Heads In Beds Show - Here's Why Hotels Can Be Better Than Vacation Rentals

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

In this episode Conrad and Paul flip the script and break down WHY a hotel often is a better stay than a vacation rental. Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteBook A Call With Us🚀 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 vacational 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. And we're live. Paul, what's going on? What's happening?

Yeah, it's, we were kind of off last week. I feel like it's been, it's been a busy time for both of us, which is always a good thing we've been talking about here. this is this is the I think I've said it on a few calls with clients partners this week it's it's all the work we do now like we've done for the last 45 days we do for the next 45 days hopefully sets us up for success over the next you know nine months after that so I do I think I would say I feel like this is that time of year this is the working time of year this is kind of kind of it's kind of weird sports abyss we've got the Olympics going on kind of run the tail into that as we're recording this. So it's an interesting time. But how are you doing, sir? How are things going for you? Yeah, pretty good. It was funny to listen back some of the last episodes that I've been listening to. We record these two weeks in advance. And boy, I was confident about the Patriots and I shouldn't

have been. But that's fine. That was bad. But no, I agree with your sense of like, it's so, it's so funny to when I think about it because I think back to my entry into the space. And really one of the smartest people that I ever talked to early on when I was, you know, at the previous agency was Mike Carrington at the time he was running. I think this is when he was transitioning out of resort royalty and going into topsill realty at the time. And he told me at one point, this would have been like 2014, 2015. He's like, he's like, hey, by this time, like by middle of March, or middle of, excuse me, February into the beginning of March, our year is like sort of dialed in. Like, we kind of know how it's going to go at this point, which is so funny than I think about it

now of like, it's not really the way it goes now. Like, there's a lot more last minute booking demand and stuff like that. But it is kind of like you're building towards something at this point of time. And we're absolutely for a lot of our clients getting a lot of bookings now for spring and summer stays in these speech markets that, you know, ends up being valuable. the weird part this year, and this is just always the case, right? We look across a wide cross section of, you know, companies all over the U.S. like I have that we work with. And like the West Coast people are bummed, these ski markets.

I mean, they've had a horrible run of like no snow out there in the West Coast. And it's just crushing them. Yeah, it's bad, man. Like the call I was just on before this was like an onboarding call. And someone out in Washington State, you know, in a ski market out there. And he's like, it's just been brutal. He's like, we had a little snow around Christmas and we've had nothing since then. It's just an absolute.

desert of nothingness out there and not cold enough to make snow and he's like this is terrible. So that's kind of the weird part about it is you just never know like as we've gotten bigger. It's kind of like there's always a problem child that I see like I'm dealing with to be honest with you. And this, you know, there's things, a lot of things outside of our control that and the client knows that. You know, they're not stupid. They understand there's not a lot we can do. But boy, does it make you demotivated to run ads when it's like, come to this winter wonderland and there's no snow. Like it makes things a little bit trickier.

So this is a tough business that we're in then. Like I think sometimes I, you know, we'll talk, people talk about how easy it is, passive income, just set the dynamic pricing, let it roll. And we, of course, you know, poke at that idea a lot and talk about how BS it is. But definitely felt it, you know, over the last month or so of just like, we've done everything in our power to try to get you the eyeballs. It's just not converting. And that can be a little bit of a bummer. But that's the way it goes. Yeah.

No doubt about that. You know, it's funny. I wonder, and I assume this is the case, right, Paul. You know, we're not in these meetings all time, these big hotel brands. But I imagine there's a lot of similarities. Like if the vacationalers are struggling because of weather and poor occupancy or, you know, low temperatures in a beach market, that sort of thing. It's got to be the same on the hotel side of things. So that's kind of the topic of today's episode, which is what do hotels do better than vacation rentals?

And most importantly from that, you know, most of our clients are more on the vacational side. I do have a few clients I work with that actually are hotels. So I get into seeing that window a little bit, although it's probably, you know, 80% of our focus is on the vacational side. But some products are almost like a hybrid, which is maybe another discussion point we can pull out. But for the most part, we kind of know what these. vacation rental products are. We know what these hotel products are. And it's interesting to hear a perspective. So recently, this will come out probably around the same time, actually, based on timing. But this is recorded a few weeks ago. We had Scott Eddy on the art of hospitality feed.

And so he had a lot of interesting things to say, because he does come more so from that, that hotel world. And he has a little bit less, you know, maybe working experience day to day, working with these vacational brands, but he is himself as a vacation rental consumer. He's a guest, you know, because he mentioned the fact that he, like, doesn't have a house. He, like, lives in hotels. And when he's in these places for an extended period of time, he uses vacation rentals.

And his perspective was fascinating. So some of the ideas I had today are actually pulled from that episode. Depending on timelines and release dates, I'll put that out. If not go out, look on the Art of Hospitality podcast feed and look for the one from Scott Eddy. It should publish around the same time. But yeah, we thought, like, that was an interesting thing. Maybe think a little bit about it.

