MC Fireside Chats – April 22nd, 2026

[00:00:45] Brian Searl: This for popping in at the very last minute. But Matt might have just said it.

[00:00:53] Matt Whitermore: I was in the last week’s link.

[00:00:59] Brian Searl: Oh, that happens to me all the time. Welcome everybody another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground excited to be here for our AI marketing monthly session, I was about to say weekly. It should be probably weekly. We should just do it every week and forget about all the other topics.

But monthly episode of AI technology and marketing we got a couple special guests here. Blair Noel from Newbook and is it Thierry? Am I pronouncing that right?

[00:01:21] Thierry Tombelle: Yeah, you can Thierry is better. French native, but Thierry is easier. The R is a bit challenging. So Thierry is perfect.

[00:01:29] Brian Searl: Okay, alright. It’s thank you for taking that again. I appreciate it. And then we have Matt Whitermore our regular guest from Climb Capital, Unhitched Management.

We got a couple people missing today Curtis is out he’s having some family things that he’s going through and we wish him all the best. And Cara just texted me and she has some kind of emergency that’s happening too. So it seems like Wednesdays are cursed for us all.

I woke up this morning at 6 o’clock in the morning and my computer wouldn’t turn on cause the CPU was overheated. So I had to rip apart the whole thing and change the cooling and put thermal paste on the CPU and that is my morning. So it seems like all of us are having a great time. But how’s your week Matt? What’s going on with you?

[00:02:06] Matt Whitermore: Good week. We had some snow up here in Syracuse on Monday and today it’s 70 degrees so that’s cool, that’s part of living in upstate New York.

[00:02:13] Brian Searl: It was 20 here yesterday. Cause remember the rest of the world, the rest of the world doesn’t do the Fahrenheit thing. I don’t know what that is, but you guys have just made it up. God bless you. So it was 20, which is warm here yesterday, and it’s supposed to snow today, but I haven’t gotten a chance to look out the window yet.

[00:02:30] Matt Whitermore: Yeah.

[00:02:32] Brian Searl: But briefly introduce yourself and then we’ll go around the room to Blair and Thierry.

[00:02:37] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, so my name is Matt Whitermore, I’m based in Syracuse, New York. I am a Director at Climb Capital and Unhitched Management.

Doing a lot of different things. We’re growing quickly, gonna be surpassing I think 40 parks sometime soon. I might be breaking some news there maybe, but wearing lots of different hats, deep into AI so I have always looked forward to these these chats to see where everybody else is at and throw some ideas at the wall and see what’s going on in the industry.

But work on some acquisitions, some capital raising, some AI, some marketing. So doing a little bit of it all and it’s an exciting time to be in this business.

[00:03:15] Brian Searl: Awesome. Yeah, we’ll dive into AI as always a little bit on this episode a little bit later.

I was talking to I think Robert was on our show last week or the week before and he’s saying you guys got thrown a little curveball with a Claude restricting the usages for open Claude and stuff like that.

[00:03:29] Matt Whitermore: Yeah.

[00:03:30] Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s it’s an interesting world that keeps every changing. Blair, please, introduce yourself.

[00:03:34] Blair Noel: Yes, I’m Blair Noel, I’m the Head of Solutions Architecture Newbook. Newbook for those who don’t know, property management software for the outdoor hospitality industry. Been with the company for eight years in a couple of different roles, but currently as the Head of Solution Architecture and my role is to obviously meet with perspective and existing clients and understand how we can fit basically our tech stack into the way they do business, but also into any existing infrastructure they might have, which these days involves a significant amount of work around AI and companies adopting it and feeling their way through that.

As there’s various levels of adoption and rejection throughout the industry. So it’s a certainly a very interesting and active time within the industry.

[00:04:19] Brian Searl: Blair, I don’t want to say this in front of everybody, so I’m just going to whisper this to you. You’re promoting a different company on your background. It’s called Storable not Newbook. I just

[00:04:26] Blair Noel: Ah well so this is the parent company and then we’ve got the hang on we’ve got the reverse background on and then Newbook.

So yeah little bit of a branding change. Storable Newbook now, we’re just the offshoot of the parent company. Bit of a kerfuffle about that in some areas where but basically change of logo, essentially all the all the staff as Matt would know he talks to the exact same people.

But yeah, different colors. Little bit easier these colors to work with to be honest. So that’s nice. I’m not sure if they suit me better than the old Coral, but we’ll work on that.

[00:04:56] Brian Searl: Alright, thanks for being here Blair. Excited to talk a little bit about tech with you. And Thierry, last but not least.

[00:05:01] Thierry Tombelle: Yeah, so me I’m just mainly I do I have two main two main activity and a lot of just like everyone side activities too. Oh yeah, it’s going in the right direction too.

[00:05:12] Brian Searl: We flipped your words around so that we could read them.

[00:05:14] Thierry Tombelle: Ah yeah absolutely. We never know. So first I’m sourcing I’m sourcing for developer investor project all the kind of equipments it’s a part that you can see behind me so I’m really oriented oriented equipments and gradually bringing bringing some yeah some technology and ask ask ask kind of experience and I also represent some manufacturer to support them in developing developing their market a bit a certain country like in like in Europe in Canada.

Promote them more as a business representative and project representative. Yeah, it concern it concern the things but I’m more on my point I come from creative industry before being in glamping and outdoor hospitality first so I just try to I just try to bring to bring creativity but place it on on the guest and user experience.

After my point is to use technology but my people not notice it. But we try to have some to imagine concepts. Yeah, creativity is important and technology is one of the tools we use.

[00:06:24] Brian Searl: Yeah, what you’re talking about is honestly like a problem that we probably don’t talk about a lot in the industry because we don’t talk a lot about AI in the industry anyway. We’re trying to change that with this show and me blabbing on LinkedIn all the time about AI.

But generally speaking like we don’t have that conversation often enough about how tech can go into the outdoor hospitality experience because by its very nature, I think the intention of outdoor hospitality, Matt you can all three of you can weigh in on this, right?

My thinking is is the outdoor hospitality industry is obviously meant to disconnect it’s the outside by nature, rivers, trees, mountains, stuff like that. And there’s just by default in in everyone’s mind who looks at outdoor hospitality and truly appreciates the outdoor hospitality piece of it and not just the business side without that. Everybody who’s looked at that altruistically and said I really enjoy sitting outside and I can enjoy nature and the trees and breathe in the fresh air and all that is what tech technology has no place here. What are you talking about?

