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AI is no longer a feature. It’s an infrastructure shift.
In my recent conversation with Amiad Soto, Founder & CEO of Guesty, one of the leading platforms powering short-term rental and hospitality operations globally, a clear message emerged for investors: AI is fundamentally reshaping how large, complex, operational industries scale - and hospitality is just the beginning.
Hospitality and property management are massive industries, but historically, they’ve been riddled with inefficiencies. Managing bookings, pricing, guest communications, housekeeping, maintenance, accounting, and payments has meant mountains of manual work and fragmented processes. The perfect storm — and the perfect opportunity for AI to step in.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how the industry operates, collapsing layers of operational overhead that once required large teams and months of effort. Tasks that used to be painfully slow — like reconciling bank transactions or optimizing pricing across hundreds of properties — can now be handled automatically, accurately, and at scale. As Amiad Soto, CEO of Guesty, explains, “Nowadays we can just allow our customers to upload their bank file, and AI will match it to reservations… and it is already about 80% accurate.”
The most powerful AI applications aren’t flashy consumer apps. They’re in the trenches, tackling deeply operational, labor-intensive processes. Revenue uplift through dynamic pricing, smarter guest engagement, and demand forecasting, combined with cost reduction via automated reconciliation, support, and back-office operations, deliver structural ROI. Financial reconciliation, historically a painful and error-prone monthly process, can now be automated with high accuracy — a leap that fundamentally changes the way businesses operate.
Surprisingly, larger enterprise clients are moving fastest in adopting AI. Soto observes, “The bigger the account, the more adoption we see with AI.” Enterprises often prioritize outcomes over tools: if AI can remove operational friction without requiring teams to relearn workflows, adoption happens naturally.
AI also serves as a powerful customization engine. Hospitality operators, especially large enterprises, are “snowflakes” — each with unique processes, constraints, and data structures. Soto explains, “AI is a democratizer in a sense that it makes customization much easier than ever before.” Platforms that combine rich data with AI-driven customization become hard to replace, creating a defensibility moat that’s rare in traditional SaaS.
Payments are often overlooked but are a major pain point. Legacy systems are slow, costly, and error-prone. AI can optimize routing, reduce fees, detect fraud, and handle chargebacks — all in real time. Soto recalls, “During COVID, our payment processors started blocking a lot of our customers because of chargebacks… we had to create something that we can control and give more stability to our business.” Owning the payment layer allows platforms to protect customers during systemic shocks while opening new revenue streams.
AI adoption is still in its early stages, but the next wave will be transformative. The future isn’t smarter dashboards or prettier interfaces — it’s agent-driven systems that operate autonomously, doing work on behalf of humans. Soto predicts, “A year from now, many of our customers will use agents for most of their operations, and two years from now it’ll be 100%.”
Flashpoint has been supporting companies like Guesty that leverage AI to streamline operations, reduce costs, and unlock new revenue streams, demonstrating the potential of AI to redefine entire industries. For founders and investors alike, this is a signal: the companies building for the AI era are not just improving processes—they are reshaping how business is done.
