Heads In Beds Show - Breaking Down The Way The "Guest Booking Journey" Actually Works In 2025... (Part 2)

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show (Part Two), Paul and Conrad dive into the early stages of the vacation rental guest journey — where interest is sparked and decisions begin to form. They explore how true inspiration often comes from unexpected, memorable experiences and how smart property managers can tap into that moment before a guest is even planning a trip. From the role of local tourism boards to leveraging blog content and “pattern interrupts,” they unpack why this top-of-funnel phase is often overlooked—and how to make your brand unforgettable.As guests shift into research mode, the pressure’s on. The hosts break down what travelers are really looking for when comparing destinations and rentals—and why your website needs to stand toe-to-toe with the likes of Airbnb. If your site leaks trust, design, or information, you’ll lose them fast. Tune in to learn how to optimize your marketing for these make-or-break early stages and build demand that puts your properties in high demand (waitlist, anyone?).⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's LinkedIn PostConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101Part One Of This Series🔗 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 Heads and Meds 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 Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. You know what I wish we could do Paul? I wish we could do some theme music, but I'm sure we could get copyright strikes because as we record this, you and I are watching the Masters. If you're listening to this, you know the outcome, but as we record this, we do not know the outcome. So all good stuff. What's happened in your world?

I'm going to do it. Do do do do do do do do. Okay. I'm good. Yeah, it's it's been a good morning of a little bit of golf watching and a little bit of conversing with with people in this lovely space of ours. But yeah, it's a I don't know, spring always feels invigorating. So I think I'm finally we're starting to warm up a little bit here weather wise. And that's always fun. And you know, that's that's I feel like it's the signal. It's the signal that we got to be we got to be moving, we got to be changing, we got to be really doing fun things. But how are you doing, sir? looks so perfect there. And even here, it's like we're just starting to get warmed up. Our climates are very similar, you know, where I'm based in Augusta. But yeah, I think they

have probably the best agronomy crew on planet Earth, you know, working in that place. And it's like, there's, there's the scene in Parks and Rec where they go to the neighboring town and they're like, oh, it's on a, it's on a warm spring. So we actually have a summer climate year round. There's like palm trees in the middle of Indiana. It's like this whole bit. That's how I feel about Augusta when I look at that stuff is like, they're probably just pumping like good air and like fertilizer into the stuff that normal people can access. And that's why it looks so perfect on TV all the time. So I gotta tell you, I mean, growing up on a farm, it was that was one of the directions like, when I

was thinking about school, it's like, are we gonna go political science? Are we gonna go agronomy? So, you know, I went political science and ended up in marketing. So whatever, we'll take that for what it is here. Your journey was different depending on the destination. So same kind of theme for today. We'll dive right in here on what the journey of the destination is, which is a guest staying in your vacation rental properties.

So fun one today, we're going a little out of order on our kind of mini series here. So hopefully the listener can kind of follow the thread. So to pick us up, if you want to go back and listen, two episodes ago in the feed, we talked about this idea that there's this stages of awareness when it comes to a guest booking, you know, vacation rental. And we talked more about kind of more the top of the funnel, you know, someone becoming aware of a destination, aware of a property, aware of a, you know,

company and some of those activities. We'll come back to this like booking idea concept, maybe in a future episode, because we kind of covered that before on the show, to be honest with you. But today we want to talk a little bit about kind of this onsite experience. So this is a bit of a update on something that I did a little while ago. Francois and I just did a webinar, wrapped a webinar yesterday actually on talking about the guest experience and Francois, excuse me, from Enzo Connect. So the goal today was to kind of give our thoughts on it, you know, you have some unique insight from it. I've been working on this presentation for a little while. So the goal today, yeah, is to go through those different concepts. What is it like to craft, you know, the perfect with the ideal guest experience that ultimately leads

to repeat bookings? So what's kind of your read on this? You know, you've seen a lot over the years with different clients that you've worked with. Yeah, I think that when I think as marketers, we kind of get to that point and we talked about it as we were just kind of planning for this episode, but we get them to the point of staying. Then we're kind of done on the digital marketing side. That's it's not that way at all. But our job, you know, we've kind of taken care of our job. And I do I think that the property managers who kind of pick it up where we were we leave off and really try to bridge that gap and are not leaving any gaps or anything