But if you look at it like you were explaining it Thierry, like that’s the core crux of it, right? Is how do I utilize technology in such a way whether that’s AI chat bots or AI calls just for an example of one thing, but technology at the campground woven into the accommodations into the guest experience personalizing the stay gathering data to make sure that people are more appreciative and enjoying their stay in the way that they want to before they get there, but in ways that don’t put it in your face.

And I think that’s going to be one of the biggest challenges that this industry faces over the next I think it’s going to go really fast, but 10 years let’s call it is weaving that in there without making it obvious and in turning off the guest.

[00:08:03] Thierry Tombelle: I mean from my point of view from my perspective the thing is that why technology when not when not needed. It’s just AI for currently and I’m a quite creative guy currently I don’t think nothing really really happened with AI as really useful useful experience for guests.

I use AI daily just like all of us I believe. But for me it’s quite of the tool but really honestly I didn’t find exactly the way to create new experience or to create really something new for the guest experience.

For me I’m or maybe I’m a little bit more traditional but I like to point for example for me it’s more useful we did that in in small project we have for canvas tent just like bell tent I get just little treats for them we got some we got some some feedback from some our clients feeling a little bit unsecure because neighborhood because you know how to make more secure in a tent when you just have to open the zipper and feel more secure for your stuff for your stuff inside the tent or even in the night time because some experience some guests like want to experience camping and want to experience even camping outdoor but they feel a little bit uncomfortable particularly in particularly in Southeast Asia where there is a lot of superstition they are very sensitive with the notion of ghosts and spirit and stuff like this and so I just got the idea to find to adapt a little alarm that we use for motorbikes or motorcycles when you check the motorcycles start and that with the remote control.

It’s unbelievable how people with the right storytelling how people just appreciate this little technology which is honestly between you and me a little bit tends to be stupid but but in terms of psychology that that make people and they play a lot too to press the remote to close the tent which is only a zipper at the end. You know so for me it’s more this aspect talking about AI.

For me of course it’s a fantastic tool and it will be but in the future I don’t see anything it just make it just make the management job the user the user experience just more quickly if you if you say the right the right agent or the right bot that help your job but I didn’t find yet I’m sure it will come but I didn’t find yet the creative way to use AI to really bring to really bring a must to the in term of experience. It just talking about AI so far.

But it’s a really personal point of view if the technology must be a real add on. So you have the you have the back stage technology on you have the guest experience. Personally I’m really involved as much as I can in the guest experience. That will be able to share some some idea and some funny things we we did with that.

[00:11:03] Brian Searl: Yeah, I don’t know how much times I’m going to disappear randomly during the show and I don’t want to interrupt your thoughts. I think you’re going to talk Blair just give me one second.

So I was going to say I agree with you. Like I think that there’s I can’t imagine right now and I’m deep into AI of a way really an amazing way an applicable an actionable way that I would explain to somebody how we would want to involve AI in the actual guest experience once they get to the accommodation. Once they’re on their stay.

I think eventually there’s going to be places like little robots who deliver stuff or depending on your type of property, drone deliveries, not everywhere for sure there’s going to be a place for that. Some people are going to hate it.

But right now from AI specifically, I think the biggest power of AI is personalizing the stay and then allowing your team generally to have more efficiency, more data to allow them to spend more time with the guests so they’re not spending more time in front of the computer. So the win with the guest is freeing up the human’s time.

[00:11:50] Thierry Tombelle: Totally agree. Totally agree. It’s just yeah, it’s an office. It’s an office tool.

Helps to automatize helps to reply faster it helps to it helps you to analyze data better and faster but guys I would be I will be super I will be super happy the day that someone will find the right way we say ah yes, this is the one. But still still haven’t still haven’t found it exactly yet.

So after that after that it’s you were talking about robotics and stuff like this first it’s not adaptable to every place it’s first it takes a good concept to have a good storytelling. Then after that it’s tool.

We suggested to we suggested to to to to a few clients for example what we like to what we like to create is use technology but to to create some visual experience some sounds experience ah for example we we ready because yeah that was the background for me long time ago but many some and light show around the around the tent or in the nature we create some we create some some technical with with capture with capture and with sensors and stuff like this when you wander in a part of the in a part of the of the camp out of the nature and then suddenly there is a storytelling okay I I used to do that kind of multimedia show before so I just tried not to disconnect about that.

And then I’m convinced that AI will find a way to more AI what I’m talking trying to think for example that wandering in a night time in a night time or in the evening in the tent or on site and leaving some visual and auditive experience that maybe you can certainly interact and the nature start to speak your language. So mostly English or any kind of other language but human language and that that can be yeah that could be could be could be an idea to use AI but for guest side and for the guest experience and kind of unique things.

Yeah I’m more oriented I’m personally more oriented for guests than for back office. I’m more an ignorant in operation.

[00:14:01] Brian Searl: Sorry, Blair I just lagged for a second. Blair, were you going to say something before?

[00:14:04] Blair Noel: Oh I was just just going to say I think I agree with the fact that it’s all ultimately about the guest experience, right? And we had this same conversation when I’d started in hospitality software 20 years ago where people like I don’t want the PMS or whatever I want guest I want that customer service, that personal touch and it’s like you writing out 400 late checkout slips and sliding them under people’s door. That’s not really what people care about or people handwriting invoices or things like that.

It does free you up to do more of the actual customer service things and I think once you are particularly at the property, where it’s woven in properly, you probably as a guest not even be 100% sure that it’s you don’t notice the difference. It’s just a better experience for you.

Whether AI is doing it, whether it’s freeing up the staff member doing some of those jobs, but particularly around the personalization of the stay, I think is where people are going to find the most difference. Ultimately there’ll be something that someone will come out with next week at the pace things are moving that I’m just going to say that’s brilliant. I didn’t think about that before like that’s really commonly something go along.

But we do see we’re having that conversation a bit where people are it’s that’s a little bit hesitant oh well the out the hospitality is either yes, we’re looking to disconnect um they don’t want to see us they don’t want us to be involved, they just want to be left alone or ultimately they do want to be left alone but at a really high level of service. It’s a balance.

And just seamlessly it’s like almost back to the old IT guy if they’re doing their job properly you won’t really know if they’re doing anything at all from the guest experience just that hey I had a really great stay and they took care of everything I wanted and I got offered everything I wanted and it knew what I needed.

