Heads In Beds Show - Can You Really Compete With Airbnb? Nope...

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, we chat on Conrad's LinkedIn post "can you really compete with Airbnb" to talk strategy, marketing, goals, profits and a LOT more...NOTE: this was recorded BEFORE the Airbnb 15.5% price increase move -> non-PMS connected price increase for hosts. So we didn't mention that... ⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101Conrad's LinkedIn Post🔗 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 of Med Show presented by Build Up Bookings. We teach you how to get more vacation rental 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. And I'm your co-host, Paul. Paul, the little red light is blinking. We're live. We're recording. What's going on? What's happening? yeah it's it's as as i've been saying for the last month as slowly at surely all my colleagues and partners and friends in the space just get to say oh bye kids bye kids time to go to school

as you learned as my son my youngest son just told you i have 12 days left do you have a little fridge countdown where like they erase it and they oh we're almost at hours i'm thinking of a thousand minutes or something like this is we're getting there um the first day i drive the kids off. I'm going to miss them immensely. And that's just the fun part about parenting that you just, you know, they give them back to you. You know, that's what I told my wife. They're going to give them back to me. They're taking them for ever. That's, uh, I can you, sometimes I wish, but I digress. I'm excited. How are you doing, sir? How are things going in your neck of the woods? You have your kids gone. So yeah, exactly. Exactly. They'll actually come home during

this recording. Well, the tail end of this recording will come home. So if you had the background noise again, dear listener. Gosh, I try to avoid it. Sometimes I listen back to proof episodes and I go, sorry people. You know, a little scream or a little, you know, background noise. We try our best to suppress it, but it is what it is. They're all back there sometimes. No, all good for my side. You know, I think one of these years that we'll look back on and be like, that wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. You know, it kind of like landed somewhere in the middle, I think, for a lot of people as far as summer demand. And we're just like, we're in a shifting time right now. I think if you just go log in and look every day, you just can't expect to see the same thing you've

seen like expect the unexpected you know what I mean as far as like demand goes and stuff like that and that's kind of been the story for most of this year but it's so funny because I think the great operators are fine like maybe they were down a little bit maybe they had some little battles or struggles during certain seasons or certain properties maybe didn't perform but it's all the people that I think kind of put in that half-hearted effort like we were talking about before we record people that put in the bare minimum that I think are seeing the crunch really affect them and it is true unfortunately in this space that the the greatest reward is the greatest yield on you know, getting more guest demand, getting more homeowner demand tends to go to the bigger

companies, the bigger regional companies in the space. I don't mean the large national brands necessarily, although they sometimes do benefit from some of their branding initiatives they absolutely have in the past. Yeah, it's the big companies that continue to do well, I think, during these downturns. And it's all these ones kind of bumping along the bottom of a performance chart that I think are really struggling right now. So, you know, it's one of those things, right? The only way out is through if you're small, like you've got to figure out a way to kind of put yourself in a better position to fight back against local competition and even in a way against your partners, which are like the OTAs, which are the topic of today's discussion.

But maybe we can be, maybe we can dive in and transition into that if you're, if you're cool with it. Yeah. I think that's, that's what we're, we are trying to figure out. We've had kind of similar topics here where we talk about what, we said what WACSA does well. We know, we're going to talk about what Airbnb does well. Talk about what Verbo does well.

Talk about, you know, how you can, I think some of it is leveraging what they do well. And some of it is figuring out how. to figure how much necessity you have in that on that third party side of things. Obviously, we talk about direct bookings a lot, but how do you have the conversation about direct bookings and breaking down versus the OTAs and reliance and need there? What does that look like when you're either at a first conversation or as the partnership kind of evolves there as well? Right.

It could be the first conversation or the 50th where clients might check in on their status, you know, on the platforms and understand where they're setting. So the clickbait title, it's not really clickbait is, can you really compete with Airbnb? No, you cannot. But here's the backside of that. That's not the point. That's not what you're trying to achieve. So I think some people, and I've heard this over and over again, it's been a repeated theme on the podcast in the previous episodes.

