Latest / MC Fireside Chats, an Outdoor Hospitality Podcast / MC Fireside Chats - July 29th, 2026

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MC Fireside Chats - July 29th, 2026 · MC Fireside Chats, an Outdoor Hospitality Podcast

• 0:46
  Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats.
• 0:48
  Brian Searl: My name's Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground.
• 0:50
  Brian Searl: Sitting outside, it's outdoor hospitality.
• 0:52
  Brian Searl: I get outside of my studio.
• 0:53
  Brian Searl: There's real benefits to this.
• 0:54
  Brian Searl: I was talking to these guys beforehand about how I don't have a graphics card for my new PC I had to build 'cause RAM prices are up, crazy memory prices.
• 1:03
  Brian Searl: I have to pay $5,000 for the one I need and the part didn't come from eBay, but it's driving me outside.
• 1:07
  Brian Searl: I kinda like this.
• 1:08
  Brian Searl: It's too bad that I live in Calgary and it's not this nice all year.
• 1:12
  Brian Searl: But then somebody on this here was listening to who's the one in Arizona?
• 1:16
  Sam Jankovich: Oh, Sam here.
• 1:17
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 1:18
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 1:18
  Brian Searl: That's Sam.
• 1:19
  Brian Searl: That's Sam.
• 1:20
  Brian Searl: You gotta move, man.
• 1:20
  Brian Searl: I don't know.
• 1:21
  Sam Jankovich: I live up in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, but I'm down here visiting, but it is super hot.
• 1:24
  Brian Searl: Oh, okay.
• 1:25
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 1:26
  Brian Searl: Okay.
• 1:26
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 1:26
  Brian Searl: 'Cause the water, the, the Colorado River, they're gonna take all your water away there in Arizona, so you gotta get back pretty fast.
• 1:31
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 1:31
  Sam Jankovich: It's pretty challenging.
• 1:33
  Brian Searl: Okay.
• 1:33
  Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another week of MC Fireside Chats.
• 1:35
  Brian Searl: We got a It's kind of one of those weird fifth week episodes.
• 1:38
  Brian Searl: We don't have any recurring guests this week so we just have three special guests with us here.
• 1:42
  Brian Searl: I'm gonna let them go around the room and just briefly introduce themselves, then we'll have a good show talk to you about who knows what.
• 1:47
  Brian Searl: So Sarah, you wanna go first?
• 1:49
  Sarah Krause: Sure.
• 1:49
  Sarah Krause: My name is Sarah Krause.
• 1:51
  Sarah Krause: I am the CCO at C&D Hospitality.
• 1:55
  Sarah Krause: We- I oversee the operations of four campgrounds and one beach bar here in Wisconsin.
• 2:00
  Sarah Krause: They are all seasonal.
• 2:02
  Sarah Krause: And then in addition to that, I also have my own business called Campground Manpower.
• 2:08
  Brian Searl: Nice.
• 2:08
  Brian Searl: If I was you, I would be at the beach bar all the time.
• 2:11
  Brian Searl: But that's probably why I'm not you and I could never do your job and I'd be fired, what you got, Sam?
• 2:16
  Brian Searl: Tell us about GuideTime.
• 2:17
  Brian Searl: We're appreciative.
• 2:17
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 2:18
  Sam Jankovich: Sam Jankovich, CEO of GuideTime.
• 2:20
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah, my, my career's actually gone full circle.
• 2:23
  Sam Jankovich: I started off in the hospitality industry, and my first job with was w- a trainee at Westin Hotels.
• 2:30
  Sam Jankovich: But now for the last 35 years, I've been leading digital transformations for some of the biggest enterprises out there, and recently retired from IBM.
• 2:39
  Sam Jankovich: And I'm now leading the charge at GuideTime, helping my son, the founder of the company embed and build great memories through our marketplace directly with our hospitality partners
• 2:53
  Brian Searl: Awesome.
• 2:54
  Brian Searl: Welcome, Sam.
• 2:54
  Brian Searl: Excited to see what the Guy Time is.
• 2:56
  Brian Searl: I've seen a little bit about it on my LinkedIn feed, mostly from Quentin.
• 2:59
  Brian Searl: We're gonna-
• 3:00
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah, Quentin, yeah
• 3:01
  Brian Searl: yeah, learn a little bit more about Guy Time.
• 3:02
  Brian Searl: I'm excited about that.
• 3:03
  Brian Searl: All right.
• 3:04
  Brian Searl: Francois, did I pronounce that right?
• 3:06
  Francois Gouelo: You did, 100%.
• 3:08
  Francois Gouelo: You got it right.
• 3:08
  Brian Searl: That's good, 'cause I've been in Canada for a few years now, and I have to practice.
• 3:11
  Brian Searl: My girlfriend learns French on the phone every three days.
• 3:14
  Brian Searl: She's been doing Duolingo for I think almost 280 straight days, 'cause we went to France for the SETT conference last year.
• 3:22
  Francois Gouelo: Nice.
• 3:22
  Brian Searl: And then she's been...
• 3:23
  Brian Searl: Like, she knew a little bit of French before that, but that's not my cheat code, but it's my girlfriend.
• 3:28
  Brian Searl: But tell us, yeah, tell us about yourself.
• 3:29
  Brian Searl: Who are you, bro?
• 3:30
  Francois Gouelo: 100%.
• 3:31
  Francois Gouelo: Yes, my name is Francois, also based in Canada.
• 3:33
  Francois Gouelo: Based in Toronto although currently in Alabama.
• 3:36
  Francois Gouelo: And I run a company called Enso Connect.
• 3:38
  Francois Gouelo: We're a guest experience platform for hospitality businesses, currently focused primarily on vacation rentals, as well as some boutique hotels.
• 3:47
  Francois Gouelo: We operate with about 60,000 units globally, 60 different countries, and really our mission is to digitize and monetize the entire guest experience.
• 3:55
  Francois Gouelo: So that means making that whole check-in experience online, leveraging AI to communicate with your different guests and being able to upsell them different services from different marketplaces.
• 4:05
  Francois Gouelo: So s- maybe I have to connect with you, Sam, afterwards to see if there's anything we can do there.
• 4:08
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:10
  Brian Searl: All right, Francois, I wanted to start with you, and here's why.
• 4:13
  Brian Searl: Because at least Sarah knows I'm an AI geek.
• 4:16
  Brian Searl: And our company produces a lot of da- data and developments for the outdoor hospitality industry.
• 4:20
  Brian Searl: We do a lot, like we have custom AI chatbots, connectors and things like that we build.
• 4:24
  Brian Searl: We don't play a lot in vacation rentals, I don't really want to do that.
• 4:26
  Brian Searl: Like campgrounds has been my outdoor hospitality's been my thing for 16 years-ish and so I'm interested from your perspective, I heard a little bit of the conversations, like I...
• 4:34
  Brian Searl: My gut instinct, and you tell me if I'm wrong, other than maybe like you do this in your spare time, you don't have a lot of experience with the campground industry, correct?
• 4:42
  Francois Gouelo: No, that's correct.
• 4:43
  Francois Gouelo: Not as much as you guys, certainly.
• 4:45
  Francois Gouelo: Or very little to say.
• 4:46
  Francois Gouelo: So I'm here to learn, if anything.
• 4:48
  Brian Searl: But we're also here to learn from you, which I think is some of the benefit of bringing in somebody who works in vacation rental and stuff.
• 4:54
  Brian Searl: Obviously, there are people in the outdoor hospitality space.
• 4:58
  Brian Searl: Marriott's getting involved in this with Postcard Cabins.
• 5:00
  Brian Searl: We've got Hilton coming in with AutoCamp.
• 5:02
  Brian Searl: There are plenty of people who do glamping only accommodations.
• 5:06
  Brian Searl: They put their list of things up on Airbnb that people utilize for services, things like that, right?
• 5:10
  Brian Searl: So it's not like we're isolated campgrounds with our audience.
• 5:14
  Brian Searl: But because of that background coming primarily from campgrounds or RV parks, most of the owners and operators who watch our show, either they're into expanding glamping or glamping standalone, which is common and not had any experience maybe in
• 5:26
  Brian Searl: either side of it.
• 5:28
  Brian Searl: And we certainly have people in our industry who worked in hotels, right?
• 5:30
  Brian Searl: But there's a lot I think that people don't understand about where technology can actually help their business today.
• 5:36
  Brian Searl: And what I mean by that is not necessarily preaching to them like, "Hey, you can do dynamic pricing.
• 5:41
  Brian Searl: You can do automated flows.
• 5:42
  Brian Searl: You can do funnels.
• 5:43
  Brian Searl: You can do..."
• 5:44
  Brian Searl: They know all that, but they don't know how to do all that.
• 5:47
  Brian Searl: What they don't know is what's possible as an outcome that they can get from taking the time to work through all those things.
• 5:55
  Brian Searl: So can we just-- I just want to throw you a softball and start there.
• 5:59
  Francois Gouelo: Yeah.
• 5:59
  Francois Gouelo: The first thing I would say, and this is connecting to one of the value propositions that we provide to operators.
• 6:04
  Francois Gouelo: So we work with vacation rental managers.
• 6:05
  Francois Gouelo: Typically, they don't own the assets.
• 6:07
  Francois Gouelo: They don't own the properties.
• 6:08
  Francois Gouelo: They manage on behalf of property owners.
• 6:11
  Francois Gouelo: So margins can get really thin.
• 6:12
  Francois Gouelo: You take twenty percent of that, and that's really your revenue, and then you have to factor in your cleaning costs and your team and staff, communication, everything out of that.
• 6:21
  Francois Gouelo: So you end up with four to six, maybe seven percent margins on average for every booking.
• 6:25
  Francois Gouelo: So it's pretty tight to manage a lot of vacation rentals.
• 6:28
  Francois Gouelo: So a lot of operators, what they do is they go about it with scale.
• 6:32
  Francois Gouelo: So the more properties I manage, the more revenue I'll grow, and therefore I'll be a bigger business.
• 6:37
  Francois Gouelo: But then you start adding a lot more complications.
• 6:39
  Francois Gouelo: You have to add more staff.
• 6:40
  Francois Gouelo: So I'm currently in a eight hundred and fifty unit property management business down here in Alabama.
• 6:45
  Francois Gouelo: They operate like it's a machine, these guys.
• 6:49
  Francois Gouelo: They have...
• 6:49
  Francois Gouelo: I went and visited their maintenance system this morning where they have all the professional industrial laundry machines to do all the cleaning.
• 6:56
  Francois Gouelo: So it's a different kind of ballpark at that scale.
