Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / How to Scale a Luxury Holiday Let Business

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How to Scale a Luxury Holiday Let Business · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

0:00
Welcome to the House Planet Playbook, your go to guide for
0:03
mastering short term rentals. In this special series, we're
0:07
sitting down with 30 of the world's top.
0:09
Property managers to uncover. What really drives success in
0:13
the vacation rental industry? You'll hear their stories, learn
0:16
the key lessons they've picked up along the way, and discover
0:19
the game changing tech. They use to deliver.
0:22
Five star guest experiences if you're serious about growing
0:26
your STR. Business, you're in the.
0:28
Right place. We've also developed an ebook
0:31
featuring the stories of every manager in this series, and you
0:34
can download it for free. Head to House Planet dot Club to
0:38
find out more. In today's episode, we're
0:40
chatting to James Cornwell from Curated Property.
0:43
Stand by for a deep dive into the luxury sector, delivering a
0:47
personalized guest experience. And dealing with work life
0:51
balance. This special series is brought
0:58
to. You by Hostplanet and.
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Hospitable, the smart AI powered property management software
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trusted by hosts worldwide. With Hospitable, you can
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automate guest messaging, sync calendars across platforms and
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manage your rentals with ease, all from one powerful, easy to
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use platform. If you're keen to run your short
1:17
term rental on autopilot, try Hospitable today.
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Visit hospitable.com/hostplanet to see how the platform can save
1:26
you time, reduce stress, and maximize.
1:29
Your earnings, James. Thank you for being part of the
1:31
Host Planet Playbook. Let's start.
1:33
With you, what's the name of your company?
1:35
Where are you located and how many?
1:37
Rentals do you manage? Hello, name of the company's
1:41
curated property and we manage just over 80 properties
1:46
predominantly located in London and Bath are our 2 core markets.
1:51
And we've started bringing on properties around the UK under a
1:54
slightly different model. I moved to Portugal last year so
1:58
we've just set up a new office in Portugal and I'm currently in
2:02
Brazil visiting family, so bit of everywhere.
2:08
We're ticking off plenty of countries and tell us how you
2:10
got started in the STR space. How how long have you got and
2:16
how far do you want to be back? I've always been brought up
2:19
around property. My family property developer has
2:22
always been brought up around property and I worked as an
2:27
estate agent for about 4 1/2 years straight out of uni and
2:31
then pivoted and went into private aviation and then set up
2:37
a company with family about 7 years ago.
2:41
And business and family don't always mix particularly well.
2:45
So about 3 1/2 four years ago I set up created property
2:51
alongside my Co founder Tom. OK, so tell us about the
2:56
journey. Then and what makes curated
2:58
property? Stand out among the competition.
3:02
Very good question. Really it's customer service.
3:06
I, I, I think that a, a lot of people talk a good, a good game.
3:11
We've coined the, the phrase high tech, high touch.
3:14
So it's balancing tech the, the best technology in class
3:19
alongside our customer service. I think once you start to grow
3:23
too big, the customer service seems to dwindle somewhat and
3:28
it's actually one of the hardest things we're facing at the
3:30
moment. It's growing a portfolio whilst
3:32
retaining that high level of customer service and making sure
3:36
that it's not 100% founder LED. Obviously from a an acquisitions
3:44
perspective and a sustainable kind of company perspective, it
3:48
can't be founder LED forever. So yeah, we're trying to put in
3:52
systems and automations and workflows in place to make sure
3:57
that it's, yeah, that it works. Tell us what are the?
4:01
Main challenges and opportunities in the markets
4:05
where you're active. The main challenges at the
4:09
moment are the updated fire risk assessments.
4:13
We have recently got very close to signing a handful of four and
4:20
five and six bedroom houses in the heart of Bath, which are
4:24
absolutely breathtaking. But these are Grade 1 and Grade
4:27
2 listed properties. So we have to get consent to
4:33
make any amendments inside the properties and the fire risk
4:39
assessment and the planning don't kind of connect.
