Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / Why Property Managers Are Missing These 3 Critical Metrics

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Why Property Managers Are Missing These 3 Critical Metrics · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

0:00
I think it will change the world of short term rentals
0:03
dramatically because AI isn't currently utilized to drive
0:08
demand. Next marathon for host away.
0:12
I think it will be all related to AII.
0:15
Think we're going to be the one to crack practice game and see
0:20
what AI can do for property managers, and we're
0:24
experimenting a lot right now. How does running a marathon help
0:28
you run a billion dollar business?
0:31
What is the simplest way to improve your guest experience?
0:34
And how is AI going to transform the short term rentals industry?
0:39
Marcus Radar from Host Away is the special guest on the Host
0:42
Planet podcast, and he'll be answering all these questions
0:45
and more on today's show. Marcus, thank you for joining us
0:53
on the Host Planet podcast. Firstly, congratulations to you
0:57
and Host Away. You recently announced a
1:00
valuation of $1 billion, which makes you the first property
1:05
management software Unicorn in the short term rentals industry.
1:10
I want to know how do you frame this valuation in your mind when
1:14
you think back to when Host Away started 10 years ago?
1:18
I, I think it's insane. We had just two years ago or we,
1:25
we had an employee who said, you know what, we keep doing like
1:29
this, we're going to be a Unicorn.
1:30
And I thought, no, that's, that's not going to happen.
1:34
And, and now, yeah, beginning of this year, we, we raised some
1:38
capital at evaluation of 925. So it's, it's not that big of a
1:43
stretch to, to go to from 9:00 to 5:00 to 1000, but it's still
1:48
being the first one is, is something that's really unique
1:52
and also looking at the time scale of things.
1:54
Well, now with AI, things have shifted.
1:56
So basically companies are getting no funding at all,
1:59
except a couple ones I met, met a Swedish law firm software
2:04
using AI. They are less than a year old
2:07
and their valuation is 1.8 billion.
2:11
Is this beyond your wildest dreams?
2:13
Yes, it is this is this is a bit crazy, but it's also it's really
2:19
fun. It's it's really because you get
2:21
as the company's growing so fast, you get to learn new
2:24
things every day and that's I I was never a good employee mostly
2:29
because once I got good at something, then I had to keep
2:31
doing it and I got I got super bored.
2:33
But here, whenever I get good at something, then the skills are
2:38
unnecessary the next week because we've grown so much and
2:42
so you're always playing catch up.
2:44
And that goes for we have 300 employees now.
2:46
That goes for everyone. Whatever we're doing now, we
2:49
need to figure out how to do it. But the moment that we figure
2:51
out how to do it, we need to move on to the next thing, which
2:54
is something that nobody knows how to do.
2:56
And that's the way it is all the time.
2:58
Pace of change is incredible. When I saw you in Rome recently
3:02
at the Vacation Rental World Summit, you told me about your
3:06
marathon. You're running exploits.
3:09
Tell us the story of this because I'm keen to know how
3:12
preparing for a marathon and running a marathon has helped
3:16
your business. So there's, there's a lot of
3:22
founders who come to me and ask for advice.
3:24
Was setting up a, a business. And I, I often, well, I ask a
3:29
few questions. I, I'm usually don't care too
3:33
much about their idea, but more of their industry that they're
3:36
in. And eventually I tried to
3:38
convince them that don't, don't do it.
3:40
It's, it's not worth it. The, the, the reason I say that
3:45
is that it's, it's nice to be successful and it's very nice to
3:49
have a have a success story and, and people look up to that and
3:53
they find it inspirational, but it's a massive personal toll
3:57
that that takes. If you really want to succeed,
4:02
you need to, you need to work in a way so that you prioritize
4:06
work above everything else. And, and there's many things
4:12
that you don't even notice with other people around you.
4:16
They're doing it. For example, for me, it was a
4:19
wake up call when I, I didn't have time to, I was so busy
4:23
building my business that I didn't realize that other
4:26
people, what they're doing instead is they're going to the
4:29
dentist on a regular basis. So I had 17 cavities when I, I
4:34
finally went to the dentist and it took over 2 years to fix.
4:40
And now my teeth are going to be an endless, yeah, endless drain
4:46
for the rest of my life because of that.
4:47
That's just one example. Another one was my health.
4:51
I didn't have the time to notice that other people around me,
4:56
they were exercising and I wasn't because I was glued to a
5:00
computer and a phone and meetings and conferences and
5:04
pitching and recruiting and, and firing and reporting to
5:09
investors and, and getting the product built.
5:13
So I didn't have time to do that.
