Winter Update 2026

It’s a really exciting time to be in business. There is a lot being said at the moment about AI, automation and new technology, and while some of it can feel daunting, we genuinely see it as a huge opportunity.

Like any new wave of change, there is plenty of noise. There is AI “slop”, there are tools that overpromise, and there are areas where technology can feel a bit gimmicky. But there is also real value, especially when it is used thoughtfully. For Host’d, this is not something we have suddenly jumped into. We have been exploring, testing and building with AI and automation for the past four years, and right now it feels like we are standing in the middle of a true digital revolution.

It reminds me of arriving on the West Coast 13 years ago, when Drifting Sands was still run with a pencil, rubber, paper diary, landline and mobile phone. I had come from London and had not used a landline in over 15 years. In that first year, I moved the business onto Airbnb and Booking com which were very new platforms at the time, changed Drifting Sands from a backpackers into a B&B, and that shift completely transformed the business.

Now, 13yrs on, we feel that same kind of opportunity again. This next wave of digital support, through workflows, automation and AI, gives us the chance to let technology take care of the repetitive tasks, the admin, the checking and the background systems. That gives us more time for the work that really matters: supporting our guests, our owners, our team and the guests who help bring each home to life with their in-house experience.

At Host’d, technology is not replacing the heart of what we do. It is supporting it. Our systems are the engine running quietly in the background, but the real output is still human connection, beautiful stays, well-cared-for homes, and people getting precious time together.

Over the past month in particular, and really over the past year, we have been working on a number of exciting improvements behind the scenes. Some of these you may have already noticed, and others are still being built and tested. We wanted to take this opportunity to share a little more about what we have been working on, where Host’d is heading, and how these changes continue to support your property, our guests and the wider Host’d team.

When people think about Host’d, they often think about beautiful homes, seamless stays and five-star reviews. What they don’t often see is the incredible team working quietly behind the scenes to make all of that happen.

At the heart of Host’d are our people.

Many of you will have met Sandy during her visits to New Zealand over the past 3 years with us. Sandy is our Head of Guest Experience and Operations, and every morning she begins her day around 4.00am so she can be online and supporting our guests and team throughout the New Zealand day. Alongside Sandy is Ems, who provides guest support and account administration, helping ensure every booking, enquiry and owner request is looked after with care and attention.

Together, they are often the unseen faces behind the messages our guests receive. Whether it’s responding to a new enquiry within minutes, helping guests navigate road closures or severe weather, rearranging reservations, assisting when something breaks, or supporting families through unexpected situations, they are constantly working in the background to ensure every guest feels cared for, supported and heard.

It’s one of the reasons our communication is so consistently recognised in guest reviews. Fast responses, thoughtful support and genuine care don’t happen by accident. They happen because of an amazing team committed to delivering a five-star experience from the very first enquiry through to checkout.

Our incredible housekeepers, maintenance team and grounds team are the heartbeat of every home. They work with such flexibility around resets, early check-ins, late check-outs and ever-changing schedules, while making sure each property is beautifully cared for.

It’s their attention to the finer details that makes a house feel truly welcoming: turning lights on for late arrivals, warming homes before guests arrive in winter, cooling them in summer, and ensuring everything feels comfortable, thoughtful and ready for guests to make themselves at home.

Finally, our guests themselves play one of the most important roles in caring for your home. They become our true eyes and ears while they’re staying in the property, experiencing it in a way that we simply can’t between visits.

That’s why we actively encourage every guest to let us know about even the smallest things. Whether it’s a lightbulb that’s gone, something that’s missing, a maintenance issue that’s just starting to show itself, or simply a suggestion that could make the next guest’s stay even better, every piece of feedback matters.

By listening carefully to our guests, we’re able to continually improve each home and address little issues before they become bigger ones. It’s not about what we think guests might want, it’s about listening to the people who are actually staying in your home. That ongoing feedback helps us keep every property at the high standard that our guests have come to expect.

