Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / Graham Donoghue on AI, Acquisitions & the Future of Short-Term Rentals

Transcript

Graham Donoghue on AI, Acquisitions & the Future of Short-Term Rentals · 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 property managers to
• 0:10
  uncover what really drives success in the vacation rental
• 0:14
  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 five star guest
• 0:23
  experiences. If you're serious about growing
• 0:26
  your STR. Business.
• 0:28
  You're in the right place. We've also developed an e-book
• 0:31
  featuring the stories of every manager in this series, and you
• 0:35
  can download it for free. Head to House Planet dot Club to
• 0:39
  find out more. In today's episode, we're
• 0:41
  chatting to a man whose brand manages more than 30,000 holiday
• 0:45
  rentals across the UK. Graham Donohue is the CEO of
• 0:49
  Forge Holiday Group, which manages several major brands
• 0:52
  including Sykes Holiday Cottages.
• 0:54
  Stand by for a deep dive into AI, the secrets to scaling, and
• 0:59
  how to keep both with owners and guests happy.
• 1:07
  This special series is brought to you by House Planners and
• 1:09
  Hospitable, the smart AI powered property management software
• 1:14
  trusted by hosts worldwide. With Hospitable, you can
• 1:17
  automate guest messaging, sync calendars across platforms, and
• 1:22
  manage your rentals with ease, all from one powerful, easy to
• 1:25
  use platform. If you're keen to run your short
• 1:28
  term rentals on auto. Pilots.
• 1:30
  Try Hospitable today. Visit hospitable.com/host Planet
• 1:35
  to see how the platform can save you time, reduce stress, and
• 1:39
  maximize your earnings. Graham.
• 1:42
  Thank you for being part of the Host Planet Playbook.
• 1:44
  Let's start with you. Tell us where you're located.
• 1:48
  And how many rentals you manage? OK, well I'm in the UK very
• 1:53
  specifically I'm in the middle of the UK in the place sunny
• 1:57
  Cheshire and and we look after about 30,000 properties rough
• 2:04
  and tough. Significant number we should
• 2:07
  explain. Graham is the CEO of Forge
• 2:09
  Holiday Group and you're responsible.
• 2:12
  For a. Lot of brands in the property
• 2:14
  management space, most famously Sykes Holiday Cottages, but
• 2:18
  there's a few others as well. So I mean.
• 2:20
  And you're, you're, you're all. Over the UK, right?
• 2:23
  Yeah, yeah, from, you know, the very tip of Scotland, right the
• 2:26
  way down to the very the South cost.
• 2:28
  We have units everywhere. We're mostly the company's
• 2:31
  heritage back in 1991 was mostly in the north of the country.
• 2:35
  So we've got quite a strong presence in so the late
• 2:38
  district, Yorkshire and North Wales and Wales in general.
• 2:43
  Tell us about. The growth of Sykes Holiday
• 2:46
  Cottages and about this growth trajectory presumably from a
• 2:50
  small number of properties all the way up to 30,000, which and
• 2:53
  I think I'm right in saying you guys are the biggest in the UK.
• 2:58
  Yeah. I mean, it depends who who's
• 2:59
  counting. It depends.
• 3:01
  It depends what you're counting. But we're certainly one of the
• 3:03
  largest. So I mean, obviously the company
• 3:05
  started in 1991, you know, classic sort of a family that
• 3:10
  was a mother and son sort of enterprise scaled relatively
• 3:15
  well up until 2015. Then I think at that point they
• 3:19
  had five and a half thousand properties and then the the
• 3:24
  private equity investors came in to terrible charge the
• 3:28
  investment growth and that's when I joined as well.
• 3:30
  So we then took it from 5 1/2 thousand properties to where we
• 3:33
  are today from a balanced organic growth as well as M&A.
• 3:40
  So about 20 acquisitions we've made rough and tough, but the
• 3:45
  organic growth is still very good as well.
• 3:47
  You know, I mean on boarding anywhere between 4 and 5000
• 3:50
  properties a year organically, clearly losing some at the other
• 3:55
  side, but then the M&A coming in as well.
• 3:57
  And that obviously allowed us to scale very, very quickly and to
• 4:00
  get into parts of the UK that the business couldn't easily get
• 4:04
  into. M&A was a a good sort of a
• 4:06
  Trojan horse from that sort of from that perspective.
• 4:09
  Just talk to us about the the main challenges of going from
• 4:12
  5000 to 30,000. Sleep, I mean, I, I guess the
• 4:21
  challenge is particularly when you're doing M&A, every business
• 4:23
  is different. You have to really learn what's
• 4:27
  make these businesses special and then integrating them and
• 4:30
  then sort of trying to trying to convince the property owners to
• 4:35
  stay with us because you're just buying an annuity really.
• 4:39
  There's no physical things you're buying here.
• 4:41
  You might, might buy some property space, whatever.
• 4:45
  So, you know, relationships is really important.
• 4:48
  What was really important for us is to maintain all the staff as
• 4:51
  we acquired all the businesses because they held the
• 4:53
  relationships and also we held all the local brands and other
• 4:57
  local offices. So really just sort of a scaling
• 5:02
  using our playbook of technology, using our playbook
• 5:05
  of sort of, you know, marketing services and convincing some of
• 5:09
  these smaller businesses that were, you know, not some big
• 5:13
  Goliath that's, you know, impersonal.
