Heads In Beds Show - A Guidebook Is MARKETING For Your Vacation Rentals: Here's Why

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

In this episode Conrad and Paul dive into the guidebook: what purpose does it serve for your marketing? More than you might think... Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingTouchstay Guidebooks🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagramTwitter🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Heads and Feds show where we teach you how to get more properties, earn more revenue per property, and increase your occupancy. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. Hey there Paul, how's it going today? Oh, fantastic day here. Just recovering from the holiday, first set of holidays here that we've come through. It's been a good time. How are you, sir? Yeah, pretty good. I was on vacation last week, hence the two-parter that we recorded a few weeks back. We got back just before Thanksgiving, like literally the day before Thanksgiving, we arrived back.

So it was a Wednesday to Wednesday type vacation. It seemed like those are low travel days. I was somewhat expecting a bit of chaos in the airport. But the Wednesday because this was our assumption that we led to when we were getting on our plane Wednesday in Charlotte to get back to Myrtle Beach. We're like, well, if you wanted to go somewhere for Thanksgiving, you would have already traveled. So if you're traveling on Wednesday, it might be like, oh, no, like I couldn't make it until this day. So there was just like a little bit less demand, like very few people I feel would arrive the day before Thanksgiving on a plane because something could have gone wrong so i was expecting

more chaos than i saw or maybe there's like less overall travel i'm not sure i feel like if you wanted to be somewhere for thanksgiving and you were going to fly to do so you would have traveled it monday or sunday or something like that so that was an interesting observation that i had i was expecting more chaos than i actually experienced when i was in the airport for sure and is myrtle does it have is it like a Thanksgiving? Do you do anything Thanksgiving big celebration down there? Or is it? I feel like just the demographics

and psychographics of our area would indicate that if you're like, you didn't, if your parents live here, you likely didn't grow up here. So if it was like, I'm going to return home for the holidays. If anything, it might be the parents leaving Myrtle Beach

to go visit their kids back in the Northeast or something like that. I feel like that would be actually a more common travel path. But my sisters come down here for Thanksgiving before from New York down here and stuff like that. I don't know. It's an interesting question. I haven't really thought about it before. But I suspect that if there was one bias, it would be it wouldn't overwhelm it wouldn't overwhelm the airport like people coming into

Myrtle. But the I made that call when I was in Charlotte, which is a pretty big hub here. And the Charlotte airport wasn't even that full relative to how full I've seen it before. So that was interesting. It was busy. There was people there. I don't think I've ever gone to the Charlotte airport and been like, oh, there's no one here. It's such a big hub.

But it was it was not as chaotic as I thought, which is always interesting when you're traveling, looking at observations and trends and things like that. We saw I saw the videos at MSP, which MSP is big and people getting out and people getting out of the cold weather. It's we're back to winter ish up here. It's 30 degrees. MSP, which MSP is big and people getting out and people getting out of the cold weather. We're back to winter-ish up here. It's 30 degrees. So I think you had people at 4 a.m. in a two-hour line or a three-hour line or something that whole week.

But I didn't really hear about that many flights being delayed or canceled or anything like that. So I think, fingers crossed, people got where they needed to go to. And that's where we go. Yeah. I will say that the flight that I saw that was the most full or the most jam-packed I saw was people like coming from JFK, like New York City area, metro area to Aruba. That's where we were. Or then I saw a flight that was like Philly, first like Aruba back to Philly. That one seemed full, completely full.

There was like standing people trying to get on the flight. And then the same one back to JFK. So if you were in the Northeast, Philly or New York City, you were like, please get me to a beach, 90 degrees, perfect weather for a week before the holiday. And that seemed to be, I always joke about this. I have a client in Florida. I think we talked about this before in the Palm Beach, like Jupiter area. And you hear more New York accents there than you do outside of New York.