At the end of the day, while technology and systems help us work smarter, it is people who remain the heart of Host’d. They are the reason we can care for your homes and create memorable experiences for every guest who stays with us.

Ever since I started Drifting Sands 13 years ago, I made a promise to myself that I would always reinvest back into the business. Sometimes that investment has been small, sometimes much larger, but every year the goal has remained the same: to keep learning, improving and building a better business for our guests and our team and more recently, our owners.

To build a more sustainable business, we have to keep backing ourselves, keep learning, and keep investing in the right people, systems and support around us. That belief has guided Host’d from the very beginning, and continues to guide the way we grow.

Over the past year, one of those investments has been working alongside Business Blueprint, an Australian and New Zealand business mentoring organisation that supports business owners with leadership, strategy, systems and sustainable growth. Through that partnership, we were introduced to WorkPod in Dumaguete, Philippines, a company specialising in helping businesses build exceptional remote teams.

When Sandy and I first connected with Business Blueprint, it felt like a natural fit. We had already been working remotely together for some time, but this gave us access to world-class mentoring, systems, technology and a wider community of people who are shaping the future of modern businesses.

This year, instead of Sandy travelling to New Zealand for her annual visit, we made the decision to invest those resources into something even bigger. We timed our trip around the iGrow Conference in Dumaguete, bringing together business owners, technology leaders, AI specialists and remote professionals from across Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines.

It was, without question, one of the best business investments we have made.

The conference exceeded every expectation. We learnt from leaders who are helping shape the future of AI, automation, remote teams and business systems, giving us practical insights that we are already applying within Host’d. In a world where technology is evolving so quickly, we believe it’s important not just to keep up, but to understand how to use it thoughtfully and responsibly to create a better experience for our owners and guests.

Perhaps the most valuable part of the trip wasn’t the conference itself, but the opportunity to work alongside our own team. For the first time, Sandy, Ems, Jazel, Julius and I were all in the same room, spending dedicated time designing new workflows, refining our systems and planning the next stage of Host’d together.

As much as technology enables us to work remotely, nothing replaces human connection. Being able to collaborate face-to-face, solve problems together and build alongside one another accelerated months of work in just a few weeks.

This was a significant investment for Host’d, both financially and in dedicated time away from the everyday demands of the business. It was an investment made with a very clear purpose. Everything we learnt, every system we refined and every workflow we built comes back into Host’d. It means stronger systems behind the scenes, faster support, better communication, more consistency across every stay, better support for our housekeepers and ultimately better care for your property and every guest who walks through its door.

The following sections share some of the projects and improvements that have already come from that investment, and the exciting work that continues behind the scenes.

If I were to show you the dashboard behind Host’d (which you’ll see in the image below), you would probably wonder what on earth you’re looking at!

To be honest, even after spending months immersed in this technology, it took me quite a while to understand how these workflows are designed and how they all connect together. It can look incredibly technical, and in many ways, it is. You don’t have to understand this tech or get as excited as we do… but we love these improvements and so we wanted to share a little more of the processes behind the scenes.

And rather than trying to explain lots of lines, boxes and computer coding jargon, I came up with a much more fun way to think about it… and this is actually what helped me get my head around the process.

Spider Babies.

If you’ve ever seen a spider carrying hundreds of tiny babies on its back, you’ll understand the idea. Instead of implementing our LLM bespoke GPT’s we have already designed to do everything, we’ve built lots of tiny little digital helpers. Each “Spider Baby” has one very specific job. It knows exactly what it’s responsible for, quietly scurries off, completes its task, and then waits until it’s needed again.

Individually, they might seem like very small jobs. Together, they create a smarter, faster and more consistent experience for our guests, owners and team.

One of our first Spider Babies springs into action the moment one of our housekeepers completes their digital housekeeping checklist.

As soon as they press Submit, our little Spider Baby checks our booking system, confirms the next arriving guest, and automatically sends them a personalised message letting them know their property is ready.

It sounds simple…

…but this workflow alone took over a month to design, build and test and we are just in the process of live launching it now.