like that, are the ones that are obviously the most successful. I think it is. It's taking marketing into your property. It's making sure that people are going to remember you, that you are giving a memorable experience. I think there's certainly just some operational things that you can do, but this is the on-the-site marketing is a chance to kind of go a little off the wall, a little, you know, be a little, be a little fun with things, be a little cheeky, because

that is what's like, I mean, but you already convinced them to stay with you. Now it's a matter of hopefully getting them to either, you know, be a promoter of you down the road and be, you know, be a referral for someone else potentially as even as a traveler going on social media, going on any other more public facing platform and doing something like that. Or leaving you that positive review or coming back to book themselves. I think that that's something where the on-site marketing is more of a wow factor. We're interrupting. You got to wow them once we get it on site. And if you're not wowing them, now it's not just going to be about marketing.

It's going to be about all the things that happen to them when they're on property with you and things like that. But whatever you can control in that mix of how they're going to experience your brand, I think this is kind of hopefully where we're going to give you some opportunities and potential on what you can do there. Yeah, yeah.

I think that that's well said because ultimately, the way that I thought about this a little bit more, by the way, as we've put together these different presentations that I'm working on right now, it's like it's the multiplier. If you have a good guest experience, it's a multiplier in a positive direction. I'm going to lower my cost per acquisition. I'm going to make my marketing more effective.

I'm going to get more five-star reviews. I'm going to get more referrals, word of mouth, et cetera. And then it can be a multiplier, unfortunately, the wrong way. I went and stayed with this property manager. They did a bad job. And we don't need to re-litigate all of the Casa, Casago stuff. But again, objectively, go look at some of these really large property managers and go look at their reviews on sites like Airbnb, sites like Verbo, obviously Google, and so on and so forth. And you'll see some of these large property managers end up with a more negative brand perception. And I think it's a multiplier in the negative. You know, it's like, it hurts your ability to get more conversion.

It hurts your ability to get more bookings because people see the reviews and they go, ah, I'm a little unsure. And that hesitation when I've got my credit card out is like the worst thing that I, you know, we can do. The best thing we can have is like, they have their credit card out, they're ready to book a rental.

And then they see all these things that are validating their decision that are confirming their decision that are yes, this is the right people to book with. Yes, there's a five star review over here. Yes, these photos look great. Yes, this website makes me feel comfortable. All those things are kind of working in that right direction. So that yes, when they get there, when they have that actual experience in the property, they hopefully have walked in with like a more positive mindset versus like booking it and then going like, I hope that turns out okay, that's what we don't want. And unfortunately, that can happen, I think, on the review side, like you're mentioning, it's something that is truly stunning. And I talk about Microsoft query a lot. But to

have it on a direct booking website, and to see as people are going through listings, how consistently they actually go over or go down or go, they find that review section to really click through. I was tracking for one month just to kind of see how many bookings, you know, how many bookings happened and how many bookings actually hit the review portion. And I think we had an 88% conversion rate of those who hit, of the bookings. They also hit that review section too. So I think it is now that's that's one month. That's that's a particular thing. But it does lend the idea of you know, we see studies all the time that people do people look to social media for inspiration. People look to Reddit, people look to I mean,

the TripAdvisor is still a spot where people look maybe not as much for the vacation rental space, but people are looking for someone else's experience. Because in some cases, they're trying to figure out how to plan that trip and how to get the most out of that trip. And I think that it's not always about looking for a negative per se. It's about really making sure they get the most out of their trip. And if someone else has already traveled there and done what you maybe want to do, you're going to want to try to at least follow that blueprint. So I think that that's something that, when you can see it in real time happening

and be a part of that booking journey where, yeah, they're looking at the pictures. Yes, they're certainly reading the property description, but they're going down to that review section too. And as we think about how you're positioning that, making sure it's not, it's easy to get to, it's easily accessible and that people can read those reviews so that they can get that, that third party validation that you are in fact, the right manager for them.

