Heads In Beds Show - Last Minute Marketing Tips To Boost Summer Occupancy

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, Paul and Conrad dive into tips and tricks on getting more bookings this summer, driving last-minute demand and boosting the number of bookings you get to fill in open dates.⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagram🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Head to Med Show presented by Buildup Bookings. We teach you how to get more vacation properties, earn more revenue per property, master marketing, and increase your occupancy. Take your vacation rental marketing game to the next level by listening in. I'm your co-host, Conrad. And I'm your co-host, Paul. All righthost Paul. All right, Paul, what's happening? Good morning. How's it flying?

We are, let's see, we're recording this on Memorial Day. So happy Memorial Day. Um, I have some plans later in the day for that. But for this morning, I'm super excited to be talking about what we're talking about today. It's been a full packed weekend for me. So it's summertime. And I know it is for you as well here, but how are you doing sir? How's everything going in your neck of the woods? Yeah, pretty good.

I can't complain. It's not gonna be a full work day for me, but you know, we try not to fall behind as it were for the listeners. So you're listening to this a little bit later, but we're trying to make sure that we keep on track. At some point we're gonna get ahead. We've been ahead of the past and you know,

it just hasn't worked out that way lately. So we'll make it happen. But for the time being, we're recording on a holiday. But honestly, you know what I think that does, Paul? It's a good segue into today's topic because today is a holiday and you're listening to this a little bit later. But if you look back on your calendars from Memorial Day, were they full? Were they completely full? Because for most of our clients, although they may have reached a high level of occupancy, it's obviously very uncommon that people ever reach 100% occupancy, right? For a given holiday, even if you look at July 4th,

even if you look at Christmas and New Year's and very popular holidays and things like that, we get pretty high. But at some point, you know, it's like, how do we get those last two, three, four bookings, right? So the topic of today's episode really is talking about what are those last minute marketing tactics that you can use to get occupancy? And hopefully, hopefully, you're filling out the last two or three or four or five percent of your inventory. Hopefully, you're not trying to fill the last 50% of your inventory, because goodness gracious, that you'll be in a tough spot if so. But we could talk about all those ideas and topics as we kind of go through today's episode. But yeah, you know, somewhat

maybe gratuitous timing, if you will, that we're recording on a holiday where hopefully people are 100% occupied. But I get the sense that not everybody was 100% occupied this year. So good job by going offline for us. But what do you think on those on those topics and those ideas? It's I think it's an important topic because we are we've all been in the position we all want 100% occupancy. But the reality is, is that's very difficult to attain. And I think it's becoming maybe more difficult to attain as we talk about the shrinking booking window, which is probably gonna be a pretty consistent thread that we're gonna have through the episode today

is that we've seen a pretty dramatic shift downward, not just in like Airbnb, not just in Verbo and some of those OTA bookings, but even for those people coming directly to your direct booking site, those bookings that may have taken place three months ago, four months ago, five months ago before are now maybe taking place 70 days out, 60 days out, maybe less than that. And I mean, for someone who has booked in greater increments or the booking window has been a little longer, that lead time has been a little longer, that can certainly be a little bit concerning. So I think, you know, we were, we're going

to talk about, is it seasonality? Is it trouble? Is it what, what does that really look like here? And then again, getting into some of the tactics to try to fill in some of those times there. So, I mean, we've talked about seasonality many, many times on the podcast here, but where do you start to define the differences between we've got seasonality many, many times on the podcast here, but where do you start to define the differences between we've got seasonality up and down, and we've got trouble within our seasonality? And when are we actually going to take action on those? It's a great question, actually, because I think it's now

getting harder and harder to figure that out. If I were to hop in a time machine or talk to myself, let's say, seven or 10 years ago, when I was getting started in the space, and I were to, you know, tell past me what today was like. I think some things wouldn't surprise me at all. Like a lot of the trends that have happened, a lot of the growth that we've seen, obviously, we kind of predicted COVID. That was kind of a unique situation, obviously. But outside of that event, you know, all the growth and a lot of things that happened, I feel like I could have relatively predicted somewhat accurately 10 years ago, seven years ago.

I don't think I could say that though about the booking window. If you told me, you know, even five years ago, let's say before COVID, somewhere in that range, like, hey, the booking window is going to get completely collapsed, and people are going to be booking massive, you know, five, six, seven, eight bedroom homes, quote unquote, last minute, I'd be like, really? Like, that's the trend? It's surprising to me, because I mean, I distinctly remember talking, and I give this example before in the show, talking with

I think it was Mike Harrington at the time. And this was I think he was when he was still with the resort realty, that might be the case. And I think it was like a call in like March 10, or something. And he was like, Well, that's it. That's how summer is going to go like, because all the bookings that were made for summer of that year were basically made by March 10, or March 15, or somewhere in that zone, right? It was like people started booking around Christmas. By the time we were in the middle of March, it was like, all right, now we know how summer is going to go the rest that's going to fill in, you know, maybe it'll fill in a little bit. But that's kind of how things were. Now it's like, you know, as we know how summer is going to go, the rest that's going to fill in, you know, maybe it'll fill in a little bit, but that's kind of how things were. Now it's like, you know, as we referenced earlier, we're recording this on Monday, May 26. That's like, you know, you may not know how the

next second week of June is gonna look like you might be like, I will get some more filling in. It's just such an interesting trend that I think has occurred. And I think honestly, and I've said this before, again, too, the problem that I see at a high level is that we've trained the guests now that if you wait, you get a better deal. And the shifting market forces of higher supply, right, and more sophisticated so-called, you know, rate analysis tools, have led us to a spot where now people feel like I can get something in most markets if I wait.