And that's how I felt in Aruba last week. Lots of New York accents that you can hear from people. That's for sure. Always fun to experience that. Yeah. it's always fun to experience things you know what else we can experience when we're being when we're hosting guests when we're working with our clients they're hosting guests is a guidebook so i thought today we would talk about the guidebook process paul's a touch into the weather his voice is 100 so i'll try to carry the load here i will try to jordan flu game this although it's i guess that's not really the right analogy if it was jordan

flu game you'd be talking the whole time so we're trying to not jordan flu game poor paul manzi over there who's having a cough and dealing with some stuff but i'll get i thought today we would talk about the guidebook because actually i talked about this a little bit on art of hospitality and scott was very surprised that i thought the guidebook was really important and he because adam and scott we were talking about the book and we were doing some pieces about that and i said yeah in the second chapter and third chapter we talk about blogging we talk about doing content creation for seo and that's something that we discussed with some level of detail. And then he was like, and then he but he thought that was like the first

thing. And I was like, hold on, it's actually not the first thing. I think there's two pieces of content that you put out, even as a single property host, or even do this, even if you have 10 properties, and you're a small property manager first before you get to that blogging thing. And it's actually a property description, which we've done an episode on property descriptions before. You can go back in the archives and look for that. And we didn't talk about this too much before. It's the guidebook.

The guidebook is what do you send your guest and that sort of thing. So I guess I'm curious your perspective on the role of the guidebook. Maybe if you just want to share a high level and then I'll dive into the specifics of the guidebook and the role that I think it serves

and the hosting experience. I think the guidebook is something that it's unique to a vacation rental, a short-term rental of some kind, because at a hotel, you don't really need a guide. You need a guidebook, but it's all standardized, I think. You're in the same block. You may have a few extra amenities here, but for the most part, everything's pretty standard. And you can look at a fact sheet for a hotel and you're going to get the breakdown of what everything is. I think that's where on the rental side of things you do. You have the ability to really allow your listing or property to stand out and not just explain everything about the property, but what you can do.

Give people that whole experience. And it is if you've got a funky appliance, kitchen appliance that you have to explain how to people how to use it. Guidebook is a great way to do that, to set that experience off on the right foot. So that's how I've always seen the guestbook provide value. And it is something that I've been away from the guest side for a while, so I haven't seen as much of the guest book. I think owner guidebooks are also a resource that is worth considering. If you have, if you really want to explain to people, I've seen some partners who are trying to undertake something like that and really educate their owners the same way, but it is throwing it back to you. What do you think? What's the key value in having a really solid guidebook? Well, it's interesting. You went in a different direction than I,

when I think guidebook first, I always think like recommendations first and then property second, but you're probably right. The appropriate questions that you have initially are generally more property first or local area information second. Maybe it's just because my brain works in like content. And then I thought like I books content, therefore let's put content in the guidebook. And the truth is both are necessary in some respect, but I think you're correct. Comparing it to a hotel is an interesting thing to explore for a minute. Because ultimately, inside of the hotel, like you said, not only is there just a sense of I know what to expect in the hotel room itself, right? Yeah, it all looks the same, right? If you were if I were to blindfold you and then drop you into a Hilton and then covered all the logos on

the stationery and things like that and drop you into a Hyatt, would you be able to tell the difference? Probably not unless you're just like a road warrior and you travel in hotels a lot of time. Ah, those purple sheets, I know what that is. But yeah, the vacation rental can be very unique. That's one very important layer that we can pick apart here in a second. The other piece is, and this is just a simple deductive example, but like in the hotel, you can walk down to the front desk and say, Hey, I'm having trouble with this, or this isn't working how I expect or Hey, what is the best pizza place that actually delivers here? We did that one last time we stayed in Boston, what's the best pizza place that actually delivers here? They give us recommendations. So that's one angle that you

have in the hotel experience that you really don't have the same format of interaction in the vacation rental experience for the most part, right? That host maybe will help you if you send them a message or give them a call on some of those types of things. But the guidebook has to carry a lot more weight, especially like you're saying, because you may even with our clients, if I were to stay in five different vacation rental properties, I might encounter five different dishwashers, five different refrigerators, five different. I remember the one we stayed in down in Florida, there was like, I was turning on the pool heat accidentally because I was trying to turn on the light. It was like, oh, the light and the pool heater on the same switch.