But not being as obvious as wearing the back office you know we’re using whether it be Claude or Glean or whatever we’re using this week to make our lives a little bit easier. It’s a little bit more obvious and a little bit more inserted.

The other things is interesting Brian when you did get disconnected I saw Matt’s shoulders move. He was ready to just slipped into hosting mode almost immediately. When you go and watch that back so

[00:16:11] Brian Searl: This guy has his own podcast, don’t you?

[00:16:13] Blair Noel: Don’t be, be afraid at all if you just get disconnected he’s just very comfortably sliding into that seat.

[00:16:19] Brian Searl: It would have been a better show, I can go away.

[00:16:21] Matt Whitermore: No, that’s not true. Yeah, really interesting thoughts across the board and I love I love that we are in this monthly cadence here because in this new world of AI for me personally a month is an eternity. So much changes from each time we get together Brian with everybody else on the show and so it’s an interesting lens.

On the side of the guest experience, I definitely echo all the comments with we are inching our way into having AI in the guest experience in very calculated ways. Two months ago, I think Bob or I would have given you the same answer that we’ll never have a voice bot or a chat bot interacting with our customers. And we’ve completely changed our take on that in that it’s a force multiplier.

And we’ve talked about this on the show before Brian a couple months back that right hospitality is getting your guests the information that they need as fast as possible. So if that’s 10 p.m. when your store is closed and they call in to a chat bot or a voice bot and they get that information that’s great hospitality.

And I made the comment about how a month is an eternity. The last couple months, there’s been incredible advancements in how well these voice bots are working and I think every day there’s an improvement. So that’s a piece of it, right? We were cautious optimistic that we would do it one day and then I think we blinked and then the day was here and we were expecting it to be 12 months from now and it was 12 days.

And where we’re hyper focused I see a few really high leverage areas for AI. There there’s so many voices in our industry. Some I think are a little bit of a guru especially like on the acquisition side. It’s pitched as high cash flow real estate.

And I come from it from a completely different angle that you don’t get into outdoor hospitality for the money. That’s not the that’s not the right that’s not the right reason to be in outdoor hospitality. Find another industry. It’s all about the guest experience as you said, Blair. And you have to be in it to provide that.

And we have some real downward pressure in our industry. Payroll is way up. Cost of utilities way up. And then that that creates a very tiny in your world, Brian, tiny marketing budget. I don’t envy you in selling marketing into the campground industry because I think a lot of campground owners just resign themselves to have having zero marketing budget.

[00:19:09] Brian Searl: Yeah I don’t disagree that’s why we’re not a marketing company anymore. Stop calling me a marketing company.

[00:19:15] Matt Whitermore: Fair. Prove the point, right?

[00:19:16] Brian Searl: Yeah, well it’s that and I want you to finish your thought, right? But you’re not wrong. It’s that and everything else. But like marketing we got out of because of AI. We want to get more into intelligence. But it’s still the same thing.

It’s new thing that you’re presenting to a campground owner that they’ve never had to spend money on before or they don’t understand, not because they’re not capable but because they’re so busy. Whether that’s a PMS from Newbook or a technology from Unhitched Management or something that we’re building with AI or data or intelligence or even marketing. It’s a hard sell.

[00:19:47] Matt Whitermore: Sure.

[00:19:47] Brian Searl: What do you mean I have to pay for email? 15, 20 years ago. It’s been free. So, convince me and then it takes people 10 years in this industry to figure out they need to pay for email. And half of them still have at gmail addresses.

[00:20:04] Matt Whitermore: Right. Yeah, and if you want a wake up call go into your Claude console and do the Claude code usage command and see that even if you’re at the $200 a month tier, you’re probably spending two to $3,000 a month worth of tokens.

Yeah, but to finish my thought smaller campgrounds so much of our industry is mom and pop under $500,000 a year gross revenue even probably under $300,000 a year gross revenue. Those are like very small businesses that there’s not a lot of room for error.

Your payroll you’ve probably discovered in the last few years has creeped up to 25% of your gross revenue, maybe 30% of your gross revenue. Or you live on site and run it yourself and the profit is your salary and it’s not a huge sum to live off of.

So there the main areas are payroll, right? AI is a force multiplier. It allows you if employed correctly to take some pressure off of that payroll cost, maybe get more out of your payroll dollars.

To your point about marketing, Brian. Probably one of the most mature use cases of AI with automations is in marketing.

[00:21:17] Brian Searl: Yep.

[00:21:17] Matt Whitermore: So it allows you it allows your marketing budget to go much further now. And a lot of areas that we’re focusing on at Unhitched and Climb Capital is on finance.

It just gives you it’s a force multiplier in keeping your eye on expenses, benchmarking, revenue management, all the things that you would have to employ people to do three years ago. You’d need an extra controller, an extra bookkeeper, an extra director of finance to really keep keep an eye on expense benchmarking and rectifying that stuff.

Now we can employ some automation and throw throw an agent at it an open Claude instance or whatever. There’s a new harness out there like every day. And so that’s where my mind is at with it, right? It’s selectively introducing it to the guest and employing it directly with the guest in a really calculated way but it’s all the back office stuff, it’s finance, marketing and a lever to get more out of your payroll dollars than you could a couple years ago.

[00:22:25] Brian Searl: I think I think the thing for me is like everybody hears AI, everybody hears artificial intelligence and then they have their own instant opinion of what that is. Either that’s a chat bot or it’s something I’m scared of or I can’t learn it or my cousin sister’s brother had a bad experience with it or like it’s ruining the environment or like I just it’s something, right?

And I’m not saying that everybody’s wrong or everybody’s right or everybody’s not entitled to their opinion. They are. But I think the problem is we’re trying maybe not we as a whole on this call, right? But there’s a lot of pitching of just use AI.

And I think if you just step back and you say just use intelligence, the more intelligence that you have the better. Whether that comes from AI or it comes from a database or it comes from reporting or it comes from a group like Sage Outdoor Hospitality or a feasibility study or a management company like Unhitched or The more intelligence that you have, the stronger that you can make your campground RV park or glamping resort. Period.

And so you should be seeking out whatever ways you can to get as much intelligence as you can. What AI has done has enabled in Matt’s case as he was explaining, with the finances and I don’t know what you do exactly Matt right, but share your secrets do not share your secrets.