5:15
And at some point I said this, this has got to stop.
5:19
And, and I started thinking about exercise.
5:22
At the same time I found out my mom has Alzheimer's and that's
5:27
genetical. So I thought as I did some
5:30
research and it turns out exercise is, is something that's
5:33
pretty good for, you know, if your genetics are, are not the
5:38
optimal, you can compensate by, by exercise.
5:41
But what I found out was that starting to exercise is
5:44
incredibly hard because at least for me, I was fat, I was
5:48
overweight. And it's pretty much the same
5:50
thing. When you start a business, it's
5:52
incredibly hard because if you've been an employee, that's
5:56
great. Many people who start a business
5:57
have never been an employee. But if you've been an employee,
6:00
there's a lot of things around you that are just there and you
6:03
never knew they were there because you always assumed they
6:06
were there. A bit like when you're home, you
6:08
go to the tap and you turn on the water and this you turn on
6:12
the tap and there's water coming out.
6:14
It's magic. But you just assume it's there
6:16
because every home you ever lived in, you turn on the tap
6:18
and there's water coming out. When you start your own
6:20
business, it's nothing like that.
6:22
There isn't even a tap. There isn't even a kitchen like
6:26
this. You get thirsty, there's no
6:27
water. And that's what starting the
6:29
exercise was like for me as well.
6:32
I, I just couldn't do it. So first I had to, I had to
6:35
figure out how to lose weight. But I, I, well, this was an
6:38
interesting challenge because building a Unicorn is incredibly
6:42
difficult, but I know for a fact that other people have done it
6:46
and I know for a fact that other people have lost weight.
6:48
So I found this method called calories in, calories out.
6:51
It's a bit like your bank account.
6:53
Money comes in like money comes out and it if at the end of the
6:56
day or the month you spent less than you, you got in, then you
6:59
have more. It's the same thing with
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calories. If you spend more than you, then
7:03
you take in, then you lose weight.
7:05
So I followed that and it was, it was perfect because I didn't
7:08
have to go on any diet. I got to eat pizza, chocolate,
7:13
ice cream, and I managed to lose 40 kilos or 70 lbs in six
7:18
months. What I found out during that
7:21
process was that I really enjoyed running, which is
7:23
something I always hated, probably because I was
7:25
overweight. And I thought, well, running is
7:30
cool, but how do how do you supercharge it?
7:32
What's what's like a difficult run?
7:34
And I found out marathons are difficult.
7:37
So I started studying that again.
7:39
I like studying things and turns out marathon is incredibly hard
7:44
because if you just try to run, first of all, you're not going
7:48
to get to the finish line. Second of all, you're going to
7:50
get injured possibly for life. So it's a, it's a bit of an
7:53
extreme sport. So I, I decided to try it and it
7:59
took six months of, of practice and I remember reading that you
8:04
have to run. Was it 300 kilometers in a
8:09
month? So an average 10K or or 6 miles
8:14
per day on average. But you got to have rest days
8:17
otherwise you'll get injured. So you got to actually do longer
8:21
runs than that. So it was in May last year 24
8:26
when I decided to do exactly that.
8:28
And I, I did it and then two months later I ran my first
8:32
marathon and it, it worked. But then I thought, OK, how do I
8:37
supercharge that? Because that was exciting.
8:39
But then I figured out I can do 100 marathons in 100 different
8:44
cities. And if I finish with that before
8:46
I die, then I'm going to donate 100,000 to Alzheimer's Research.
8:51
So that's, that's a journey that I'm on.
8:53
And actually I did have an injury in October here, so I
8:56
couldn't run for a bit. But just 2-3 days ago, Friday, I
9:00
ran my 11th marathon. And I, I see this as a
9:04
percentage, I think whatever you're going to do, the goal
9:08
should be to get there 100%. But getting the 1%, if you can
9:13
measure that, that's the most difficult part.
9:17
The second most difficult is getting to 10%.
9:20
If you can get to 10% of your goal, the other 90% is about the
9:26
same effort. It's really because when, when
9:29
you do it the first time, if it doesn't kill you, it's going to
9:32
make you stronger. But when you've done it 10
9:34
times, 10 times over, you're going to be able to do it 9
9:38
times that and you're done. You've done 100%.
9:41
And that's the way I see. That's why I like the round
9:43
Number of 100 marathons. The challenge is probably going
9:46
to be logistics. How do I find enough cities to
9:48
run it? Incredible.
9:51
Yeah, and a few things stuck out there and a brilliant goal, you
9:56
know, 100 marathons in 100 cities and, and raising money
9:59
for, for Alzheimer's Research as well.