I was like, whoops, sorry about that. I didn't realize that no one was in the pool and I was turning the pool heat. That's not ideal. I should have read the guidebook, but men read manuals nowadays. So of course I didn't do that. But that those layers of exploration of the property, and then like area information, I think are worth splitting apart. And in my mind, yeah, the guidebook is a great opportunity to put the key necessary useful information in there. And people can scroll through it. I guess I should disclose this

early right touch day is a client of ours. So we've worked with them for some time and the team over there, they do a great job. But I'm very partial to their platform anyways, because I think the way that it's structured and the way they organize the guidebook is just so logical. And to your point, you were talking about homeowner pieces there too. To my knowledge, I think this was the case before Heather Bayer sold her company. I think she actually had an owner onboarding guidebook in Touch Day that she was using. And she would send this to the owner and say, hey, here's the 10 steps from step one to step 10 from you're now listing with us.

Great. Step step step step 10, excuse me, is OK, we've got a guest in your property and you're getting a check. What are the things in between? And they did that through the TouchState platform in a guidebook format because it can be a little overwhelming. Like what stage am I in? What do I need to work on?

That sort of thing on the owner side. So yet back to the guest piece really quickly. Maybe this is where I'll bring it back to you when you've stayed and you've stayed in vacation rentals as well. Or when you see clients doing this in your past, what do you think the thing is that they miss in that property education aspect? And what's something that they miss on the area information education aspect as well? side of things. I think it is. It's some of the, I think it's just the essential things that they need, putting a door code in there, but being able, the ability to really customize that experience, putting in the pool hours, putting in like those small details that again, are going to affect the stay long-term. And that's something that is is everybody's going to be a little different there. But I always felt like what comes out more on the back end of it is when someone gets into a review

and they say, I didn't know about this. If you can go through anybody's reviews, one, two, three star reviews. I didn't know about this. I wasn't told about this. There's something to be said for the pictures weren't the same as this. There weren't this. Okay. We've all heard that complaint, but the details that of knowing early check-in, knowing late check-in, knowing some of these, some of those seemingly small details that are really important, that are really going to affect the ultimate outcome of the stay. I think that's where you can get into the most trouble, not having those in there. And I think it's because we overlook them. We just assume that, okay, if we put it on the website, if we put it here, if we put it on any of these other spots, people are just going to know and understand that.

Talking about the area, I think it's probably, I don't know. I think it's probably, I don't know. I think that tends to be more of a copy and paste or template type of thing where you put in just the information that everybody puts in. You're not giving someone a real personalized feel of, oh, I'm putting the same top five restaurants in that everybody else puts in. What if those aren't really the top five restaurants? What if those are not something like that? At this point, it's not just a county or a county representation or a city directory of what's in the area. This is your representation.

And I think the ability to personalize that and say, hey, I like this pizza place because it's got really good stuff, crust pizza, it's got this and that, it's extra cheesy, it's got all the toppings I like. You become the true, it is, it's a travel guide. You become the travel guide at that point. And I think so many people get to rush to finish it as opposed to really customizing that experience for the potential guest. And it is, people are going to, I think people are just naturally going to take all of that into the experience of booking with you. And it is that people are going to, I think people are just naturally going to take all of that into the experience of booking with you. And that guidebook becomes a part of something that

they can either applaud and praise when the stay is done or completely throw you under the bus with because you didn't give enough information there. But what are your thoughts on what typically gets missed there on the guestbook side of things? Yeah, I think it's so funny because this is going to seem like an opposite recommendation from what I've said before. there on the guestbook side of things. Yeah, I think it's so funny, because this is going to seem like an opposite recommendation from what I've said before. But on the website, you want the content to be so comprehensive to rank well in Google, and you want to cover every nook and cranny. In the guidebook, you want more curation and less comprehensiveness, right to do some alliteration there. So in the guidebook, I don't maybe want 25 pizza restaurants, I want one of the two or three best pizza

restaurants right there. Catherine and I talked about this on the podcast episode that we did together at VRMA, which was that she was like giving recommendations to guests, whether it be through phone or text or messages or whatever. And it was like, yeah, this place is nice. It's close by to her property that she has in Florida. And then she thought about it more and she listened to the keynote of VRMA and she said, you know what? I'm not going to recommend this restaurant anymore. It's overpriced. It's not really great, et cetera. It's close. It's walkable or it's very close to the property. But I'm going to tell people, I'm going to preface it by saying, hey, look, this is going

to be a drive. You might have to get in the car. It's going to be 20 minutes. But if you go over here, this place is actually so much better. So if you're not like needing to eat right now, like kids screaming in your ear, like that sort of thing, get in the car, drive 20 minutes, go over here. I think that's what the guest is after in the guidebook on the area recommendation stuff is I might not have found this place if it wasn't for my host, Paul, or my property manager that

