Heads In Beds Show - Breaking Down The Reasons WHY Guest Choose Vacation Rentals vs Hotels

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, we ask what most don't: why in the world do guests even CHOOSE to book a vacation rental over a hotel in the first place? How can you use this information to your advantage and let guests pick your property (and pay a premium to do it)? ⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagram🚀 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 Head to Med Show presented by Buildup Bookings. We teach you how to get more vacation properties, earn more revenue per property, master marketing, and increase your occupancy. Take your vacation rental marketing game to the next level by listening in. I'm your co-host Conrad. I'm your co-host Paul. All right, Paul, good afternoon. What's cooking? level by listening in. I'm your co-host Conrad. I'm your co-host Paul. All right, Paul, good afternoon. What's cooking?

It's storm season in Minnesota. I my wife just said that summer's not coming around the way she expected here. That's because we've had either 50 degree weather or 95 degree weather. We have nothing in between and no lot of rain. So, you know, I'm looking at half full. It's going to be rainy, but the garden is growing very well today. So how, how is your garden growing? How are you doing, Conrad? How are things going for you? Actually, funny enough, this is a total sidebar. They had to aerate my lawn, which has only happened, they've only done twice, I think. The like people that helped me with my yard have done this twice. And I was like, this is a cause for pain and misery when this happens to the golf course, when they aerate it, cause I got to punch the greens and it ruins the greens for a few weeks. But in my yard, I found it very satisfying

to watch that machine just rip through my yard and take out those little dirt plugs and it was just flying all over the place. And I was like, oh, this actually kind of, and they're like, yeah, it's gonna help you with the grass grow better and all this kind of stuff. So maybe that's just that time of the year to do that kind of thing.

And then of course they told me to water it a lot. And I was like, define a lot for me, because I got a $300 water bill last time you guys suggested I watered a lot. I was like, I'm trying to define what's actually fair or not. But no, I'll get here. Very, very hot down here. So we're recording here till end of June. I know this will probably come out in July at this point, but it'll probably still be hot in July here. So, you know, I'm used to it at this point, it doesn't faze me as much as it used to. When I first came down here, I would really the hot weather hot weather would really get to me. I say that, but then on our three or four being outside this weekend, I'll probably have, you know, some

complaints. So anyone can tolerate hot weather for a certain period of time. It's really just how far south you go is kind of the timeline changes, but almost no one can tolerate being out there all day that one day. So that's for sure. We got gotta be happy. We have to be happy that it's summer time. Give me the hot over the cold. It's not snow, it is. I got away with completely different things, outcomes that could be happening. So I gotta be happy with this, I guess.

But guests aren't always happy because guests don't always pick the right accommodation product for them. And I think that's an interesting jumping off point for today's discussion because this is a reoccurring actual SEO term, by the way, that comes up when I do SEO research is people search this a lot on Google, hotel versus vacation rentals,

which is not the reason we're doing this podcast, although you and I are both SEO nerds at heart, as it were. But it's something that we've actually never covered on the podcast before. And obviously most of our clients in their vacational space, although we do have some clients I would say that are more in this hotel space,

there are some clients that we work with own both. We have a client we work with who manages about 75 or 85 condos in a vacation rental market. And then he actually owns two hotels that we help with the marketing on as well. And there's definitely different styles to the way we do the marketing, the promotions, the guest types are a little bit different. But we thought we'd try to at least take a crack today. Maybe we can't get through everything, but take a crack today. It's starting to define what are these guest preferences that they have for different accommodations. Because I think one thing I see online quite a bit, particularly the way I talk about it a little bit, is this idea of we have

our bubble. When I go on LinkedIn, I'm in my bubble, which is this vacation rental bubble. When I talk to people like you, when I talk to people like Brooke, when I talk to people like Trover, who I talked to the other day, it's like, we're all in this little industry, this little bubble, and we see it from our perspective. But when I go online to like Twitter or Reddit or other places online, you get out of this bubble. Or when I talk to friends and family about what I do, I get outside this bubble and I get a different perspective. And I think it's good to understand like, why people are choosing what they're choosing. And also from a company building perspective, like what companies actually have it, quote unquote,

figured out, you know, and are offering a product people really want. And why? What are they doing that's working well? What are they doing that's not working well? And one thing I see quite a bit is this idea that I think a lot of people tried, quote unquote, Airbnb as a hotel replacement in an urban environment. So they went on Airbnb and they said, Oh, I can book a apartment or a condo or something like that in Philadelphia for this conference that I'm doing. And look, oh man, the Airbnb is only 127 a night and the hotel is 249 a night. Why wouldn't I do this? What a great deal. And then they get there and it's run poorly and the quality isn't great. And then they go, ah, Airbnbs are terrible, right? That's

like a common thing, particularly on Twitter. You see that a lot, you know, where someone goes, that's so stupid to try Airbnb. I tried it one time and I had a bad experience. I'm just going to stick to hotels. And it's like, it's so funny because I don't see that at all as our core client or really the heart and soul, I feel like of what the vacational industry is, it's not that. But that's kind of my jumping off point, I think, for defining someone tries an Airbnb one time and then they swear off all short term rentals or all vacation rentals. When really the type of client that you and I typically work with, and I assume most of our listeners are offering a vacation rental product is very different from an urban Airbnb. So walk me through some of the thoughts you have when again, maybe same thing when you get outside of your bubble, what do people say about you about this industry that you've learned from? Yeah, I mean, I think this is, this is where