• 5:17
  And we still really believe in service.
• 5:19
  We still really believe on personal touch.
• 5:21
  We still believe on relationships.
• 5:23
  So you know, that that's some of the challenges you have.
• 5:25
  But you know, scaling, scaling any businesses, you know, you
• 5:29
  know, it has its challenges as you get bigger and bigger and
• 5:33
  bigger. And I remember when I joined 180
• 5:35
  people we had and sort of I knew everybody and I prided myself on
• 5:38
  that. You know, we got to 2000 people
• 5:42
  about a year ago I think it was. And we're slightly less than
• 5:44
  that now. But you know, it gets tougher
• 5:47
  and the bigger you are to maintain that sort of a sense of
• 5:50
  small business and personal thinking in a large company.
• 5:54
  How do you? Keep the the.
• 5:56
  Local flavour when you are quite a major brand, especially when
• 6:00
  you make those acquisitions and I imagine the owners are saying,
• 6:04
  oh you know, we like dealing with the company down the road.
• 6:07
  They they know this area. And we kind of fear that you big
• 6:10
  boys come in and you don't know what we're all about.
• 6:13
  Well, I mean, the, the first thing is if you deliver more
• 6:17
  bookings and more income, it's amazing, you know what, what
• 6:23
  you'll be forgiven for. Not that we needed to be
• 6:25
  forgiven for anything because what was important was to
• 6:29
  maintain all those offices. So we have something like 40
• 6:31
  offices across the UK and you know, all that local staff that
• 6:36
  exists there. So you're used to dealing with,
• 6:38
  you know, Helen in, you know, part of Devon.
• 6:42
  Helen's still there, he's still going to speak to Helen.
• 6:45
  But also we made sure we still invested in local brands as
• 6:48
  well. So, you know, Rd. shows we'll go
• 6:51
  to like over 100 different events that we sort of a
• 6:54
  sponsor, you know, we'd still sponsor local football teams,
• 6:57
  you know, the Cricket Club, you know, and the Women's Institute,
• 7:01
  whatever it may be, you know, so there's still enough sort of a
• 7:03
  marketing locally. So the presence is still felt,
• 7:06
  you know, felt as well. And you know, we always say to
• 7:09
  our owners that, you know, we, you know, if you've got an
• 7:12
  issue, you need to speak to someone.
• 7:13
  You can come and speak to a real person or we'll come to you same
• 7:17
  day because we've got people all over the country.
• 7:19
  So that's sort of the what we maintain now.
• 7:22
  You know, it would it be easier for us to say consolidate all
• 7:25
  that, put it all under one brands probably more efficient
• 7:29
  in terms of the sort of the cost base.
• 7:33
  But I do genuinely believe we would have lost a lot of the
• 7:35
  supply because that was important because what we've
• 7:38
  discovered and we've learned over the years, our average is
• 7:42
  1.3 properties per owner. You know, we're not dealing
• 7:46
  with, you know, professional super horse hero with like lots
• 7:50
  and lots of sort of properties. You know, these are lifestyle
• 7:54
  relationships are really important.
• 7:57
  Half of our owners measure owners measures on revenue.
• 8:00
  The other half just measure on like, you know, haven't got a
• 8:02
  number of bookings. And so we had to be really quite
• 8:04
  sympathetic to what's important to the owners.
• 8:06
  Plus remember you know, we will do cleaning, laundry, key
• 8:10
  services, maintenance, all that stuff is really quite important
• 8:13
  to hold onto the properties and you need to have a local
• 8:16
  presence. If you've got a plumber or you
• 8:18
  need something, then you know, we try and facilitate through a
• 8:22
  network of, you know, hundreds of relationships or if we've got
• 8:26
  enough properties in an area, we'll deliver that service
• 8:28
  ourselves. You've had the acquisition side
• 8:31
  of things, but you've also grown organic organically so.
• 8:35
  Why do people keep? Joining Sykes, what are your
• 8:39
  unique selling points? Why do you stand out in the
• 8:41
  market? Genuinely, I'd say we do what we
• 8:44
  say. So when we give income proposals
• 8:47
  and, you know, we commit to delivering, you know, we obsess
• 8:50
  over delivering to that proposal, you know, and it is
• 8:55
  quite difficult because there's a lot of people out there who'll
• 8:57
  sort of say one thing and don't necessarily deliver.
• 9:00
  For us it's about being able to back ourselves and prove through
• 9:04
  the history and the legacy that actually if we're saying this
• 9:07
  property is going to deliver this number of bookings, we will
• 9:10
  do all we can to make sure we we deliver that on average about
• 9:14
  90% of the income pose we give, we deliver to that sort of
• 9:17
  number. So first of all, it's like doing
• 9:19
  what you say. Secondly, it's like, you know,
• 9:22
  we're a large scale sort of a business.
• 9:24
  So we have huge, a huge amount of presence, huge amount of
• 9:27
  buying power, huge amount of economies of scale.
• 9:29
  And we have a lot of human capital that can sort of assist
• 9:33
  if you want to, you know, if you're dealing with regulation,
• 9:36
  you want to know about like a new tax regime, we'll have
• 9:38
  someone who know about it. Or if you feel that we should be
• 9:41
  lobbying on your behalf in local community, then we can pick that
• 9:45
  up and we can sort of run with it as well.
