AI Video Inspections for Vacation Rentals (2026)
AI Video Inspections
How a video walkthrough inspection works
Written by Punn Kam, ex-Google AI engineer and Y Combinator repeat founder. He is the co-founder of Conduit, an AI agent platform built for hospitality, serving 300+ hospitality brands in 140+ languages. Last updated October 7, 2026.
An AI video inspection compares a cleaner's walkthrough video against a baseline of each room and returns findings: damage, missed cleaning, or a missing item, each with a room, a severity, and a timestamp. In Conduit, RapidEye's AI does the review through Conduit's RapidEye integration, and its findings land as a follow-up task that a workflow or an agent can route to staff, the owner, or the last guest.
How does an AI video inspection work?
An AI video inspection works in three steps: a baseline, a walkthrough, and a set of findings. RapidEye, the inspection partner Conduit integrates with, says on its homepage that it ingests historical turnover photos, builds a visual baseline for each room, and flags "damages, missing items, staging changes, and cleanliness issues" in new turnover photos or video.
The walkthrough is the part your team controls. In Conduit, someone opens the cleaning or inspection task for a property and presses Start walkthrough. Conduit asks RapidEye for a recording link, the cleaner records the unit through that link, and the task shows the inspection moving from recording to processing to completed. When RapidEye finishes, a View report button opens the full report from the task.
What comes back is a list of findings. Nobody on your team has to watch a ten-minute video to learn that the bathroom mirror is cracked; they read one line and jump to the second where it shows.
What does a finding look like once it reaches Conduit?
A RapidEye finding in Conduit carries five fields: a room, a severity (minor, moderate, or major), a category (damage, cleaning, or lost item), a timestamp in the walkthrough video, and a plain description. Conduit collects every finding from one inspection into a single follow-up task, linked to the same property as the task the walkthrough started from (and to its reservation, when that task has one), with RapidEye's before and after evidence photos attached and a link to the full report.
Here is an illustrative example of what the follow-up task would hold after a two-finding walkthrough (the unit and the findings are made up for this post):
Walkthrough follow-up: 2 findings
From the RapidEye walkthrough:
- [Primary bedroom · MODERATE · damage · video 2:14] Crack along the left side of the headboard
- [Kitchen · MINOR · cleaning · video 3:41] Residue left inside the microwave
Full report: <RapidEye report link>
Creating that task fires Conduit's task-created trigger. In this example, an agent reads the new task and sends the cleaning line back to the cleaner who just left, drafts a note to the owner with the headboard photos before anyone books a repair, and, if the owner wants to pursue the damage, asks the last guest about it in the same thread they booked and stayed in. None of those steps runs by default; you set each one up in a workflow or in the agent's instructions.
What can AI video inspection check?
AI video inspection checks visible change against the baseline in three categories, which match the three categories Conduit imports: damage, cleaning, and lost items. RapidEye lists the kinds of things it catches as wall damage, broken glass, stains, missing items, furniture damage, appliance issues, staging inconsistencies, and cleanliness problems (homepage).
The table below sets out where each category tends to land and what it usually needs next.
| Category | What it picks up | Typical next step in Conduit |
|---|---|---|
| Damage | Cracks, chips, burns, stains, broken fixtures, furniture damage | Maintenance task; owner told before money is spent; guest asked if a charge is likely |
| Cleaning | Residue, trash, an unmade bed, a bathroom that was skipped | Cleaner sent back before the next check-in |
| Lost item | Something in the baseline that is missing now, such as a remote, a lamp, or a throw | Ask the last guest; replace before arrival if it is listed |
| Not covered | Smell, water pressure, HVAC, mattress under the sheets, closed drawers, rooms not filmed | Your checklist or a person on site |
Severity should decide how fast someone moves. A major damage finding on a unit with a same-day arrival is a different job from the same finding on a unit that sits empty for a week, so write the next arrival into the rule.
What can't AI video inspection check?
AI video inspection cannot check anything the camera did not see clearly. A smell, a dripping tap you can only hear, weak water pressure, a heater that does not heat, the mattress under a fitted sheet, and the inside of a closed drawer will not show up as findings. RapidEye's own walkthrough guide lists limits along the same lines.
A skipped room is the limit that costs most often. If the cleaner never walks into the second bathroom, the inspection comes back with no findings for it. Treat a missing room as its own problem and send the walkthrough back.
Accuracy is the other open question. None of the vendors we looked at publishes an independent accuracy benchmark, so a person should confirm a finding before it costs a guest money.
Does video catch more than a photo checklist?
A walkthrough video covers the whole unit in one continuous take, so it catches change in places a photo checklist never asked for: behind a door, under a counter, the corner behind the sofa. RapidEye says on its homepage that video walkthroughs "produce better results than individual photos because they capture the full context of each space."
