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[00:00:05] Sarah: Hello. Welcome back to another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:00:09] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:00:11] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:00:12] Sarah: Let’s start this episode like we do each and every week, and that is celebrating one of you, our listeners, who is heading on over to strshare.com, sharing all the details about your short-term rental so we can celebrate you here on the podcast, to our email list, on our Instagram account each and every Sunday. Annette, who are we sharing this week?

[00:00:30] Annette: This week we are sharing @hipandhistoricfrederick, and they are coming up to us from Frederick, Maryland. I want you to check out their pinned post in their Instagram feed. One of them is an actual tour of the home. I think it’s really well done. It’s a quick run through. You get to see the whole property. But the other thing that I love really quickly is they give you just a breakdown of the property in the actual caption. But my favorite part is they say comment tour for a special Instagram offer.

[00:01:01] So that is they’re interacting with the person on their feed and letting them know, “Hey, we want to give you a special offer.” Giving them that call to action to get the folks to stay. So I haven’t seen that too much of people comment a specific word on their account to get a specific offer. So I think that is really, really well done. And I love the quick tour that they have pinned there right up at the top. That’s physical. They’re going through the entire property. Love it.

[00:01:28] Sarah: All right. Let’s kick off our episode today. Annette and I went to VRMA International Conference this year, and that is the Vacation Rental Managers Association Conference. And this conference has been around for a really long time, so they’re still using words– vacation rental manager is still very much a thing, but as a co-host out there, if you’re a homeowner out there really dedicated to your short-term rental, we do like this conference.

[00:01:56] It is one of the biggest in the United States at this moment, and you can pretty much see any and all tech offerings on their exhibit floor. My favorite part is the education. It’s often education from property managers for property managers or co-hosts or property owners. Honestly, we all can benefit from it, but it’s people who are in the trenches who are experiencing the industry as it is today.

[00:02:23] We got there the day that the event started, and we stayed with one of our coaches in the Hosting Business Membership, Wendy Doris. She’s a CEO and founder of Mostess Host, and she is a text book example of how to be an incredible co-host. And she’s just crushing the game. We walked in that property and found, not that we were looking for anything to improve, but I think we were just so impressed by how tight everything was from the decor to how clean it was, to the amenity gift that they offered us when we got there. What were your takeaways from staying at Wendy’s Place?

[00:03:02] Annette: My favorite part is she did a really simple and clean two magnets on her refrigerator that were both informative, easy to read. I need certain font size, everybody, not going to lie. And so it was really clear where we were staying, what the rules were, what the safety was, what we should enjoy while we’re there.

[00:03:22] But what I love is I could tell those were really up to date. She simply prints them out. They’re frames that go on your refrigerator. And I just felt like all of the information I really needed for the home was on those two eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper that I didn’t have to refer back to my phone and a guidebook at all.

[00:03:44] I didn’t have to look for a guidebook. Those two pages right there gave me enough information for our whole entire stay, which she had a kitchen that was well equipped, a pool, and it gave us all of that information. I just thought it was really well done and just so simplified.

[00:03:59] Sarah: Do yourself a favor. I know we do the STR Share thing at the podcast, which we always want you to give your fellow hosts some love. But Wendy has also crushed her website over the years and refined it, honed it, perfected it. We walked in the property, and it was exactly as it was photographed online. We knew exactly what we were getting. The neighborhood was safe and close to lots of things.

[00:04:21] So it just sets the tone for your trip when you check into your vacation rental home, your short-term rental, and you feel safe, you feel taken care of. Wendy even asked us like what our favorite snacks were, and Annette loves gummy bears. And so on the intake form, I mentioned the snacks that we love included gummy bears. We walked into this–

[00:04:41] Annette: A fish bowl.

[00:04:41] Sarah: A fish bowl.

[00:04:43] Annette: A giant margarita bowl or margarita glass.

[00:04:46] Sarah: All sorts of different kind of gummy candies, including one giant. And when I say giant, I don’t know, is six or eight inches tall of a gummy bear.

[00:04:56] Annette: Tall.

[00:04:57] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:04:58] Annette: No, I like it.

[00:04:58] Sarah: Long? I don’t know.

[00:04:59] Annette: It was big.

[00:05:00] Sarah: It was really cute and just unique, thoughtful, and definitely curated for our stay. So that kicked off the stay in Phoenix, Scottsdale. And then we actually met one of our team members there as well, who we only see–

[00:05:14] Annette: Virtually.

[00:05:15] Sarah: Virtually.

[00:05:16] Annette: Via Zoom.

[00:05:17] Sarah: So Monica is our sales director here at Thanks for Visiting, and she got the courage to jump into one of the Waymo cars. And they do these in select cities, but they are–

[00:05:30] Annette: Austin, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Phoenix. If you go to any of those cities, we encourage you, get you a Waymo.

[00:05:36] Sarah: A Waymo is a self-driving car.

[00:05:39] Annette: Yeah. Sarah went from saying I will never get into one of those to it being our favorite mode of transportation. Yes, self-driving. They’re Jaguars. The seat belt is buckled, but there is no one in the driver’s seat

[00:05:51] Sarah: It was wild.

[00:05:52] Annette: Check it out. But it was awesome.

[00:05:54] Sarah: It’s been around for a while, so I called my husband. I FaceTimed him, because he likes futuristic things, and he’s like, “Oh yeah, I drove in one of those in Vegas a couple of years ago.” But I thought it was cool, and it was definitely an experience.

[00:06:06] Annette: And affordable. So inexpensive.

[00:06:08] Sarah: It was affordable.

[00:06:08] Annette: Yeah. So inexpensive.

[00:06:10] Sarah: Right. So then we got to the event, and it was a two-day event. There is a third day, but by that time, most of the vendors are gone and the education is one or two classes. So there are two full days at the event. And I wanted to share with you our favorite takeaways. Because we consume a lot. Obviously we put out a lot of content about our industry, and then we’re also consuming a lot of content.

[00:06:33] We feel like that’s our job. So we can keep all of you updated on what’s going on. And so there was a lot to take in from the Expo Hall being one of the biggest offered each year in the United States to, like I said, the education that’s provided by our fellow colleagues in the space. Annette, what is something that stood out to you at this year’s event?

[00:06:55] Annette: Something that stood out is that the maintenance sessions were standing room only, and it’s just a pain point. And it’s a pain point for hosts, vacation rental managers from all over the country, and they are trying to find solutions, trying to learn from each other. But it was one of those it almost felt like solidarity because you could tell everyone’s trying to just get one step ahead.

[00:07:28] Sarah: Give us like an example. What do you mean a maintenance session? And what were some of the–

[00:07:33] Annette: The one of them I can say was cool, they had someone from East Coast, the West Coast, and the Southeast. And everywhere from people that are on islands to mountain towns, and just learning that they all actually had different maintenance teams, different pay structures, different ways that they compensate them. You would think there would be a uniform way. And so I think one of the biggest takeaways was most of these places were from 50 to 200 properties. And their maintenance team is in sync, and they are on call 24/7.

[00:08:12] They do not ever go a day without knowing that someone cannot be out to a property. They’re on call. They have a team member on call all the time. And so even if you’re a smaller, even if you have one home, it’s like, who are you going to call in the middle of the night? You need to have some sort of plan for that.

[00:08:33] And so the interesting thing is they were breaking down to communication with homeowners, and I was interested in– seemed like some people still really needed to set some boundaries with their homeowners on how to communicate.

[00:08:49] Sarah: I was shocked by that.

[00:08:50] Annette: Yeah.

[00:08:51] Sarah: I was in a session with you, and these people were managing 600-plus homes. Had been in business for years and years and years.

[00:08:56] Annette: And we’re talking to someone about– an owner wanted to drive to replace a coffee pot.

[00:09:02] Sarah: The owner was like, whatever it is, instead of you buying it and trying to be a markup, I will drive you what you need, even though I’m three hours away.

[00:09:10] Annette: This was something I thought was very, very interesting, actually. One of those vacation rental managers, they actually have a backup, multiple backups of everything from refrigerators, dishwasher, oven, in their warehouse. What I thought was very interesting is they will immediately go out and replace with a replacement. But if the owner doesn’t make a decision quickly, they start renting them that piece of equipment.

[00:09:41] If they’re like, “Oh, wait, maybe I have a warranty. Let me check. Let me order this.” It’s like, “Well, we’re going to get you a replacement, but also, number one, you can buy it from us.” They have some that they could just buy on the spot and just fix it for them, or they are renting it.

