Mike Bayer

You're listening to the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, and we are proud to welcome back returning sponsor, OwnerRez. Providing a powerful and flexible system for managing vacation rental properties, OwnerRez provides booking and maintenance management, payment scheduling and collection, as well as insightful reporting. OwnerRez will provide you with a long-term booking foundation that is scalable for your vacation rental business while fully managing your channel listings, but still focusing on your brand, your website, and your way of doing things. If you sign up now using the promotional code VRF30, that's VRF3 0, you can get 30% off your first three months. Make sure you're listening to the mid-episode break where you'll hear some great testimonials about OwnerRez and more about this incredible company. For more information about OwnerRes, click in the link in the description of this episode on your smart device. Let's get started. Here's your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer

Today I'm joined by Robin Craigen, a lifelong hospitality professional and the President and CEO of Moving Mountains in Colorado. Robin joined me for the 500th episode of the podcast, and I wanted to have him back on the show for a more in-depth conversation on his experience as a property manager and curator of amazing guest experiences.

Heather Bayer

This is the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer and with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer

Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer. As ever, I'm super delighted to be back with you once again. It's been over a year now since I sold my company, and to be quite honest, it's only in the last few weeks I finally relaxed and realized I'm not responsible anymore for guest happiness. I actually haven't been responsible for guest happiness for a long time, but after 20 years of having the buck stop with me, it was really hard to shake off that feeling that we could always do better. Anyway, it's all lifted from me now; however, of course, I've just transferred that commitment to our newly minted Vacation Rental Formula Business School, but at least I'm in control of that. I don't have to corral cleaning teams or maintenance workers, and I don't have to worry about owners, who decide to swap out a king-size bed for a set of bunks, or decide that they're going to stop by and take their canoe away from the rental property, put it on the top of the car and drive away because they're going on vacation and they need a canoe and then neglect to tell us that they've done so.

Heather Bayer

Those were just a couple of things that I recall happening and having to deal with in the year or two before we sold the company. I don't think I'll ever be rid of some of those things that happened when I thought, Oh, gosh, we could have done so much better. Not sure how we could have done it.... corral-in the owners and stop them from doing these things. However, being a property manager is really challenging in so many ways. It's a real plate juggling exercise. You've got to keep so many people happy and you've got to keep a close eye on profits as well, and it's not easy. There's no one-size-fits-all way of doing it either. It's dependent on so many moving parts, from location, from seasonality, the nature of your competitors, legislation and regulations.

Heather Bayer

It takes such a very special type of person to start a business like this and make it successful. We just don't often hear of what goes on in the background. You can go to these conferences and meet up with these big property managers and it looks like everything runs smoothly, but you know underneath they're like that proverbial swan gliding gently across the water.  If you look underneath, it's paddling like mad to keep that serenity going.

Heather Bayer

In a LinkedIn post earlier this year, Brooke Pfautz of Vintory asked 52 active and former property managers to reflect on their top 10 mistakes. Those responses were real and transparent, and raw in some cases. Those responses have now made their way into a book which Brooke has called Vacation Rental Secrets: The Short-term Rental Industry's Top Experts Disclose Their Mistakes and Share Their Hard-earned Wisdom. You know that's over 500 Nuggets of wisdom that will help anybody that is grappling with this business to do it better than their predecessors did. I wish I'd had this book, I really do. I think everyone of these 52 contributors wishes they'd had this book when they started out. At the end of this episode, I'm going to share how you can get a copy of the book and how to attend a free webinar, where many of the contributors are going to be there to share even more of those experiences.

Heather Bayer

One of those contributors is Robin Craigen. Robin was a panelist on our 500th episode, and today he's joining us to talk about some of those mistakes he made and also to share some of the secrets of his success with Moving Mountains, his luxury rental company in Colorado.  Without further ado, let's move on over to talk to Robin Craigen.

Heather Bayer

Well, I'm so delighted to have with me today, Robin Craigen from Moving Mountains. You may recall if you listened to the 500th episode of the podcast that Robin was part of the panel that we did on that day talking about where this business is going and there was so much that Robin talked about then that I hadn't heard before. So I really wanted to get him on his own, one-on-one, and have a really good conversation. Welcome, Robin. Thanks so much for joining me.

Robin Craigen

Thank you, Heather. It's exciting to be back and nice to have you to myself for a few minutes.