You and I were talking about this recently. This is kind of the topic for today. So that's what we plan to dive into. Yeah, this is something where I've had a little more connection to some of the hotel side a little more recently. It's not, admittedly, it's not on the actual, like, room side. It's more on the ancillary and stuff like that. But it has. It's given me kind of a different peek behind the curtains of some of these brands and identifying some of the things where, yeah, hotel really have a good thing in place here.

And this is, this is, this is something that I wish and we strive for on the vacation rental side of things. And it's something that not just when you're in kind of the, in the nitty gritty of the hotel side, we also, I mean, I've talked to numerous vacation rental managers who do, who bring up, yeah, I wish we could do this on the hotel side. I wish we could do this, which hotels do really, really well. One of those things that I think gets mentioned and bandied about very frequently is the loyalty side of that. things. Loyalty is one of those things that I think, I mean, A number one, hotels do significantly better than vacation rentals do. It's something that a lot of our loyalty kind of feels like we're building towards remarketing and stuff like that. They really have, I think it's not only the loyalty programs they have, the loyalty offers they have, but there's, there's some perceived value and there's some actual value behind having loyalty to some of these

brands and doing stuff like that. So as we're kicking off the topic here, that's one thing that when we really identify things that we strive for as an industry and that, again, the hotel industry has it set up and really set up in a lot of different ways, too. I mean, it's not just at a brand level, which I think a lot of these brands do very well, but even some of these third party. I mean, there are third party loyalty programs as well in there. I mean, there's obvious reasons why, and we've talked about this at length, you know, on many episodes in the past, but like the truth is that most, you know, in what we advocate, we've done a whole episode on this recently where it's like you should probably be a single destination, you know, airbie, you know, short term rental, Airbnb vacation rental host from both an inventory acquisition standpoint and from a, you know, guest marketing standpoint. And then here we're saying, well, the problem why you can't do loyalty in brand building, you know, Mr. Small Property Manager is that that's all you are. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Small Property Manager and a single destination, that is the problem. You know, Adam's belief, Adam is who I do the other podcast with, his belief is that we have to band together. We have to build networks essentially of like, we are part of this alliance or this, you know, group or this collective.

And you get benefits by booking within this group or collective or alliance. I think the only people that could actually pull that off maybe would be like the PMS level. So like imagine, I was giving an example. It could be any PMS. But I'm just saying like a guesty, a hostfully, a host away, a, you know, insert whatever PMS you want to here. Could be like, could create some kind of backend system because they own kind of that. they don't own it, but they have, I guess, that relationship of the guest data, they would know if I made up direct booking with Paul in his property up in Minnesota.

And then if I had a property here in South Carolina, I made a booking in theory, guest he could with the right proper opt-in and consent and all that kind of stuff, potentially share that. So I could see something like that, maybe being the solution there. But it's tricky because I don't know how you run your business, Paul. Like maybe you're a good host. Maybe you hold my standards. Maybe you don't.

You know, another interview we did recently was with Dennis and his crew over at Cassiola. And he kind of said that. He's like, even within Cassioli, we have to work really hard to enforce brand standards. And that's a franchise. We have an agreement. We have a legal contract in place. And we have to work diligently to enforce our standards on how we make the beds, how we do the guest welcoming, et cetera. Because he's in Orlando and he's dealing with someone in Aruba, a thousand miles away.

Like they're not going to do it his way without checking or enforcement. So it's really, really hard. I don't know if I have a good solution. I think it's an almost an unsolvable problem in the short time. We could tie these together because it is. It's brand and it's the loyalty and it's everything like that. But that's what we have. have in the vacation rental space that is kind of those brands. I mean, we have PMS brands,

certainly, but the franchise level is where that brand takes place. And I think you go across all the major, I mean, you can go to Pasago, go to Grand Welcome, go to the I trips, go to the Skyron. I mean, these are some great franchises. I mean, people who have a great system in place. I mean, Cassiola, another great example. But still, we're talking about individual. You have not even individual property manager, individuals, just individual people. You're not going to be able to create the same copy paste, copy paste, copy paste against all these. So obviously there's going to be some different dynamics. There's going to be some different people dynamics. There's going to be some different, when we talk about it, market dynamics, all these items. But it does. It really,

where that loyalty could be based at that franchise level, there's still the disparate nature of that experience there. So I do. I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I wish. wish that that was kind of the level where you can't focus on that. You have to focus on hospitality. You have to focus on so many things. I guess loyalty becomes kind of a secondary or tertiary thought as far as, well, we got to get them in the door. Now we got to take care of them. If you're doing everything right, it does contribute to a better experience. And hopefully it does build that loyalty, guest loyalty, brand loyalty, wherever it's at. But it's not a copy paste. Like I think you could argue is done at most chains, most brand levels, most tier levels.

