Heads In Beds Show - Should Your Direct Bookings Actually Be More Expensive Than The OTA Price?

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

In this episode Conrad and Paul bring up an idea: what if you charged *more* on your direct booking website compared to what you charged on the OTAs? It sounds counter-intuitive, but there's an argument to me made. Tune in, will ya? 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. I'm your co-host Paul. Happy Thursday, Paul. What's happening and what's going on?

Well, I have no doubt that either when we're texting tonight or when we are talking tomorrow, that we will both be celebrating. series victories because we're both heading into our three, two games now. How did you play in your elimination game? Did you play really good? And, you know, did you shoot the ball well down the stretch like the Celtics did, clanking 16 in a row or was it a little bit rougher? I think we both demonstrated great cases of shooting yourself in the putism.

It was just, I think the Timberwolves had maybe 26 turnovers and like 16 in the first tap. Like, it was so bad and so hard to watch. and we still came within 12 points. So I don't know. We also lost two starters. Don't today. We lost arguably our best player, you know,

top 5, 10 player in the league and an aunt. So I would love a series victory. That's, you know, I want to extend it, see if we can get help back. That's the key. I'd love to square up with Wembe and have some fun. But yeah, I feel a lot better about your chances. That's all.

So good luck, best of luck. And we'll go from there. How are you doing, sir? Yeah, pretty good. I think the, I think Timberwell's got a pretty good chance. The Celtics, in theory, should have a good chance. But, I mean, they had a good chance a few days ago at home, and they sort of laid an egg. So, you know, these things do happen.

Philly, man. I told you I didn't want Philly. And there's a reason for it. This is true. It was Maxie. Maxie was the reason why I didn't want that. But there's a lot to be said for that kind of skill, as it were. Yeah, it's tough, man.

We'll see where it all flushes out. You know what else people sometimes don't want to do. They don't know who admit, Paul, that they might be wrong about something. So maybe I'm a little bit wrong about this, or at least I've shaped my thinking a little bit recently about fees. And we talk about fees. The fees have been a topic of discussion. Oh, I don't know for several years now. So we don't really need to go through the obvious things that have been said about fees.

It's almost a bit of a thought of experiment, perhaps a little bit of a debate today. Your direct booking, should they actually cost? Let's flesh this idea out a little bit. Should your direct bookings perhaps be more than the OTAs, but you provide more value? So that's kind of the concept that we're going to play with today. So you hear over and over again, and I've been on this camp or I've been in this camp before, that of course you should offer a better rate on your website because it will incentivize the guest to make a booking directly.

And we need to offer the guests more incentive to book directly. They're timid of booking directly. They like the fact that they can book on an OTA and get all these so-called protections. So in order to get them to convince them to do a direct booking, we've got to make the economics of that more favorable so that they say, well, I wanted the website to books directly and I saved X amount of dollars, Y amount of dollars. I don't necessarily disagree with that logic. But again, we're just going to play with this.

some of the ideas today of like, what would it look like if direct bookings were actually more expensive on your website? Why? Why is that even a thought that we would have? And how do you actually build some pricing value in your business? So what do your thoughts, Paul? Do you want to go ahead and recommend everybody just jack up their prices on their website? So it's more expensive. What do you think? I mean, obviously, that's, I don't know why you wouldn't be doing that. I'll be back you in a corner very early on here. It is. I think that certainly this is something where, I mean, look at the tools that are out there. Everybody's looking at a price comparison tool of this and everybody's trying to build one.

Correct booking tool. You know, Chris clearly saw some need in the space with shopping behaviors. But what if I think there is that assumption that everybody is using the OTA or the meta search. What if they aren't? What if they organically made their way to you based on, well, let's do a sidetrack here to some of the marketing efforts that you've done? done to the SEO and then maybe some paid ads or doing things like that, but they find you and they're not interested in verbal or they're not interested in Airbnb and they're not interested in booking.com or wherever else. So then what? What incentive do they have to go to be

able to cross shop or go to be able to do some other, go to be able to find something else? And obviously it's difficult to say that, yes, this is the exact buying pattern that we're talking about, but I think we're so quick to assume that we're comparison shoppers and this is, you know, how we do it that, because we do it in the retail side of things. We're buying groceries to all of this type of stuff. But that might not necessarily be the case. And I think when you look at, I think glamping and experiential stuff is a good example of that, because what's think about, you're paying to kind of rough it, but not really rough it.