Heather Bayer

Well, we've crossed paths over the years and we've never really had a chance to sit down and have a chat. I love what you're doing with Moving Mountains from what I can see from the website and from hearing you on everybody else's podcast, everybody else has got in before me. When I started out in 2014, I got everybody for the first time. Now they're coming on. It's like, Oh, I was on this podcast, that podcast.

Robin Craigen

But Heather, your podcast is so well established, I feel like I've finally arrived now that I have actually made it to your podcast.

Heather Bayer

Thank you. That is very kind. I'm thinking, here am I still plodding on and there's just hundreds of them coming in now, all these new ones.....

Robin Craigen

.....So many lonely nights waiting for the invite.

Heather Bayer

Well, here you are now. I've spent some time listening to some of the podcasts that you've been on and I have a thing about About Us pages on websites, and I think that every property manager and every host should be open and transparent and tell the people who are visiting that page who they are and where they've come from and why they're passionate about the business. Your About Us page on Moving Mountains is just lovely. I learned so much about you that was so interesting. You've had such a varied life so far that as you ended up into this vacation rental industry, I'd love to have a little bit of a potted.... tell everybody this potted history of Robin Craigen and what those experiences that you've had over the years have taught you about running a successful company.

Robin Craigen

Yeah, I've told the story a few times, but the potted history would be that, after finishing business school I had aspirations to get a ski season out of my system. So I said, before I get a job in the city of London and become a stockbroker, that I'm going to do this and do it once and for all. And to be honest, one thing led to another. One ski season led to a summer in the Greek Islands, led to another ski season. And my entrepreneurial spirit began during that time. I had some experiences at college that showed me what is possible and I came back from the ski business and set up a windsurfing vacation company that ended up being sold to a much larger business. During that time, we learned along the way of the things that we like and we don't like. And what I learned is, I didn't really love working for a big company. And in 1991, a guy came into the office and said, there's this thing, the Gulf War. We're looking to reduce staff, looking to start with who wants to leave first and  mine was one of the first hands in the air.

Robin Craigen

And I took that opportunity to take a sabbatical, did a little windsurfing, sitting on the beach and pondered my future and decided that,, in my dreams was the idea that before I get myself tied down to too much more, I was going to sail across the Atlantic. That journey, hitchhiking across the Atlantic with a flotilla of boats that goes across every year, took me to the Caribbean. I had spent some time that previous summer getting a captain's license and I began a career as a yachtsman. And that's a very fun lifestyle for someone in their 20s into my early 30s, yacht racing and yacht chartering. I learned all about that. And during that time, I met my girlfriend who became my wife, Heather, and my business partner. And together we ran a 72-foot yacht in the British Virgin Islands. And I like being around people that are on vacation, I like the travel industry in itself. When we brought that to the situation of Endless Summer II, the yacht we used to run, it was the culmination of all of that. Plus, I was being shown how to provide a level of hospitality that ultimately transitioned into the company that we formed to bring ourselves to land to raise a family in Colorado.

Robin Craigen

And we took so much of what we learned from that journey into, this is how we're going to do Moving Mountains. This is the experience that we're going to offer, all the things that we did for people on the yacht, anticipating their every need, making a potentially complicated vacation into a much simpler, much more fun vacation experience. Well, we just did all of that for a ski vacation, and that was the beginning.

Robin Craigen

We started with the one house. We used to joke that this one house was like our yacht on the side of the hill.  It didn't move at night, we slept better than we'd slept in the last four years. People didn't try and park their house next to us in the middle of the night. But that was the beginning of the story and many things for us filled-in the way that we had dreamed. We had a couple of kids, we raised our family, and we began growing this business. And we applied so many of the things that we had learned from working on a boat, about being resourceful and looking ahead and never taking things for granted. To be honest, everything seemed so much easier doing hospitality in a house than doing it on a yacht.

Heather Bayer

I cannot imagine the yacht charter business. Having spent some time with my son and his wife on their catamaran when they were doing their sailing trip for a year, it's a very small space. We were family, maybe that's worse, actually. It's worse being family. But when you've got people, and granted, yours was 72-foot, that was quite a bit longer than theirs was. How many people did you take out in the yacht?

Robin Craigen

So it was an average of about six to eight guests. So very comfortable with three crew, myself and Heather as the chef, and we had a first mate. But what we really took away from that experience is how much we could influence the outcome of that week. It wasn't just about taking people to the six or seven spots that we were going to visit during the week. It was about the extra things that we could put into it. And I was stepping into a well-oiled machine. The owner, Barry, had really been doing this for many years, and his turning point was hiring Heather, who ultimately kicked him off his boat to bring me in as the captain. And that became our opportunity to take what he had been doing over the years and take it to another level. And I think it was a journey for him too, thinking, well, what am I doing? Giving my guests, my repeat guests, that I've been cultivating to these two kids. And then him realizing that it wasn't going to be the same experience, but it wasn't that it was a negative either. He had shown Heather and the first mate at that time, really everything that he wanted to put into it and we just simply took that to the next level.