I worked with Paul, or whatever Paul's cool cabin rentals or whatever the case may be. But I'm so glad that I listened to him because I found this place when I got there is mostly locals and then I experienced this or I experienced that I think that is really what you're after for the most part on the recommendation side of things. And I think it's okay to be more curated and less comprehensive on that side. So yeah, sometimes I look at guidebooks back to the question of what's the mistake or what's the thing that I see. And usually people actually take it too far sometimes, or they misunderstand the assignment. They say, oh, well, touch day is this great feature where I can click a button and import the Google places and the reviews and all that stuff.

And to be fair, it's a great, it's a well done feature. But the downside is I think that you can stuff 20 things in there. And when there's 20 restaurant recommendations for a place that I might be three or four, maybe five nights at the most, that's I'm not going to do all 20 no matter what. I don't care how hungry I am. I'm not going to go to 20 restaurants in four days. So give me your top six or seven or maybe top three across four categories or something like that to make it a little bit more palatable. And I think that's probably the advice that I would give there is that at this point,

this is not really made for search engines or for optimization or for traffic purposes. This is that narrow thing that you're really giving people a recommendation of there. So those are the things that I think make the most sense there. Back to the property angle though. So there's like this, these two components of it. I think you nailed it with Wi-Fi, door codes, all that kind of stuff, access, getting in the property, et cetera. One thing that felt to, I felt this way at the recent stay that we did, not the one a month ago, but the one that we did back a few months back is that i feel like some people don't make any effort to make their properties more simple for the average new guest coming in who's never stayed there before right and i forget who's

talked about this before i think it might have been tyan i just talked about this before with like labeling light switches and things like that so when you walk in there's like a little label of like dining room light overhead light like that kind of stuff so that's always one thing that i find is like an evie an obvious low-h. It's like someone's going to walk in this property every week for hopefully the next 10 years or something like that, who's never been in it before, say for a few rebookings that you might get, and who doesn't know anything about the property itself. And you have to get them up to speed, hopefully very quickly, so they're not frustrated. And the technology can certainly be a component of that. I was reading a

Twitter thread the other day from someone saying, i put smart tvs in all my properties but i make the guests use their login they have to log into their disney plus they have to log into their netflix and stuff like that and that to me feels like kind of a negative thing i want to walk in the property and not have to sit there and type on the little keyboard in the property my long password and me with my one password passwords that i use are always like long and complex i'm like i just want to log in and it just works. And it always surprises me when people cheap out on like small things like that inside of property.

So I think inside of a guidebook and inside of that guest experience, I think you want to provide as much as possible. And I think you want to simplify as much as possible too. And be like aware of what the guest is coming in and what they're experiencing. They might arrive, it might be dark, like having the lights on and putting some of that information in the guidebook. Hey, we have five smart TVs in the property. This was the case for the property

we stayed at in Florida, by the way. They were all the same brand, all the same everything. And then each remote was labeled on the back, right? It was like living room TV. And then you flipped over the label on the one upstairs and it was like upstairs TV. And they were, so if you figured out one, you figured out all of them very quickly.

It wasn't like one was a Vizio, one was a Samsung and things like that. So I think going back to the guidebook piece, your guidebook can be a lot simpler if you keep it simpler on purpose, right? If you keep it simpler, I feel like intentionally you're going to have a better outcome on the guidebook because you can be like all the TVs work in the same way, like all the remotes are labeled, here's how they're labeled and stuff like that. So those are some things to explore. Another thing I've seen is a lot of more clients who are working with doing videos. It used to be that they thought that maybe it had to be like super high production value. And we've talked about this

on a video marketing episode that we did a while back. It doesn't have to be like the highest quality on earth don't intentionally make something low quality just for the sake of whatever. But even having an iPhone on a tripod pointing at something and explaining it in a five second, you know, 25 second video can save someone a load of trouble. And then you can then send the videos a response if someone were to have a question or those sorts of pieces. So those are just some different layers, I think, to explore in the guidebook. But yeah, make it simpler, make it clearer. I think, especially the bigger the property, the more you can do inside the guidebook, maybe you're incentivized to like, oh, there's all this different stuff. But some people can figure things out on their own.

