I'm Prabin. My partner Matthias and I host 12 short-term rental apartments across Vienna. Virtual Host AI started as a tool we built for ourselves at 2 AM when we couldn't keep up with guest messages from our day jobs.
Matthias runs Social Bunny Marketing. I'm a software developer. Short-term rentals started as a side hustle — one apartment in Vienna, then another, then another. Within two years we were managing twelve across different parts of the city, all through Smoobu, and still holding down full-time jobs.
We didn't know what we were getting into. Nobody tells you how much of the work isn't cleaning or pricing or photography — it's answering the same five questions over and over again, from guests who are already at the door.
I was at work one day — a real-paid-salary job — when I realised something: 70% of the guest messages I was racing to reply to were asking questions that were already in the apartment guide we'd sent them.
Wi-Fi password. Check-in instructions. Parking. Trash day. It was all there, on the PDF they'd downloaded 48 hours earlier. But who reads a PDF on vacation mode? I wouldn't. You wouldn't. They didn't. They just wanted the key and someone to tell them which button to press on the coffee machine.
And that's fine. That's what a host is for. But a host with a day job can't answer a Wi-Fi question at 2 PM on a Tuesday while sitting in a meeting.
Apartment name, guest name, arrival date, the guide I'd written, the check-in code. All sitting in Smoobu. All I needed was something intelligent enough to pick the right facts out of the guide and answer the guest, in their language, in seconds.
So I built a prototype. Lots of trial and error — the first version confidently told a guest the Wi-Fi was "as per the welcome pack", which is exactly the non-answer that got us into this mess. But after a few iterations it started working. It read the guide. It answered in the guest's language. It replied in under a minute.
The prototype worked — until it didn't. A guest once sent "my husband collapsed, I need help", and it cheerfully replied with emergency contact info when what the guest needed was a human. Another time, I was already mid-conversation with a guest, and the bot helpfully sent a second reply on top of mine. Embarrassing.
I realised: a prototype that only sends replies isn't enough. The real product is the bit that knows when to stop sending replies. I built an intervention shield — the moment I reply to a guest, the AI pauses for an hour. I built an escalation engine — emergency keywords bump the message straight to my phone via Telegram. I built handoff states for "the guest is angry", "the guest is confused", "the guest needs me personally."
Once those guardrails existed, I could actually leave the system running while I was at work. That was the moment it stopped being a prototype.
Matthias and I aren't the only hosts on Smoobu. There are thousands of us — side-hustlers, small-portfolio operators, property managers who can't afford to hire a concierge desk. Every one of them answers the same Wi-Fi question a hundred times a year.
So we turned the internal tool into a product. One-click Smoobu connect. Pay per apartment, no bundles, no setup fee. Cancel any time. 14-day full refund under Austrian §11 FAGG, one button, no forms.
Messaging was the start. These are the features we shipped as new problems surfaced in our own hosting operation:
The feature that started the company. Gemini reads the guest's message, pulls facts from your apartment guide, replies in their language — usually under 30 seconds. Pauses the moment you take over. Escalates when something needs you personally.
One morning at 9 AM I saw that a guest checking out at 11 had no arrival behind them until 3 PM. I thought "I could just offer them a late checkout for €20." Then I forgot. €20 on the floor. Now the system catches those gaps for every booking and sends you a Telegram card: approve, decline, done. Most hosts make back the subscription cost in one upsell a month.
Our cleaners used to ask us for a spreadsheet every Friday — who's arriving, how many guests, any special requests, what time. We now push every Smoobu booking into a shared Google Calendar with guest name, head count, arrival time, and extras (crib, sofa bed, late key pickup) right in the event description. The cleaners plan their route from their own phone.
We built a bare-bones mobile app for our cleaners so they don't need to call us when something's unclear. They see today's apartments, guest arrival time, number of people, any extras, and the access instructions. Runs on their own phone, installs like an app, no login beyond an email OTP.
Every Austrian municipality requires you to register every guest — TourismusStatistik in Vienna, equivalent registries in the other Bundesländer. Doing that manually for twelve apartments is a part-time job. We built a one-link digital form the guest fills in on their phone before arrival, and we push the data to the right local registry on your behalf — wherever your apartment is in Austria.
Most hosts already have a welcome-pack PDF. Drop it in, we parse the Wi-Fi password, check-in instructions, nearby restaurants, house rules, and a dozen other fields automatically. The AI uses the structured version to answer guests precisely, instead of guessing from the raw blob.
Our guests are from Warsaw, Seoul, Rome, Istanbul, São Paulo, Dubai. Gemini replies in whatever language the guest wrote in — no toggle, no config. We've seen German hosts with no English skills close bookings from Japanese travellers through the app without lifting a finger.
Austrian §11 FAGG gives you 14 days to walk away from any new subscription. Most companies bury that behind a support email. We built it as a button in the settings page — "Cancel everything + refund" — that refunds every invoice you've ever paid us, in a single click. Because if we can't earn your trust in two weeks, we shouldn't keep your money.
We haven't quit our day jobs and we're not trying to. Virtual Host AI is small, focused, and sustainable — it grows when our own apartments throw us a new problem we decide to solve in code.
Every feature on this site is something we use ourselves, on our own 12 apartments, before we ship it to you. If we wouldn't trust it with our guests' Wi-Fi question, we don't ship it.
Built in Vienna. Registered in Austria. Answers to Austrian consumer law. And if you email support@virtualhost.at, you're emailing one of us — not a ticket queue.
Connect Smoobu in one click. First guest reply in under 10 minutes. Cancel any time — 14-day full refund.