I've said this in passing, but we've never done like a deep dive on us. That's what today is about. So, you know, someone, I get this one all the time, specifically when it comes to Google ads. That's the most common one where I feel like, well, you know, Conrad, okay, you're saying maybe I should spend one, two, three thousand dollars a month, you know, pick a number like that. let's figure out which campaigns are going to perform the best, which ones are going to work the best for my business. But does not even matter? I mean, come on, man, Airbnb, they've got $5 billion of advertising

they're spending every year. Not that much. I'm exaggerating a little bit. But they'll say stuff like that, right? Airbnb is billions of dollars, you know, that sort of thing. And I go, yeah, that's true. But first of all, there's four ads laws on the top of Google. And over the past 10 years, what's been very funny, by the way,

is the number of competing sites that you have in ads has actually gone down drastically if you think of, like, well-funded competitors. Like it used to be not until long ago, we had Home Away, the actual brand home away, we had VRBO, we had Vacation Rentals.com, that was just one company. They were all bidding on those clicks and search traffic. We had TripAdvisor and Flipke going after that same traffic. We had, you know, obviously Airbnb kind of folding into the mix there. We had other sites.

We interviewed the former CEO of Tripping.com on Art of Hospitality like two days ago. That's coming out on that feed. So that was another site that was competing in that space. And what's happened actually interestingly over time is there's been a condensing of actual brands and there's actually fewer people on the ad side competing. So first of all, yeah, there's four ad slots. Airbnb might be one of them. They may not be. They don't have an unlimited budget despite the fact that people think that. I posted a LinkedIn post a little while ago where I said in a smaller market, you need like 50 bucks to have like basically full impression share in Google on this ad spend. So yes, they have a billion dollars, sure, but they're splitting it over six million destination. So it's not like every single budget, every single market, they have an unlimited budget that they're working with them. And again, to go back to my kind of core thesis here, can you really compete with Airbnb? No. And that's not the point. Airbnb is trying to fill in your market potentially. 2,000, 3,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 listings. Let's say you're in Orlando, Florida.

You're probably trying to fill 50. So, like, even if you are spending 10x less or 20x less, that might actually be perfectly proportional to get the same results as Airbnb, right? Because you're sending, you're trying to fill 10x less nights. You might need 10x smaller budget, if not more. And you're going to get a better yield on that potentially if you target it right and get the right clicks in there. So, yeah, to kind of get us started here, I would say, like, don't compare yourself

to an OTA, that's silly. Like you are a giraffe and there are a, you know, whatever, an elephant. these are two completely different animals, two completely different businesses. The goal of your advertising and your marketing is to work well for your business, to be profitable for your business, not to worry about what another company is doing, whether it be a local competitor or whether it be a large OTA. So that's my take on it, but what's your take on that line of thinking? I think everybody's always looking for the competition.

I think that that's something where those competitive metrics are things that people desire they want to see. I mean, I can't tell you how many times we got into auction and science reports. And someone said, my competitor is getting this and this and this. this. And when I do a search, this is all I see. And I'm just like, okay, well, yeah, we can, we can play that game. But again, I think that if you're always concerned about what Airbnb is doing, I think if you're always concerned about what Verbo is doing, what your local competitors are doing, you can't focus. You can't focus on those wins that you are getting.

And I think that that's something that with an Airbnb that really has become synonymous with vacation rentals, that's a whole other discussion. But when you see it everywhere, And you see that full proliferation and you see all of these things that around, it is hard to not, you know, to kind of step back and say, oh, right, they are trying to fill in. Think about Myrtle Beach, not even 2,000, 20,000 condo rentals in that area compared to your 50 or 100 there. It's really difficult. I think part of it is, it's understanding what those leading indicators of success look like for your business. And again, obviously it's going to be different than. than what Airbnb has, but those are the things that you need to focus on.

Like, your wins are going to be different than X, Y, Z wins. That's the reality. And if you do get sucked into, I say vanity metrics on the show a lot, but vanity metrics, that's what happens. It's not every number that you see on a report is important. That's the reality. They all tell part of the story, but that's what it's about. You have to interpret that data.

have to understand what it really means. I mean, I think, I mean, even if we step back further and say, what's the difference between an OTA and a meta-search resource in our space? I think that that's another thing is we use everything so interchangeably. But then when we try to compete one-to-one against big player X, big brand Y, or local competitor Z, you begin to fall. I don't know, it's that fall-flat feeling of I'm either always chasing Airbnb, I'm always chasing a search result. I'm always chasing this. I'm chasing that next reservation.

