Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / Has Google Given Up on Vacation Rentals?

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Has Google Given Up on Vacation Rentals? · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

• 0:00
  Who's in charge of that product? We couldn't find a single person
• 0:02
  on the Google team or like anywhere on LinkedIn that was
• 0:05
  responsible for Google vacation rentals.
• 0:06
  Between US and the listeners here, I think that's an
• 0:09
  abandoned product. Either they either need to
• 0:10
  double down on it and make it good or kill it, move on and
• 0:13
  just not do it anymore. How can you wean your STR
• 0:15
  business off the OTAs and attract more direct bookings?
• 0:19
  What pages must every direct booking website have?
• 0:23
  What are the common SEO and social media mistakes that short
• 0:27
  term rental managers are making? And is Google Vacation rentals a
• 0:32
  waste of time? Conrad O'Connell from Build Up
• 0:35
  Bookings is the special guest on today's House Planet podcast,
• 0:39
  and he'll be answering all these questions and more during this
• 0:42
  episode. Conrad, thank you for joining us
• 0:49
  on the House Planet podcast. If a manager is completely OTA
• 0:54
  dependent, what's your road map for driving direct bookings in
• 0:59
  the first three months? Yeah, I think it's a good
• 1:01
  question. I think it's, you know, a lot of
• 1:03
  people are in this bucket. If, if I may, maybe it would
• 1:05
  take, it may be worth exploring a little bit further as to why
• 1:08
  that's the case. Like I, I would probably want to
• 1:11
  sit down 1st and understand like what are they currently doing?
• 1:13
  Are they trying things that aren't working?
• 1:14
  That may give me some information what they need to
• 1:16
  do. Or are they doing nothing, which
• 1:17
  is of course somewhat common as well.
• 1:19
  If they're doing nothing, it's sort of a different action plan
• 1:21
  than if they're doing something and it's not working well.
• 1:23
  But let's, let's start with the doing nothing bucket because
• 1:25
  that might be a little bit simpler or at least for people
• 1:27
  to kind of understand the process.
• 1:29
  Maybe people haven't done nothing, but they've done close
• 1:30
  to nothing. So that might be a, a good
• 1:32
  starting point. It starts with the, the, the
• 1:34
  foundation. Obviously the property itself
• 1:36
  should be desirable. You know, I talk at length on
• 1:37
  the other podcast that I do heads and bed show a lot about
• 1:40
  this idea of a specialty property, a unique property
• 1:43
  versus a commodity property. And I think that if someone's
• 1:45
  getting all OTA bookings and it's a very commoditized
• 1:47
  listing, it's very, very challenging to get, you know, a
• 1:50
  good chunk or a decent chunk of direct booking.
• 1:52
  So that's like the first thing I would say is like, do you have a
• 1:55
  product that is actually desirable enough to enough
• 1:56
  people to wear when they saw an ad or they saw an outbound
• 1:59
  message from you on an e-mail or an SMS or whatever the case may
• 2:02
  be, did they actually want to act on it?
• 2:04
  So that's like almost the first thing to think about and
• 2:06
  understand a little bit more. But, you know, practically
• 2:09
  speaking, if someone's like looking to kind of start on that
• 2:11
  journey, I think the, the buckets that we focus on the
• 2:13
  most are as search traffic paid in organic, social media traffic
• 2:16
  paid in organic. And then I'm kind of rephrasing
• 2:18
  this now to outbound traffic, which is, I used to just say
• 2:21
  e-mail marketing, but I feel like now we have no clients
• 2:23
  doing SMS or maybe overseas or elsewhere.
• 2:25
  I know WhatsApp is very popular and not as popular in the
• 2:27
  States, but I know it's very popular elsewhere.
• 2:29
  That kind of fits in that outbound bucket to me of, you
• 2:32
  know, e-mail, SMS, WhatsApp, that sort of thing.
• 2:34
  That's kind of the third bucket. So those are the things you're
• 2:36
  starting with and then you're determining what is my level of
• 2:39
  engagement, What is my level of investment that I'm willing to
• 2:41
  make in those different channels?
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  What can I do? What can I outsource is how do
• 2:44
  my margins look? That's a very different
• 2:45
  discussion, but those are kind of the buckets that I think
• 2:47
  you're going to actually focus on when you have the right
• 2:49
  property and the right website that you're sending people to.
• 2:52
  OK, real talk now for all you hosts out there, you know that
• 2:55
  moment when you guest messages you again with hey, what's the
• 2:59
  Wi-Fi code? Or you're staring at 5 different
• 3:01
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• 3:04
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• 3:08
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• 3:14
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• 3:17
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• 3:21
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• 3:25
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• 3:27
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• 3:57
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• 4:00
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• 4:03
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• 4:05
  Less stress, more bookings sorted with hopefully.
• 4:10
  What's the normal scenario when people approach you and say I
• 4:15
  want more direct bookings? Have they been doing much or
• 4:19
  have they just been failing at what they've been doing?
• 4:23
  That's a good question. I, I would say it, it depends,
• 4:26
  you know, is, is, is obviously the answer.
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  I think if, if someone's coming as like an individual host where
• 4:31
  it's like they have 123456 properties, most of the time
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  they'd be doing very little unless they have very, very
• 4:37
  unique luxury properties where they have a lot more margin
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  built in or it's something that they designed from the
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  beginning. Like I would say one of every 20
• 4:43
  leads we get is someone who's like, no, I knew what I was
• 4:45
  going to do before I even started.
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  And like I had a plan in mind or I had a plan in place.
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  And they're someone who's already getting 20-30, forty,
• 4:51
  50% direct and they're like, I want more or I want to be able
• 4:53
  to do more things. And that's kind of a different
• 4:55
  bucket. But yeah, 1819 out of 20 leads
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  that we're going to get in that smaller host bucket are people
• 4:59
  that are like, I'm not doing a lot or I have like a simple
• 5:01
  website or my PMS Gimme website, but I'm not really doing much
• 5:04
  with it. But I would kind of separate
• 5:06
  that like that host crowd from like the professional property
• 5:08
  manager crowd, which in most cases, like they've been doing
• 5:10
  this for a long time, especially people that have been in
• 5:12
  business for very long, you know, let's say 10 plus years,
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  that sort of thing. You can almost draw a line like
• 5:16
  COVID, you know, before COVID, if they've been in business at
• 5:18
  least a few years before that, it's like it was probably part
• 5:20
  of their mix already. And those are people more so who
• 5:22
  are doing something, but they're questioning its effectiveness,
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  you know, is it working as well as it could?
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  Is the partner we have the right partner?
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  Do we need to sign on to do something different?
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  So it's kind of like those different, you know,
• 5:32
  engagements, you know will will differ a little bit depending on
• 5:34
  exactly what people set up is and that type of company
• 5:36
  reaching out, that sort of thing.
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  Are there scenarios where direct bookings perhaps don't make a
• 5:42
  lot of sense because there is an investment required and there
• 5:47
  will be host and property managers out there, Maybe
• 5:49
  they're getting 7580% occupancy rate.