[00:09:54] And it just also goes to show how quickly we need to solve for a guest issue. It’s not okay to say like, “We’ll fix it after your stay.” You need to fix it during their stay, and it’s also important to share, if you are co-hosting or hosting for others, how important it is to have a backup plan immediately in place for your guests. But I thought them having a full warehouse of all these things, obviously that’s at scale. But there were other people there that didn’t have that ready.

[00:10:25] Sarah: It’s rooted in. We’ve all been there. Actually, I can tell you a story about this summer. We have an apartment complex that has apartment sized refrigerators. They’re not mini refrigerators. They’re not the full-size refrigerators, these apartment sized refrigerators, and one of them died and just went out. So we immediately brought up a mini fridge. It’s a taller mini fridge. It’s a little bit bigger. But we ordered same day a fridge from Home Depot or Lowe’s. It doesn’t matter. It’s one of the big box stores. And getting that, that wasn’t the problem.

[00:10:52] We ordered it, whatever. We scheduled delivery. Meeting the delivery person for some reason Lowe’s and Home Depot has still not been able to figure this out. They’ll tell us they’re on their way. We go meet them. They leave a thing on our doors, they’ve been there, and they left already. And it’s like, “You called five minutes ago, and you said you’d be here in 30 minutes.”

[00:11:10] Annette: Actually, all the hosts at the Vacation Rental Management were basically like, “Look, Lowe’s and Home Depot, whatever it is, they can’t get it there.”

[00:11:18] Sarah: I am feeling those feelings I felt that summer. Annette, we tried three, four, five times to align with the delivery team, and it’s very frustrating. So that is what this manager was saying they did. They can no longer rely. So what they do is they will order the fridge or the dishwasher, standard sizes, a standard oven, a standard gas and electric standard dishwasher.

[00:11:39] They’ll have them in their warehouse ready to go. Solve the problem, put the dishwasher in, alert the homeowner, and tell them, “You have,” whatever that is, “five to seven days to tell us if you’d like to buy this off of us. Order one of your liking, and have it delivered and swapped out.”

[00:11:54] But this way the guest isn’t suffering not having a dishwasher. And also I think the ADR of the property would dictate that. So, again, if you’re offering a place that’s 1,000 bucks a night, $1,500 a night, and you’re out there, that guest is paying for a higher end stay. You might want to have some of these more essential pieces ready to be installed and swapped should something happen. Because relying on these delivery services is not going to cut it.

[00:12:26] Annette: And knowing if it goes out, what are you willing to compensate. And then if it’s a refrigerator with everything that’s in there. It was just an exercise, and like these are pain points on a daily basis for hosts everywhere.

[00:12:41] Sarah: I attended– there was twofold sessions on liability. So there was one session and then there was so much talk in liability. They had another session, and they had different professionals up on stage. They ranged from property managers who’ve been in the space for a really long time to insurance professionals who worked for the insurance companies to companies that do guest vetting services that offer background checks and things of that nature for hosts.

[00:13:11] And I want to give you some of my takeaways that I wrote down from attending those sessions. There’s so much. I can’t go over all of them. The ones that stuck out though is– okay, co-hosts, listen up. If you’re a co-hosting right now, especially if you’re on property, but I would say no matter what, even if you’re only offering virtual services, a big discussion was around how you need to make sure that your homeowners have not only appropriate short-term rental coverage, but that you are named as additional insured on that property.

[00:13:39] And if a property owner ever gives you slack about doing that, it’s not the right fit. Pretty much that was the message across the entire room. And these were really well attended sessions. I’m talking 60, 70 property managers, hosts, homeowners in these rooms. And the reason they don’t want to do it is because sometimes it will cost them more to have you as additional insured, but it is essential.

[00:14:02] You don’t want to hear the horror stories that were being told in the room about these hosts that were caught with– this expression is– their pants down. You know what I’m saying? They’re caught exposed and then having to pay the price and all you’re doing here is serving your client and you’re not– yes, you might have your own business insurance, but the way these things work, you just want to make sure that that’s the first line of defense for you, is to be on their insurance coverage.

[00:14:25] And then beyond that, and I did this actually the minute I got home, is you want to make sure that your clients, if you’re a co-host, they have adequate coverage. So in a lot of these homes, $200,000, $500,000. Sometimes if you’ve got pools and hot tubs, a million dollars isn’t enough coverage for the property.

[00:14:45] So if you’re co-hosting and you have a client who has a hot tub, a pool, or things of that nature, you might want to discuss with your insurance broker about the additional insurer that you’re on this policy and how it’s got a million dollars and do they think that’s enough.

[00:15:02] And you might want to chat with your client about making sure they’ve got adequate coverage. And actually, Annette, we have a little story we could tell from this morning. One of the conversations we had at this session was about making sure everyone on your team, and if your team is you, ask yourself, “Are you trained on how to respond to guest incidents without accidentally–” because maybe you are not at fault, but saying you’re at fault with some words that you use, and how important that is.

[00:15:33] So this is why I think it’s also important to attend these events, even if you’re a homeowner and you have a property manager. Because if something happens at the property and it’s the guest’s fault, but your co-host or your cleaner sees the guest and says something that admits fault, how deep of a hole you might dig yourself in if you are not trained.

[00:15:53] And actually just this morning, one of our colleagues was talking about how their co-host unknowingly gave a code to a guest for the wrong property that was already occupied. And so when it comes to safety and how to speak to guests when they’ve been injured or hurt or something goes down at a property that is not normal, making sure you have the proper procedures in place to make sure that they’re not digging you into a deeper hole that you can’t get out of.

[00:16:23] And if you’re not sure what to say, and obviously that’s not what this episode is about today, to talk to whether it’s your insurance company or your attorney on what to do should something happen, what you should and shouldn’t say. And a lot of the times, if you’re a co-host, it really is, let me document the incident and share it with the homeowner. And we will be with you shortly. And talking that insurance coverage for the property and seeing how they want you to handle it.

[00:16:47] Annette: So I guess what you’re saying in that session, it’s like, even if something bad happened, you don’t want to say, I’m sorry, because that’s admitting. Whether it’s our fault or not, that’s normally your first thing, like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry this happened to you.” That’s what I say immediately, whether I’m involved in the situation or not. But you having that is that admission of guilt or fault. And it is our first reaction for– even if a door code isn’t working, a lot of times you’re like, “Oh, I’m so sorry that–” that’s most of our first reaction. And you want to be careful of those words.

[00:17:19] Sarah: Right. So check your insurance policies. Make sure you’re talking to your team about safety and liability and how they’re communicating with guests. And now we want to get into a part of the episode today. We had the fun opportunity to partner with our friends at Hostfully, and I don’t want to say co-sponsor because there are actually a lot of sponsors of a party. I’m sure as you guys know, a lot of these conferences have these parties at the end of day one and day two, where you can go and just talk with your colleagues and unhash the day.

[00:17:50] Annette: Yeah, network.

[00:17:51] Sarah: Yeah. It’s one of my favorite parts, and I’m not even a social person. But I just like to be around all the people who get my life and get what I’m going through each and every day. And so we got to partner with Hostfully and a few other companies and host this party. And what we did was we got to be in the room with our Thanks for Visiting– what do you call it? Behind us, we had our Thanks for Visiting banner.

[00:18:14] Annette: Step and repeat.

[00:18:15] Sarah: Step and repeat. That’s what it probably is. And we had a table. We had all of our podcasting equipment, and we pulled people out of the dance floor, from the bar. We took them away from their conversations, and we asked them questions about, hey, what were the takeaways from this event? How are you wrapping up your 2024? What’s in store for you going into 2025?

[00:18:38] And it was important for Annette and me to get interviews from CEOs of tech companies, CEOs of hospitality companies, so co-hosts and property management companies, vendors. We actually have a really cool interview with a vendor to the Phoenix Scottsdale Bachelorette space. And just listening to these different points of view and the conversations that are happening right now in our industry and seeing where you fall, if you’ve got any questions, sparks, any ideas or inspiration.

[00:19:07] Annette: Yeah, it’s just a really diversity of voices in the space, and we want to share their takeaways with you. And since we are on location during a majority of this episode, you are going to hear some background noise. You’re going to hear people enjoying themselves. This literally was a live podcast recording.