I'm chasing all these things. You're never going to find a place of contentment and success when you're constantly thinking about, well, how do I get this? How do I get that? How? How? How do they do it? Well, they're huge. Verbo is huge. Airbnb is huge. And this is not a new thing that Airbnb took over. We've got the trend lines. 2013, 2014. Airbnb was new. look at search trends trended lower than vacation rentals trended lower than VRBO for so 2015 2016 almost nine years now think about how much time it took for us to get to this point that now when you do a search for city Airbnb that's kind of what that's kind of the mindset people are in that's it's it's tough like like I think that that's kind of the weight that we have to think about

as well is that this isn't a fly-by-night type of thing that Airbnb we just took over. They just, you know, started making some of these big changes. No, this is this has been in the works for a long time. This is Brian Chesky being probably playing not even 40 chess. We're talking about like six, seven D chess and going to that level there. So I do. I think that this is, it's very hard to benchmark against some of those things because everybody's in a different position. So how? Again, the back to how do we figure out whether we're doing it right, whether we're doing it effectively and can i do it as well as them no but i don't need to how do i do it well okay so a few food follow-up notes so the analogy that i've been doing i think we did this on a

recent one so i'm repeating myself slightly i apologize but the idea that what is the most popular local restaurant in town so wherever you live wherever you're listening in from there's some restaurant in town that's the most popular on a friday night on a saturday night it's there's line out the door people wait around for it and obviously no chains right like that that's the premise of the analogy I'm about to make, right? So if that restaurant owner said, man, how in the world am I ever going to compete with McDonald's? How am I ever going to ever compete with Domino's pizza or whatever the case may be? They would have never built a restaurant because they would have said, oh, McDonald's has this brand awareness. They have this infrastructure, etc. But again, they're not doing what McDonald's is doing. So who cares? Who cares that McDonald's can make a burger for $3. I mean, it used to be a dollar, but $3 now and deliver that. If you're delivering a $24, you know, farm to table, grass fed beef, hand-cut burger, there's a absolutely market for that. And I'm not just saying that you have to be a luxury property manager to get more direct bookings, although I will say the data tells me very clearly that it does help, the higher your booking values, the easier it is to do more direct marketing and

booking. So maybe that's a thing for you to file away in your head as far as having a commodity offering versus a specialty offering, obviously. But even if you are offering a little bit more of commodity property, but you do a great job at it, again, it's no different than the local restaurant that thrives and does well, even though McDonald's is a quarter mile down the road or half mile down the road. The truth is probably that there's, you know, enough room for both to do well, depending on the market, and depending on how many people are coming in and looking for what you have to offer. So that's kind of one thought I have. The other thought I have, you mentioned, you know, Chesky and Airbnb in the brand performance. So obviously, Airbnb

is very brand-centric, and that's been their whole growth pattern this whole time, you know, design, brand-centric, et cetera. But I feel like the cracks forming in the foundation a little bit, as far as like the most recent quarterly call talking about, we've got to get in the hotel space. And it's like, what does the hotel space have to do with Airbnb's core, you know, mission and ethos, if you will, around brand design and meeting a local host and all that kind of stuff, if you can book like a freaking Hyatt on there. Like I don't, I just don't see how that at all ties in there. Now, can they drive revenue from that? Absolutely. I think they can absolutely drive revenue from that. No doubt about it. If you had a button that was like, click here to book a

vacation rental, click here to book a hotel, just by offering people more options, they absolutely will drive significantly more like gross booking revenue off the Airbnb website from that, right? That's, that's undoubtedly true. But it feels that to me feels like a very good example of like a public market compromise. That's like, all right, where are we going that we can get more growth next? And by the way, should I recall, there was this very, you know, public, very talked about launch of Airbnb, you know, the experiences and the services platform. I'm going to do it right now because I don't think I've done this yet. I'm going to pop in Myrtle Beach. This is a live thing.

I did not do this before the call. I'm going to put experiences into Myrtle Beach. We are a destination here in South Carolina, if you've not been or have not heard of Myrtle Beach before. That gets roughly 10 million visitors every single year. This Airbnb experiences. Take a guess. You didn't look it up. How many Airbnb experiences are currently active in Myrtle Beach?

I put in No dates. I just put in Myrtle Beach and I click search. How many do you think are in there? Let's say, for $10 million, it should be high, but I'm going to say $200. Five. There's five experiences in Myrtle Beach on this tab, right? So let's flip it over. Let's go to services.