• 9:46
  So we're able to sort of provide that that assistance through
• 9:51
  that human touch as well. So, you know, we're not a
• 9:55
  pureplay digital sort of effaceless sort of a company.
• 9:57
  So leveraging that. So you've got the the marketing
• 9:59
  power doing what you say backed up by real sort of the people.
• 10:04
  And I guess lastly, I'd say we're always investing for
• 10:07
  growth. So you know, we're never happy.
• 10:10
  It's like one of my biggest downfalls to see.
• 10:12
  You're always like, you know, could we do more?
• 10:14
  So we're always investing and like learning about new ways of
• 10:18
  doing things, you know, leveraging new technology, new
• 10:20
  capability, new marketing channels, leaning more into
• 10:23
  social media, expanding the brand presence, you know,
• 10:26
  sponsorship, whatever it may be. And I think that's people want
• 10:29
  to be part of a brand that does that and also does it with a
• 10:32
  purpose in terms of the how we think about balancing the sort
• 10:37
  of the people, planet and profit as well.
• 10:40
  Now one thing in terms of the future and new technology is AI
• 10:44
  and I've seen you on LinkedIn quite often talking about AI and
• 10:48
  its benefits and how you guys are utilizing it.
• 10:51
  So how is Sykes utilizing AI and and how do you think that's
• 10:56
  going to affect your business over the next few years?
• 11:00
  The the objective for us is to give everybody a superpower
• 11:03
  through AI. So I want, I want everybody in
• 11:08
  organization. What it makes sense is to have
• 11:11
  like a 30% competitive advantage over everybody else.
• 11:13
  And I believe AI can do that. So we're using AI mean almost
• 11:19
  everywhere. If anything, we're creating a
• 11:21
  monster like a sort of AI monster, an organization.
• 11:25
  We've got over 50% of all of our employees using, you know, one
• 11:30
  of the whole suite of different tools.
• 11:33
  You know, at least once a week we're educating people, we're
• 11:37
  providing training where we're leaning into people like
• 11:40
  multiverse and we're doing like for party sort of a training as
• 11:43
  well. We're embedding it into just the
• 11:47
  way we think. You know, we have agents now
• 11:50
  sitting in an organizational chart that are performing
• 11:53
  agentic sort of a tasks. So it is everywhere.
• 11:58
  And I genuinely believe that, you know, it's going to allow us
• 12:01
  to leverage the human capital to do the stuff that AI can't do.
• 12:05
  And then the menial sort of the tasks that are more processed
• 12:07
  and more operated, you know, more more mundane and more
• 12:11
  repetitive, we can use the AI to sort of do it.
• 12:13
  So I'm, you know, it doesn't take a lot to get me super
• 12:17
  excited. And I'm old enough to have been
• 12:20
  around with the Internet was just getting going and like
• 12:23
  mobile then became the big thing and an app became the big thing.
• 12:26
  To me, this is like another big paradigm shift on a big
• 12:29
  groundswell that, you know, I'm really quite excited about
• 12:33
  because it's I can really see how it's useful in the
• 12:37
  organization as opposed to a bit of a fad.
• 12:41
  Do you feel like AI eventually is going to blow the impact of
• 12:45
  the Internet, for example, out of the water?
• 12:48
  I mean, how do you think it's going to impact the short term
• 12:51
  rentals industry generally? I think, you know, people using
• 12:57
  AI will get a competitive advantage.
• 13:01
  I think more and more of our customers and our owners will be
• 13:05
  more getting more comfortable using AI.
• 13:08
  Very simply, if you look at how people buy holidays online and
• 13:12
  search for holidays, you know, going to Google, typing in a few
• 13:15
  keywords, getting it, what we're seeing is more and more of our
• 13:19
  queries that are coming are coming from large language
• 13:21
  models and the types of prompting that people are
• 13:26
  putting in the queries that are putting in they're quite
• 13:29
  advanced. You know, it's not cottage in
• 13:31
  Cornwall. You know, it's quite detailed
• 13:34
  sort of a prompting and then there's then there's an
• 13:35
  engagement going on so it's conversational because AI is
• 13:39
  pretty good at that. So, you know, I, I think
• 13:42
  learning how to win that arms race, you know, back in the
• 13:46
  early days, you know, playing the SEO sort of a game, you
• 13:49
  know, so it's now playing the search LLM game, learning that,
• 13:52
  making your content more accessible to these LLMS and
• 13:57
  then engaging more in a sort of a conversation because people
• 14:02
  short term rentals, particularly in the business I operate, we're
• 14:04
  like a leisure, you know, predominant in the holiday, you
• 14:06
  know, the, the steps are, you know, plan, book, enjoy.
• 14:12
  And what I think AI will do, particularly a gentic sort of AI
• 14:16
  in the way that we'll sort of work is bring all that together.
• 14:19
  And we're really good at the booking part.
• 14:22
  We're OK at the planning part, but we sort of, we sort of allow
• 14:26
  the customers to do a lot of browsing and sort of the sales.
• 14:28
  And actually then we get sharper as they go deeper into the, the
• 14:31
  booking part. And actually we're no one need
• 14:33
  as good as we should be at the enjoy part, you know, things to
• 14:36
  do. But I think AI will bring all
• 14:38
  that together and act a bit like this sort of a short term rental
• 14:42
  white concierge, white glove concierge way of operating.