you're you're paying for that experience more so so let's take it back into the more standardized vacation rental space and say why wouldn't why aren't you or why wouldn't you be giving that same experience that people would be willing to pay that quote unquote premium but again maybe they don't know it's a premium so yeah I guess that this is something it's it's going to be a fun discussion it's a fun thing to kind of dive into and and think about that like how do you create that pricing power so that you don't have to feel like it's a race to the bottom. And you really are taking into consideration all the needs of your travelers and the needs of the homeowners as well there. Well, I think, okay, so at a high level, just to like zoom out for one second, like you're

saying there. The only way you can even entertain this discussion at all of how do I, first all, how do you get direct bookings? How do you get bookings in general is you have a highly desire or property. Okay. So there's your first battle, right? Is that in order for people to be even interested in finding your website, seeking it out directly, the property itself has to be highly desirable, which is both a location thing and amenities thing, a value thing. And you know, you and I talk before we hit record about the idea of Pebble Beach, which is not a vacation rental product, to be fair. It's a hotel resort product attached to perhaps one of the best golf course in the world. And why would Pebble Beach have that kind of pricing power to charge $1,700 for a hotel room?

And the person staying in that hotel room, by the way, doesn't care at all about the hotel. You could put that person in a tent outside the golf course, and they'd be thrilled to be paying $1,700 a night, like the hotel, I mean, I'm now, now being a little facetious at this point, right? Of course, you want reasonable combination for that fee. But it's because it's attached to one of the most high demand, valuable golf courses in the world. So a golfer who loves golf and loves playing unique courses will go and pay that money for that experience. And they'll happen, they'll do it with a smile on their face because of the experience that they're getting through that whole stay, that lodging plus the experience that they're looking to explore there.

And I realize that's like, okay, good good advice, Conrad, go build Pebble Beach, right? Which, you know, it was basically impossible, obviously. But I think it's the line. of thinking of like, what is the guest getting out of this day that I can lean into that I can give more value on that they would consider in the OTA. So I have some more practical examples if we can play with some of those ideas for a second. I have a client who did some time ago did free beach gear. So all their beach houses had like chairs included. It had like beach blankets that had equipment included. So they went to back, they went to pack anything or bring anything from home. Now they just gave that to every guest. But could you not if you wanted to, as hotel brands do,

only offer the free beach gear perk to those guests that have booked directly. Absolutely, you could. Of course you could. And the guest would place a perhaps irrational value or a value of not equivalent to what it actually costs you to deliver so-called beach gear to their property and then pay a premium for that experience. So well, it's $1,100 per night on Airbnb. And it's $1.50 on the property manager's website. But if I book on the property manager's website, I get the beach gear and I get this and I get this and I

don't get those things if I book on Airbnb. Could you not see a version of that where that's, would work. And that's accessible to anybody, right? You don't need to have massive secret, you know, stashes of premium oceanfront property building golf courses in order to execute that strategy, right? So that's one example, I think, where if we think of how some of the hotel brands have actually done a really good job of pushing back, everyone goes straight to loyalty points, like, oh, points or the system or whatever. And that's really hard for a property manager to generate. So I'm not going to even get entertained for a second, but I don't think that's the

solution. But the idea of, well, if I book at the Hilton and I book on the Hilton website, I get the water included. I get the Wi-Fi included. I get all these little things included that I'm going to have a little hiccup. I'm going to have a little issue if I don't book the Hilton on the Hilton website or Hyatt or insert whatever Hilton chain of choice here.

It leads me to do it. And I'm obviously like a direct booking guy, but I've trained people in my family to be like, well, yeah, if you're going to go stay there, like your best off booking on the hotel website, you may even have a more favorable cancellation policy. Again, these are all things that you could do. You could do all these things at a premium price

compared to how the OTAs handle things. And so if you think through the process of what am I giving this more value, then the price becomes, I'm going to say irrelevant, because it's never irrelevant. Price becomes less of a concern. When you're selling in more of a, I can't compare this to that. I can't compare an Airbnb booking to this other property manager's website that I'm considering booking on because I'm not getting the same thing. So when I book on Airbnb, I'm not getting the same things as when I book on the property managers website, you can explore each of those ideas and play with them. And the tax get to the point where the guest goes, oh, yeah, I definitely book directly with you guys because then I get the beach passes and I get the free beach gear. and I get the bike rental for free and I get the Explorey credits or I get the free Wi-Fi or,

you know, whatever, right? Like you can see all the things that could be played with that are worthy of marketing around and you could see a version where the guests would absolutely choose that. And it would be the logical choice for them to do is pay a preview. So that's kind of my counterpoint to as we're exploring this, those ideas. I mean, I think that's a really good point there. And I think it's like it goes down and maybe it leads me to a different question for you about is this an easier concept?

maybe, you know, we're looking at a couple different angles there of if you are in more of a commodity volume market there where it is all about just everything's the same. So how do you stand out? I think maybe then that value add-on makes a lot more sense and drives that value. But do you need to necessarily do that when the property, going back to the quality of the property, when the quality of the property is higher, do you? Do you know, do you know, Do you need to, and more unique? And then, you know, you can't just find another property like that, another vacation rental like that, another whatever that looks like.