4:44
There's a bit of friction between those two entities.
4:48
So we've had numerous situations recently where a client is super
4:52
interested in, in renting their property out.
4:54
Their council tax has been doubled.
4:56
So they want to receive, you know, move over to business
5:00
rates and, and, and rent it out. A couple of the properties in
5:04
question, they've moved to Singapore and the property is
5:09
sitting there completely empty, not generating a penny.
5:13
But when we go to them and say, right, you need to spend 2030
5:18
grand, you know, upgrading the property to adhere with the
5:22
updated fire risk assessments, not even just from a cost
5:27
perspective, but more from an aesthetic perspective and the
5:31
grade one and two listed angle, they're not willing to do that.
5:35
So we've actually lost a few properties in our current
5:39
portfolio, but also lost a few potential future properties
5:43
because of that. So I would say that that's one
5:46
of the most frustrating things in the immediate future within,
5:51
you know, what I can kind of immediately touch outside of
5:56
that. I mean, I think Pask did a
5:59
little coffee coaster thing with every single issue and bit of
6:06
government legislation that's coming into play over the next
6:09
kind of last year and the next couple of years.
6:12
And I mean, put your hand in a bucket and pick one.
6:16
High interest rates, double council.
6:18
I mean, I can list them, but I think most viewers would
6:22
understand. Pick, pick one registration
6:25
scheme planning, C5 planning. I mean, the list is, is, is is
6:30
endless. And I think it's that
6:32
uncertainty that I'm really keen on just moving past and moving
6:35
forward with. So I can, you know, I want to
6:38
hire more people. I want to grow my business.
6:40
But until all this legislation firms up, I'm in a point right
6:45
now that I'm just holding fire on investing money and employing
6:50
people because I'm uncertain about what the future holds.
6:56
Yeah. What do you think the industry
6:59
needs to do to fight back? What does the industry need to
7:04
do well? Getting rid of Labour for a
7:06
start would in my opinion be a good good start.
7:09
But that being said Conservatives were the one that
7:11
were implementing a lot of these policies in the 1st place.
7:15
I think government over the last 15 years have been all
7:18
government have been pretty pretty pretty rubbish and
7:22
putting imposing a lot of red tape.
7:25
I think we need to get rid of the red tape.
7:28
Implement A sensible registration scheme, look at the
7:32
data, look at the facts and then move the industry forward.
7:37
You spoke before there about scaling and when you add
7:41
properties the challenge is to keep the customer service as
7:44
good. Do you think there's a sweet
7:46
spot? In the number of properties that
7:48
you can manage as a relatively small, medium sized business and
7:52
and what do you think that sweet spot is?
7:54
12:00 To be honest, I, I, we, we've coined the phrase high
8:03
tech, high touch. And the reason why we've, we've
8:05
kind of coined that is because when I first started in this
8:07
industry and bear in mind my background is high end property
8:12
and private aviation. Those two parts, you have to
8:15
bring the highest level of, of customer service to those two
8:21
job roles. Otherwise you, you, you lose
8:24
your clients. I completely forgot the question
8:28
though, sorry. Is there a sweet spot in
8:33
relation to the number of properties that you can manage
8:36
and still keep the customer service very high?
8:43
Yeah. So it's, it's going to be, it's
8:44
going to be 12 and, and looking at the customer, customer
8:48
service, what I've using my background in private aviation
8:52
and, and, and, and, and property.
8:54
What I realized was when I first entered this industry, there was
8:57
two types of companies, the ones that are super high tech focus,
9:01
you know, the, the big boys like Sykes that are using all sorts
9:04
of AI and amazing PMS integrations.
9:07
And they're doing, you know, they've got the budget, they've
9:09
got the funding, they're using, you know, amazing technology.