• 5:52
  It's all coming from the OTAs and they just think, well, I'm,
• 5:55
  I'm fine with that. And I don't really want to spend
• 5:58
  money on on direct bookings because direct bookings are not
• 6:00
  free, right? No, no, they're not free.
• 6:02
  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. There's lots of scenarios where
• 6:04
  I think it doesn't make sense. I mean, we, we talked at the
• 6:06
  beginning about this idea of like commodity or specialty.
• 6:08
  If you have a very commoditized listing and you have low rates,
• 6:10
  like there's a very, very, very thin line for you to potentially
• 6:13
  get a lot of direct bookings, right, it's going to be super
• 6:15
  challenging. So if you have a property
• 6:16
  that's, you know, the example I typically give here in the
• 6:19
  states, I'm in the Myrtle Beach market, but I usually give the
• 6:20
  Orlando market, Florida market as an example.
• 6:23
  I think there's somewhere in the neighborhood of like 30 to
• 6:25
  40,000, you know, short term rentals in a 5 or 6 mile radius
• 6:28
  around the Disney parks in Orlando, FL.
• 6:30
  It's like if you have $100 night condo and one of those 34,000
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  less things like there's going to be very again, is it
• 6:36
  impossible for you to get direct bookings?
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  No, of course not. But like, it's going to be very,
• 6:39
  very thin line, like I said, for you to have success with direct.
• 6:41
  So, yeah, I think you need to look at your business and what
• 6:43
  you want out of it. And by the way, like I think
• 6:44
  some people want me to like, take the stance against Airbnb
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  or whatever the OTAs. I'm not really like that because
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  I think that you have to, whatever path you decide, you
• 6:52
  just have to be OK with the downsides of that path.
• 6:54
  That would be my take on that. So if you're completely OTAOTA
• 6:57
  dependent, you know that you're not looking to go down the
• 6:59
  direct booking route. But in exchange, you're like,
• 7:02
  yeah, Airbnb might change the fee rules like they did, you
• 7:04
  know, a week or two ago. They might change this payout
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  rule. They might change this rule.
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  You're in that boat. And Brian Chesky's the captain.
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  And if you're cool with that and you trust him, like that's fine,
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  right? And like I've, I've no problem
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  with that. You know, like I, I think I've
• 7:14
  told the story before in different podcasts.
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  Not recently though. My dad was an eBay power seller
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  for many, many years. I think he opened his eBay
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  account in like 1999 or 2000 or something like that when I was a
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  kid. And his like sort of niche, if
• 7:24
  you will, was he plays guitar and he plays left-handed guitar.
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  So it's like a niche within a niche.
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  People who buy guitars, vintage guitars on eBay, it's already a
• 7:30
  small group of people. And then within that world, he's
• 7:33
  left-handed, you know, so that's like less than 1% of guitars
• 7:35
  made or left-handed. And so over the years, the
• 7:37
  policies kind of got like more and more purchaser friendly and
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  less and less seller friendly on eBay.
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  And it was kind of like that was his business was selling on
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  eBay. I mean, it was more of a side
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  hustle than a business, but it was like that was and he didn't
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  like it. But he's like, yeah, like, I'm
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  not going to go like set up a website or set up a store to
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  sell my things. It's like that's the platform on
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  that's the rules that I have to combine, you know, abide by.
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  So what I don't like is people that are OTA dependent don't
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  want to do the right bookings, but then complain constantly,
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  you know, about the rules that they've signed up for.
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  It's like that's the that's the combination of things that I
• 8:02
  don't like. That's the trium rent that I
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  that I sort of, you know, get a little eye twitchy about.
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  But if you're like down that path and you're OK with it and
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  you understand it, I think that's perfectly fine, yeah.
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  Yeah, there was. There are pay offs on on both
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  sides of the equation without a shadow of a doubt.
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  Let's talk direct booking websites then.
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  So what pages must every direct booking website have to boost
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  traffic? Yeah.
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  I mean, you know, ultimately the ones that really matter the most
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  if you're just looking for a practical standpoint is, you
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  know, some kind of search results page or some kind of,
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  you know, availability page. Certainly if you have multiple
• 8:34
  listings, you're going to have like a list of search results.
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  If you have one listing, you probably don't need that.
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  You just need to drive people straight into the property page,
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  which I think would kind of be the next thing.
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  You're gonna have a home page. You're gonna search results if
• 8:44
  you're multi property. If not, you could skip that and
• 8:46
  go to the property page. If you're 1 host, you're gonna
• 8:48
  one property detail page. If obviously you're a property
• 8:50
  manager or no multi property host, you're gonna have many,
• 8:53
  many different property detail pages.
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  You have a star checkout process or like a checkout page, and
• 8:57
  then you have a confirmation page.
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  So at its core, like that's all you need, right.
• 9:00
  But the things that actually help beyond that, you know, that
• 9:02
  you, you know, other than just the basic functionality you
• 9:04
  probably want to consider Heather Bayer talks about this a
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  lot like in about us page. Like I think that's often so
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  missing. I, we just find a new client the
• 9:09
  other day and I didn't deal with them.
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  Someone on my sales team did and I went to website for the first
• 9:14
  time looking at after they signed and I was like, I don't
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  know anything about this company.
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  I don't know who's behind it. I don't know the names of
• 9:18
  anybody, you know, and it was just, it kind of reminded me of
• 9:20
  what Heather talks about at length of just like show your
• 9:23
  face, show the people behind the company.
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  So can you get your bookings out about this page?
• 9:26
  Yes, but like, why make it harder than you need to?
• 9:28
  Like you want to build some of that trust.
• 9:29
  So I think a lot of social proof is missing a lot of vacational
• 9:32
  websites, whether that be on a separate page or the home page.
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  I think a lot of like personalization is missing, you
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  know, I think a lot of typically like better than standard photo
• 9:40
  content is missing a lot of pages as well.
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  So having like a video walkthrough tour and having that
• 9:44
  be embedded on the page, can't do that on Airbnb.
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  You can do that on your website. So use those, you know, extra
• 9:49
  little flourishes that you can put on your website to the best
• 9:52
  of your ability. But yeah, at its core, like
• 9:53
  those are the pages that that, you know, are people are going
• 9:55
  to choose when they go through the booking process.
• 9:57
  Everything else, maybe we can call it window dressing, but I
• 9:59
  would say it's important window dressing if you're trying to get
• 10:01
  someone to like trust you, especially if it's a high
• 10:03
  purchase, you know, high dollar purchase type thing.
• 10:05
  I always say to people, you know, clients for the first time
• 10:07
  when we start to work with them in some situations, I'm like,
• 10:09
  OK, someone has their credit card, they have your website
• 10:11
  open and they're about to charge 356 ten, $15,000 maybe depending
• 10:15
  on how expensive your property is for a week.
• 10:17
  Why should they do that? Like why should they trust you?
• 10:18
  There's so many risks in their mind entering when they're
• 10:20
  holding that credit card. Like what are we doing to try to
• 10:22
  make it seem like that's a safe thing to do?
• 10:24
  And then you kind of work backwards from there and start
• 10:26
  to figure out some of those things.