10:01
OK, real talk now for all you hosts out there, you know that
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10:08
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10:11
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10:14
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11:20
things stuck out there, especially starting a business.
11:22
Nobody tells you about the the Founders 15.
11:25
I read about this in Mark Randolph who set up Netflix
11:28
book. He said the Founders 15
11:30
basically because you're stuck behind a desk all day, you're on
11:33
your laptop, you're trying to build a business.
11:35
You don't do any exercise, you eat rubbish all the time and you
11:38
put on 15 lbs or or sometimes even more.
11:41
And then that that bit where you said, you know, the the tap
11:44
isn't there anymore and there isn't even a kitchen more.
11:46
Forget about that. You know, I remember when I
11:48
started my business, one of the things I thought about was I was
11:51
invited to a conference and I thought to myself, I don't know
11:54
if I can go, I'll have to apply for leave.
11:57
And then I thought, hang on a minute.
11:59
I'm basically applying to myself.
12:00
I can approve myself to go on a trip now.
12:02
That's that's all fine. It does take a bit of getting
12:05
used to. So I mean, I mean, we're here
12:08
with marathon runners that they have hit the wall moments.
12:13
So I'm interested what's been the equivalent hit the wall
12:18
moment that you might have had with Host Away and how did you
12:21
overcome it? There's thousands of those those
12:27
moments. It's when you when you know you
12:29
got the best solution out there for not for everyone, but for a
12:34
specific type of customer. And then you get on a call with
12:36
the customer and they highlight how much you suck.
12:40
Even though you're the most commonly used software and you
12:44
have 10s of thousands of happy customers, it can still be a
12:47
terrible experience for one customer.
12:49
That's just really, it's really humbling.
12:52
And it's important to remember also that if a business it's, I
12:58
see a lot of idealistic founders who just want to get a customer
13:03
and keep them happy and then get another customer and keep them
13:06
happy. That's all great for a lifestyle
13:09
business, but if once you scale, you're eventually going to reach
13:13
a point where you, you just can't keep customers happy.
13:17
You can't talk to everyone. I mean, if you got 100,000
13:19
customers, how many seconds are there in a year?
13:22
How many seconds can you spend with each customer?
13:25
You can't. That's just not if you want to
13:27
run a business. And, and there's also the, the
13:33
hard lessons learned with, with employees when you, you spend 6
13:37
months recruiting someone and then finally find the, the dream
13:40
candidate and you sign the agreement.
13:43
And then you, you tell everyone else, sorry, we found someone
13:46
else who's better than you. Good luck and thanks.
13:51
And then just two days before they start, it turns out that
13:55
they had an accident or, or something happened and then they
13:58
don't start or, or someone who starts and then leaves for
14:02
various reasons or someone who you really know is going to
14:04
perform and doesn't perform. There's always these very, very
14:08
humbling moments in business and they, it's important to have
14:12
them because the, the flip side of the coin is if you don't have
14:16
them, you won't be prepared for what's to come.
14:20
And that's what I see a lot of businesses.
14:23
They, they avoid mistakes sometimes by, they have great
14:27
mentors, they have luck. Timing can help you avoid
14:32
mistakes a lot. But then when things start going
14:35
bad, they don't have any muscles at all and they don't know what
14:39
to do about it. And so so it's very healthy to
14:43
have a certain amount of pain all the time.
14:46
Great advice. I mean during a marathon as
14:49
well, you've got to pace yourself.
14:52
How do you think about pace for host away now that you've
14:56
reached Unicorn status and and what happens next?
15:00
What's the next big goal? Yeah, there's there's a lot of
15:05
perils there. The I'd say the the biggest
15:11
challenge as a as a founder, Brian Chesky from every me from
15:15
our industry, he talks about the founder mode.
15:18
It means that founder of business has an ability to do
15:22
things in a certain way. That's just simply better than
15:27
anyone else because they have shaped the business around how
15:30
they see the world and how they see the industry.
15:33
But it can be quite intense for especially new employees who are
15:38
not used to that. Maybe employees who have never
15:40
worked with founders before because a lot of businesses
15:42
don't have a founder working in the business.
15:45
Or maybe but they do, but not in the part of business that you
15:48
work in. So trying to make sure you don't
15:52
put too much pressure on teams and individuals that can really
15:57
break, break things fast. And also it's, it's just so
16:03
strange how I think we still, I don't think any company does
16:08
this well, but when they make a mistake, everyone critiques
16:13
them. So either you come out, you
16:16
don't do anything and you become old and irrelevant.