9:12
Good on them. And then you've got the more
9:16
boutique small agents that are typically sub kind of 20 or 50
9:21
units and they hover around those numbers and they hover
9:25
around those numbers because they don't have great
9:28
technology, they don't have the infrastructure that they need to
9:31
continue growing whilst retaining that high level of
9:34
customer service. So I think what we what I would
9:37
like to think is kind of figured out that sweet spot of
9:40
leveraging technology to the best of our ability and using
9:45
similar tech to the big boys, but what whilst also ensuring
9:49
that we are still a boutique agency.
9:52
I'm in a fortunate position that a lot of our properties are high
9:56
end properties. So even looking at some of our
9:59
largest competitors in the UK, they kind of cap out around 3:50
10:05
to 5:00, 500 properties at that high end level.
10:09
And if you want to do more than that, then you start to lower
10:12
the quality of properties that you're coming on.
10:14
So I'm actually OK being in terms of unit size smaller, but
10:20
specializing and doubling down in the high end, high end arena.
10:24
And also during a cost of living crisis, what we've seen is a lot
10:28
of our smaller units are struggling, but the big ones are
10:31
not. And that's typical of any sort
10:33
of financial crisis. You know, the, the, the, the
10:35
rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
10:38
It's, it's horrible. But having luxury properties I
10:43
think helps a little bit and it and it helps us weather that
10:46
storm a little bit better. What are your top?
10:49
Tips for keeping owners happy. So the first thing that came to
10:57
mind was me annoyingly having to pick up the phone, go out for
11:05
dinners, have a few beers. It really is that level.
11:09
And, and, and and WhatsApp, you know, I, I hate the thing I
11:13
really, really do. But having our owners being able
11:17
to contact both myself, head of OPS, Co founder on WhatsApp,
11:23
kind of at any time, I think is, is probably quite important for
11:29
a lot of our owners. We're trying to move away from
11:32
that a little bit. We're trying to put in systems
11:35
in place where it's not just jerk reactions and instant
11:41
responses at 11:00 PM at night. But the one thing that I've
11:45
learned from working in private aviation is that if you don't
11:50
respond, high net worth individuals will drop you like a
11:53
hot potato to the next best thing.
11:56
And that's just the honest, brutal truth of it.
11:59
So we can try as much as we like systemizing and pushing owners
12:04
to not call us or what's up us late at night or on Sunday
12:08
mornings. Sunday mornings is always the
12:11
fun one. And we can try and push back and
12:14
put some boundaries in place. But we can't forget that this is
12:17
still hospitality and we're dealing with high net worth
12:20
individuals and they're used to a certain level of quality and
12:24
if we don't provide that quality, you know, they'll drop
12:27
us like a hot potato. Yeah, we can try, but whilst
12:32
acknowledging that we need to, we need to be flexible with
12:37
these owners. Yeah.
12:38
These are owners who expect to be able to speak to the guy in
12:41
charge straight away, not just get through to Ava or maybe
12:45
somebody else in the business. In terms of the guest
12:49
experience, how do you make sure that you deliver a great guest
12:53
experience? Great guest experience starts
12:57
from starts from the first words that you respond to any inquiry
13:02
with. So our customer service team
13:04
have great training on how to respond to owner, how to respond
13:11
to guests. I, I was, I brought it up last
13:14
week in in in the team meeting and I never thought I'd hear
13:17
myself saying this, but saying I haven't received any expenses
13:20
this month. So all of my team have free
13:23
reign to spend anywhere from £50 to 100 lbs without asking or
13:28
talking about it to try and wow guests.
13:31
And that's a bottle of champagne.
13:33
And that's, I know we're not supposed to do champagne, but
13:35
alcohol, but a gift of sorts. And I had zero expenses.
13:42
And I complained to the guest comms team saying, guys, what's
13:46
going on? Like, are you saying that in the
13:48
month of June, nobody had a birthday or celebration or an
13:51
anniversary or some special occasion going on?
13:54
And yeah, so had a, had a, had a bit of a bit, bit of a go saying
13:59
spend more money on some of our guests.