• 14:46
  And I think organizations that lead into that, but also then
• 14:50
  support it with the human capital, the ones that will do
• 14:52
  really well. So I think there's a lot of
• 14:54
  disruption in short will happen. I think you see a lot of
• 14:57
  disruption also in the way the platforms operate and the way
• 15:00
  the technology is sort of curated and, you know, opening
• 15:05
  up access to various different tooling as well.
• 15:08
  You mentioned there the kind of the arms race.
• 15:10
  I mean, how important is it going to be for property
• 15:12
  management companies to have their rentals front and centre?
• 15:17
  When somebody goes in to ChatGPT and says, I want this cottage in
• 15:21
  Cornwall that allows a dog with a hot tub with a Seaview.
• 15:25
  And if you're a property management company, what can you
• 15:28
  do to make sure that these large language models like ChatGPT are
• 15:32
  going to be recommending you? Well, look, I mean, it's small
• 15:36
  numbers to start with at the moment, but look at any chart
• 15:41
  that exists that talks about the growth of ChatGPT, you know,
• 15:45
  mostly thanks to thanks to sort of the people creating
• 15:47
  characters and various different things and all that sort of the
• 15:50
  stuff. And, and, and it's only going in
• 15:53
  One Direction. I mean, it's like the curve is,
• 15:55
  is like a rocket ship and the technology is improving, the
• 15:58
  hardware is improving. So the adoption will improve and
• 16:01
  look at the billions, if not trillions are being invested in
• 16:05
  this space. So like, I think, I think, you
• 16:08
  know, this is not a, it could happen.
• 16:10
  It's going to happen. So the question is, you know,
• 16:15
  who's going to win? What bets should you play and
• 16:18
  who should you play those bets with?
• 16:20
  There's a lot of people out there that are writing off
• 16:22
  Google at the moment and they're saying, you know, Google's dead
• 16:25
  SEO, sort of a dead natural SEO in the way that we sort of
• 16:27
  looked at it. I'm not quite sure about that.
• 16:30
  I actually think if you look at the data that someone at Google
• 16:32
  has and you look at what they're doing with Gemini and some of
• 16:34
  the more, the more recent models that were coming out and bearing
• 16:38
  in mind Google's been doing sort of AI before open AI and perform
• 16:42
  most people as well. So, you know, I'm, I'm pretty
• 16:44
  sure they will sort of make it work.
• 16:46
  What you really need to do is to is to first of all understand
• 16:49
  like how visible are you? So people putting in queries,
• 16:52
  how visible are you? Then you need to sort of
• 16:54
  understand how many citations, So how many times are you being
• 16:59
  are you coming back? And there's some there's some
• 17:01
  tooling that you can you can lean into.
• 17:04
  One I'd probably recommend is a simple example is a tool from a
• 17:07
  company called Peak AI, which basically allows you to
• 17:10
  understand how visible are you on the large language models.
• 17:14
  And you can pick, you know all of them or you can just pick a
• 17:16
  perplexity or a Gemini, whatever.
• 17:19
  That will give you an idea of your visibility and also give
• 17:22
  you an idea of how many times when results are coming back.
• 17:24
  Because what these bots are doing effectively within the AI
• 17:29
  and the way they're crawling, it's not like as the way that
• 17:32
  sort of a bot crawls on Google, it's doing very different
• 17:35
  things. It's learning very different
• 17:37
  things. It's looking at, you know, a lot
• 17:39
  more citation, It's looking at a lot more structured metadata.
• 17:43
  It's looking at not just one review website, It's looking at
• 17:46
  lots of review websites and it's making a deformed choice.
• 17:50
  And what I've discovered, you know, more recently is the
• 17:55
  smaller brands are doing almost as well as the big brands,
• 17:59
  partly because it's young and you, but also some of these
• 18:02
  smaller brands are really rich. They have great content and they
• 18:06
  have really good reviews. And what I'm I'm noticing is
• 18:09
  some of the the tooling that's sort of going on the way that
• 18:11
  it's working as it's blending in, you know, you know, yes,
• 18:14
  it's cottages, but you'll have a smaller brand that you know,
• 18:16
  etcetera, etcetera. It's not.
• 18:18
  If anything, the big brands, particularly the OTA big brands
• 18:21
  like an AOBB andabigger.com are not doing that well.
• 18:25
  So learning, learning what are the signals, making sure your
• 18:30
  data is really structured, making sure you have good
• 18:32
  visibility and then undoubtedly making some changes to your
• 18:37
  website in order to open up more so that some of these bots can
• 18:43
  crawl you better and get access to more sort of the data as
• 18:47
  well. I mean, there's clearly lots
• 18:49
  written on this and it is still young and new, but I think
• 18:52
  again, there's a bit of an arms race that's going on.
• 18:54
  And I'm lucky enough that you know this, this business was
• 18:58
  built on a heritage of really strong organic performance.
• 19:02
  And it's like this is like another wave of something going
• 19:05
  on. Really good, strong organic
• 19:06
  performance. So marketing and PR and telling
• 19:10
  your story and and being visible across a lot of different
• 19:13
  platforms, news outlets is going to get more and more important
• 19:18
  you think? Yeah, yeah.