Previously, our team would manually check whether the housekeeper had finished, confirm the booking, then write and send a message to the guest. We are sure you can imagine the comms across multiple properties and early check ins and late check outs is one of our biggest communications.

Now it happens automatically within seconds.

Even more importantly, it makes our housekeepers part of the guest journey. The moment they finish preparing a home, that action immediately creates a better experience for the arriving guest. Receiving a message saying, “Your home is all ready to welcome you and you’re welcome to arrive whenever you like,” can completely transform the start of someone’s holiday.

Another little Spider Baby wakes up every evening at 11pm.

Its job is to quietly look through every upcoming reservation and check whether a property is sitting empty the night before a guest arrives.

If it finds one, it automatically lets us know that an early check-in is possible, allowing us to reach out and offer guests the chance to arrive much earlier the following day.

It’s a small automation…

…but a wonderful guest experience.

Instead of guests wondering whether they can arrive early, we can often offer it before they even think to ask.

Perhaps the biggest Spider Baby project we’ve been working on is completely redesigning our Master Booking and Owner Payout systems.

You may have noticed the occasional changes or testing happening within the booking spreadsheets over recent months. That’s because we’ve been rebuilding this system with our automation team from the ground up.

Instead of relying on manual copying and pasting, the new system automatically pulls reservations directly from our property management system, updates booking information in real time, prepares owner payout information, and performs multiple validation checks before anything is finalised.

Think of it as dozens of little Spider Babies constantly checking one another’s work, making sure every booking, every figure and every payout has been processed correctly before anything moves forward. This workflow will also be creating your EOY files for your accountant too.

It significantly reduces manual handling, improves consistency and gives us much greater confidence in the information we’re working with.

One question we often get asked is…

“If it’s automated, why does it take so long to build?”

The answer is that building a reliable workflow is much more like building a house than flicking a switch. Each workflow goes through many stages before it’s trusted enough to become part of our daily operations.

We begin by designing the process and mapping every possible scenario. We then build the first version, test it thoroughly, identify improvements, redesign it, rebuild it, test it again, and continue refining it through soft launches and real-world trials. Even after a workflow is live, we continue monitoring it closely, reviewing reports and making ongoing improvements.

Most of these workflows connect multiple systems together, including our Property Management System, booking channels, guest communications and internal reporting. There are thousands of possible scenarios they need to handle correctly before we can rely on them.

It’s a significant investment of time, but once these Spider Babies are up and running, they quietly work around the clock, supporting our team, reducing repetitive administration, minimising human error and allowing us to spend more of our time where it matters most: caring for our owners, our guests and their homes.

It might seem like a slightly unusual analogy, but we hope our little Spider Babies help make sense of the technology we’re building behind the scenes. Rather than one giant system trying to do everything, we’re creating lots of tiny, intelligent helpers, each with one clear job to do. Over time, you’ll probably hear us talking about new Spider Babies joining the Host’d family as we continue building more workflows and automations. Each one may seem small on its own, but together they’re helping us create a stronger, smarter and more consistent experience for our owners, guests and team.

Alongside the workflow projects, we have also been spending a lot of time looking at how we can continue improving our housekeeping, maintenance and deep clean systems.

After such a demanding season last year, maintenance was a huge pull on the business. Some things are simply out of our control. Homes are lived in, appliances break, weather hits, guests use things differently, and issues can appear without warning. While we are very used to responding quickly when things happen, we also want to keep building better systems that help us stay ahead wherever possible.

One of the key projects we have been working on is improving the information and support available to our housekeeping team. Every housekeeper now completes a digital checklist at the end of each clean, which is a non-negotiable part of our reset process. These checklists help us confirm that the essential details have been completed before the next guest arrives.

We are also building more detailed house manuals for each property. The goal is that, in future, any trained housekeeper could walk into a property and clearly understand how that home should be reset, what is unique to it, and what details matter most. Every house is different, and every housekeeper works a little differently, so we want to make sure we are giving them the best possible tools, guidance and support.