Yeah, I couldn't remember. You know, one thing when we were putting together today's talk, we came up this idea of like, business tropes that really tire me out. And I think I beat up a few of them. The one was this idea of 80 20, which people love to say, everyone loves to say, you know, hey, there's a few things you do that lead to the most outcome. Right? So it's like, but I think with property management and with how you take care of a guest, I don't know if that's true. I don't know of many property managers. And maybe you have seen this in your career that are spending a lot of time doing something that doesn't end up being important to the guest experience. Like it's rare that I find that. So for example, like cleaning takes a lot of time,

inspections take a lot of time. Can we skip cleaning and inspections? I don't think so, at least not consistently. We certainly can't skip cleaning. We can make an argument maybe on the inspection side of it. Is that necessary? Maybe not if you have the right cleaning team. But it's rare that I see someone being like,

oh man, we're spending 20 hours a week getting ready for incoming guests and we could just go ahead and cut 80% of it out of there. I don't really think that that happens in a way that people expect. So usually, I think what tends to happen in my experience on the, you know, the guest side of things is they have to make it better and it has to come from other sources or other things that we're already doing. We have to like add onto that. There's not an 80, 20, there's not a list of things that we can cut on the guest experience side of anything we're enhancing, we're adding onto what is already

kind of a full play, which does make me think a little bit more about the way that teams are constructed. We didn't talk about this much in the webinar, and I don't think we talked about this much before, but that's one piece that Adam and I have talked about this recently, where this idea of five or maybe a little bit more than that, let's go 70 years ago when I was getting more into this space and I was going and meeting vacation managers in their office sometimes. I would walk into some of these vacation offices and I'd see a phone bank and there was like 10 or 15 reservationists sitting there calling. Of course they had online booking.

That was kind of like a thing at that point, but it wasn't as prominent. Like I would have clients who would tell me, hey, I'm 50-50 back when I started doing this for the first time. 50% of my direct bookings are on the website. 50% of my direct bookings are happening online. And they'd get phone call after phone call from like Verbo

and at the time HomeAway, VRBL at the time, HomeAway and so on and so forth, even FlipKey. And now it's changed so much as far as people are comfortable booking online. But in my head, I'm like, all right, so those 15 reservationists, you know, don't exist anymore, really in the company. Now it's maybe one or two. It's a much smaller set of reservation stack needed. But I always think about like, what are the things they could be doing to enhance the guest experience? I think a lot of it is this idea of like, the moment between booking and when they arrive is often like just an ignored zone. You know, it's just like, and you and I have to, you know, you kind of said it already today. Once the booking comes in, the marketing people kind of wash our hands of it and we're like, all right, you guys

deal with it. But we don't often think about, well, the more that could be done there, and hopefully some of those things can be automated. I do think an automated touch point is better than no touch point. I think a better thing is some level of automation, plus some level of personalization, where it's like, Hey, Paul, I see you and your two boys are coming with your wife up here to our fishing lodge up here in northern Minnesota. Can't wait to welcome you. That kind of stuff can be, you know, mixed, I think, of automation and personalization. But when you get that mixed down right and we're using the people on the team to enhance the guest experience, I think it does build on itself where it's like, oh, great, they haven't forgot about

me. You know, it's like one of those things who likes to give money to an entity or organization, you know, a vacation company, $3,000. I'm booking my summer vacation right now. And then I just don't hear anything until it's actually there. You know, I'm there and I'm checking in and they go, oh yeah, of course, Mr. O'Connell, I knew you were going to arrive today. You know, like a little bit of like pre-communication, I think is the way to go. And I think what I'm getting at is the perfect guest experience starts, you know, from the moment of booking really all the way up until they arrive. I think that's a key part of the process that I think a lot of our clients are now skipping and just not really doing much there, unfortunately. Well, I mean, I think we've said it before is that I mean, I would argue that one of the most powerful marketing tools for any vacation rental manager is your property management system. If it's working properly, if the automations

and all of your systems are in place, we'll say, because there's a lot of things in there, but if that is in place, you should. You should be continuing that whole guest journey, buyer's journey all the way through. Once they've reached the bottom of the funnel, then they're back up the top of the funnel by the PMS standard, and they are. I mean, it's the work. I think that's maybe where the 80-20 starts. People start to take the 20 sometimes when they're filling out information,

when they're using systems. I mean, it is. The more complete guest folio that you have is going to give you so much more information to market to people down the road. Again, take that example, going up to that fishing lodge. Okay, there's a golf course on site. Now we can indicate that they're a golfer as well.