You know, when we're looking at the ultra luxury versus even the your budget stays, there's still brand loyalty within those levels. Yeah, I mean, well, it, let's say you can pull it off within your own company, right? I think most people, that scope is going to be pretty limited. Most people are going to have a hard time doing it where it really drives a lot of repeat bookings. By the way, I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm not saying that you shouldn't try this or attempt this. We have some clients that have pulled it off and I think it does provide a little bit of a boost. Hey, you're a super guest. You're a VIP guest. You get XYZ benefit, early checking if available, late checkout if available at no additional fee, XYZ, kind of talking about it. We have a few clients

going down this path. So I'm not saying that we can't do it, but I'm saying that even if you pull it off, it's going to be pale in comparison to what the hotels do as far as the point system, the credit card integrations. Like, I was talking about this earlier with the client today. I'm like, I have the Hyatt points is kind of what I pursued lately over the past year or two. And I go to a Hyatt property. I walk in and they're like, they have a separate check-in lane for me. Like, I can go to the globalist check-in lane because I have the high-a-credit card and I've spent money on it or whatever. So I'm like, I don't have to wait in line.

Like, I can just walk up here and check in. Oh, you're not paying for parking, Mr. O'Connell. Of course not. Like, that would be absurd, right? You're this high-ed member. And I'm like, I'll take it, of course. But, you know, it's funny when I think about some of these little things of like, that's not the reason that I was doing that necessarily,

but it's like all these little perks add up to where, honestly, when I'm going somewhere now, like, I do the quick search. like, is there a Hyatt there? I think that their program has been much more generous than other ones in the past. I was like kind of pursuing Hilton at one point. And I'm like, these parks aren't that good. Hilton's are more inconsistent. Like, I've been a little bit happier with Hyatt stuff. So when I do travel, you know, and stay in hotel specifically. So yeah, it's, it's hard. I don't have a simple and easy solution there. But I think that, again, could you pull little elements of that and try to put them into your own business? I think so.

I think you want to be careful not to waste too many cycles on that if you're like too early in the process. But if you're a company at 200 units, 300 units, 500 units, you're in a single destination. You're getting a lot of repeat already. I think it can be a little bit of an accelerant. And once you're bigger, I think you have enough room to test and play with that kind of stuff and see how that's actually going to become a good thing for you. But then you have to have a whole marketing and communication plan to route it, I would say as well. You've got to not only do it, you've got to have the pages, the information, the benefits built out everywhere on your website. And that's a pretty custom thing. Like you're not going to find anything off the shelf.

You're not going to pull a PMS website off the shelf and integrate something like that into your system. It's going to have to be relatively custom. So maybe this is like four bigger players only. but I think that ignoring brand and ignoring loyalty from hotels and saying, oh, we can't do that, just writing an office, probably not the right play, but rather saying, excuse me, what can I copy from them? And kind of doubling down on that would be what else that makes sense. Yeah. And then we talk about this quite often, the hospitality.

You know, it is. It is difficult. We're not even talking about multi-market. Let's just think about, let's think about Gatlinburg, that nice, tiny little market in mountains. Think about where some of those properties are located. They are unique. They are special. They are what they are because they are a little clandest, a little out of the way. A little, you know, you want that privacy in some cases. That ultimately doesn't necessarily lead to a better hospitality experience and how you have to deliver that hospitality because it is. The ease of having, we talked about 300 doors in a single building, pretty easy to have someone right there immediately to take care of any issues, to provide and accept. experience if you're able to do something like that. It is driving 30, 40 minutes to have to do,

take care of some of these things and then another thing and then another thing. And now you're four hours in and you've completed four hospitality tasks. It can be really difficult and really trying. You know, that's the nature of our business. But that's just something that hotels really don't have to contend with. I mean, they've got every, you know, they have multiple staff people to take care of these items and it's right there. You're not, you're not waiting. I think that's in the on-demand world that we're used to, not having to wait for someone to come fix something, to give you something, even if it's delivering food or something like that, just having it there in a timely fashion or something to be said for that. And again, we, just by the nature of our businesses, we can't

really replicate unless you're an on-site manager or something like that. Scott, when we had him on the podcast, he said this. I wrote this down on my notes here. He talked about the fact that the vacation rental, what we offer is space for the most part. We're offering a bigger space for people to use and as someone with a bunch of kids, like, I value that a lot. We haven't done a trip yet with the little baby. We certainly have with the other three kids that I have.

And like, yeah, when we go into one of these larger houses or bigger spaces and I'm like, everyone has our own room. No one's yelling at each other. That is a lot of value that I'm getting in exchange for whatever additional fee that I'm paying for that, you know, larger property versus having like one or even two hotel rooms connected. like it's just not the same thing, you know, value wise there. But he said what the hotel is offering, okay, we're offering space in the vacation rental world. What the hotel is offering a service.