Do you, do you then regain more of that pricing power? And maybe take, maybe the other question is, at a certain point, do you get to a point where you don't want to put it out on an OTA or a meta search site because you have enough? And it is, that's probably going to be for a very, very, very unique part. properties, but there's got to be some levels in here where this type of value add-on is going to be much more important in a market where there are 1,000 rentals as opposed to in a market where there are 75 rentals. So, I mean, obviously, you live in one of those markets.

Talk about that a little bit here. Yeah, I think so for reference, like what Paul's referring to there, I'm in Myrtle Beach, and I think when you go look at the air DNA data for Myrtle Beach, actually, let me do a live so I don't make a mistake here. In the past one, I've looked, it's been in the 20, 30,000, range, depending on exactly how you want to define Myrtle Beach. So yeah, 18,754 is what I see in the Airbnb, excuse me, Air DNA page right now for Myrtle Beach. And keep in mind, there's also like North Myrtle Beach and Surfside and all these kind of surrounding communities. So it's 30-odd thousand.

Like if I were to drive an hour either way, you know, I could probably touch 35,000 properties, assuming I was like as fast as Santa Claus on Christmas night. I can touch every property in a second. I think it's incredibly challenging to stick out when you have nothing unique about the property. and I think that if you manage condo inventory, I think your only differentiators are really like service. It's interior design. I think that's a differentiator. If you have a condo property and yours looks better,

looks nicer than all the other condo properties, I think that sticks out on a page because people can be loyal to a building, but they may not be loyal to a unit. So, oh, yeah, well, this unit's better than the one I stayed in last year. I want to book this one again, a little pay premium for that. I think the home angle that maybe would make more sense to your question or what you theorize there,

we have a client that we work with in the island of the Bahama, and there's like 30 homes in the whole island. And so at one point, you had like three homes that he kind of managed or owned directly and then one or two others that he would kind of book for. And I was like, I mean, I kind of joking at one point. I'm like,

hey, you control like a significant portion of inventory in the island with like seven or eight homes because it's not very populated with properties, place, right? But people love this place and they pay a premium to go there as much as $3,000 per night. For a property, it's great, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's not great, but it would not blow you away.

It does, it is excellent, is highly monetized. It's an awesome listing. don't give me wrong. But if you were to look at pictures of it, you would not think that this is necessarily something that would fetch $3,000 a night. Why does it fetch $3,000 a night location? You know, like it has this unique location that is beachfront, you know, this island people really enjoy, you know, it's very serene, peaceful, not crowded, that attracts a certain type of traveler that gladly pays $3,000 a night. And he gets five-star reviews all the time after people pay $3,000 bucks a night, whereas, you know, a $300 a night condo. How could they charge this much for that?

I paid $274 for it over and it's the hedge did for a client offsite meeting. And I got in there and I kid you not, it was an extra like a highway and like all night, I just heard like road noise all day. And I'm like, this is terrible. Like I'm so angry about this right now. And I pay $274. So it's all relative to like what your, you know, what your expectations are versus the overall experience. And I think that everyone exists on that scale on that continuum like you're describing.

And I think that this person that I'm referring to in the Bahamas already gets the majority, the overall and the majority of their booking directly. And they're not big, by the way. So we talk a lot about the fact that most property minors, the best way to get more direct bookings is to get bigger. You know, the data from key data dashboard is super clear. Once you get over that 100 to a property mark, your ability to get direct bookings goes up. In some cases, doubles. Your ability to go from maybe 20% direct bookings, 25% to 40% gets there when you get larger. But there are always examples, counter examples, counterpoints to those

situations. And it's things like that. You have a property that's so desirable. There's enough demand for it that if you just do, frankly, and I'll tell myself here, relatively basic advertising techniques and strategies, am I saying that we're doing something that's that novel or unique that's that hard to do. I like to think we do a good job of it, but that's what we're doing. We're doing advertising on Google. We're doing advertising on Facebook and Instagram. And those techniques and tactics along with this fast-guest ratings and reviews lead him to a very high percentage direct bookings with a few properties. So those are things that absolutely can occur if you have the right confluence of factors working in your favor.