I think you want to stick to things that you get the most questions out. And maybe that's my departing thought here on this, which would be that the guidebook in my mind would be a place that you can refine a lot version one of the guidebook when the first guest arrives should hopefully look very different than version 12 of the guidebook after you've hosted 50 different people in that property and you found all the little problems and things that people were having with it for sure. So here's the thing that I think that gets the most negative connotation from those guidebooks is about house rules. We get to hear about Airbnb house rules all over the place. How do you feel about house rules? How do you feel about the

craziness of some Airbnb house rules? Dive into that one a little bit here. Yeah. So I think it's so funny because some of the best hosts are people that I see that have great reviews and a lot of clients that we have that have great reviews, not just on their own site, but on Airbnb. It seems like there's direct correlation between how many house rules they impose on people and how good their reviews are. And I think Richard fatigue has posted his house rules on Twitter before, but it's, um, we hope you had a great stay. Please lock the door when you walk out, something like that, right? To that effect. That's the house rules. Now I get it because it's one of those things where if you it's that's the Nordstrom employee handbook,

I think, which is use your best judgment in all situations at all times or something like that. I love that idea, but then it's then someone inevitably does something very stupid. And then you have to deal with it. So the condo example, I can point to on the guidebook is clients of condo buildings don't smoke on the balcony. That's like a common one that I see when you smoke in the balcony, you think it's only impacting you, but it's not because the smoke goes up, the smoke goes down, the smoke goes left, the smoke goes right. Other people on the balcony, and then they're dealing with the same smoke that you're dealing with. If it's tobacco, cigarette smoke smoke people aren't too bothered by they don't like it but they can understand it when it's the green stuff when it's the devil's

lettuce so to speak people get very upset at that especially here in south carolina where it's not actually legal and there's police called and there's all sorts of problems that can arise from that so that's an example of one where it's you can't just say in the guidebook don't smoke on the balcony you have to like my frame on it in the guidebook is that you have to give a reason. Smoking in the balcony causes folks above you and below you who may have breathing issues to ingest your smoke. That's not fair. Please go to the smoking area out in the parking lot over here where everyone's going to smoke,

right? So I think that's, I think if you're going to have the house rule that if you have to have it in there, in my mind, you have to wordsmith it a little bit and make it seem a little bit more palatable than it might actually be, or at least explain why that is the case. But what I don't like, and this is, I feel like something that I see in guidebooks, or I see these property descriptions is rules for the sake of rules when things, these things just don't happen very often, or it's common sense. I've always hated that part of the guidebook process where there's someone in there that's, yeah, say this, say this, say quiet hours at this time, say all this stuff. And I'm like,

you could just do that, like sign in the property. That can be very subtle. That could just be a little sheet when they check in. that could be on the fridge. I don't like the idea of wasting guidebook real estate or property description real estate, which is where I see this sometimes on stuff that's so obvious and so clear that you shouldn't do it that way, that it's just a waste of like overall time and effort and energy. So my guidebook rule section, if like I was my property, I would put as few in there as possible. And it really would be more of the Nordstrom style please respect our home please respect the property other guests will stay here after you we want to keep it in great shape for a lot of folks to enjoy

that's that encompasses 60 70 of don't damage this don't leave the don't leave don't spill red wine on the sofa that kind of rules that you sometimes see in a guidebook and and then for the rest i would explain every rule that i had to put in there for why i have that rule so it's not just no smoking in the balcony it's no smoking in the balcony because and then explain in a friendly way why that's the case but maybe you've experienced this as well in your career what's this is something i think the the painful ones that you see are when a guest unfortunately gets on social media and says i have to do the dishes and i have to take out the garbage i'm just doing all the work i would have done at home. Why did I even, first of all, you're going to a different space. So it's not just like being at home. Yeah. Are these things that you wouldn't