And if you're not super duper picky on property quality, you know, maybe you can find something that's really punching above your weight as you were by waiting a little bit. It's so funny because I'm not this way at all. Maybe it's just like everyone's personality is a little bit different and I'm sure drive-to versus fly-to, there's so many different factors, right? We have clients in, you know, Hawaii that we're working with and that's such a different behavior pattern, you know, because you're booking flights and so on, you know, with that versus the drive-to demand. That's so last minute. So yeah, I think you break up a good point. Are you actually in trouble? I think it's really hard to actually know if you're in trouble because it might fill in just fine. You might not actually need to panic. But, but you know, if you've been doing this for five, 10 years,

15 years, 20 years, 30 years, like some of my clients have been, you know, you're just, it puts your brain into a pretzel realizing how much the booking window has collapsed, at least then totally with the clients that we work with. I think that the people, I mean, there are some people who that is not, it's not like that is a regularly tracked data point for a lot of people. So I think that's something that if they feel and I think everybody has a feel for what that booking window is.

And if you can feel it shrinking down and you haven't tracked that over the last years, months, anything like that, I would do that as a, as kind of a, you know, a exercise of some kind tracking your lead, your direct bookings, anything that's coming in through the OTA. Do it for seven days. Do it for 30 days. Do it for something like that. Try to build a picture and try to understand because that lead time can be that double

edge sort of, well, yeah, I can get more bookings and maybe I can get that occupancy up to 80, 90%. But what is it going to take? And when should I start to panic? And I think we've all been on those calls where we are in panic mode. And it's how do we reset expectations, not just for the property manager, for the traveler, because that seven days booking out is not sustainable over time. You know, we're not going to have jobs if that's going to be continued to be the

case, because these marketing tactics are okay, but it's not a strategy. It's not a long-term strategy. Yeah, you can fill in here and there, but at some point, even these tactics are gonna phase out. They're not gonna do what we want them to do. So, you know, you bring up Hawaii, I think that is. That's another good comparison.

I've seen a dramatic shift downwards, you know, even in people going out to more luxurious, more travel bound places. And yeah, this is, is it macroeconomics? Is it this is at the drive to destination? I mean, we've got a lot of different data points that we'll talk about throughout the conversation here. Yeah, I think you're bringing up a great point, which is like, the more high demand the property is, we talked about this

on the art of hospitality feed, probably two months ago now with Ben Wolf, and we came up with this idea on the podcast, which I think I kind of conceptually understood. And then he helps cement my understanding of this, which is this idea of specialty versus commodity. And commodity isn't an insult, by the way, it's really not. I mean, some people might feel that way. I think a commodity property can be a low end property, but actually a commodity property can be a luxury property. I mean, go look in the Destin market. You and I talked about this actually when we were in Destin. You drive down certain streets and there's 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, five bedrooms, six bedrooms, million dollar, multimillion dollar beachfront homes. They've almost become a commodity

in a way. Again, I don't mean that in an insulting way, but it's like at some point there's only so much demand to fill up so many of these homes. And what's very clear is that this is still ongoing. Maybe it's, you know, the velocity has slowed down a little bit, but there's still people going, I can take a cabin in this market and I can make X per year from it. I can build a house in this market and I can get X per year from it. And I think what's happening a little bit, by the way, is this idea of there's an increasing amount of people coming in

and then leveling up the quality of the property. And then other properties get left behind in that. You know, it's like, ah, this location isn't great. The interior amenities aren't great. The design's not amazing. The photography is just okay. I think what happens is some of these other properties just slowly erode. And then I think they can fall off a cliff, particularly if you're very OTA dependent. If you're getting all your bookings from Airbnb and Verbo and you have a property that is on that slow decline, then it falls off so-called the first page of Verbo or the first page of Airbnb. Then it's like this like self-reinforcing negative loop of like, oh man, like now we can't even get any bookings because it's not, there's no history

in Airbnb. It's not picking up any reservations, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it's like, that's kind of the world that we're in. I mean, this is capitalism, right? In a very pure form, which is like the better quality properties run by the best companies tend to win over time. But it's like, man, if you set up shop three, four years ago, you know, even when COVID was booming, you might've thought, I got it dialed in. Like I got this all figured out. Look at my property. It did $100,000 in revenue in 2022 or whatever the case may be. And now you're looking around like, wait, there's now 60 other that are just like mine in the nearby neighborhood. It's become a commodity, right? So the more specialty you could be in price, brand awareness,

quality service, review count, interior amenities, photography, all the things we talked about, right? The more you can at least resist against this change. It's almost like a boulder running down a hill and it's your job to kind of grab that boulder and push it back up the hill, which is hard. That's why I use such a tough analogy, but it's like the more, again, the more commodity you are,

the more you're gonna have to use these tactics to be like, all right, we just gotta put heads and beds as it were. Right. And that's obviously, you know, what people are focusing on. It's not just the occupancy. I mean, it is, you know, we don't talk as much about RevPAR. We don't talk as much about ADR because we're not revenue driven, nearly as much as the people who are moving. There's people that are experts in that. That's all they do. Exactly. I think that that's another thing to consider is that, yeah, if occupancy is down and, you know, 30, 40%, but your ADR and your RevPAR are actually in line. I mean, I think that's, that's not our discussion. Those are things that people also have to keep in mind there is that,

yeah, you want 100% occupancy. But if your revenue is maintaining with 60 or 70% or your revenue is still growing with that 60 or 70% occupancy. Yeah, we still want to fill up those remaining rooms, but making sure they get the full picture of, you know, and making the right comparison where we're going year over year and we're saying, okay, well, last year we had a, you know, I think about Scottsdale a couple of years ago when they had the waste management open, followed by or the same time as the Super Bowl. Yeah, I think I recall that.