So if you're again, if we were zooming it, we're doing a lot of zooming out today or just like thinking back to like the principles of the business, if you look at your inventory and you realize you have commodity inventory that anybody can manage, anybody could book, there's 25,000 other replacements, then you have no pricing power and no amount of, there's no strategy that Paul and I could draw up that would like massively move the needle. Could you be the best condo in that building? I think that's possible, of course. But the ceiling might be that the best, the average condo does 60 gay year and yours does 72K year. So which is valuable. I'm not saying that's not valuable. That owner making another acre end in their pocket every year is meaningful.

So I'm not diminishing that value. But if you think about building a vacational company that's super successful that's really profitable. It's delivering on the property and the experience that that guest has. And it's not thinking about how can I copy and paste what someone else has done on Airbnb and try to do a slightly better version of that. That's like very incremental thinking. I think the way to really unlock that is to go all the way out and say, how do I make this an experience that's so awesome that people pay thousands of dollars a night for it and they're happy to do it and then work backwards from there. I would agree with that. Maybe it is. Maybe like would you say that by reintroducing, and this is something that this was my main complaint

or my main objection when we did start to see some of the price comparison tools just across all of the other, just across the space, is that why are we bringing another brand into this discussion on our website? Because that just, I mean, even if the number is, again, now we're, now we're teaching people and training people that it's a race to the bottom. And I just, if it helps you convert more, sure. I guess that's maybe ultimately what it's all about. Yes, I think, yes, I think that. I don't know.

It's a little painful for me. And again, and this might be my own personal thing, but once you're introducing Airbnb into the thought process, once you're introducing Verbo into the thought process, we already lost that power. Like, look at this. Maybe we'll put up the search console. or the search trends,

diversions, like from 2016, 17, 18 of vacation rentals versus Verbo versus Airbnb. And it was vacation rentals and Verbo. Now, that's a whole other discussion, VRBO, was everything a VRBO a vacation rental by owner? No, it was not. But at least we had a little more power there. Airbnb is a different brand. That was a concept.

Vacation rental by owner was at least a concept that we could all get behind. It set vacation rental in it. We were still kind of good. So I guess that's where I'm not saying don't use those tools either. I'm not saying don't use those price comparisons because I do think that they can be helpful in the conversion rate. But make sure that you're understanding that as well. Don't just take for granted that every tool that you have out there is actually improving that conversion rate. Take into consideration some of these other factors, the pricing, the property itself.

Because if that's just kind of window treatment and maybe confirming and cost, modifying their decision as opposed to helping them make the decision, then yeah, I think that that's something that we just need to be careful with how we're presenting that data and that information. Because, again, if we do have our idealistic guess that we talked about at the beginning there of, oh, I'm just going to look for ex-vacation rental and X market. And I have no idea what else is out there. I don't know about Airbnb. I don't even know about Expedia. I don't know about booking. I don't know about anything.

I'm just looking for a business. I'm looking for a rental or I could take my family. Well, that's gone now. We've brought them to our website for that initial session, gotten them down the funnel into that, I mean, mid-futtle,

almost to the bottom of the funnel, and now we've introduced, oh, well, now there's somewhere else. Now there's something else that I could at least check and see. Maybe I can shop a little bit. I don't know. That's something that, again,

I don't think that that's, I don't know. This is the thing. We don't know what that buying habit looks like. We don't know what that shopping habit truly looks like. I think that sometimes we do. We take for granted or we assume that because people price shop here and there and there, they price shop everywhere. Maybe that's not the case in hospitality.

Maybe we do have a much more clearly defined end product that what people want is more important then spending an extra $5, an extra $10, or hell, an extra $50 in some cases, if the product is good enough there. So you chew on that for a lot of. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think we see it every day, right? Because we see the fact that a premium product and a product is positioned in a premium way will sell for rates far exceeding, quote-unquote, the market value of what that is. And we could look at any number of hobbies. But again, I think I, why do people like to travel at all?

You know, it's like it's an experience, right? So if we're making a choice based on the experience of what the property manager provides and the home location of views, the presentation of the interior design at home, if we think of all those factors, then I think you get someone in when you're, when someone's on your website, like if we, again, if I go back to that concept or a second, if someone's on your website and they're looking at only your inventory, and by the way, your inventory has congruency to it. There's some similarities between it.

