Jumpino
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Ask both suppliers to quote a complete year of operation. Include setup, model usage, hosting, messaging fees, updates, support and exit costs. Check cancellation and export terms. A custom application still needs maintenance and may use paid external services. Test each option with the same guest questions, missing facts and human handovers. Obtain current written prices instead of relying on archived price lists. Verify processing locations for every provider, including the model, before promising that guest data stays in Europe.
In an earlier Field Note, An AI Concierge for Your Guests, I described what a knowledge-base assistant is and how it answers guests in their own language around the clock. This post is the money question that always comes next: do you rent one from a software company every month, or do you have one built that you own outright? I run my own server and build the owned kind, so I have a side in this. Even so, I will lay out both honestly, because for some properties the subscription is the right call.
What These Assistants Actually Do for Your Guests
A quick recap, since the earlier post covers this in depth. Whichever route you take, the job of the assistant is the same:
- Answer the repetitive questions instantly: check-in and check-out times, Wi-Fi, parking, breakfast hours, directions, local tips.
- Reply in the guest's own language, German, Italian, English and more, day or night.
- Catch inquiries that arrive after hours, so nobody waits until morning for a two-line answer.
- Sit on your website, in a booking-confirmation email, and often on WhatsApp, all reading from the same source of truth.
- Hand off anything real, a cancellation, a broken radiator, a price negotiation, to you.
The Owned Route: Build It Once, Run It on Your Own Server
The honest downside: an owned system needs someone to keep it current. When the AI model it builds on changes, when your property information changes, when something breaks at two in the morning during high season, there has to be a person responsible, me on a maintenance arrangement, or someone in-house. You do not get a large vendor's support desk. And the money arrives as an upfront investment rather than a small monthly line item, which suits some budgets and not others. An owned assistant is also, by design, an information assistant, not a booking engine with dozens of native integrations; if you need deep two-way sync with a channel manager, a specialised SaaS may simply do more.
A Simple Way to Decide
You do not need a spreadsheet. Answer these six questions honestly and the shape of the answer usually appears.
Most of the hosts I talk to in South Tyrol are not choosing between good and bad, they are choosing between renting and owning, and they just want the numbers laid side by side for their own property. That is a short conversation. Tell me your rough room count, how busy your inbox gets, and how you feel about your guest data leaving the EU, and I will give you an honest build-versus-subscribe estimate, including the cases where I would tell you a subscription is the smarter buy.