• 10:27
  It's a great point about the about us.
• 10:29
  I was actually looking at an event company the other day and
• 10:32
  brilliant website really, really detailed everything he wanted to
• 10:36
  know, but there was no about page.
• 10:38
  I had no idea who was actually running the business and 100%
• 10:41
  right. You know, I was like, do I trust
• 10:43
  these guys? I'm I'm not sure SEO then.
• 10:46
  So this is a big deal for any business, particularly for short
• 10:52
  term rental property managers. What are the most common SEO
• 10:56
  mistakes that you fix for vacation rental managers?
• 11:01
  Just it sounds silly, but on page, I mean, that's the number
• 11:03
  one thing we're fixing. If we're getting a new website,
• 11:05
  like most the time, the on page is bad or the content is the
• 11:08
  word I choose to use as comprehensive.
• 11:10
  The content is not as comprehensive as it needs to be.
• 11:12
  So, you know, they write write a very short description on a
• 11:14
  page. They don't have much information
• 11:15
  on a page. And we just have to go through
• 11:17
  the process of building out those pages to be significantly
• 11:19
  more detailed, have significantly more content and
• 11:22
  information on them or get towards this goal of
• 11:23
  comprehensive. I don't think of it as like a
• 11:26
  word count or like an exact number of pages or headings or
• 11:28
  substructures. I think of what's everything on
• 11:30
  that page that would make it completely comprehensive for
• 11:32
  someone to choose to book an event or choose to book a
• 11:34
  vacation rental or holiday or latch or whatever the case may
• 11:37
  be, right? So I think those are the things
• 11:39
  that we most often fix are, you know, on page related things.
• 11:42
  And then I think what most people are missing that takes a
• 11:44
  long time to fix, especially if they're a smaller host, is links
• 11:47
  like just no one knows about the website, Like no one's
• 11:49
  referenced the website, no one's mentioned the website.
• 11:51
  So as a result, you could actually have like quote UN
• 11:53
  quote perfect on page SEO and it doesn't matter much because no
• 11:55
  one's actually going through and looking looking at it and it's
• 11:57
  not going to rank in Google without any links.
• 11:59
  So that's I would say like the thing that people skip over and
• 12:01
  they kind of like I'll get to that later type thing and then
• 12:04
  they don't get to it and their site doesn't make a lot of
• 12:05
  progress even with got on page SEO or got content without a lot
• 12:09
  of links pointing to it as well. Yeah, that's a good point.
• 12:11
  I mean, if you've got a website and you're a property manager
• 12:13
  and a lot of people do, but they don't point anybody to it, what
• 12:18
  are the maybe simple things that you can do that are not
• 12:21
  particularly time consuming to make sure that you're driving a
• 12:24
  bit of traffic? Yeah.
• 12:26
  I mean on the on the SEO side in particular or just in general?
• 12:29
  SEO and in general. Yeah, yeah.
• 12:31
  So SEO wise, I think like start with your partner, start with
• 12:34
  people who you already refer business over to.
• 12:36
  Like that's a very logical thing to start with.
• 12:38
  So, you know, if you're, you know, local property manager or
• 12:40
  local vacation rental manager and you already send people to a
• 12:43
  certain restaurant, you already recommend a certain vendor or a
• 12:45
  certain service, go on their website and be like, oh, do you
• 12:47
  have a page on your website about like where to stay or like
• 12:49
  lodging partners? And they may say no cool, create
• 12:52
  1 Addison there. You know, like that's that's a
• 12:53
  really good starting point. Like just chat with chat with
• 12:55
  people you already know, chat with local businesses that
• 12:57
  you're already referring business to because you have
• 12:58
  some baseline there. It's not like doing cold
• 13:00
  outreach was a lot of what we do in our agency where it's like,
• 13:03
  if we're being honest, it's a numbers game.
• 13:04
  We do everything in our power to like shade the numbers in our
• 13:07
  favor and make it, you know, more effective for us to get
• 13:09
  links through outreach. But it's just a grind of like
• 13:11
  sending out hundreds of emails to get a handful of links
• 13:13
  basically on the outbound side of things.
• 13:15
  So you'll get there maybe eventually, but like start with
• 13:17
  your local partners first. Get your first 20-30 links
• 13:19
  through, you know, Chamber of Commerce, you know, get a
• 13:21
  listing on there. Obviously have all your social
• 13:23
  media profiles claim have a link there.
• 13:24
  Go to your local businesses that you already refer business or
• 13:27
  send business to get some links there.
• 13:28
  And that'll kind of get you at least out of the starting
• 13:30
  blocks. And then, yeah, at some point
• 13:31
  you'll be like, OK, I've exhausted like everyone in my
• 13:33
  contact list now I have to go out to the other world of link
• 13:36
  building and get more references or citations or mentions from
• 13:38
  there. So that's, that's that side of
• 13:40
  it. The other thing though, just in
• 13:42
  general of like that starting point of the website traffic, I
• 13:45
  think a lot of it is brand. We didn't touch on that yet, but
• 13:47
  it's like having something that's actually easily
• 13:48
  searchable. I think what you don't want to
• 13:50
  have, and we see this a lot, is an Airbnb listing or the Air BL
• 13:53
  listing or whatever the case may be.
• 13:54
  And it's lovely, you know, cityfront property, you know,
• 13:58
  with a view or something like that, like that is a perfectly
• 14:00
  reasonable Airbnb title, but it's not what you actually want
• 14:02
  to brand the listing around, right?
• 14:04
  You want to have welcome to the example I was given my podcast
• 14:07
  as Conrad School Cabin Rentals, which is not a real company, but
• 14:09
  it's just like, that's the fictional company that gives us
• 14:11
  an example. And maybe each property would
• 14:13
  have a name within that portfolio.
• 14:14
  So it'd be welcome to Julian Sideway.
• 14:16
  That's my son's name. And you know, at Conrad School
• 14:18
  Cabin Rentals. And then that's the first line
• 14:20
  of your Airbnb description. That's like a very good
• 14:22
  prompting, like starting point to say like, OK, that's a name
• 14:25
  that's could be presented throughout the property.
• 14:27
  By the way, like an actual signage in the property that
• 14:30
  could be presented in the guidebook material that could be
• 14:31
  presented in when you go to the property and there's a little,
• 14:35
  you know, key you're you're entering this property.
• 14:37
  Those are all things that I think get some initial brand
• 14:39
  search because on Google you want to find a name that people
• 14:41
  aren't using that you know no one else is using.
• 14:43
  And that's actually going to be your first probably 10/20/30
• 14:46
  direct bookings anyways. It's just people finding your
• 14:47
  website off platform. Then you don't have to do
• 14:50
  anything against the terms of service to do that.
• 14:51
  People will just search it naturally and get your first
• 14:54
  direct bookings that way. I think that's like the little
• 14:56
  momentum that gets you going and then from there you need to
• 14:58
  attract new people. But that's a good starting point
• 14:59
  for sure. Yeah.