[00:19:26] Sarah: Meghan, we’re so excited to sit down with you here at the Hostfully party at VRMA. Tell us your name, where you operate, and a little bit of your backstory, how you got started.

[00:19:38] Meghan: Yeah. So my name is Meghan Ketterman. I own a property management company in the Seneca South Carolina area called Oconee Hospitality. I am a small boutique luxury property management company for homes on the Lake Keowee area. We’re right above Clemson, South Carolina, so we get a lot of lake traffic as well as Clemson football traffic. My husband, Jared, and I started with our own properties. We actually put the first Airbnbs on Main Street, Walhalla, in 2017.

[00:20:20] Annette: Nice.

[00:20:21] Meghan: And I was working a corporate job then, but during COVID, obviously things were changing. I was traveling a lot. So I quit my corporate job and started my property management company to do this for homeowners on the lake.

[00:20:36] Annette: Okay, we have a lot of very, very similar listeners to you. They’re good at hosting their own properties. How did you get your first client?

[00:20:47] Meghan: So it’s weird. I have to say I’ve been super blessed because I have done zero marketing, zero marketing. Everybody has found me. I have to brag. I did a phenomenal job in building a great website, and I have a very good connection with our realtor friends and referrals of clients from realtors because I’m not a real estate agent.

[00:21:17] Annette: You’re not threatening.

[00:21:18] Meghan: I’m not threatened for threatening them for the sale of that property potentially.

[00:21:23] Annette: But your first client, how’d you get that very first client?

[00:21:26] Meghan: My very first client was a homeowner out of California who had bought a house on Lake Keowee. And honestly, the cleaner that I had at that time, she’s still my best. She is my girl. She is my go-to girl.

[00:21:47] Sarah: She’s your ride or die.

[00:21:48] Meghan: She’s my ride or die. She’s got me at all times. The owner’s sister had been managing the property up until a certain point just out convenience. The sister lived nearby. And my cleaner called me. Her name is Amber. So Amber called me and said, “Hey, I know you’re starting your own company. Are you taking clients now?” And I was like, “Well, it’s funny that you say so. I’m actually getting licensed.” And she said, “Okay, I’m passing your name along to these owners that I clean for already, and they want to talk to you.”

[00:22:20] So I hadn’t even gotten licensed yet, and these owners called me, and so we worked out the details, and boom, they’re still with me, they’re one of my favorites. Obviously, all my owners are my favorites, but they have been with me the longest, and we’re almost like a family now.

[00:22:39] Annette: Your cleaner is the one that I love. You’re here though, because you probably have some problems or just want to get better at your business. What did you learn today that you are going to do immediately though? Or maybe you texted back home already, like, “We got to do this.” What was today’s zinger?

[00:22:58] Meghan: Today’s gold nugget zinger was a maintenance program. I’ve got to line out my maintenance program. We’ve done everything from laundry, linens. We can software ourself out of business with pricing, PMS systems, insurance, and data. We have all that. But if we don’t have a good maintenance program– so having the maintenance program and talking to those guys.

[00:23:23] I actually ended up meeting the keynote speaker for that session that I went to before I came here, and I just sat down and said, “Hey, I want to pay you to consult me through this maintenance program.” So that’s where we’re at.

[00:23:39] Sarah: Did he agree?

[00:23:39] Meghan: He said, “Absolutely. Call me when we get home.”

[00:23:42] Sarah: It’s those kind of things that can change your business.

[00:23:46] Meghan: Absolutely.

[00:23:46] Sarah: Which is so cool. All right, Meghan. Real quick, I’m going to do like a rapid fire. What PMS do you use?

[00:23:53] Meghan: OwnerRez.

[00:23:53] Sarah: What’s your favorite lock?

[00:23:56] Meghan: I don’t use locks. We have our own.

[00:23:59] Annette: What do you mean?

[00:23:59] Sarah: What do you mean?

[00:24:00] Meghan: So all of my owners have their own locks.

[00:24:03] Sarah: Oh, okay. Okay.

[00:24:04] Meghan: And I don’t use an integrated lock system.

[00:24:07] Sarah: Okay, okay, okay.

[00:24:08] Annette: You said you had an amazing website.

[00:24:10] Sarah: What is your website?

[00:24:12] Meghan: oconeehospitality.com.

[00:24:13] Annette: We’re going to send some traffic that way so people can get– my rapid fire question is, how are you marketing for direct bookings?

[00:24:23] Meghan: I don’t market. They just find me.

[00:24:26] Annette: And they come back. Do you have a return guest?

[00:24:27] Meghan: Absolutely. Actually, I say that. I market direct bookings. Obviously, we’re getting them in home, majority the first time Airbnb or Vrbo. But when they get in that house and they love it and they love the guest experience, I have a little thing in the house that says, “Hey, if you love your stay, book with us direct next time, and you become a VIP client of ours.” And they are sent the listing. They’re sent all of our traffic for the website, and then they have my personal cell, and they book with us time and time again.

[00:25:00] Annette: Ooh, I like this market. You say you don’t market, but do you really call them your VIP client? Everybody wants to be a VIP. We might have to steal that.

[00:25:08] Meghan: I do have a VIP market.

[00:25:10] Annette: I love that. That’s good. Well, Meghan, thank you so much.

[00:25:14] Meghan: Absolutely. Thank guys.

[00:25:15] Annette: No, I love that. We’ll make sure that your website is in the show notes so people can check it out.

[00:25:20] Meghan: Great. Thank you.

[00:25:23] Sarah: All right, Maddie. Tell us who you are, where you’re from, and a little bit about your company.

[00:25:31] Madison: Absolutely. All right. Hello. I’m Maddie Rifkin, CEO and founder of Mount. We are in the experience side of the short-term rental space. So we work with all the local businesses, everyone that makes your market amazing. We bring them online and then allow you to offer those experiences to your guests because we’re a believer it’s not about your property. At the end of the day, it’s more about what your guest is going to be doing. And you have to offer that as well.

[00:25:53] Annette: Okay. Where do our listeners find you?

[00:25:56] Madison: Oh, I’m very active on LinkedIn. You can get all my hot takes there. I keep the industry questioning what they’re doing.

[00:26:03] Sarah: You keep us questioning what the heck we’re doing, Maddie, because I feel like you know the future when it comes to content creation for this industry. And Annette and I, every time we talk to you, we’re like, Annette, we know nothing.

[00:26:14] Madison: Oh, no.

[00:26:15] Sarah: No, it’s a good thing.

[00:26:16] Annette: In a good way. So to help our listeners right now, Maddie, what do you think is the biggest mistake hosts are making when it comes to letting influencers help them market their properties?

[00:26:33] Madison: That’s a good question. I’m going to give some context because people are going to be like, why is she answering a content creation question? For context, we grew our TikTok in less than a year to 170,000 followers. That was actually from one video.

[00:26:45] Sarah: That’s huge.

[00:26:46] Madison: And that’s our community. And then our videos go viral now, and we have a lot of this stuff going on. So that’s why they asked me that question. But I’d say the biggest mistake is– there’s a few. The first is thinking your property has to be Instagrammable for you to bring in influencers. So that’s not the case.

[00:27:03] Sarah: Unpack that for me. Why?

[00:27:04] Madison: Because the influencer isn’t coming to showcase your property. You could hire a professional photographer, which you most likely did to shoot your property. What people want to see is what am I going to be doing when I’m at the property?

[00:27:17] Sarah: So if there’s something cool to do or partake in, that is enough.

[00:27:21] Madison: Exactly.

[00:27:21] Annette: That might not even be on property.

[00:27:24] Madison: No. And so TikTok, Instagram, it’s very inspirational, so people scroll and they see something cool. So let’s say you’re in the middle of New York, because that’s like a very rural area, but there’s this apple orchard and they actually only create crazy types of varieties of apples. This actually does exist.

[00:27:40] That video went viral, and so like hundreds of thousands of people are now wanting to go to that orchard, but they’re going to need a place to stay. So if you have partnered with that apple orchard, you’re now going to get all those bookings from that viral video that wasn’t even talking about a place to stay, but it’s a thing to do.

[00:27:56] Annette: They want to experience the thing near that location.

[00:28:00] Sarah: Okay. But how we package it? How we create the reel or the post of the story matters, right, Maddie?

[00:28:05] Madison: Exactly.

[00:28:06] Sarah: So, is that why we should work with influencers, because they have experience doing that?