• 6:58
  Francois Gouelo: But even if you're managing twenty, thirty units, it gets really complicated.
• 7:01
  Francois Gouelo: The biggest advice I give operators in our space specifically is even though there's all this technology and AI, the biggest thing you need to do in order to leverage that technology is to write down your processes.
• 7:13
  Francois Gouelo: Write down the facts about, the knowledge base, if you will, of your business and how you handle certain situations.
• 7:20
  Francois Gouelo: 'Cause a lot of times these businesses are family-run, so you kinda just know 'cause you've been doing it for so long, and when you hire a new employee you just train them up and you tell them about all
• 7:28
  Francois Gouelo: the things you've been doing for ten years, but you don't really have it written out anywhere.
• 7:32
  Francois Gouelo: And so it becomes really hard to adopt different AI systems because those AI systems are not connected to your brain, at least not yet, unless you have some of these microchips that we can put in and, maybe connect
• 7:42
  Francois Gouelo: some MCPs to it, but we're not at that level yet.
• 7:44
  Francois Gouelo: So m- for the most part, it's just I have to tell the employee now you have to tell the AI."
• 7:49
  Francois Gouelo: And the benefits in terms of value, it's everything from being able to run your entire guest communication for you, answering all the questions guests might have in a very natural human tone of voice or voice that, that, people
• 8:03
  Francois Gouelo: wouldn't even realize they're speaking to an AI.
• 8:04
  Francois Gouelo: It's about prioritizing what conversations you should focus on in general.
• 8:09
  Francois Gouelo: Guests that are in-house that are having issues, guests that are about to check in that are having issues, or guests that have booked for in six months.
• 8:15
  Francois Gouelo: Should you answer that one first?
• 8:17
  Francois Gouelo: So I think technology can be wildly used in so many different use cases, upselling communication, you mentioned dynamic pricing, and so on.
• 8:25
  Francois Gouelo: I think the first step is identify the problem and make sure you've documented a sort of solution or a path to a solution that you take today.
• 8:32
  Francois Gouelo: I don't know if that makes sense, Brian.
• 8:33
  Francois Gouelo: Happy to go more into more details.
• 8:35
  Brian Searl: It does, and I think that's part of the problem with gener-- let me just say generally business owners, 'cause I'm a...
• 8:41
  Brian Searl: I own multiple businesses myself and, I build I build the agents and the things and the custom automations, right?
• 8:46
  Brian Searl: So I'm more deep into what you're talking about than most of our audience is But I think that's part of the problem, what you bring up is where do I start?
• 8:54
  Brian Searl: And I'll give an easy example.
• 8:55
  Brian Searl: I'll sit down and I'll I'll have a client email us and ask us questions about previously we did marketing, so we do a lot of that in the industry, right?
• 9:01
  Brian Searl: And they'll ask me questions about "What do I do with Google Ads?"
• 9:04
  Brian Searl: Or, "What's my strategy?"
• 9:04
  Brian Searl: Or, "How do I increase conversions on my website?"
• 9:06
  Brian Searl: Or whatever else.
• 9:07
  Brian Searl: And I'll ask it to a team member, and the team member knows the basics of I can either go to Claude or I've been through the ringer enough that I can tell you like, "Here's a big blocker."
• 9:15
  Brian Searl: But they don't know the industry like I do.
• 9:17
  Brian Searl: And so sitting down and s- and giving that knowledge to them in either a Loom video or a meeting is almost like exhausting.
• 9:25
  Brian Searl: It's like I know that's the way it should be done because then the next 12 times they can do it themselves.
• 9:30
  Brian Searl: But also, I don't have an hour to sit here and make a Loom video for them, so I'm just gonna do it myself, and that's, I feel the same way that people are getting trapped- Yeah into AI is
• 9:38
  Brian Searl: overwhelming.
• 9:39
  Brian Searl: I hear you, it can do all these things, but I don't know.
• 9:42
  Brian Searl: So it takes-
• 9:43
  Francois Gouelo: Yeah So the amount of work to set something up doesn't feel like it's the right thing to do in that moment even though you know that down the road the outcome is gonna be worth it.
• 9:54
  Francois Gouelo: And that's with anything.
• 9:55
  Francois Gouelo: With any sort of process change, anything that you have to change in your business, sometimes it just feels like it's better to just keep doing it the same way because it's easier or you think it's easier.
• 10:04
  Francois Gouelo: But once you understand or can at least quantify the benefits, I think this is the thing that we're missing in hospitality.
• 10:10
  Francois Gouelo: A lot of people don't value their time the same way they value the revenue from their business, and for us this was one of the features we focused on.
• 10:18
  Francois Gouelo: We don't just sell time, we also sell you money.
• 10:20
  Francois Gouelo: It's actually so much easier to sell money, free money than it is to sell time 'cause people in hospitality have no idea what it's worth 'cause they're just busy all the time.
• 10:28
  Francois Gouelo: There's so many requests and things to do that you're always going to be busy.
• 10:32
  Francois Gouelo: So two things I like to focus on is, like, how do I quantify that pain point?
• 10:35
  Francois Gouelo: And we did it with time and money, so we upsell guests.
• 10:38
  Francois Gouelo: That's 100% margin for these gue- for these operators.
• 10:41
  Francois Gouelo: So if I can sell an early check-in to your vacation rental, you as the operator get to keep 100% of that revenue, and making an extra 50, 60 bucks on every reservation is a huge margin improver.
• 10:50
  Francois Gouelo: But then also from a time savings it's like if I can take 30, 40% of the conversations that you have today and automate them, where can I use that time and put you towards something else?
• 11:00
  Francois Gouelo: We had a, a, a company that was working.
• 11:02
  Francois Gouelo: They had an employee whose only job was really to try and get reviews, Google reviews, so they could get really well indexed.
• 11:08
  Francois Gouelo: And what we did was we looked at the entire conversation with guests and we would rank the conversation to be positive or negative using AI.
• 11:16
  Francois Gouelo: So was that, the guest happy or not?
• 11:17
  Francois Gouelo: If they mentioned some sort of issue or something and it didn't get resolved, we'd mark it as negative.
• 11:22
  Francois Gouelo: And if they were really happy and they were like, "This is so great, I love this stay," then we would mark it as positive.
• 11:26
  Francois Gouelo: And we then asked every guest that was positive to leave a five-star review, and any guest that was marked as negative to fill out a Google form to say how can we improve the experience.
• 11:36
  Francois Gouelo: So then we seven next all of their Google reviews because they were scared always to ask for Google reviews 'cause they never knew if they were gonna get a five star or one star, and it was just always
• 11:46
  Francois Gouelo: this kind of big gamble.
• 11:47
  Francois Gouelo: So then they got someone on their team whose job was to go through these conversations and try to id- identify a few gaps and tell those guests, "Can you leave me a review?"
• 11:56
  Francois Gouelo: And this is a perfect example where we're saving time, we're generating more revenue in a way 'cause we're getting all those high five-star reviews, so you get more bookings, more visibility and all the things I'm sure Brian, Sam,
• 12:07
  Francois Gouelo: and Sarah you guys know of around the importance of those reviews.
• 12:10
  Francois Gouelo: So just a small tactical example of the many things that you can do that'll drive ROI.
• 12:15
  Brian Searl: Yeah, and it's not all AI.
• 12:17
  Brian Searl: It's AI...
• 12:17
  Brian Searl: what you're talking about could be automated, but it doesn't necessarily need AI.
• 12:22
  Francois Gouelo: That's right.
• 12:22
  Brian Searl: There are instances that you could build for them.
• 12:24
  Brian Searl: But Sarah, Sarah, how do you think about the, all this from an operator perspective?
• 12:27
  Sarah Krause: I think that's a great idea, and we had actually switched reservation systems 'cause they were offering something like that, but it didn't turn out to work that way.
• 12:35
  Sarah Krause: But that automation itself is really cool, and I wish we could figure out a way to do that, 'cause we are always looking to get those good Google reviews.
• 12:44
  Sarah Krause: You definitely get the bad ones all the time so our 1% of guests that are unhappy are always the first ones to complain anywhere.
• 12:52
  Sarah Krause: So I love all of that.
• 12:54
  Sarah Krause: And a- as Brian, we're always trying to implement any sort of AI automation pro- processes into our business, especially 'cause we have so many of them.
• 13:04
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 13:04
  Brian Searl: And that's part of I can only imagine with running the beach bar too, in addition to the campgrounds, obviously, are easy.
• 13:09
  Brian Searl: But just the beach bar where do I start?
• 13:11
  Brian Searl: How do I do the things?
• 13:12
  Brian Searl: How do I...
• 13:13
  Sarah Krause: yeah.
• 13:13
  Sarah Krause: And I had actually fed all of our invoices into Chad at some point and said, get me a par list for the summer."
• 13:21
  Sarah Krause: 'Cause a lot of times at the end of the year we have a lot of stuff left over.
• 13:24
  Sarah Krause: Set up a par list, set up an order guide for my cooks, for the people that are doing the ordering in the bar.
• 13:29
  Sarah Krause: And then Chad had actually been like, "You know what?
• 13:32
  Sarah Krause: We should make this manager guide."
• 13:34
  Sarah Krause: But it was honest with me, which was cool 'cause it was like, it's gonna take us definitely a few days of hard work, so let me know when you're ready to do it.
• 13:42
  Sarah Krause: But it's, I've all of that stuff I'm in trying to find time to do it.
• 13:46
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 13:47
  Brian Searl: And I think that's the biggest issue is the time, right?
• 13:49
  Brian Searl: And so obviously there are vendors and suppliers like Francois who offer services that can speed those things up.
• 13:54
  Brian Searl: But I think one of the things that we've heard from our clients too is where do I start and how do I know that this is the right place to start?
• 14:00
  Brian Searl: And even if it's the right place to start, you're telling me, Brian, 'cause you're an obsessed AI geek, that this stuff is changing like 17 times every six minutes.
• 14:09
  Brian Searl: So how do I know where I start and invest the time today is gonna be where I should do it tomorrow or next week or next month?"
• 14:14
  Brian Searl: We're telling clients, like, build databases and master brains and like Supabase and PostgreSQL and all that stuff, right?
• 14:20
  Brian Searl: And they're like, "What are you talking about?
• 14:21
  Brian Searl: I don't even know how to upload a file to Chat GPT yet."
• 14:23
  Brian Searl: And I'm like I don't know where that's going, but PostgreSQL has been around since 1980.
• 14:27
  Brian Searl: So eh, probably start there, right?"