• 15:00
  And another good starting point as well is just, you know,
• 15:02
  trying to turn those OTA bookers into direct book as if they want
• 15:06
  to come back next time. You know, even simple things
• 15:08
  like QR code in your listing and just letting them know that you
• 15:12
  have a direct booking website. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's
• 15:15
  shocking. So we, we get a lot of Safi
• 15:17
  customers, people that are using Safi, which I think is a good
• 15:19
  solution. Sorry for the free ad read on on
• 15:22
  the podcast here. But they're, they're solid at
• 15:24
  what they do. And you know, we people,
• 15:25
  they'll, they'll come to us and be like, oh, I've got the Safi
• 15:27
  system installed. And I, you know, they gave me
• 15:29
  all the right tools and all the right information and nothing on
• 15:31
  Safi's end. I just didn't do enough with it.
• 15:32
  Like I didn't do much with it. And we had someone the other day
• 15:34
  reach out to who like had collected, I think somewhere in
• 15:37
  the neighborhood of 30,000 emails.
• 15:38
  So property manager here in the states, in Colorado.
• 15:40
  And it sent like two or three emails to them over the course
• 15:42
  of a few years and then started to try to market to them with
• 15:44
  the different company. And, you know, he he was getting
• 15:46
  very poor results. And I was like, yeah, they
• 15:48
  forgot. Like it's there's not much, you
• 15:50
  know, mystery here. Like they stayed with you
• 15:51
  several years ago, you had their e-mail, but if you didn't do
• 15:53
  anything with it, their memory just gets completely reset.
• 15:56
  You know, they might have remembered that stay they had in
• 15:57
  Colorado, but they didn't remember exactly their
• 15:59
  experience with you, you know, and exactly the name of your
• 16:01
  company, etcetera, etcetera. So when they got that e-mail
• 16:03
  here in 2025, first day that it might have happened in 2020, I
• 16:07
  mean, so many things have happened between now and then,
• 16:08
  like their brain just, you know, completely cleared that stuff
• 16:10
  out. So he was sort of angling
• 16:12
  towards the idea that like this e-mail marketing team that he
• 16:14
  hired did a bad job. And I'm like, no, you did a bad
• 16:16
  job. Like you didn't reach out and
• 16:18
  message to them at least with some level of consistency.
• 16:20
  So as a result, you almost just, you had a cut list of customers
• 16:22
  and it turned into just a random list, you know, essentially over
• 16:24
  time. It's almost like, what I would
• 16:26
  say is like, it's like milk. It expires, you know, like it's
• 16:28
  not going to stay good forever. 30,000 What a waste.
• 16:31
  Goodness me yeah. So how should property managers
• 16:36
  use Google Business Profile to promote their brand?
• 16:40
  It's, it's tricky because you've got to realize what the rules
• 16:43
  are and are not. I think a lot of people set up
• 16:44
  these business profiles on individual homes, which is kind
• 16:47
  of clearly against their terms of service, and they get away
• 16:49
  with it. And that's the dangerous part
• 16:50
  about this whole thing. And maybe they get away with it
• 16:51
  for an extended period of time. Yeah, they might get away with
• 16:54
  it for six months, a year or two years.
• 16:56
  And then they think, oh, OK, like I, I this was deserved of
• 16:59
  me. Like I should have had this
• 16:59
  listing. And then it gets taken away and
• 17:01
  they get very upset at Google or they're mad or they're high
• 17:03
  rested through how to fix it. And the whole time they weren't
• 17:05
  really supposed to have that listing.
• 17:06
  So I think first of all, I'm not opposed to this like the
• 17:09
  theology or this philosophy of like, OK, I'm going to have a
• 17:11
  listing, you know, set up in Google My Business, even though
• 17:14
  I'm not really supposed to like it.
• 17:15
  Really, you should have an office address for Google My
• 17:18
  Business. And then from there it's like,
• 17:20
  OK, yeah. Then there's reviews that you
• 17:21
  want to build on that profile, there's citations you want to
• 17:23
  build on that profile. There's, you know, make sure
• 17:25
  your hours are in there. All the information's up to
• 17:27
  date. It's not really like a massively
• 17:28
  complicated procedure in my opinion.
• 17:30
  I really think it's just having the reviews from direct bookings
• 17:32
  that are sent out, you know, post departure, they're going to
• 17:34
  Google is like a very healthy and logical way to get there.
• 17:37
  But I would say like first understand if you can or can't
• 17:39
  have that listing. And if you can't have that
• 17:41
  listing and you have one, just know that you're kind of
• 17:42
  probably playing on borrowed time.
• 17:44
  Do the best you can, but you know, I think your best bet long
• 17:47
  term if trying to build up that as a sustainable marketing
• 17:49
  channel is to actually do it the right way.
• 17:51
  And like, if you're a property manager, have an office with
• 17:53
  signage that can actually be verified on Google.
• 17:55
  If you're a host, you probably can't have like a listing at
• 17:57
  your property unless you make, you know, serious modifications
• 18:00
  to it. Like it's more of a better
• 18:01
  breakfast listing on Google as opposed to a vacation or help
• 18:03
  rental listing. So yeah, like, first know what
• 18:06
  you're playing, play by the rules.
• 18:07
  Or if you're not playing by the rules again, kind of see my
• 18:09
  Airbnb conversation for a few minutes ago, do what you can to,
• 18:12
  you know, to to, you know, optimize that listing, but know
• 18:14
  that it can get taken at any time.
• 18:16
  And that's the tricky part about Google right now with vacation
• 18:18
  rentals is they want people, they're pushing people into this
• 18:20
  Google vacation rental product, which has very little uptake and
• 18:23
  very little success, by the way, as a, as a sidebar.
• 18:26
  And, but they don't want individual homes listed as like
• 18:28
  businesses on Google. They want them in this other
• 18:30
  product, you know, through one of their PMS partners, so.
• 18:32
  Sticking with Google vacation rentals then.
• 18:35
  So what's the best path to show your direct booking website in
• 18:40
  Google Vacation Rentals? And are there any common setup
• 18:45
  errors that keep owners from appearing there that you've
• 18:48
  seen? I'll be honest, I don't know if
• 18:51
  I've got this nailed down yet, you know, because I know a lot
• 18:53
  of the PMS platform providers obviously do the connection like
• 18:55
  you have to use APMS platform provider to get your listings in
• 18:58
  there, right? And many of them are out there.
• 19:00
  I don't know if you have any like sponsors on the show that
• 19:02
  you don't do it or whatever, but you know, pick, pick down the
• 19:05
  list or go to the Google page and you can find all the ones
• 19:06
  that are listed there. But I haven't really been able
• 19:09
  to crack at this point in time. Like is there some hack?
• 19:11
  Is there some optimization within Google?
• 19:13
  Like I feel like I understand pretty well how Google search
• 19:15
  works and Google ads and a lot of these platforms, Google
• 19:17
  vacation rentals. I'll see listings in there that
• 19:19
  are brand new that no listings, no reviews.