have done necessarily? Like you weren't going to put garbage in the garbage can or you, there's some common sense type of things that go a lot more viral than I think they should. Certainly. that go a lot more viral than I think they should, certainly. I don't know. That's, I think you're hitting it on the head there with you want to be as minimal as possible. And it is. I mean, there's some common sense stuff. If you got to do a little more,

if that means you have to do a little more guess betting to ensure that you don't have to write rules because someone's going to be crazy and wild, then maybe that's a solution you have to look for and looking for something like that. And solution you have to look for and looking for something like that. But and there are solutions like that out there. You can bet you do that deeper guest vetting and new stuff like that. It's I think when you see just what happens when someone does take it too far, or as a guest perceives it is taking it too far. It just

always comes out to negatives, even if it's tongue in cheek and you're joking, make sure your guests understand that. And they're like, it is, if you're in it, there's some businesses out there that absolutely could be have fun with it and do that type of stuff and make a crazy rule list knowing that, okay, it's not really a crazy rule list, but you have to have a pretty good relationship. You better have a lot of returning guests. You better have a lot of relationships already built up because if you're just a big company that's going to, that has hundreds of rentals and you're putting in an exhaustive list of rules for all of your, of house rules for all your individual properties, I think you're going to get some

negative blowback of some kind. Maybe not negative reviews, maybe not this, but someone's going to look at that and say, this just seems a little ridiculous. I don't, at that point, I don't think all good headlines are going to, all headlines are good headlines is going to apply in that area. And there's, and some of that commentary that goes viral, Twitter being the place that I see it most commonly, it's always the comments will say something to the effect of, I won't stay in Airbnbs anymore, the term like that, because because of this because of this sort of potential expectation. But it's so funny. I want this to be an interesting study to do. I wonder if there's a way to do it now. And now that Airbnb, I think is more public about what is it now there's like a feature in Airbnb where it's like

what the host requires you to do. If we could scrape all that and look across 100 or 1000 of the top listings in like a competitive market, pick a Destin, pick a San Diego, pick a Orlando, Florida, pick a Myrtle Beach, etc. I think you would find that most of the top listings in like a competitive market, pick a Destin, pick a San Diego, pick a Orlando, Florida, pick a Myrtle Beach, etc. I think you would find that most of the top property managers and hosts don't have what these exhaustive lists. One of the ones I see is very reasonable in my mind is like garbage to the curb, something like that. And there's services out there that help you with that as well. And then ones around like time based things. So if it is a tight turn, you have to start the dishwasher before the cleaner gets there, because otherwise the dishwasher won't be done. And it's like the new guest is going to come in at three o'clock, we don't start the dishwasher to

two o'clock, it's we're toast, that sort of thing. So those things in my mind seem ones that are reasonable. And I feel like you can't get that upset about a tour list if it takes five minutes, if it takes five minutes for you to put my dishes, you're being unreasonable by saying that's some egregious thing that a hotel would make me do this. We hotel centralized. So like, the fact that people try to compare these two things in this context, like if you just put two minutes into thinking about it, even if you weren't in our industry, some a cleaner, like the one that we experienced when we were in Massachusetts visiting my grandfather, she had to drive there from 35 minutes away, 40 minutes away, it's in the middle of nowhere. Obviously, there's a little bit of a bigger chore list there. And I think it was

unreasonable. It was like piling sheets into a certain spot. It was things that I it took me five minutes to do. So how can I sit there and say, this person is unreasonable by doing it that way? I think the best thing to do is keep the property in good shape. That's why I think having these more simple rules is best because then if you do have an issue, then sure, you can call it out and go towards it. But once you let that guest into that house, in my mind, if you're the property manager or whether you're the owner of that property, it's not really your property anymore. It is like you own it, but it's like you have to bend the property towards what they want to do. So if they want to be a little bit messy on vacation, I don't know, I could live with that. If I was a property manager or host, I'm like, you're gonna be a little messy. Now,