14:01
We need to be wowing them. And I was reading on LinkedIn a
14:05
very a cool comment that I saw that I think I'm going to
14:11
implement, which is a manager saying to a guest, if I had a
14:18
magic wand right now, what would I do to improve your stay during
14:25
the stay? And I thought that's actually,
14:28
it's a bit cheesy, bit American, but actually I really loved
14:32
that. So I think I'm going to start
14:34
doing that with some of our, you know, top you can't do with
14:37
every single property. And also, you know, some guests
14:41
will then write you a long list of 15 things that they want.
14:45
But you know, all feedbacks, good feedback, but it's peak
14:48
season. We've got 80 properties.
14:50
There's only so much we can take.
14:52
But yeah, in short, I think I'm going to start doing that and
14:55
kind of one in five responses, or at least for our top 20
14:59
properties, ask every guest if, if we had a magic wand, what
15:03
could we do to improve your stay.
15:06
I think the other thing is the guest journey has to be seamless
15:10
and it's still quite archaic in a lot of the we use guests as
15:13
our PMS, which we love. I still think they're market
15:16
leaders at the moment, but we use Enzo Connect with for our
15:22
boarding pass so we can upsell, we can offer the guests
15:26
experiences and I've built personally experiences, not just
15:30
a sightseeing bus tour, but it's a private sauna with ice baths
15:34
on a farm overlooking the Cotswolds.
15:37
You can't find it on Google. I mean, you can if you search
15:39
hard enough, but these are the unique small experiences that
15:45
that that I know that my owners know that my team knows about
15:49
that we want to share with guests rather than just sending
15:52
them a generic book, some random thing off this website and we'll
15:57
take a 2% Commission. Great.
16:00
So all the experiences, while a lot of the experiences I've
16:05
manually uploaded myself to ensure that guests really, yeah,
16:10
get, get, get enjoy their time. And it's a unique experience.
16:14
It's it's a curated experience. There we go.
16:17
It's not just a generic one. A curated experience from
16:20
curated property and do you find if you're hosting high end
16:25
guests, which we imagine you are in the, in the properties that
16:28
you've got in your portfolio, are they more likely to take up
16:31
these kind of off the beaten track experiences when it, when
16:35
it comes to upselling? Yeah, they are.
16:38
I mean, yeah, they are. And the word upselling is being
16:41
thrown around a lot at the moment.
16:43
And to be honest with you from from our side, we offer a lot of
16:47
upsells and really cool experiences.
16:51
It's hard to integrate these experiences where you, unless
16:56
it's a corporate one, but some farmer that's got an amazing
17:01
sauna and ice baths, he doesn't have the technology to properly
17:04
integrate to track where the bookings are coming from.
17:07
I would rather just help him out and you know, offer our guests.
17:10
It's added value for us. I guess if our guests have a
17:12
good time, they're going, they're going to enjoy the
17:15
property better and they're hopefully going to come back.
17:18
We don't really generate much doing upsells to be honest.
17:22
I know some people do, but we we don't and we're OK with that
17:27
because we want to keep it curated.
17:29
And I don't want to just put a load of junk on Enzo Connect
17:33
because it, you know, you get paid for it.
17:36
That's not really what we're about.
17:38
Yeah. I hear a lot of property
17:39
managers especially in the high end space saying we just offer
17:42
extra opportunities to improve the guest experience, not
17:45
necessarily to to improve the bottom line, which which does
17:48
make a lot of sense. What's your biggest lesson
17:52
learned since starting the business?
17:57
The irony of me moving from private aviation into the STR
18:02
world for a better quality of life is not lost on me.
18:07
You are working all hours under the sun.
18:12
There is no I'm currently in Brazil, I'm on holiday and I've,
18:16
you know, I've been working every, every single day.
18:19
Maybe I've got a problem, maybe I'm addicted to work.
18:22
That's probably another part of it, but you can't really switch
18:26
off. And I think that's hard for me.
18:29
It's OK. It's my company.
18:30
I'm growing something great. But to, to, you know, to, to, to
18:34
look after the team is quite hard because sometimes you do
18:37
need people to work a little bit extra out of hours and pick
18:40
stuff up. But the biggest learning I would
18:44
say is an accountant. Get a good accountant.