That was how Scott described it. I thought that was a really interesting comparison because I'm like, yeah, that that's true. Like there's an element of service that you're giving up, you know, in most situations. And he told a story in our podcast that we did with him about the fact that he had booked somewhere. It was like 20, somewhere in that range, like 17 to 20 stays over the past little bit on Airbnb. And he's been disappointed by all but two of them. So like his success rate is pretty low. It's like 10% whatever, 15% of people stays that he's actually.

had had met as standards. And I'm like, that's tough. You know, when you, when you hear that out loud, like someone who's very knowledgeable about hospitality trying our space and then kind of getting a bad taste left in their mouth more often than not. And he mentioned things like that. He mentioned the fact that like, yes, they're not there and I can understand that. That's, that's not the reason that I would or wouldn't grade someone positively. But I think some of these, it's like we're encouraged to do this. And all the PMS vendors are encouraging this, use AI messaging. And there's such a big difference between someone, an AI responding to the message and someone just kind of saying, okay, like kind of the answer, kind of not the answer I'm looking for,

versus like when you talk to an actual employee in a hotel and you ask a specific question, you get a specific answer, and it's not right. Like you're going to follow up immediately. You're not just going to be like, oh, okay, like that's not the answer I was looking for. You're going to try to get what you want out of it. So I think that, yes, we are at a disadvantage, obviously, to your point, of course. But I do think that it would be foolish just to say, like, again, there's nothing better that we can do. Because there are things.

Like, for example, I've done, we did a mombang stay in Cape Horrell some time ago. And they came out on the second day. And they had like, we checked in everything was fine. They came in the second day. Hey, just here where we're going to drop by the second day. We're going to show you everything in the house. We're going to show you how the pool heat works. We're going to show you, you know, the door lock system.

We're going to show you this and show you that. And it was a, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes. It was not long. And, you know, he gave us your restaurant recommendations. Like, it was a really, it was an in-person hospitality experience built off of, you know, a short-term rental stay. Granted, maybe that's unique because it's a month-long stay. Maybe you can't do that for every single guest.

We certainly could do an outbound call. We certainly could do an outbound video message. Like there's things that you can do that are at least bridging that gap a little bit. And it does make me question, you know, we have clients that have done this where they've outsourced their reservations department completely overseas. And at first I was like, I see the benefit and I understand it. I've done some of that as well as far as offshoring talent and finding talent that can do, you know, sort of these critical elements of your business. But they don't have to be in the market to do it. And then I'm kind of torn on that because I'm like, well, then that's really like you talk about being this local company.

And then when I call you, I'm talking to someone over in Manila, the Philippines, which is fine. Like, okay, that's what you're doing. But it's that local? that's not local. You know, so it's like, I don't know, I have some tension there, you know, where it's like, what's the right balance of things and how do we make sure these things work? Because some of these clients that we work with have a really hard time finding local talent. So I don't know what the right answer is, but it's certainly an advantage of the hotels that have over us, that's for sure, I would say. Well, when we were talking about that communication, while we use it for communication.

I don't think there we have that special, that right secret sauce, whatever that is, the recipe to using AI effectively. I think there's a few people who are using it really, really well. there's a handful that are using it very, very well. It's really how you're sprinkling it into the business. I think there are people who are evaluating how it can help their business through two different lenses, through how it can give guests a better experience and how it can make their business run more effectively efficiently. And I think in some case, be a cost-saving effort.

And I think if you're focused on that cost, the business side, the operational side, as opposed to the hospitality side, that is where you're going to the cost-saving effort, that is you're going to start to focus on the communication. You're going to start to focus on some of those items that seem like they're going to move the needle. Again, it's just getting an answer to a question does not mean you got the right answer. It doesn't mean you've got a resolution to your issue. So I do. I think that that's something where the more we're focusing on the hospitality side,

the less we're focusing on the operational side or some way to find a better mix of that combination, I think. that's where we're going to find the most success on AI. And people are going to actually feel like they're getting a better experience. They may develop that brand loyalty, et cetera, et cetera. And maybe we are kind of falling more in line with what hotels are doing. Well, that's the thing, right, is that there's been, I was going to say this for later, but I'll do it now. There's been almost a little bit of a merging of ideas, right?

Like the hotels look at us and they go, okay, this is what people are enjoying about the short-term rental vacational experience. And you can see them trying to mimic some of those ideas. But hotels are relatively like fixed sort of immovable objects, right? So like some of these trends may take a decade to play out almost, right, like in terms of how people expect to see it. And it is funny. I mean, we haven't even mentioned this yet, but like Airbnb is doubling down in hotels

right now. Airbnb is saying, we are going to make hotel inventory much more available in Airbnb. They claim to be focused mostly on boutique, small brands, et cetera, not, you know, your typical large brands on there. We'll see where that all shakes out. We have no idea. You know, at this time of this recording. Yeah, we'll see.

I think the problem with that idea is like, there's probably not as many choices as maybe they think or that they realize once they get there. And like boutique small doesn't mean good. And like that's for sure. Like yes, yes, many small boutique brands are great, maybe even better than the equivalent chain in that same price point. But there's certainly no guarantee of that. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out over the long term.

Because again, this idea of merging, I think if you pitch that to Brian Chesky, like I said this before, if you pitched that to Brian Chesky in 2010, let's say, we're going to put a bunch of hotels in Airbnb. He'd be like, no, that's not what this is. And now here he is embracing it because, of course, Wall Street. And they need to take all this traffic they have and convert it into even more revenue. They're doing well, but they're not doing well enough. in terms of their stock price would indicate that.