I mean, now when those all those management companies are comparing year over year, yeah, it's not going to look the same in the first week of February, or it shouldn't unless you didn't do that well. It's like it's like our new Texas client that was in the that was in the path of the one of my I'm playing on what it was. Yeah, the solar eclipse or whatever. And it was like that was such a random, you know, that air DNA graphic that Jamie posted was such a it was like showing like the occupancy in the path and it was like 99%. And then it was like, why are people looking at the middle of April in this specific zone? It's

like they wanted to see it. Such a strange thing that occurred. But yeah, obviously that screws up your comparisons. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, all right. So let's go through some of these ideas here. So in that first block, are we actually in trouble defining what your gaps are, defining what people are searching for, I think, is two really delicate questions. Because I think if you go and look at what dates people are searching for on your website, for example, you may find that you're trying to push Memorial Day or Fourth

of July or Labor Day or insert holiday here. And no one's actually looking for those days. I saw this reason for recently for a client who was getting a lot of bookings to be clear. But they're like, man, this period is very slow right now. I'm like, okay. We actually in this client's website, we have the ability to see what dates people are searching. I'm looking and I'm seeing a bunch of June dates and July dates and August dates. I'm like, I hate to tell you,

but no one's looking for what you're referencing right now. It's like if you're soft, we have to remind them almost of this particular period. And like if you've done rate adjustments or you've done downgrades or whatever, let's maybe call attention to that. Let's figure out some different ways to get the word out about those dates because you're getting thousands of people to your website every month, and they're absolutely booking. They're just not booking for what you want them to do.

So that's always a tricky thing, right? It's almost like timing everything. You're timing this messaging between you and the guest, right, so I get them to book when you want them to book. You're timing the idea of when they're searching. And again, that's a moving target where you're trying to hit a moving target that's kind of going around here. That's really challenging. But yeah, if you don't have the data, then you really kind of are guessing. I mean, obviously you can look at what's currently booking on your website from even from OTA sources. Of course, that's excellent information. And you can look at what people are searching for in your website. Obviously, you don't really

know exactly what people are searching for on the OTA platforms, unfortunately course, that's excellent information. And you can look at what people are searching for in your website. Obviously, you don't really know exactly what people are searching for on the OTA platforms, unfortunately, but you can maybe make some assessments based on the bookings that you are getting. But yeah, again, common that I see people talking about a period that they're worried about. And then we go look at the data and people aren't actually looking for that period. I don't know if you see the same. Truly, I think that that was that was one of the things I was

proudest about during the end of my time at travel net was the fact that we made a conscious effort to go into all these websites, all the direct booking websites and find ways that we could find some type of search intent there, whether it was grabbing something out of the URL string when they said this date matches this date and then putting that into Google Analytics because the visual was kind of stunning. Like, I mean, to see that bell curve of, okay, you've got, we're in February, you've got people searching for March, April, whole lot in May, whole lot in June, few in July. And just to kind of understand where that booking pattern is. I mean, I'm sure if those same, and if I looked

in those same analytics accounts now, five years later or whatever that is, we'd see a pretty heavy constriction there of what that bell curve looks like right now. It might not even, you know, it might be very different than what we're seeing or we might see all near-term, we might see all far-term. But I think without having that data in place, it's really difficult to get a gauge of, not only, I mean, we can see what's booking, but understanding

when people are doing those searches for specific dates, it's good to know. Now, you want to be able to take some action towards that. And that's where you get putting up those pop-ups or putting up something that's going to notify people, hey, this is what other people are looking at. This is what you're looking at. Fig figuring out some way to drive people in those areas of need that you have on the booking calendar because yeah, with that data, that's great. Okay, all my searches are happening in April, all my searches are happening three months out, four months out. How do you drive people further down that funnel? How do you also create some content to support that search as well? Because people aren't just going to stay with you like we,

they're going to be looking for some activities as well. And so we got some really great insights on, Oh, they're looking for all these April and May dates. Let's talk about the April and May events that are going to be happening or these spring and early summer events, write some blogs about those, and then kind of just complimenting and supplementing some of that as well. That's not these quick fix type of marketing tactics, but still things that you can suss out,

that you can strategize if you've got the data to make those, so. Yeah. I mean, I think that it's always a combination, right, of like, what am I focused on? What are the gaps, actually? I think data is probably more underserved, broadly speaking, in these conversations,

because it's, to your point, it's more like, ah, I we're very, you know, slow in occupancy, or I feel like we're very much this way, then if you go pull the numbers that like the difference may not be as much as you think. So regardless, right, like when we're setting in the agency, see, it's kind of like we kind of have sometimes have to go with the clients, I'm gonna say whims, I don't mean in a bad way, but just like, we're there to help direct what you're trying to do, for the most part, and we're happy to give our input or pull additional resources of information. But if you say I want to focus on this, then for the most part, that's what we're going to do, right? You know, we're going to assume that you have your best interest in your mind and you have your best interest for your owners