18:47
They can mess things up so badly.
18:50
We had one that messed things up and you know, it was, it was a
18:54
massive pain to, to kind of fix. And when you're working at
18:59
scale, one small problem across a portfolio, properties can can
19:04
suddenly become a very big problem.
19:06
Luckily I caught it after about 3 months because I kind of
19:09
oversee everything and I'm like, that doesn't make sense.
19:14
And Needless to say, let him go very quickly and then found an
19:17
absolute superstar. But yeah, making sure financial
19:22
hygiene in this game is absolutely key.
19:27
And I think if you know Simon Lehman, he often does talks
19:31
around this at the, you know, the short let short stay summit
19:37
and, and your conference as well where he talks about financial
19:44
hygiene. And I think that that's, that's,
19:48
that's that's key. I, I've spoken to so many
19:51
competitors, smaller scale, kind of sub 50, and they're telling
19:54
me how they're running their books, especially things around
19:58
VAT and things like that. And I'm like, you're not doing
20:01
it right and you know, you're essentially jeopardising your
20:03
business. So yeah, making sure you've got
20:06
good financial hygiene is absolutely key in this industry.
20:11
Yeah. I guess one of the challenges is
20:13
you've got a lot of money coming in, but yours is a relatively
20:18
small percentage of that cash. You're taking the Commission.
20:22
So how important is it as a property manager when you've got
20:24
this massive revenue not to get carried away?
20:28
That's a very good, very good point.
20:30
So I mean, first of all, there are plenty of Cowboys and idiots
20:35
out there in this industry that are spending money that's not
20:38
there. As a company, we ring fence all
20:40
of our client funds and then we take our fee from that.
20:44
So we work similar to an estate agent how an estate agent would,
20:48
but that's not enforced, that's voluntary.
20:50
And I think that a lot of people enter this game are running cash
20:53
flow negative businesses. And that's why I often do check
20:57
on Companies House, you know, competitors and other people
21:00
running their businesses just because I think it's interesting
21:03
to see where you are and to, you know, people say you shouldn't
21:07
compare, but actually it's quite useful to compare and see where
21:11
other companies are and what they're doing and the amount of
21:14
times I see kind of negative balances.
21:16
And I'm just thinking this isn't going to end well.
21:19
So yeah, cash flow positivity is key and it's one of our key
21:24
KPI's that we have internally on our management report is looking
21:30
at financial hygiene. And you mentioned something else
21:34
as before, which I'm sure will resonate with a lot of property
21:38
managers, especially people leading the companies.
21:40
They feel like they don't have any time because they're on call
21:44
forever. You've obviously got young
21:46
family as well, and I'm sure that's the same for a lot of
21:48
other people out there. How do you ensure your work life
21:51
balance? Or is there just not really a
21:53
work life balance? It's a battle that I've faced
21:59
for years now. I don't think I've ever
22:02
succeeded work life balance. I think in this industry is very
22:08
hard to come across. I think we are living almost in
22:16
a in a world now that people keep talking about work life
22:19
balance. And if I'm being completely
22:21
honest, if you want to grow a successful, profitable company
22:26
and potentially have an exit 1 day, you've got to sacrifice
22:30
something. And that sacrifice often is the
22:32
work life balance. There is no way of easily,
22:36
despite what you see on Instagram and LinkedIn, all
22:39
these people driving around in Lamborghinis, you know, it's,
22:42
it's all, it's all BS, it's all smoke and mirrors, most of it.
22:46
And you've got to make sacrifices.
22:49
I try and mitigate those sacrifices, especially around my
22:52
kids, as much as humanly possible.
22:57
I still do most pickups, most drop offs, I'm still very
23:00
present, but I just try and maximize my time during the day
23:04
and then I work into the evenings as well.
23:07
So I'm kind of on from 6/7 until 1011.
23:12
But in between that I make sure that I have time for my kids and
23:15
I'm doing stuff and I'm fully present.