16:19
That sometimes happen or you do things, you release new
16:21
functionality and sometimes you release something that's not
16:25
really tested and you don't really know if the customers
16:29
want it, but you'd build it overnight and think this is cool
16:32
so let's just release it. And then it becomes a massive
16:34
success. And sometimes you spend 6 months
16:37
interviewing customers, doing research, building it perfect
16:41
and you release it. Then it's a giant fail.
16:43
Most of the things go somewhere in between, but it's, it's just
16:47
so unpredictable. And, and I think the the only
16:51
way you can really make sure that you don't have those big
16:54
failures, they can break a company if you if you do the
16:57
wrong thing, especially on the consumer side.
17:00
You see, you know, big brands come out with an ad campaign
17:04
that's very unpopular and suddenly their sales tank can
17:07
happen to to anyone. And it's not like that.
17:11
I mean, they did research. They don't just release an ad
17:14
that's going to break their business.
17:15
That would be stupid. But yeah, the only way you can
17:20
avoid that is by slowing down the speed of development or
17:23
speed of releases. But then you might become
17:27
stagnant. So it's a it's a very double
17:29
edged sword. Yeah, it's difficult.
17:31
I mean, it's similar with, you know, content production.
17:33
Sometimes you will spend ages producing something which you
17:37
think is brilliant and valuable and everybody and his wife are
17:40
going to download it and be interested in reading it and it
17:43
does OK. And then other times you throw
17:45
up some content and wow, get so much engagement.
17:48
Everybody wants wants a piece of it.
17:50
It's sometimes you we're just at the mercy of how people think
17:53
and it's difficult to know and sometimes at the mercy of
17:55
algorithms and and all the rest of it.
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19:17
the the PMS space and where it stands right now.
19:21
How do you think it's going to develop over the next few years?
19:25
It's going to develop the very same way that it has been
19:29
developing for at least the last five years.
19:32
There's a lot of consolidation going on, a lot of a lot of
19:37
smaller solutions, whether they're point solutions or
19:40
localized PMSS or channel managers, they're, they're going
19:45
to get acquired by PMSS or in some case do roll ups.
19:50
And and that's going to continue.
19:53
And we're very actively pursuing all the opportunities we can
19:56
find. But yeah, we're going to, this
20:03
is actually a really good thing for most property managers
20:06
because there has been in the last, last 10 years so much new
20:10
technology coming out all the time and you don't know what to
20:12
what to use. And now we're going more towards
20:15
the stage where there's. A couple of big established
20:17
players that have all the functionality that's needed and
20:21
whenever something new comes out, you don't need to go around
20:23
looking for it because these players are fast enough to
20:26
adopt. So where and that's also that
20:31
also means you as a property manager get to save a lot of
20:34
time because you don't need to play around with things that
20:36
find out what works because in the end, it's a it's a
20:40
hospitality business. Your success as a business
20:43
depends on the on the guest experience.
20:45
It depends on the type of real estate you have access to and
20:48
how well you can match those two together.
20:50
Can you have good real estate that give a good experience to
20:53
the guests? Then you're going to have a good
20:56
business. There's no technology really
21:00
that can prevent that. I mean, for example, if you're
21:03
real estate in a place where the weather is bad and people go on
21:07
vacation, they want good weather, but your real estate is
21:10
in bad weather, there's no software on the planet, and AI
21:14
is not going to be able to change that.
21:18
So yeah, that's what's up for the PMS space.
21:22
Sounds good. So I hope to waste growth really
21:24
tied to, you know, very closely to automation and AI.
21:29
Where are you doubling down on product development over the
21:33
next two to three years to to really move the needle for for
21:36
your property managers? Right now we're doing we're
21:41
doing three major topics. One of them is AI, obviously
21:47
that doesn't just mean functionality within the
21:49
software. It also means in in the
21:51
background, we do a lot of testing and optimization of the
21:55
of the listing of the advertising, the guest
21:58
experience as well to to help our customers become successful.
22:03
One of our company's values is our customer success is our
22:06
success. So that's how we think about AI.
22:09
What is it that AI can help our customers be more successful
22:12
with? Sometimes it's adding a new
22:13
feature into our product, but sometimes it's not.
22:16
Sometimes it's helping out the customers, but on a massive
22:19
scale with hundreds of thousands of properties, how about we make
22:23
each one of them 1% better? That's what AI can do.
22:27
The other one that we're focusing a lot on is making the
22:32
usability better. We have a very extensive in
22:37
depth software that has a lot of functionality and, but but find
22:44
finding out what it can and cannot do can be sometimes
22:48
cumbersome. That's why we have a massive
22:49
customer success team to to help our customers utilize the
22:54
software and make their business better.