Photo checklists still prove that a specific step was done. Turno's API marks checklist items with a required-image flag, Operto Teams requires photo and video uploads on tasks, and Breezeway's quality assurance page describes required photos per task. Video answers a different question, whether anything in the unit changed, and you can run both on the same turnover. For how AI fits into the rest of an inspection routine, see how to use AI for vacation rental inspections.
What does the cleaner have to film?
The cleaner has to film every room on the same route each time, after cleaning is complete, with the lights on. RapidEye's walkthrough guide puts a studio or one-bedroom at about 1 to 2 minutes and larger homes at 3 to 5 minutes, and its homepage describes a 5 to 10 minute walkthrough after cleaning.
A route that works for most floor plans:
- Start outside the front door, with the lock and entry light in frame.
- Living areas at chest height, sweeping each room in the same direction.
- The kitchen with the fridge, oven, and microwave doors open.
- Each bedroom, showing the bed and the inside of the closet.
- Bathrooms, slowly, because wet areas hold most cleaning findings.
- Outdoor areas: patio, grill, hot tub, garage.
Write the route down per unit, because a cleaner who films the kitchen from the doorway one week and from the window the next makes every comparison noisier. Film a new baseline after any repair, refit, or furniture change, or the replaced sofa reads as missing.
How long do you have to use the evidence in a damage claim?
Airbnb gives hosts 14 days from the responsible guest's checkout to file a reimbursement request in the Resolution Center, with photos or videos of the damage, and the guest then has 24 hours to respond (Airbnb help article). A walkthrough recorded at the turnover puts that evidence in hand on the first day of the window.
Vrbo works differently when you take a refundable deposit. Vrbo says refundable damage deposits are released after the stay if the host reports no damage, and that release can take up to 14 days, so a finding decides whether money is held back while the guest waits for it. RapidEye lists back-to-back damage attribution on its Operations plan (pricing), which helps when two stays sit close together and you need to know which one caused the change. The choice between a deposit and a waiver is covered in damage waiver vs. security deposit.
What does it cost to run AI video inspections in Conduit?
Running AI video inspections in Conduit takes two subscriptions. Tasks, scheduling and dispatch, and agentic operations workflows are part of Conduit's Full Suite at $48 per unit per month (pricing), and the RapidEye integration needs that operations side turned on. RapidEye is billed separately, per unit, and its pricing page does not publish the number.
Without the integration, RapidEye sends flagged turns to Slack or email (pricing); with it, the same findings become a task next to the guest conversation, where a workflow or an agent can act on them. Our post on running guest messaging and operations in one system covers why that handoff matters, and the best AI inspection tools for vacation rentals compares RapidEye with other inspection vendors.
FAQ
The questions below cover how AI video inspections work at vacation rentals, including what the cleaner films and what happens when RapidEye's findings reach Conduit. Each answer stands on its own, and the sections above carry the detail and the source links for anything quoted.
What is an AI video inspection for a vacation rental?
An AI video inspection is a walkthrough video of the unit that software compares against a baseline of each room, returning findings such as damage, missed cleaning, or a missing item. In Conduit, the AI review is done by RapidEye through Conduit's RapidEye integration.
Does Conduit's own AI review the video?
Conduit does not review the video itself; RapidEye's AI does. Conduit starts the walkthrough from a task, imports RapidEye's findings, and turns them into a follow-up task that a workflow or an agent can act on.
Should the cleaner film before or after cleaning?
RapidEye's guidance is to record the walkthrough after cleaning is complete, which is when missed cleaning can be judged against the baseline. Damage and missing items still show up after a clean because the baseline records how the room should look.
How long should the walkthrough video be?
RapidEye's walkthrough guide puts a studio or one-bedroom at about 1 to 2 minutes and larger homes at 3 to 5 minutes, and its homepage describes a 5 to 10 minute walkthrough. The route matters more than the length, since a skipped room returns no findings.
Can the task carry the walkthrough video itself?
No, Conduit tasks hold photos, receipts, and checklists, not video files. The follow-up task carries RapidEye's before and after evidence photos, the video timestamp for each finding, and a link to the full RapidEye report.
How long do I have to file an Airbnb damage claim with the evidence?
Airbnb asks hosts to file a reimbursement request within 14 days of the responsible guest's checkout, with photos or videos of the damage, and the guest then has 24 hours to respond.
What does it cost to run AI video inspections through Conduit?
Tasks and operations workflows are part of Conduit's Full Suite at $48 per unit per month. RapidEye is a separate subscription, priced per unit, and RapidEye does not publish the figure.
Sources
The sources below are the vendor and channel pages this post quotes or paraphrases, each read on October 7, 2026. Conduit's own behavior (the walkthrough button, the finding fields, the follow-up task) is described from the product, where it is part of the Full Suite package.
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