I'm grateful to have kind of started is when we joke a lot that when resorts and lodges used to go to conferences, the vacation rental conferences to Burma and all that. That's what everybody said was, well, you're just I'm not a resort or a lodge. This is not applicable to me. Well, in doing that, we did, we got to work with a lot of these hotel, resort and lodge properties and inns and B&Bs and all these boutique lodging opportunities. And it was, it was kind of a chance to peek behind that curtain because now it is, now I have to go back and think, whoa, yeah, this is how it was run at a, you know, a full service resort or a water park resort or more of a metropolitan

hotel, you know, something like the urban hotel property. So it's still very interesting to kind of look at the people who have, I would say, treaded the line between the two, because we do. We have a lot of people who have tried to come into the vacation rental space from the hotel space, from the resort space. And I think people that, and I've gotten in the work with some of these people, and I think the biggest eye-opening moment for them is really, it's about the consistency. It's about the standardization. And the fact that that's what, I mean, it is, we've got a little outline here. And the line that I highlighted was the traditional hotel and resort models built upon a foundational promise of consistency,

reliability, and service-centric convenience. And I do, I think that that's something that when you have people who come from the more hotelier side and the resort side of things, bringing that into the vacation rental side, that is that's what they're looking for. That's what they're striving for. But because you're kind of creating that out of nothing, because the wild, I mean, let's face it, the vacation rental space is still a little bit of the wild, wild west. And when we are getting more regulation, we're all doing some of these things. But standardization, I think we've had that discussion a few times here. So I do. I think that it's certainly, it is, it's a different look. It's a different, I mean, you're going after

different audiences sometimes. You're kind of, I think it is. It's really identifying what a hotel and resort do better. And I use heavy air quotes there with the do better. And I think the other side is understanding why, what is the motivation for people to choose a rental over a hotel? Is it the space? Is it the cost? I think at one time it was. It was

I'm getting more property for less money and that was pretty much standard across the board. And everybody before, now it's Airbnb. Well, I've done an Airbnb. I don't like it. Before it was a Verbo. It is a VRBO at that point, but these weren't all vacation rentals by owners. We've had this conversation. These were professionally managed properties, and was there some brand service style standard out there? Maybe, but ten years ago, probably not nearly to the same extent that people are trying to do now. So, you know, we're all going after the same travel audience. Everybody is approaching how they're going after that audience.

They do it in a different way. But ultimately, if you're not considering travelers who are openly considering a hotel in some type of unique accommodation, that's not a rental. I think you are. You're missing a huge subset of the potential traveler audience that you're looking for.

It's a fun conversation. I'm really looking forward to just kind of going through this in a deeper level. Yeah. Well, one thing that stuck out there in your commentary was this idea of what are the hotels do well. And one thing that I highlighted here that we talked about previously is the idea that these brands carry such weight in the hotel world. And that's what, of course, we keep trying to replicate over and over again, in the vacation until world. And here we are recording this middle of 2025. And, you know, we're on the second inning of the new maybe or the first inning, maybe I should say, of the new Vakasa, which, you know, now owned by Casago.

And it's like, that's obviously that story that we told about Vakasa and what it was going to be is debt. And if it gets reincarnated as something else, it's not the same body. It's not the same methodology. It's not the same thinking of what made Vakasa originally a public company and you have this $4 billion valuation. And now it's going to be something completely different, even if it does live on in some form or fashion. But look at Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt, these massive ecosystems, right? Marriott, 228 million members, according to our research that we did here.

Incredible, right? Like you could, you know, you, you could take every single guest booking that Akasa did, line them up. And I feel like it would scratch, you know, a 10th of that. And those are actual members that have an account and have IDs and that sort of thing. So there's points, there's status upgrades, there's perks. There's all these reasons to go,