The third piece we are rolling out through July and August is our new deep clean and property health check system. Rather than simply saying “deep clean” and assuming everyone has the same understanding of what that includes, we are creating detailed deep clean checklists to ensure consistency across every property and the unique features of each property.

Alongside the cleaning tasks, these quarterly checks will also include a more practical health check for each home. This might include things such as cleaning a gas fire filter, checking an appliance, reviewing gutters that tend to fill quickly, looking at gates, driveways, gardens, exterior areas or any other property-specific items that we know need regular attention.

The aim is to be more proactive rather than reactive. Instead of waiting until something becomes urgent on a guest arrival day, we want to identify small issues earlier, plan maintenance more calmly, and keep building a clearer picture of what each home needs throughout the year. These can then be clearly communicated with owners and actions agreed upon together.

This is another piece of behind-the-scenes work that may not always be visible, but it makes a real difference to how each property is cared for, how our team is supported, and how smoothly we can continue delivering beautiful guest stays.

One of the biggest operational changes we’ve worked through over the past few months has been redesigning our entire linen process.

Right in the middle of our busiest weeks and coast 2 coast week, our long-term linen supplier changed the way they delivered and managed our linen after more than 10 years of working together. While unexpected, it meant we needed to rethink and rebuild our own linen systems from the ground up, all while continuing to operate through one of our busiest periods.

Linen is one of the largest logistical parts of our business. Behind every beautifully made bed is a constant cycle of collecting, washing, delivering, restocking and coordinating linen across all of our properties. It takes a huge amount of planning, and our housekeepers rely on that system working seamlessly every single day.

Rather than simply adapting to the change, we saw it as an opportunity to build something even better.

Over the past few months, we’ve designed and introduced a new linen management system, including a dedicated team member whose role is to ensure every property remains fully stocked and topped up before supplies ever become an issue. We’re continuing to trial and refine this system over the quieter winter months so that it is running as efficiently as possible before we head into another crazy busy summer.

Like many improvements within Host’d, this change came about because circumstances forced us to think differently. While it was certainly a huge challenge at the time, it has also given us the opportunity to create a stronger, more resilient system that will better support our homes, our housekeepers and our guests into the future.

As part of our ongoing commitment to staying connected with the wider tourism industry, we regularly attend workshops and updates with Development West Coast to understand the latest visitor trends, research and opportunities for our region.

One of the biggest takeaways from the recent May industry update was the growing influence of AI in travel planning. More and more travellers are now using tools such as ChatGPT and other AI platforms to research destinations, build itineraries and discover accommodation. While traditional search engines are still important, AI is becoming another key way people decide where to stay and what experiences to book.

The research also reinforced that visitors continue to value authentic experiences, beautiful natural environments, great food and genuine hospitality, with word-of-mouth and guest reviews remaining some of the most powerful influences on future bookings. It also highlighted the importance of ensuring websites, listings and online content are clear, informative and structured in ways that both people and AI can easily understand.

For us, it was reassuring to see that many of the projects we’re already investing in, from strengthening our listings and website to building smarter systems and improving guest communication, are closely aligned with the future direction of tourism. As the industry continues to evolve, we’re committed to ensuring Host’d and your property remain well positioned for the years ahead.

In May, we also met with a number of independent travel agents and inbound operators, including agents working with UK, European, Asian, New Zealand and wider international markets. We already work with a select group of travel partners, and these conversations are helping us continue to grow that network. This gives us more opportunities to place Host’d homes in front of international travellers through trusted travel agent channels, increasing our reach beyond the main online booking platforms.

On 1 June, our Win Your Wedding at Enchanted campaign went live in partnership with My Wedding Mag.

This is a really exciting campaign inviting couples to share their love story, with entries being narrowed down to finalists before going out to a public vote.

Our goal is to help bring more beautiful small weddings, elopements and intimate events to the West Coast, with Enchanted sitting at the heart of that offering. Alongside this, we are also launching a new section of the Host’d website focused on mini elopements and micro weddings, often for groups of four to eight people.