• 14:29
  Brian Searl: But as but how do you, how do you land on what do I do first, Sarah?
• 14:32
  Brian Searl: Is it just the, the thing that's on fire today, or are you thinking about it like Francois said?
• 14:36
  Sarah Krause: We're definitely thinking about it but yes, things that are on fire today are the, are definitely the things that get tackled first.
• 14:42
  Sarah Krause: We have spoke about processes.
• 14:45
  Sarah Krause: I think we've spoke to you a few times about implementing some things and in the off-season we're looking at what can we do and how can we be better and what can we implement to do better.
• 14:54
  Sarah Krause: S- you know, things like contactless check-in and o- using the app to register guests and all of those things are things that we rolled out in the off-season, but like this time of year with- we're looking at Building
• 15:07
  Sarah Krause: a, right now I'm building my seasonal agreements, 'cause those go out on Saturday.
• 15:11
  Sarah Krause: So we're already looking to next season and building our seasonal agreements, and then those, figuring out how, 'cause now we will have them sign them online in our reservation system, so figuring out how to automate that correspondence and
• 15:24
  Sarah Krause: have that all so we're paperless.
• 15:26
  Sarah Krause: So there's all these different technologies out there that...
• 15:29
  Sarah Krause: But it is a lot when you look at it.
• 15:31
  Sarah Krause: You have to do the programming, you have to figure out what you're doing, and there's people to help, but the, and sometimes the people that are helping aren't helpful because they don't have, they have these amazing big brains
• 15:43
  Sarah Krause: and I don't have you know?
• 15:44
  Sarah Krause: So they're like, "Yeah, it's just easy.
• 15:45
  Sarah Krause: Just click these things."
• 15:46
  Sarah Krause: And I'm like, "Control, alt, delete, buddy.
• 15:48
  Sarah Krause: That's what I got."
• 15:50
  Brian Searl: That's what I tell operators.
• 15:51
  Brian Searl: They talk to me like I'm so much smarter than them.
• 15:53
  Brian Searl: I'm not smarter than them.
• 15:54
  Brian Searl: I know different things than you.
• 15:56
  Brian Searl: Put me behind a desk at a campground, tell me to run it, I'd look at you like a deer in headlights.
• 15:59
  Brian Searl: I don't know what that's doing, right?
• 16:01
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 16:01
  Brian Searl: That's just, it's just the one thing that I manage to learn and talk about but yeah, you're right.
• 16:05
  Brian Searl: It is especially hard, I think, for a campground, because you're taking away half your, like you take away your summer season basically from implementing any of those processes, 'cause you're running around too much- Yeah and doing too many
• 16:15
  Brian Searl: things that are important in the moment.
• 16:17
  Brian Searl: Have you tried spiking the drinks twice as hard at the beach bar and then maybe- people will be a little bit more chill and you can just do some work during the summer?
• 16:24
  Brian Searl: That seems like- we
• 16:25
  Sarah Krause: did add buckets of booze to the menu, so that does seem to be helping.
• 16:31
  Brian Searl: Don't...
• 16:31
  Brian Searl: Nothing I give up, nothing I say on the show should ever be taken as advice.
• 16:34
  Brian Searl: I- Sam, what do you think of all this?
• 16:39
  Brian Searl: I know we want to dig into Guide Time, but just start-
• 16:42
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah, but no I think this is a great a great topic because at Guide Time, we, w- first of all, being at IBM and IBM creating Watson 20 years ago, we've been in the AI game for quite a
• 16:54
  Sam Jankovich: while, but I'm a big data guy.
• 16:57
  Sam Jankovich: And so we built our platform on Salesforce, so we have attribution with all of our data elements on how we can use that data and automate that data through AI.
• 17:09
  Sam Jankovich: But the way we view it is really by work stream, and I'd say one of our biggest challenging work streams is curating supply of experiences in local markets.
• 17:20
  Sam Jankovich: And so we used AI to really, on how we drive automation, to find the outfitters, to onboard them and actually we built an agent that automates the whole creation of the listing which is really what we're selling.
• 17:36
  Sam Jankovich: And we've taken that onboarding time of a particular listing, building it from 45 minutes down to less than five minutes.
• 17:43
  Sam Jankovich: So i- it's all about scale.
• 17:45
  Sam Jankovich: And I say one of the other agents w- we've got in the progress right now is automating the schedule management between the outfitters and the guides when the actual request and the booking comes in to where an outfitter
• 17:58
  Sam Jankovich: can just go into the agent and see who on his squad's available, ask a question, it'll bring up, and he can automatically assign that trip to a guide.
• 18:08
  Sam Jankovich: We also wanted to automate on the front end in our marketplace.
• 18:13
  Sam Jankovich: Instead of going through thousands of listings and trying to find what you want to do, we created an agent called Scout, and you can go into Scout and say, "Hey, I'm going into this market, on these days, and
• 18:24
  Sam Jankovich: I wanna go do this type of activity.
• 18:26
  Sam Jankovich: What do you have?"
• 18:28
  Sam Jankovich: And Scout will bring up the top six selections.
• 18:31
  Sam Jankovich: You can just click on it, and you're on your way.
• 18:33
  Sam Jankovich: But it's all about work streams.
• 18:35
  Sam Jankovich: It's all about data, and you've gotta be able to scale 'cause Francois was saying, there's not a lot of margins in these business.
• 18:42
  Sam Jankovich: So we've gotta, we have to scale, and AI has been a great tool for us.
• 18:49
  Brian Searl: Yeah, I think it's interesting the way that like, and I know a little bit about GuideTime and I want you to ex- to, to tell our audience a little bit more in a second.
• 18:56
  Brian Searl: But I think it naturally fits into kind of our conversation about where do I start?
• 18:59
  Brian Searl: What do I do?
• 19:00
  Brian Searl: What do I optimize?
• 19:01
  Brian Searl: Because for an owner operator, and if I'm gonna spit anything out of my mouth that's wrong about GuideTime, you can just yell at me, right?
• 19:07
  Brian Searl: You can scream in the middle of my conversation and make me stop.
• 19:10
  Brian Searl: But but from what I understand about it, like it embeds on a website.
• 19:13
  Brian Searl: It gives people an area of a list of, again, like there's more things, right?
• 19:17
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 19:17
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 19:17
  Brian Searl: With a product, end product for a campground owner.
• 19:19
  Brian Searl: We work with one of your partner properties, CRR Hospitality.
• 19:22
  Brian Searl: I think they own- Yep Savannah Lakes RV Resort.
• 19:24
  Brian Searl: So it embeds on the website, gives them a list of area attractions to view.
• 19:27
  Brian Searl: They click, they can get the inventories, they can buy the tickets, all that stuff.
• 19:31
  Brian Searl: Yeah,
• 19:32
  Sam Jankovich: they buy the booking.
• 19:32
  Sam Jankovich: They can schedule the booking right there on the site.
• 19:35
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 19:35
  Brian Searl: Everything, right?
• 19:35
  Brian Searl: So I think- One is looking at stepping back from an owner operator and saying that I could do certain things with AI, I could do certain things with automation, but some things are better off turned over to another
• 19:44
  Brian Searl: company who's already got certain things like vendor relationships, partners, partnerships, things like that.
• 19:49
  Brian Searl: But then also like what can AI actually do for me versus what AI actually can't?
• 19:53
  Brian Searl: And I'll give you an example.
• 19:55
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 19:55
  Brian Searl: I'm more of a shoulder season traveler person, so my girlfriend and I typically go on trips in May and September every year.
• 20:01
  Brian Searl: That's not because we don't want to go in the summer, but because it's less crowded almost all the places we go in May and September.
• 20:06
  Brian Searl: And if you pick the right places, it's great.
• 20:08
  Brian Searl: And but often I will go to Chat GPT or Claude or whatever AI I'm using at the time, built our own AI platform now with local models.
• 20:16
  Brian Searl: But if you go to that platform and it will tell you, "Hey, I've got this great itinerary planned out for you in May," and because it's shoulder season, it doesn't know are the ferries running?
• 20:25
  Brian Searl: Are you sure they're running?
• 20:26
  Brian Searl: Are you positive they're running?
• 20:28
  Brian Searl: Are you 100%?
• 20:29
  Brian Searl: Are you sure the hot spring island in northern Canada that I wanna go to is gonna be open that week?
• 20:33
  Brian Searl: Oh no, it opens the week after I fly out.
• 20:35
  Brian Searl: And so there's all kinds of nuances there where like you can get a lot of information from AI, but ultimately it helps to have a partner like GuideTime-
• 20:43
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah
• 20:43
  Brian Searl: that has curated that and plugs into AI or complements it.
• 20:47
  Brian Searl: So what are your thoughts on that?
• 20:48
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 20:48
  Sam Jankovich: You're hitting on something really interesting 'cause when we first started looking AI, our team like wanted to create every scenario possible.
• 20:56
  Sam Jankovich: Oh, I've got someone that wants to book a fishing trip in Michigan, but it's not quite available, so what other things are available in that market and this and that.
• 21:04
  Sam Jankovich: So if you make it too complex, the agent tends to hallucinate and not give you good results.
• 21:11
  Sam Jankovich: The other thing is we-- we're all about schedule management and data, so in our data model, the scheduling, And we really rely on our partners to make sure they keep their schedules up to date, so we aren't booking
• 21:24
  Sam Jankovich: things that are not y- accurate or not available.
• 21:27
  Sam Jankovich: And we always have in our workflow, on what that approval process looks like.
• 21:31
  Sam Jankovich: But the data's key, and I think the next big lesson learned is don't make it so complex or the agent hallucinates and gives you bad results.
• 21:42
  Brian Searl: Don't make it so complex, period, is obviously a pretty good- Right piece of advice for everybody who tries to overcomplicate their website and think about button clicks- Yep and click-throughs and all the actions and some of that sciency,
• 21:53
  Brian Searl: helpful information.
• 21:54
  Brian Searl: I think when the agents get ahold of it, you're gonna find your marketing team has a whole lot of time on their hands with nothing to do.
• 21:59
  Brian Searl: But that's a whole nother topic that we won't go into today.
• 22:03
  Brian Searl: But yeah, just stepping back and thinking about, like, how does the customer experience my product or service?
• 22:06
  Brian Searl: How do they...
• 22:07
  Brian Searl: Let's use Savannah Lakes as an example.
• 22:08
  Brian Searl: How do they go to Savannahlakes.com from wherever my marketing drove them to Savannah Lakes?
• 22:11
  Brian Searl: How do they experience it?