• 19:21
  Then I Scroll down half the page and I see a listing with 87
• 19:24
  reviews. You know, all five stars, you
• 19:25
  know, that that you would assume would do better there that has
• 19:28
  more traffic, more brand awareness, you know, more
• 19:30
  listing history, let's say on these platforms and stuff like
• 19:33
  that. So I think that's almost like
• 19:34
  the awkward thing is that Google is kind of like ignored that
• 19:37
  product. They're not really investing
• 19:38
  into that product. It's not picking up significant
• 19:40
  shares of inventory, that's for sure.
• 19:42
  Like it's not getting more listings from the major OTA
• 19:44
  platforms for the most part, right?
• 19:46
  It's mostly just, you know, getting little chips in here and
• 19:48
  there from their PMS partners and like who's in charge of that
• 19:51
  product? Like I actually did this one
• 19:53
  day. Paul and I did a podcast a
• 19:54
  little while ago, like updating where Google was on Google
• 19:56
  Vacation rentals. And we can find a single person
• 19:59
  on the Google team or like anywhere on LinkedIn that was
• 20:01
  responsible for Google Vacation rentals.
• 20:03
  Anyone who was previously responsible for it had a new
• 20:05
  title at Google. So I think it's between, you
• 20:07
  know, us and the listeners here. I think that's an abandoned.
• 20:09
  Product and it's just a matter of time before Google either
• 20:11
  they either need to double down on it and make it good or kill
• 20:13
  it and move on and just not do it anymore.
• 20:15
  Because right now, where it's sitting right now, I don't think
• 20:16
  that it's a meaningful traffic source or a meaningful booking
• 20:18
  source for very many of our clients.
• 20:20
  Interesting if you do want to get on Google vacation rentals
• 20:24
  if they might not be worth it. By the sound of it, this show is
• 20:27
  sponsored by House Fully. You need to use APMS.
• 20:29
  So check out House Fully and you can get.
• 20:32
  Yourself and there's no harm yeah, like there's no harm in
• 20:34
  doing it right like and and so yeah, use hopefully that that's
• 20:37
  a great platform to do it on for sure But like I, I pulled down
• 20:41
  we talked about this at Dharm last year for a key data
• 20:43
  dashboard. They have data for I don't even
• 20:45
  know how many listings, many, many thousands, if not 100,000
• 20:48
  listings, that sort of thing. And they have source data where
• 20:50
  the booking actually comes from. And you know, I asked them, I
• 20:52
  was like, is anyone other than Airbnb direct booking.com and
• 20:55
  VRBO and their U.S. data getting more than 1% of the booking
• 20:58
  share? And their answer was no.
• 20:59
  So like that means Marriott homes and bills is not getting
• 21:01
  more than 1%. Google Vacation rentals is not
• 21:03
  getting more than 1%, you know, on and on and on home to go go
• 21:05
  down the list. Now there's individual property
• 21:07
  managers who are getting more than 1% or you know, 2 or 3%
• 21:09
  from those other platforms. But in their like whole data set
• 21:12
  across the whole country, that was not the case.
• 21:14
  So you know, if you look at it, you know, it's really like
• 21:16
  there's three big fish in booking.com, Airbnb, Verbo, at
• 21:19
  least here in the States, I don't know as well, you know,
• 21:21
  over in the UK and stuff like that.
• 21:23
  So there's obviously different markets over there that I'm not
• 21:25
  as savvy about. And then it's direct.
• 21:26
  So it's like those are your three channels plus plus direct.
• 21:28
  That's where you're going to get 90 odd percent of all your
• 21:31
  bookings from. The rest is just a little bit
• 21:32
  here and there. Yeah, UK and Europe, we've got
• 21:35
  Airbnb and booking.com are the big two verbo little bit, but
• 21:39
  it's it's a small percentage. And then of course direct and a
• 21:42
  few other smaller platforms, niche platforms here and there.
• 21:47
  OK, So what are your top tips for property managers when it
• 21:50
  comes to utilizing social media to drive people to your direct
• 21:54
  booking website? Yeah.
• 21:56
  I think one thing that we've kind of learned, I would say the
• 21:58
  hard way a little bit over the last year or two is that video
• 22:00
  content is really king on social nowadays.
• 22:02
  And really, when we say social, Instagram is kind of like the
• 22:05
  platform where I think a lot of this has has had the most reach.
• 22:08
  I would say our Facebook ads can do quite well and placement wise
• 22:10
  on Facebook, that's more of an audience question.
• 22:12
  Does the, does the audience itself tend to prefer using
• 22:15
  Facebook or Instagram? But if the, if the goal is I'm
• 22:17
  trying to drive more awareness, social is the platform that I'm
• 22:19
  doing it on. We have so many examples now of
• 22:21
  people doing it. Well, you know what Instagram
• 22:22
  through sure. You know, short vertical video
• 22:25
  like that is the, the mechanism that seems to drive the most
• 22:28
  demand. And if you go look at people
• 22:29
  that have had a lot of success, that's kind of the, the path,
• 22:31
  the path that they've gone down. So, you know, is there ways to
• 22:34
  get some social traffic from other sources?
• 22:35
  Absolutely. But again, going back to like
• 22:37
  that conversation of like, what are the big fish that really
• 22:39
  move the needle? What are the ones that really
• 22:41
  move the needle? You know, I would say double
• 22:42
  down on video, double down on Instagram.
• 22:44
  And that's going to be the path that's going to most likely lead
• 22:46
  you to success with some, you know, cross posting on Facebook
• 22:49
  as well, depending on your audience, of course, too.
• 22:51
  You mentioned that paid search and social media ads.
• 22:55
  What should property managers be doing in this area?
• 22:59
  I think the number one mistake I see people make on Meta ads is
• 23:01
  that they don't actually choose the right objective.
• 23:03
  I know this sounds very simple, but it's like they started out
• 23:05
  on social on let's say on Instagram or Facebook and they
• 23:07
  just want they're objective. They select just like traffic or
• 23:10
  clicks or those sorts of things. When you do that, unfortunately,
• 23:12
  you don't actually get any of the relevant people who are
• 23:14
  actually likely to convert targeted very well on Facebook.
• 23:17
  You're basically just telling Facebook, hey, send traffic to
• 23:19
  my website and Facebook will do that.
• 23:21
  Facebook and Instagram will do that.
• 23:22
  They're not. They have no problem taking your
• 23:23
  money and charging you, you know, and giving you traffic,
• 23:25
  but that's not really what your objective is.
• 23:27
  Your objective is not traffic. Your objective is either A, a
• 23:29
  booking or B, something that's going to lead to a booking like
• 23:31
  an e-mail, sign up, a promo code, download a guide,
• 23:34
  download. At least doing some other key
• 23:36
  action like starting a check out or entering dates.
• 23:38
  Those are things that are more tangible as far as like getting
• 23:40
  more bookings. So I think that's the number one
• 23:42
  mistake honestly is like the creative is not very good or the
• 23:45
  tracking is not setting up properly.
• 23:46
  So I'm not even telling Facebook or Instagram what I want to be
• 23:49
  achieving with the ad. Once you do those things, get a
• 23:51
  good creative and you have the tracking set up, the rest of the
• 23:53
  targeting just becomes a little bit more straightforward because
• 23:55
  you can quickly figure out like, OK, I spent, you know, X dollars
• 23:58
  over here. It didn't work.