Let's do the same thing. Myrtle Beach undated. Let's see how many we have here. So it actually tells me, because there's several that are marked just coming soon, nothing. So there's nothing under nails, catering, spot treatments, makeup, massage. Those are all zero, even though there's absolutely many massage, you know, sort of establishments here. There's one under hair, one under training, one under prepare meals, two under chef, eight, under photography.

So that's eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. Thirteen services. And there's, what I say a second ago, five experiences in Myrtle Beach. Again, a destination that gets 10 million people coming a year. This is our peak season or this is, we're kind of coming out of our peak season here as we record towards the tail end of August. That makes those, like, what is the launch here? What are we excited about?

I mean, Vitor would be crushing Airbnb in this metric if you go look here. And I don't know, go pop in Orlando, go pop in Destin, go pop in San Diego, pop in a few different markets and see. but this feels like a nothing burger to me. Now, could they figure it out and get better absolutely over time? I'm not going to count Airbnb out. I'm not stupid or I'm not arrogant to say that they're not going to figure it out. But there was a lot of hype for really not a lot of actual seemingly interest

on the host side of things like providing these services or on the guest demand side of things where you go here and you see five experiences that honestly you can book anywhere. You could book all these like kayak tours and, you know, ocean yoga and all this kind of stuff. These were businesses that have existed for decades here in the Myrtle Beach area that I'm sure we'll continue to do well. So I don't see much there. I see the whole Airbnb move as we're going in hotels. We're offering these other things as let's get more revenue. Let's own more of the wallet, quote unquote, of the guest day, you know, what a lot of people will talk about or say.

But I don't see this happening right now. And I see coming to a lot of resources who seemingly doesn't have much of a direction. So am I being too harsh or am I misunderstanding what the long play is here? And I'm not seeing the forest industries. No, I see. I mean, I did the same look, the same search for my non-vacational rental destination, which is miniat. I'm a guy in Minneapolis here. We have nine experiences.

It's funny because three or four of them are walking tours run by a guy who went to the same college as I did a couple years before. So I recognize the guy who's doing it, actually. That's funny. But yeah, this is. How many people visit your city on an annual basis if we get figured that out really quickly? Like, it's going to be millions, right? I mean, I would guess we're not 10 million by any means. I would guess we're a couple million if we looked at that.

I've got to go back and take a look at the notes there. It's a more fun episode. We're having fun of that. I think this is also the reason why Airbnb is looking into the hotel side, is that you do have markets, not many, but you have markets where there isn't inventory. And as we've talked about many times, when you have a directory site like this, you've got to have that inventory for the people who are hitting these pages. And I'm sure, while it's rare, that you do have some empty pencil drawers that are being presented to people in these different markets. And probably more often in the metro markets than in the traditional vacation rental markets there. So the concept of bringing in more inventory so that you can fill some of those gaps, do some of those things, I think that makes sense.

But again, are you compromising on where does that compromise happen? Where does this happen? Where does that happen? Could Airbnb be driving more revenue from New York City, L.A., you know, Chicago, all these, all these big, probably. And I think that that's probably where they're thinking as they're trying to segment more. Like, this is, just think about hotel tonight. I mean, there's been opportunities available to be using some of this inventory that hasn't happened.

So, you know, is it an AI trip planner that's necessitating this down the road? Like, what does that look like? Because I think any of the decisions that are being made right now regarding inventory, regarding trip, the trip planning process, I think a lot of that is driven by AI and what that looks like moving forward and the LLMs and how to connect the dots behind the scenes. I think that that's, unfortunately, we are still woefully behind on how why like AI agents and LLMs and like the travel space is still relatively untouched because there is so much money flowing through it. So how do you ensure the money keeps flowing while the bookings are

flowing while all these, I wouldn't want to be in the decision-making chair at some of those companies right now that are trying to decide, okay, so how do we either get more inventory, how we've had that discussion a few times, but how do we make more happen so that we can make this a never-ending channel of revenue? Yeah. Well, we have a comparison point, by the way, Right, right. We have, so we could look at, and I saw someone tweeted this out the other day, I was trying to find a link to it and I couldn't. I should have bookmarked it or saved it or something. But it was Airbnb stock price overlaid booking.com stock price over the past few years. And basically, long story short, Airbnb is underperformed. Like if you go look at their five year, you know, stock performance, they went public. Let me sure I get this, make sure I get this correct. December of 2020 is when they went public. Interesting timing on that. They've actually lost 10%, 9.9% to be clear as time of this recording of their stock value since then. So it's a company that's kind of to perform. Now, they bottomed out in December of 2022, $85 a share. They currently sit at $125 a share. So if you bought that, you're feeling good. But hey, 9% down is nothing compared to Picasso, right? So it's all relative, I suppose. But anyways, if you compare that to booking.com and you see the