So I think people are really struggling with them. But that does break. So two things maybe to build off that. One is the hotel is consistent, predictable. It's kind of boring, which I think is an appeal in some cases. Like,

you know, the story I always give is like, if I'm doing a one night's day and I'm driving up to like, let's say for me it'd be like driving to Atlanta or Charlotte so I could take a direct flight somewhere. So for me that'd be like a three to five hour drive depending on those two locations,

which I went to. I want a hotel super close to the airport. I want to walk in there and I want to be quiet. And I just don't want to like have any problem. I really don't care what it costs. Like, it doesn't matter to me, right? Like, I have no reaction to that. We're booking this family trip for June, you know,

a whole summer family vacation thing. And we put hours into searching for that property, you know, like, and finding it and talking with multiple people who were involved and coming on that trip with me and stuff like that to be like, hey, is this one good? Is this one good? What do you think about this one? I mean, there's been group chats.

There's been group things going on. It is mentally overwhelming to pick a property when a lot of people are driving there or arriving in a single destination. So one of those things I can do. decide in probably five minutes or less. And we talk about too, like the rise of AI. Like, I think I would trust AI to book a book an airport close to the hotel for me, give me a few different options. Okay, I can give you option one, two or three. And I go, yep, option J looks good. Go ahead and book it. I think that is like a different product entirely than I'm planning a

summer vacation with my family and everyone else is coming and it's going to be $5,000 plus, you know, booking. And I'm doing a hell of a lot of research on that. So that's kind of my thought process too, which is like many of these things are not apples and oranges. But I think that consistent, predictable, boring hotel experience is sometimes exactly what we want. And I think with the vacation rentals, people like Scott and others that I've talked to outside of kind of our bubble is what I talk about. They don't like the unpredictability of a vacation. They don't like the fact that they're going to book there.

And a lot of hosts have good reasons for this, but they'll say stuff like, oh, yeah, like you only get one roll with toilet paper. And then they're like, that sucks. I'm going to go buy toilet paper, I'm on vacation. Like, come on, man. Like, you can put another, what is that, 25 cents? Come on. But that's just the way some people are.

That's just the way things have been done. So they keep staying that way, which is problematic at times. Being in a market where we're just outside of Minneapolis. So I drive 15 minutes north and I see all of the hotels that are surrounding Mall of America and then the airport as well. So I do. When I think of that experience of someone who is just looking for in Minnesota, somewhere along 494 to be able to get to the airport real quick the next day. Yeah, absolutely. I'd feel comfortable sending an agent out there to find, you know, even if I'm not prompting it that well, you're finding, I don't know, when I, when I'm

I'm seeing in a hotel. I'm sorry. I need a bed. I need a pillow. That's just, I mean, I need, again, the four walls. That's, that's, that's all I'm looking for. Hopefully somewhat quiet as well. Yeah.

I mean, quiet's good. I mean, I'm not even that. Like, again, you kind of know what you're getting into there. Because if you're looking for that Ludger experience, that is quiet, that is very formulated, that is very brand standard driven, whatever that is, you're going to get it. Same thing. If you're looking for something cheap, It's the Wild West.

Good luck. Find a spot that you're going to be able to wake up the next day. I think that's one of those things where that travel specific. I think that's a really good example because you do have those little pockets around the Charlotte, around in Atlanta, I mean, that they do. It's Hotel Central. Like that's it. It's where there's Hospitality Central and that might be a whole other story, but it's definitely Hotel Central. They got some rooms.

They can keep you in one spot. So I think there's a willingness for people to. book a hotel or a vacation rental, depending on their need. It truly is need-based. The GMH, the hotel crew was talking about, you know, what are the factors that really drive? They're talking about how breakfasts are contributing to, you know, people aren't doing free breakfast,

people aren't doing continental breakfast because that's not something that is sustainable operationally for some of these small to mid-sized brands. You know, that's never a concept that we've really had in the vacation rental space. but think about how that drove, that probably drove families like ours to stop at half these places in the 80s, 90s, maybe early odds. Now it is. I think we've, as we've maybe skewed more,

or we've maybe understood, you don't have to just have the four walls. There are more experiences that are out there. And if you want that, that's available. But if not, here, here are some other, you know, this is what this opens up. It's more space. It's this amenity.

It's that amenity. It's not just your Wi-Fi. It's not just your business phone. See, here, ironing your ironing board, your whatever that was. I remember doing those metadata points for hundreds of hotels, but it's the same thing. Wi-Fi, this, that, that. I mean, go down the line. So, I mean, ultimately, whether or not someone's going to book a hotel, whether they're going to choose a vacation rental,

it's some of these factors, most definitely. But it's how you're traveling. And I think that that's what makes our job so difficult because that's what we're trying to tap into. We're not trying to tap into. Do you want this rental versus this rental? Why do you want the rental? And what are you trying to experience? And how can we get that true experiential effort so that you keep coming back?