22:57
But we have a dedicated focus on making sure the user experience
23:01
is a lot better with the software.
23:04
And the third one is localization because it's a very
23:08
being a proper managers, very local business.
23:10
And we have we have recently expanded into a lot of markets.
23:15
And as an example of that, we translated software, translated
23:20
the website, we hired sales onboarding support, customer
23:25
success in in those local markets, for example, in France,
23:28
Spain, Italy, UK, Australia, Mexico and so on.
23:34
But what these property managers really need is sometimes
23:37
specific solutions for their market.
23:39
So for example, in Italy, if you're nationwide chain in its
23:44
report to about 300 different authorities on who is staying
23:48
and that can be a nightmare. It's not a nightmare.
23:50
If you got one property in one location, then you can do it
23:53
manually and you got one guest a week.
23:55
But if you have hundreds of properties across multiple
23:59
locations, that's that's one example.
24:01
So very much localization here. Let's look at the industry more
24:06
generally than in your Unicorn announcement.
24:09
You said that you think the industry is set to double in
24:12
size. What do you think that looks
24:14
like in practice? In practice, what it it's, it's
24:19
a simple math formula. So we are part of the
24:23
accommodation industry and the accommodation industry is
24:27
basically people who are looking for a place to stay.
24:30
And that one is growing. There's there's some trends like
24:35
COVID can change that. But overall it's business and
24:39
pleasure travelers who travel and to some extent they travel
24:43
longer as well. Like digital nomads can stay a
24:46
month or six months somewhere, but that's the entire
24:49
accommodation space. That one is growing at a very
24:53
rapid rate year over year and there's no, there's no real
24:56
signs that travel would would stop.
25:00
I mean what we're seeing in the US right now for example, is
25:03
that there's fewer international visitors coming in.
25:06
But at the same time we're seeing compared to 2019 data
25:11
that there's 20% more travel out of the US than there was before.
25:16
So if you look globally at the whole accommodation, even if one
25:18
market is is not doing so great, it's still contributing and
25:23
overall positive to the entire global accommodation market.
25:27
But then if we start looking at short term rentals, education
25:30
rentals, 10 years ago they represented 4% of that total
25:35
massive pie. Today they represent 15% and
25:39
there's no sign that that percentage is going to go down.
25:42
There is no indication that consumers actively are choosing
25:48
to to stay in hotels instead of vacation homes.
25:53
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see further
25:57
growth industry more widely then what frustrates you the most
26:03
about the STR industry and what would you change if you could?
26:08
Honestly, a lot of the frustrations have have sold
26:12
themselves over the years. One of my, my frustrations, of
26:18
course, I'm biased because my job is selling software, but
26:23
I've met a lot of property managers over the years who have
26:26
said, Oh yeah, but we're different because we're, we're
26:29
building our own software and it's going to be better.
26:31
The nice thing with those is I always told them that, look,
26:36
before you go bankrupt, please reach out.
26:39
They never do because they don't like.
26:42
But the nice thing is all of them are bankrupt now.
26:44
Sundar is bankrupt. Everyone who tried Bacasa
26:47
failed. Everyone who has tried to build
26:51
their own software at scale have have gone bankrupt or being
26:56
acquired for pennies, $100.00. So that's, that's really nice
27:00
for, for us because it, you know, I, for me, it was a
27:03
massive frustration that, that people were like, let's say I'm
27:08
a farmer, I want to grow apples. There's two things I can do to
27:13
start to grow apples. One is I can plant an apple tree
27:16
or maybe buy a seedling and plant it and start waiting for
27:21
the apples, or I can figure out how do I build a tractor from
27:25
scratch? You know, which one makes more
27:29
sense to me? It makes more sense to plant the
27:31
apple tree and then see, are the apples good?
27:33
But some people, they don't think about it.
27:36
They think about, oh, I need to build my own tractor.
27:38
I know that there's companies out there who have hundreds
27:41
years of experience in building the best tractor on the planet,
27:44
and I could just buy one of those.
27:46
But no, I'm going to build my own tractor.
27:48
And that's why they always fail, because at some point someone's
27:51
going to come and ask where, where are the apples?
27:55
And all they can say is, well I built 0.37% of the perfect
28:01
tractor. New Year, then New Year
28:06
resolutions 2026. How do you think how some
28:12
property managers can prosper in 2026?
28:14
What would your top piece of advice be to somebody who says
28:17
Marcus, I've got a few properties, I want to grow my
28:19
business, How should I do it? Focus on the on the basics, keep
28:24
the guests happy, keep the the property owners happy.
28:29
If you're managing other people's properties.