Now we can indicate that they've done this, they've done that, they ate at the restaurant. So that when you're, I think it is, that's these PMS tools are so powerful in what they can include on a guest folio and give you that really high powered marketing tool. I mean, you're going to have more information in that spot than you're going to have for anybody that you're trying to cold email, that you're trying to reach through social media, through any of these other channels and anything like that. So I do, I just, I think that if you have your PMS set up properly and you have all the triggers and automations

to make sure that from booking time to after they've checked out, you've touched them, it doesn't have to be an insane amount of times, but five, seven, 10 times, depending on how, you know, how early they book or do things like that, you should be just the same way as you're kind of leading them down the funnel on the top side with digital marketing and any other direct marketing efforts you're doing. That process just continues. So I do, I think that that's, it's the toolbox where we think about it operationally. It runs our business, we get to the end of

the month, we have our owner statements, we have all these really important things. But let your marketing team in there too, because maybe they don't need to be running the show by any means, but making sure that that messaging is aligned, making sure that you are pulling the right guest information and that you can use that to market to people down the road. Yeah you're accumulating and aggregating all of these tags and all of these tips and all of these things, all these notes, and you're not using them, what do you do? Where is the strategy to get more repeat business, to get more bookings out of these people,

to get additional revenue opportunities out of these people, to get additional revenue opportunities out of these people. So that's a soapbox I've stood on once or twice before, but I do, I really, and maybe it is because I started with track and I saw how powerful those systems can be if you're using them appropriately, if you've got them configured in a way that does benefit the business long term. So if we can get somewhere useful with AI and hospitality, combining these ideas together, I hope it's not what it currently is, which is basically I can respond to messages on your behalf when you're sleeping.

And it's simple stuff. I think that is a decent idea, to be clear. I'm not saying like don't use those tools, those AI tools, but I don't know if it actually brings us to a better spot as much as it's just automating busy work, which I'm all for, believe me. Like I said, I'm all for that. But I think a better version of that, a much better version of that, and going back to your idea, what you're saying, is the PMS should know more about me. Then it should run some analysis or it should run some, you know, review based on like, like one thing I'm doing a lot of lately, just give you a very practical example, is I'm doing a lot more call transcripts. And I think call transcript is such a fascinating piece of data to review, because before it was without AI, it's,

okay, I have an eight-minute call transcript from someone, let's say he was booking, and then I kind of would have to go through it and listen back to it maybe. Maybe I could listen on 2x speed or something, and I could make an eight-minute call, a four-minute call. But what I couldn't do previously was I couldn't click a button and say, summarize everything that was discussed in this call between Paul and the fishing lodge that he's heading up to with his family and tell me three important things that he's doing while he's there.

Now with AI, you can do that. So what a fascinating thing it would be. And this is kind of how my email client works now. Superhuman is what I use for email. And it could take a 30 email thread and it can be like, Paul's trying to get analytics tracking working on this random landing page. And Matt said this, it takes the 30 emails and it brings it down to four bullet points. And I be like, Paul is trying to get analytics tracking working on this, on this, you know, random landing page, you know, and, you know, Matt said this, you know, it takes the 30 emails and it brings it down to four bullet points. And I'm like, wouldn't that be a much better form of marketing is like, you check in or you're, you know, in the property and I go, okay, cool. Let me pull up all the track from last year. Here's a summary of everything that happened. The call transcripts, what activities he did when he was here, because

he indicates me he made a tee time. Cool. I can see that, that's now in the PMS maybe, if we could figure out how to get all that tech working. And then I already know what he's into. Then I can send a marketing message that's almost like a friend asking you, hey Paul, are you and your family coming back in for the week before Thanksgiving again this year? Would love to help if so, all the best Conrad.