• 22:13
  Brian Searl: How do they decide this is for me because I have the site type that I want, or the amenities that I want, but then also what can I do in the area?
• 22:19
  Brian Searl: And then I'm seeing something like Guide Time and to your point, it's showing you a list of available things.
• 22:25
  Brian Searl: I had my hopes and dreams set on I was gonna go to Haida Gwaii in Northwest BC in May, and just the hot spring island that I wanted to go to is just not you couldn't get there for
• 22:35
  Brian Searl: two weeks before I was to be there.
• 22:37
  Brian Searl: So I canceled the entire trip.
• 22:38
  Brian Searl: It must've been like $7,000, right?
• 22:39
  Brian Searl: There was nothing that could have made up that difference, but there's, but that's a, a unique circumstance.
• 22:44
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 22:45
  Brian Searl: In many other cases, there's a, "Oh, you can't do this, but you could do this."
• 22:49
  Brian Searl: And you go, "Oh maybe that fits me better.
• 22:50
  Brian Searl: I even like that.
• 22:51
  Brian Searl: I didn't know that existed."
• 22:52
  Brian Searl: And so having- that kind of thing right there, and sometimes, AI will do that for you, but it's a whole lot better when it's a curated local experience, because a lot of these vendors that you're working with probably
• 23:01
  Brian Searl: don't have great online presences either, which means they're not showing up in Chat GPT, like I could've or whatever the case might be.
• 23:07
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah, you've got- Most and I would say that the experiences you offer really, it's a really wide cast of a net, because, like, when we started off, we were doing fly fishing in Montana, but now today, besides all
• 23:23
  Sam Jankovich: your core things of doing cycling, hiking, white water, whatever the, the net is really wide and we could be doing everything from cow cuddling in Bo- Boulder, Colorado, to zip lining, down to iguana hunting in Florida.
• 23:39
  Sam Jankovich: It's just...
• 23:40
  Sam Jankovich: So we-
• 23:41
  Brian Searl: Define cow cuddling.
• 23:41
  Brian Searl: Hold on
• 23:43
  Sam Jankovich: Pardon?
• 23:44
  Brian Searl: Define cow cuddling.
• 23:45
  Brian Searl: I wanna know what that is.
• 23:49
  Sam Jankovich: I guess it's like baby cows, and you can do a tour of 'em, and you cuddle 'em and play with them and whatever.
• 23:58
  Sam Jankovich: But it's...
• 23:58
  Sam Jankovich: A- and I think that's really what makes the big difference.
• 24:01
  Sam Jankovich: Instead of having some big massive marketplace with all these things, working with the local campsite or RV site on what's unique and different in my area, and what are the experiences that I want for my guests, and then
• 24:16
  Sam Jankovich: us going out and curating all those experiences and getting...
• 24:20
  Sam Jankovich: And we don't try to make it too complex.
• 24:21
  Sam Jankovich: If you have 25, 30 really unique experiences in an area, and then you've got multiple outfitters that offer that, so we always have backup that's key.
• 24:31
  Sam Jankovich: But it...
• 24:33
  Sam Jankovich: But I think, really working with them, 'cause it looks very different.
• 24:35
  Sam Jankovich: We did some properties with Lark up in Stowe, Maine, and the things they're doing up there are completely different than other places.
• 24:44
  Sam Jankovich: And that's what makes yours, makes your property more unique and different.
• 24:47
  Sam Jankovich: It's really creating those memories and a memory destination versus just going out and saying, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna book a campsite."
• 24:56
  Brian Searl: Sarah, I wanna know what you think from your seasonal site perspective, from your four properties, right?
• 25:01
  Brian Searl: And then, Francois, I wanna know what you think about this from how important that experience is from the, hotel vacation rental side.
• 25:08
  Brian Searl: Because in outdoor hospitality, we've been preaching this, at least I have and several other people I know have been preaching this to clients on calls for, months.
• 25:15
  Brian Searl: I've been doing it for years.
• 25:16
  Brian Searl: It's like you have to build the experience, especially in the RV world where you're-- But most people's, obviously not Sarah's park, way upper class above everybody, right?
• 25:28
  Brian Searl: But most people since the '60s have been building parking lots for RVs.
• 25:30
  Brian Searl: It's all we've been doing.
• 25:32
  Brian Searl: And we need a difference maker, and whether that's on the property through an amenity or a service or a guest experience or customer service or something else.
• 25:41
  Brian Searl: And if it's not there or can't be there, then it needs to be something through like a curated experience, like a Guide Time.
• 25:47
  Brian Searl: Not that you need Guide Time, but that you need to bring the...
• 25:50
  Brian Searl: Sorry, Sam, just being, you know- No.
• 25:52
  Brian Searl: Oh,
• 25:52
  Sarah Krause: yeah
• 25:53
  Brian Searl: in the middle.
• 25:54
  Brian Searl: Like Guide Time helps, right?
• 25:55
  Brian Searl: But you don't have to have Guide Time.
• 25:57
  Brian Searl: You need to pres- to figure out a way to present to your guests, like why am I the compelling option?
• 26:02
  Brian Searl: There's a client we work for Rock Springs RV Resort, CRR was on my mind.
• 26:05
  Brian Searl: They're managing them.
• 26:06
  Brian Searl: They're opening in September.
• 26:07
  Brian Searl: They have one of the world's most famous little pie shops, right outside the corner of their entrance.
• 26:12
  Brian Searl: So they're big on that, right?
• 26:14
  Brian Searl: But things like that, why am I coming specifically to you?
• 26:18
  Brian Searl: Why are you the best location for me?
• 26:20
  Brian Searl: And if it's not your amenities, your guest service, whatever else, obviously we can all offer different customer service, but if it's not something on the property, then what is it?
• 26:28
  Brian Searl: What makes me different?
• 26:29
  Brian Searl: I'm closer to this national park or this hiking trail or this whatever.
• 26:32
  Brian Searl: Sarah, how does that impact your park, but then also like specifically with long-term guests, 'cause I feel like that's a different type of what they're looking for than a short-term
• 26:42
  Sarah Krause: Absolutely.
• 26:42
  Sarah Krause: The, the, speaking of the long-term guest, if we have really great amenities at all of our parks that most of our transient campers would never leave the park.
• 26:53
  Sarah Krause: They're just coming there specifically for those amenities.
• 26:56
  Sarah Krause: But our seasonal campers, they're there all the time, so how do you get them not wore out on the things you offer, and then, and keep them as seasonals by you?
• 27:06
  Sarah Krause: Because why wouldn't they go back to being transient campers or change different campgrounds every season too?
• 27:12
  Sarah Krause: All of those things are definitely important, so you definitely wanna know what is around you and what is happening.
• 27:17
  Sarah Krause: I'm, look, we're fortunate that in central Wisconsin there is a ton of other things to do besides hang out at our parks, not that we don't want you to hang out with us.
• 27:25
  Sarah Krause: But there, there's definitely things to see, different things to do and you definitely have to we have an, a partner app that says things to do in the area so that people know they can go do the Green
• 27:37
  Sarah Krause: Circle Trail, which is a big bike trail here in Stevens Point, or go visit War Memorial in Marion.
• 27:43
  Sarah Krause: So those are all very important.
• 27:45
  Sarah Krause: Whether you're like us where we're a destination campground and most of our guests don't leave, or if you are a campground with nothing to offer inside except for a campsite and maybe a camp store, then you definitely wanna
• 27:58
  Sarah Krause: emphasize on all the things around you, especially to market to get those campers to come into you
• 28:06
  Brian Searl: François, how do you look at this from the vacation rental hotel side of things?
• 28:11
  Brian Searl: Because I think it's different than outdoor hospitality because you're not...
• 28:14
  Brian Searl: You're more of, and I'm gonna put words in your mouth, you tell me if I'm wrong, I'm talking about your industry, not your company.
• 28:19
  Brian Searl: But you're more of a like, "I'm the place to stay and I'm not adding like extra amenities to my hotel lobby
• 28:29
  Francois Gouelo: other than the standard stuff we find everywhere," right?
• 28:29
  Francois Gouelo: It's funny because this is-- First of all, this is a subject I love to talk about when it comes to experiences and services 'cause I think it's such an underappreciated vertical of hospitality, and whether it's hotels, campgrounds, or
• 28:42
  Francois Gouelo: even vacation rentals.
• 28:44
  Francois Gouelo: I could see how important it is in campgrounds, how it needs to be front and center in so many ways, 'cause I think one of you guys mentioned like if you're just a parking lot, then there's no interest
• 28:53
  Francois Gouelo: for people to come back.
• 28:54
  Francois Gouelo: If you have those amenities and you have more reasons for people to come, then you're not gonna be maybe competing with other co-campgrounds as much, or you're just gonna get more repeat guests.
• 29:02
  Francois Gouelo: I think the vacation rental and the hotel industry has not had enough of a focus on experiences as it should because the experience is the property, and that's wrong.
• 29:15
  Francois Gouelo: It's wrong in so many ways.
• 29:16
  Francois Gouelo: A lot of times people book a property because they're wanting to do something in the area, whether it's watch a FIFA game, whether it's go for a NASCAR whatever, or there's a specific tour, they have a business conference,
• 29:29
  Francois Gouelo: you name it.
• 29:30
  Francois Gouelo: There's always a reason why they're staying beyond the property itself.
• 29:33
  Francois Gouelo: Now, in the ultra-luxury villa, I get it.
• 29:37
  Francois Gouelo: The, the reason is the villa and the reason is all the amenities that come with the villa, but that's a whole different category in and of itself, and even they have a set of services that go beyond the
• 29:48
  Francois Gouelo: property itself.
• 29:48
  Francois Gouelo: So I think the problem I see in vacation rentals is how do you adopt this, and how do you not create a second job for yourself, where now you are a vacation rental manager and a personal concierge for
• 30:00
  Francois Gouelo: every single guest that goes through those doors?
• 30:02
  Francois Gouelo: And this is one area where we've spent a lot of time on.
• 30:05
  Francois Gouelo: That's why I'd love to chat with you, Sam, on, on potentially partnering here.
• 30:08
  Francois Gouelo: We integrate with the big platforms, the Viator's, GetYourGuides, the sort of huge marketplaces that are impossible to scour through.
• 30:16
  Francois Gouelo: And last year we launched this product called Enzo Experiences, where we basically just provided a white label of all those different experiences to the guests, and the booking rate was really low And then we created a workflow, an
• 30:30
  Francois Gouelo: automation that came on behalf of the property managers the, the ones running the property saying, "Hey, I picked 10 items or 10 experiences for you that I think would really work for you."