I'm gonna go book a Marriott, Hilton or Hyatt over here. And then I'm gonna go book one over here during my next day. And there's very different reasons for doing that. So in the context of like professional, what I think of as like functional travel, that's kind of what you want. It's like consistency, predictability, repeatability, you want

kind of the same thing. But that's it's funny, because like, what has made the hotel successful is successfully commoditizing this and you and I fight against that marketing, which is like, you don't want to be a commodity property. So it's these two push and pull two different dynamics. And it probably explains why scaling a vacation rental company is so freaking difficult. Because if you offer 200 properties, and they're somewhat specialized in some form or fashion, you're going to have 200 different, you know, elements to how those properties are photographed and laid out and presented and

marketed and all this stuff. And scale does bring you more benefit in terms of being able to get more reach, get more eyeballs, get more booking, or excuse me, get more marketing budgets, drive more bookings, that sort of thing. But it's the antithesis of like, of Hilton or Marriott saying, yeah, we have 300 of the same room, man, like, come on down, like, we got them all, you know, whatever you're looking for. And of course, I'm exaggerating a little bit, there'll be different room types. But, you know, for the most part, the analogy that we talked about when we were putting together the outline for the show is that if, you know, if I blindfolded

Paul and brought him up an elevator, put him into a vacation, or excuse me, a hotel room done by Hilton, and then I did the same thing in Hyatt and I asked him what company it was. Let's assume I covered the logos on the little notepad sitting there on the counter. Would you actually be able to know? And I feel like the answer is no, unless you are just a business traveler

and you can tell the sheets or the certain curtains maybe that Hilton uses versus Hyatt, but the answer is not really. And I've even found that to be honest with you too, when I stay at a more like a nicer hotel, a more luxury hotel, my wife and I stay at the higher place and we stayed the four seasons one time before in Boston when we go up there. And when you're in the room, it's a little bit nicer between it, but it's not massively different. It's like maybe one click nicer,

one thing different. It's the service. I think that's where the hotels are sometimes differentiating more is on service. And there's the soft touch ideas. The restaurants a lot nicer at the four seasons than it is at some of these other places. A lot of places don't even have a restaurant. It's, Hey man, here's some crackers. You can buy a package of it before you head to your room. Right. Very different experience. Whereas on the vacational side, the property is what we're making unique. The property is the thing that is really, you know, stand out, the design, the amenities,

the architecture. Go back a few episodes. You'll hear our kind of thought process on specialty versus unique properties and specialty versus commodity properties. Excuse me. And those are things that we market off of. So there's this, again, this push pull when it all comes down to, I want to bet and I want to place a state, but there's so many factors inside that that make it so complicated and explains why it's hard to compare these two things because there's similarities and but also a lot of differences as well. Most definitely. One of the things that stuck out to me as you were just talking there was the consistency going to a place over and over again.

I think that's one of the things where there to a place over and over again. I think that's one of the things where there's volume of travel is one thing that I don't think we actually have on the list here anywhere, but I think that makes just as big an impact in some cases. I mean, it is. If you're staying 100 nights a year, that could be traveling for pleasure with your family. It could be business travel, anything like that. But I think that creates a different set of preferences because again, that opens you up to having more value, more perks, more rewards, more membership, things like that. So it's something that's not even on the list here, but talking about one of the things

that we talk about a lot by location. I mean, I think when we're defining what really sets something apart there and how someone's traveling, it's where are you traveling to? I mean, are you going to downtown Minneapolis? Are you going to Myrtle Beach, a beach market there? Are you going up to a Northwoods cabin market where nobody's out there? Are you going to the suburbs? Are you traveling? So you're actually doing some air travel. Do you want convenience of being at the airport? I think there's so many different reasons why people are traveling, why people need that accommodation. I think those two things aren't necessarily a carryover. You could

be traveling and you can need an accommodation for two very separate reasons. So how are we scratching that edge of the traveler who's looking to stay closer to an airport, stay closer to a city center, stay away from a city center so they can get away from everything. And that's, you know, how can we get those COVID tourists who are trying to distance themselves from the outside world there a little bit? We're not done with those people yet. They're still around. We can find them.

Yeah, I mean, when you're thinking about breaking down by location, when people are traveling to go to a hotel or vacation rental, what do you think about there? Well, I think you break up a good point, which is, again, like the reason for your travel. I think there's such a variety of, you know, again, demand reasons. And the reasons why someone chooses a place is so different depending on the reason they're traveling, the group they're traveling with, the location, all these pieces, because it's so funny, too. I always think about VRMA events,

you know, when we the vacation industry all converge for a few days at a hotel, I'll talk about why vacation rentals are this great opportunity and how we can make our companies run better. But in that context, the reason we do it, it's kind of a funny thing at the surface, but when you dig under the surface, you realize, well, yeah, that would be silly for us to all be in 200 different, 300 different vacation rentals, and then we're all driving in or something like that to a conference center, we all need to be in one place for a few days, a hotel resort center. And this, this year it's in Las Vegas. Logically that makes sense.