23:17
I throw my phone. Sometimes I literally throw my
23:19
phone on the bed. I'm like bugger off phone and I
23:22
just kind of ignore it for an hour or so so I can actually be
23:27
fully present. And actually what I found with
23:29
kids is that is much better being fully present for half an
23:32
hour or an hour versus being semi present and omnipresent for
23:37
2-3 hours. So they get so much more out of
23:40
it when you're fully present. So yeah, throwing my phone on
23:43
the bed and then going to play with them is pretty, pretty key.
23:46
But in terms of work life balance, I don't think it exists
23:50
in this industry or other industries.
23:52
If you want to grow and succeed in this competitive landscape
23:57
and market, you've got to sacrifice something.
24:01
Yeah. What do you love most about your
24:04
work? What do I love most about my
24:07
work? Going back to the work life
24:10
balance thing, I would say this is maybe not STR specific, but
24:15
more me specific running my own company, which is I can stop
24:21
work now and go and spend 2-3 hours with my kids if
24:24
something's happening or take them to the beach after school
24:27
or whatever it is and then come back.
24:30
Unless I have really important specific meetings, obviously
24:33
I've got to kind of, you know, adhere to those.
24:37
But if it's kind of more of the generic workload, I can pause
24:42
that workload and go off and do something.
24:44
I'm not stuck at my desk. When I was working for corporate
24:47
companies, I was stuck at my desk from 9:00 till 5.
24:50
And you know, sometimes your brain is non functional from
24:54
3:00 PM onwards. So you're literally just sitting
24:56
at your desk not working from three till 5 or you know,
25:02
productivity levels are minimal and then you're not, you know,
25:07
you need to re energize sometimes.
25:09
And that's what I found in this industry and running my own
25:11
company is work comes like waves.
25:16
When a wave comes, when a good wave comes, you've just got to
25:18
ride it. And if that means that you've
25:20
got to work for 4-5 days until 11/12, 1:00 in the morning
25:24
because you've got contracts coming in or issues or, or
25:27
growth plans or you're working on an exciting project, roll
25:30
with it. Do it, but when the wave stops
25:33
and you have a lull in the waves, then embrace that time.
25:37
Stop trying to catch a wave that doesn't exist because then
25:40
you'll just burn out. And this is coming from a guy
25:43
that's almost on perpetual burnout cycles.
25:45
So but I try and take my foot off the accelerator before I get
25:49
to that stage, which I'm learning to do a bit better now.
25:53
It makes a lot of sense. OK then, James, we've got a few
25:57
quick fire questions or more quick fire.
26:00
Which PMS do you use? You haven't mentioned this
26:02
already. Guesty.
26:05
Which dynamic pricing? Tool do you use?
26:08
Wheelhouse the best in class. Which piece of tech?
26:13
Couldn't you live without? I mean it would it would it
26:17
would have to be guesty. Ideally pets.
26:22
Yes or no? Yes, but in brackets subject to
26:29
the property. Same.
26:32
Question with hot tubs. Again, yes, but in brackets
26:40
subject to the property and if it's rural, trying to get a
26:43
cleaning team at a cost effective rate to go to a rural
26:47
property and change after every single changeover and treat it
26:52
can often be prohibitive, cost prohibitive versus.
26:55
But but yeah, if you've got a cleaning team that's already on
26:58
site and has Jacuzzi training, great.
27:01
But if it's rural, remote and you need to pay somebody a
27:03
couple of £100 or you know, 506070, whatever it is, every
27:07
single changeover in time, it's probably not worth it if it's a
27:11
return on investment that you're looking for.
27:13
Yeah, that's the thing. Come boils down to the the
27:15
cleaning often. Ideally self checking.
27:18
Or a personal welcome. Always personal welcome with us.
27:22
All of our properties apart from the one beds, they're self
27:24
checking. Telephone call or an AI
27:28
response? Oh, don't get me started.
27:30
Telephone call 110% and we're doubling down on that.