• 19:20
  I mean, you know, a very simple thing.
• 19:21
  You know your images. So the way that a lot of these
• 19:25
  models are looking at is the metadata control.
• 19:27
  You know, images is playing a big factor now.
• 19:30
  Up until recently we were quite lazy.
• 19:32
  You know, we've got half a million images in our database,
• 19:34
  hell of a lot. And we would say something like,
• 19:36
  you know, a cottage in Cornwall or you know, lock keepers
• 19:39
  cottage reference 10425. That is not useful metadata.
• 19:44
  So what we did, we leveraged AI, all of that sort of the data
• 19:47
  through, you know, an AI sort of a model.
• 19:50
  We asked it to sort of a look at the image, identify with some
• 19:52
  and come up with really good structured metadata.
• 19:55
  We then embedded in that. And then obviously we put the
• 19:57
  whole thing live and it took like, you know, four days,
• 19:59
  whereas before AI it would have taken like four months probably.
• 20:02
  But if you write, if you go into booker.com, who I think are very
• 20:05
  good at this stuff because they've got thousands of
• 20:07
  engineers that have got the head already did it and you right
• 20:09
  click on. On one of the images and you
• 20:11
  look at the sort of the, the sort of the structure, sort of
• 20:13
  the data and look at the the HTML, you'll see how they're
• 20:17
  doing their metadata. Again, this is quite a deep
• 20:20
  topic I'm going into here, but that they're they're a good
• 20:22
  example of Someone Like You I think are doing it quite well.
• 20:25
  Fascinating and it's going to be really fascinating to see how AI
• 20:29
  develops as we as we go on, especially in the in the
• 20:33
  industry. OK.
• 20:35
  So at the moment in the UK then back to the the nitty gritty in
• 20:38
  the day-to-day, what are the main challenges and
• 20:40
  opportunities that you're seeing in the holiday that space?
• 20:43
  Well, I think we're seeing this globally.
• 20:45
  I think we are seeing an ADRA rate under pressure.
• 20:50
  You know, it's, it's, it's hard. I mean, occupancy levels
• 20:52
  generally are getting there from what I can, what I can sort of a
• 20:55
  tell. But then when you tweak the
• 20:57
  rate, you get a little bit more because we've all got cost
• 21:00
  pressures. Then it just seems to really
• 21:03
  fall back and people are sort of trading down or just not
• 21:05
  converting. So that's tough.
• 21:08
  We're seeing shortening length of stay.
• 21:11
  Again, this is a, you know, a trend that we're seeing globally
• 21:14
  and people are doing more short breaks.
• 21:16
  So you need more flexibility in your product and your offering
• 21:19
  and not all traditional cottage companies, you know, depending
• 21:25
  on the, the, the legacy, it's easy to adapt into like multiple
• 21:29
  short breaks. If you're coming from a a, you
• 21:32
  know, a clean position, you know, most people will do, you
• 21:34
  know, daily pricing with minimum two night stay in the day.
• 21:38
  That is not the industry typically that we come from.
• 21:40
  So we've had to evolve and adapt our offering quite a bit.
• 21:42
  So shorter breaks, shorter than to stay.
• 21:44
  And probably the last one I'm seeing is, well, last two, sorry
• 21:48
  if I can, is people are really leaving at last minute to make a
• 21:53
  decision. So it's like, you know, that
• 21:56
  that that window from booking to depart is just narrowing all the
• 22:01
  time. And that's, you know, that's
• 22:03
  that's nervous, quite nerve wracking.
• 22:06
  The only way you can counter that is, you know, early
• 22:09
  promotions, you know, early discounts was now pricing book
• 22:14
  now for a low deposit or book now pay nothing and you know,
• 22:18
  pay the balance of your holiday, you know, 4 weeks before or the
• 22:22
  one that the old guests seem to want.
• 22:25
  And I think, you know, book and don't call them or trained.
• 22:26
  Everybody is like, you know, free cancellation up to 24 hours
• 22:31
  before. Now we, we've had to build some
• 22:33
  products and create some products that do that.
• 22:37
  But what I'm observing is there's more and more people
• 22:40
  actually are holding or taking multiple holidays and, you know,
• 22:46
  booking multiple holidays and then just waiting last minute
• 22:48
  and sort of cancelling the ones that don't want and maybe going
• 22:50
  on the one that do want Nas. It's difficult to run a business
• 22:52
  like that. What are your top tips in terms
• 22:56
  of keeping owners? Happy and do what you say.
• 23:01
  Deliver good service. Make sure you deliver the right
• 23:04
  number of bookings per property. Understand their pressures, you
• 23:09
  know, understand their cost pressures.
• 23:11
  Understand all the things they're phasing into and if
• 23:14
  something goes wrong, deal with it really quickly.
• 23:17
  Even if you have to put your own hand in your pocket because a
• 23:21
  lifetime value of a property is huge.
• 23:24
  Don't argue over 20 lbs or 30 lbs if someone's, you know,
• 23:29
  broke some glasses or smashed some plates or something like
• 23:32
  that. If you can just deal with it
• 23:34
  quickly because holding onto those properties and retaining
• 23:39
  those properties, The biggest thing we see is, is 01.