Robin Craigen

And I still think about things that we do now every day that really trace back to our experiences of working on the boat and just how we think about things. I mean, a lot of our approach to property management, it's one part to say that we're in the hospitality business, but a big part of being able to deliver these experiences is being trusted with these incredible homes that we manage. And I think our approach to property management was very aligned with how we were trained to maintain the yacht. There's constant proactive versus reactive. The last thing you want to be doing is fixing something while you have guests on the boat that are trying to have a good time. This is my dreaded nightmare to have to pull up the floor to the engine room while we're sailing to somewhere and try and figure out why the engine won't start or something like that. So it turns into the checklist that we do in the off-season that are proactive maintenance steps, cleaning out dry vents and checking washer hoses. And during the winter, we're always looking at the roofs of the houses we manage, to wait for where the ice dam is going to form because that's going to bring water into the house.

Robin Craigen

All those things have, over the years, turned into a steady trickle of reservations that we have captured, sometimes because other people were not maintaining the homes as well. And we would benefit from those guests that were getting displaced because there was a problem with the home that they were staying in. And for us, it's been a process of reducing down the calls that we're getting at seven o'clock at night. That's a frustration to our team to have to deal with something when you have a guest in the house who's disappointed and needs us to come solve a problem.

Heather Bayer

So let's go back to the beginning again. What were your goals when you started? Well, let's start with how many properties do you have now?

Robin Craigen

We're at about 200 right now, and we're looking at some opportunities to branch out beyond mountains into beaches and oceans. But the core of what we do is, we manage about 200 luxury homes in four ski markets. So Steamboat [Springs], that's our home base, Breckenridge, Vail, and Beaver Creek.

Heather Bayer

So when you started, was 200 your goal? Was 300 your goal?

Robin Craigen

No. And in fact, that's been one of my messages to...... I've done some panels and things like that and so on at conferences, and I've said to people, I think it might have made a real difference to how we did so many things if maybe we'd even gone into this with a vision of we're trying to create this portfolio of homes. We were the opposite of that. Our vision, the company was Moving Mountains Chalet. We started with one house, and that was our vision. That was the horizon for us. When we took on a second home, which I think was in the third year, it was the simple we just added an S. When we ten years later took on the management of a very large private residence club at the base of the ski mountain, then we dispensed with the term 'chalets' because we broadened our experiences into things that didn't fully fit the description of a chalet. And we became Moving Mountains. And that speaks to, Oh, we're at this point. Okay, let's take this fork in the road and let's go in that direction.

Robin Craigen

And it wasn't until 2019 that we, even though we've been hearing it from our guests for many years, that if we were in different markets, they would follow us to those markets.  It wasn't until 2019 that we actually grew outside of Steamboat Springs. And that has been kind of the trajectory that we've been on for the last four or five years now, of rapid growth and realizing that there's a lot more potential to our business.

Heather Bayer

So would you say that was your tipping point, 2019, when you decided to branch out and from there it's been, as you say, upward trajectory?

Robin Craigen

I think people look at you and think, 200 homes - you make it look easy,  without realizing that we spent 20 years getting to 100 properties, and we were very thoughtful about every step of the way. My biggest concern, that I voiced over and over was, I don't want people to say that Moving Mountains was a great company five years ago when it was small and family friendly, and felt like everybody had their fingers on everything. And it's been our challenge. We've challenged ourselves to say, can we continue to make the experience as good as what made us successful in the first place? Can we continue to do that at 200 properties? Which amazingly, and I credit our team every step of the way for this, is we're making it happen. It's really been amazing.

Heather Bayer

You mentioned a number of times the guest experience, and how important that is. In your 10 biggest mistakes, which is your list that is going into Brooke Pfautz's book.....

Robin Craigen

.....I wish I had seen that book 20 years ago!

Heather Bayer

I know, me too.  When I read some of those, I thought, Yes, Yes.

Heather Bayer

For those of you listening, I did mention at the beginning that I'll be talking a little bit more about how you can get hold of the book and how you can come along to the webinar and hopefully see Robin there and myself and 50 others, maybe, towards the end of August. I'll be talking about that after this interview is over.