But generally speaking, like it has allowed the the labor capitalization, the payroll thing that he was talking about to allow Unhitched Management Climb Capital to analyze their finances in completely distinct different unique ways that would help them be more efficient. And thus end up downstream six ways down that road to to serve their guests better. Because there’s more capital to deploy in other places, more time to deploy in other places. Is that accurate Matt?

[00:23:58] Matt Whitermore: It is accurate. It’s I wouldn’t say we’re at the point of replacing people right in our headquarters office. We’re not never say never and that’s not really our goal.

But it is starting to think about we we hit a bottleneck in whatever process, the monthly close because we just onboarded 10 more properties and the human team is stretched to their limits. And we think, okay we need to hire another bookkeeper. That’s going to be X salary per year.

And now we have this a little bit of knowledge that we’ve acquired over the last six months or so that could be an agent, right? We could invest $10 or $20,000, you even if we have to bring in a consultant to build us an agent and implement everything make it turn key for us.

[00:24:46] Brian Searl: Yeah.

[00:24:46] Matt Whitermore: It’s we’re starting to have those conversations. We haven’t not hired the person yet, but I feel like we’re inching closer and closer with each growth spurt and with each hiring decision we’re there.

And we’re still in the mode of we phase it out with our AI strategy. It’s short term goal is let’s get everybody like 20 to 30% more efficient with compressing their day to day work. Which is honestly a really easy goal in my mind in terms of adoption and getting everybody into Claude code and learning how to work in those systems. It’s it’s a little bit of a hurdle to get there.

But that’s just a mental model switch with the people on the team. I think of the second phase of that is get everybody like 100 to 200% more efficient. And any still just a mental model shift and it’s education and adoption and doing those doing like hackathons internally at the company. These are all kind of things that we’re we’re exploring that we’re really excited about.

And right we’re focused in that area, right of we have a corporate team of 20ish. AI can make it feel like we have a corporate team of 40 or 60. If we’re really good at adopting it. And honestly my struggle is that I get all these ideas and I’ve got five different Claude code terminals going on at once and I my brain cannot keep up with all of the things that are going so I’ve started to integrate like AI native project management solutions.

I was literally today I was going to try there was a saw one on Twitter. It’s called there’s one called Paperclip that went viral, open sourced and then there’s one now one that’s based off of Paperclip called Cabinet. And that’s that’s agents plus knowledge base. So that’s an area that we’ve been putting a ton of resources.

Just refining like an LLM knowledge base a wiki. Great marketing applications there. Eventually right you can sit a voice agent on top of it. It’s going to know everything about your property, know everything about your company at least that you want it to. We’re still very basic with what we’re doing. But I think we’ve opened our minds and opened our eyes to some real exciting levers that we’re starting to be able to pull.

[00:27:23] Brian Searl: Yeah, and back to what Thierry and Blair were saying, right? It’s the intelligence layer too. It’s not just in the back office. It’s the how can the intelligence layer help me understand my guest better.

So right now like you were saying Blair do I have a guest who wants to talk to me? Or do I have a guest who doesn’t want to talk to me? I’ve told this story a number of times on the podcast but just it’s a good setting point for this. We went to Ireland end of last year. Stayed at this really nice little Airbnb castle. Like it was an older castle it actually looked like a castle it took me forever to find one of those in Ireland that looked like a castle. And not like a Queen’s castle.

Anyway, so like we get there and there’s there’s just one tower. It’s next to this old farm and this late like it’s just one tower. And there’s three Airbnbs in there but nobody else is there. It’s just us we’re in the off season it’s in September. And the host is you can come talk to me if you want, there’s two dogs outside that are in the yard feel free to open the door and play with them, just make sure you shut it and when you’re done or whatever. If you want to say hi to me, I’m here. Let me know.

And I wrestled with it for like the whole we only stayed there a day, but I wrestled with it the whole time we were there so I’m like do I actually want to talk to this woman or do I want to pretend I’m actually alone in this whole castle by myself? And I ended up not talking to the woman, right? But she was very nice and she gave me the option to do it.

And so I think right now in hospitality, outdoor hospitality specifically because hospitality generally with hotels has had more data for decades, there’s a lot of guessing going on. Who is my guest really? Like how not it’s easy to see how old they are or their address where they’re coming from, but what did they go through to get here? What was the fuel price they paid? What was the weather when they booked? What made them make their decision to book? How long are they staying and why? What are their kids interested in? What are they like? What are they so there’s so much data out there that can be used and supplemented by AI, like it’s not really AI, but it’s the intelligence layer that you’re able to gather because of the speed of AI that allows you to then service your guests just like hotels have have done forever. And so I think that’s where you start to change people’s perception and experience in outdoor hospitality without them knowing it.

[00:29:28] Blair Noel: And I think going to Thierry’s initial thing where it’s no one has time. Like everyone you talk to in the industry, I’m busy. I don’t have time.

But then either from that point of view, it’s not just that it allows you to do it faster and save labor. Like we always have talked about a long time you’ve got to make data led decisions when you’re deciding hey am I going to put in extra pads, am I going to put in extra head take a look at the data because a lot of time your gut feels a little bit off.

And not only using an example the other day I was reviewing for a certain region in the US OTA usage, right? And what was and it’s that adoption has been very sporadic throughout the industry. So there’s a lot of gaps where these guys connect to these three channels but these guys connect to another three and they only have one in common and so on and so forth. And the ability for

[00:30:15] Brian Searl: Anybody browse any of those websites? Sorry.

[00:30:21] Blair Noel: Carry on. Sorry.

The weird thing is that you only have so much good data and it’s a little bit incomplete. And for a human to sit down and cross reference all that and figure it out, it was incredibly quick to actually just fill in the gaps and say hang on, here’s the order and here’s who this person should be connected to because it can see the links between that.

Now if you were doing that I 25 years ago I used to be a revenue manager to do that manually would have taken an extraordinarily long amount of time. But the other impressive thing is especially when I was working on a data set that I knew very well it catches things that you don’t see. People miss things all the time.