in mind. I think that's an easier way to go about it versus assuming, you know, you don't know what you're looking at. Although there are some people, maybe I cross check a little bit more than others because they prove it in the past that they do all go off feel more than real, you know, with respect to occupancy and demand and stuff like that. So, I digress. But just some interesting talking points here. So, all right. So here's some obvious ones. And we talked about this maybe on a previous one, but I'll kind of refresh the listener's memory on this. We now have clients, and particularly our largest client, that's actually getting more bookings attributed to SMS than email for the first time as of last month. So they've been growing their email list for multiple decades. They've been growing their SMS list, like really

strong opt-in, you know, lead focused SMS, you know, lead generation. So phone number lead generation for probably closer to two years. And it's now this last month was the first month where we saw more attributed bookings from SMS than we did from email. We actually don't run this for client, we do other services for them, but I'm in analytics and we talk about performance all the time. So they actually have kind of an in-house department doing this. But fascinating to see the shift in, you know, how many email newsletters are you signed up for? How many do you engage with? How many do you click on? All these kind of things. It's actually very similar to the conversation right now with Google, right? This idea of like Google stuffing a lot of AI overviews into search

results. We're losing click traffic. We're not necessarily losing influence, but we're losing click traffic. I feel that way about email right now. It's like we're kind of on these email lists. People are still absolutely clicking on them. They're engaging with them. But it's very clear that the data tells me that if you're trying to push last minute,

SMS is probably gonna be a better bet for you than email. Both can work. That's my belief with any marketing channel. Any marketing channel can work. So I'm not saying like email's dead. I'm just saying email has eroded a little bit. And SMS is probably a little bit more of an underserved channel right now. And we're trying to adjust in that direction on our side of things of like, if you have a last minute cancellation, could be really compelling, by the

way, we have a client that's doing this right now, people that are signing up for a last minute cancellation SMS alert list, where it's like it's derived to market, again, on our SMS alert list, if we have last minute cancellation, we're going to sell them at basically bargain rates, but only to people who are on this list. It's a way to keep that messaging somewhat close on that side of things. There's somewhat random, they've only sent out a handful so far,

but really high open rates or click rates, I should say maybe. They do have high seemingly engagement rates. It's hard to tell exactly how many people are opening them, obviously, with SMS versus email, but the numbers are there to support that. So yeah, one kind of thing to start us off with here tactically on that note of the conversation is like, you could do last minute marketing through email.

Absolutely. We just had an opening, we have an availability. We have this next week still unfilled. Here's the units that are left. Those are all valid ways of doing it. Obviously email, you've got a lot bigger canvas to paint on, if you will, in terms of design and aesthetic layout. SMS has got to be a little punchier, just with nature of

how limited the message is. But SMS grabs attention a little bit faster, a little bit quicker than email on that side. So I think with the means to do both, you know, I think both is a good way to go about it with the subjects there being if you don't have an SMS list, probably start time to really start thinking about building that out and making that on par with your email list as far as collection goes. Especially for the younger audiences that you're going after, the younger travelers that you're going after, email and SMS are great options. I think probably under thought of and underserved

is actually picking up the phone and calling previous guests. And that's something that for a small mom and pop, for a property manager, probably under 10, 15 units, probably not going to be what's going to move the needle for me. You might have a great relationship with those travelers, but they just may have decided not to come this year. That's the reality of what we've got. But when you do have some of these larger call center type of vacation rental managers that are doing volume, more of a commodity type thing, I do think that it's more an option to say, all right, hey, we're soft by 20, 25% heading into the next two weeks, putting a little

spiff on your team and saying, Hey, let's go do it. Let's go find some outbound guests and past guests that stayed the same period, figuring out ways to do that. So that that was always interesting to see how some of these larger companies incentivize to get some of those near term bookings in, whether it was special offers, whether it was throwing in some additional amenities, whether it was doing some of these special types of perks and offers, the perceived value that they were giving the traveler was far higher than the actual value that they were giving on their margins and everything like that. So I do, I think that that's something that especially, and with those older markets,

I mean, when you have that when your average travelers may be closer to 55, 65, something like that. Yeah, millennials don't answer the phone, but that next generation up still does. So if you are more of that market, and a lot of this is knowing your target audience, knowing that guest persona and knowing who is going to be able to book on a shorter window or be willing to book on a shorter window there. So I do, I still do like the concept of calls because people still call to make reservations.

This is, we are a very digital online world where we like to do things with our fingers, but at the same time, there are a lot of people who, when they're making a booking of $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, just like they don't like doing it on mobile, Lookers versus Bookers, mobile versus desktop, it's the same thing. Some people still don't feel that comfortable going to that desktop and making that. They would still prefer to call, ask any of the questions that they have and make it a more personalized experience. So we can also do that on the, you know, on the short side of things if we need to, if you have the resources to do it.

It's not a terrible idea. It's not advocating to go out and buy a new phone system by any means. But when you've got the resources in place, when you've got a massive database of previous guests and you know, booking windows and things like place, when you've got a massive database of previous guests and you know booking windows and things like that, I think it's a really good idea to test that water. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the way I'm thinking about it, right, is like, if you're, I don't wanna say desperate,

and I don't mean it in that way, we framed it a little bit that way when we were having our conversation about this. But it's like, if you are desperate, you have to be willing to try something, or I'm kind of of the belief that you can't complain. Right. So it's like, you know, to your point, I've heard people say in the past, like, well, you know, I don't know, app on call, we're gonna get such a low, you know, connection rate, etc, etc, etc. And I said, look, we can go up with 1000 excuses not to do something, right? We can come up with any reason of all of why not to do

app on SMS, app on email, one to one-one, not to do these things, right? But the question is, if you want these properties booked, it's kind of like, what are you willing to do to get it, right? Do you wanna just like do the easy thing? Because if so, that's like kind of easy to ignore. It's kind of like the topic that we've talked about recently with a few clients where we talk about reviews. And the data that I've seen from some large clients

that I have data on is that maybe 10 or 20% somewhere in that zone of people who get an automated review response will leave a review. So if you just get you depart from a stay and you get a very clearly templated automated email, thanks for staying with us Paul can leave us a review. That typically will catch 10 or 20% of people. Take that same message and personalize it and make it be known that it's personalized and send it from a different style of messaging. And that response rate can go as high as 50%.