• 30:42
  Francois Gouelo: And suddenly people started booking.
• 30:44
  Francois Gouelo: So then we were like, "Okay, hold up.
• 30:45
  Francois Gouelo: But what if we made it a bit more personalized?
• 30:47
  Francois Gouelo: What if we actually curated some of these services?
• 30:49
  Francois Gouelo: What if we try to figure out which ones should go where instead of just providing a menu?"
• 30:54
  Francois Gouelo: Because if you go to Viator or any of these platforms and you look up Barcelona, for example, there's over 50 tours of the Sagrada Familia.
• 31:01
  Francois Gouelo: If you go to Toronto on Viator and you look up Toronto, there's at least 60 different Niagara Falls tours.
• 31:08
  Francois Gouelo: Now, let me tell you something about Toronto.
• 31:10
  Francois Gouelo: Niagara Falls is not in Toronto.
• 31:12
  Francois Gouelo: It's away from...
• 31:13
  Francois Gouelo: It's three hours away from Toronto, but all the tour guides of Niagara Falls, they wanted to get more search visibility, so they picked Toronto as their city.
• 31:21
  Francois Gouelo: It's a completely different city.
• 31:22
  Francois Gouelo: It's a completely different place.
• 31:24
  Francois Gouelo: So being able to curate this and what I realized from all this was the, the local experts are the operators, are the ones such as yourself, Sarah, and any of the, the customers we work with that are vacation
• 31:33
  Francois Gouelo: rental operators.
• 31:34
  Francois Gouelo: They know their markets so much better.
• 31:36
  Francois Gouelo: And this is one of the reasons why I'm here in Alabama.
• 31:38
  Francois Gouelo: I have learned more about Ala- managing vacation rentals in Alabama than I could have reading any blog posts, review, Reddit forum or anything.
• 31:48
  Francois Gouelo: This has been like a ultimate crash course for me to learn about, parking passes in vacation rentals in Alabama is the biggest mess you could ever imagine.
• 31:57
  Francois Gouelo: And I just discovered how it all works.
• 31:58
  Francois Gouelo: So my point is, I think the operators are the ones who understand their markets the best.
• 32:03
  Francois Gouelo: I think there's available experiences, tours, and activities that are-- s- there's too much inventory, too many options out there to choose from.
• 32:10
  Francois Gouelo: Connecting the two is how you convert those upsells, and it's how you make the trip more memorable.
• 32:16
  Francois Gouelo: It's how you get to get a commission on it, make more money, frankly.
• 32:19
  Francois Gouelo: And you give people a reason to stay beyond the stay itself, and I think that's what hospitality's all about.
• 32:24
  Francois Gouelo: So yeah, I love this subject.
• 32:27
  Brian Searl: And I think one of that, one of those answers, and Sam, do you have something to say?
• 32:31
  Brian Searl: Go
• 32:31
  Sam Jankovich: ahead.
• 32:31
  Sam Jankovich: No, I'm fine.
• 32:32
  Brian Searl: So like I think Sam's got time is one of those options.
• 32:36
  Brian Searl: I think, but I think what we're in for is like a really nice treat for the consumer going forward in how AI evolves.
• 32:42
  Brian Searl: And Francois, you probably know this as well as I do, I'm not saying clear if Sam don't, but like we're both maybe kind of geeks in AI given our companies and where things are going.
• 32:51
  Brian Searl: But I think AI quickly goes to way, way more personalization in that you can already connect your Gmail and your photos and your calendar and all that to Google's AI mode.
• 33:00
  Brian Searl: You can connect way more to Chat GPT and Claude and Gemini than you can to that alone right now.
• 33:05
  Brian Searl: I think there becomes a point where AI becomes proactive, where in February in our industry, in the outdoor hospitality industry, it's "Okay, hey, it's time to go camping.
• 33:13
  Brian Searl: Where would you-- where do you wanna go this year?"
• 33:14
  Brian Searl: Or maybe it doesn't even say that, maybe it just knows based on your emails and what you're talking about and all the privacy things that are gonna probably get even worse as we go forward.
• 33:23
  Brian Searl: But it just says, "Hey, it's time to book your camping trip.
• 33:25
  Brian Searl: Instead of waiting for you, here's something I've selected for you.
• 33:28
  Brian Searl: It's in North Texas because I know you like heat but not too much heat, and it's near a river because I know you like water, and it's near shade, and it's in the exact dates I know you can
• 33:35
  Brian Searl: get off of work 'cause I've accessed your calendar and your kids are at school."
• 33:39
  Brian Searl: And it's just, and it's just gonna present you with an option, and it's gonna give you an itinerary of two to three examples of what you should do.
• 33:44
  Brian Searl: And in 99% of cases, people are just gonna be like, "Yep, you know me way better than I do.
• 33:48
  Brian Searl: Book that."
• 33:49
  Brian Searl: I can't imagine like probably me because I'm is anal retentive a word I can say on a podcast?
• 33:54
  Brian Searl: Like specific about when I tr- when I trip plan, right?
• 33:57
  Brian Searl: I just wanna pick everything.
• 33:58
  Brian Searl: It's part of what I enjoy doing, and so I can't imagine handing that over to an AI.
• 34:03
  Brian Searl: But at some point you're gonna get to the point where like people, like nobody's gonna say no to that.
• 34:08
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 34:08
  Brian Searl: Like who's gonna be like, "No, I think I'm smarter than you, AI.
• 34:09
  Brian Searl: I want this instead."
• 34:11
  Francois Gouelo: Yeah.
• 34:12
  Francois Gouelo: And finding the right time too for those offers, right?
• 34:14
  Francois Gouelo: 'Cause it's not, one of the things we'll sell is an early check-in.
• 34:17
  Francois Gouelo: I love this product because first off, it doesn't work if you sell it at checkout.
• 34:20
  Francois Gouelo: I'll tell you that right now.
• 34:21
  Francois Gouelo: This is a quick little tip.
• 34:22
  Francois Gouelo: If you try to sell an early check-in at checkout, doesn't work.
• 34:25
  Francois Gouelo: If you send the message a few days before, the right time, and things like that.
• 34:28
  Francois Gouelo: But then there's also data that tells you this guest is 100% going to pay for the early check-in.
• 34:33
  Francois Gouelo: I'll give you an example.
• 34:34
  Francois Gouelo: We have a property manager in Iceland.
• 34:36
  Francois Gouelo: Any flight that lands in the morning is landing from the US or vice versa.
• 34:42
  Francois Gouelo: Anyone coming from the US is landing in the morning.
• 34:44
  Francois Gouelo: So if you're gonna land in the morning, you're coming from the US or Canada, you arrive in the morning of c- and your check-in's at 4:00 PM, of course you're gonna pay for an early check-in for 25, 30,
• 34:52
  Francois Gouelo: 40 bucks 'cause what else are you gonna do?
• 34:54
  Francois Gouelo: And if not, what are you gonna do?
• 34:56
  Francois Gouelo: Luggage storage.
• 34:57
  Francois Gouelo: So that's the second option.
• 34:58
  Francois Gouelo: So we start collecting that data as part of our verification process for guests, which is like, "Hey, where are you from?"
• 35:04
  Francois Gouelo: And what's your purpose of trip?
• 35:05
  Francois Gouelo: And different data points that make it more friendly, but then actually behind the scenes it's about if he has a plus one number, he's Canadian or American, so let's sell him that early check-in proactively and tell them, "Hey,
• 35:16
  Francois Gouelo: we can give you a free early check-in for 3:00 PM or a paid one for 12:00," and make that available, and prioritize him over maybe the French guy, and I'll say that since I'm French, who's coming in just
• 35:26
  Francois Gouelo: to, to, visit and is gonna be landing at 7:00 PM instead, and won't even be checking in early.
• 35:30
  Francois Gouelo: So that data, collecting the information and actually being able to use it is how you're gonna be able to drive personalization, and I think that's where the world's headed, so I'm excited for it more than anything.
• 35:40
  Brian Searl: Yeah, and there's a balance between being creepy and being helpful, right?
• 35:44
  Francois Gouelo: I don't mind the creepy.
• 35:46
  Brian Searl: Most people don't honestly.
• 35:49
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 35:50
  Brian Searl: We've seen that, especially in the United States, we've seen that, and I live in Canada, but it's...
• 35:53
  Brian Searl: We have a few laws up here, but it's basically the same way in that there's really a free-for-all for everything, whereas Europe is more locked down with GDPR and stuff like that.
• 36:01
  Brian Searl: But just the ability for you to- Take that stuff and aggregate it and collate it into an experience that you want.
• 36:08
  Brian Searl: If you're using it in the right way, you're serving your guests better.
• 36:11
  Brian Searl: And as long as it remains in the background and the tech isn't in front of everybody's face, and they have a choice whether to use it or not, it just creates a better experience if you do it correctly.
• 36:20
  Francois Gouelo: Yeah, 100%.
• 36:21
  Francois Gouelo: Sarah, do you use anything to personalize guest stays like that in campgrounds?
• 36:25
  Francois Gouelo: I wonder how that works in the campground specific, like you collect information about guests and what they're planning on doing during their stay?
• 36:32
  Sarah Krause: Not too spe- specifically.
• 36:35
  Sarah Krause: We ha- we put in notes if somebody says it's a birthday or, and some sort of flag.
• 36:40
  Sarah Krause: But after listening to you talk, I was already like, "So what kind of text or email can I automate to get ages of everybody traveling and then send them suggested activities to do while they're here?"
• 36:53
  Sarah Krause: So yeah, that's sparked a whole lot- Yeah for my campers.
• 36:56
  Brian Searl: You can automate that and run that all through AI.
• 36:58
  Sarah Krause: Yeah.
• 36:59
  Brian Searl: You just, you take the you use RMS, is that what you use?
• 37:02
  Sarah Krause: Yes.
• 37:02
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 37:03
  Brian Searl: So you just take, okay, RMS, Campspot, Newbook, whatever you use, right?
• 37:05
  Brian Searl: You take the e-commerce data that you get from the checkout window and then you automatically use that as a trigger to send them a form to fill out, then you take the form fields from that, merge it with
• 37:13
  Brian Searl: the dates they're staying in Campspot, run it all through AI, and give them a guide to everything they need.
• 37:18
  Brian Searl: And then you send them a SAM to actually book the stuff.
• 37:20
  Sarah Krause: Yeah.
• 37:21
  Sarah Krause: Love that.
• 37:24
  Brian Searl: This is
• 37:26
  Sarah Krause: just purely for us today.