So even to Matt’s point in the finance area and looking at expenses and stuff, the rate at which it can pick out an outlier or something that’s a little bit wrong that can save you hey if I nip this in the bud and it doesn’t fester for six months or something along those lines there there’s just so many little incremental wins you can have that as you said success straight down it allows you to spend less money on that part of the budget and whether that is straight up employing another staff member because I save that money or putting more money into marketing or giving me some time back, it’s just those wins that sort of a domino effect of those wins that give you I think room time, space down downstream to invest into whatever you want to invest into or to give you more time back or to give you more usage out of your existing staff.

It doesn’t always I think quite often because that we are at this early adoption phase in the industry and there’s a lot of I think yeah self-styled gurus and people to get up and do talks and just that’s all wonderful but what operationally does it do at the end of the day sometimes it’s not actually doing that operational thing it gives you just time, money, freedom or insight at the intelligence layer. So there’s a lot of different parts to it and I think as people are starting to appreciate that people who have perhaps been a little bit more fearful of adoption are now starting to jump on board a little quicker.

[00:32:28] Brian Searl: Thierry, did 

you 

[00:32:28] Brian Searl: have something to add?

[00:32:29] Thierry Tombelle: Yeah, I have some several start about AI shows. Yeah, a place there where just we are in a early stage for that. From my own experience and my own observation most of the people they are not absolutely not trained to AI they use it quite a poorly so basically and so in the simplest way possible and it’s just not the right way to get the best front to get the best front from AI.

I see some different application possible that it will come gradually obviously fast or not but I guess so is to have AI platform and AI agent really thought user friendly for a majority of a majority of of hospitality and campground runner. First is most of the people are not tech they are not game definitely not. Even myself and I’m very comfortable with technology sometimes there is a lot of possibilities that I don’t explore myself first I have a lack of time you must you must train yourself also you must fight up quite of the change so I’m really I’m really waiting for for some agent or even even application that will make my option out there high much more easy and faster for me. I don’t have time okay? So this is my first up my first my first thought about that.

The second thing is okay we know we all know that okay it’s going fast it can collect information and then that might be also that might be also a barrier for guests to some clients some guests they feel uncomfortable to give to give to technology part of their preferences a part of their privacy in fact. So it’s hard to deal that to explain your wishes and your expectation to to to a staff it’s human it’s not recorded, set it and keeping forever. To give it to an AI what will be what will be the what will be the reaction for that from for the guest.

We already normally a good operator we already collect doing well his job will already collect the basic information about the test of his client of his guest. He will know that what time the breakfast and if he want to if he want to have a hard mattress or a soft mattress all that details that make the client feel VIP. How will be the perception of a client to give that information to a technology instead of giving it to a human. That’s something that need to be work in my opinion also.

Basic interesting use for agent. It’s particularly for particularly for small small operator mini resort and stuff they don’t have the staff I run my sit on in my my season one also just for making some experience in suburban of a chiming any season is coming so we are dismantling correctly and we’ll reopen somewhere else next hot season. And the thing is that we don’t want we don’t want to have to have a 24 hour staff but it’s terrible how many booking had personally to manage after midnight. Yeah I’m sleeping but I don’t want to I don’t want to miss the booking.

Having a good agent who can really have a great booking conversation with the potential with the potential guest and then you make sure you ensure the booking potential your funnel of sale will be much more efficient than waking up at in the middle of the night you answer on phone or to leave on voicemail or send an email there is a message obviously you lose some booking and some booking efficiency so this is this is something that AI can in my opinion really help and support.

For the bigger one for me what I see is fantastic fantastic assistant tool and even coach. Never mind even the gardeners, even maintenance people, even maintenance staff, even even cook, even everywhere. So the thing is that I don’t think that AI will replace personally I think that it would be stupid to replace human because in our specific industry people they want they don’t want to talk to machines. They want nature they want authentic. So they want they want harmony with harmony in the industry.

[00:37:10] Brian Searl: You’re correct yes in our industry exactly.

[00:37:12] Thierry Tombelle: You know so. But having a receptionist, having a gardener, having a chef, having a I don’t know charcoal supported with an AI agent who will be his own assistant. And yes, spending spending less time to I know prepare the menu or el to imaging I don’t know new menu helpful to learn faster learn faster how to maintain this plant or whatever that sounds very interesting to me.

I would call that I would call that augmented role for the staff. But the staff continue to be there but they be they bring more creativity, more service to the guest, spending less time to struggle to fix their problem. Oh I want this plant is almost dying well AI can tell you that okay just do this that and you will save your tree what something like this. But it must be I don’t see it must remain at the moment personally for operation but we are very particular but yeah augmented staff stuff and we have an assistant everybody all every staff has a known high end and very high IQ AI assistant that’s the cool thing I think but personally that’s what I will target to set.

[00:37:44] Brian Searl: I think that and I’ve talked to other people and other people have brought up this point that there has to be kind of an intermediary there. And so maybe there will be. And I know some people are building stuff where the AI acts as your assistant but the actual human interacts with the guest. And that that will happen more to speed things up so right instead of looking for where is site 52 over here and answering that question from a guest the human can just type it and their brain and it pops up and it feeds through an earpiece down in an apple vision whatever down down the road the human is essentially a cyborg if you want to be funny about it. Where all the knowledge connects to their brain but they’re projecting it to a human person.

The thing that I would caution people out is with your specific example about collecting preferences. The humans don’t always do a really good job. A lot of human people and I’m not to be offensive to anybody human people are stupid sometimes. They do stupid stuff. It is what it is. And we fail and we have gaps and we have errors and we have people who get the wrong type of mattress like to use your example and then the guest leaves a bad review. Even though they told the hotel three weeks in advance or they told the clamping property. For you as an individual it probably works well for smaller properties but a larger properties they miss that. Or somebody calls somebody who isn’t writing on a piece of post it note right and they just throw it in the trash on accident.

And so there’s an integration that needs to happen when you collect preferences like that that the human the gap that a human has that an AI doesn’t. And eventually it’ll come back and people will prefer giving their preferences to robots because an AI is never going to forget what kind of mattress that you told it as long as the memory bank is checked. And it’s never going to judge you. It’s never going to have an opinion of what you look like or smell like or where you’re coming from or what race you are. It’s truly objective all the time, 100% of the time right out of the box unless it’s given instructions otherwise. So I think there’s a lot of things to balance out as we go forward but all of you have really brilliant points on your side for sure.

[00:37:52] Thierry Tombelle: One thing real quick. I totally totally agree with you on these points. Definitely. But what I say it’s more human perception not everybody has this open open to give to a machine. And honestly I say that yeah of course human human do errors a lot we forgot everything whatever.