Heather Bayer

But in your list, you said that failing to develop standards that provide a consistent guest experience was a mistake. At one point did you decide that was an issue and you needed to resolve it? Was this one particular incident or was it something that happened over time?

Robin Craigen

Well, it's been over many years and I'm fond of saying we are the product of our failures more than our successes, in terms of, we made mistakes, we learned from it, we try not to repeat the same mistake again. And one of the mistakes that we made early on, was taking on a home that maybe didn't deliver the wow factor and didn't have the consistency of some of the other homes. We were fortunate that we started at the top end of the market, and that was our core. And then other property owners came to us and said, hey, we'd love to work with you guys, take a look at our home. We'd go and say, yeah, seems like a nice home. Let's add this. Maybe it's good to have something different. What we realized is along with the services that we provide, and we don't just rent someone a house. We try to do everything for them, just as we used to do on the boat. We're arranging groceries and lift tickets and ski school and private instruction and these things as a typical standard. We realized that guests coming into a lower budget home that maybe didn't have so many bells and whistles, didn't want the same services, didn't appreciate everything we were putting into it.

Robin Craigen

And if we did have a guest who has stayed with us in one of our nicer homes, goes to this home because maybe it was all we had available, then there was this disappointment of, well, this home doesn't have flat screen TVs. We've been in the business so long that we've seen the arrival of the flat screen TV. It was all things like that that are the bells and whistles that become an expectation that in the beginning you're excited when you get a house like that. When you've been doing this a while, then today the conversation with a new owner is it's a requirement. We certainly don't want to see anything other than a flat screen TV. We have an expectation that your home is going to have a hot tub and a grill. There's got to be some wow factor. There's got to be a decent view. It's got to be in a good location. And then we began with standardizing things like the kitchen inventory and saying, our guests, like many guests and vacation homes, they truly want to entertain. So there's an expectation of serving dishes, baking trays, whatever you need for baking, which might go far and beyond what the average owner who runs down to Wal*mart and picks up a standard pack of plates and knives and forks and says, Oh, this will do.

Robin Craigen

We're not a cheap and cheerful operation. And where we fail to meet that standard of some of the other homes, we quickly realized that we needed to start drawing a line and saying, This is us. This is what we represent in the market. And thinking about my own experiences of occasionally staying in a hotel and realizing we graduate towards staying in a Marriott hotel because that bed is comfortable wherever you are. And that became a goal of ours is why not have the same linens and the same bedding experience in every one of our homes? Here we are three years after we began that initiative to go right through the portfolio. Now you can say that the same sheets are on every bed in every home that we manage.

Heather Bayer

Yeah. A lot of what you said really resonated with me, because I remember starting out in the business back in 2003. And then, most people when they start out take whatever comes at you, and sometimes it's cast-offs from other property managers. But it's fine because it's inventory.  But it comes to the point where you've got to make that decision. I think it's almost for many of us, it's that luxury of being able to select the properties and be ultra selective. I'm talking to Tyann.....

Robin Craigen

.....I think that's a stage of life in property management. You know you're getting somewhere when you say to the owner, I'm not taking your house unless you do XYZ, and it's got to have this, this and this. And I mean, it's a beautiful thing to watch my team come back to me and say, yeah, I told them we weren't taking it unless they did XYZ. And you know that sometimes probably nine out of ten homes that are knocking on the door, we don't end up taking. That's a milestone. And if you're out there as a property manager and you've had that experience, you should know that you're making real progress.

Heather Bayer

I recall, I think, 2020.... I can't remember when I sold my company now..., 2021, the year before. I look back on how many owner inquiries we had. Something like over 300 owner inquiries in that year. I think we took on less than 20 properties out of that 300.

Robin Craigen

I'm joking amongst other property managers, we all talk about how we are slowly educating the vacation rental owners of this world to how to be a better owner. It's a two-way street. In fact, I think I learned it from one of my owners when we were doing a video testimony and he was willing to speak about what the experience had been. And he said it back to me in this video "Halfway through the first meeting with Robin and going through our home. I realized he was interviewing me as much as I was interviewing him."

Heather Bayer

Yes. And I think that's when you realize that you are achieving success.  You've not necessarily 'made it', because I don't think we ever do that, but you've got to that level.