You know, that's, that's the right tool for the job. You know what I mean? So it's not, it's not us abandoning our values as an industry to say say we're all, you know, vacational managers, and we're coming together. Once a year in a hotel center, it's the most logical thing to do for that particular type of travel that form of travel. So I think that's a good example of what I'm talking about, right? You know, you and I, if we go split a place to stay in Vegas, it's because we're just trying to save, you know, maybe a few shekels. And, you know, we don't really care, we're going to be in there. And then the morning we'll go out and we'll have to be at the conference all day and have dinner and come back, right? It's literally just place to to lay your head at the end of the day. So I think about that very differently from my family and I planning maybe a fall vacation, maybe end of your vacation is something that's still ongoing discussing it with will the baby be up to it is kind of what it comes down to. And the the concern the anxiety my wife feels and booking that travel is is so specific needs to have God, I really hope that room is really dark. Gosh, I

hope there's a noise machine, you know, man, I hope there's a crib, you know, man, I hope you know, the pack any of this stuff that I really don't want to bring if I don't need to. And it creates this long list of desire that you know, I'm going by myself, I don't think about any of those things at all. You know, it's just such a such a simple process. So I think it's you know, going back way back to like this idea of like knowing your audience knowing what your the guest is actually after

you've got to know who you're serving. And if you're not serving that person with what they're after, then I think that you find yourself in a tough spot. And again, it goes back to that same concept too, right? Of what are you offering? And is it, is it unique enough to really stick out from the crowd? Or do you, are you checking enough boxes to where you can kind of fit into that mold and offer someone a great value? Because I think that's, the reason a hotel does well is that it offers enough value to enough large enough people in that given location that you kind of check a lot of boxes. But does anyone dream of owning probably an airport hotel? I don't suspect so. I don't think that's the case. But I bet those are actually really good businesses purely from like a cost perspective. How much

you pay to run one on one and get to make money. I bet people run those businesses make a lot of money, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a desirable product. It's more of a convenience product in a way. So I think it's knowing what you're offering. And that's, that's a different, that's the motivations of why people get into vacation rentals is so different, you know, especially the ownership layer in this business is so different. Someone bought a house because they liked it and they wanted to spend time there. And then they went, Hmm, I might rinse it out when I'm not here and make a little bit of money off of it. And that's how you got the product, right? It wasn't someone most of the time, certainly in the, in the

past of this industry, it wasn't someone with a spreadsheet opening up and talk about cap rates and cash on cash return and all this kind of stuff. That's a new phenomenon that's happened the last few years. That's not how things were 10 or 15 years ago by any stretch. No, I mean, I do. I think that what is different, you talk about that service level, that is where hotels have a better defined that. And we talked about that in our branding and our talking about the, like, and I think franchise, the individual franchises in the vacation rental space. When we had that conversation kind of comparing to the hotel space. Yeah, people are going

to the best Western know exactly what they're getting at the best one or Western and the Econa Lodge. They're not looking for a five star luxury experience. They're looking for getting the exact same place to lay their bed at the end of the night where they feel safe, reasonably certain that they'll be able to wake up without, you know, this pest or people in the room. I think that's certainly a value there, but it is when you have that much more clearly defined

service level across your entire property, it does make it easier for a guest to know, okay, I'm going, I want that mid scale hotel, I want, you know, the continental breakfast, I want the Wi Fi, those are the things I need. Well, you take a look at that vacation rental portfolio, I may have 50 different properties that have some type of mid scale service level fee, and not really service level, but mid scale feel. But we don But then it's down to amenity types, or it's down to where is that location?

And then it comes down to so many other things where I think that's where hotels have it. Not easier, but it is, it's just more defined. You are looking for this service level in the location. Your one plus one is gonna equal two most times, which is gonna allow you to make that booking in a pretty straightforward manner Yeah, you're gonna look for the amenities make sure they fit what you're looking for

But once you've in most cases most people have stayed with does one of these brands before so they know they they have that feeling Of what they're getting and it's meeting their expectation And that's why they continued to consistently choose that because it continues to meet their expectation Now hopefully they didn't have that one bad experience with the Airbnb which is pushing them to do that But sometimes we do for some of these hotel resort guests we get one chance and that's a really scary proposition to say You have to have a perfect stay. I mean, what does it two episodes ago three episodes? We talked about all the things you can't control in the traveler experience and when they're on site or when they're going through the booking process

or post-stay. So when there's so little margin for error, I mean, it does, it just, it necessitates having your operations in order. It necessitates having your brand in order to make sure that you have a clearly defined brand with brand expectation brand standards that aren't going to be compromised on so that people are they're receiving that great experience

and that they are going to come back because they had such a great experience like they do with hotels right now. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I think the more complex it gets, you know, it's people's preferences are changing. And you've got to guess it's almost like you're guessing ahead of the target, right? It's kind of that line of like, skating to where the puck is going versus where the puck is now, right. And you see this with markets that get overflooded and oversaturated, which was easier

