# Kevin Bautista, Director of Hotel Operations at Sunridge Hospitality Group — read of CheckoutPulse, June 8 2026

> 13 years in hotels, now running ops for a 4-property ownership group in the Phoenix metro while quietly building toward something of my own.

## How I got here

I've been half-heartedly searching "hotel guest feedback software" for about three months, ever since our Revinate contract came up for renewal and I started wondering if there was something better. A guy in a hospitality slack I'm in posted this link with "interesting model, not sure what they're selling." That was enough to click.

## What I clicked first

"Guest Feedback That Arrives Before the Review." Stopped me immediately. That's the exact pain. We lose three to four stars on TripAdvisor every month from guests who had a fixable problem, said nothing, went home, and torched us. The framing is right. I kept reading.

The "Voice-First Feedback Collection" description is the clearest thing on the page: "Guests can speak freely instead of choosing from options." I've watched guests abandon surveys at question two. If an AI can actually get a 90-second voicemail-style call from a guest 30 minutes after checkout, that is genuinely interesting.

## Where I paused

The scoring section. "Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet." That sentence broke something in my understanding of the page. I had been reading this as a product I could trial. I had to scroll back to the top and re-read to understand what Wishdeal Studio actually is. They are not selling me a subscription to CheckoutPulse. They are selling me the *idea* of CheckoutPulse for $99, plus the code starter.

That realization took me a minute. And I'm not sure most hotel GMs will make that jump. They'll read the feature list, click "Start Free Trial," and be confused immediately.

## What I distrusted

The Fermi math is both the most interesting thing on the page and the thing I trust the least. "$-15,568 Year-1 take-home" is a bold thing to put on your own product page. I respect it. But the scoring system is Wishdeal grading Wishdeal ideas. "Credibility: 9/10" is not a third party saying this is credible. It's the studio grading its own work. That's the definition of self-grading, and the intro copy even says "The studio that built this is grading itself." At least they named it.

Also: "1 in 8 Meaningful-success odds." That's 12.5%. Would I pitch an ownership group on a hotel renovation with 12.5% odds? No. Is this a different kind of bet? Maybe. But they put it right there and I'm not sure whether to read that as courage or a liability hedge.

## What would convince me

I want to see one hotel GM on video, name and property visible, describing the moment they got a GM alert and recovered a guest before checkout. Not a testimonial quote in gray italic text. A 90-second clip with a face and a specific property name. The "pain intensity: 4/10" score from their own rubric suggests they know this is a vitamin, not a painkiller. The recovery story is the only thing that upgrades it to painkiller.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. Has anyone actually deployed this, even in a pilot? You said no live customers, but did any beta testers run the calls? What did guests say when an AI called them 30 minutes post-checkout?
2. Which PMS integrations are actually built versus planned? "Feedback appears in your existing systems" is doing a lot of work for a product with no customers yet.
3. If I pay $99 for the code starter, what's the realistic first step? Do I need a developer, or is this a no-code setup?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The core concept earns real attention and the honesty about "no live customers" is more refreshing than I expected. But I still don't fully understand what I'm buying, and that confusion is a problem they haven't solved on the page.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-06-08. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*