28:31
I still, I've been travelling a lot this year and as, as every
28:36
year, that's my, my hobby and that I often, you know, I had a
28:42
a revelation in it was a few years ago, there was the VRMA
28:47
Spring forum in New Orleans and it was completely dead.
28:50
There was nobody there. So we didn't have much to do,
28:52
but we had massive team there. We had a good party, but I went,
28:56
I went walking around the Conference Center and the
28:58
Conference Center in New Orleans, actually three
29:01
different halls that are identical.
29:04
So I went to the next one and there was the the American Wood
29:09
Floor Association. They had their annual trade show
29:13
and I just thought about it for a while.
29:16
You know, when I meet new people or when you go on a date, I
29:21
don't date. I've been married for 20 years
29:24
and you ask people, what do you enjoy?
29:26
What's your passion? I've never met a person who goes
29:29
and says my greatest passion is wooden floors.
29:33
However, I met a lot of people who say my greatest passion is
29:37
travel. So we are very fortunate to be
29:41
in the travel industry and that's something the property
29:43
manager should should remember that we are we are working in a
29:47
place that is very close to passion and it's very similar to
29:52
restaurants because working in a restaurant is not a glamorous
29:56
job, but there's many people drawn to it because they're
29:58
passionate about food. And we have this one thing going
30:01
for us, which is travel. It happens to be something that
30:04
a lot of people are passionate about, so make sure that your
30:08
guests have a good experience and read those reviews.
30:12
If you're not at 4.9 on Airbnb, you're doing something wrong and
30:16
you need to find out what it is because it's not.
30:18
It's not going to last. What is your number one guest
30:23
experience tip to hosts out there who who want to provide a
30:26
better guest experience? It's so simple.
30:29
It's incredibly simple. Just go and stay one night.
30:34
Just go and stay, read the instructions on how to find the
30:38
key or how to do the check in and then bring bring a suitcase
30:44
pack for a week and then start unpacking it.
30:48
I recently went to Malta and I rented a place where we didn't
30:53
have any adapters because we didn't realize multi is an EU
30:58
countries in Europe. We didn't realize that they use
31:00
British electricity plugs and that meant our chargers didn't
31:05
work. Nothing worked.
31:07
But was what was even more strange was that the TV and the
31:11
toaster, they both had European plugs, but you couldn't plug
31:15
them in anywhere because the walls had British outlets.
31:20
And that was just one out of hundreds of examples.
31:25
But yeah, please go and stay in their own property when at
31:29
night, when you lay down at bed, you'll figure out exactly what's
31:32
wrong. Or same place in Malta, the
31:35
curtain was broken so you couldn't close it, which wasn't
31:39
a big deal because it was quite dark at night.
31:42
The big deal, though, was that that was the curtain in the
31:44
master bedroom, and the window was exactly where the sun went
31:49
up at 5:00 AM. So at 5:00 AM you have direct
31:52
sun shining straight into your eyes, which is something that
31:55
tells me that property manager or the owner has not stayed here
32:00
ever, because if they had, they would have woken up at 5:00 AM.
32:04
And that's not nice if you're travelling.
32:07
Great tip, stay at your rental, understand the guest experience
32:11
that you are actually delivering.
32:14
What if somebody comes to you and says, Marcus, I really need
32:17
to get my property on the first page of Airbnb?
32:21
How do I do it? I would ask why you got you got
32:31
3 metrics that that matters. One of them is ADR as the
32:37
average daily rate. That one you should look at from
32:41
the perspective of what else could this money buy.
32:44
So if you're renting out a place and you're making 200 per rent
32:48
at night, then what else do you get for 200?
32:50
What kind of hotel do you get for 200?
32:52
What about the other Airbnb's? What do they make?
32:55
The other thing you got to play around with is occupancy rate.
32:58
That means out of 31 days in a month, how many days are rented
33:01
out? And when you multiply those two
33:03
together, you you get Rev par, which is revenue per available
33:09
room. That's a term from the hotel
33:11
industry that's quite a bit per available room and not house or
33:16
home. But I would say which of these
33:21
three metrics are you trying to improve?
33:24
Because those are also very different.
33:26
And for example, ADR is a very relevant metric when you want a
33:31
property to make more money than everyone else.
33:33
Let's say it's a certain type of property like a three bedroom
33:38
house and everyone else is renting for 200.
33:41
There are things you can do to increase that to 300 a night,
33:48
but it might require substantial investments and sacrifices to
33:52
get to that. But still there is that what
33:55
you're trying to do that may or may not end result in you ending
34:00
up on the first page of Airbnb. So I would, yeah, I would just
34:04
start with what is the problem you're trying to solve.