[00:28:10] Madison: Yes. I would say you can learn about content creation and try and create your own videos. But until you’re able to get the perspective of the guest, which that influencer is doing for you– and they’re going to leave you two things. And this is the other faux pas. You’re not just paying the influencer for their posts to make the influencer style post.

[00:28:28] You’re also paying them because you want content from them, and you want the edited reel, they call user generated content. And that’s a reel you get to post that they edited on your behalf basically. And it’s showing the guest perspective on your socials.

[00:28:41] Annette: Okay. I want to unpack one more thing. Now that we are pumped up, we’re psyched, we’re like, “Wait, I don’t have to redesign my place and get a mural and do this, but I have the coolest experience near or around me, as a host, how would you advise us we reach out to an influencer?

[00:29:02] Madison: Yes. Okay, so there’s a lot of mistakes being made, but that’s the other mistake. People think they should reach out to influencers that have really big followings. It’s actually a lot more nuanced. So you have to look at who your guest avatar is, who you’re targeting that would make the booking. And then you have to see if that influencer has that following and has the avatar for their following.

[00:29:23] So the way you can look at that is use your personal Instagram because you’re most likely following local businesses in your community. Go see if that influencer has mutual connections. Because it means they’re following that local community that you are a part of. And that means they’re following cares about that local business as well. That’s how you start to match it.

[00:29:40] Annette: It’s basically like instant focus group. You know immediately if you have those connections. I just did it here at this event. I connected with somebody on LinkedIn. I was like, “Oh, we have 35 mutual connections.”

[00:29:54] Madison: It is like LinkedIn, but on Instagram.

[00:29:55] Annette: Right. So it’s like, “Oh, we should definitely know each other.” Same with Instagram. You do have that. It’s a built-in focus group.

[00:30:03] Madison: I would say though, the one thing to add too is you’re not going to get it right on the first try, because that would be like winning the lottery. That actually might happen, but you can’t get discouraged if the first one doesn’t work because you’re learning. And you’re learning what type of influencer is actually going to do the best. And then when you get that type of influencer, now you know who you’re going after.

[00:30:22] Sarah: Maddie, you with Mount works with a lot of influencers, right?

[00:30:26] Madison: We do. We call them our content army. So we vet creators, we bring them into our platform, and then we send them out to go work with property managers, local businesses, everyone.

[00:30:36] Sarah: I’m sure it’s in depth, but tell me a little bit about that vetting process.

[00:30:40] Madison: Yes. So for us, what makes a really good creator, first of all– this is creepy, so just bear with me– but I have them take a personality test, like what you do when you hire someone. And I can tell what type of personality makes a good creator. Lily is a great example.

[00:30:56] Lilly, if you’re listening, hi. She came to me with 100 followers, but she took my personality tests, and I was like, Lilly, “Do you know you’re a good content creator? You travel. You should be posting about it.” So we gave her the tools to post. In three months she got to 12,000 followers and is now growing.

[00:31:12] And so we work with those types of creators who we just know are good. We give them the tools they need to be great creators. And then we handle everything else because this is where it falls apart when you try and work with businesses and hosts. Anyone thinks they can be a creator, and they want free stuff.

[00:31:27] I want free stuff. So everyone reaches out to the property managers and you’re like, “Why is this person reaching out to me? They have 100 followers. What is going on?” So we cut through all that bullshit, all that noise, and we match you with actually creators based on what I just talked about, who we think is going to be a good fit for you guys. And I vibe check them. They all have to talk to me first.

[00:31:45] Sarah: And you guys, Maddie is the real deal. You just know how to take something and make it– you have this gift for packaging, I guess. And now you know how to teach people how to package that content because it is how you package it and deliver it on social media channels, which is what so many people, myself included, struggle with.

[00:32:07] And I love how Mount delivers experiences for guests. And you have this really cool twist of connecting with your content army to help that. So if a host listening right now is like, “I don’t know how to master this. I don’t know how to work with influencer.” Are you telling me that they can go to Mount and get connected with someone? Is that how that works?

[00:32:27] Madison: Yeah. So you would go to Mount. You first have to be offering the Mount hidden gem experiences. So it’s a free tool for hosts. So you sign up on our website, you get started, and then from there you just reach out to me, shoot me a DM on LinkedIn or shoot me an email. It’s just maddie@rentmount.com. And then I will personally connect you with our influencers. Yeah.

[00:32:45] Sarah: All right, guys.

[00:32:45] Annette: That’s the nugget. Thank you, Maddie.

[00:32:48] Sarah: Thanks, Maddie.

[00:32:49] Madison: Absolutely. 

[00:32:50] Sarah: All right. Tell us who you are and the cool thing that you do for our industry.

[00:32:57] Casey: So my name is Casey Hohman. I’m the owner and founder of Scottsdale Bachelorette. We provide concierge services for bachelorette parties in Scottsdale to all the short-term rentals.

[00:33:07] Annette: Do you partner with the host of the property? How’s that relationship go down?

[00:33:13] Casey: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s really a bi-directional co-marketing agreement. So we get a lot of people, about 250,000 visitors a year to the website. And so people are looking for, where’s a great place to stay? Where can we go for activities? And so what we do is we promote the short-term rentals. We say, “Hey, these are some of the best places that you can stay in Scottsdale.” And then in reciprocity, basically those short-term rentals refer those businesses back to us, those clients back to us.

[00:33:41] Sarah: So how does that work? Do the hosts send the guests your way and that’s it? Is there any commission or monetary exchange, or is it simply the valuable aspect of you promoting them, they promote you?

[00:33:58] Casey: Exactly. When we first started and we launched and we weren’t really anybody, we were like, “Great, we’ll give you a commission. Just send us any business that you can. We’ll give you a commission off of anything that we book.” Then we quickly realized that like, hey, we’re providing something really of value, which is that we can actually drive bookings for your property too.

[00:34:14] And so that’s when we were like, rather than doing commission, let’s just agree that we’ll promote you, you promote us, and you guys will get direct bookings, and we’ll get some of those bookings back, hopefully.

[00:34:24] Annette: What do you think the bachelorettes– let’s help the hosts out there. What are they looking for in a stay?

[00:34:32] Casey: A design is the most important thing. Design and basically a comfortable stay for about 10 to 12, usually on average.

[00:34:39] Annette: That’s the sweet spot, 10 to 12?

[00:34:41] Casey: Yes, usually about 10 to 12 women is typically what it is. But somewhere that they can really have this amazing, memorable lifetime experience. A bachelorette party is hopefully a once in a lifetime experience. They’re having this moment with their closest friends and their family that they may never have again in their life, and they want somewhere that’s going to be really a wow moment, that’s going to make that weekend something that they’ll never forget that house ever again in their life.

[00:35:07] Annette: When they’re thinking about booking the property, are they thinking about photos ahead of time?

[00:35:14] Casey: 100%. Photos matter big time. And these groups too, they’re booking months in advance. So I just launched my own first short-term rental this year. People are booking already for– it’s October– next May, June, even. So these are groups that plan well in advance, are willing to pay a premium for a well-designed, well-accommodating house for their group so that they can have that experience.

[00:35:39] Annette: You having so much experience with the bachelorette crowd, what was a non-negotiable in your own short-term rental?

[00:35:48] Casey: 100% a pool. In Scottsdale you need a pool. Also a proper getting ready station, believe it or not, because bathrooms are hard. Women are fighting over bathrooms all the time, or mirror space, that type of thing. So when we actually work with Somerled designs to have the house designed, one of the biggest things is, where are we going to put a getting ready station?

[00:36:07] We need vanity mirrors with good lighting, good outlet, so that they can have a proper place to get ready. And then just that really resort style backyard because one of the reasons why people pick Scottsdale as a destination is for the outdoor living. And so having this amazing place that they can congregate, spend time together, and basically have their own little version of a party.

[00:36:27] Annette: I like it.

[00:36:28] Sarah: Let’s flip the script. You’re a new host, right?

[00:36:30] Casey: Yes.

[00:36:31] Sarah: Yes, you’ve done the bachelor party, and I know you know a little bit about behind the scenes, but what’s one question you have right now about hosting that maybe Annette and I can help with or put you in the right direction of someone to ask a question about hosting?

