Latest / Hospitable Hosts / Unlock Your Rental's Hidden Potential with Data
Transcript
- Miles: Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Hospitable Host podcast. My name is Miles and I am the head of marketing here at Hospitable. Today I am speaking with Andrea Jordan, who is the owner of Stays Optimized. She works on consulting, coaching, optimization, and full service management for short term rental hosts. And she recently launched her tool, Property IQ, using Hospitable's MCP functionality. And so today we're gonna learn more about that. And as always, if you enjoyed today's episode, please don't forget to like, share, and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Okay, hello Andrea and thank you so much for joining us today. How are you doing? Andrea Jordan: I'm doing great, Miles. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here. I love your show. Miles: Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it. So yeah, so to get started, for listeners who haven't come across you before, can you tell us a bit about yourself, your kind of experience, your hosting journey, maybe a little bit more about stays optimized. Andrea Jordan: Sure. My name is Andrea Jordan and I am the founder of Stays Optimized. I would say my journey to Stays Optimized started with an abandoned building that I stumbled upon, kind of made a deal with the owner and I single-handedly renovated it and turned it into this beautiful, amazing income generating property, sold it and am managing it to this day. It is really my flagship. listing and I'm super proud of it and the owners we've really come a long way. So that's pretty much how STAZE Optimize started when I decided to sell and get into property management more full time because I love hosting and I didn't want it to be the end right so I just took on more listings and really honed in my management skills. Miles: Nice, excellent. And then alongside obviously kind of your management side of things, you recently built a property IQ. Can you tell us a bit more about that and the problem that you were trying to solve there? Andrea Jordan: Peace. Sure, I'm so proud of it. It's such an amazing tool. Well, the beginnings of Property IQ came from me doing manual. data collection, data analysis to onboard more properties. had a listing who the owners, kind of a fix and flip type of a guy, and he asked me to come over and meet with his realtor and himself to look at the property and see what potential it had. And I did. I booked a room, I drove all the way over there and the night before I was supposed to meet with them, my entire computer crashed. I was not even able to save the hard drive. So it was a lot of fumbling, redoing, and then I came across the idea, kind of came to me to use the MCP connection with hospitable and use that for an analysis for the property and kind of make it. kind of a holistic comprehensive, it was 10 times better than what I had previously come up with that I took weeks to put together. So that was kind of the birth of Property IQ. Since then it has definitely flushed out. It's so much more robust now since I've had time to kind of really zone in on it and work it out so that it really is the most comprehensive analysis out there. I checked all the tools, I use all of the tools and it kind of just consolidated it into one. So now I can use it as a property manager, I can use it with my investors and I can absolutely use it for my realtors as well. Miles: Hmm. Nice, that's awesome. And what are some of the insights that it's pointing out to hosts? Maybe give us some examples of the things that it's helping hosts to see to help them solve, to help them grow and optimize their business. Andrea Jordan: Sure, well for existing hosts when you're onboarding a property, I think this is where property IQ really shines because it looks at every listing strategy you could possibly do for that house, for that home or that property. Whether you're going to also list maybe your hot tub on Swimpley, there's different optimization strategies you can present in the report. The other part of it is that it collects the data for all your cops. So it kind of gives you this really nice packaged report where you're your clickable links, verifiable data that you can have your comps done for you and you can get a 12 month pricing strategy. we also have a launching strategy map as well. But the blueprint to optimization is really key with property IQ because it really tells you maybe you can do two listings out of one property where you can mother daughter, home or something. You can do a parent child relationship. Miles: Mm-hmm. Andrea Jordan: So that's really where it shines really is on onboarding and doing the analysis for a home. Also, not every property is for every property manager, right? So we all have different things that we like or don't like about our businesses. And so it really gives you just a clear verifiable way to say this is the kind of property I want. Also, does it match the owner's goal that I'm speaking to? Maybe it's a hands-on owner, maybe it's a hands-off owner, maybe you only want to do four bedrooms and three bathrooms, but you can actually, Property IQ will show you that if you split the property or the home into two separate listings, three altogether, meaning the whole home, that you can actually increase your profits and your revenue quite a bit. So it makes it really attractive to property managers. to present to their potential hosts or owners. Miles: Nice, that's great. And obviously you mentioned that you used the hospitable MCP to build this and some of the API capabilities there. What made you decide to build on top of hospitable? What was the thing that triggered you to do that? Andrea Jordan: Yes. Well, I'm going to be honest with you. I've been so impressed with hospitable from the beginning. It was a little rough for me because I had not used a PMS system before, but it was so intuitive how it looks so much like Airbnb, which is where I really can navigate and thrive in and moving to multiple platforms and channels. I really loved it. So I had my listings in there already with the MCP. connection, I'm just able to collect the data, verify it, so much easier to do that. And the comparables, it's not an estimate. These are in my market. These are real data, not something made up. We do. Some work with AI, but it's not only AI driven. Nobody wakes up saying, what AI can I use? They're looking for clarity. And I think with the