But me to I use my little AI agent what to support to support what and don’t forget this and ah yeah it’s coming ah this VIP guest coming oh you get your dog don’t forget the ball of ball of water stuff like this just the things to to not forget it’s quite infinite to create amazing experience for VIP but some things you have you have some application you tell the application what does the client what does the client like or some interest and the AI built automatically an individual an individual program for its states.

And okay you show some interest for that but with ah you have a kid up the AI build the program and propose as suggestion proposal individual individual stay program for the guest and that completely automatic. You don’t have human time it just completely automatic that I see I read some article there is already existing so for big result there are stuff like this all that things are coming out coming out fast but from my own my own vision of reality the reality of an operator the reality of campground or our stuff we are a very big gap with this top edge technology coming up currently. We don’t have the same we don’t have the same resource to implement or to develop their project too. So this is it.

[00:37:55] Brian Searl: I think you’re going to get there. It just takes time like anything. They just they like anything it takes time for this to filter down. For the big companies, the big enterprise to invest hundreds of millions. When the cost goes down to zero to build custom software pretty much almost is. Then those guys have an opportunity to have it.

I want to pass along a compliment to both Blair and to Matt before you guys give your final thoughts and where we can find you. Cause I found an area a problem to solve that I didn’t see before. Like when you’re thinking about creating an AI product to solve a specific problem with intelligence, those usually end up as dashboards to people to log into something. You log into your CRM or you log into your PMS or you log into something.

And neither the two issues I’m talking about like are AI specific per se, but the problem I wanted to get your feedback on what people would buy essentially right to make a product that makes sense to people. For Unhitched they’ve got essentially internal knowledge of SOPs and procedures and operations. For Newbook, Blair’s talked very intelligently about the cross channel data integration connecting gaps to make the platform stronger.

If I can take out those solutions away from the dashboard and feed those to people in ways that they’re already operating via texts and email, then my solution has a much better viability of survival. Right, Matt doesn’t want to log in, his property managers don’t want to log in, but if his property manager receives a text message every single morning giving them the specific context that they need or an email. It’s like here is exactly what you need to focus on right now. A lot of that friction is removed because they’re already checking their email and text.

[00:37:58] Blair Noel: Correct. Or teams chat or whatever they’re using to communicate internally right? They get the summary like you’re talking about they don’t even have to look for the dashboard to read the things.

[00:37:59] Thierry Tombelle: I’m even thinking that to get the best of that we have two possibility or really to have new agent and new application really adapted and easily adaptable for for people who are not who are not in technology. My daughter play AI she’s 16. She plays she plays AI she plays AI every day. She spit hot seceding with that but she doesn’t know how to install how to install the driver on my Wi-Fi printer I have to print for her. But she for AI she super good.

So I think that it’s a very interesting very interesting very interesting use all the AI we continue to have the stats but the staff will be more first performant will have more time to interact and will be it will be amazingly more more creative. But just in conclusion by a few words we were talking about data analysis and so on bookkeeping and I’m not sure I’m not sure I’m not sure that before long never mind how fast the technology will will evolve.

But I’m not sure that human are really willing to blindly trust even the best AI. Then we still need bookkeeper bookkeeper to check that AI did a good job because it’s gonna be better and better of course. But if you don’t have the knowledge, AI used to bullshit I’m good in one I’m good seeing and I use the AI every day I spend a lot of time to correct AI. Because I say yes stop you sometimes I insult a bit wrong.

[00:39:30] Brian Searl: I think that the thing is people are going to have to get more trusting of it as they use it more. There’s a couple points to what you’re saying and I’m probably going to forget two of them but one of them that comes to the top of my head now is that just as I’ve gone through this journey of myself with AI and I’ve been all on AI since 2019, 20 I’ve been playing with GPT 2 is just that the more you play with it the more you learn that you’ve got you’ve got to ask it the right questions you’ve got to say to it exactly what you want you’ve got to steer it back when you need it to go.

I’ll give you an example we released the outdoor hospitality pricing index today. It’s we’re going to release a monthly report it’s going to be like Case Shiller for campgrounds outdoor hospitality. But that thing took me probably on and off but weeks and weeks to go back and forth right and it’s not AI generated if we use I used AI to code some of the things that helped me gather the data that went into that report.

But when I’m going through the methodology of how do we present this data because we have all the data, it’s you can look at data ten thousand different ways till Sunday and spin up whatever story you want but for this it’s got to be accurate. It has to be correct. There can’t be any wiggle room there’s got to be the same metho methodology every single month.

So just going back and forth with AI and AI saying yeah this is a good way to do it and I’m like wait a minute I’ve been in this industry for 15 years that’s not a good way to do it. Oh you’re right. Let’s do it this way instead. Yeah, until you get to so you’ve got to have that intelligence layer of your own that comes from learned experience in whatever you’re trying to produce or display or analyze from financial side or whatever else to say this isn’t a good idea or isn’t or it is a good idea. But then be able to take that and say if I’m producing something as important as OHPI or analyzing financials for a campground or whatever else, that I can’t just look at it through my lens or my slant, I’ve got to be able to take the AI and say this is where I want you to go but tell me how I can not slant it and tell me how I can do it better or whatever else. So that’s number one.

And then number two is I think sometimes a lot of the problem that I hear from people when theyre talking about AI is they’re just overwhelmed by it and they’re too they’re complicating it too much. And I’ve learned this too like I’ve had to step back in how I talk to some of our clients about AI, like Matt there’s I’m all in on Claude code and Claude and all the things that you’re doing right. And I’ve been that way for years. Just in at the bleeding edge of technology.

But I’ve started to realize as I’ve progressed even further and these AI tools keep advancing more and more that sometimes there’s a line where you overcomplicate two things, too many things too much. And so we’ve talked a lot about data and we’ve talked a lot about intelligence. Look at what’s going on in the world right now as an example and there’s lots. We’re not going to get into politics I promise. Gas prices right? Gas is expensive. Gas is about to go up a whole lot more than people realize if nothing changes because there’s no more oil coming from the Middle East.

And that’s a whole geopolitical discussion we could talk about, but they refine the heavy stuff from the Middle East to turn it into diesel. They don’t refine the stuff that comes out of Cushing, Oklahoma into diesel. So it’s a whole it’s going to be a problem for the United States and it’s going to be a problem like really quickly in the next few weeks if it isn’t even if it opens back up because the ships aren’t going to get here for 40 days. But, gas prices, right?

