While much of the travel industry experiments with chatbots and basic recommendation engines, a New York City vacation rental platform is implementing a sophisticated multi-model AI architecture that tackles three interconnected problems: search intent interpretation, review data synthesis, and cross-language accessibility.
CasaVoya, a short-term rental platform operating in highly regulated markets, has built an AI-powered system that leverages both OpenAI and Anthropic APIs to transform how travelers discover and evaluate accommodations. The implementation goes well beyond simple keyword matching, using large language models to understand context, synthesize insights from thousands of reviews, and make properties accessible to international audiences.
Natural Language Search: Moving Beyond Filter-Based Discovery
The platform’s most visible AI feature is its conversational search interface, which interprets queries like “girls weekend near good restaurants” or “family trip around New Year’s” to surface relevant vacation rental listings.
Traditional vacation rental platforms rely on structured filters—date ranges, guest counts, price thresholds, amenity checkboxes—that force users to translate their trip intent into database queries. CasaVoya’s approach inverts this paradigm by having the AI interpret natural language and infer the underlying requirements.
“The challenge isn’t just NLP—it’s understanding that ‘romantic weekend’ implies certain property characteristics, that ‘family Thanksgiving’ suggests specific timing and space requirements, and that ‘see Broadway shows’ has location implications,” explained Sasha Ramani, Board Member and Artificial Intelligence Advisor at CasaVoya. “We’re using LLMs to bridge the gap between how people think about travel and how vacation rental data is structured.”
The system analyzes multiple dimensions simultaneously:
- Temporal context: Interpreting phrases like “over the holidays” or “summer vacation” to infer date ranges and seasonal preferences
- Group dynamics: Understanding whether a query suggests couples, families, friend groups, or solo travelers
- Activity intent: Extracting interests like nightlife, cultural attractions, family activities, or quiet retreats
- Location requirements: Mapping mentioned activities to appropriate neighborhoods and proximity needs
Rather than returning a simple ranked list, the AI-powered search considers property fit across these dimensions, surfacing listings that match the overall trip profile even when exact keywords don’t appear in descriptions.
Review Intelligence: Synthesizing Signal from Noise
CasaVoya’s second major AI application addresses a fundamental problem in online marketplaces: review overload. With some properties accumulating hundreds of guest reviews, travelers face an impossible task of reading and synthesizing all available information to understand what a stay will actually be like.
The platform uses AI to generate structured summaries that extract key themes from the full corpus of reviews for each property. Rather than forcing potential guests to read through 200+ individual reviews, the system identifies patterns around cleanliness, host responsiveness, location convenience, amenities, and common concerns.
“We’re processing over 8,000 verified guest reviews across our platform,” added Ramani. “The AI doesn’t just summarize—it identifies trade-offs, highlights what different types of travelers appreciated or found challenging, and surfaces the insights that actually matter for decision-making.”
This review intelligence feeds back into the search algorithm, allowing the system to recommend properties based on aggregated guest experience data rather than just host-provided descriptions. If reviews consistently mention that a property works well for families with young children, the AI can surface that listing for relevant queries even if the host never explicitly marketed it that way.
Cross-Language Accessibility via AI Translation
CasaVoya’s third AI implementation addresses the global nature of travel: guests from 22 countries use the platform, and many reviews are submitted in languages other than English. Rather than maintaining separate review databases by language or limiting international users to properties with reviews in their language, the platform uses AI-powered translation to make all review content accessible.
“Translation was one of those features that seemed obvious once we started thinking about the user experience,” noted Ramani. “These aren’t marketing copy—they’re authentic guest experiences, and being able to access that information regardless of your language shouldn’t be a barrier.”
The multilingual capabilities extend to the AI search itself, allowing users to query in their preferred language while still accessing the full inventory of New York City vacation rental properties.
Multi-Model Architecture: Choosing the Right Tool
CasaVoya’s decision to leverage both OpenAI and Anthropic APIs reflects a pragmatic approach to model selection rather than vendor lock-in. Different components of the system use different models based on their specific requirements around context length, reasoning capabilities, latency, and cost.
“We’re not ideological about model providers,” said Ramani. “Different parts of our AI stack have different requirements. We evaluate different providers based on performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness for each use case.”
This multi-vendor strategy also provides resilience—if one API experiences issues, critical features can fail over to alternative models. For a vacation rental platform where search and review access are core to the user experience, this redundancy matters.
AI as Product Differentiator in Regulated Markets
The AI innovations are particularly significant given CasaVoya’s unusual market position. The platform operates as an alternative to Airbnb and other traditional booking sites by functioning as an introduction service rather than a transaction platform—a structure that allows compliance with New York City’s restrictive short-term rental regulations.
In this model, sophisticated discovery and evaluation tools become even more critical. Since CasaVoya doesn’t process bookings directly, the platform needs to give users high confidence in their property selection before they connect with hosts. AI-powered search and review intelligence help bridge that trust gap.
The company is now expanding beyond New York City into other regulated markets in the U.S., Europe, and globally, bringing its multi-model AI architecture to new destinations where vacation rental platforms face similar compliance challenges.
Measuring AI Impact: Beyond Engagement Metrics
While CasaVoya hasn’t disclosed specific performance metrics, the company reports that the AI search tool is driving higher-quality matches between travelers and properties. The key indicator isn’t just search-to-booking conversion, but whether guests and hosts report better fit and satisfaction with the introduction process.
“The test of whether the AI is working isn’t clicks or engagement time—it’s whether travelers find stays that actually match what they were looking for,” said Ramani. “That’s harder to measure but more meaningful than vanity metrics.”
As the vacation rental industry grapples with how to deploy AI beyond superficial implementations, CasaVoya’s approach—using multiple models for distinct problems, focusing on user value rather than novelty, and building AI into core product functionality—offers a case study in practical LLM application.
The platform’s next AI initiatives include enhanced property-to-property recommendations and predictive insights for hosts about demand patterns, continuing to build on its multi-model architecture.
About CasaVoya: CasaVoya (formerly ManhattanBNB) is a vacation rental platform that operates as an introduction service in regulated short-term rental markets. The company uses AI-powered search, review intelligence, and translation features to connect travelers from 22 countries with nearly 200 hosts across New York City and expanding global destinations. For more information, visit www.CasaVoya.com.