difference between those two stock prices as far as at least what the public market thinks about these companies, the investor loves them some booking.com. They don't seem to love Airbnb, you know, side of things as far as the performance of that, five-year performance, or maybe I should say, since the tail end of 20 for booking.com, they're up 218%. You know, so, you know, you can see these two companies, the divergence on that. If you can just picture that in your head or just go to do a Google search, booking stock price and then compared to Airbnb stock price, you see two very different stories. So again, you know, even though that Airbnb is the dominant, you know, market share leader of OTAs

in our little bubble that we're in the vacation of the world, there's a much broader world out there of travel and the public markets don't seem to love, be loving what Airbnb does. And again, as that LinkedIn posts, I put it a little while ago that does well, Airbnb will continue to make decisions that are in the best interest of Airbnb. That's what they need to do. They're a public company. And you could argue they're not a failing public company. I don't mean that's click baby. That's nonsense.

But they're not a thriving, massively growing public company either, to be honest with you, if you go look at the stock price, like I don't think chess can look at that and say, we're crushing it right now. Like if you're down 10% from IPO and you supposedly IPO at a fair price, that doesn't seem to line up with that thesis or theory. These new launches, experiences doesn't look like it's heading on some hockey season. growth curve right now. Same thing with the other piece, you know, the experiences and then the other service offerings that they have there. Those don't seem to be on, oh, we've unlocked something unbelievable here that people want to, you know, use Airbnb to book their whole trip. All the marketing and all the presentations was really cool and slick and savvy, but it doesn't seem to be happening right now, at least in like a quote-unquote traditional vacational market.

Now, maybe if you pop in Rome or Paris or New York City or like you said, Los Angeles, Miami, maybe you see a different set of stuff there. That may be the case. But, you know, it's interesting. it's like the less the more work that has to be done to actually provide that experience the more value you can unlock but if you're Airbnb and you're just like hey just throw your you know tour walking tour of Minneapolis on Airbnb that's like very low effort like and it's a very small ticket value too by the way that's always one thing I never really understood on the Airbnb side is like what can they charge on that like I would think Airbnb would want to do the opposite not go down market and try to sell more people in those cheaper things but how could we do like a helicopter tour tour for a thousand dollars or how could we do something that's more of a higher end experience that people pay a lot of money for as opposed to going down market and sell in $25, you know, photo sessions or something. That doesn't make as much sense to me. I mean, I think part of it is I have to hope that some of that feedback came from some of the hosts who did that already, who went above and beyond and wanted to monetize it more. Like they felt like they maybe were getting a little short change, even though that's delivering

on unreasonable hospitality and everything else there. But I do wonder like where that feedback came from. why they decided to go there as opposed to trying to find some other ancillary. I mean, even putting out dining options, even putting it like, there is an open table. I get that. There's some of these solutions that are already there, but trying to rope in something that probably was people would look under TripAdvisor for or a Yelp or something like that. I guess that's where I'm trying to, I've been trying to figure out what they're trying to

replace or how they're trying to replace something or what they're trying to at least leverage from a mindset there. I mean, I still think it's crazy that trust is a big reason that people use Airbnb because it is. That's, you know, they feel like the traveler is going to be taken care of there. If something happens, you contact Airbnb, it will be taken care of. Now, we can talk about it on the back end what that looks like, but that's not anything that the traveler needs to worry about.

So there are some good things here. So what was it? I mean, it's either got to be that the buyer has that. that travel has that demand for it, or that those hosts felt like they were being shortchanged for offering above and beyond. Or are we just, like, tapping into revenue streams that don't need to be tapped. It's hard to say that something shouldn't be tapped into, but yeah. Yeah, well, here, let me give my take on it, at least, and we'll see if we can land the plane some on the right spot here.

We always talk about how when someone says, I'm going to go compete with Airbnb. The beef that I always have with that is like, okay, show me how somehow you're going to grow, and traffic demand in lockstep. Like they have to be somewhat close to one another for this to work. So you have to figure out if someone were to make a new OTA work, I think you actually do it by focusing very narrowly and then slowly expanding over time. So for example, like we are only live in, you know, let's say you're attracting the U.S. traveler.