So it’s easy for me to go off a tangent. But so gas prices. So there it’s very easy like this is something that your guests want to pay attention to they are concerned about. So imagine if you could if you just had an intelligence layer that told you what the gas price was where they were booking. Like where they live, right? Then you were able to tell them then you were able to figure out the gas price along the route to how they’re going to get to you likely. And then you the gas price around your park, right? And then you’re able to send an intelligence intelligent email to somebody that says hey you shouldn’t fill up halfway here because it’s 30 cents cheaper around our park when you get here.

Little tiny things like that that are not necessarily AI driven, but AI facilitated because they allow people to design systems like that who couldn’t do it before. Completely change the experience of the guests and their perception of your property. So sometimes we overcomplicate things I think when you just have to step back and look at what can make this guest stay better.

[00:43:37] Blair Noel: And I think going to Thierry’s initial thing where it’s no one has time. Like everyone you talk to in the industry, I’m busy, I don’t have time. It is one of those things where if I can sacrifice an hour today, does that save me two hours every week for the next eternity kind of thing. Will that free up?

And I think to the point you made around feeding it information and understanding like any employee right? The more context you give it it’s going to help because you have 15 years of learning like Brian I’m sure you’ve got clients that you’ve had for a very long time and you know that park, that client absolutely intimately where you’re going to say I know better. And but let me feed that information. Give me context around what you’re asking it to do so.

[00:44:22] Brian Searl: Let me double check. Exactly what you mean.

[00:44:22] Blair Noel: Yeah, there’s always that hang on this isn’t the direct it to where you want to go. Just like you would have to with any other employee, brand new employee, right? You got to give them a little bit of context, a bit of understanding and for us internally we’ve started to use Glean which has been fantastic because if you think of an organization like us, the amount of emails internally, the amount of support tickets internally, the amount of knowledge base articles, Slack chats between support and development teams and things going back, it that’s been an amazing accelerator but look not everyone’s going to have the ability to do that.

But even the most simple thing that at most campgrounds you’ll either get the same couple of emails or phone calls a day around FAQs. You get to asked the same 10 20 questions for 90% of your guests. If you can plug again to your point if you can plug something in to go hey what actually are the most frequently asked questions for the last 10 years of my email or whatever it might happen to be and produce a nice FAQ list to sit on your website.

One, that’s helpful to the guest, two it’s more accurate than probably what you could pull yourself. Again it doesn’t really feel like AI to the guest or anything like that but it allows you to get more accurate data and present something that’s going to be useful to the guest in front of them on your website.

[00:45:39] Brian Searl: For sure. Alright, let’s spend the last few minutes here asking each other questions. So we’ll start with you, Thierry. So Thierry the way we do this is you get to pick a speaker any choice to completely up to you choose. There’s not a lot of guests today. But between Blair and Matt, do you have a question for either one of them you’d like to ask?

[00:45:53] Thierry Tombelle: Me? A lot it just for me my first my first time meeting meeting you guys by the way. Anybody you want to ask Matt or Blair? It’s something like 2 AM and you stuck me with you stuck me with AI a part of my brain is really basically on AI you know.

I was I was just thinking that probably in in the very next future from a certain level of size every in hospitality but just like in every company it will take to have a new a new role a new position with a for the AI specialist just like we have we have an accountant you have you have a marketing department we gonna have a AI department I believe that because given that sorry it’s not a question it’s just a comment also.

It’s not given it’s not given to everyone to be able to to formulate the question currently to fix the con the context and to fix the role and how to act for the AI. I had to learn how to ask questions and how to write a good prompt. And I’m still learning because it’s evolving of course.

And I think that not everyone not everyone would be we connect we put all a full staff of an organization not everyone will be able to to handle this the right way to add accurate information, accurate treatment never mind it is called for an analyze for as you say as you say find a way to to drag information on the web.

And then I think that I think that promptly prompt engineer as they call them I need to be engineer they need to be good in the logical. So probably probably this is something that we shall start to consider in our in our business to have already someone or a staff member more trained to with the right logic for that or or having our AI specialist. Sorry that was not a that was not a real question.

[00:47:57] Brian Searl: Alright, Matt, you want to try? You got a question?

[00:48:00] Matt Whitermore: Yes I have a question I have a question for Blair. So we’ve been fortunate to obviously be Newbook partners and love love that growing that relationship. We’ve had the opportunity

[00:48:12] Brian Searl: Are you going. I’m sorry to interrupt you but are you also a Storable partner or just a Newbook partner?

[00:48:16] Matt Whitermore: We’re not in the storage industry yet but never say never.

[00:48:19] Brian Searl: It’s the same thing it’s on a shirt Matt it’s a trick question.

[00:48:22] Matt Whitermore: Yes. Sorry. Yes, so we’ve been fortunate to connect with some other more I’d say advanced technologically other Newbook clients and partners that have really opened our eyes to the to the API and that like a whole new world right with Claude code at your disposal or whatever you use tapping into all of the end points that are available with all these different APIs and I’ve I haven’t dove in yet but I’ve heard you can do some amazing things and get really deep and really get control over your data through the Newbook API.

I guess what what are some of the more interesting use cases you’ve seen, endpoints data driven things that you’ve seen some your more advanced clients doing.

[00:49:16] Blair Noel: Yeah not all software I don’t think is perhaps as opened as we are. We’ve always had that sort of open rest API. Yeah. I’ve there’s some been some amazing where people are skipping it used to be I’m gonna use that to then create some sort of data lake and then I’m going to plug in whether it be power bi or tableau. It’s people just skipping that entire middle step.

It’s actually quite impressive just the standard hospitality knowledge that’s even built into something like really basic like chat GPT where you can extract those end points just as a basic JSON file or whatever dump it into those things and say create me a repar model off of this or give me a repam or rev you know kind of thing. Someone I was working with in our office the other day I’m like okay so I’ll just explain to Claude this and that he don’t so that that’s forgetting Sarah Marshall bit just do less. Do less. It already knows, right? You don’t need to over explain it. If it’s on the internet it knows it already, right? Yeah.