[00:36:45] Casey: I think my biggest challenge as a new host has been pricing and revenue management. So when you first start out, you don’t know if you just need to get as many bookings as you can or you need to get it for the right price. And so I think for me, that has been my biggest challenge. I look at the future months. I’m like, “Wait, we’ve got bookings.” But then, did I price it too low? Is it too high? That’s been the biggest struggle for me. I know I’ve got a great property. I know it’s marketable. I know I can get it booked, but what’s the right price?

[00:37:12] Sarah: Right. Yeah.

[00:37:13] Annette: What tool are you using to help you price?

[00:37:16] Casey: So I’m using PriceLabs. The challenge with that is it’s comparing us to every other house on the market, and it doesn’t take into account the special client factor that we have and who we accommodate. So that’s where I think there needs to be that manual override, tweaking and a level of, expertise.

[00:37:35] Sarah: Yeah. I was sharing that you need to put together a goal, whether it’s– in your business. I’m sure you have quarterly goals of financial revenue that you want to bring in. So I was sharing it’s the same thing. What do you want to bring in a quarter, by the six-month mark, the whole year, and see if you can hit that your first year and then from there– goals just help you.

[00:37:54] Casey: Yeah. And maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re wrong.

[00:37:57] Sarah: Right. You have to start somewhere.

[00:37:59] Casey: And I think that’s one of the challenges about when you first start out, is you don’t know what you don’t know. And so that’s why I lean on experts and other hosts that I have in my network to say, “Hey, help me out here. How am I doing? What could I do be doing better?” And even you guys, how you’ve said with setting goals, that’s really important. So I appreciate that.

[00:38:16] Annette: And where can our listeners follow you online?

[00:38:19] Casey: Follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We are on TikTok, @scottsdalebachelorette, and scottsdalebachelorette.com.

[00:38:25] Annette: Go check them out. Thank you, Casey.

[00:38:26] Sarah: Thank you. Wendy, Mostess Host.

[00:38:31] Wendy: Hello.

[00:38:31] Sarah: We are staying with you over here in Phoenix, and honestly, we wouldn’t say anything if we had nothing nice to say.

[00:38:40] Wendy: Don’t say any of the bad things.

[00:38:41] Sarah: No, there is literally no bad things. Your property is gorgeous. So clean. When I go to get something, it’s there. It’s inspirational, really well done.

[00:38:52] Wendy: Thank you.

[00:38:52] Sarah: So if anyone’s traveling to the Phoenix, Scottsdale area, you have to check out Mostess Host. We’ll put your link in the bio.

[00:38:59] Annette: mostess.host. Tell your friends, tell your family. But Wendy, we want to know, you went to the event today.

[00:39:04] Wendy: Yes.

[00:39:05] Annette: You were feverishly writing notes. I went to a few sessions with you. But what was your aha takeaway, texting your team, “I’m going to do this yesterday” moment?

[00:39:19] Wendy: Okay. I think sometimes when you’re going to these things, you find the smallest little nugget, and it’s going to save a lot of time in the long run, but it seems so insignificant. But I also know it’s not. I don’t know how to explain that. But okay. We went to the one that was the design and safety, and one of the takeaways from that was that tight lock, whatever it’s called.

[00:39:44] Annette: Screw. No, it’s a talk–

[00:39:46] Wendy: It’s like plumbers’ tape for your screws, for your furniture, so that you’re not having to do the Allen wrench thing every month on every piece of furniture.

[00:39:58] Annette: Essentially, one of the designers taught us to use this because literally, she had a client who they would have on the task every month to go in and fix bar stools, chairs. We’ve all sat in one.

[00:40:15] Wendy: They’re wiggly.

[00:40:16] Annette: It wobbles. And she was like, stop today. Anytime you put a piece of furniture together, you use this– I have it in my pocket, I think, a screw–

[00:40:27] Wendy: Loctite?

[00:40:28] Annette: Loctite, yes.

[00:40:28] Sarah: Yeah, it’s like Loctite. Yeah. Like when you put a shower head on, you always tape the threads, and that helps the water not– yeah.

[00:40:35] Wendy: Yeah.

[00:40:36] Sarah: But for regular screws on furniture and stools.

[00:40:39] Wendy: We also have, as a quarterly maintenance task, to go through the house and check for wobbly furniture, so if that doesn’t have to happen.

[00:40:48] Sarah: It’s amazing.

[00:40:49] Wendy: Yeah.

[00:40:49] Annette: And it really is. I can say every time I stay in a short-term rental, I sit in a chair that wobbles or is a little loose, and I don’t know if you could ever truly stay on top of it, but that was a–

[00:41:02] Sarah: Mic drop.

[00:41:03] Annette: Yes. It was a moment where you’re like, how do I not know this?

[00:41:07] Wendy: Well, if you think about it, you’re sending somebody out monthly or quarterly, and you’re paying them an hourly rate, or whatever you’re paying them, to tighten things with an Allen wrench.

[00:41:18] Sarah: Yeah. If you think about it though, the alternative is, and this is real everybody, that if someone were to fall while sitting on your barstool or on a chair, you could be held liable for an injury. And that’s why this session was so cool, because it was design meets safety.

[00:41:36] Wendy: Yeah, that was actually a really good takeaway. I like that they combined those two things, because they also showed the sexy way of mounting a fire extinguisher.

[00:41:46] Annette: Yes, you could make an art.

[00:41:47] Sarah: Oh, what’s the sexy way of doing it? Can you explain it?

[00:41:51] Wendy: You can buy a pretty fire extinguisher, which I didn’t even know you could do that. I just thought the white one is the prettier one instead of the red one in your kitchen. But then they had ways of working it around the art, or there was somebody that, I forgot her name, but one of the designers who would mount art on the wall that has a bar that’s actually like a railing while you’re walking down the stairs.

[00:42:15] Annette: Builds in accessibility.

[00:42:16] Wendy: Yeah.

[00:42:17] Sarah: Love that. And coming from you, Wendy, that’s huge because you’ve flipped houses for so long. You have an eye for design. And there’s always something to learn, a trick to pick up from someone along the way. And it’s helped our places be safer while staying pretty. So we have to be aesthetically pleasing. We have to.

[00:42:37] Wendy: We do. We do. That’s one of the reasons that we are doing experiential stays, is that it has to be pretty, but it also has to have a fire extinguisher.

[00:42:46] Annette: For sure. All right. At mostess.host, check her out.

[00:42:50] Sarah: Thanks, Wendy.

[00:42:50] Wendy: Thank you.

[00:42:52] Sarah: We’ve heard from Hostfully, and you’ve been busy here at VRMA. You’ve been very busy. You’ve talked to a lot of people. What is different this year? What is the conversation happening on the floor this year for hosts, for property managers in the industry?

[00:43:09] Margot: I think our industry is at a really interesting inflection point, just like many other industries with how much AI and automation people want to use versus manual work. And we’re seeing a big difference. So some teams have these really outstanding guest services teams on their staff. And they’re like, “Okay, we want to supplement it a little bit, but not replace it.”

[00:43:32] And then others who have been trying to get by with VAs or other outsource services are really asking themselves hard questions about what they want to do. And so we’re seeing this for Hostfully customers, but also for other property managers who are trying to understand what AI options they can use.

[00:43:51] And so for Hostfully, we started with the inbox. And I actually sat next to a wonderful property manager at the keynote today. And during the keynote, I said I’m with Hostfully, he’s like, “Oh, I’m a Hostfully customer.” I was very excited. He was excited. And then he turns to me and he’s like, “This app saves my life. The suggestions are so great. It’s actually saving me so many minutes in every day that I’m getting my life back.”

[00:44:16] And that’s really powerful. I’m so excited to hear that. And I think it’s overwhelming for property managers to figure out how to approach this problem. And there’s not a single company who’s figured it out yet. But I’ve seen a huge change in just this wave of like, how much AI should you be using? Can you be using? Is best for your guests?

[00:44:37] Annette: Is there a way though to just dip your toe into AI? I think that’s the fear, is you flip the switch and it’s all robots all the time and your guest is going to know immediately. Is there a way to turn the volume up a little bit but not just only AI in their face? Is that possible?

[00:44:59] Margot: Absolutely. So the really rough way it is to go to ChatGPT yourself and try to put in the prompts. But good software platforms out there, Hostfully is one of them, there are others as well, are giving property managers the choice. When do you want to use AI? And when do you want to answer it yourself?

[00:45:17] So if you’re using a tool that’s forcing you down the path of using AI when you’re not ready for it, it’s probably not a good product, honestly. But if you’re in a place where you’re able to turn the dial yourself and have that control, I think that’s what you should be looking for.