And I've seen the numbers on this with our clients' data that indicate this is the case. So we have a client right now struggling with the reviews, has some bad ones, wants more good ones to offset the bad ones, totally valid. A lot of people wanna do that, obviously. I think it's a good idea to have a lot of good reviews, even if you have good reviews,

it'll take more of, more good reviews, right? Like, it's, I kinda can't overdose on it, right? I was gonna say like water, but I guess you can't overdose on water. But for the most part, it's pretty hard to do so, right? And I'm like, okay, well, like if we put an outbound messaging flow in place that's automated, that's going to get 10 or 15% of people.

For the 90% to 85% of people that are not currently, you know, leaving a review, if we send them a more personalized message based on what we know they did, we're going to get a significant increase in our response rate. We're going to get double, triple, quadruple, even. It's not uncurredive to see a 400% increase

in the number of views left on Google or whatever the case may be by doing a more personalized flow. And it's like, yeah, but that's work. And I'm like, okay, we want the reviews. I don't know what to tell you. If you wanna achieve those things, then you have to go through that process.

So I think any sort of outbound personalized messaging is gonna take you so much further than the automated messaging. And I'm all for it. We're the ones running automated messaging for our clients. That's going to take you decently far. But if you do it outbound call and personalize it, you're going to get so much further than doing it more manually. And it's like, yeah, what's between you and what you want is a bit of work on that side. That's where I'm just struggling to figure out how to get better advice than what we're giving in that respect, but comes up a lot.

And I mean, you taking taking the pressure, I mean, going just looking at reviews, reviews play a big role in all this, too. Because what you do if you kind of do this, you're chopping and you see that there's some of your local competitors that are booked, I mean, and they have all five star reviews. Yeah, there's a pretty good chance that that's at least contributing Is it the only reason that you're not booked? No, but if you have a recent two-star review and everybody else in the area has got five stars

You got some work to do just to kind of cover up that that opportunity will say but that's I think that's a that's a huge Part of this is that as that booking window shrinks I think that third party validation becomes even more important because you know, you have an idea of what that destination, what that market is ultimately going to be. But if it's really coming down to, okay, we're just going to pick one of these spots, reviews are going to play a role. Pictures are going to play a role. Pricing is going to play a role. But I think reviews are going to play just as important. I mean, when we get into the psychology and you can kind of jump into that next year, but the psychology of actually booking last minute is completely different or has,

well, we're going to go with completely different because I want to give you a clear stage to go after there, but that's a part of it. So like, let's think about all these factors that are contributing to a shorter stay window and reviews being one. Okay. How do we impact those reviews? How do we consistently know that our reviews are in line and are going to show the best possible face for your company here? Because people are going to make those shorter window decisions. So I'm going to just hop right into the psychology of doing a short term booking and we'll go from there.

Well, yeah, I think it's I think it's an interesting talking point because it's like, is someone just again, like that behavior that I am sort of like, this is sort of like my my pet peeve right now. This idea of like, the idea that the guest is, you know, now waiting and they they know they're coming to North Myrtle Beach here in July. Maybe July is not a good example because that is our peak demand here, period here. They're coming in September. And I always tell people, hey, September, if you want to come here, it's the best time to come.

Like the weather is still amazing. The beaches aren't completely full. All the restaurants are open. I tell people that. But let's be honest, right? All that messaging doesn't actually lead to a high level of occupancy in September. Like I just referenced, oh yeah, people aren't here during September. So if you're going to come and visit me in September,

we talked about that offline. So let's say you were to do that, that could be fun. I might tell you, yeah, like you might be able to wait till September 1st and then you can find something for September 15th or 16th or whatever the case may be, right? Because it's not gonna be that hard to find that occupancy. So it's like you're planning in advance,

but you're more of a value seeker. You're looking for value, that's why you're waiting. It's like, ah, I'll make my decision later. You know, that that's a plus side, right? I do think that's the difference between that and maybe more of a spontaneous traveler who's like, we're talking about here in May, you might come in September, right? That might be fun. But it's like, that's different than like you and your wife turn into each other this week on Wednesday and saying, let's go to the fishing lodge on for, you know, tomorrow, let's drive up, you know, after you get off work and do that, that could be a completely different behavior. But the net effect of like a quote,

unquote, last minute booking is the same. So it would be interesting to maybe better understand that again, I'm putting my own context or what I think is the case onto it. But I should probably zoom back a little bit, remove my bias for a second and say, okay, if we were to actually like chat with those guests, which may be able to do very easily and ask them a few questions, or we could ask them to fill out a survey or something, and we'll at least get some a little response from it. Particularly we offer them a discount or restaurant gift card or something like that. And we said, you know, we're always trying to serve our guests the best way possible. Was this a trip that you had planned a little while ago, thought in your head,

