Trust, Reviews, and AI: Driving Performance in STR

Reviews are everywhere in hospitality, yet most operators still misunderstand what they actually represent.

In this episode of STR Global Unlocked, Simon Lehmann sits down with Ben Jost, CEO of TrustYou, to unpack why guest feedback analytics, reputation management, trust, and experience intelligence are emerging as critical drivers of decision-making and long-term performance in hospitality and short-term rentals.

Ben brings more than 15 years of experience working at the intersection of reputation management, data, and guest intelligence across global hospitality brands. While TrustYou’s roots are firmly in traditional hotels, the conversation repeatedly highlights how the same feedback dynamics apply to short-term rentals as the sector professionalizes and guest expectations increasingly mirror hotel standards.

This discussion reframes reviews as strategic infrastructure rather than surface-level scores and shows how review data directly influences pricing strategy, revenue management, and conversion performance.

The episode explores why operators who understand and act on feedback build stronger trust, clearer positioning, and more resilient businesses over time.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why guest feedback functions as the quality management layer of modern experience intelligence.
• How small improvements in perceived quality directly influence pricing power, conversion, and long-term revenue performance.
• The disconnect between collecting reviews and acting on them, and how inaction weakens trust with guests over time.
• Why trust is created when expectations align with reality, not through brand alone, and how reviews shape that expectation.
• How consistency challenges in short-term rentals mirror hotel dynamics, and why operating without quality benchmarks creates structural risk.
• How AI will turn fragmented guest touchpoints into a continuous conversation, making feedback more timely, natural, and actionable across the guest journey.

Learn more

Connect with Ben Jost on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-jost-7761643/]  to learn more about TrustYou [https://www.trustyou.com/]

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