[00:45:32] Annette: And I think the thing that we wat to share with everybody is it isn’t all or nothing. You can test it out. Why don’t we share that a little bit with our listeners? When did Hostfully decide now is time to roll this out to our customers? Because I think that’s the thing that we don’t understand, is like, what was their R&D? What were they doing behind the scenes before you just like, “Okay, we’re using AI now.” What was that like for you and your team to decide it’s go time?

[00:46:03] Margot: First of all, AI’s been on the scene for a little while, but the tool set has been limited. And also there’s only been really one game in town, ChatGPT. So what our team did was we looked at a bunch of different services because we also don’t want to be dependent on just one. So we waited until we could see there were a couple services out there.

[00:46:22] We also waited to make sure that we could structure the data so that it can be really useful to an AI engine. And so we waited until all of that was ready before we implemented. And whether it’s good or not, Hostfully is a little bit sometimes slower to adopt new technologies.

[00:46:40] Annette: Conservative. Let’s say conservative.

[00:46:41] Margot: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Don’t tell my sales team I said this. No, but we are. We’re a little bit more conservative to adopt things because we really want to make sure that the user experience is great and we want to give our users the control that they want.

[00:46:55] Annette: My last question about AI is, for a Hostfully user, do they pay more, or is this now just part of your product suite?

[00:47:03] Margot: This is part of our product suite, and if you use both products together, the guidebooks and the property management platform together, the AI tool will actually go through your guidebook information and pull the stuff that you’ve already written, so you don’t have to do the work again. And you can train it.

[00:47:19] So once you train it to answer a specific question, it will know to answer that question in a similar way in the future. You can also modify the tone. If you’re like, “Hey, this is too formal for my business,” you can modify it. You can coach it on what to use. So it’s pretty cool.

[00:47:37] Annette: I like to say it’s just an additional team member that never gets sick, is there 24/7, you don’t have to pay additional payroll taxes for this tool. AI is what you’re seeing at the forefront of everybody’s mind and how to use that. The people that adopted it, are they wanting to go full steam ahead so it’s really just they’ve got to flip the switch?

[00:48:08] Margot: It’s not like flipping the switch. I think that they need to be embracing the change. That’s important. And it’s hard. We all like to get set in our ways and just say, “Hey, I’ve done this before. I don’t want to figure out a new way to do it.” But we’re trying to gently teach our users to do that, and I think we’re doing a decent job.

[00:48:27] But, yeah, it’s a big shift. I will also say, though, on top of AI, there’s also the question of, like, how do I get the most out of all the ecosystem of software partners? And that’s something that at Hostfully we also lean into, and we want to give people choices. So we’ve talked to customers today who are like, “Oh, I talked to you before, and you don’t do trust accounting, and it was a non-starter for us, but now you have a partnership with Clearing, for example.” And we’re like, “Okay, let’s bring in both solutions together so you can see what you can get.” And this is where it gets really interesting.

[00:48:59] Sarah: I’ve said it from the beginning from when we first interviewed you all those years ago, that the reason why I chose Hostfully was because you have these great partnerships with these companies. Because I know how hard, let’s say, Clearing works to make their product incredible.

[00:49:13] Margot: Yes.

[00:49:15] Sarah: If a know that a company is dedicated to this one vertical, how the heck can a PMS be incredible at dynamic pricing, at trust accounting, and all these things. I actually trusted and appreciated Hostfully the most because you’re like, let’s do what we do best and then have a strong connection with these other companies that are huge teams all in on these solutions. I actually don’t want a software that says they can do all the thing. I know people have different opinions about it, but that’s my perspective, and I’ve always appreciated that.

[00:49:51] Annette: One final note before Margot leaves. We’ve always been inspired by Margot and look up to Margot because she’s a female founder in this space, and we just champion that.

[00:49:59] Margot: Just like you are.

[00:50:01] Annette: Yeah. But we champion that, and we’re drawn to that and doing business with female founders. So thank you.

[00:50:07] Sarah: I have one last question for you, and maybe your sales team will kill you for this because I know the conservative Hostfully approach. But is there anything cool coming that you can share with our audience?

[00:50:15] Margot: Oh, just lots more enhancements with the inbox and inbox AI. Also, we are working on some multi-unit capabilities. So if you’re wanting to have a little bit more flexible ways of managing your inventory, that’s coming. Some improvements around property settings. Also just overall performance improvements across our entire product suite.

[00:50:35] You’re going to see a lot of changes. We’ve grown our engineering and product team a lot this year, and we really haven’t even seen the full oomf of that investment, and we know it’s coming. It’s a really exciting time to be part of this company actually. It’s really great. I know the rest of the world is hunkering down because it’s crazy, but for us, we’re like, it’s there. Let’s keep going.

[00:50:57] Sarah: But that’s great because you’re the backbone to so many businesses, and we really rely on Hostfully to be there for us, especially right now, where we’re really focused on revenue management strategies, pricing strategies, services strategies. So it’s just great that Hostfully is there humming in the background.

[00:51:10] Margot: Yeah, you need it to work, so that’s our priority.

[00:51:12] Sarah: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for hosting this party.

[00:51:15] Margot: Oh my gosh. You’re all the best. You’re female founders, too. We love being partners with you. Thank you so much for having

[00:51:22] Annette: Thanks, Margot.

[00:51:23] Sarah: Thank you. All right, we have Arthur from StayFi. Arthur, thanks for stopping by. You’ve been on your feet all day talking to people on the VRMA.

[00:51:33] Annette: Show floor that hosts hundreds, if not thousands, of properties across the country.

[00:51:38] Sarah: Yeah, definitely thousands.

[00:51:40] Annette: They’re coming to you because they have a problem. And they want you to solve them.

[00:51:44] Arthur: They have many problems that we’re solving.

[00:51:46] Annette: Yes, they have many problems. What is the recurring problem that you see hosts are trying to solve?

[00:52:21] Arthur: I break it down in three stages to be successful in direct bookings. First, is you need to capture data. If you don’t have guests’ data, you’re not going to be able to drive them to rebook. So that’s definitely step number one, and we have a great solution for that. Step number two is you have market. We’re doubling down on making marketing tools that are easier to send pre-built templates. And one thing that’s great that’s coming here, we see a lot of our existing customers, and it’s very hard to get people’s attention when they’re running their business when it’s peak season.

[00:52:22] So we actually put more emphasis on customer success this year. We actually have our customer success manager here. She’s sitting down with people. She’s showing them new tools, because this may be our one chance the whole year to get in front of a customer and be like, “Hey, did you know we do this seven other things that you’re not using?”

[00:52:35] And the number three, which is the part of the ecosystem we don’t have a product in, is the website. So you could be doing great on one and two, but if you’re sending them to a site that isn’t that great, they’re not going to convert, or maybe you have to do more manual email converting. What has been interesting is I’d say you have the starter website that you get in your PMS like a Hostfully.

[00:52:56] You’ve had these companies around for years, like ICND, RealTech, Boostly that build custom or semi-custom sites that are on the more expensive end. And what I’m excited this year, I’ve seen more people emerge in the mid-market website solutions. We have crafted stays web ready, are these middle ground of a very slick do-it-yourself website that sits in between the custom website design and the out-of-the-box PMS website. So I’m interested to see if we get more adoption of those, and those help try higher conversions.

[00:53:26] And so we’re partnering with some of those companies as well to spread the word that you don’t need to shell out 20 grand and wait nine months to get– it’s going to be a sick website. If you get an ICND website, it’s going to be amazing, but there’s a mid-market opportunity there that we don’t think is being serviced that well right now.

[00:53:39] Annette: A lot of our hosts are independent host. They maybe have one property looking to get two or three, and they are fully dependent on Airbnb. They want to try to start direct booking or marketing to their guests. Is it worth it for them?

[00:53:59] Arthur: It depends. That’s always the best answer.

[00:54:01] Annette: Okay.

[00:54:02] Arthur: If your calendar is booked 100% through Airbnb and you’re happy with the prices that you’re getting and you have sufficient demand, it’s probably not worth it, especially if your plan is not to grow your business and add more properties and become a full-time property manager.

[00:54:15] So it just needs to align with your aspirations. If maybe your market has seen a lot of ups and downs, maybe Airbnb isn’t dependent for you, then that’s when you have to think about, how do I diversify my sources of demand? So it’s really just having market awareness. I’ll also say the other leading indicator is if you have guests organically ask you to book again because they love it. Or you see them just book you multiple times on Airbnb.