and then you decided to book it more now for closer to your stay dates? Because you were, like, what was the reasons behind that? Like, it would be good more as like an open text field. Like, I don't want to force people into like a radio button or a checkbox of like explaining what they are. I'd rather just like hear from them, well, you well, we're thinking about it, but we didn't know. And then we thought, well, once we book, we can't get a refund. That's something that we're testing a lot right now with one client where they're basically opted into a service where they can offer a very forgiving cancellation policy to the guest, but then there's a third party company that's backing them if they don't actually get that booking, which I find really interesting

because many quote unquote traditional property managers have very inflexible cancellation policies, which I think might also be stemming to this reason of why would I book last minute? Well, then I'm more sure that I'm going to go, you know, so it's like, I may want to, you may want to go now in September, why not book it right now? Well, I haven't booked my flight yet. You know, I don't know for the 100% certainty if I'm going to go, my kids might have something going on, my wife might have something going on, whatever the case may be, family commitments, whatever the case, you know, might, might slide in there on. And it's have something going on, whatever the case may be, family commitments, whatever the case might slide in there on. And it's like, well, that's why you might not book, right?

There's uncertainty. And if you feel like, well, if I book now, I have to give them that money, you know, half now and then half on September 1st, that's going to create a little bit of that feeling, right? Of like, well, you know, I don't know. So part of this may be self-inflicted, right? Because we make it so hard to cancel. We're now training the guest on that as well.

We'll book last minute. And then, you know, you're more sure that you're actually going to go versus more that spontaneous traveler who's like, oh, no, I just decided on Wednesday that we're coming here this weekend, whether look good, you know, we got off work early, whatever the case may be. So that's kind of my take on it. But maybe there's other pieces I'm missing, or maybe you could paint some additional context on that. I mean, I think I think you've got it there. I think what we've got in the outline is spontaneous travelers versus deal hunters. And I think that there are two different things there. So spontaneous travelers might be less price sensitive, but they want the convenience or they want the experience. Deal hunters, they want, they want price. That's it.

They can maybe you might be able to upsell them, but realistically they've got a number and that's the number they're going to get and they want value. And it is, I mean, that's something that I can remember like a focus, right, I think it was a Focusrite study talking about unexpected opportunities were a key driver for last minute travel, not the price. I mean, that's something that it continues to be pounding the drum across the industry is it is still about the experiences. I mean, that's, that's the other side of this is that people still want something experiential but there are other factors that are going to play into that as well. So you can get those spontaneous travelers with an amazing experience. You might not be able to get those those deal hunters with an amazing experience because there may be more cost attached to that.

So again understanding that there are even within the last minute bookers, different people that you're trying to kind of bring into the fold. So I think that's the one thing that understanding the difference between the two, you can still get people to pay full price if you're presenting them with a better experience than your competitors or then whatever else they were looking at there. That may not be the case with a beyonder. So I mean, as we get kind of more into compromises that we make in this time period, or the periods of need, I think you have to understand who you're really going after. Are you going after those spontaneous travelers that might come and stay with you? Are you trying to drop rates to fill up occupancy and do things like that? So

yeah, what do we were your thoughts on that? Yeah, what note on that? And then I do want to go into pricing because that you brought that up and I think that's a really important side of this coin here. But I do think that one of those people is going to be a lot more responsive to the marketing than the other.

The Spongebob Traveler is going to be a lot more responsive to the market, right? They're going to look and go, you know what? It could be good. It's almost like you want, like if I was dropping that SMS the perfect time for that person, it's like they both get home from work. It's a couple.

They had a tough week, as it were. And it's like, well, you know, be nice as if we went to the mountains this weekend. You'll be nice as if we went to the beach this weekend or the lake or whatever. You know, I always joke about that with clients. It's like we're marketing usually a lake, a beach or mountain. That's like usually what we're marketing, right? And then we're trying to get someone to come in and stay there. That's like, for the most part, what we're focused on leisure side of things, right? Yeah, I do think that knowing that is important. And again, like, we've talked about our behavior of who we might typically see making this behavior,

but do your own research. Like your audience might be different, your guests might be different, the smaller the unit that might be very different than a bigger group of people. Maybe the bigger people's family. That's why it's a large family. Like I have a large family now. And it's like, if we were to go book something, it's got to be kind of a three bedroom type place at this point, right? Where you can't really book anything much smaller than that. So that's the last minute booking. And you think most of the time a three or four place at this point, right? Where you can't really book anything much smaller than that. So that's the last minute booking. And you think most of the time a three or four bedroom home is going to book mostly from people who are traveling multi-generational traveling with family,

family, friends, like meeting different households. It's like, not for me. It's like, I may book that just for my family down the road, because that's what we need to obviously I'll be comfortable as it were. So I think there's some logic on there, but pricing, let's talk about that for a second, because you and I have talked about this a little bit before offline. I don't think it, again, we're not pricing experts, but I do wonder about this a lot. And I wonder about it because the pricing expert methodology seems to be in most situations.