And it's me trying to book you. And then you don't respond, I go, hey Paul, just so you know, our golf course is opening next week, we're getting it ready for you. The Greens will be rolling smooth by the time you head out here. Like that's a very specific type messaging that for you is going to really click where it's like, oh man, this person knows me.

And I know the stuff that works well on the email side of things, because we, I'm sure you get the same ones, or maybe I get more of them because I'm the email in the feed. But this podcast, I can tell people are using AI tools to summarize the podcast. And then they're sending me emails based on what we talked about. And I'm like, I don't think you listen to it. You know, I'd be shocked if people were actually listening to it, these cold pitches, I guess. And there are a lot of guest pitches, you know, they're

like, they're trying to get someone to guest on the podcast, which tells me that it's automated because we don't have guests on the podcast. We've had one in four years now or three years now or whatever. So there's a bit of a miss there. But but it's I fall, I don't want to say fall for these emails, but I tend to read them because it's like when you and Paul discussed topic A, B, and C on your last podcast episode, and I'm like, Yep, that's what we discussed. I can't argue that. I tend to keep reading and like gets me going because I'm like, wait, what do you, it was a question from a listener. Like, what is this? And like I said, it's kind of fooling me and I know what's happening to me as I'm reading it. And yet

I still end up reading it versus like, if I get emails and I do get these from time to time, Hey, Conrad, um, person ABC would be a good guest for your podcast. And I just delete them immediately. I almost don't even guess the end of that line. Cause it's like, no, dude, you don't even know what this podcast is. Like you didn't listen to it because we don't have any guests basically. So yeah, that's kind of the, I would say the interesting thing on these AI tools is like that to me is such a great use case for like,

oh, you were listening. And it's like, I was listening in a way because my AI tool is running notes in the background. But then it just gives me, all right, that was a 10 minute call. Here's the four things that really matter. You took action on them, you appreciated it. And that's one thing I don't see happening today,

going back to your note about like PMSs. Like I know there's teams that are training their staff to say, hey, if someone mentions birthday, go put birthday in there and what birthday it is. And then they don't do that. You know, the reservations department doesn't do that. So if the AI can listen and go put into the contact field automatically,

Paul and his wife came up for their anniversary. Paul and his wife came up for their son's seventh birthday, whatever the case may be. Those are things that I think are super valuable, because then we can take all those insights and then build some marketing campaigns around those ideas. And then it is crafting that better guest experience because I said something once and it was remembered. I think that's what like when I think of elevated

hospitality, when I think of a good experience, it's mentioning to someone one time, I like the Timberwolves, I like the Celtics, that sort of thing. And then someone remembering it and being like, you know, mentioning that back to you later on, it's like, Oh, you remember, like, that's such a good feeling that I think is not often carried across in many interactions I see, I'm sure you feel the same way. It is. I think that's, everybody wants to feel listened to, everybody wants to feel appreciated. That's, it's one of those things where it seems so straightforward, it seems so logical. But because we live in a society

where that's not just always what happens, and we're a little confrontational. And that's what I mean, it is. Think about the worst experience that you've had in some, you know, in some scenario like this, it could be worse if there wasn't communication like it's usually being ignored. That's the worst thing is, I have an issue, I have a problem, I want this thing, and then I hear nothing. And I don't get anything back. Like even an auto response or some kind of like, I'm working on it is better than silence, right? Right. Right. No, it is. I think that's, that's the key there is, is that it's difficult to put yourself in the shoes of every guest,

because you are, you know, if you're, if you're a big company, you're, you've got hundreds, thousands of guests, maybe in a given week, month, something like that. But you do that again, that's that's why you put the system tools and the systems in place, and automation is in place to be able to make your job easier while still delivering on that high level of hospitality and guest satisfaction and all those things. It's tough next. I don't want to be in the position of the operators themselves because we can make the numbers work. We can tell the story behind the numbers. You can't tell the story to a guest that has come on

site and had an experience that was not what they were expecting. You can't tell them that they didn't have the right experience there. I think that that's something that what you can do is you use the tools available to you to try to derive a better experience. And hopefully they will. They'll come back. And again, that cycle just continues. And it's a beautiful, beautiful process where your sales and marketing funnel just falls into each other.