Robin Craigen

You've learned from your mistakes. I mean, when an owner says, well, we're going to use it for all the busiest times of the year, we just need you to fill in a couple of gaps here and there. We just shake our heads. What we put into onboarding your home and bringing it into the marketplace and building a clientele for your home, that isn't going to work. And you learn to ask those questions before going down that path and being frustrated with the experience. And maybe you're frustrating them, too, because you haven't spoken at all.

Heather Bayer

So do you have a team of people who go out and have these discussions, or is it just you?

Robin Craigen

No, no, it's no longer me. We have truly a business development team. It's really exciting to see the people that we have on our team and how they've taken the ball and they just run with it. So Katie Bell is our business development director. She is out there fielding these inquiries, grilling the owners along with the general manager in that particular market. They will go out and meet with the homeowner, walk through the experience and really learn to set expectations about what it is that... Well, what is it that you're looking for? What is it that we can provide? And it's the benefit, perhaps, of being in the market for as long as we have, in that many of these inquiries are coming referred to us from realtors and other locals in the marketplace. It isn't that uncommon for people to come and say, well, three or four people basically told me for the kind of home that we have, you're really the only company that we should be looking at. And it's not as if we would sit before them and say, how do we win your business? We are fond of saying we're not the cheapest in the market, but we're also not trying to cut corners.

Robin Craigen

And I think that has maybe been the challenge of the last few years, when you've seen so many new types of companies coming into this business, the disruptors, the mass market companies saying, We can do more. We're a tech company. We've got all these tools, without realizing that we have all those same tools ourselves. But we're actually local in the markets, and we've been doing this a while, and you can't cut corners in this business. It's about what happens when things go wrong is typically where you show your value.  I don't like to paint that picture when I'm onboarding somebody and saying, you're going to be glad you signed us. And on Christmas Eve, when your hot tub goes down and we've got a guy who'll leave his Christmas dinner to come and fix that hot tub because he values the relationship he's had with us for the last 15 years.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, exactly. A lot of what you're saying falls right into Matt Landau's Limited Edition. I know you spend a lot of time with......

Robin Craigen

Oh, yeah. We speak the same language there, for sure. Yeah.

Heather Bayer

We're going to take a short break just now to hear about our sponsor, sponsor, directly from one of their clients. We'll be back to our interview in just a few moments.

Adria Hahn

Hi, my name is Adria and I own and manage three homes plus a suite in Page, Arizona, a few hours from the Grand Canyon, and have been actively short-term renting for nearly 10 years. One way I stand out from the crowd is by offering three houses in combinations, plus my neighbor's suite. The larger guest count multi-house listings are surprisingly successful. Some months we have more multi-house bookings than single-house stays. Offering all three houses individually, plus various permutations of two or three houses, plus allowing the suite to be added to any of those, provides tremendous versatility.

Adria Hahn

OwnerRez has been instrumental in the success of my vacation rental business. The expansion from one house to multiple properties introduced particular complexities. OwnerRez's mutual blocking feature has been a perfect solution, instantly blocking the calendars and related listings to prevent scheduling conflicts. I cannot even imagine creating these complex permutations of multi-house listings without having the benefit of OwnerRez. The thought of relying on Channel iCal syncing, uh-uh, no way. OwnerRez's capabilities have been crucial in managing the intricacies of my short-term rental business. The thought of double bookings can be stressful, but with with OwnerRez I can trust that such issues are mitigated, allowing me to focus on providing a top-notch guest experience.

Adria Hahn

Exceptional hospitality for my guests means providing all the information they need to craft their once-in-a-lifetime experience. OwnerRez's automation features have proven invaluable in streamlining communication. Utilizing messaging templates and automated triggers, I can ensure that guests receive the necessary information at optimal times without me manually tracking each individual message. This saves time and allows me to maintain a high-level of guest satisfaction by providing timely relevant info. OwnerRez has transformed our property management workflow. The platform's advanced features and automation capabilities have significantly reduced the time and effort required for various manual tasks. As a matter of fact, I liked OwnerRez so much, that when they were hiring last fall, I took a job and now work on the support team. I like and respect OwnerRez even more now that I can see behind the scenes.

Heather Bayer

Well, that was a great testimonial. And now back to our interview.

Heather Bayer

Tell us about some of the more unconventional approaches you take to enhance your guest satisfaction and loyalty.