We're going to slowly shave down the rates as we get closer to check-in. That's like a very common tactic, right? And then other people have the opposite philosophy. Again, the more demand the property, I'm going to keep my rates high because I know that someone's going to want to come last minute and I'm going to be the last one standing. I think it's called actually last man standing, revenue management philosophy. Then there's kind of your, the more common one I see is like, closer you get, the lower the night minimums go, and the more the rates get shaped down, right? So it's like, if that were the case,

again, let's ignore my commentary about the behavior that we're training people on just for one moment. But it's like, I think the the problem with that philosophy is that I don't really know if someone's a booker at 220 a night, and they're not a booker at 240. And I, right, so as I do wonder about these like little shit call shavings, it's like, are we actually just cutting off our revenue for no reason? Or is there actually some like data to back up the fact that like, someone is a booker at certain price points and not others, I did a LinkedIn post the other day, which was not well received by these revenue managers. It was this idea of ending prices at nine nines, which is a proven psychological tactic to increase conversions across almost any industry, any test. There's a

lot of data to back up the fact that we prefer or we perceive something for $199 a night to be $100 a night. Basically, we put it in that bracket, whereas $209 a night, even though it's like 10 bucks different messes with our psychology and it seems like it's more money. So that's a very proven thing. And I basically shot down because it's like, well, we can't actually calculate that because there's rates and taxes and number of nights they're booking and so on and so forth. That makes it, you know, to where we can calculate it. And they're right, by the way, I'm not saying that these revenue people are wrong. Maybe some more people comments in that post. But what I'm getting at is just like, I do see this value in psychologically positioning the property as like, what if I gave you three nights for $1,000 all in?

Or again, what if I gave you three nights for $9.99 all in? You know, rates, fees, taxes, everything included. And then it's almost like up to us as far as what the breakdown is between fees and rates and taxes and how much goes to the owner and how much goes to us. That's a complicated formula. I realize we've made it very complicated now the way things are set up. But it's like messaging like that is probably going to work a lot better than just like, yeah, we've lowered it from again, 333 a night to 329 a night or 318 a night or whatever. Because by the time you add everything back in, you know, you go back to a higher level. So I guess what I'm getting at is like, and

people have actually tested lower pricing, and they still haven't reached their occupancy goals. I wonder what the floor is. And I think most people haven't actually tested the floor. How effective is that? I think we just use these like common ideas of like, yeah, we're going to lower, you know, 1020 30%, as people get closer. That's it. And it's kind of like, I do wonder if there's something to be learned with lowering enough where you actually feel you understand what the floor is and then actually building it back up from there and being like, for example, this weekend, if you put a property that's normally 500 bucks a night and you put it at 199 a night, would you get a booking? It's like, maybe, maybe not. So if you don't get a booking, that proves my thesis here that like price is not the only consideration

because if it was certainly the property that normally books for 500 bucks a night would book if it was $199 a night, right? We all agree on that. And if that isn't the case, then it's like, it's worthy of opening discussion around like, is it a marketing problem? Is it a brand positioning problem? I think it's more of that than the other. But I think people have this idea in their head that like the moment I offer the property that's normally 500 bucks for 199, it's going to be a disaster. There's going to be problems. There's going to be issues. And I don't think anyone's very few people actually seem to do that to know if that is the case. Like I've seen property damage occur from people that have paid 1000 bucks a night. And I've seen people that have, I've seen guests that leave a property in

good shape at 99 bucks a night. Right. And of course, the, the lower the price, like the different type of person you might attract in that property, there's somebody to be said for that. But I think that's ultimately what the issue stems from is like the different type of person you might attract in that property, there's something to be said for that. But I think that's ultimately what the issue stems from is like not actually doing the testing to really understand where those friction points are, where the actual problem set is, you know, from an awareness standpoint. I mean, yeah, I think that that's something that I for those people who meticulously track pricing up and down and in

and out and everywhere in between, I think that works. But I don't think people do that. And that's something that I understand that you're hiring someone out for it, or you've got a solution for it, or you've got a managed service, you've got some type of system in place, but still having that kind of that hand count, that manual count, I think pricing is one of those areas, you almost need something like that. You need more of a manual backup in place. And that's something that I would assume all of the major pricing software, they're saying something like that. Because they're not taking it from zero, I don't think. And this is something I haven't had

a ton of conversations with them, but they're not just saying, okay, here's our strategy. Here's your market. Here's going to fit. This is a template that we're going to put on top. First of all, that's just disingenuous and I don't think it's gonna provide a better end user service there. However, that's the thing is that how low do you wanna test? And kind of bringing the owners back into it.

You wanna be where the market is on pricing. I think that's something that up, down, in and out, you wanna be there. But in the back, and out, you want to be there. But in the back of your mind, you do have to think about the homeowner side of things too and making sure what are their priorities. Your priorities as a company may be X amount of direct bookings, X amount of bookings here, X amount of revenue, X amount of occupancy, things like that. What is that homeowner worried about?

Because I think that that's something that has to be part of the discussion. It's not the leading part of the discussion. It's not the be all end all. But if the homeowner is not happy, is happier with 60% occupancy, but they're making the same money year over year, cool. That's fine. And I think that that's, I think that's something that some operators, some managers have to worry themselves or

concern themselves a little more about that. Now we can talk about pricing from the traveler perspective but how is that homeowner gonna feel when their house all of a sudden went from 100% occupancy at X-rate to 50% occupancy at this rate? So that's part of the conversation that you don't like to consider because it's more qualitative but that's what makes the conversation that you don't like to consider because it's more qualitative. But that's what makes pricing and everything relating to this last minute occupancy so difficult is that everybody's got those different goals. The business has different goals and objectives likely than the homeowners, than the operations

staff and this and that. And we just have to make sure somehow we can come together there and find a number, find whatever works for everybody so that we're all happy and everybody's booked and everybody's feeling good at the end of the day there or the end of the season as we come. Yeah, it's an interesting point, which is like, if you, you know, and I've heard, again,

I've heard clients say this to me before, so I know this is a way that people do it, which is like, you know, I received a similar amount of revenue from the last guy, the last property manager, guy, gal, whatever, but I did it with less occupancy, meaning I was able to charge higher rates. And the data tells,

like if you listen to the key data dashboard reports, what they seem to indicate, or they talk about in the past is that the single property host, the small hobbyist host is actually generally pretty poor at deciding what the ceiling is. They actually are pretty good at finding out what the floor is.

