutting edge thing available for everything. So, and we'll be looking at this to use this in our platform. So everybody that's moving around between Zeni homes has a seamless software wrapper around a very similar product. that they are used to staying in. So anyway, thank you very much everyone. Luca, anything to wrap up with?

Luca Zambello:
Thank you for having me and I'm extremely excited to be working together and it was a great webinar.

Bob Worsley:
Thank you, Luca. Thank you everyone for joining us and we'll see you next week. Thank you.

Luca Zambello:
Thanks, everyone.