34:08
Now if your occupancy is already at 95% then you're asking the
34:13
wrong question because then you don't need more bookings.
34:17
What you need to figure out is what could you do to improve
34:20
your business. My guess would be increase your
34:23
prices. Because you're renting out 95%,
34:27
there's not much left for those expensive last minute bookings
34:31
or event time booking. 100%, yeah.
34:35
If you're at 95% or above, yeah, charge more.
34:38
You're probably too cheap. In terms of AII mean, how do you
34:43
think property managers should be utilizing AI and then follow
34:48
up after that will be how do you think AI is going to upend our
34:52
industry? Well, a lot of the challenges
34:57
that property managers have to face day-to-day are not actually
35:01
related to automations or software.
35:03
They're actually related to very physical things.
35:06
And AI can be incredibly helpful.
35:11
So for for example, let's say you you're taking over a new
35:14
property and you find out that things are not working or you
35:18
want to do a house manual. Like how do you turn on the
35:21
shower? How do you turn on the TV?
35:22
How does the fridge work? How does the dishwasher work?
35:25
Just take a picture of it, send it to Gemini or ChatGPT.
35:28
We'll tell you exactly how it works and it it's when something
35:32
is broken, ask what are the different type of options like a
35:36
fix, because the default is always Oh yeah, let's replace it
35:39
and then that's expensive takes a long time and if you got guest
35:43
booked, it's not nice to to hear Oh yeah, the dishwasher's
35:46
broken, but we'll get one in two weeks.
35:48
So sorry you're only staying 10 days.
35:51
That's not what you want to hear, but it might be a little
35:53
trick. So that's where I say start with
35:57
that edit situation that you come up with before.
36:01
Oh, no, there's no hot water. Again, we'll call in, call in
36:04
the the hot water experts, whatever they're called.
36:08
Yeah. But instead of doing what you
36:10
normally do, go and ask an AI model.
36:13
Sometimes they're terribly wrong, don't follow their
36:15
advice, but sometimes they come up with ideas that you never
36:18
thought of. You might have been doing it the
36:20
hard way, and there might actually be an easy way.
36:22
So right now we're at the stage where this type of expertise is
36:28
getting really, really good on the LLMS.
36:32
So start using those or if you're recruiting or you have a
36:36
management decision to make, ask it how should I?
36:41
What are the pros and cons of this decision?
36:45
100 percent, 100%, yeah. Just use it.
36:47
Just try it, try it out. Ask you some questions.
36:50
And where do you think AI is going to lead this industry?
36:55
And I mean, maybe the world generally?
36:57
How are things going to change over the next few years, do you
36:59
think? I think it will change the world
37:02
of short term rentals dramatically because AI isn't
37:09
currently utilized to drive demand.
37:12
Basically all the models today. They reinforce what you already
37:18
believe, which is a bit bad because you end up living in a
37:20
bubble if you ask it for stuff. Hey, can you recommend a
37:23
restaurant? Eventually we'll just recommend
37:25
restaurants that things are good for you, but not necessarily
37:28
restaurants that everyone else thinks are good and you want
37:31
actually restaurants that other people also think are good.
37:34
But but it will it will move in that direction where it starts
37:38
actually recommending things. And as consumers, that's that's
37:43
sometimes what we want. Sometimes we have a problem
37:46
like, Hey, there's ATV missing. I want the TV, which TV should I
37:50
buy? And the solution is probably to
37:53
buy a certain TV. That's a very tangible solution,
37:59
but AI will start solving these problems at an increasing rate.
38:04
What that means for making travel plans is that consumers
38:08
will get used to the idea that they want to ask specifically
38:12
what would, what is the best Airbnb I can find in in this
38:16
location for that week. I don't think that's how it's
38:19
going to work. Instead, there will be people
38:21
who say, hey, here's our family. Our plans for the summer are
38:26
that we're going to spend 2 weeks in some location that's
38:30
within a six hour flight. Now here's three holidays that
38:34
we did enjoy from before and then list those and here's 2
38:38
holidays that we didn't enjoy. And here are the reasons.
38:40
What's the new location we can go to and what would guarantee
38:43
that we have a good experience? And when people start asking
38:47
questions like that and they already are today because they
38:50
know if they ask should I go to Sardinia, then every AI model
38:54
will say, yeah, you should have a great, you will have a great
38:57
time because AI always says that.
38:59
I mean, if you ask it for fitness advice, hey, if I do
39:02
this, will I lose weight? Like if I walk more steps, it
39:07
will always tell you, yes, it will tell you exactly what you
39:09
want to hear. But if you ask, you know, OK,
39:13
where should I go on? On a family vacation?