in the vacation rental industry, for the most part, because the desire, the number of people who can go and build a single cabin in Gatlinburg is very high, like that number of people that can take action on that is very high, because that's not overly restricted. Regulation wise, the land is relatively affordable. It's not like Southern California or buying land in New York City or something like that that doesn't really exist. It's, you know, we hear, oh, it's a good market to run into. I think I've told this story before on the podcast, but I have a client whose destination was kind of less well known, and it ended up in one of these lists where it's like the 10 best places to invest. And I was like,

oh boy, you're in for some pain, you know, because copy. I think it was air DNA of memory serves and nothing already is doing wrong there. They're just doing what the data tells them to do. So I have no qualms on air DNA is approached there. But then it gets the attention of all these kind of armchair kind of investors, right? Where they go, yeah, I'm gonna go buy in this market, you know, air DNA said it was a good market. And it's like, well, maybe like that, that may be an indication of growing demand that may be an indication of, you know, renewed interest in that particular destination. Maybe there's some anchor site there that's creating, you know, more travel or more

tourism tourism there for that reason, or it could just be, it was a little undiscovered, then it becomes discovered during COVID, then 1000 people pile in there, which is kind of what happened in Gatlinburg and Pidgey Forge great market before COVID great market after COVID. But there was all this building and you know, kind of gold rush mentality that went on that made that market much harder to drive revenue from. Broken Bow is another example that I've referred to in the past and other people refer to that one online. Not that well known inside of that core market of those folks in kind of that North Texas area. Then again, it becomes well known, people start coming in from other areas, very beautiful, they build a bunch of properties, then the bottom kind of falls out and the demand's a lot softer.

Are people still doing well in Broken Bow and Gatenburg? Absolutely, of course they are. You know, but is the average property doing the bare minimum and trying to charge a premium price going to still do well? Absolutely not. And I think that's the difference probably between the vacation rental space and the hotel space with what you're talking about there is hotels just take a lot longer. Any sort of resort, any sort of large scale thing takes a lot longer between the investment, the build out, that's going to be a five year project. They're building a hotel resort here. I think they first approved in 2021 if memory serves. I think they're targeting an open date for like 2028 or 2027 maybe is something like

that. Because they got to build all this infrastructure around it. They had to get more approval from the city, all these kinds of things, right. And I'm sure they're putting 10s of millions of dollars into that property. They're not just going to do it very quickly. They're going to think about it over a very long time horizon. So yeah, it's very different. And I think that's, again, probably a blessing and a curse when I think about the hotel space versus the vacation rental space is that anyone can do it. The barriers to entry are still very low. You and I could get our heads together, go buy a vacation rental tomorrow in Burl Beach or in Minnesota. We can go put something together and launch it and say, hey, this is our product, go book it. And we'll get

some bookings right away, probably, right? Like the barriers are so low to entry. And again, I think that's kind of a blessing and a curse when I think about it. One thing that I don't know if we've hit on this exactly, but I'll just kind of refer it in because I just mentioned AirDNA and I refer to them a lot, but they've actually broken it out by these categories. And I've thought about this a little bit when we're doing client selection

and we're looking for different things. I'll sometimes joke when people ask us about what we're focused on, what type of properties we're going for. And one thing I'll say is like, we're looking for a beach, a mountain or a lake. Like those are very common things that we're marketing around. But I think AirDNA has done a better job of breaking down exactly what we should call that because that's not really a great description. They use the categories of coastal, mountains or lakes, they put that in one category, suburban, urban, midsize city, and then rural

markets, which is kind of interesting because I think of some markets as probably fitting into some of those categories nicely and with the way people describe them. And within each of those, what is that, six market types, I believe, in total, there's kind of, you know, to your point from a few minutes ago, there's so many different ways that people are experiencing travel at that destination, but you see trends emerge, right? Like I think urban vacation rentals are a very, very, very tough game to play because you are competing with hotels and people are going there for a functional reason. There's very low repeat booking rates. There's often not a huge desire to pay a lot more for a nicer space. You'll pay a little bit more for a nicer space, but you're not going to pay double or triple. In a beach market, people absolutely will do that.

They'll pay triple or quadruple the rate of a hotel room for a massive vacation or property because they want to host a group together. They're coming there. That's a one time, one vacation they're going to take all year. And there's different demand curves there. You know, a mountain or lake market, what do people value a view that that's tough to you know, what do you put a dollar on that, so you could have a three bedroom property at the bottom of the mountain that doesn't do very good. You have a three property bedroom at the top of the mountain with a

stunning view. And it does way better even if the interior of the property is exactly the same as the other one. So there's so many factors, you know, and so many ways that it gets so complicated so quickly, when it comes to these different inventory types that I understand why someone looking at this from afar tries to put things in simple little buckets and it just doesn't work that way. It does that there's just too much nuance in there and in that process, right?