That's the dream here, right? Well, I think the dream for me, and I'm sure you've felt the same in your career, is that you're working with an operator that really puts the experience at the forefront so that everything we do on the marketing side is actually promoting something good, right? Like, I truly believe this is often the case. Like, I think it'd be very easy for you and I

to join the Apple marketing team and sell a lot of iPhones in 2026. Why? Because they make the best phone, in my opinion. You know, like, I think you may have a different opinion on that, but they make a very popular phone. We'll say it that way, right? Like, many people will buy Apple products kind of no matter what the marketing advertising looks like in 2026, right, reasonable assumption there. So I think if you can have that same methodology of like, how can I make it so

that how can I set my marketing team up for success, whether it's in house or whether it's an agency, how can I set them up for success? I think it applies in the homeowner side, I think it applies in the guest side. And if you're saying, I'm gonna do the bare minimum, I'm gonna automate everything, I'm gonna make, I'm gonna cut corners wherever possible, I'm getting 80, 20 this whole thing, and then be disappointed by very mediocre results,

that's where I find it to be a very, that's a bad combination for me, in terms of I wanna do as little as possible, I wanna automate everything, and I also expect to be the top in the area. But those things don't at all jive as possible, I want to automate everything. And I also expect to be the top in the area. But those things don't at all jive to me, but that's very common.

I mean, and we've sort of joked in previous episodes and I've joked a lot over the years about these TikTok gurus. I feel a good chunk of them have kind of fallen away and just kind of died on the vine like a dead grape. And they're kind of gone in that respect. But there was a while there where people were told, come do this, it's really easy.

You can put up a property on Airbnb, you can Airbnb it, and you can make, you know, all this money per month. And our competition for our clients, our typical clients, property manager, was being flooded by these so-called hobbyist hosts, right? I think those people are either A, getting washed out, or B, they're just like struggling right now,

because they're realizing like, I'm not dedicating my life to this, which is almost what it takes, I think, to be really good operationally, and be really good at the guest experience side of things, is thinking about each interaction. And yes, you can automate portions of it, of course, don't be copying and pasting door codes and sending them to people. That's not a hospitality. It's

just annoying to not have the door code, right? But beyond the things that can be automated, I guess that's one thing I've always wondered about. And I've never had a good answer on this, or I've never got to a satisfying answer on this, which is what is the property manager doing every day? And I don't mean this in a negative way, because I know there's days where they're fighting fires and there's property issues and there's things going on. But like on a good day, like how are they, yeah, how are they enhancing? Or they kind of at the status quo and they're just like, yeah, it's just kind of how we do it, man. You know, like that's, that's how it goes. And they're just not really doing much to think about

the positive experiences there, which again, is something we've covered at length on the Art of Hospitality podcast, which is like, just being proactive, just listening, you know, and going in and doing things for people that they didn't necessarily expect creates this amazing flywheel, this amazing benefit to your last point of I'm going to recommend you to a friend or family member. I'm going to recommend you. I'm going to leave a review, which is seen by other people. That was a slide or something that we talked about in the webinar with Francois. I was kind of like, well, there is, even if that person never books again, it doesn't mean that they're not going to be an advocate for your business because there's a lot of things that they may do that other people will see. They could tell a friend,

they could leave a review, which can be seen by other people. They could put a post on social media and then it could be, this is one thing we talked about a little bit yesterday too, part of their group rebooks. So you went with your wife and you guys went up to this fishing lodge in Northern Minnesota. Great. Let's say you would go on with a family friend of you guys or a couple of friends, something like that. Well, maybe you were the reservation person, but it doesn't mean that your friend Mark or your friend, Alyssa or whatever the case may be,

wouldn't then go back and rebook again. That's another thing that some of our best clients will see bookings and they go, oh yeah, this group comes every year. Maybe the group configuration's a little different from year to year. Oh, they just had a baby. Oh, they add another commitment, et cetera.