So in other words, they can kind of, okay, I'm not getting bookings there, let me see if I lower, okay, I found it, That's a good spot. Okay. And then they kind of slowly bring it back up where some property manager is much more skilled. Generally speaking, this is the data from key to data dashboard. They've talked about a previous presentations at finding out on July 4th weekend, this property will actually go for 1300 bucks a night 1400 bucks a night for that one high demand period, I can see more data than you can. Whereas the obvious host will say, I'm normally in 300. Let me go to 500. That seems crazy, right? And then they get

rid of it and they think, I booked 4th of July, I did a good job, right? Like just for giggles, I brought up the, the tape chart, if you will, or like the rate chart for a Four Seasons Hotel in Boston, right next to Commons, which is like, we walk by it, we think like that's really nice hotel, we've only stayed there one time, but it's really nice. So interestingly, on July 4th, obviously not much demand on July 4th, you can book a night of that property for $597. Okay, two weeks later, or two months later, I should say in September, I'm assuming this is like student week at the university or something like that, that's nearby, it is $1,200 for the same room. So this is four seasons, presumably, smart, intelligent marketers and smart, intelligent revenue rate people over that four seasons, charging between $597 and $1,200 for same room, same view, same everything, about two weeks or two months apart, I should say, excuse me, right? So like, that's a pretty big delta.

I'm assuming they've tested lower rates. And maybe at some point they, again, they know, all right, we can't go over $597. Maybe $597 is their floor there. I don't know what it's like to rape rate, again, rape price a luxury hotel. But it's like interesting to think like, that is how big their spread is.

And again, most of our clients come over the same way. But it's like, have you actually found the floor? I don't know if they have, to be honest with you or not. Good thing. But it's like, you can't complain until you've tested it and like understand what's there. I think most people just make assumptions. And I think assumptions are where you know, we actually have problems and some experiences. I mean, it's think about all those people who are out in Green Bay for the draft, their pricing, you know, now Green Bay and then the entire Door County of Wisconsin, their pricing strategies are off for the next year. That's the reality of bringing 250,000 people into a market. Ari, that doesn't normally happen.

That is not that big. We're talking about 3Xing these cities, and these are not big cities to begin with. So yeah, I always thought, and this is something I saw, I mean, I worked in a restaurant, you could see the like when a football game got done, you saw all of a sudden, oh, everybody's getting this, like this is not, I wish we could have had some dynamic pricing for that because boy, we could have made some ridiculous money at that point.

I think some restaurants are testing that by the way. They're like, yeah, the beer is more expensive on certain days. Makes perfect sense. ridiculous money at that point. I think some restaurants are testing that by the way. The beer is more expensive on certain days. Makes perfect sense. And I'm shocked that we haven't done more of it. The fact that this still remains something that is more hospitality centric is a little surprising. And now again, the consumer ultimately dictates the satisfaction of what's happening there. And I can see McDonald's and all these fast food restaurants trying to do that and all of a sudden not having anybody come through the fast food line. So I do, I think that that's something that,

there are so many facts. That's why this is a fun conversation is because we can point to a lot of different areas where you can look and observe and try to figure out what that underlying cause is, but you're not going to point down to just one. That's why presenting everybody with multiple options of this, these are the marketing tactics that you can try. This is the pricing tactics that we've seen people use. This is, you know, why you, what you have to consider on the owner's side, what you consider on the traveler's side,

all these things just makes our job so much fun and so enjoyable. But it makes having a strategy and not just firing away at it so much more important. Because again, those people who have been tracking their lead time and have been tracking their revenue numbers and know what the breakdown is of direct versus OTAs and all these things, and what the timing is on each of those windows and channels, you're going to have more data to make a more data driven decision on what you need to do to improve these numbers if they're a little off, if they are low, if it is seasonal, all these things. Data is your friend in this case, but you also have to know which data is the most important and what's going to help you drive the best performance for the business long

term. Yeah, can agree more. So I think Paul is probably a decent place given that we're a time here today to put a bow on it. Otherwise we'll do two hour episodes, which I don't think people want. They could email us if they want that email me, conradadbill.bookings.com and just put two hour episodes in the in the sub-describe if you made it all the way here to the end of this one. And we'll do two hour episodes. Well, Joe Rogan, if you will, have some real fun with that. Yeah, exactly. Otherwise, one note here before Rogan, if you will, and have some real fun with that. Yeah, exactly. Otherwise, one note here before you depart, thank you for listening in.

We always appreciate that. Hope you have a great holiday season, if you will. We're coming into summer season, which Paul and I, you've joked about offline that we know less people are listening during the summer, but that's okay. We're gonna still putting out episodes. Maybe you're listening a little bit later on in the year,

and that's okay too. Always a good one for us. Leave us a review. Made it all the way to the end. Obviously, you appreciate things a little bit, or you wanna spend 30, that's okay too. Always a good one for us. Leave us a review. Made it all the way to the end. Obviously, you appreciate things a little bit or you want to spend 30, 40 minutes with us. So go ahead to your podcast app of choice, click five stars on iTunes or Spotify. Data tells us that's where people leave the most reviews. So a last minute thing that you can do before you get out of here and have an awesome rest of your day. Thanks so much.