• 23:59
  I spent X dollars over here. I got 7 people to, to make a
• 24:01
  booking. Excellent.
• 24:02
  Let me double down on that and do more of it.
• 24:04
  So you don't have to be much of like a media buying guru if
• 24:06
  you've got good creative and good tracking because you'll
• 24:08
  just figure it out a little bit on the along the way.
• 24:10
  There are a lot of nuances and tracking and things that you
• 24:12
  know are, excuse me, targeting that do make sense to test and
• 24:15
  figure out. But it's like those are the two
• 24:17
  big rocks that I see in the way of people having success.
• 24:19
  And when we go look at Facebook ads accounts, like whenever we
• 24:21
  see like a traffic objective campaign, I can take that same
• 24:24
  spend, flip it over and get the conversion tracking dialed in
• 24:26
  properly and like pretty much almost guarantee it's going to
• 24:28
  double or triple in performance very quickly.
• 24:31
  We mentioned before the property manager who had 30,000 e-mail
• 24:34
  addresses but had done very little with them.
• 24:37
  How important is it for hosts and property managers to develop
• 24:40
  an e-mail list, and what are the smartest ways to build it?
• 24:44
  Yeah. So I think again, I've redefined
• 24:46
  this lately to say like outbound messaging.
• 24:48
  So like e-mail I think is the most important piece of
• 24:50
  information that I would get there.
• 24:51
  But we're trying more and more aggressively now to for our
• 24:53
  clients to get SMS like phone numbers.
• 24:55
  So we can do marketing in both channels.
• 24:57
  We have a client now and we actually don't do their e-mail
• 24:58
  or their SMS marketing. They do it in house.
• 25:00
  They have an in house team member that does it.
• 25:02
  But most months now they get more traffic from their SMS list
• 25:04
  than analytics than they do from their e-mail list.
• 25:06
  Their e-mail list has been around for like 1819 years.
• 25:08
  They've been in business for a very long time.
• 25:10
  Their SMS list I think is 3 years old, two years old,
• 25:12
  something like that. So they only recently started on
• 25:15
  phone number collection, but it's pretty much neck and neck
• 25:17
  most months, maybe a little bit up a little bit down from where
• 25:19
  they get from e-mail. So first of all, can you get
• 25:21
  both would be my my initial question.
• 25:22
  Can you get e-mail addresses and SMS, you know, phone numbers as
• 25:25
  well? That's that would, I would say
• 25:28
  would be a good starting point. Obviously fans of Stayfi, but I
• 25:30
  think any sort of like method you have for offline collection
• 25:33
  is fine. I'm not like overly adamant that
• 25:35
  it's Stayfi. I just think there's the
• 25:36
  friction point of how Stayfi works is perfect because it's
• 25:39
  like you want the Wi-Fi. So when you go and present it
• 25:41
  with that little Rd. bump, the e-mail or the phone number in
• 25:43
  exchange for the Wi-Fi feels very fair in that moment of
• 25:45
  trade off when it's in like a welcome guide or it's in a Hey,
• 25:48
  click here and you know, download this particular guide
• 25:51
  or, you know, through your phone number, your e-mail.
• 25:52
  That still does work, don't get me wrong, but I don't think this
• 25:54
  works as effectively. Some people won't do that versus
• 25:57
  of the people who will do it at the moment of wanting the Wi-Fi
• 25:59
  in the property. So those are kind of my initial
• 26:00
  things like offline collection and there's so many things you
• 26:02
  can do for online collection. Like we're big fans obviously
• 26:04
  have pop up models on the website.
• 26:06
  I post about this at length on LinkedIn about most people have
• 26:09
  a pop up model on their website, but it's like sign up for a
• 26:10
  newsletter. No one wants a newsletter.
• 26:12
  What they want is some benefit, you know, given to them,
• 26:14
  discount code, a guide, something like that, an extra
• 26:16
  bonus or a perk in exchange for the e-mail address.
• 26:18
  Those are things that work really well.
• 26:20
  And we're testing now some 2 step forms.
• 26:22
  So the first step is give us your e-mail, then it's OK,
• 26:24
  unlock it after you give us your phone number.
• 26:26
  So we kind of put it in two different steps and we found
• 26:28
  we've in early testing that seems to convert a little bit
• 26:30
  better than asking for both and the initial pop up, but more
• 26:33
  testing to come. So some of our forms still have
• 26:35
  to to there right now. But yeah, I think it's just like
• 26:36
  collecting at every point. And then I think the the thing
• 26:38
  that most people need to do is just automate something simple
• 26:40
  on the back end. So most of our clients, we just
• 26:42
  do a welcome series where it's like maybe 5-6 emails over two
• 26:45
  or three-week, you know, sequence once they get added to
• 26:48
  the list. So don't stress too much about
• 26:49
  like, oh, I'm adding people to my list all the time.
• 26:50
  I need to go and send them. Just set up an automation one
• 26:52
  time that's just going to work for you in the background and
• 26:54
  have it be information about your company, your best listing,
• 26:57
  things you know more about the area, whatever rate.
• 26:59
  It's not hard for you if you like your destination to talk
• 27:01
  about it for a few emails, right?
• 27:02
  And just have a few bullet points in there.
• 27:03
  So I think that's like a really valuable, you know, tool to have
• 27:06
  is like a collection portal of some kind and an automation on
• 27:09
  the back end. And then you're just doing like
• 27:10
  maybe a newsletter every month. That shouldn't be overwhelming
• 27:12
  as far as time goes. And you can send out that same
• 27:14
  message through SMS as well. And you're going to be ahead of
• 27:16
  90% of people just doing those things.
• 27:19
  Makes a lot of sense. What's the one mistake that you
• 27:25
  wish every operator would stop doing this week?
• 27:30
  I think it's probably just like understanding their property and
• 27:32
  where it's where it sits, like where it sits in their, you
• 27:35
  know, in the guest demands eyes and understanding how to make
• 27:37
  that property more desirable. And I think it's probably just
• 27:40
  being being honest with yourself.
• 27:41
  I think that's probably the mistake that people make is they
• 27:43
  sort of maybe like delude themselves or they they have
• 27:45
  this vision in their mind of what it could be, but they don't
• 27:47
  set up, they don't have concurrency with like how they
• 27:49
  think about their property or their marketing versus how it
• 27:51
  actually is. There's this disconnect that
• 27:53
  they have and that's why they end up unhappy.
• 27:54
  It's like that's where their unmet expectations come from as
• 27:57
  this disconnect between those two things.
• 27:58
  So it's like, it's hard, and I'm the same way.
• 28:00
  You know, we all have our own biases and I tend to find them
• 28:02
  in my own business as well. But it's just like being honest,
• 28:05
  you know, I think with yourself about what you do have, what you
• 28:07
  don't have, and then taking action, right?