We're only live in Miami, New York City, Houston, Chicago, et cetera. We're offering a new type of home sharing, a new type of whatever, a new type of short-term rental experience. We're only taking in the best homes, et cetera. And then once you have this demand for that luxury travel, or over time, you can tell, oh, we just added, whatever, some other city. We just added Las Vegas. You know, we just added San Francisco.

We just added whatever. Like, I could see that path kind of making sense for someone to compete with Airbnb. I think the thing that never works is let me just take 20 random listings in South Carolina, 17 random ones in Texas, 14 ones in Massachusetts, seven in California. And then you just got, like, you've got nothing. Like that, that's where I think that path just doesn't ever work. And it's been tried now dozens of times. And no one's ever actually made any success out of it.

Also, I think another just sidebar there is that people often seem to think that the fees are this inhibiting factor that everyone hates the fees on Airbnb. So if I get rid of the fees, that's automatically going to make me grow on the guest side. And there's no evidence to support that. In fact, people have been paying the same Airbnb fees now for closer to two decades and one decade at this point, right? Yeah, 2027 would be two decades of Airbnb as far as the official launch goes. Obviously, they've been a more well-loan company since, let's say, like you said, 2016, 17, 18, maybe we consider their like rise in our little bubble here in this world. But anyways, if you think about that, so they've been doing it for that long. They've charged the same guest fee the

whole time. And there's never really ever been a reason to think that they should change their business model. So you've got to figure out either A, how to grow that stuff in lockstep or B actually create something that's like novel or different or unique, that it's like, oh, I can't get this on Airbnb. And, you know, so I think to go back to your question of like, what is the problem this offering. In theory, Airbnb has all the traffic that most marketplaces are just hungry as hell for. Like, if I just had the traffic, you know what I mean? And what's funny is they can't get the host end to like agree to hold up their end of the bargain, which is give me inventory to sell. So they have, in theory, all these eyeballs, but then they don't actually have any

people willing to supply it, which is, again, I just find this whole thing funny. And I'm not like crapping on Airbnb for no reason here, but I find the whole thing at least a little bit funny that a public company worth literally billions and billions of dollars can't seem to get people to sign up for at a high clip for very high growth markets or very high density markets for Airbnb. They can't get people to offer a service or to offer an experience on Airbnb at enough of a clip to anywhere near, in theory, one would assume, satisfy the demand for millions of travelers. I'm sure the book on Airbnb in Myrtle Beach on an annual basis. So it's just funny. It's just funny how some ideas work and some ideas don't work. I guess

I think back to Amazon, right? Amazon has all the distribution, all the product, everything in the world. Google does as well. And they miss all the time. Google misses, we've referenced this site before. Go to Killed by Google.com. Go look at all the stuff that Google has missed on. Go to, you know, look on Amazon's product launches and you can find stuff they launched

that didn't really click or hit well that they have the shutdown. So being a big company does not guarantee success. You know, that's for sure. And if the consumer doesn't want it, you could be, you know, have billions of users or have billions of eyeballs or whatever the case may be. But if you're not getting them what they want, then they're going to vote with their time in their eyeballs in their effort and go somewhere else. So I guess that's, if I could try to be fair to Airbnb, but explain the problem, I think

that's, that's it right there. Yeah. And I guess that's where I don't at any time in the near future and probably the distant future, I don't see, I don't see those marketplaces crumbling anytime soon. So I mean, that's the thing is it's, it's not, I mean, they didn't build it up for 10 years to just see it crumble. The castle is fortified, right? Like, it's not, you know, one, one arrow is not going to take it down, right?

That's for sure. Or even one cannonball is not. going to take down the Airbnb Castle that's for sure no they are doing their best to evan flow and playing the devil's advocacy you're there i think the macroeconomics tell us that yeah there may be blessed people staying overnight in some places and trying to do some day trips and do some of those daycations and you know those those the single day passes and stuff like that it's it's i don't think it's going to replace travel anytime soon but i do think that it's it's a more practical option for some people as well. And I do think that they're trying to find ways because I still

don't know. We don't know. Like there's there's it's it's it's it's been whiplashy for the last few months. And and we kind of addressed that earlier here and then talking about well, it's one of those years that maybe it's been good. Maybe it's been not so good. But I think that's that's that's the key is that if you are going to diversify into areas that aren't lodging related, having something that is same day type of activity and having something that is a something that can be done without a potential stay you know without an overnight stay is going to give them a leg up over whom i don't know but at least it's going to it's going to give them an offering that that they can sell to people who it is i think that even in some cost prohibitive who knows what cost prohibitive is for some people you know maybe

it's a couple you know a couple hundred dollars a night cut three hundred dollars night four hundred dollars night. We know that there are $1,000 night properties, multi-thousand-dollar-night properties. So that's something that if it's leveling the playing field for the average user of the Airbnb website, that's really what we...