Robin Craigen

Maybe this speaks to where we came from, and maybe it was naivety in the beginning that we really went into our first chalet, which was a catered ski chalet, slightly upscale from a standard vacation rental. But we really sat and thought about what is it we want to provide? What is the experience? And we weren't guided by anything else that was in the market. We didn't come in with the idea of saying, Well, let's do what these guys are doing. We almost said, let's do the opposite. And it's been interesting to watch the more established management companies, in Steamboat particularly, move away from talking about 'Unit 101'. Suddenly they've started giving them names. And one day they announced about 10 years ago, we're going to start marketing units individually; light bulb moment!  Like what home owner wants to hear that?  That finally you're going to treat them as an individual. Whereas we were able to go into the marketplace and say, we will represent you individually, your home, your view, your furnishings, your amenities. This will be a unique unique experience, and these guests are booking your home.  And it's bizarre to think, I mean, I feel like that's become more the standard now, but it's bizarre to think that we were changing the rules of the game at the time.

Robin Craigen

We also came in with the idea that we were going to have direct booking relationships with guests. We were at the early days of the the Internet, so it was an expectation that people were booking with us direct. There weren't OTAs. We were one of the first people signing on with VRBO and Airbnb when they came to the marketplace. But by that time, we'd been in business several years, and we had a book of clients that didn't even know about these platforms. So, it is interesting in terms of our time placed in the industry and how OTAs and distribution is something relatively new to us and to the industry. But I think our mindset was always about, we are a relationship business. It's our relationship with our homeowners, our relationship with our our guests that's going to secure the future of this business. And we've never strayed away from that. You're stopped in your tracks when you meet somebody who's been in the business three years and has 300 homes and probably doesn't know any of those homeowners  on the level that we know our homeowners. And they talk about owner churn, they talk about guest churn, they talk about their reliance on the platform.

Robin Craigen

In fact, I even remember asking at one of the breakout sessions at one of the conferences to somebody, what's your direct booking strategy? And he looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. He's like, what do you mean? They just go back on Airbnb and they book again the next year.  So I guess you're in bed with Airbnb forever.

Heather Bayer

So this being the case, I had Annie Holcombe on the podcast last week. She called me an OG, old guard. And because we were the same as as you.  We started in 2003, we were direct booking from the very beginning. Does anybody out there who's been in the business three years now ever heard of HomeAway?

Robin Craigen

No!

Heather Bayer

But I too see these 200, 300 homes and we've just been in business for two or three years. Do you think this is the way it's going? Do you think the relationship business is going to disappear over time?

Robin Craigen

I don't. In fact, I think it's our superpower. I'll go back to Matt Landau's The Theory of Limited Edition.  I honestly think that it's the thing that reassures me that we will always have a future in this industry. There is a place for commoditized lodging experiences. There were property management companies managing thousands of units before vacation rentals became a thing. But that is becoming more understood by the consumer. If you pay $60 a night for a condo down by the beach, your expectations probably aren't that high. You are expecting to get codes by text and to have a property manager that may or may not show up within 24 hours if you have a problem. And that has worked for certain types of lodging for many years. It fits to certain segments of the market. So depending on the kind of experience you're looking to have with your family, I feel like our opportunity is those families that have stayed with us, many people say, I've stayed all  over, and finally I found you you guys, I'm not going to stray away from that now. That's the value in building a brand. That is the path that the hotels have shown us can work.  So when you start thinking about building a brand, especially if you're going to grow into different markets and saying, Well, this brand represents consistency and value and a high touch level of service in any area that they they operate. Long as we don't stray from that standard, then I think that we have an opportunity to continue growing a business. But, it's probably not going to succeed with 10,000 or 20,000 units in beach markets where there's just thousands of condos side by side and they're all trading based on $1 or $2 per night difference in the nightly rate. That isn't the game that we're in.

Heather Bayer

Yeah. And yes, you call units, I hear keys, doors.

Robin Craigen

Yeah, units and keys.  I don't allow that word. I have to train new hires that that word doesn't belong in this company. And we have a short list of other terms and so that we don't allow. It speaks to the mindset, right? Our thought is you're staying in a home. That is the value proposition. Families like to be in a home, and home says comfort and security and safety and fun, privacy.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, exactly. We took years to actually move the Ontario market from calling guests 'renter's. And we were the first to say, no, they're not renters, they're guests. In fact, I went back over some old blog posts I wrote way back in 2008 and 2009 recently, and I was calling them renters. But we made those changes and things will continue to.....