• 28:09
  Like that's the other thing. Like doing like doing very
• 28:12
  mediocre marketing is way, way better than doing no marketing,
• 28:14
  right? So it's like, I, I have this
• 28:16
  client that I worked with a few years ago and he, you know, they
• 28:18
  were tight on budget. It wasn't his decision.
• 28:20
  It was like more of corporate's decision.
• 28:21
  And he cut his e-mail marketing and he started doing the e-mail
• 28:23
  marketing himself. And this is a nice guy, but he
• 28:26
  can't design out of a paper bag. I mean, the worst designer I've
• 28:28
  ever seen. But you know what, they still
• 28:29
  get bookings every single month from his emails.
• 28:31
  They're ugly as heck, but they still get bookings every month
• 28:32
  because he sends them out. So if he sat there and said, I'm
• 28:35
  not a designer, these emails don't look good, I'm not going
• 28:36
  to send them out. They'd be getting 30 4050 sixty
• 28:39
  thousand per year lesson bookings cuz he's sending them
• 28:41
  out and he's going out to the lesson doing them.
• 28:43
  Now. Does it pain me every time I get
• 28:44
  one of my inbox how ugly it is? Yes.
• 28:45
  Have I tried to sell him on us helping him do his emails?
• 28:47
  Yes, but it's actually a good like story reminder for me of
• 28:50
  like something's better than nothing.
• 28:51
  So if you're pontificating or thinking about doing something
• 28:54
  that's not going to get you anywhere.
• 28:55
  If you do something, I promise you that at least get you to
• 28:57
  like good and you got to be good before you can be great.
• 29:00
  So. I think it was Richard Branson
• 29:02
  who said screw it, just do it, let's do it, get on with it.
• 29:07
  I like that. Let's, let's before we get to
• 29:10
  the questions to finish, then let's finish on a positive note.
• 29:13
  So what's the biggest marketing win that you've implemented for
• 29:17
  a property manager this year? I mean, I've a funny example and
• 29:20
  then I have a more practical example.
• 29:22
  So funny example, I did an SEO audit not too long ago, 2-3
• 29:25
  months ago, and traffic just falling off a Cliff and, and all
• 29:28
  these problems, you know, kind of arising from it.
• 29:30
  And I looked at all the obvious, you know, signs of like, why is
• 29:32
  this property manager losing so much traffic?
• 29:34
  Supposedly the site was indexable.
• 29:35
  There's nothing blocked in robots.
• 29:36
  I did all the normal SEO technical checks and I get kind
• 29:39
  of deep in there. And then I realized I didn't
• 29:41
  actually look at the DNS layer. So I go look at the DNS layer
• 29:44
  and at Cloudflare, they'd selected to block Googlebot.
• 29:46
  They were just like, yeah, Google, we don't want you to
• 29:47
  visit this website. And it was all the way at the
• 29:49
  Cloudflare level. So I didn't catch it on the
• 29:51
  website itself. It was like a little bit higher
• 29:52
  than that. So that was a good one.
• 29:54
  I checked out box, you know, charge a client for an SEO audit
• 29:56
  and all their traffic came back within like a few days or maybe
• 29:59
  took a week or something like that.
• 30:00
  So that was a good one to file in the memory Bank of like you
• 30:03
  got to check everywhere. You can assume that like the
• 30:05
  answer is obvious or I have a little standard checklist I run
• 30:07
  through and it didn't fit into that bucket.
• 30:09
  So that was a good one to add to my checklist going forward.
• 30:11
  These things do happen, unfortunately.
• 30:13
  So that's one thing that comes to mind.
• 30:15
  The other thing I would say, you know, in general, you know, we
• 30:17
  have a client that we worked with for a long time.
• 30:19
  It's really just like understanding deeply what their
• 30:22
  core audience actually wants and positioning the ads that way.
• 30:24
  So we had ads running for this client for some time and they
• 30:26
  were getting OK results. And we kind of just sat down at
• 30:28
  one point and they'd had some changes internally.
• 30:30
  And we just kind of like, we're like, all right, let's just
• 30:32
  revisit this from the beginning. Like we've been doing the same
• 30:34
  thing for a while. It's working OK.
• 30:35
  No one's unhappy. Like the results are fine.
• 30:37
  But it's like, what does the guest actually want?
• 30:38
  And I kind of realized a lot of our messaging had just drifted
• 30:40
  over the years. Like a few people worked in the
• 30:42
  ads, a few people worked in the copy, multiple people gave
• 30:44
  feedback internally and externally.
• 30:46
  And we just got away from like the actual properties and what
• 30:48
  they who they were meant for. You know, we just kind of
• 30:50
  deleted, they did all the existing as we started again
• 30:52
  from scratch and we took everything, relaunched it and we
• 30:55
  got like significantly better results, like double the
• 30:57
  bookings on the same budget, you know, through, through this kind
• 30:59
  of process. So, and I think again, knowing
• 31:01
  that like I'm saying things because like I've done them too,
• 31:03
  I'm guilty of them too. If the same thing's been running
• 31:05
  for a while, I do think it's like that biannual thing where
• 31:07
  you just sit down and look at everything.
• 31:09
  Like, do we still like our homepage copy?
• 31:10
  Do we still like all the autoresponder e-mail?
• 31:12
  Do we still like our property descriptions?
• 31:13
  Do we still like our, you know, as they're going out on social
• 31:16
  media? And if not, like, yeah, maybe
• 31:17
  take some time every six months or every other quarter or
• 31:19
  something, just sit down and look at it.
• 31:21
  And maybe sometimes the answer is like, we're happy with that,
• 31:22
  it's fine, that's cool. But then you at least know you
• 31:24
  did it. But sometimes you're like, oh,
• 31:25
  this kind of drifted over the years.
• 31:27
  I, I don't know if this is actually where it should be.
• 31:28
  You come back, relaunch something.
• 31:29
  It feels fresh, feels new, and all of a sudden the results
• 31:31
  start getting better. So that's one that comes to mind
• 31:33
  as well. Absolutely, yeah.
• 31:34
  I mean, I'm a writer by trade and I'll look back at things
• 31:37
  that I've written. It might be 6 months ago, it
• 31:39
  might be 6 years ago. And sometimes I think I cannot
• 31:42
  believe that I wrote that and I completely change it and have
• 31:45
  completely edit it or do it completely differently if I was
• 31:49
  to do it today. Just before we get answer the
• 31:51
  questions to finish then Conrad, tell us more about build up
• 31:54
  bookings and where people can find you.
• 31:56
  Yeah, for sure. So build up Bookings for a
• 31:57
  digital marketing agency that works specifically with short
• 32:00
  for rental managers. So if that appeals to you, we do
• 32:02
  a lot of the services that we talked about on this on this
• 32:04
  podcast, search, social e-mail marketing.
• 32:06
  We do some website work as well. So yeah, go to Build up
• 32:08
  bookings.com, click the free call, call to action on the top
• 32:10
  right hand corner. You book a call with our team
• 32:12
  and we chat and see if we can help you.
• 32:14
  Very simple. Superb.
• 32:15
  And we'll put those details in the show notes.
• 32:17
  OK. Then questions to finish
• 32:20
  favorite brand and in the STR industry and why?