[00:54:36] Then maybe you even find out, I don’t need a website. I’m just going to do a rental contract with people that have stayed with me that I trust, that I don’t need all this extra third-party insurance. Maybe it’s probably a good idea, which you guys can talk about. Some of you are in a party about those things. But I would just say it’s like, how low-hanging is my fruit, and how much do I need it? And that’s where I put my head if I was assessing whether I want to go down this path or not.

[00:55:02] Annette: I love that you just released some of the pressure from a host if they know this is my one property. I’m crushing it right now on Airbnb. And maybe they do just go all in on that. I think we pressure ourselves to maybe adopt some things, add technology that maybe at the end of the day doesn’t align with our goals. So I like that you are offering that.

[00:55:26] Sarah: I do want to say though, two weeks ago, Arthur, we had I guest call Airbnb at 2:00 in the morning. So now we had a gas leak because she smelled gas. Spoiler alert, there was no gas leak. But because of my email list, and because Airbnb shut us down, they removed the listing entirely. And I had my email list. I was able to reach out to the list and get someone booked that night for actually a longer stay.

[00:55:49] So I would argue, yes, you’re crushing it on Airbnb, but what happens when– we talked to the host today who got shut down for two weeks because of a “safety issue.” And that’s a lot of revenue you can lose.

[00:56:00] Arthur: Yes. So there is platform dependency problems, and a lot of people, I would say the issue is it’s hard. You bring up great points. It’s hard to sell someone on it until they’ve experienced it.

[00:56:11] Sarah: Yeah, until you have that pain.

[00:56:12] Arthur: Yes, it’s like, oh. People come to us often being like, I had this horrible experience with an OTA. So often it’s too late. I’d say, especially if you’re a property manager, once the downturn hits your market, it’s hard to then invest more in the business to drive your own direct business. But if maybe you had invested in technology in the high season, in the high period, where then you had a built of a robust list, now you can go to that to drive demand.

[00:56:40] So it’s unfortunate because this market is a little cyclical sometimes. But yeah, it’s not for everybody because it doesn’t align with everyone’s goals. But I think if you are willing to put time into it, it’s totally achievable. And I think it’s great because platforms like Hostfully, other PMS have made it more accessible to do direct bookings, and it’s built in a lot of the other protections that you may believe are getting through to OTA, which is another subject that you guys touch on a lot.

[00:57:05] It’s like, how much are you really covered? But they have great partners that do guest screening, do insurance waivers, also the different products so that it’s not that hard now to do direct bookings because all the platforms have made it easier.

[00:57:17] Annette: You mentioned earlier marketing. I think a big roadblock for a lot of our hosts that are collecting emails is they have yet to do outreach to that email list. What’s your first step for the person that has an email list and has never sent an outgoing marketing email to their past guests?

[00:57:40] Arthur: Yeah. So part of StayFi, we have a standalone email tool that’s basically a better and cheaper replacement to MailChimp. And one of the first thing that it will do is it will connect to your property management software, just about anyone out there. We will go through all your past reservations, and we’ll pull in any real emails you’ve ever collected from anywhere.

[00:57:59] You can also add like a widget to your website to collect details. And then obviously if you use our Wi-Fi product, you’re going to get even more emails. That product, when you connect the PMS is free for unlimited emails up to 200 contacts. So if you have 150 contacts in your Hostfully account, you can just use the product for free to start with, then it costs a little bit once you go over 200.

[00:58:18] And we added a new feature last month called One-Click Campaigns, and we started with just two, but essentially the idea is we have a welcome automation for when the guest logs into the Wi-Fi. We now have this pre-built template. We fill in all the fields, and you just put in the photo. We already have your logo. We put in everything we can. We put in text. We put in the link to your website, the link to your guidebooks. Everything we have, we pre-fill it. You just fill in a few details.

[00:58:42] You turn it on, and it will send that automatically to every guest logged into the Wi-Fi. And then we have a prebuilt newsletter, which is like a very generic template where we have five or six sections, things like a property feature section, a discount code section if you want a discount code. We have a local events section.

[00:58:56] You just click on or off to seconds you want, upload your photos, good to go. And we’re coming out with even cooler ones coming out every month. We’ll have new One-Click emails, things like looking at your calendar that you specify, identifying which properties have availability and automatically putting them into your email and pulling the photos out of your software for you.

[00:59:19] So basically the whole approach for email marketing now is to address this very issue of how can you make it so easy that anyone can do it in less than five minutes without any email expertise, because that’s the core customer we’re focused on right now, is the people that haven’t sent the email. And we want to make it, I don’t want to say idiot proof because that’s a little demeaning, but so simple that you don’t get that design overwhelming of like, oh my God, I have to build this template from scratch, and there’s too many options.

[00:59:47] Sarah: Or what to say.

[00:59:48] Annette: You’re basically making a no excuses proof–

[00:59:52] Arthur: Yes.

[00:59:53] Annette: Possibility.

[00:59:53] Arthur: And we prefilled a copy and then you just can finesse it to what you want it to be for yourself.

[00:59:59] Annette: So that’s available to all StayFi customers right now. They can use that.

[01:00:03] Arthur: Yes.

[01:00:03] Sarah: We’ll put the StayFi link in the show notes for this episode. Arthur, thank you so much for stopping by.

[01:00:08] Arthur: Yeah, it was great seeing you guys in real life.

[01:00:10] Sarah: Yes, we always love seeing you.

[01:00:12] Arthur: Awesome. Thank you so much. And yeah, I hope to be on your podcast again soon.

[01:00:15] Annette: Yes. Make it happen.

[01:00:16] Arthur: Yes. Thanks, guys.

[01:00:17] Annette: Thanks, Arthur.

[01:00:17] Sarah: All right. Who are you? What company are you with?

[01:00:18] Steve: Hi, everyone. My name is Steve Davis. I’m the CEO of Operto.

[01:00:19] Sarah: What does Operto do? What service do you provide?

[01:00:30] Steve: We service a lot of different things, but primarily we do guest experience. So everything from the moment of booking, pre stay, in stay, post stay, including a little bit about on the back end– that was some cleaning and housekeeping.

[01:00:44] Annette: You’ve been on the show floor all day talking to a lot of hosts. What is the number one problem currently hosts are trying to solve for that you’re hearing over and over again, or their biggest concern?

[01:00:54] Steve: You know what? I think the hosts are being overwhelmed by the need for guests. The guests are just being very demanding on hosts. I think that there’s a big expectation around wanting a hotel experience instead of a short-term rental stay. And so they’re being inundated by requests, by messages, by the day-to-day admin, the operational burden of just running the day-to-day.

[01:01:21] Annette: And being open 24/7/365 and not having a hotel staff behind being them.

[01:01:27] Steve: Being a slave to the business.

[01:01:28] Sarah: But on the show floor, there are so many solutions out there that can also be daunting. You’re like, “Well, as a host, it costs money to have solutions, to have your tech stack grow.” You’ve been in the industry for a while now. What do you think is necessary for a host to be able to provide the level of service that our guests are wanting these days?

[01:01:48] Steve: Listen, I think the first thing that any host needs to do is sit down and write down what their top 10 pains are.

[01:01:54] Sarah: Oh, I like that.

[01:01:54] Steve: And then match solutions against those top 10 pains. And don’t try and solve all top 10 in one go, because trust me, when someone says, “We’re an all-in-one solution,” is complete and utter BS.

[01:02:07] So list them off and say, “Listen, this year, we’re going to do number 1, 2, and 3, or maybe only 1 and 2.” And pick the solutions that tick those boxes. And next year, the 3 and 4, 5 and 6 and slowly knock it off. Because if you take on too many tech solutions at once, no one in your team is going to use them, or they’re going to be used very poorly or rolled up incredibly badly.

[01:02:28] Annette: I love this idea of your top 10 pain points. Is it the top 10 pain points of the guests, the guests are bringing up? Or is it the organization? Or are you thinking broad stroke all of those things in the top 10?

[01:02:40] Steve: Yeah. You probably have to have two top 10 lists.

[01:02:42] Annette: It is. I’m thinking now like, “Oh, if I had to solve for the top 10, is it my team? Is it my guest? Is it my owners?”