Robin Craigen

Yeah, we figured out who we want to be, and we learned what resonates. And I can't say that we knew all the answers on day one by any means. I think we've learned who we are and we've recognized the value of different things. I think to the power of personal connection, it was a learning experience realizing that take advantage of any opportunity to make a personal connection with the guest. So it begins for us with doing a personal check-in, in-home check-in, which when I've done a vacation rental, I've always loved having a host meet me at the house and get us dialed in, even if it's 10-15 minutes. That's enough to set the tone for the beginning of the stay. When you've just arrived, you've been traveling all day long and you have no idea where anything is.  It gets more comfortable as as every goes by, but I think you're able to accelerate that process when you have an in-person check-in. And we have our people that show up....

Robin Craigen

If there's kids in the group, they go with teddy bears and coloring books, there's an extra little opportunity that's surprises and delights.  The kids are like, wow, and they start running around. And we've learned that if the kids are happy, the parents are happy.

Heather Bayer

Oh, yes. Do you know that still applies when the kids are in their 30s?

Robin Craigen

Oh, yeah.

Heather Bayer

Okay, let's take a step aside, and I want to talk about your tech, please. How has your tech changed over the years? And what's in your tech stack now?

Robin Craigen

Well, yeah.  My tech in the beginning, I mentioned this at the last VRMA International, we started with spreadsheets, I think very much as you did. And that was because there really weren't a lot of property management systems. I think the big one back then.... First Choice or whatever it was. That was too big and too expensive for us when we started. We did start with the spreadsheets. We've been through four various iterations of property management system.  But we've arrived, we're using Track today, and I think we have a pretty first-in-class tech stack. But now what we're realizing is that we need to consolidate that down into a more integrated solution. I feel very fortunate that we're doing this business at this time in the evolution of the industry, because there's so much great technology available today that wasn't around five years ago, that wasn't around 10 years ago. We were jumping up and down when we got our first online reservation, and now, 20% of the guests that book with us click on our website and make a reservation and maybe don't even really talk to us that much. And that continues to be something that we benefit from, because we also know that the consumer expectation is they want an Amazon level of shopping experience.  Right?

Robin Craigen

It was very hard for a small company like us to develop a technology that serves up the vacation to them that they can just go, Oh that's good. Click, buy, $15,000, send, confirmed. All that automation, I think of all the various things that are now an expectation that just roll off the platform that used to involve talking to the the for hours, minutes, days even, sending a booking form proposal to them by FAX.  Waiting for that FAX to come back. The FAX machine chews it up the first time that it prints it. You have to get them to resend it; all these things. Everything was so manual over the years. I go back to the travel industry. I've been doing this for way too long and back to the days of having to send brochures to people. When I worked in the travel industry in London, used to put an ad in The Sunday Times. You'd get a phone call on Monday. Hey, could you send me a brochure? You'd send the the brochure, a week later you get a phone phone call to make a reservation. One reservation on average for every 25 brochures that we'd send out.  So you realize how the industry has changed. I'm riding a high right now with everything that we have at our fingertips.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I remember when I started in the business back in the '90s and started a company called Clearwater Holidays and we were marketing Ontario cottages to the British market. I remember going to Bournemouth to a travel show, a travel exhibition. We had all these very expensive, glossy brochures printed and did exactly that. We had our ads in the Times and the Telegraph, and we got that odd booking here and there. And look at where we are now. Definitely Old Guard Robin!

Robin Craigen

Definitely Old Guard. But I mean, maybe that just helps us to appreciate how good the tech is today. We're using Breezeway for operations management. That has replaced the big whiteboard that had to be transcribed every day with who was coming, who was leaving, who was cleaning, who was doing what tasks. Having a system like that, again, it's a game changer in this industry, because it allows you to think about doing more with the people that you have and being more consistent and more reliable. I can't believe how much we do just using LiveChat on our website. People are reluctant to pick up the phone and talk to to somebody, they love LiveChatting with you and they love texting you and they pretty much want to book from their phone without talking to you.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I saw that so much more just in the last couple of years before we sold that the LiveChat and the the texting, was what people wanted.

Heather Bayer

Okay, we're coming towards the end of the time we have and I wanted to ask you to give some advice to any aspiring short-term rental operators who might be listening to this, and I know there's a lot of them, who aim to achieve similar success. What would you say to them?

Robin Craigen

Well, I'd probably say go out and buy a copy of that book, for starters, because there's a shortcut to many, many years of learning the hard way. But I would say really try and figure out what it is you want to be early on and maybe try to describe that vision because it's going to influence the kind of technology that you decide to bring into your business. So if we had started saying, well, we're going to have 200 properties in four different markets, and we're going to look at different options down the road, then I think we would have probably, more early on, gone for more enterprise level software. But there are perfect software solutions out there for someone who says, I don't want to have more than 20 homes, and I just want to be in the one market. And we all know that that can be a very good business model, too.