39:16
That's when we'll start seeing a difference.
39:18
So social media is a good example where suddenly small
39:22
places like Santorini in Greece suddenly got massively popular.
39:26
And I think that's exactly what's going to happen with AI
39:28
here. And it will also have a way of
39:30
leveling out a lot of the tourism related problems.
39:34
Because one of the things, ironically, that tourists,
39:37
including myself, don't like is over tourism.
39:40
There's nothing worse than being in high season somewhere where
39:44
it's hot, all the good restaurants are closed, but the
39:46
terrible restaurants are open, but they're ridiculously
39:49
overpriced and you're just fighting for breathing room with
39:53
other tourists. Yeah, that's what tourists don't
39:56
want. But there's an easy solution.
39:58
You can go to AI and ask, tell me a spot that's not
40:00
overcrowded. Where should I go?
40:02
So I expect, for example, that that Scotland, Ireland,
40:07
Scandinavia, Poland, Germany, the Baltics will will see a lot
40:14
increase tourism if we talk just about Europe.
40:18
Very interesting. Back to the running then.
40:22
What's a lesson from running marathons that has genuinely
40:28
changed how you approach your leadership at Hostaway?
40:33
I think I, I read a book are called What I talk about when I
40:39
talk about running, and it was, it was about a guy who runs
40:43
marathons for, for a living. And then he, he goes and talks
40:46
about it to people who want to pay him to talk about it.
40:50
It's quite, quite a funny setup. But but he, he said two things
40:55
that that really changed the way I think about the world.
40:58
One is he said nobody ever wakes up in the morning and think I'm
41:05
going to go for a run. It's going to be great.
41:08
No, every morning you wake up and you think, I did promise
41:12
myself I was going to go for a run, but I'll just have a coffee
41:16
and lie in bed instead. That's what going to work is
41:19
like. Nobody wakes up thinking, oh,
41:21
this is the most exciting thing ever to happen.
41:25
No, but then you do it and you get the results and you get the
41:27
outcome. The, the other thing I learned
41:30
from that book is that the, the pain is inevitable.
41:34
So it's you shouldn't aim to run so that you don't have any pain.
41:39
It's more running and learning how to manage the pain.
41:45
And I think the same goes very much for businesses.
41:48
If, if there is no pain, that means that you're just standing
41:52
still. If nothing breaks, if nothing
41:54
fails, you're doing it wrong. You need to push as hard until
41:59
things start breaking, and that's not a bad thing.
42:03
You need to learn how how to react, what to do when things
42:06
break. You shouldn't push so hard that
42:08
everyone burns out and the business crashes and burns, but
42:12
you should constantly be pushing so hard that you break these
42:15
little things so that you can find out are you?
42:18
Are you getting close enough to the sub?
42:21
Exactly, it's like like going to the gym, isn't it?
42:23
And if you want a bulk up and stuff, you've got to break your
42:26
muscles before they they start growing very similar for for the
42:30
business side of things as well. Finally, then Marcus, what's
42:34
What's the next marathon on your calendar?
42:36
And what's the next marathon for host away?
42:40
I think for for me, I'm going to take a taxi across the bridge
42:44
and do Miami. It's it's a challenging,
42:50
challenging running city. The incredible heat, there's no
42:53
shade. Most buildings are very low.
42:56
There's a cluster of skyscrapers downtown.
42:58
There's no water fountains. There's plenty of very, very
43:02
aggressive dogs. That's my pet peeve when running
43:05
is the people who keep, they have a fence that's this high
43:09
and then a massive dog in their front yard.
43:12
And when they run by, they don't care if you walk or drive, but
43:16
if you run, they're going to start barking and they'll jump
43:19
up. But sometimes they're out on the
43:20
street. It's quite scary.
43:22
So that's that's a massive challenge for me.
43:25
Next marathon for Host Away, I think it will be all related to
43:30
AI. I think we're going to be the
43:32
one to crack crack this game and see what AI can do for property
43:37
managers. And we're experimenting a lot
43:41
right now. Interesting times, Marcus, it's
43:44
been a real pleasure. Thanks for joining us on the
43:47
Host Planet podcast. Thank you very much for having
43:50
me. Great to chat to Marcus Radar
43:51
there from host away. I hope you found that episode
43:55
enlightening. That's just about it for today's
43:57
show. Remember, this podcast is
43:58
brought to you in collaboration with House Philly, which is
44:01
trusted by short term rental professionals across the globe.
44:05
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44:36
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44:38
Until next time, happy hosting.