How much would you pay to get a peek behind the scenes for 24 hours at Google Analytics for Airbnb or whatever analytic? Maybe they're using something even higher power. No, they're using Google Analytics. But that is something, I mean, I would

love to see, like, on some of these individual experiences pages, on some of these locations, like which of their markets, I know what markets I think are good, but which their markets are really telling us, because, oh, my gosh, just what a bounty of data that would be just to uncover and harness and see. Like, I assume, because they have so much data, there is more behind the scenes than just our, what we can conceptualize on a very small scale. But that is something that I would love to understand. What's that landing page that that's just, first of all, killing it and getting all their new hosts on. But there's, that would be something to be able to say.

Because like most people, like most marketers, they want to make data-driven decisions. What's that data you're using? You show us that. Give us a little bit that public offering of really what's happening behind this here. Yeah, bummer. They took me off their analytics a while ago, Paul, so I can't. I can't. I don't know. They took me off quite some time ago. but I hear we're saying I think ultimately we want to make decisions you know I guess based on again I'll go back to this we want to make the decisions based on what's best for our company and our company has to you know be on the bus with Airbnb but Airbnb does not have to drive that's my whole thesis this whole time and we have to listen to them and we have to maybe take 20 30 40 percent of our bookings from them and I think that's all well and good that's fine I think it's very challenging so good to kind of wrap up kind of what we talked about too a little bit previously about key data dashboard in that report let's say the average property manager is getting

somewhere in like 20, 25% range of their bookings direct. I think the truth is that some people are getting 30, 40, 50%, because they're putting a lot of effort into it. They have branding. They have marketing. They have stuff ongoing. And they're in control, at least partially in the business in that respect on direct bookings.

And then some people do nothing. And so they get 10%. And the average works out to be 25%. I'm sure, yes, there's companies that we work with that are 10%, 20%, etc. often in markets that are very Airbnb dominant or heavy. Or they're in markets that are not,

quote, quote, traditional vacation rental markets where there's not this established, you know, stream of past guests coming in. it's people like going, I want to go somewhere. Let me just open Airbnb and explore. And that is a real, very fair advantage from Airbnb. Again, does that mean that you can't get that person's attention? Of course not. And this is what I've had to learn the hard way, I would say over my career, is that I always had the SEO mindset. I always had the search mindset. So people would confront me with these facts of, hey, people search, again, Airbnb, Myrtle Beach more than they search

vacation rentals of Myrtle Beach. I used to be like, well, that's, you know, that's navigational search. But it's like, that probably is true. There's a segment of people that are only searching for Airbnb. They're going to book on Airbnb. That's fine. It's going to take more effort to get them off of Airbnb into your direct booking world. It's just going to take more effort. It's just harder. It doesn't mean that you can't do it. Everything's possible, right?

If you give people a right offer and if you price it in a way that's appealing to them or give them extra benefits of booking directly, there's lots of reasons why someone would do that. But yeah, it's like it takes some creativity in marketing. It takes some budget in your marketing. It takes some of these things to, you know, build a real company and essentially not, as we always talk about, a barnacle attached to Airbnb boat or, you know, you're a passenger in the Airbnb boat and they're the captain,