[01:02:51] Steve: Yeah. It’s probably, on one side, whatever keeps you sane. You need to sleep. You need to not be a slave to the business. It’s hard to be a short-term rental manager. But on the flip side, guests will be coming. Their expectations are rising. They stay in hotels. They know what it’s like to have really amazing 5-star reviews that are very story service. So that’s what they’re expecting.

[01:03:11] Annette: And that’s not going to go in the reverse direction. They’re just going to continue to rise.

[01:03:15] Steve: If anything, an event like COVID really sped along things. If they’re going to stay in a short-term rental, they want a quality linen. They want quality cleaning. They just want hotel quality but in a different setting, and that’s why as an industry we have to really level up.

[01:03:35] Annette: Our last question is, as we’re saying that though, what is your forecast for short-term rentals for 2025?

[01:03:44] Steve: On the technology side?

[01:03:46] Annette: Just overall travel. Is the demand going to increase, decrease? Is the demand still going to be there for short-term rental?

[01:03:54] Steve: I think a lot of it’s going to hinge to be honest on what happens in the US election coming up on macro trends. Do I think there’s going to be a bumper a year in 2025? I don’t think there’s going to be anything out of the ordinary. I think it’s going to look a lot like this year.

[01:04:10] But you know what? At the end of the day, people want to travel. And obviously with the aging population and the boomers moving into a let’s spend the inheritance instead of sitting at home, you’re just going to see that travel wave. There’s a lot of money sloshing around in the industry, and I think short-term rentals are going to really benefit from that.

[01:04:28] Annette: Oh.

[01:04:29] Sarah: [Inaudible].

[01:04:30] Annette: That’s it. That’s the mic drop. Thank you, Steve.

[01:04:32] Steve: No worries.

[01:04:32] Sarah: Thanks Steve.

[01:04:33] Steve: You bet.

[01:04:35] Sarah: We’re sitting down with Chris from tidy.com. How did you guys get that URL?

[01:04:41] Chris: A lot of money. We got it about nine years ago. We’re about 10 years old now.

[01:04:45] Sarah: Give us the 30-second background on tidy.com and how you serve the short-term rental host.

[01:04:51] Chris: Sure. Found about 10 years ago, and we tried to bring software to help with cleaning to start. And over time we’ve expanded more to maintenance as well. At this point, we really help automate cleaning and maintenance. That’s what we do all day long.

[01:05:05] Sarah: So you’re on the floor today here at VRMA, and you were talking to host one on one, and I’m sure you talk to host all the time because you care about who’s using your product. You want to make sure that you’re solving their problems. But specifically now, today’s host, today’s challenges that they’re having, what did you either hear repeatedly, or what was a big challenge that was interesting to you that you know that you can help solve?

[01:05:25] Chris: I think a lot of people are really wondering how they should manage their cleaning and maintenance. Obviously, we’re biased because we’re talking about that all day long. But I think they’re trying to figure out, should I use a software tool? Should I just use spreadsheets? How am I doing it today? And what are maybe some better options out there for me?

[01:05:44] Annette: Spreadsheets, that’s still a thing.

[01:05:46] Chris: Yeah, a lot of people use spreadsheets, and they got Martha who does a part time for them. And we like to think that like most of the things in this world at this point, there are software solutions to try to help you with that, and that’s partly what we offer.

[01:06:04] Annette: Let’s talk about maintenance a little bit because I know cleaning–

[01:06:08] Sarah: A big topic.

[01:06:08] Annette: Yeah. Cleaning, we talk about all the time. When you think about maintenance and you see what’s happening, what is something preventative that you wish every host knew and would execute that would make maintenance and cleaning easier for all hosts?

[01:06:24] Chris: Well, I think if you have a preventative maintenance schedule, it’s really nice because there are a lot of things to track and do that are ideal. But most people don’t do them at all. And that ranges from bed bugs, is maybe one example. Doing some things to try to prevent a worst case, scary scenario.

[01:06:41] Annette: Let’s go into it. How can we prevent that?

[01:06:44] Chris: There’s a lot of solutions out there to help. There’s powders. I’m actually not the deepest expert in all the intricacies of what you can do, but I just do know there’s various steps that you can take to–

[01:06:56] Sarah: And included in your maintenance program.

[01:06:59] Chris: Yeah.

[01:06:59] Annette: Okay, okay. Got it. Then what else preventatively that you can think of?

[01:07:06] Chris: Oh, sure. There’s the smoke detector alarm maintenance and making sure those things don’t chirp on people in the middle of the night. There’s replacing the air filters. There’s fridge maintenance, hot water heater maintenance. If you go through all the major appliances of your property, many of them, if you look at the manual, they require something that almost nobody actually does.

[01:07:29] And then you got to look at it and take it with a grain of salt because the manufacturer is going to tell you to do something every month or so. It doesn’t always. You don’t have to do that. But every once in a while it does make sense.

[01:07:40] Annette: And then is this something– with preventative maintenance, can the homeowner do it themselves, or do you think it’s best that they hire professionals for all of them?

[01:07:53] Chris: I think a lot of things can be done yourself. It’s just whether or not you want to do the actual work. I think probably most important thing is to try to get some of these things done. But if you want to descale a water heater, it’s some fancy words, but it’s not actually that hard. But it’s work, and most people don’t do it, probably.

[01:08:15] Sarah: It’s almost like it doesn’t matter really how it gets done; just get it done. My final question for you, Chris, is if someone comes to you, you stop them on the show floor and they say, “No, I got a great spreadsheet, and it works for me,” what would you say to them from an authentic, honest place of how you think tidy.com could help someone who has a spreadsheet and it’s working for them make their operations more efficient?

[01:08:38] Chris: Yeah. We are spending a lot of time right now with AI as well, and I do think where the industry is going, you really got to be mindful of the kind of the trends that are coming down the pipeline, and you have to be thinking about how you’re going to be competitive five years from now as things really continue to progress down that front.

[01:08:57] And even we’re learning a lot about what you can or can’t do with AI at this point. And so I think it makes sense, even if you’re not ready to implement something today and if something’s working for you today, maybe you’re not quite ready to change yet, but you have to be thinking about one step ahead. And also a lot of people decide to switch when things to finally start going wrong. They go, “It’s working great. Why change?” And then when things start going wrong, you got to think about it.

[01:09:22] Sarah: We just talked about that with another interview. We just said it was like you have to feel it. Unfortunately, it’s like you have to feel that pain before you’ll take action.

[01:09:29] Chris: Yeah.

[01:09:29] Annette: And you don’t want to feel the pain.

[01:09:30] Sarah: No, you don’t. But sometimes you have to.

[01:09:33] Chris: Yeah. A lot of times we’re just planting the seed. We’re saying, “Great, if it’s working for you now, I’m probably not going to convince you to change. But in six months from now, when it starts to become overwhelming, then give us a call.”

[01:09:43] Sarah: Thank you for sitting down with us, tidy.com, Chris. Thank you so much.

[01:09:47] Chris: Thank you.

[01:09:47] Sarah: Awesome. All right. That event was so much fun, Annette. We actually got there before the party started.

[01:09:54] Annette: Yes. Set up our gear.

[01:09:56] Sarah: We did set up our gear. We did all of our interviews in the middle of also–

[01:10:00] Annette: Of the party. It was fun.

[01:10:01] Sarah: Working ourselves. And we stayed in the van. We got kicked out.

[01:10:04] Annette: They told us to leave. It was time to check out.

[01:10:08] Sarah: It was time to check out, and we were exhausted, but getting to chat with all of these human beings that we hang out with on LinkedIn, or maybe they’re our Thanks for Visiting partner, or we use their software ourselves, or actually, there are a few interviews that we had that we just listened to that we had not yet met.

[01:10:24] Annette: That happened that night.

[01:10:25] Sarah: Yeah. And getting their take on what’s going on. It just reminds me how big our industry is.

[01:10:30] Annette: Yes, absolutely. And how giving. Everyone there is wanting to learn and invest their time and give any advice they can.

[01:10:37] Sarah: If you’re interested in attending VRMA next year, I actually have the details for you right here. It is going to be in Vegas in 2025, October 12th through the 15th. Go to vrma.org. We’ll put the link in the show notes. But it is one of the oldest conferences, one of the biggest. Annette and I have been going for years now. Always have a good time. Check it out. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

[01:11:09] Annette: I am Annette Grant, and together we are–

[01:11:11] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[01:11:12] Sarah: Talk to you next time.