• 37:28
  Sarah Krause: We're just e- educating ourselves.
• 37:30
  Brian Searl: That's fine.
• 37:31
  Brian Searl: We're edu- we're educating the audience by doing that too, so Sam, what does the future look like for GuideTime?
• 37:34
  Brian Searl: If you look at, as you s- step back and look at how you're automating processes to make yourself more efficient, like I think we're headed toward a world where the AI picks everything for you.
• 37:44
  Brian Searl: But I also think we're headed toward a world like Francois said, where we're going to need the integrations with that AI from platforms li- like either a GuideTime or a Aviator or something like that, that tells the AI
• 37:55
  Brian Searl: what's available.
• 37:56
  Brian Searl: It's like a, we're going to talk about UCP, universal commerce protocol through Google, that's TBD.
• 38:01
  Brian Searl: But like just the, presenting the AI with this is available on this date at this price, here's what it's about, that kind of stuff, right?
• 38:07
  Brian Searl: So it's not gonna lie and say that a ferry is available today.
• 38:10
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 38:10
  Brian Searl: It's not.
• 38:12
  Brian Searl: So I think that's where we head.
• 38:13
  Brian Searl: If I'm right or many of the interactions switch to voice, which I think is naturally gonna happen, 'cause who wants to sit down at a keyboard and type when you can talk it to- Yep in complete sentences?
• 38:22
  Brian Searl: At that point, where does GuideTime go?
• 38:26
  Sam Jankovich: You gotta be care- but you gotta be careful because there is a human element definitely, 'cause that's what we're doing.
• 38:32
  Sam Jankovich: We're providing experiences for people and memories.
• 38:36
  Sam Jankovich: And we try to use AI anywhere that we have a process that we can fix and do it at scale.
• 38:46
  Sam Jankovich: But then you have the human element.
• 38:49
  Sam Jankovich: Like these outfitters and guides, we need to vet them.
• 38:51
  Sam Jankovich: We need to talk to them.
• 38:52
  Sam Jankovich: We've gotta make sure that they are who they are, and that we're, that experience that we're providing for the customer, that we've vetted these people, we know they're licensed, they're insured, they're, there's a process.
• 39:04
  Sam Jankovich: And a lot of that we do online and we scale that.
• 39:06
  Sam Jankovich: But there is a human element, and there's always the chance when a booking, something they have to cancel or whatever, where there's a human element there too.
• 39:16
  Sam Jankovich: But I'd say that, I think five years from now every campground, every RV site, any outdoor boutique will have some sort of an experience platform.
• 39:27
  Sam Jankovich: And so we're trying to, and I think we kinda saw the wave Starting about three years ago when my old employer, Starwood announced the Field Stream brand that they were gonna build outdoor boutiques in 130 locations across the
• 39:42
  Sam Jankovich: country.
• 39:44
  Sam Jankovich: And then we saw Marriott with the outdoor collection and we saw, Auto Pet Camp and all these other things popping up, but it's there and it's experience led and people are picking their destinations based on experiences.
• 39:57
  Sam Jankovich: So I think we're just at the beginning of this, but in five years it will be just part of the overall experience on how people choose and book, what destinations they're gonna go to.
• 40:10
  Brian Searl: So let me be more specific, and I'm just gonna push you a little bit, right?
• 40:13
  Brian Searl: How does- Okay how does Guide Time fit into that ecosystem is specifically what I'm wondering.
• 40:17
  Brian Searl: I'm not I'm not saying I believe it's unnecessary, 'cause I don't.
• 40:21
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 40:21
  Brian Searl: What I'm asking you is how do you fit into a world where the consumer no longer visits the website because the AI- Yeah is doing it for them, and the co- and/or the consumer is talking to voice?
• 40:31
  Brian Searl: How does Guide Time fit?
• 40:32
  Brian Searl: Because the human element is important.
• 40:33
  Brian Searl: I'm not arguing to get rid of- Yeah the human element either, but there's gonna be a lot of people as AI gets better and better.
• 40:39
  Brian Searl: One of the earliest examples I've gave is I was on LinkedIn, we released our AI phone agent like two and a half years ago, the first version of it, and some lady commented on my LinkedIn post and she's
• 40:49
  Brian Searl: "I will never wanna talk to a robot on the phone."
• 40:51
  Brian Searl: And my response was like, "As soon as you call your cable company and they can, the AI can solve your problem in eight and a half seconds versus transferring you for two hours to nine different people, you'll never
• 40:59
  Brian Searl: wanna talk to a person again."
• 41:05
  Francois Gouelo: Amen.
• 41:05
  Francois Gouelo: Try calling Rogers in Canada and come back to me and let me know if you wanna, you don't wanna talk to an AI.
• 41:10
  Brian Searl: That, but it has to be said the right way.
• 41:11
  Brian Searl: So thoughts on that?
• 41:12
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah, I think that's a great question.
• 41:14
  Sam Jankovich: I think there's different ways to skin the cat of what we're providing.
• 41:18
  Sam Jankovich: You can go get your local providers and outfitters and do it yourself.
• 41:23
  Sam Jankovich: You can go hook up with some of the big booking platforms like Viator and all those.
• 41:29
  Sam Jankovich: But what we provide is that embedded experience layer totally in the booking journey of the site to where it's all white labeled and it looks like it's your experience, but we provide all the, the booking, the payments, the
• 41:45
  Sam Jankovich: collections, the, s- cancellations, you name it, and it's all a turnkey solution built on the platform, but the platform is tailored and curated based on that local lodge or site or whatever, so those experiences are just not something
• 42:03
  Sam Jankovich: generic where we just, we offer the core six things everywhere.
• 42:08
  Sam Jankovich: We're curating on a local and providing that local experience.
• 42:12
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 42:12
  Brian Searl: I still think it's important, I just think you end up plugging into like a Chat GPT as maybe an API or something.
• 42:18
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 42:19
  Brian Searl: Then you get to do that.
• 42:21
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 42:21
  Sam Jankovich: That, that, that's it's definitely a possibility.
• 42:25
  Sam Jankovich: I, and I would say also-
• 42:27
  Brian Searl: Eventually you get that idea that makes you a billionaire
• 42:28
  Sam Jankovich: Oh, yeah, I love it.
• 42:29
  Sam Jankovich: I love it.
• 42:30
  Sam Jankovich: One of my last projects at IBM was with a major airline provider and they built a pilot around the travel of the future.
• 42:39
  Sam Jankovich: And it's right what you were talking about, Brian, where they, the pilot was with this air- this airline, and they partnered up with all their partners, whether it's rental cars, hotels, experiences, you name it.
• 42:53
  Sam Jankovich: And you could go into the agent and do exactly what you're talking about, saying, "I've got a family of five.
• 42:59
  Sam Jankovich: I'm going to Dallas, Texas on this week, and we wanna do these things.
• 43:04
  Sam Jankovich: We wanna stay in this kind of a place," whatever.
• 43:06
  Sam Jankovich: And the agent would come back and give them results of a standard, a gold, and a platinum package of what they could just pick the package and book the whole experience.
• 43:17
  Sam Jankovich: But so that, that's where things are going, for sure.
• 43:20
  Brian Searl: Yeah, I'm excited for this, and I think Francois is probably excited for this, and I think the rest of everybody who runs a business is like, "Oh my God, this is terrifying.
• 43:28
  Brian Searl: Please stop."
• 43:30
  Brian Searl: Because I think it's gonna be fascinating to be able to have a, an agent dynamically compile a package.
• 43:36
  Brian Searl: You're gonna have to just decouple everything and let the agent couple it back together- Yeah to the point where you're gonna give a personalized experience to every single person, both, both with experiences and the checkout process, and even
• 43:46
  Brian Searl: the rate, to the point where you're like, "I wanna bid higher for this customer, so I wanna lower my rate by $2 or high- raise it by three because I know that they'll probably leave a mess in the
• 43:55
  Brian Searl: hotel room," or whatever else, right?
• 43:57
  Brian Searl: I think that's fascinating to build.
• 43:59
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 43:59
  Brian Searl: But it's gonna be a lot of work, for sure.
• 44:01
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah, for sure.
• 44:03
  Sam Jankovich: You need the data for sure, and you need the partnerships that you can provide, the experiences with.
• 44:09
  Sam Jankovich: But the data, as long as you got the data and you've got things designed where you've got true attribution of what you're gonna serve up based on what personas it's all there.
• 44:21
  Sam Jankovich: It's just it's all there for the making, for sure
• 44:25
  Brian Searl: Yep.
• 44:25
  Brian Searl: Gonna be exciting.
• 44:26
  Brian Searl: Sarah, what do you think about this?
• 44:27
  Brian Searl: Are you excited to jump into this?
• 44:28
  Brian Searl: You gonna start tomorrow?
• 44:32
  Sarah Krause: In two- I do like the idea of like vetting and bidding for your customers.
• 44:36
  Sarah Krause: That sounds yes, that's hot person, sounds like they're gonna trash a cabin, higher the rate.
• 44:40
  Sarah Krause: Love that.
• 44:41
  Sarah Krause: If we can work on that sooner, that would be really great.
• 44:46
  Sarah Krause: We are lo- I think we need someone to pass a law We are just loving all the...
• 44:50
  Brian Searl: What's that?
• 44:50
  Brian Searl: I wonder if we could pass a law to prevent us from doing that at some point, like discriminating against guests.
• 44:54
  Sarah Krause: Probably.
• 44:55
  Sarah Krause: Yeah.
• 44:57
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 44:57
  Brian Searl: It'd ruin all our fun.
• 44:58
  Brian Searl: But we'll do it until we can not do it anymore.
• 45:03
  Brian Searl: Go ahead, sorry.
• 45:03
  Brian Searl: I didn't mean to cut you off.
• 45:05
  Sarah Krause: Oh, I we just, we love implementing anything that's going to help any of our processes, and at the end of the day, make us more money, whether it's bringing in more campers or getting them to use our amenities
• 45:15
  Sarah Krause: or buy our things or somebody else's things or whatever it is.
• 45:19
  Sarah Krause: It's all just really great and super fun to play with all of these different things that can build your business.
• 45:28
  Brian Searl: If you, Sarah, and I just have a question for you, like if you're, if you step back and look at this, let's pretend you were in my shoes as a geek or Fran Swah's shoes as a geek and
• 45:36
  Brian Searl: you knew all of these things were changing, and we've talked about .0001% of the ways that things are gonna change in the next probably five years.
• 45:44
  Brian Searl: And then you got 10 years, 15 years with robotics and flying cars and everything else that's coming down the pipeline, right?