27:34
We, we use AI to the best of our ability, but you need to have
27:38
you need to we're at hospitality and if you look at any posh
27:42
hotel jet company, they're never going to be AI automated.
27:46
And as soon as they do, they're going to start losing business.
27:48
High net worth individuals want Sorry sorry I'm going off on one
27:52
but one word answers. That's fine.
27:55
Absolutely fine. Your most memorable hosting
27:59
moment. My most memorable hosting
28:05
moment, I'll say we we had a penthouse in London a few years
28:10
back and we had a Hollywood director come to stay.
28:15
And Needless to say, I personally did the meet and
28:18
greet there, you know, selfless as I am.
28:21
And he ended up inviting me to the a private premier in in a
28:28
hotel cinema and then maybe did the whole big, you know,
28:31
Leicester Square thing. But it was a private private
28:34
showing and met some incredible people, had some amazing
28:39
conversations and felt like I was part of the 1% until I left
28:44
the room again and came back to reality.
28:48
Better to have experienced the 1% once than you know all the
28:51
rest of it. As that saying goes.
28:53
OK then shout out time. Is there an individual in the
28:56
industry who's helped you that you'd like to give a shout out
28:58
to? Yeah, there's, there's a few
29:02
people really. I would say without a shadow of
29:05
a doubt, Alastair Handy side at PASC is the biggest embodiment
29:11
of natural passion towards fighting our cause.
29:18
And I think that Graham Donahue as well becoming chair, I think
29:25
of the STA and trying to get those two because it always felt
29:30
like those two were not kind of getting on so well.
29:34
So to have the STA, you know, under Graham Donahue input and,
29:40
and having Pask and both of them working a bit Better Together is
29:44
only going to cement the power of working together to try and
29:49
get our way and, and try and lobby and try and influence some
29:53
of the legislation that's coming in rather than different people
29:56
going off in different, different directions.
29:58
So I would say excited and somewhat relieved to see Graham
30:04
Donahue become chair of the STA. I don't know why I feel
30:07
relieved, but just see such a Titan of industry.
30:12
And then obviously Alistair at Pask, who, who, who, who just
30:16
fights that corner and also loves a beer, which is also very
30:19
nice. So going for a beer with, with,
30:22
with, with, with, with him after a show and chatting is, is
30:26
really nice. And I, I, I've got to say one
30:28
more person that's is, is, is Rudy who, who runs Mavericks.
30:35
And obviously he's got his own company in Tel Aviv.
30:38
He has volunteered and helped so much information and connected
30:44
so many people and frankly hasn't asked and you know, is
30:49
purely from a, you know, happy to connect interesting people
30:52
with interesting people. So yeah, you asked for one
30:55
people, one person. I think I gave you 3.
30:59
Three excellent shout outs there and Graham actually is also part
31:03
of the series and I interviewed him recently and yeah, brilliant
31:07
episode about lots, lots of AI talk in in that one.
31:11
OK, then question to finish the. Ultimate goal for your business.
31:16
To become market leaders in the UK and beyond.
31:21
I think really if we can get to around 500 properties globally
31:26
where we start to reduce the smaller units that we haven't
31:30
really doubled down on the best of the best, that is.
31:35
That is the dream. We're currently sitting at 80,
31:38
so nowhere near that figure yet, but we've just started getting
31:42
some really good traction with some ad campaigns and a new
31:46
market here, and it's starting to really pick up.
31:49
So yeah, I think between 350 and 500, that's where all of our top
31:55
competitors are, and it seems to cap off at that amount at the
31:58
high end level. I don't think you can really go
32:01
above that too much if you're specializing in the high end.
32:05
So that's the dream. Superb.
32:07
I love the dream. James, thank you so much for
32:10
joining us on the podcast and for being part.
32:12
Of the Host Planet Playbook. Thank you.
32:14
Thanks so much for the invite. All right, that's it for today's
32:16
episode. My thanks to James for sharing
32:19
his journey and for being. Part of the host.
32:21
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