But they had these people to come back every year. And I think that's what, that like, my marketing brain works in a way where it's like, God, I love when my my advertising cost goes down over time, or when my effectiveness goes up over time. And we're not constantly scratching and clawing and fighting to like get those new bookings all the time, because a new bookings always gonna be the most expensive, whether you're paying for it through advertising and marketing

efforts, or whether it's OTA commission, like a new booking is the most costly. A repeat booking is in theory significantly more profitable. And the only way you get through the repeat booking, like we're saying here, like we're beating up is this idea of providing a much far superior guest experience to the point where they don't consider other alternatives. That for me is when you know you're on the right track is like, if we're going to this destination, we

are staying here or we are not going like that's what you want someone to say, I'm not going to risk it. I'm not going to, you know, have this, I'm not going gonna open the door, crack the door. I'm not even gonna go on airbnb.com and look around in Minnesota. Cause I know where I'm going is here. If we end up doing it or we're gonna do something else. Obviously our hope is that we track people

to our destination. But if you have that sort of blinders on when a guest is ready to book your property, you've won. Like from that point, it's just execution. Like just have your marketing team execute. And then the rest is gonna follow very naturally, in my experience. No, I agree.

That truly is. You've won, if you have at that point, you've delivered on the expectation. You've met, exceeded, you've delivered what you needed to deliver there. We were talking about the marketing funnel, but this is the cycle. This is the marketing life cycle,

or something like that. And you're trying to visualize there. But truly, I this is the cycle. This is the marketing life cycle or something like that and you're trying to visualize there in a certain way. But truly, I think that it is. It's, if you're only focusing on getting people to the bottom, then you're not, it is, you're going to, okay, then you're going to get it one time. If you are thinking about it as a cycle where it's a customer life cycle. They will stay with you multiple times. They will advocate for you. They will put the referrals out there. They will send a review. They will do all these things. That's when you know that you have a sustainable business and you have a scalable business at that point because that's the table stakes for what you do moving forward. Now this is, I have so much repeat business,

now how do I grow the business? How do I get more properties? How do I do this? I think that's when you have, you've arrived, you are a sustainable vacation rental business of 10, 15, 20, whatever units that is, it's not as I don't think it's about as much about the units, it is about delivering on that expectation. So it's that's we talk about the numbers a lot, but it's about the quality.

It's not the quantitative, it's the quality. Well, it's kind of like this idea of like, what is the, you know, it's, it's, it's, oh, it comes back to this idea. I know in your previous role that you were in, it comes back to this idea. I know in your previous role that you were in, it was all about owner acquisition. I want more owners. Awesome. You know, every manager kind of wants that they want the right owners coming in. But the owners, again, this idea that you can like trick an owner into signing up with you is one that we've we've sufficiently, I hope, I think, put a nail in that coffin, as far as like, you're

not going to do that, right? The owner is a savvy, successful, you know, almost all the time, very smart individual, and they're not going to trust their 500 to $5, successful, you know, almost all the time, very smart individual, and they're not going to trust their 500 to $5 million asset, you know, somewhere in that range with someone that doesn't prove that they are going to deliver a superior, yes, homeowner experience and reporting and good financials and all that kind of stuff too, and deliver a good guest experience, right? Because the point of them giving it to you, the property manager, is they're giving up 23% of their revenue somewhere in that range. So they're giving up potentially 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, $70,000 of potential

income. And the, and the hope that they have from that is that you're going to save me a lot of time. You're going to save me a lot of effort, energy, and I'm going to, you're going to do more than I would do without you. So like, if those things all aren't true, it's kind of like this idea we break up over and over again, this idea of a chain and all the links are kind of tied together. And if one of those chain links is weak, Hey, I looked at your website, you guys do it seem to do a pretty good job, but like, you know, I don't see any marketing going on. And like we have, we have customers, we have clients, I'll admit this,

who have us run social media on their pages, not because they get many bookings from social media, but because they just don't want an owner to see that they're not doing social media. So it's like kind of appeasing the owner more than it is actually driving more demand. And I, you know, obviously in my hope, I would kind of give them advice. And we give them feedback on like, here's how to get us better content for social media. Here's how to make this stuff work better.