• 45:50
  Brian Searl: If you're an operator, and let's pretend you're, you were in my shoes and you believed all the things that I believe or the many people that are smarter than me believe and you talk, research, learn about on YouTube,
• 46:02
  Brian Searl: what do you do first as an operator?
• 46:04
  Brian Searl: Like I know we talked about making a list, but what we're talking about in my mind is the most overwhelming transition of any business that's ever happened in the history of forever, and that's probably an understatement by about
• 46:17
  Brian Searl: 265,000 times.
• 46:20
  Brian Searl: So how do you avoid getting overwhelmed?
• 46:22
  Brian Searl: How do you step back and say "Okay, I believe all this stuff is happening, but like today is today and tomorrow's tomorrow and next week's next week.
• 46:30
  Brian Searl: I gotta do something, but how do I do this smoothly?"
• 46:34
  Sarah Krause: For sure.
• 46:35
  Sarah Krause: Y- I think just like any other revolutionary thing that's happened you have to be open-minded and be able to evolve as a business owner.
• 46:45
  Sarah Krause: If you were a farmer and all of a sudden everybody wanted soy and almond milk, then you probably thought about what else can I do besides having a milk- milking cows, that, that's...
• 46:55
  Sarah Krause: So you've got to look into all the things and how they can help your processes.
• 46:59
  Sarah Krause: And that and the great thing about the camping industry is, we made a little TikTok that said, "AI thinks they can take our job."
• 47:06
  Sarah Krause: There's always gonna be some sort of human part of camping.
• 47:12
  Sarah Krause: You can't take that away from camping.
• 47:14
  Sarah Krause: It, you couldn't have a robot out there doing things and people would not enjoy camping as much.
• 47:20
  Sarah Krause: In, in the case of
• 47:21
  Brian Searl: your parks, I agree, and in the case of true outdoor hospitality where the experience on the property matters, I agree.
• 47:29
  Brian Searl: I think if you're building a parking lot like many RVs are, you can easily do an RV self-park model and get away with it.
• 47:35
  Brian Searl: But generally I agree with you.
• 47:36
  Sarah Krause: Oh it, oh yeah and we've l- looked into that model of RV parks where people are pulling in and like we have a license plate reader at one of our campgrounds.
• 47:44
  Sarah Krause: So w- after arrival time, it reads its license plate, opens the gate.
• 47:48
  Sarah Krause: They could go right to their site.
• 47:50
  Sarah Krause: At d- a departure time it reads their license plate and they pull out, and we could be completely hands-off with them, and that model of an RV park is very attractive if that's what you want to do.
• 48:04
  Sarah Krause: That's it.
• 48:04
  Sarah Krause: Yeah.
• 48:05
  Sarah Krause: And using those sort of processes, but y- if in the destination park where we are and we or a seasonal park where we are processes to add implementing AI and where you pick to start is for us our
• 48:20
  Sarah Krause: focus is just giving us more time to either do other jobs or actually take some time off.
• 48:30
  Sarah Krause: So everything that we look at for AI, like our, we implemented a phone answering service now the pre-check-in, all of that stuff, is solely to buy us more time, whether it's time off or time to do other jobs
• 48:45
  Sarah Krause: or or less staffing because right now it is a world where it is very difficult to fully staff your campground too.
• 48:53
  Sarah Krause: So that's where we focus and that's where I would imagine most campground owners or managers are gonna focus the implementing AI, is to get themselves whether more time off or more time to do the things they wanna do
• 49:09
  Sarah Krause: as far as their business goes, or have less staff on, on there.
• 49:14
  Sarah Krause: So just pick those things and figure it out.
• 49:17
  Brian Searl: Yeah, little by little.
• 49:18
  Brian Searl: That's all you gotta do, but start now probably.
• 49:21
  Brian Searl: Should've started a couple years ago.
• 49:22
  Brian Searl: Start now.
• 49:22
  Brian Searl: Never too late.
• 49:24
  Sarah Krause: Don't start in a couple years.
• 49:25
  Sarah Krause: Just jump right in, whatever it is.
• 49:27
  Sarah Krause: But one of the big things I really enjoyed having AI help us was we did not we...
• 49:32
  Sarah Krause: I read Traction and decided we needed processes for everything, which we had fun pr- some processes, but nothing really great.
• 49:41
  Sarah Krause: So that was the focus of my winter, was just implementing Traction, i- implementing processes, and AI was huge for all of that because it helps you think outside of the box of, and make all of that stuff happen.
• 49:56
  Sarah Krause: So if you don't have processes, and that goes back to what Francois said about having all of your stuff written down so people know how to...
• 50:05
  Sarah Krause: Because AI can't help you if it doesn't know your processes.
• 50:08
  Sarah Krause: So that's a great place to start and a great place to have AI help you start.
• 50:15
  Brian Searl: All right, let's spend the last few minutes of the show just we'll give everybody a chance to be the host for a second for one question.
• 50:19
  Brian Searl: So Sarah, do you have a question for Francois or Sam?
• 50:22
  Sarah Krause: I, I do.
• 50:24
  Sarah Krause: Sam, when you're building these, the, you are reaching out to properties and saying, "Hey, we've got these guides around you.
• 50:32
  Sarah Krause: Let us integrate int- in- integrate into your website," and then they will be taken over to your product.
• 50:38
  Sarah Krause: Is that kind of what I caught from all of that?
• 50:42
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 50:42
  Sam Jankovich: It's, first of all, number one, it's a revenue share model so that this is not an expense.
• 50:47
  Sam Jankovich: So it is a it's a revenue share model.
• 50:50
  Sam Jankovich: A property that only has maybe 50 sites on it at a 50% occupancy with 15% conversion rate could make upwards of over $20,000 a year just on, on that alone.
• 51:03
  Sam Jankovich: But yes we have a platform that automates the whole curation of experiences.
• 51:09
  Sam Jankovich: We have a marketing automation tool that we reach out to all the providers across what experiences we wanna offer, and we do all the onboarding, and then we handle everything from end to end.
• 51:22
  Sam Jankovich: It's, there's no administration by the campsite team.
• 51:25
  Sam Jankovich: We handle all the bookings, cancellations, payments, processing, you name it.
• 51:30
  Sam Jankovich: And at the end of the month, we give a, a revenue share back to the property.
• 51:34
  Sam Jankovich: We don't want this to feel like it's an expense, but to be ancillary revenue that it really gives the property some upside.
• 51:42
  Sam Jankovich: And obviously at the end of the day, a memorable experience for the destination.
• 51:47
  Sam Jankovich: They're gonna remember you by the experiences they had there, not just the campsite.
• 51:53
  Brian Searl: All right, Sam, your turn.
• 51:54
  Brian Searl: Any question for Francois or Sarah?
• 51:57
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah I had a question for Francois.
• 51:59
  Sam Jankovich: Very interested if you could elaborate just a little bit more on When you guys were working with Viator and some of the big booking platforms and it was generic, but then you got into specifically like curating like 10,
• 52:15
  Sam Jankovich: experiences, whatever what was the key to success in what you saw in that transition?
• 52:21
  Francois Gouelo: Two things.
• 52:22
  Francois Gouelo: One letting the local operators be the curators, and pick and choose what they wanted while informing them of, "By the way, if you click the add all button, it's probably not gonna work.
• 52:32
  Francois Gouelo: Like actually take the time to add the ones that make sense.
• 52:36
  Francois Gouelo: Don't click the add all button."
• 52:37
  Francois Gouelo: So doing a bit of work on that front.
• 52:39
  Francois Gouelo: And and then the second one, which I would say is, unique to what we've built, is we decide where to put them throughout the guest journey.
• 52:48
  Francois Gouelo: Yeah.
• 52:48
  Francois Gouelo: And that's something that y- we couldn't give local operators control on because you'd wanna sprinkle it kinda everywhere and you'd wanna be, "Oh, let me show the guests, some items here and let me show them there," and actually
• 52:59
  Francois Gouelo: we want the guest to follow a very specific path so that there's minimal friction throughout the check-in process, especially in vacation rentals 'cause it's not like a hotel where you show up and you just expect that there's a
• 53:11
  Francois Gouelo: front desk, and you'll be able to check in.
• 53:13
  Francois Gouelo: In vacation rentals you want the information a bit ahead of time and you wanna make sure when you get to the property you know how to get in.
• 53:18
  Francois Gouelo: There's no front desk that you can communicate with.
• 53:21
  Francois Gouelo: So on that part it was really about us curating at the right place at the right time, so we have a few specific CTAs throughout our platform.
• 53:29
  Francois Gouelo: W- we, we have two parts to our platform.
• 53:30
  Francois Gouelo: One is messaging, inbox, communicate across different channels, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Booking, VRBO, all in one place with AI to assist and respond.
• 53:40
  Francois Gouelo: And the second part, which is my personal favorite part, called the boarding pass.
• 53:43
  Francois Gouelo: And it's just like a boarding pass for your flight but for your vacation rental or hospitality business, and if you remember- you go to an airport and you would check in, you could go to the gate and you...
• 53:54
  Francois Gouelo: or the little kiosks and you can get your boarding pass there.
• 53:57
  Francois Gouelo: Now, if you go to that kiosk, for most of them are gonna look at you like, "Just go on your phone."
• 54:01
  Francois Gouelo: "Why are you here in line asking for a boarding pass?
• 54:03
  Francois Gouelo: Just do it on your phone."
• 54:04
  Francois Gouelo: So that is the concept of the boarding pass, and really just like a boarding pass for your flight, there are steps that you need to take first, and then we'll sprinkle at the right time throughout those steps the
• 54:15
  Francois Gouelo: correct upsells, and that's something we kinda mapped out that, that works really well.
• 54:20
  Francois Gouelo: So I'm happy to chat, Sam, and see if there's things we can do together on that front.
• 54:23
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 54:23
  Sam Jankovich: 100%.
• 54:24
  Sam Jankovich: I look forward to it.
• 54:25
  Sam Jankovich: Thank you.
• 54:25
  Francois Gouelo: My pleasure.
• 54:26
  Brian Searl: I just want to say that I'm only at the boarding pass kiosk because WestJet's app sucks.
• 54:32
  Francois Gouelo: See, I'm a big Air Canada fan.
• 54:34
  Francois Gouelo: I love Air Canada's app, and so there's actually a lot of inspiration of our boarding pass from Air Canada, but don't tell them I said that because I don't wanna get sued or something.
• 54:44
  Brian Searl: I still got my
• 54:44
  Sarah Krause: I owe them money.