Well, and again, hitting a few themes that we've hit on before, this idea of consistency, even within your inventory, which is, I think, kind of direction you were considering heading in there. So just because a property manager is in a single location, they're in, Hilton Head, they are in whatever insert, you know, whatever area name here does not mean by any stretch of the imagination that they are actually consistent within that inventory. You know, they're only, that they're consistent within that location of what they're offering. Like, it is not uncommon for us to have a client that has a 10 bedroom beach house that rents out for $1,200 a night next to a condo, you know, that's $100 a night. And that does make the branding thing hard. Like, no hotel

would do that, right? No hotel would offer a product or an experience that's at this price point, and then they offer something 10x less. Like, is there some variability? Yeah, room size. you know, amenities, you know, two queens, one king, whatever the case may be, of course, right? There's variability. But it's within a band. It's within kind of a upper or lower level limit is how the hotel would kind of build out their brand strategy. And they would never do what a lot of vacational hosts do, which is like, and I get it, right? Like they're desperate for inventory. You know, so because this decentralized almost nature to some degree of how these companies are built, these vacational companies are built, it leads to people just kind of making funky decisions.

Hey, I was able to snag these four condos. I need money. These condos will make me money. throw them on my website, see what happens, right? Like, it's just more of a small, tiny micro business, you know, that ultimately is going to make very different decisions at a hotel. So I think that is, you know, again, there's like, I have this in my, in my bio on base camp, but I think it's in my bio on Twitter as well, which is like, I'm in a daily fight with entropy.

Enterpies is this idea that systems go to disorder over time. I think that's what inventory is. Inventory goes to disorder over time if you just take what you can get. And as the business owner, as a leader of a vacational company, you have to really, really, really, really, really hardly with lines. in the sand enforce what you want as far as properties, or you take a homeowner and says, I have a property that doesn't meet your standards and you work to get it to your standards before you listen on your website. And that's challenging because the allure of,

let me just take this thing and figure it out later is just so strong that you have to, again, work really hard to fight that. So it's absolutely a challenge. And again, I don't know if I have the right solution, you know, like, there's work that I turned down over and over again because it's not a good fit for us. So I know what that feels like to be like, I don't think we can do an A plus job here. So I just don't want to do it. But if you're in that mode of like, I need revenue to like keep the lights on and keep things going, then like you're going to take what you can take. But it does make your brand. And back to the very first point we had here, so much harder to build because of how you're doing it. So it's a, it's a, it's a sort that cuts you

unfortunately, even if that's a sword, you have to pull out. I mean, it is. I'm kind of flipping it. You know, when the vacation rentals are thinking about revenue first, revenue first, revenue first, yeah, that's, that's something that it can get you upside down on the branding side of things. because those hotels have such strong brands and they have that loyalty, they're not focused on that I need to book direct. It is. If they hit their numbers, if they hit their occupancy numbers, if they hit their revenue numbers, their revpar numbers,

that is what they need. We're talking about February and March being the anchor point. They know by month, probably by week, and in some cases down to the day, depending on the property, what they need on an occupancy side of things. So if it's coming through the meta search engines, if it's coming through the OTAs, I think there's more of a willingness, that's what I said before the show, I think there's a more of a willingness to get more distribution out there,

to use different channels, to kind of take more of a chance, I would say. Because on the vacation rental side, the more channels you open up, more costs you open up, it feels like, and I'm sure that's the case on the hotel side as well, but it is. It's transactional. It's, okay, I've got to get to this volume. I've got to get to this. number, we don't get that same, it's not even a grace period, it's just we can't attack it that same way, knowing that our fee structures have to represent, oh, that fun little third party, homeowners, the ever complicating factor of running a property management company. So that's,

you know what hotels do better more than anything else? They don't have homeowners. That's it. We figured it. We fixed it. That's it. Yeah, yeah. Don't. Yeah. Well, that's the thing, is like actually if we zoom way out and think about the ownership structure of a hotel it's often i i learned this you know not too long ago like i learned it a little while ago but it wasn't that long ago where i realized if people start to build a hotel no idea which brand it's going to be part of so the people that are building a hotel are just building a box you know they're building a box a bunch of inside of it and then once they get closer to the finish line they go okay it's going to be a it's going to be a hilton it's going to be a this it's going to be a that and that put my brain

in a pretzel where i'm like wow so they're just realizing that like the brand on the front is kind of a logo that's one interchangeable and the people building it are just builder people. That's what they do. It's Bob the builder building the hotel. And there's someone else coming in or determining, okay, this is where we feel like based on whatever 1,000 metrics they used to figure this out. Okay, this is how this one's going to do well. So that was fascinating. I will say that's not always the case, but that's not uncommon for my understanding is that they'll go build it, not knowing what it is. Whereas they are building a hotel here. They're building like a margueriteville resort here in North Merrill Beach. That is like,

it was approved as that. It's going to be that. All the money and backing is, you know, to build this Margaritaville resort. So I think that's like the intention of what they're building. So I'm sure that happens too. up. Yeah, very different. Yeah, I mean, I think when you get the brands, maybe they get the brand, but it is a matter of, is it going to be a Hampton Suites or is it going to be a Marriott Bond Boyer? Is it going to know what level of it is? But, but yeah, I mean, it poses the fundamental statement of their boxes.