Like we give them that advice and feedback. They don't always take it, but we do go down that path. And it's like, if they're not delivering on the guest experience, all the marketing on the front end isn't really gonna deliver it for them. And the owner can see throughout the owner is not silly. The owner is not stupid. They understand exactly what good

or at least decent marketing looks like. They don't need to know all the details. They don't need to know how to dot all the i's and cross all the t's and analytics and search console and ROAS and all the things that we get our heads very deep into. But they can look at it and they can articulate very quickly if this is the right experience for them. I think about it, it's like I don't know much about cars. I enjoy cars. I enjoy driving certain nice cars and it's something I enjoy. I couldn't tell you how to fix a car. But when I get a new one for the first time, I it on and drive it. I can tell you if they thought about certain things they thought about the suspension they thought about the motor you

know it's like all these things you can kind of just tell right away if you're in the car is exactly what it looks like. I think owners are the same way they can look at a website they can look at a brand and say this aligns with what I'm hoping to achieve achieve my property and they can you know sift the sift the crap through the good stuff very quickly as can a guest you know to the whole point of this conversation. A guest can look at it quickly and go, this is a company that I wanna stay with, this is a company that I wanna book with.

And then again, we don't become a just, well, it's a little cheaper over here than it is on Airbnb. That messaging, that idea that, oh, book direct and save a little bit of money. Again, I don't dislike that messaging, but it's obviously not that effective because Airbnb keeps growing year after year after year, and they're charging these heavy service fees. So the guests may not like the service fee, but they're not that turned

off by it, right? It's not enough of an inhibitor for them to be like, oh, no, I'm never going to use Airbnb again. So if we keep humming down the idea of fees are the devil or fees are the problem, and the reason why we're not getting the penetration we want in direct bookings, I think you're wrong. Because I think if the fees were bothering a guest that much and it was inhibiting their ability to have good guest experience, then they wouldn't be making any reservations and we wouldn't be making the progress that they are. So you hit it. That's the thing. I think that's the hardest problem is understanding what

is the actual reason. We can speculate, we can try to reverse engineer it, but at a certain point you have to understand what is the reason that people are or are not and how do we resolve that? And I think that- It's not price, it's not just price at least. The price is a component. If it was a pie chart, the price component might be a big one,

a 10 or 20% chunk of the pie, right? But it's not everything. There's so many other things that are tied into it. And if you deliver on that guest experience, as many of our clients do, all the marketing stuff works better. So that brings us to a close to today. Paul last chance because people are going to listen this after the master's got started. You want to change your pick? Or

you're going to run with your pick? I'm still I'm still perfectly happy with what he mean. Yeah, I'm good. Okay, I'll keep mine the same. You know, it looks it looks neutral right now. It doesn't look good or bad. So my pick was was Ludwig. So we'll see if you're listening to this. The winner has slipped, you know, slipped on the green jacket already and you're gonna know the outcome. It doesn't look good or bad. So my pick was was Ludwig. So we'll see if you're listening to this. The winner has slipped, you know, slipped on the green jacket already. And you're gonna know the outcome. We don't because

we're recording this on Thursday. So it'll be fun to see where it all shakes out. But appreciate your time. As always, Paul, we're gonna have a good one. If you made it all the way to the end. One thing that's free doesn't cost you anything is not a private membership or anything like that to Augusta National is leaving us a review very low bar, you know bar for success there. Just go to your podcast app of choice iTunes listeners, we get the most downloads there. We appreciate

you all leaving us to review the most Spotify, your number two. So if you're a Spotify listener, make it all the way to the end here, click five stars, leave us a review. We appreciate it. And we'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks so much.