connection, absolutely is a driving force in giving people clarity that they need to make the right decisions. Miles: That makes sense. That's great. And you obviously said you were kind of a beginner with property management software when you first started. I don't know what your experience with MCPs was, but I'd love to kind of understand, guess, how you found that process, I guess, of the MCP piece. I know it can get a little bit technical in places, but how did you find building on top of that hospitable data? Was it easy process? Was it kind of a bit of a journey? I would love to understand that. Andrea Jordan: Honestly, it was really easy. I wish I can tell you it so challenging and I overcame this horrible hurdle. But once you, I use Claude specifically most of the time. I love Claude co-work and Claude code and I'm not a coder. I don't come from a technical background. I come from hospitality background actually. Miles: sorry. Mm-hmm. Andrea Jordan: So I was nervous, but once I had Claude integrated with my own workspace and I was able to say, hey Claude, how do I do this? Because this could be really amazing. And he was of course, very supportive of that and walked me through every step. It was a snap actually to make the connections available. Miles: That's great to hear. And then maybe you can give me a few examples of kind of the things that you'd say weren't possible probably a year or two ago, but now you found that are possible thanks to things like the MCP and being connected to hospice. Andrea Jordan: The MCP connection, even the API connections that other platforms are sometimes offering, it just makes your business. run so much smoother. I never thought I would be in favor of AI and the MCP connections, but it really is like having a team of people that you can send out on a goal, on a mission, and come back within minutes, sometimes seconds, with information. Miles: Mm. Andrea Jordan: you know, the fact that there's human oversight is super important. Every AI will say, you know, AI can make mistakes. So the constant cross-referencing with the MCP connection is it just makes it so much easier and validated for your clients. Yeah. Miles: That's great. Yeah, that makes sense. And then, you know, I don't want to keep kind of talking about hospitals MCP too much. So kind of just moving on, I guess, on some of the data that you've been getting out and you've been seeing with property IQ. Are there any kind of surprising trends you've seen now that you kind of see in this data across multiple properties? Is there anything that you're kind of learning along the way that's Andrea Jordan: You Sure, you know, not coming from a technical background and then now I'm like deep dive up to my neck in it and I am loving every minute of it. It's amazing and eye opening to see all the trends that come up like whatever property you have, can always be optimized. There's always a space to be better. And I think that's the same for us as humans, right? We can always be better. Nothing's ever really done. So that was a surprising, one of the surprising Miles: Mm-hmm. Andrea Jordan: things that I have found was that great properties are still underperforming. there's still gaps and the tool really picks up on that and then gives you a whole strategy on how to apply fixes for it. So that was one of the surprising trends is how many fantastic properties, what we would consider fantastic in the short term rental market are underperforming and they're not difficult fixes. And I think if more hosts and more property managers, more owners even had access to this information, to this tool, it would totally change how they make decisions and their strategies moving forward. Miles: That's awesome. just kind of, you you talked there about the trend of, you know, there being those gaps. What are some of those gaps? What are some of common mistakes that you're seeing hosts, you know, performance metrics. Andrea Jordan: I think that hosts seem to find a strategy and stick with it the whole way. there's, I wish that they would open their minds more to sometimes you just need to pivot your strategy. Sometimes you need to, you know, just like the power outage, right? I had to pivot and then make a different, so, you know, make a different strategy even for this call. I think it's the same way with listings. Miles: You Andrea Jordan: And I found that there are hosts that are kind of narrowly listing and saying, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that. And when something's not working, they're kind of guessing on toggles and levers to push, hoping that it will make a difference either in their occupancy, their ADR, their pricing. There's really no other tool out there like this that can really look at a property holistically from every angle and see where the opportunities are and tell you how to exactly pull those levers and what the consequence would be if you did. Does that make sense? Miles: That makes sense. Yeah, that does. Yeah. And you kind of mentioned there a couple of different metrics that hosts are probably looking at to kind of judge performance. What would you say is kind of some of the, like, what's the top metric for you? What's the kind of top thing that you're looking at across properties and kind of judging success by? Andrea Jordan: Sure. I find the occupancy number to be very misleading because you can have a 40 % occupancy on the home, but the market's at 20. So you're doing well compared to the market, but maybe as a headliner not doing very well. still, right? So there's some really have to look at data in a whole new way. It's really taught me so much in the development of this tool. Miles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Andrea Jordan: So that's one of the things. Your occupancy, you know, I have two different properties. Let's say one is a huge, you know, very good for groups. And I have another one that's maybe a two bedroom, two bath. Those two, where this market is for the two bedroom, two bath, I have a lot of last minute bookings. Like I don't even worry about three months from now because I just know month after month after month, it's doing fantastic. where a large group, they're going to plan out their trips in advance. So you don't want to do far out discounts because everyone's booking that way, right? But you want to do last minute, last minute to encourage them to book last minute. And it fills up that time in between where the two bedrooms, two bathroom, you know, you