Well, even when you were looking at like the list of why people choose one over the other, better amenities, ease of booking, more available service staff, onsite dining options. These are things that, you know, we're not gonna be able to control necessarily there in a lot of cases or not uniformly across the board. So I wanna go back and jump into, are you saying that nobody knows where Bieber Bend State Park is in Brokenbone?

Come on. But that's a great name. I'll say that for darn sure. And I'm all about names, like cool names. And we nailed that one. That was one're gonna go with people in that market. And every time writing content about Beaver Bend State Park was, that was, it was a fun time. It was just good times. Just great content right there. But I mean, looking at how we do categorize, you know, the market type, it's good. And those are

similar types. But even from, say, mountain markets, Gatlinburg to Vail Breckenridge, different markets, like you're going there for different reasons. I'm sorry, not a lot of people are going to Gatlinburg Pigeon Forge to ski. That is not that type of market there. So I think that that's something that even breaking them down even further like that, how do you really categorize all of the small individual meta categories that we have in this space

to really uniformly try to understand what is the difference? I mean, I love Beyond Pricing, and all these two price labs, all these tools, and all the pools of information that all of these systems have behind the scenes for a market. But when we're looking at a market, even going down to a bedroom count level, a one bedroom beachfront condo as opposed to a one bedroom interior condo, these are going to be completely different things. So I think even when we're measuring,

trying to measure against something that's not standard, it's going to be completely different things. So I think even when we're measuring and trying to measure against something that's not standard, it's going to be really difficult there. But it does make that travel planning process a little harder too, I think, then because you don't just have four accommodation options. That's there's something to be said for the ease of going into if as long as the hotel is working. You have four accommodation options. You have your king-size queen-size double double whatever double beds and then you maybe you have a suite the accommodation maybe you have eight different types eight different types I mean it is you

you work with some people with smaller vacation rental numbers they have a different combinations not a that's eight accommodation types spread across 200 250 300 400 500 rooms. I mean, it is we're over complicating. I wouldn't say we're not over complicating the system, but just the sheer nature of our businesses does over complicate the booking process more so than these traditional accommodation types do. Yeah, it's, you know, and that's, well, let me break a new category here. Cause we've kind of talked about vacationals or hotels, but even within vacation rentals,

and we have been Wolf on the podcast a few weeks back on the art of hospitality feed and what he offers and like his products that he's building now are completely unique. And I think you're working with someone who's a member of his new project that he's working down in Florida, where it's like, that's that, what do I put that in? That's

not a category that kind of exists before, you know, they kind of use terms like unique stays or experiential hospitality or whatever. Okay, cool. Like I'm not discreet with those labels. That's perfectly fine to use those labels. But it's like, I can't compare that to like a two bedroom condo in Miami or even a house in Miami. Those are completely different experiences. So that's where I think sometimes the fun part comes the marketing side is

like, figuring out what it is, who it's for, that sort of thing. I guess the piece that I where I think sometimes the fun part comes the marketing side is like figuring out what it is who it's for that sort of thing. I guess the piece that I battled was sometimes that was like people putting these things together, how much thought have they put into it? Did they really have a good handle on it? And I get the sense that this one that they're working on down in Florida is like they put a ton of thought effort energy into this. But I don't know everyone that's feeds in that category. I think they're kind of the top 1% you

know, of that mindset of how people put these projects together. I was working with someone for a little while, not too long ago, who had done themes properties in a market where that theme didn't seem to be working clicking. So he spent he took three properties, three cabins, bought them, kitted them out with a certain theme. And that theme wasn't clicking at all. And I mean, it was like he was probably 1 million plus dollars into this idea. And it didn't work. And

there was no marketing couldn't save it. We were getting eyeballs, we were getting clicks, no one was booking. So he rightly did the only logical thing you do should do in that scenario. And he stopped doing the marketing and he's gonna have to figure out how to pivot, you know, outside of that and try something different. But that's hard. Like sometimes you don't know where the right answer is, you know, I think you have to be bold and visionary to find what's working well. But sometimes being bold and visionary is also a way for you to end up offering the wrong product that people just don't want and they're not going to book off of it. So it makes it very complicated, needless to say.

Having the property that someone wants. I think that's the, I love some of the cool examples we get of vacation rentals in the space that really go after that niche, that go above and beyond the amenities and really try to take it to that next level of experiential travel. And then get it, I mean, we get it as far as we can. We can get 55, 60% of the way there,

because after that, you don't have someone on site. You don't have someone who's guiding them through the experience in stay. In most cases, we don't have concierge. So this is, this is something that part of that experiential travel in a hotel is the experience is created for you. And I think that, yes, the accommodation is going to create that experience, but we don't nurture people along the experience. And that's, we shouldn't. I mean, that's, that's not, that's, that's a different, you know, that is, that's hotels, that's resorts. That's, that's something that's a little more, uh, it is in bed breakfast, that type of thing. It's not, it's something that's a little more, it is a bed and breakfast, that type of thing. It's not, it's something that you can't define to say, yes, this is the experience