if someone's excessively messy, like I certainly wouldn't want to host them again. And if they're like, almost going out of their way to be messy, I understand that. But in my mind, you have to that's what the cleaning fee is for to deal with these sort of things reasonably. So the guidebook is your chance to get back to the core topic there of messaging, to make sure they understand why the rules are the way they are. But ultimately, I would try to make it as minimal and as friendly as possible from a language perspective. And I certainly wouldn't have a list of no, don't do stop. I wouldn't want that because I think that just to your point that just nothing about that feels hospitable. Nothing about that feels if you're if you're staying with a friend who you didn't know that well, maybe like hung out a little bit

before, but you never stayed at his house before, or her house her house you may say you might pop in your shoes off and be like oh yeah of course no problem but if you're like no shoes in the house like it just it comes out across so much more poorly even though the net effect is the same ah you might pop in your shoes no i don't mind at all it's such a different sort of like tone and i think that's where the guidebook should do that because you're not there to police it so the only way that you're going to get your point across is to try to be friendly and try to explain it otherwise you, you're just going to end up with, to your point, these viral threads of these people are very unreasonable. And if they're unreasonable, not only is that not going to come back and stay again, not the given, but they're just not going to leave you a good review. They just, it's putting a bad taste in your mouth.

It's giving them something better when hopefully you can get them something a little bit sweeter for sure. Correct. Awesome. What else on guidebooks or did we cover the gamut there from property to area info to everything? All of a sudden, you've got a small flood in the house. But I think it is. I think it's important to get in the minds of guests. Like, use the feedback you get from guests. And I think that's why doing surveys, doing all these things is going to help build a better guidebook. So take that information.

Take the feedback you get. Take the reviews you get. And actually read them. Use chat. Plug them into chat. GPT. Do something like that, get an assessment. And again, lay that out, use the data you've got to put better information out so that you're giving ultimately those guests a better experience. And if the guidebook isn't

giving guests a better experience, you're missing somewhere. So try to fix it and do something else, I would say. Yeah, no doubt about it. There's a reason that it's early on in the book, like I was talking about, we're at the top, which is that I think this is your second piece of content, you do a property description, that's your first piece of content. And then you do a guidebook, that's your second piece of content. And it's to your point, though, there broadly that you shared earlier, it's not just the experience of here's a restaurant I go to, it's the experience of the property. And I think the better you can do there, the more professional you seem and appear, the better your reviews are. And ultimately, you can save yourself some headache as well.

So I like that to put a bow on it. So that's all we got on guidebooks. Again, Touchday is the one that I recommend a very biased there. I know there's other platforms and companies out there that offer guidebooks. Definitely check those out too. Do your due diligence, do your research. But the guys over there at Touchday are fantastic, do a great job. A client, but not sponsoring this episode.

But let's say they're informally sponsoring an episode if they listen to this later on. Just great product out there. I know some PMS platforms have this kind of functionality built in. What is sponsoring this episode in some respect was the book that we mentioned earlier. So if you'd like, you can go on Amazon and pick up Mastering Vacational Marketing. While I was on my vacation, Paul, I noticed that you can buy this in Aruba and it would cost $38 to ship it from I'm assuming like Florida down to Aruba. So I don't think I'll ever sell a copy in Aruba. We have sold in the US, we sold in the UK, we sold in Canada. I think i sold one in new zealand there was one in australia so this print on demand stuff

is amazing shout out to amazon like they get a lot of negative i guess like credit or whatever but they let someone like me who's not going to sell hundreds of thousands of these copies he's going to sell them to people to listen to the show that's going to that are vacation managers that are going to get some value out of the book i'm selling her for 15 bucks you really can't beat it they ship it to you straight to your door you get it you're going to learn a lot from it and we talk about guidebooks in the lightweight section which is early on the book. I'm selling it for 15 bucks. You really can't beat it. They ship it to you straight to your door. You get it. You're going to learn a lot from it. And we talk about guidebooks in the lightweight section, which is early on in the book. So if you haven't yet picked that up, we would certainly appreciate that. If you made it this far in the episode, 30 minutes in, hopefully you appreciate what we're talking about here on the guidebook side, and you can leave the

show a review as well. So two review requests from you. Hopefully it's not too painful. Not a long checkout list, so to speak. If we were giving you a task list, just two things on it, find the book, leave a review, listen to the podcast, leave a review. We'll catch you in the next episode of the Heads and Beds show. Thank you so much. We'll catch you next time.