don't want to do last minute discounts. You want to do far out. So it's really showing me how to look at each market, each property has different strengths, weaknesses, and how it navigates even through the STR market. Miles: It makes lot of sense. Okay, great. Fantastic. And obviously we're with MCP, we're kind of touching on the use of AI. And obviously you've kind of talked about using Claude quite a lot in your business. Just from your perspective as a host and how you're managing your business and how you see others managing their business. What things do you think that we'll see change with AI? How is AI going to transform? for you how things are managed and how you think others might be managing their short-term rental businesses over coming years. Andrea Jordan: I'll say that I want to believe, I don't know if this is true, but I want to believe that the majority of hosts are not coming from a technical background. like myself. So AI simplifies all that. I don't need to learn how to code. I can have an AI agent or an AI quad code, for example, that can do that for me. And you give it a goal, and then it figures out the how to. We all have goals. Those are easy to come up with, especially when you're doing property management or hosting. So I really feel like AI is changing the way that we all do business and especially in the short term rental market industry. It's been Exponentially helpful for all of us. One of the things that I think property managers, hosts, homeowners, is they're afraid of it because they don't know how to use it. Once you figure out I could do this just by giving it directives, yes. So then I think more people will come on board with AI. There's still some people who are not, who are leery of it. Again, I just think it's just lack of awareness of how well it can be used. It's a tool and it's... you know, if I gave you a hammer and told you to build a house, you're like, what am I even doing with this? But if I showed you that each nail goes in, right, then that's how you do it one board at a time, then it's super easy. So. Miles: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think there's an education journey there for sure. But yeah, the possibilities are kind of endless to a degree. Yeah. Andrea Jordan: Endless. Yeah. Well, that's how Property IQ came about. It was just, it solved a problem in that moment. And then I had this aha moment that don't other hosts want this? Wouldn't this be amazing how easy it would be to onboard a owner if you can show them your exact strategy, what the market was doing and how it was doing it. And yeah, it's definitely changing things. Miles: Yeah, what's next for property IQ as well? now you're kind of built into all you kind of focusing, getting more people using it, would be one I'm guessing, but then, know, further development of it. Are you thinking of different ways that it could be improved as well? Andrea Jordan: Yes, well, definitely, I'm definitely in conversations with developers about how to scale this out. So right now you have to come to stays optimized or property IQ specifically to get a report on a property. And what I have heard is that after. Miles: Mm-hmm. Andrea Jordan: meeting with multiple people about this, this can really change the way that people invest in real estate. This can change the way that people host. So we're looking at scaling this out. quite a bit. So we came up with a founders wait list. If you want to be on that list, you can go to property IQ and join that list. We also just put in the promo code for any hospitable users if you want 20 % off. So you can try it out and see how you like it. It is different for investors and realtors. You know, we do for realtors especially. We like to white label. Miles: Nice. Andrea Jordan: our reports and we can absolutely do that for hosts as well. So you come to your owner, you know, looking like the most prepared property manager out there. It really does give you a leg up. I see this changing the industry quite a bit. It's already has. It's just, it's really an amazing tool. Thank you. Miles: Yeah. Nice. That's exciting. so besides the obvious answer of using property IQ, if you were starting out a hosting business today, what systems and automations would you be putting in place from day one? What's some of the things that people should be doing from day Andrea Jordan: Very, very, very. Well, from day one, I would get a property management software. That is the key. And then I would be, I'm sorry to say this, but I would be connecting it with the MCP and my life would be so much easier had I started that way. So for today, for a host today, just starting out, I would absolutely get on a property management software. Hopefully it be hospitable. I find it to be the most intuitive. as you navigate, so it's super easy for non-tech people to navigate the software. Yeah, and I would have, I would say if I was starting off today as well, I would look at the market and the property more in a way that how can this property, this owner, compare with the market because it's not always the same. Not all four bedroom, three bathrooms function the same way, even in the same market. The numbers really tell so much. And as a new host coming on, I would say, look at those numbers in a way that you can really see their relationship between them instead of separated, isolated data. Miles: Yeah, that makes sense. Awesome. And so I think final question, you did already call out the websites, but just give you another opportunity in case someone didn't hear. Where do people go if they want to learn more about you, property IQ, and what are those website addresses? Andrea Jordan: Sure. The website for my business is www.staysoptimized.com. S-T-A-Y-S, optimized.com. And that's my personal business that we've been running for a while now and it's been fantastic. I've had great feedback from my clients there. And for the reports themselves, I would go to propertyiq.report. We're not a dot com or a dot report because that is our main focus is giving everyone some clarity before they commit. So that's our. Yeah, thank you so much. Miles: Perfect. That makes sense. Awesome. Thank you very much for joining us today, Andrea. It's been fantastic. Andrea Jordan: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Miles: Thank you everyone for listening to today's episode on the Hospitable MCP. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to Hospitable Hosts on your favorite podcast platform.