They're in the same location and they're looking at maybe different sizes. but it's all kind of, it's congruent, right? It kind of makes sense together. Then, yeah, that's very possible that they're not going to go compare, or at least not sit there and count pennies. Now, if you're, I mean, if you're trying to charge 10 grand for property that is available, very similarly for three grand on Airbnb at Verbo,

you're probably going to have a hard time, unless you're offering something so unique that I just don't see this delta there. But I think this idea of like, oh, we're lucky to scrape by. We're lucky to get a few direct bookings. You know, let me take off all my booking fees and, you know, and do it that way. But then you also need money for marketing. Like marketing costs money, getting attention to cost money.

Why does Airbnb charge so much? Why does Vibaba charge much? Some people might say, oh, they're greedy and they're taking advantage of you and this and that. And it's like, well, go look at their stock price. If Airbnb was this greedy company that was making insane profits every year, wouldn't their stock price have gone up in the last four years, five years, or whatever since I went public? And it's not.

And because, like, despite the fact their business has grown, the revenue has grown, their bookings have grown. Wall Street, et cetera. Investors are not convinced that this is a great business, despite the fact that they've increased fees, what, twice now kind of in a way? And then they did like the recent mandatory, you know, change to make, basically you pay the full amount. So if Airbnb booking goings up doesn't mean the company's more valuable, then for you, you should just like throw that idea out and be like, okay, well, then

I don't need my bookings to go up. I need my profits to go up. I need to make more revenue per booking. That's more so my objective over like, like I would take 10 homes over 20 or 30 condos, right? Because I'm going to drive more revenue and I'm probably going to drive or let's say the revenue is equal, but I know I'm going to drive more profit. I know it's going to be less work and I'm going to be able to manage it more efficiently to have 10 high quality homes than to have 20 condos. And I'll be able to offer some level of differentiation. So I think that in that world of I've, you come on my website and there's 10 homes that are all listed that all have private pools, that all have great views, that all have lake access, whatever. I'm just making up, you know, a fictional market, fictional example.

And then you find one that you like and you can't even find that same listing on Airbnb. I don't know how your wife makes decisions, but in my house, my wife makes those decisions. And the data that I have in analytics tells me that most people of wives are making those decisions. Yeah. The data is clear that it's women 35 to 55 are the number one people cohort that decides in group. books, vacation rentals, if you go look at all the analytics data that I've access to, which is millions and millions of visitors across. So if that person is one making decision, we're almost, I made this joke with a client

recently, or almost the wrong person to ask about, you know, pricing and power and stuff like that because we're actually not the buyer. We're the marketers, but the buyer is actually, in my case in my house, it's my wife who's the buyer. So it would be more logical to ask her. And she absolutely, 10 days out of 10 days out of 10 will pay a premium for something that she feels like is a better fit for her or is a better fit for the experience that we want for our family on a vacation.

And some level of price shopping, some level of comparison, will always occur in travel bookings from now until the end of time until they put us in pine boxes, six feet underground. But that's not the only criteria that people are going to choose off of. I think personally how I feel about this is that there's a ban that we're willing to spend. There's kind of a low and a high. And then there's maybe a stretch number that if we saw something really liked, we pay that.

And as long as you're within that band and you're presenting the property the right way, I don't think people are worried about 60 bucks or 50 bucks or 80 bucks. I really don't think that that's the thing that, you know, to make them choose at a high level one property versus the other. I don't think anybody goes into travel planning with a number in mind. I don't think it's like $199. I don't think it's not. I think they may have a overall budget.

Yeah. But do they though? Like Americans are more in debt now than they've ever been. But I think that's what it's fair too. But I think that the other thing to consider with the travel budget is it's not just the accommodation. It's not just like that's that's. And that's where we get shortchanged a little bit, I think, is that, or maybe not.

Because I think if you're going to try to find the cheap route, you're going to do that with transportation. You're going to find cheap cash along the way. You're going to find a discount there. You're going to find cheaper airfare. I don't think accommodations are something where we skirt. So I do think that that's something where you do. And again, just presenting more reasons why we do have more power.

Like, my wife is the same way. if you are finding the right things, now I know how to search better. So I get her to the point of where she's going to get those 25 listings. She's actually going to compare. But that's when it's going to happen. Or we're going to find the property manager in the location where she's going, something like that. Cover my bed tracks there a little bit. But whatever it is, that is not where we scrimp and try to save.