The West Coast has so many incredible locations for these smaller, meaningful celebrations, and many of our Host’d homes are perfectly placed to support guests travelling for these events.

Click this link to the campaign, and if you know anyone dreaming of a West Coast wedding or elopement, we would love you to pass it on.

One of the highlights of the past few months has been being recommended for both the Leading Light Awards and the TIA New Zealand Tourism Awards.

We feel incredibly honoured to have been recommended. As Host’d continues to evolve from a boutique property management and design business into a design-led hospitality company, supported by technology, innovation and exceptional people, it’s encouraging to see that journey recognised within the tourism industry.

These aren’t opportunities we would normally find the time to pursue, but while we were working together in the Philippines, we invested the time to reflect on the journey we’ve been on over the past few years and prepare our award entries.

As well as being a lovely recognition of the work happening behind the scenes, opportunities like this also help create more exposure for Host’d, our homes, our region and the story we are building together.

We’ll find out whether we’ve been shortlisted for the Leading Light Awards on 20 July, with the New Zealand Tourism Awards to follow later in the year in Christchurch. Whatever the outcome, we’re incredibly grateful for the recognition and look forward to sharing the journey with you.

As we prepare for another fabulous summer season, our focus is firmly on building stronger systems, telling our story more effectively, and continuing to create exceptional experiences for both our guests, owners and our housekeeping team.

Over the coming months, one of our biggest priorities is completing the rollout of our new workflows, digital checklists and deep clean systems. Many of these projects have been months in the making, and we’re excited to have them fully implemented and supporting the team ahead of the new season. These systems will help improve consistency, reduce administration, and give us more time to focus on what matters most: caring for people and properties.

We’re also excited to launch our new Let’s Elope West Coast offering. This dedicated section of our website will showcase intimate weddings and micro elopements, highlighting not only Enchanted but also many of the incredible Host’d properties that are perfectly suited to these special occasions. We see this as another wonderful opportunity to bring visitors to the West Coast and continue growing year-round tourism.

Another key focus is continuing to strengthen our partnerships with Development West Coast, our travel agent network and other industry partners. Building these relationships helps ensure Host’d properties are being showcased through multiple channels, both within New Zealand and internationally.

Finally, after two years of quietly building the foundations of Host’d, refining our systems, growing our team and implementing new technology, we feel we’re now ready to tell our story.

Over the coming months you’ll begin to see a refreshed website, updated property listings, stronger storytelling and a more consistent presence across our social channels. This isn’t simply about marketing; it’s about helping people discover the West Coast, understand what makes each of our homes special, and ensuring Host’d is well positioned as more travellers begin using AI and new digital platforms to research and book their holidays.

To support this next chapter, we’re delighted to be welcoming a new member to the Host’d team this week. She joins us as our Digital Marketing and Storytelling Concierge and will be leading the ongoing development of our website, content, social media and digital presence. Her role is to ensure every Host’d property is presented at its very best, helping us attract more guests, increase direct bookings, and continue sharing the unique stories that make our homes and our region so special.

As always, thank you for your continued trust and support. We genuinely love what we do, and we are excited about the season ahead, the systems we are building, and the future of Host’d.

Thank you also for all the May’tenance and low-season updates that have been completed over the past few months. Winter is a valuable time for us to reset, refine and prepare, and it has been wonderful to see so many improvements taking shape across the homes.

As we head into Matariki, it feels like the perfect time to reflect, reset and look ahead. There is a strong sense of optimism for the coming season, and we are looking forward to a lovely winter continuing and a fabulous summer ahead.

As AI becomes more capable, we don’t believe it will reduce the need for humanity. We believe it will increase its value. Technology should make people better, not replace them. The businesses we return to are rarely just the fastest or most efficient; they are the ones that make us feel something.

That has always been at the heart of Host’d, and it will continue to guide everything we build from here.

Wishing you a peaceful Matariki and a wonderful season ahead.

Warmest regards,

Claire & Sandy 🧡