• 23:43
  It's all the new supply we get. Particularly if you're new to
• 23:46
  letting you know, it's quite a nerve racking thing, you know,
• 23:48
  like letting out a property you've got, particularly if you
• 23:50
  put a lot of money in investment.
• 23:52
  So hand holding for that first period, we call it like the
• 23:56
  nursery sort of a period, hand holding the owner making sure
• 24:00
  they're ready for the 1st guest checking in after the 1st guest
• 24:03
  has checked in, you know, when they've actually checked out
• 24:06
  really, you know, holding their hand through that whole process
• 24:10
  and guiding them is really important.
• 24:12
  And what we find is once they get past year one that actually,
• 24:16
  you know, sort of used to it, they sort of tend to tend to
• 24:18
  sort of, you know, stay with you.
• 24:19
  So that year 1 is really, really important.
• 24:23
  But also recognizing if owners have got a lot of cost pressure,
• 24:26
  it's like how do you understand that?
• 24:28
  How can you help them with that? What the different things you
• 24:30
  can sort of do to support them? Can you leverage, you know, some
• 24:34
  deals that you've got with different vendors, you know,
• 24:36
  linen providers or whatever it may be, you can offer ancillary
• 24:39
  services where they can sort of top it up, You know, so it's
• 24:44
  really about having a dialogue and delivering.
• 24:47
  You know, I think we do really well in the market on retention
• 24:50
  because we have really good account management, you know,
• 24:53
  really good, strong account management, dedicated account
• 24:55
  managers looking after you, a named individual.
• 24:58
  And if you've got any issue, you can speak to a human.
• 25:03
  Solid advice and what are your? Top tips for.
• 25:06
  Delivering an outstanding guest experience.
• 25:10
  Track it, understand what's going on.
• 25:14
  We use Net Promoter score is the key measure and we measure it
• 25:20
  really at 2 points. The first point is after your
• 25:24
  first night's sleep. So when you've gone to a
• 25:26
  property and you've, I mean, you might have driven like 4 hours
• 25:30
  and you might be all a bit flustered on day one.
• 25:32
  So let's not ask you, but after that first night's sleep, get a
• 25:35
  little message and understand like, you know, you know, is it
• 25:39
  a :), is it, is it, or is it like I'm unhappy?
• 25:43
  And if it's unhappy, then create a workflow, try, try and give a
• 25:47
  call and do something about it, speak to the guests.
• 25:49
  So we have a lot of triggers that go on quite early on to try
• 25:52
  and sort of deal with stuff. And then the second point we
• 25:56
  measure it is typically if you check out and see a Saturday, by
• 26:01
  12:00 the following day, we'll have sent you a communication.
• 26:04
  We'll ask you to rate US and give us feedback on 4 simple
• 26:07
  questions. And what we really focus on is,
• 26:11
  excuse me, you can send it to tractors.
• 26:13
  You know, anybody who's sort of negative, like how can we learn
• 26:16
  from it? How can we sort of make it
• 26:18
  better for the next guest to just keep building on that as
• 26:20
  well? So closing the loop on guest
• 26:23
  experience is really important, but also working with the
• 26:27
  property owners as well to understand like how to be a
• 26:29
  really good property owner, how to be a really good host, so to
• 26:33
  speak, you know, what's important.
• 26:35
  And so we spend a lot of time giving tips, giving advice and,
• 26:40
  you know, little extras that you can sort of do to, you know, for
• 26:44
  dogs coming, you know, treats for the dog, if it's, you know,
• 26:47
  we have, unfortunately, it rains a lot in the UK.
• 26:49
  So the idea of having like a rainy box day, you know, full of
• 26:52
  games that you might have bought at a car boot sale, you know,
• 26:55
  and there's like 100 of these tips that we sort of give to
• 26:57
  the, to the property owners just to improve and then how we share
• 27:00
  all that knowledge across as well.
• 27:03
  What's been your biggest? Lesson learned from your holiday
• 27:06
  letting journey. There's a Scott, there's a
• 27:13
  there's an expression which may not translate well to maybe some
• 27:17
  of your international sort of a guess, but it's quite a norm of
• 27:20
  an expression. It's like there's note as funny
• 27:23
  as folk translated. There's nothing as funny as
• 27:26
  like, you know, the public And you know, I guess my biggest
• 27:31
  lesson learnt is what's brilliant for one person is not
• 27:36
  necessarily brilliant for somebody else.
• 27:38
  And when you're a scale business, like I was taking
• 27:40
  millions of people on holiday, you'll see sort of everything
• 27:43
  and you just have to accept that.
• 27:46
  You just have to sort of recognise that.
• 27:48
  And then the other thing as sort of a learnt is if you're honest
• 27:53
  and if you try to deal with things really quite quickly and
• 27:56
  you face into difficult things, people are people will generally
• 28:02
  go with you and be sort of a reasonable.
• 28:05
  But if you try and like, you know, blame the owner or like,
• 28:08
  you know, hide behind a contract, you know, hide behind
• 28:11
  terms and conditions, all that sort of stuff.
• 28:13
  Yeah, it doesn't really doesn't really land out of the well.
• 28:17
  So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, deliver exceptional
• 28:19
  service just really, you know, just keep sort of doing your
• 28:24
  best and even, you know, even as a scale business, you know, like
• 28:27
  a lower scale, we're large. But if we can think small, if we
• 28:31
  can relate, you know, to individual property owners, you
• 28:34
  know what's important to them. Individual guests recognise that
• 28:38
  they save up all year long to, you know, the money to go on
• 28:41
  holiday and despite the owner holiday have each year.