That's what they are. So, yeah, yeah. What a great show, what a great show, weeds was, by the way. Yeah, so interesting for that. You know, again, contrast that with the fact that, yes, you're right, the vacational manager doesn't own the inventory. that's kind of one side of it. The second being did the person would get into that. There's a thousand reasons that someone might get into owning a vacation rental from someone who's super

investor dollar on dollar cash return motivated all the way up to its grandma's old house that she left us in her will, you know, to, I just inherited it. I'd nothing to do with it to everything in between, right? Oh, it's a second home for us. Oh, it's somewhere in the middle we wanted to make money. Oh, we needed to make money. Now we're in a bad spot. Like there's some layers to that that you could potentially explore. And I was talking to someone today and they signed a homeowner that brought two homes to them. So a single homeowner who brought two homes in their program and they were, they were excited and we're doing some marketing campaigns around it. Hopefully we'll get some, you know, some bookings of these new properties once they're on board it next month. But I was like, oh, that's cool.

She's like, yeah, unfortunately, one home is leaving our program. So we took it off over our ads. But she was like, man, that owner was a tough one to deal with. It was a trust that owned this property. And there was like nine people in the trust. So they all had to say, so it's one home. And like nine people could sit in there and say, all the cousins and, you know, whatever kids of whoever passed the home down to them or whatever could sit here and say, we want this to get done. We want this to get done. And they're in the middle of it. So I'm like, wow, your life just got a lot easier. And you're going to make more money off two homes than one home.

She's like, yeah, they're actually going to be, you know, about double the revenue or close to it. And my life is going to be a lot easier, not having to deal with these nine people involved in the trust. So again, imagine a hotel where like every room was owned by a different person. It's like, I want to check someone into, you know, room 212, Mr. Manzi. Is that okay? And you say, well, no, I might come use the property.

I got to put a block on it. And then, you know, imagine that, right? Whereas the hotel just operates. Like it's just pure efficiency, pure, let me give you a key, scan you in. You're off to the races versus the whole. whole, you know, complicated ownership structure and just everything about vacationals is just harder. It's like that uniqueness comes at a at a cost, which is, again, a little bit of that unpredictability and all the, all the battles that come with that. There were just a little sidebar.

We're looking at some of the old Ventory I can remember because it was, it was like eyes bleeding type of moments where you'd have all the trusts listed and all the individual contacts that were kind of attached to that trust. I remember seeing a trust with 37 people patched. Oh my gosh. 37. And again, I don't know what it will. Like, I don't know where. Yeah. I was assuming there's like percentages, right?

Like someone owns more of it than the other. But that's wild. Why? Why? Why would you agree? I think it was like a, no, to be fair, I think it was like an $8 million home. So maybe there were some interests and everything like that. But 30, yeah, yeah. It just, that's, that's, that's who knock your socks off kind of stuff. Like, okay, this is the behind the scenes.

Chest checker, pokers. I don't know what you're playing at that point, but you're not. You're not playing on games. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I think thinking of like how professional, quote unquote professional, I'm putting this in early quotes for the listener, a hotel is run, you know, whereas, again, these vacational managers are very small. And let's be honest, sometimes making it up as they go along.

And I do this because I talk to all them all day, every day. And I see such variability between, I'll talk to two companies that are the same size or very similar sizes. And they have totally different mindsets about so many things. Like, for example, I've never really heard the hotel clients we work with get that worried about book direct. So, like, they don't really talk about book direct that much. Like, it's part of their, it's not part of their lexicon. Whereas, like, in the vacational world, we seem to be a lot more focused on that messaging or thinking that messaging is important.

I don't know where that stems from. I think the hotel just understands that, like, acquisition costs or acquisition costs. They want to get more direct bookings. It's not that they're not working on direct bookings, by the way. They just don't think about it that way. They just think of it as, like, we're putting our rooms and our inventory in any places as possible. We're going to play with rates, numbers, pricing, et cetera, to find our optimal yield,

you know, or optimal rep par or whatever metric you want to use as far as occupancy divided by rates or whatever the case may be. And then it's our job, like with the hotel clients, we have to get more visibility. But they don't look at it that way in terms of like it seems a little more stable, like month, month, year to year. Like our client that was 40% direct bookings when we started with them is kind of still in that 40, 50% of range now. Whereas vacationals, to be fair, there can be like these wild variable swings up and down of when you sign a bunch of homes. Sometimes your direct booking percentage goes down for a little bit as you kind of find your level with that marketing. and then vice versa.

You know, sometimes it goes the other way. You know, you build your brand up. You get a lot more demand. You get a lot more past guest. Your direct booking percentage goes up. And then it can go down, you know, depending on what inventory you have. So just a very different mindset. I think, again, I've never been a part of a hotel meeting, marketing meeting where it's like, I have to get a book more direct bookings right now.

