Hospitality is About Moments—AI Escalations Keep Them Unforgettable
Chrissy Reter doesn’t just manage hospitality—she orchestrates it. As the Director of Hospitality at Beckon Homes, she doesn’t see guest support as just answering questions; she sees it as a high-touch, proactive system that anticipates issues before they become problems. For her, hospitality is about moments—and the right escalation at the right time can make or break one.
At Beckon Homes, a boutique vacation rental company operating in Nashville, Cape Cod, and the Smoky Mountains, hospitality is deeply personal. The company started before short-term rentals were an established market, founded out of a passion for home and hospitality. Chrissy’s role is to protect that boutique experience at scale, ensuring that even as the company grows, guests still feel like they’re the only ones that matter.
That’s why AI-powered escalations have become a core part of her strategy. “Guests will always have problems—no matter how well we prepare,” Chrissy said. “The difference is in how fast and how well we respond. That’s what makes great hospitality.”
When Guest Issues Get Missed, Hospitality Suffers
Before HostAI, managing guest concerns meant manually checking inboxes and relying on team members to surface urgent issues. It worked—until it didn’t. As Beckon Homes expanded, critical guest issues could get buried, delayed, or missed entirely.
“With hospitality, timing is everything,” Chrissy explained. “If a guest has a problem, the difference between a five-star and a three-star review is often about how quickly we act.”
With AI-powered escalations, Chrissy’s team gets immediate visibility into guest issues that require human attention. HostAI intelligently flags urgent matters—whether it’s a guest locked out, a damaged property, or an urgent maintenance request—and routes them to the right person in real time.
“Seeing things instantly as they come in—that’s what changed everything,” Chrissy said. “Now, we don’t find out about an issue hours later. We know the moment it happens and can fix it before it escalates.”
Today, 66% of guest inquiries are handled automatically—meaning Chrissy’s team only sees the 34% of cases that require human intervention. By automating routine responses, Beckon Homes ensures that their team is focused entirely on escalations and high-touch hospitality.
Bringing the Voice of the Guest into their Slack
Beckon Homes takes internal communication as seriously as guest communication. Their team operates across multiple markets, and Slack is their central command center. By integrating HostAI directly into Slack, Chrissy and her team can see escalations in real time, collaborate instantly, and act faster.
“We built a culture where everyone has eyes on the guest experience,” Chrissy explained. “If an escalation comes in, it doesn’t just sit in an inbox—it shows up where our team is already working, so action happens immediately.”
With routine guest messaging fully automated, Beckon Homes ensures that their human team focuses on what matters most—solving complex issues, creating memorable moments, and delivering true boutique hospitality at scale. The team no longer has to dig through emails or PMS alerts to find urgent issues. Instead, AI surfaces them in Slack, allowing them to resolve problems before they turn into bad experiences.
The Future
For boutique property managers, growth often comes with a difficult choice: expand and risk losing quality, or stay small to maintain high-touch service. Chrissy believes AI-powered escalations eliminate that tradeoff.
“We don’t have to choose between growing and keeping our hospitality standards,” she said. “AI lets us stay boutique at scale—it ensures that no matter how big we get, we never lose the personal, high-touch experience that makes us different.”
Looking ahead, Chrissy sees AI as an even bigger part of Beckon Homes’ growth strategy. Whether it’s anticipating guest needs, streamlining vendor communication, or ensuring owners stay informed, escalations will continue to be a cornerstone of their hospitality philosophy.
“At the end of the day, guests remember how they felt when something went wrong,” Chrissy said. “With AI-powered escalations, we make sure they feel taken care of—every single time.”