• 28:43
  If you can make it really relatable, then I think you can
• 28:46
  deliver exceptional sort of a service.
• 28:50
  What do you love? Most about the industry.
• 28:53
  Well, holiday, I mean holidays in general is like a great
• 28:56
  industry to be in. You know, I've been lucky enough
• 28:58
  that you know, you know, I work for the biggest tour operator in
• 29:01
  the world for a number of years. You know, I've worked for, you
• 29:04
  know, biggest holiday price comparison website in the world.
• 29:07
  You know, it's not financial services, I'm not selling life
• 29:09
  insurance. So I love the industry because I
• 29:13
  think it has so much opportunity in it.
• 29:17
  It's a big community really is the way I sort of think about
• 29:20
  it. Generally people are quite, you
• 29:22
  know, open and honest and want to sort of help each other.
• 29:25
  I don't think there's a lot of bad actors.
• 29:27
  I don't think there's a lot of people necessarily are getting
• 29:29
  out of bed to do a bad job. And there is some but, but in
• 29:32
  the general, I think it's a great growth opportunity because
• 29:35
  I think it's super fragmented. And as someone who likes growing
• 29:38
  and creating value and growing businesses, I think that's
• 29:41
  really interesting as well. But ultimately we're, you know,
• 29:45
  we're taking people on holiday, we're creating memories, we're
• 29:47
  building experiences. I mean, it's a great industry
• 29:50
  and to sort of the be in and I think when you get it right, you
• 29:53
  can bring a lot of joy and I love that.
• 29:57
  Absolutely. Well said.
• 29:59
  OK then great. We've got a few quick fire
• 30:01
  questions. So which PMS do you use?
• 30:06
  We use our own proprietary system.
• 30:08
  We build ourselves. I guess you've got to do that
• 30:11
  when you've got 30,000 properties.
• 30:13
  Which dynamic pricing tool do you use?
• 30:16
  We use it on proprietary system we built and sell called Prism.
• 30:23
  In house this can be. Business or personal?
• 30:27
  Which piece of tech? Couldn't you live without?
• 30:31
  Well, at the moment the one I couldn't live without is a tool
• 30:33
  called Letterley, which is like an AI dictation tool.
• 30:37
  So I don't like drive and I can dictate to this sort of a tool
• 30:40
  and it has lots of features in it.
• 30:41
  One of them is like it's called magic.
• 30:44
  It's a button you present. It just it takes all the
• 30:46
  nonsense that I spurt out and it just makes it into like
• 30:49
  beautiful sentences or it could do bullet points or whatever it
• 30:54
  may be. So literally is the one I
• 30:56
  probably couldn't live without at the moment in terms of a
• 30:59
  productivity tool. Superb.
• 31:01
  I'll I'll take a. Look at that.
• 31:03
  So in. Terms of hosting them and
• 31:05
  holiday letting pets? Yes or no?
• 31:09
  100%, yeah. Hot tub yes or no?
• 31:13
  100% yes self. Check in or personal welcome.
• 31:19
  Both. Telephone call or AI response?
• 31:25
  Both I think. What's the most unusual guest
• 31:29
  request you've ever? Heard of?
• 31:35
  Oh God, I forgot lots. It's normally to do with like
• 31:41
  kitchen utensils. I think the weirdest one I've
• 31:45
  heard is like, I'm really disappointed because the
• 31:48
  property didn't have a melon ball scooper.
• 31:52
  But yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing what, like people
• 31:54
  want and sort of the, you know, sort of properties, but we're
• 31:59
  just owner's side. It's not like a request, but
• 32:00
  it's, you know, you know, we've got owners who are like, you
• 32:04
  know, I'm happy to accept pets. That's your pet's question.
• 32:06
  But only little dogs. I don't want big dogs.
• 32:09
  So that I remember one business we acquired a number of years
• 32:11
  ago, there was like a, there was like a, you know, this owner
• 32:15
  will accept pets under like 2 kilos or two kilograms, random
• 32:19
  stuff like this. Great.
• 32:21
  So you have to you have to send a picture of your dog on the
• 32:23
  scales or or something and stuff.
• 32:25
  Well, we said no. Quite frankly, yeah.
• 32:29
  And what's been your most memorable holiday letting
• 32:33
  moment? Genuinely, it's when we've been
• 32:42
  able to gift properties to families or individuals who've
• 32:49
  rather gone through trauma or or our end of life, etcetera.
• 32:55
  So we work with a number of charities, time away being one
• 32:57
  of them. But we also work with, I think I
• 33:00
  can say this, you know, we work with the Clock Tower Fund, which
• 33:03
  is the SES to sort of a support some of the squaddies when they
• 33:07
  come back from various different, let's just say, you
• 33:11
  know, life changing events or with time away, you know, we're
• 33:16
  able to sort of a gift properties or weeks that owners
• 33:18
  may have to individuals. And I think for me, the joyous
• 33:22
  moment is we ask, we ask for like a little bit of feedback,
• 33:26
  you know, like a little postcard that we can then give to the
• 33:28
  property owner. Rob, we give food back in my
• 33:30
  word, it's, it's joyful. So I think those memories we
• 33:35
  create for those individuals really, you know, we sort of
• 33:38
  struck A chord with me in terms of something.