So literally just skipping to that here’s my data source, here’s what I want to know. And just that whole creating that that data lake and then creating those reports when then someone would have to read and things like that just skipping straight to the endpoint. Like I quite often have people still come to me and go oh can you produce a report in CSV that has all these columns to to it. And then you find out that they grab that and they imported that into this system and then they imported that into a pivot chart and then it ends up in power BI and then it ends up in a dashboard and it’s just skip to the end.

And it’s sometimes even reminding myself like um we work with little projects internally and it’s just why did I stop halfway that solved my problem that’s great but I can go further. I think that’s really interesting and there’s a lot of people doing some great stuff about that. Even though with our clients they’ll just ask and they’ll get the endpoints and they’ll intimate what they’re working on and they’re like oh what’s going on there and they’re like we’ll show you later because they want to get a leg up and a head start on everyone else. So people aren’t always willing to share with you, which is fair enough. That’s fair enough. But it is very interesting seeing what people are doing with that I think now people are really realizing the possibilities.

[00:53:02] Brian Searl: I’ll give you a free one Matt with Newbook’s API if you want one.

[00:53:06] Matt Whitermore: I do.

[00:53:07] Brian Searl: We’ve been building this for we’ve built this for a couple clients I think a first one was like a year and a half ago, two years ago. Housekeeping automated AI with Newbook. So you can because they have all those endpoints all the departures and all the like when people are actually leaving and all the occupancy.

So you can take those APIs and you can put them together in an automation and you can build something super crude in Zapier or you can build something really nice in Claude code. Yeah. That actually then you know the dimensions of your cabins, the floor plans, you know how off how average time it takes the housekeeping staff to clean them already, you know what your schedules of your housekeeping staff are put all that stuff together, put it together with API from Newbook and then a week before you can automate the creation of a schedule for your housekeeping staff and then the day of you can just see if anybody else extended or anything else by pulling the data live from Newbook and you can adjust the schedule last minute for those people. And boom you’ve got your housekeeping schedules designed or saving this like a couple hours per property that people are spending on this stuff sometimes.

[00:54:03] Blair Noel: Yeah. Back in like traditional hospitality like hotels and things that’s your housekeeping supervisor used to spend a day of their week getting a roster sorted which to your point right could at any moment a couple late stay extensions and extra back to back booking comes in and the whole thing was thrown into chaos and have to be redone kind of thing.

The rate and speed of which you can then yeah freeing up some people, getting a better experience being able to turn those rooms over faster that it’s just that snowball effect of if you can make things more efficient you can do more with less.

[00:54:35] Brian Searl: Alright, we are over by a couple minutes so sorry Blair I didn’t get to give you a chance to ask a question but final thoughts Blair and then tell us where they can find more about Storable Newbook if they’re interested.

[00:54:45] Blair Noel: Look thanks very much for having us on, appreciate being able to come and have a chat. More Newbook if you go visit newbook.cloud whether you’re looking for a PMS or just some industry chat and discussion we do a whole bunch of different things there.

I would say as well there’s probably odds are a fair few newbook clients sitting on here, certainly come and either speak to me or your customer success manager if you are looking to open up that API and you want to see what you can do and where you can throttle up, there’s many companies that provide these services like Brian, but there is also a fair bit you can do internally I would say don’t have too much fear about it.

A lot of people are terrified sometimes in the industry about just get in, just have a go, just start using it. It’s not as scary or as difficult as you think and it actually it’s getting easier every single day.

[00:55:33] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here Blair. Thierry, final thoughts and where can they find out more about your Creative International?

[00:55:38] Thierry Tombelle: I mean it’s infinite. It’s infinite. The thing is that we just have we now are almost at the state that just think about something and just do it with AI support. It’s I don’t know it’s unbelievable how it open a world of possibilities. And everything still everything is to be yeah everything is to be invented.

Yeah no I don’t know exactly how to conclude that because in fact for me we don’t conclude we just open some doors and we don’t even we don’t even know how many doors behind this door we are opening now. It’s fascinating of possibilities and definitely super super exciting. And yeah what is interesting is just got an idea and ask AI how you can build it. Sometimes it will be complicated but sometimes it will be very simple to implement in a to implement in a few hours. No need to go on super all the idea we exchange were just practical at the end. And that’s very interesting. And master of them for where they what’s your website? Where can they learn more about Creative International?

We currently source worldwide money of yeah not the top the best of the best solution because I personally believe that there is a there is a type of equipment and the type of accommodation dome safari tent and all that stuff that are not suitable for every site. Are not suitable for every every investor operator so we try to we try to bring everything and just yeah just a one stop source.

And this is the visible part. Never mind never mind on we go in a very luxury luxury villa also luxury tented lodge and we source directly from from manufacturer because we we want to work direct factories and to adapt according the project according the client which.

And beside that there is all the technology technology aspects also technical because we serve event also so it’s one stop source and yeah maybe soon we will integrate some some AI tools we’re thinking about some stuff but always always thinking um not about the biggest investors or biggest operator. I try just to serve the the small one SMEs who doesn’t have the same doesn’t have the same resource to implement or to develop their project too. So this is it.

[00:58:22] Brian Searl: I really appreciate it. Matt, any final thoughts and where can they learn more about Unhitched and Climb Capital?

[00:58:27] Matt Whitermore: You can find us at climbcapital.com or unhitchedmgmt.com. We’ll be at all the conferences coming up at least somebody from the team will be at each of the conferences. Are you going to be in Florida, Brian?

[00:58:43] Brian Searl: Yeah, I’ll be in Florida.

[00:58:44] Matt Whitermore: Nice, I’ll see you in Florida then. Yeah we’re actively acquiring we’re actively adding to the management portfolio and if you’re looking for help with management of a campground or looking to invest in the space or looking to exit if you’re an owner, give us a call. You can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me you can find us on the website like I said unhitchedmgmt.com, climbcapital.com.

[00:59:10] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you guys for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. If you’re not sick and tired of hearing of me and my cute little dog here, then you can see us more.

We’ll be on Outwired in about 45 minutes something like that with Scott Bahr. We’re going to be talking about the outdoor hospitality pricing index, the data that went into that, the methodology and some obviously AI news and whatever comes across Scott’s brain which is usually something really smart and way better than me.

If not, we’ll see you next week on MC Fireside Chats. Take care guys, appreciate you all.

[00:59:35] Blair Noel: Cheers.

[00:59:35] Thierry Tombelle: Thank you very much. Bye bye. Definitely keep in touch.