• 54:46
  Brian Searl: Which partners with WestJet and I'm in Calgary.
• 54:48
  Brian Searl: So anyway.
• 54:49
  Francois Gouelo: Fair.
• 54:49
  Brian Searl: Francois, do you have a question for Sarah or Sam b- and then we'll wrap up the show?
• 54:52
  Francois Gouelo: Yeah.
• 54:53
  Francois Gouelo: First off, Sarah, I'd love to chat after the show because I don't know enough about campgrounds, and it feels like there's a lot of nuances, differences, but similarities with some of the things that we do in vacation rentals.
• 55:03
  Francois Gouelo: So I'd love to understand a bit more how that works.
• 55:05
  Francois Gouelo: But I guess one of the questions is like how do you prioritize bookings across different channels with campgrounds?
• 55:10
  Francois Gouelo: What is...
• 55:11
  Francois Gouelo: Do you get more bookings?
• 55:12
  Francois Gouelo: This is gonna be a first question.
• 55:13
  Francois Gouelo: Do you get more bookings from various channels, or is it almost all from your own booking website?
• 55:20
  Sarah Krause: It's almost all from our own booking website.
• 55:22
  Sarah Krause: We had implemented Airbnb a few years ago and we've...
• 55:27
  Sarah Krause: There's a few other campground specific ones.
• 55:29
  Sarah Krause: I think Spot Tonight we've tried, and there might be m- some others.
• 55:34
  Sarah Krause: And the reservation system that we use, RMS, is really good about integrating with OTAs, so we did try giving them a whirl.
• 55:40
  Sarah Krause: But honestly, most of them come direct through our website.
• 55:45
  Sarah Krause: And so that's just the way we grab all of those bookings.
• 55:48
  Sarah Krause: I just pulled up something yesterday.
• 55:49
  Sarah Krause: Most of our bookings, new bookings, I would say probably 70% of our new bookings come from our social media posts.
• 55:57
  Sarah Krause: We just have a really great-
• 55:58
  Francois Gouelo: Got it
• 55:58
  Sarah Krause: social media game.
• 56:00
  Sarah Krause: Yeah.
• 56:00
  Francois Gouelo: I was gonna ask 'cause this is the one thing the vacation rental operators dream they had.
• 56:05
  Francois Gouelo: Most are at 70, 80% Airbnb, 70, 80% VRBO, et cetera, which costs you 10, 15, 20% or at least it's 10, 15, 20% more expensive.
• 56:14
  Francois Gouelo: So I was gonna ask you as a follow-up question what's the strategy that actually drives the most bookings right now for you?
• 56:18
  Francois Gouelo: But you said social media is the-
• 56:20
  Sarah Krause: Social media
• 56:21
  Francois Gouelo: the driver.
• 56:21
  Francois Gouelo: Yeah.
• 56:21
  Francois Gouelo: Is it TikTok?
• 56:22
  Francois Gouelo: Are you doing dances to get people booking?
• 56:24
  Sarah Krause: We use the...
• 56:25
  Sarah Krause: Yeah we have done dances.
• 56:26
  Sarah Krause: Yep.
• 56:27
  Sarah Krause: R- last week we created a video.
• 56:29
  Sarah Krause: We have a guy that works for us, his name is Bernie, and so we s- are now starting a series recreating scenes from Weekend at Bernie's.
• 56:37
  Sarah Krause: So my...
• 56:38
  Sarah Krause: Two of my guys are dragging around my dead Bernie.
• 56:42
  Sarah Krause: I...
• 56:42
  Sarah Krause: We just do dumb stuff.
• 56:43
  Sarah Krause: But yes- I love it it, we focus and show off of all the great things that are at all of our properties.
• 56:49
  Sarah Krause: And same thing with the beach bar and really that we just get a lot of attention from those places.
• 56:54
  Sarah Krause: So we're pretty fortunate.
• 56:56
  Sarah Krause: Not everybody has got a great social media- platform to work with.
• 57:02
  Sarah Krause: So-
• 57:03
  Francois Gouelo: And last question.
• 57:04
  Francois Gouelo: I know you told me one question, Brian.
• 57:05
  Francois Gouelo: Here I am taking over your whole show, but one follow-up question would be, like, how many repeat guests?
• 57:10
  Francois Gouelo: From those social media posts, you g- you- you've got that, that sort of top of the funnel coming from marketing.
• 57:15
  Francois Gouelo: Do you know how many of them come back to your places and book again?
• 57:18
  Francois Gouelo: And is it a big majority?
• 57:20
  Sarah Krause: It is a big majority, yeah.
• 57:21
  Sarah Krause: Okay.
• 57:22
  Sarah Krause: We could probably get some pretty firm numbers from the reservation system, but I would say well over 60%,
• 57:27
  Francois Gouelo: wow
• 57:28
  Sarah Krause: turn into repeat guests.
• 57:29
  Sarah Krause: Wow.
• 57:29
  Sarah Krause: Yep.
• 57:30
  Sarah Krause: Yeah.
• 57:30
  Francois Gouelo: That's awesome.
• 57:31
  Sarah Krause: Yep.
• 57:32
  Brian Searl: But I think a lot of that, too, is specific to Sarah's property and audience, given that they're longer term, seasonal, in Central Wisconsin.
• 57:39
  Brian Searl: Not a lot of...
• 57:40
  Brian Searl: There are com- competition around you.
• 57:42
  Brian Searl: There's lots of campgrounds in Wisconsin, but you're not the overnight who's gonna maybe choose a different place, and so social media is a different kind of content stream for you than it would be for a transient park, right?
• 57:52
  Sarah Krause: The, the other big part is we're not seeing a lot of longterm travelers.
• 57:56
  Sarah Krause: E- pretty much everybody that comes to...
• 57:57
  Sarah Krause: I would say maybe 5% of our campers are from out of state.
• 58:02
  Sarah Krause: The people that are coming to our campground are also going to our competition 30 miles down the road the next weekend, going to our competition.
• 58:09
  Sarah Krause: They're not really our competitors, but, they're visiting every campground in Wisconsin and o- and they're not going...
• 58:16
  Sarah Krause: Th- this is what their summer, their whole summer consists of, is going from campground to campground.
• 58:21
  Sarah Krause: So th- they're just going to every destination park or what- whatever it may be.
• 58:26
  Sarah Krause: Most of our customers are, our campers are not coming from maybe Illinois, but they're not flying from Florida to go to River's Edge, does that make sense?
• 58:37
  Brian Searl: Yeah.
• 58:38
  Brian Searl: All right.
• 58:38
  Brian Searl: Let's wrap it up real quick.
• 58:39
  Brian Searl: Sarah, final thoughts, and then where can they learn more about your campground if they're interested, or campgrounds or whichever you...
• 58:44
  Brian Searl: campground Manpower, whatever you wanna promote.
• 58:47
  Sarah Krause: You can definitely learn more about our campgrounds at cdhospitalitywisconsin.com.
• 58:52
  Sarah Krause: And we have all kinds of exciting stuff, so if you're in Wisconsin, we do have s- a big rock fest at the end of August.
• 58:57
  Sarah Krause: Come check that out.
• 58:59
  Sarah Krause: And then th- this was awesome.
• 59:01
  Sarah Krause: I love hearing...
• 59:01
  Sarah Krause: I'm a- an AI geek, too.
• 59:03
  Sarah Krause: You know that.
• 59:04
  Sarah Krause: And hearing ways to implement stuff into our business from you guys was great today.
• 59:08
  Sarah Krause: I think it was awesome.
• 59:10
  Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Sarah.
• 59:11
  Brian Searl: Appreciate it.
• 59:11
  Brian Searl: Sam, final thoughts and where can they learn more about you?
• 59:13
  Sam Jankovich: Yeah.
• 59:13
  Sam Jankovich: This first of all, Brian, thank you so much for inviting us to be here today.
• 59:17
  Sam Jankovich: And I would just say if you are looking into offering outdoor experiences don't wait, do it now because there is a process that it takes to get everything curated and up online so don't wait till next season.
• 59:31
  Sam Jankovich: But I think it's, I'm really excited for just the outcomes and the great experiences we're providing out there and the partnering opportunities.
• 59:39
  Sam Jankovich: This has been an amazing call just listening to Sarah and Francois.
• 59:43
  Sam Jankovich: That's just, there's unlimited opportunities of what we can do to make a big difference out there.
• 59:47
  Sam Jankovich: So thank you.
• 59:49
  Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Sam.
• 59:49
  Brian Searl: Last but not least, Francois.
• 59:52
  Francois Gouelo: Yeah, super eye-opening.
• 59:54
  Francois Gouelo: I didn't know enough about campgrounds and now I'm, like, opening up my whole research.
• 59:58
  Francois Gouelo: I'm gonna have so many ideas.
• 59:59
  Francois Gouelo: I'm probably gonna go back to my team being like, "Guys, we're opening a new vertical."
• 1:00:02
  Francois Gouelo: And they're gonna get mad at me.
• 1:00:04
  Francois Gouelo: But no, if you guys wanna learn more about Enzo Connect and what we do and how we help hospitality businesses, just go to enzoconnect.com.
• 1:00:10
  Francois Gouelo: A really big pleasure of mine to, to learn more about what you guys do, what you do, Sam, what you do, Sarah and Brian.
• 1:00:16
  Francois Gouelo: So I'm gonna do a lot of research tonight.
• 1:00:19
  Francois Gouelo: I think I, I won't be able to sleep tonight as I, I read more about how this industry evolves into outdoor hospitality as well.
• 1:00:26
  Francois Gouelo: Really appreciate it.
• 1:00:28
  Brian Searl: Awesome.
• 1:00:28
  Brian Searl: Thank you, guys, for being here for another episode of MC Fireside Chats.
• 1:00:30
  Brian Searl: If you're not sick and tired of hearing it from me, I will be on my other live podcast in about 55 minutes with Scott Bahr.
• 1:00:36
  Brian Searl: We're gonna be talking about data and we're gonna do an exercise on cost-cutting for campgrounds which is even more important as we deal with inflation and whatever's happening in the Middle East and causing us all to maybe panic
• 1:00:46
  Brian Searl: and not sleep as well like Francois.
• 1:00:48
  Brian Searl: So we'll see how that goes.
• 1:00:50
  Brian Searl: If not, we will see you next week in another episode of MC Fireside Chats.
• 1:00:52
  Brian Searl: Take care, guys.
• 1:00:53
  Brian Searl: Appreciate you.
• 1:00:54
  Francois Gouelo: Thank you.
• 1:00:55
  Francois Gouelo: Thank you.