Ospito was born from a single moment of complete failure — not ours, but the entire short-term rental industry’s. We experienced firsthand what it’s like when the system breaks down at 4am. We decided never to let it happen to anyone else.
One night, we’d just arrived at our Airbnb after a long flight — tired, luggage in hand, ready to sleep. The door code didn’t work.
We tried it again. And again. We checked the booking confirmation. The code was right. The door just didn’t open.
So we did what you’re supposed to do — we messaged the host. No reply. We called the number on the listing. Voicemail. It was 4am. We were standing on a porch with nowhere to go.
Then we called Airbnb’s customer support. We were on hold for 40 minutes. When someone finally picked up, they read from a script. They couldn’t override the lock remotely. They couldn’t reach the host. They offered us a “rebooking credit.”
A credit. At 4am. On a street. With bags.
We ended up at a 24-hour diner, waiting for sunrise, paying out of pocket for a hotel nearby. The host apologized the next morning — they’d been asleep in a different timezone. The lock battery had died. They had no backup system. No ops team. No one watching.
That night, sitting in that diner at 5am over bad coffee, we kept asking each other the same question: “How does a billion-dollar industry have no answer for this?”
Airbnb took their platform fee. The host took their nightly rate. And when everything broke at 4am, nobody was there. We decided that was the business to build — the one that’s actually there.
We talked to hosts. What we found wasn’t surprising — it was just ignored. Hosts were drowning. 3am WiFi questions. Cleaning logistics. Pricing guesswork. Guest disputes. Platform policy changes. The “passive income” they’d been promised was anything but.
And guests were suffering too. Not because hosts were bad people — but because no one had built the infrastructure to actually support them at scale.
So we built Homie — an AI that knows each property it looks after, drafts answers at any hour, brings the host in when it matters, and never runs out of battery. Then we built the tools around it: cleaning schedules, pricing suggestions, guest guidebooks and owner statements.
We built everything we wished had existed that night. And we called it Ospito — Italian for “I host.” Because hosting, done right, is something to be proud of.
Every milestone started with a problem we lived ourselves.
Stranded outside an Airbnb at 4am. Host unreachable. Airbnb support: useless. Spent the night in a diner. Decided something needed to change.
We interviewed hosts about what keeps them up at night. Guest communication came up again and again — and so did bad reviews from incidents they couldn’t have prevented alone.
Built Homie from the ground up — an AI set up for each individual property, not generic responses. Homie is built to draft replies around the clock once it is switched on for a property.
Ospito is for vacation-rental hosts around the world, and we are starting in Portugal and Spain. Next we switch Homie on for a first property, to draft answers for guests day and night and bring hosts in when a decision is theirs.
The phrase “passive income” has become a joke. Hosts spend hours every week managing guests, cleaning logistics, pricing, permits, and platform issues. We think that’s broken. If you own a great property, you should earn great returns — without that property becoming a second job.
You see everything. Every booking, every message Homie drafted or sent on your behalf. No black boxes, no hidden fees, no “trust us” moments. Ever.
We work for you, not the platforms. Your Airbnb reviews, your Superhost status, your listing data — all in your name. Always. We’re guests in your business, not the other way around.
A great guest experience means great reviews. Great reviews mean more bookings. More bookings mean more money for you. Homie doesn’t take nights off. Neither do we.
Every expert told us the same thing: “AI can’t handle short-term rental support. Too nuanced. Too property-specific. Too unpredictable.” We disagreed. Homie is set up for each individual property — its quirks, its WiFi, its appliances, its neighbourhood, its house rules. It drafts replies in your guests’ own language and hands the decisions to you. We think that’s the best AI vacation rental assistant we could build — and we keep making it better.
Every person behind Ospito has been a guest, a host, or both. We’ve been locked out. We’ve woken up to bad reviews. We built this because we had no choice.
A visionary with an obsessive focus on product and a rare ability to see exactly where markets are broken before anyone else does. Creative, relentless, and deeply host-first in every decision. The kind of founder who builds for real people, not pitch decks. Identity reveal coming soon — stay tuned.
Drafts replies day and night. Speaks your guests’ language. Set up for every property individually. Homie doesn’t sleep and doesn’t call in sick. The most reliable team member we’ve ever had.
A small team building Ospito, answering your questions, and watching for sync and booking problems. When Homie needs a human, we are the humans behind the AI.
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