you're going to have across the board for everybody that comes in, because we can't control that. So yeah, the other side of that is the people you're traveling with. We kind of bounced around now here, but you know, are you traveling with your family? Are you traveling with a larger group? Are you traveling for business? This is something that I think during COVID, we figured out that people want, there were some business travel type activities happening

for people working remote and doing things like that. I still think that's a very untapped market for the vacation rental space because again, how do you customize that experience for someone who is going to travel for business? When you and I stayed down at Indarm, it was a really nice setup for a potential business traveler who's looking to stay in a vacation rental, but is that what they're looking for? Is that what they need? Is that, are we fulfilling the expectation of, okay, when you're traveling with for business, do you need to be close to something?

It's usually some proximity to an office, to a location, to some type of workspace. So how do we accommodate to travelers like that? And do we try to accommodate for travelers like that? I mean, that's something where have you dallyed into any business specific traveler campaigns or trying to go after some of those in specific markets, anything like that? You know, not really, if I'm being honest, because I think it's like what that happens organically versus what about is something that you can generate people generate their

interest in, right? So it's like, I think there was a word that people came up with a lot ago, where it's like, leisure travel, the idea was like, blending leisure and business travel together. Again, conceptually, it makes a lot of sense to me. But it's like, I don't know, like, if you if you had a conference in Las Vegas, why do people pick that as a conference venue? It's like, yeah, because there's fun. And there's sort of infrastructure there, you know, what I mean, for a conference. And that's probably why we're having the VMA conference this year there. And that location or any other of these kind of cities that have a blend of those two things together. We had Orlando a few years ago, same kind of thing, right? We're there for business, we're there to do the CRMA event. But then, hey, there's the parks,

there's Discovery, which I think Discovery Cove is where we have that, that cassiola party a few years ago. It's like, those are all things that get merged together. But I always think about this, right? It's like, can we influence their behavior with our advertising? Like, is our advertising or our media or messaging enough to do it? Or is it just inherently embedded in that destination? And we just more so need to capture it when they're already fishing in that pond. I guess I think about that a little bit. And some things like clients will explain to me as like, our ideal guest is doing this. They're planning, like to give you an example, this is one that comes up quite a bit. Many of our people who book our largest properties are booking a family

reunion. So if you go on Google and you try to build a page where it's like family reunion vacation rentals in Gulf shores, or insert any market here at Destin, Florida, whatever the case may be Galveston, you'll get some traffic from that. But it never matches the actual and the volume of people that are coming for that activity. Because a lot of people just don't go into Google and search that. So? So same thing with doing like a social ad on that concept. So our properties are perfect for X, Y, Z, right? And X could be a church group retreat, Y could be a family reunion, and Z could be whatever, you know,

a girlfriend's trip or a yoga retreat or something like that. So it's like, you could describe all the use cases of what your property does, and I don't think that's a bad thing, like from a marketing perspective, but it's not really how people discover it in search. It's like more so conceptually, they know what they want. And then they're

going to go out there looking for it. But they can connect some of the dots is sometimes how I think about that with clients. So it's not that I'm opposed to those ideas. But it's just they don't move the needle as much as people who are just searching for like, the Gulf shores vacation rental terms, and then they find that. And then once they find the properties, they may then want to dive in further on the website, which ones are the biggest, which ones have the

most space, which ones fit my needs? And that's more of a, I would say, an advocate for me on my side of things to make sure the property pages have as much information as possible. We have great photos, we have great videos, we have great property descriptions. We have maybe some sketch of the floor plan

and how it looks. We have information on size, location of the property, how many people can park there. We had a client recently where that came up. He's like, we went back on the website with him and helped him add in parking spaces for every single property. Because some will sleep, let's say 10 people, but they don't have like 10 parking spaces or even close to it. And he was having issues. So it's like, now he'll kind of direct people and say like, hey, if you are, if it's five separate groups that are coming

and staying this big vacation or property, this, this place only has five cars, well, we got to figure out how to, you know, get them in that space that's appropriate for that, you know, whereas maybe again, back on the hotel resort comparison, maybe you don't worry about that. Maybe there's plenty of parking most of those places, depending on the location and the type of travel. So, again, goes back to that idea that I had earlier, which is marketing and vacationals very hard because you don't always know all the use cases. And although we talked about knowing your audience, there's often I said this before in LinkedIn recently, there's not often just one audience, it's not like there's only one type of person coming. That is that does occur from time

to time, but it's not the most common way that people get there. So you have to have some creativity mixed in with some, hey, how can I set this up for a group of people that maybe would fit in a slightly different way? I guess I think of it like puzzle pieces, where it's like, there's not only one puzzle piece, I have to connect the different puzzle pieces together to get the full picture. And that may mean like you're alluding here to having different type of things that some travelers will care about, other travelers will not care about. And if you lean fully into one niche, it can be tricky if you get it wrong. If you get it right, I think it can work well. If you get it wrong, then you find yourself in a tough spot where you've