And I think that, you know, let's go back for the last decade because that comes with vacation rentals really growing into prominence. Like, we aren't in the commodity side of things. Like, people who are looking true commodity is hotels. That's what they're looking for. They know what they're getting. They're getting the four standard walls. Maybe they're getting the brand loyalty.

They're getting the rewards there. That's where they're getting that value. We have the value on the vacation rental side of things. Let's take advantage of it a little bit more. Again, if you're a condo, maybe you don't. Maybe you are very similar to a hotel. Then you're in that world. play the game. We got to find, yeah, we do probably have to find some ways to get loyalty

involved and really be able to drive people back in. But we can do that with our hospitality. We can do that with some other ways of trying to do things. I think we've changed, changed mind, changed decisions three times in this episode. But truly, it is. It's something that maybe we're convincing ourselves that we should be taking more money for our direct bookings. And maybe we can get everybody on board with this as well. Or the 70% of people who are managing a non-commodity markets and have the opportunity to play that game a little more. Because it truly is. I think we're not giving the traveler enough credit that what they want, they want what we got.

Like, we don't need to oversell it. We don't need to undersell it. We just need to present them with a great end product complemented by a great, hospitality experience and hopefully follow up in marketing down the road so that they'll come back and remember that they had that great experience and we don't have to do the work the second time we're out. Yeah. I'll end on two notes. I know we're coming up against the time wise here, which is that I paid the most for the trip that I took to Kiowa than I paid for any trip for my wife and I, right, that we've ever taken in our 12-year marriage now at this point.

And we've talked about going back. So the most that we ever paid and when I looked at it, went that was really expensive and it'll be awesome to come back for anniversary again next year. That was what we said as we drove away, you know, from, you know, from our last day there. Right. So if someone pays the most, they want to come back and do it again, that probably tells me that you're on the right track there, right? Even if it means like, I'd rather take one great trip like that than two mediocre trips. You know, like that's kind of where we landed as a family making those decisions on travel. Maybe that's kind of one concept to play with. So I kind of, that's, that's one side of it. And the second side of it is I think all this form of thinking can help you,

even if you don't implement every single thing that we talked about today. I think the concept, if we zoom out for a second, I'm just like, all right, what do people care about when they come here? How can I lean into that? And how can I do a better job? And I reminded of Scott Eddie, when he was on the Art of Hospitality, he said that the problem with vacation rentals is that we do have all the space and out of the service. So I like that concept a lot that he's, and it stuck with me, even though, like,

I do a lot of podcasts interviews on Art of Hospitality. And I don't remember a lot of stuff that I say there. Sometimes I listen back the proof. And I'm like, did I say that? Sorry, I'm going crazy here at the end of the show. But that one stuck with me because I'm like, yeah, that is what it is, right? People pick it because they do, oh, it's big and it fits my family. And gosh, this is so much better than the four hotel rooms.

But if they feel like they got really bad service or just mediocre service or no service, that it doesn't give them awesome, warm and fuzzy feelings. It gives them some of that, that medium level of satisfaction. I'm like, okay, that's about what I expected. You know, I got what I got. Okay, that's fine. Sure, I'll leave you five stars, because you may mandate they'll leave you five stars. But did they actually feel like it was a five star experience?

Or was that a met expectations experience? I think that's much more common. I think the goal is for us to try to fight against that and go, not only did they, we gave them high expectations coming in. That's why they paid a premium to put a bow on the episode topic. And then we exceeded them. And then they got more than what they paid for. And that leads to this awesome flywheel of reviews and, you know,

return guests and all your marketing, by the way, you know, Paul and I, what we do works so much better. Oh my God, it works so much better. You know, when you actually have, I guess that's super happy, enjoys what they're seeing, what they're, what they get from staying with you. And they want to come back again again. So that's it. We can end on that thought unless you have anything else, Paul, you want to put a

a little bow on here before we go. That'll do it. All good, man. All right. To your listener coming at the end of this very episode, we need one thing from you. Hopefully, we gave you a five-star listening experience. We need a five-star review. Now it's our turn to beg for reviews.

I know you as a host or manager might also beg for reviews from your guests. Now it's our time to do it to you. And again, we know, we know. Not everyone who listens leaves a review. It's very evident because there are tens of thousands of downloads, and there's certainly not tens of thousands of reviews. So go to your podcast, Apple, iTunes, Spotify. We get the most downloads. Click five stars.

We appreciate that. We'll catch you in the next episode. Have an awesome rest of your day. We appreciate you.