Brian Chesley is the captain, whatever you want to say there. that that's fine. So I guess at the end of day, it's like, it's up to you. Like, whatever you want out of this, I think you should get out of it. So, you know, to go back to that, the original thesis of the episode, can you can be with Airbnb? Nope. It's, again, you're not, it doesn't matter because that's not what you're doing anyways. But for what you are doing, it's like design what you want. Like, I just had to call someone the other day about, you know, what you were saying a second ago as far as like execution on the marketing about how, you know, at the end of the day, the blog posts have to go out, the social media posts have to go out. I'm like, yes,

but it's also creativity. So if you're burned out by something, and you're like an in-house marketing person out of a vacational company and you're like tired of doing the same stuff over to over again. Maybe take a season and try something different. I mean, I'm saying you should just abandon ship and just not do anything for your employer

or whatever the case may be. But if you own the company and you have something that you're passionate about and you can make that part of your marketing, do it. We have a client that we work with in Central America that his whole, you know, kind of, you know, I would say focus is offering these like fishing excursion type things

with lodging attached to him. So he posts content, pose videos of him catching amazing fish in Central America and that's like marketing to get someone to book a vacation rental because it's, hey, come down and experience this awesome fishing some of the best in the world book with me and I'll put you on the best boats and we'll get you out there, right? Like that's someone tying in their passions and what they

want to do, knowing their audience a little bit about what their audience cares about, catching amazing fish with their offering, which is lodging, which is vacation rentals in this given market, right? So I think those are all angles around like exploration that you can, you know, improve from significantly if you just, you know, kind of lean into it and have fun with that. And none of that stuff is what Airbnb is going to do anyways, right? Airbnb, again, is trying to build this massive brand, this marketplace. You should for sure use that marketplace, but then you should at the end that I circle back and, you know, build what you want to build. and it's going to take some creativity, it's going to take some marketing to get there.

And it's all very possible. We see it literally every day, whether we work with them or not, you know, clients and you and I see it all the time. It's just, it takes that extra step, you know, it takes that extra process and extra marketing. Yeah. I mean, it's, it is. We're not trying to compete, but we also don't want to see the horror stories that we said. The horror posts on LinkedIn where, oh, this happened, this happened, and now they own

your, I mean, Airbnb can't own your business. That's the, I mean, they can buy, by how much of your business. They drive to you, but that's the key. You don't need to compete, but you want to make sure that they aren't the metaphorical, if not literal, owners of your business based on them being the only drivers of sales, revenue, this, that, and the other. So, yeah, I mean, it's take the last six Airbnb episodes we've done piece them together, and we got something about what we've been talking about here a little bit.

It's all good. I think, so to put a bow on this one, Paul, I think we overdosed on Airbnb. The next episode shall, Airbnb shall not be wrong. or if it is, we have to have, like, a limit or a counter, you know, where it's like, oh, you said it three times, you can't say it again. You know, it's like Beetlejuice. He can only say it so many times before. Yeah, yeah.

We'll do the Airbnb Beetge stool for the next episode. So all good. Fun episode here, I think, just kind of giving our thoughts on this, because it's probably been a while since we've done something exactly on this, on this thread. Back next week, we'll have some other content that we're talking about that's not really Airbnb-specific. We got a few ideas. I don't know which one we're going to pick.

Maybe an update on the Google ads or some out to add, so that would be a good one. That's not necessarily Airbnb-specific at all. could be fun. One thing, dear listener, if you made it to the end, thank you. You're a beautiful human being. We appreciate that. How many people make it all the way of the end? We don't know because we can't get those analytics anywhere on the podcast side of things. We just see downloads. So you could be anybody, but I'm sure you're an awesome person. Two things we need for me before we get out of here. Number one, leave us a review. Go to your podcast app of choice. Click five stars. Leave us a review. If I stayed in your properties, I'd leave you a far star review. So you should

do the same for your listening experience here. And up, you know, Paul and I joked by this we want to do a pitch at the end. We never do pitches on this. You know, we assume like, hey, you assume what we do, you'll click in, you know, to the bottom of the episode article, click on the link and then book call with Paul. If you're interested in chatting about his marketing services, you'll book a call on the Buildup Bookings website if you want to chat with us. But we don't actually ever say it. So like, you know, we don't do this very often.

It's a pitch, very blatant pitch here right at the end. Go to the show notes of this episode. If you're interested in chatting with Paul, click on his website or click on his LinkedIn profile, you can book call with him there. Or you can go to Manzi Digital.com. You can reach out to Paul that way. On my side of things, you can go to buildupbookings.com slash getting started. Again, there's link on LinkedIn as well.

fire me a message, but I'm going to route you there anyway. So just go there, buildup bookings.com slash getting dash started. A book call with us. We could chat with you. We could figure out if maybe we could help you with something marketing-wise. We've got some new service offerings or an advisory stuff. We don't have to do all your marketing for you to give you some advice. So that'd be a fun thing.

So there you go. Blighton pitch over. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening. And we'll catch you on the next episode.