They just look at it as like, yeah, Airbnb or, you know, Expedia is over here. Booking.com is over here. And they look at it as kind of this overall picture. So just an observation. I don't know what we can learn from that. But just I think they think differently. But that's one of the clients I work with it. He has the most in-depth revenue tracking as far as we can go down to.

And when we see the swings week over week, we track the swings week over week of Verbo is 40% this week. Now it's booking.com is 37% this week. Now direct is 60% this week. Now it's 15% the next week. It is just so it's so wild. But I think it does. It presents the path.

And when we look in an attribution report, you've got to dig to find it, but it's still back there. And you can see all the steps that do still take place. And I think it's reassuring sometimes to see that I think there are more single, single channel types of things. They may be looking at, you know, you may have four sessions, but they're coming from all from organic search. Or you may have four email clicks that are coming through, something like that. But it is. This is still a process of nobody comes into the, I think on the vacation rental side, nobody comes into the travel planning experience, 100% knowing where they're going, they need some inspiration.

That is where the hotel side of things, you don't really, you know, it gets into the, why are you traveling? If you are traveling for that specific reason, that's where you're going to go. That's what you're going to do. There is a set idea of what the end process and goal looks like there. And I do, I think that's where maybe that focus on book direct is because we know that there are so many touch points along the way. And it takes a little more to sell someone on your uniqueness as opposed to the boxy, boxy, boxiness of what I know is consistent in a brand and I'm loyal to it. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And it stems back all the way back to the beginning of like, you know it well, you know what you're getting. You know, the hotels have built this, you know,

discipline over, to be fair, decades, right? Like, of some of these brands have been around for more than decades, right? And I think that, yeah, we have a element of catching up to do, you know, when it comes to what they do, what they do better. So, you know, to kind of come to a close here, put a bow on it, you know, I think consistency, brand loyalty, these are all things that the hotels do really well. And we know this, but it's like, how can you reassure your guests every step of the way that you are delivering a similar type of consistency and experience?

Reviews tell a big part of the story. I think it's probably an underutilized area of, like, property descriptions. of photos of direct booking sites having pages of here's what our common amenities are here's how we deal with the guests here's how we help you here's our local team if you have those things um all those things kind of reinforcing because it's like there's questions people have questions even if they're not conscious questions they could be subconscious questions or in their mind somewhere of like i don't know what to expect whatever i have a problem here one more thing i'll say actually by the way hotels are great on cancellations i've canceled hotels the day of before and they're

just like oh yeah no problem you know whereas like with vacationalals we have this mindset of like you blocked your calendar i block my calendar for you can i'm not really to offer you any sort of flexibility on cancellation. And so it does make, it does drive the consumer towards that. Like think about it when you're booking, right? If you're booking, what do you want? You want as much flexibility as possible. You want to, you know, pay, you understand you're going to pay a fair rate for, you know, good products. But it's like, I think sometimes the property manager tries to, you know, squeeze really hard and control as much as they can. And they don't realize that when they're doing that, they're squeezing so hard that, you know, little customers,

you know, little guests are flipping through their fingers and they're missing, you know, a lot of that demand and they just don't see it. So I'll kind of end on that thought, which is like, look to the hotels and copy what makes. sense, you know, or emulate or review, it makes sense, put that in your business, and then don't worry about the other pieces. That would kind of be my thought process. You're not going to copy everything, nor should you, but do the things that make sense. Where do you kind of land on the, on things there? I think there is. I think the hotel industry is a mature industry. We've kind of been run as the wild west. I think you're spot on. There are things that you should absolutely

try to incorporate into your business on the hospitality side. You know, it is. You don't need to run. Rav party numbers, they don't even be dynamically running everything in and out and upside down. But there's a reason, you know, there's a reason that hotels have built up the loyalty that they have over, I mean, probably in some cases,

a century. This is a old and mature hospital. It is, this is, hospitality kind of grew around hotels, hotels and resorts and things like that. We, we're not the red-headed stepchild. We're,

we're, we're a cousin, we're something. We, we, we are the next. generation somewhere along the lines. But we do. We have to learn, I think we have to learn a little bit from our forefathers,

from the people who have been there before. I think if we can take those small lessons, I think that's the thing. Those small lessons can have a big impact. Because you wouldn't get to that point unless that consistency was not playing a role there. Yeah, yeah, man. I have so many thoughts on that, but we'll come to a close to because we will save it for a future episode. got some thoughts on like people say that these things are bad or it's the common narrative these things are bad and yet I'm like you know why does everybody use them then you know it's like

it's like what's the yogi bear line like no one goes there it's uh it's too crowded or something like that um it's it's it makes me think a little bit about these common tropes that people say and then people don't behave in the way that they say that they do but that's a whole different conversation um all good you know one little behavior though that we want people to do paul before they depart for today that's right is leave is a podcast review so they need to go to their app i tuesday uh you know, aka the kind of the Apple podcast app, we get the most downloads there. And then we get the second most downloads on Spotify. If you're listening on Spotify, if you're listening on iTunes, the podcast app there, you click

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