made it too available, too niche, too specialty. The example, of course, that we give is the Packers themed house that's based in Texas. Like there's just not a big enough audience for that to really have demand. The Packers themed house in Green Bay is probably going to do quite well. The other one probably won't do nearly as well as all, even though there's people interested in that. So that's kind of the way that I think about it a little bit as well. I think that's spot on. I think, I mean, you're talking about the people that are doing the travel. We haven't even talked about the different age groups that have different general preferences as well now. And that's something that I will say most of the, I don't know if this is the sources

that were being pulled from everything like that, it's 50-50. I think there's no, right now even for, you know, we've got millennial travelers, Gen Z travelers, stuff like that, the percentages I see, 47%, 52%, 56%, they have expressed their preference for vacation rentals due to unique experiences and affordability. 52% of millennials prefer traditional hotels or vacation rentals. So it is. I think that this is where, even when I look in Google Analytics, when I look in Google Ads, seeing the people who are actually seeing the ads and doing things like that, I don't

see, I mean, I do. I see certainly a skew older, but that's not because that's their preference. I think that's because those are the people doing the bookings more than anything else. So I think that's the other motivating factor is who are some of these decision makers, you know, think about the sales side, who are some of these decision makers who are actually helping make that, helping plan the travel. Yeah, Baby Boomer might be doing the actual booking, but a Gen Z traveler coming through, a millennial traveler coming through, if you're traveling with a larger group of different generations, and that's much more common now,

because I think we're at a point now where there are seven generations that are living together right now, however harmoniously you wanna think of that. So that is, that's something that you're not trying to appeal to just one or two group. I mean, you're trying to appeal to a very wide range of potential traveler, potential traveler preferences, needs, what has to be in place there. We also have international luxury travelers, which is a

whole nother subset that I think you have to be a little more niche in how you're marketing those people and not everybody is going to market those people. But do they prefer vacation rentals right now? The research would say no, but tell me that you have examples of people who do I mean, who are clearly luxury properties, they're getting booked. So there are people who are finding these properties and wanting to stay in these properties, you just have to match it up and try to make your marketing work to find the right people. So they're gonna fill these homes. Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, maybe a closing thought here would be, and you've got to match up all the inventory with all the guest demand, and you didn't choose the inventory exactly, right? Like you're kind of inheriting something that's sort of maybe half done, half built, and then you're built, you're trying to then suit it to people that you haven't met and you don't know. It's like, man, this, this space, right? There's, there's a reason why getting started is so easy, but making it big is very hard. You know, I think that's, if I could, if I could bring to a close on that thought, that's probably the thought that I would have, right? Which is that you see these companies that are at 25 units, 40 units, 50 units, and then you kind of see them hitting a ceiling. It's like, yeah, they haven't found that thing

that really makes a destination click that exactly is that property that people can get. And then building the trust of all the homeowners in that market that make them wanna choose you. And then competing with hotels in that space that they're not just gonna lay over and be like, oh yeah, sure, go ahead, vacation industry, take all of our guests, take all the people that are going to come. And instead of staying in our property, they're going to stay over there. Hotels are not going to do

that either. They're going to fight back with the best of their ability to the vacational industry, sometimes with legislation and the law and the mighty pen, if you will. And that's obviously something we've seen like in New York City, other markets around the U.S. that's occurred, but they're also going to fight back on service and price and amenities and location and all these things that are going to make some of them more desirable. But the guest gets the benefit of that in some respect, right? They get more options now than there was pre-COVID by a wide margin in most destinations. And probably you could find yourself a better value for money in some ways. I mean, inflation has been a little bit of a complicating factor there, depending on what you're looking for, if you're willing

to look around and do some searching and that process of finding the right place to stay. It's not simple on the surface, and we found so many companies that are still trying to find that right, you know, balance and right mix of getting all the tech and all the inventory lined up the right way. So it was very difficult. So there you go, Paul, we can put a ball in this one, this idea of kind of merging together, hotels versus vacation rentals, all these unique fragments or fractals within the vacational industry. Same thing on the hotel side, right? Why you're staying, the type of reason for your stay, at the location of the property itself, the reason why people are traveling, what their hopes are, what their dreams are,

and then you, the dear vacational manager listening, presumably have to make it all a reality. So all good, if you made it to the end, one thing that would give us great joy, and you don't have to have a debate or there's no discussion about it, it's really pretty simple. Go to your podcast app for

choice, iTunes, Spotify listeners, get the most downloads from you, click five stars, leave a little comment, and then it keeps Paul and I going and we get excited. And with them, we're going to bring you more episodes in the future. Thanks so much and have an awesome rest of your day.