• 32:23
  All right. So I'm going to pick one that's
• 32:25
  dead because it's a shame what they did to them.
• 32:27
  I think Luxury Retreats was the best OTA that I've ever seen in
• 32:30
  execution and quality of inventory, quality of
• 32:32
  properties, their marketing, everything they did was like top
• 32:36
  notch and it's a shame that it's gone.
• 32:37
  So like poor went out for Luxury Retreats, Airbnb bought them.
• 32:40
  At this point, it's like more than five years ago, I would
• 32:42
  imagine. But when I think of like brands
• 32:44
  that I stick in my brain as like that we're so well executed and
• 32:47
  so well done and had the right audience, had the right
• 32:49
  property, we're actually making everybody happy, like a win win
• 32:52
  all around. Luxury retreats comes to mind.
• 32:54
  And yeah, whatever Airbnb do with Airbnb Lux, there's nothing
• 32:56
  like what it once was. So like, if you're new to the
• 32:58
  industry, you don't know that brand, but like drop it in
• 33:00
  archive.org and like look at the mastery that was like luxury
• 33:03
  retreats because I think that was an amazing brand.
• 33:05
  Current, current, current brands that are actually exist today
• 33:08
  just so we don't puttificate on stuff that's gone.
• 33:10
  So field trip is a client that we have.
• 33:11
  I hate to pick a client, but I, I feel like they're, they're one
• 33:14
  that really stick out to me is one that I really enjoy looking
• 33:16
  at. So if you go to
• 33:18
  stayfieldtrip.com, they manage to really iconic properties like
• 33:21
  the invisible house in Joshua Tree, CA and some surrounding
• 33:23
  markets like Malibu and stuff like that.
• 33:25
  That their execution on brand, their execution on a lot of
• 33:27
  their social stuff. We don't do their social stuff,
• 33:29
  to be clear, we do just their, some of their paid out stuff is
• 33:31
  really, really well done. And I think they've, they've
• 33:33
  nailed down this idea of like, what does the brand actually
• 33:35
  stand for all the way through, like from Click to the actual
• 33:37
  booking experience. They they understand it well.
• 33:40
  The reviews are phenomenal. They do a really good job.
• 33:41
  The founders are very like logical, thoughtful people who
• 33:44
  like, want to want to have everybody win, like the team
• 33:47
  members win, the guests like the experience, the owners are
• 33:49
  making money and it's rare to find that nowadays.
• 33:51
  Usually you find people cutting corners.
• 33:53
  So those are two that come to mind.
• 33:54
  Great shout out there for field Trip.
• 33:57
  Somebody in the STR industry that you'd like to give a shout
• 34:00
  out to and why? Yeah.
• 34:02
  Well, OK, so this case, I don't know this will come out exactly.
• 34:05
  But like Tian was just announced as the Tiane, Marcinc was just
• 34:08
  announced as one of the board directors for VRMA and just
• 34:11
  someone who actually deeply understands all the problems in
• 34:13
  our space. I think back to front, like what
• 34:15
  a great person to bring on to lead some of the, you know,
• 34:17
  decisions or some of the processes at VRMA.
• 34:20
  I mean, she gets shout out. She's good at promoting,
• 34:22
  obviously, and tie in does a lot of different things.
• 34:24
  And some of it's hard to keep up with her because she has so many
• 34:25
  things going on. But yeah, just someone who I
• 34:27
  think like, again, I've seen her work like up close.
• 34:29
  Like we had a conference one year and she was like taking
• 34:32
  guest calls in the back of a van.
• 34:33
  Like we're all in a Uber riding to a, you know, dinner or
• 34:35
  something. And she's trying to, you know,
• 34:36
  troubleshoot a guest call while she's at this conference.
• 34:38
  And of course, her team was handling some of it as well
• 34:40
  from, you know, where she was at.
• 34:41
  But yeah, someone like that that I think just actually has gone
• 34:44
  through everything, tries to make everything great, like
• 34:46
  tries to actually do with the right way front to back.
• 34:49
  And if you go look at again, go look at reviews, go look at her
• 34:51
  property, her properties, how she executes upon them,
• 34:53
  everything she thinks about in the property, I think that's
• 34:55
  someone that really understands stuff really well.
• 34:56
  And yeah, Ty Anne's I think a good example for sure.
• 34:59
  The queen of guest experience and we will be seeing her soon
• 35:03
  in Kansas City for her World Cup hosting event.
• 35:06
  I'm heading over for that in November.
• 35:09
  So very much looking forward to to taking part in that.
• 35:12
  Final question then, Conrad number one.
• 35:15
  Lesson learned since founding build up bookings.
• 35:19
  It's going to take a lot more work than you think,
• 35:20
  unfortunately. So I think that, you know, I
• 35:23
  said earlier I take some kind of action, but I think it's like
• 35:25
  momentum begets momentum. So if you get going your first
• 35:29
  versions of it, or like you said, the first thing that you
• 35:30
  write, six months later, you hate it, but you wouldn't have
• 35:33
  got to like the next step until you did that first step.
• 35:35
  So I think it's just like it's going to take more work than I
• 35:37
  took, more work than I thought for everything, especially as
• 35:39
  you've gotten bigger. When it was small and I could
• 35:40
  handle everything, it wasn't that hard.
• 35:42
  And as you've gotten bigger, it's having to translate my
• 35:44
  knowledge and my brain into my team that I think is really
• 35:46
  hard. And it's constant reinforcement.
• 35:48
  You know, it's constant reminders.
• 35:49
  It's constant, hey, this is how we do it.
• 35:51
  It's constant culture building. And yeah, if you take a day off,
• 35:54
  you're fine. But if you take like a week off
• 35:56
  or two weeks off or three weeks off, they can start to kind of
• 35:58
  go the wrong way. So this idea of like passive
• 36:00
  income or everything works. You hit a button and people just
• 36:02
  show up and do what they need to do is a complete fallacy.
• 36:05
  And it takes a lot more work than you think.
• 36:06
  But you know, you cannot lose if you do not quit, right?
• 36:09
  So it's like that's kind of the momentum and the thing that I've
• 36:11
  had learned the hard way over the past nine years now.
• 36:14
  I like that you can't lose if you don't quit.
• 36:16
  Great way. It's a finish, Conrad.
• 36:18
  It's been a real pleasure. Thank you for joining us on the
• 36:20
  Host Planet podcast. Appreciate it.
• 36:23
  Great to chatter Conrad O'Connell there from build up
• 36:25
  bookings, build your e-mail list, tweak your website and
• 36:29
  watch those direct bookings roll in.
• 36:32
  All right, that's it for today's show.
• 36:33
  Remember, this podcast is brought to you in collaboration
• 36:35
  with Housefully, which is trusted by short term rental
• 36:38
  professionals across the globe. As a house planet listener, you
• 36:42
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• 37:03
  trends from the STR industry, visit Houseplanet dot club where
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• 37:09
  podcasts, and download a suite of ebooks for hosts and property
• 37:13
  managers. That's it for today's episode.
• 37:15
  Until next time, happy hosting.