• 33:40
  I think that I'm privileged that we have the the ability to do
• 33:43
  it. And I'm really proud that our
• 33:45
  property owners and we have the ability to support those things
• 33:47
  as well. That's really lovely.
• 33:50
  OK then shout out time. Is there an individual?
• 33:53
  In the short term, rentals. Industry who's helped you and
• 33:55
  that you'd like to give a shout out to?
• 33:59
  There's lots of people that helped me on my journey, you
• 34:01
  know, like in the early days, Simon Lehman was a great sort of
• 34:03
  a friend of mine sort of helped me understand, particularly when
• 34:07
  we had the the dizzy desire to maybe go into America and start
• 34:11
  buying some sort of a businesses.
• 34:14
  A lot of those people that run those sort of a conferences.
• 34:16
  Antonio who runs the, you know, vacation at Walsh Summit, I
• 34:18
  think is a great sort of a character as well.
• 34:21
  But I mean, there's just so many people in this short term, sort
• 34:24
  of the, you know, rental industry that I think have been
• 34:26
  really helpful and sort of a useful, you know, useful to me,
• 34:29
  you know, speaking to over a number of years, you know, a
• 34:32
  number of, you know, we've bought so many businesses, The
• 34:34
  boundaries of those businesses have been great, helping me
• 34:36
  understand their businesses and allowing me to be like a
• 34:38
  caretaker of those businesses as well.
• 34:41
  And I think, I think the thing I've really learnt is it's, it's
• 34:46
  such a personal sort of a business and there's so many,
• 34:48
  there's so many things that there's so many assumptions you
• 34:52
  can make coming into it. Just really listening and
• 34:54
  understanding and getting experience from all these people
• 34:57
  is really good. I mean, when I first joined,
• 34:59
  you'd go into all the different conferences to learn all the
• 35:01
  different things and all the different markets and work out
• 35:03
  actually how we're going to behave and how we're going to
• 35:05
  operate. Final question then, what's the
• 35:08
  ultimate goal for Forge Group or where do you see it heading in
• 35:12
  the future? World domination.
• 35:15
  No, it's not that for us really, you know, it's about creating
• 35:20
  value, which which sounds a bit depressing, but actually it's
• 35:25
  the nature of our business. You know, we're a value creation
• 35:28
  business. We've got shareholders and all
• 35:29
  that. And the way we have to do that
• 35:30
  is through exceptional service and through sort of a growth.
• 35:34
  So you know, ultimately we're going to be a bigger business
• 35:36
  than we are today because we keep sort of a growing, but
• 35:39
  we're going to focus less on quantity, more just like on
• 35:45
  quality. We've spent a lot of time really
• 35:47
  focusing on the quality of what we sort of offer.
• 35:49
  We won't sort of take anything at the moment.
• 35:51
  We don't have any grand plans for, you know, international
• 35:54
  expansion. You know, you know, I ask ask
• 35:56
  this question all the time, you know, when you come to Europe,
• 35:58
  when you come to the US, whatever.
• 35:59
  We have an international business.
• 36:01
  It's in our portfolio, but it isn't a big part of our long
• 36:04
  term thinking because weirdly I think at the moment, in the UK
• 36:08
  anyway, supply is not something I'm losing any sleep over.
• 36:12
  You know, I think we're taking market share.
• 36:14
  We've got, you know, good supply coming in.
• 36:17
  It's more of a demand challenge that we have coming in sort of
• 36:20
  into the UK. So hopefully just keep doing
• 36:22
  what we're doing, you know, and, and to put it into contact, you
• 36:24
  know, to stand still, we need to organically really on board
• 36:28
  about 5000 properties a year and you know, we'll lose maybe 15%.
• 36:36
  Let's just save overall supplies.
• 36:37
  So we're looking from a net property recruitment.
• 36:40
  There's a lot of work you have to do just to maintain sort of
• 36:42
  the status quo. Absolutely.
• 36:44
  Yeah, Superb. Graham, it's been a real.
• 36:47
  Pleasure. Thank you for being part of the
• 36:48
  Host Planet Playbook. Thank you.
• 36:51
  All right, that's it for today's episode.
• 36:52
  My thanks to Graham for sharing his journey.
• 36:55
  And being. Part of the House Planet
• 36:57
  playbook, Remember, this series is brought to you in partnership
• 37:00
  with Hospitable, the all in one property management software
• 37:04
  designed to save you time and help your business thrive.
• 37:07
  Hospitable automates your guest messaging, syncs your calendars
• 37:10
  across platforms, handles team tasks and and so much more so
• 37:15
  you can focus on delivering a top notch guest experience.
• 37:19
  Or just get some of your. Time back and here's the good
• 37:22
  news. House Planet Playbook listeners
• 37:24
  get an exclusive 14 day free trial plus 25% off for the first
• 37:29
  three months. Head to hospitable.com/house
• 37:33
  Planet to claim your offer and start running your rentals on
• 37:37
  autopilot. For more free education for
• 37:40
  short term rental hosts at the House, planet.com, where you can
• 37:44
  sign up for our newsletter, listen to our podcasts and
• 37:47
  download our suite of ebooks. Until next time, happy hosting.