Robin Craigen

So I think identify your vision and the tools that you need to get there, because one of the most painful experiences that I know you've been through, and I've certainly been through, is changing your software as you grow. It's like pulling off your shell and putting on a new one.  You go back so many steps in order to go forward. Every year that we had to go through one of those big transitions was a year of flatline growth because we were just completely distracted with making those transitions.

Robin Craigen

I would really advise people to get to know who your competitors are in the market because we really have had a good experience in our local markets where we talk about 'cooptition' as opposed to competition. So having respectful boundaries makes for a better business environment. The second part is get to know the industry. Listen to podcasts like Heather's and like the dozens of others that are out there now because you can learn from the others in this industry, and we are willing to talk about our mistakes, and we're willing to talk about what's working, and go to conferences and really get a sense of what this industry is. Because in that way, I think that you won't find yourself going off into left field trying to plow your own field and create something new. You might realize that it is an opportunity for me to replicate what these guys are doing in this place very effectively in this market and meeting some of the other challenges that we're trying to overcome as an industry, like to be a good player.  Maybe if, collectively, more of us could be good actors, then there would be less regulatory pressure on the industry. We're in catch-up mode, because allowing so many individuals to just go out there and put the homes up on Airbnb and not care about how they were impacting the neighbors. So I think it's all things to do with becoming aware of the industry and learn from others because there's no playbook on how to do this. But there's a lot of information out there now that could guide you to a quicker path to being a successful business.

Heather Bayer

So if you were starting this all over again....

Robin Craigen

I'd never do it.  Never do it!

Heather Bayer

....Not touch it with a barge pole. I was actually saying to somebody the other day, 20 years ago, when we started, I had seven homes of my own. Why did I not just continue to buy and sell homes? That might have been a much easier path to go and let somebody else manage them.

Heather Bayer

But thinking on those mistakes that you made, is there anything else that you would do differently if you started again that we haven't mentioned yet?

Robin Craigen

I think probably the only thing that we were slow getting there was about company culture. I think company culture, they never talked about it in the way that we use it in our business today. When I was in business school, that was never like, hey, today we're going to teach you about company culture.  But, it has been the most powerful force within our company. I would say early on, identify what your vision is for the business and identify what your culture is and what your values are, because getting your team to understand why you do what you do.... This is a fun business to be in.  To be around people that are on vacation and to have people say back to you, This is one of the best vacations we've ever had in our lives. That's a very meaningful career to to have, to be creating those experiences. And when people choose to come back and do that again and again with you, it's like, I really feel good about what we do. And when we hear owners say, you guys do a great job of taking care of our home, it's sort of that validation. Well, it turns out that it's a nice thing to have validation for your work that's positive. So you feel good about going to work every day instead of feeling like, Oh my God, I'm back to the coal face tomorrow.

Heather Bayer

Yes. And I hear it from others, those who are really successful, like Lance and Elaine Stitcher, when they talk about their company culture, the Harrelsons in Alabama down at Orange Beach, Tyann Marcink, who's growing a very lovely company in Branson talks the same. They talk about their people....

Robin Craigen

And the the Casago Team......

Heather Bayer

The Casago Tea. Yes

Robin Craigen

The fact that culture is becoming a day one topic at conferences in our industry is really a sign of good things. I think we're all learning from each And I love how people love to share what their culture is. And we're all not that different, but the ones that are at the front of that are the ones that speak about culture on a weekly, if not daily, if not hourly basis.

Heather Bayer

Yes. I'm looking forward to talking to Lauren Maidwell from Auntie Bellham's Cabins in a couple of of weeks' time, because company culture is very dear, I know, to her heart.....

Robin Craigen

....And that looks like a fun place to work.

Heather Bayer

That looks like a really fun place to work.

Heather Bayer

Robin, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you....

Robin Craigen

...Thank you, Heather.

Heather Bayer

Encourage everybody that's listening to go buy Brooke's book when it comes out. I'll be including some information on that in a few moments. But Robin's mistakes are in there, as are the mistakes of 51 others. I'm looking out for my copy coming in the mail.

Robin Craigen

It's kind of the opposite approach to the way you think you would talk about your business, because we all like to talk about the good things. But, believe me, we all know we've made mistakes. And I mean, the beautiful thing is being able to learn from that and not repeat them. So that's what's made the industry what it is.

Heather Bayer

It was always amazing to see how many we had in common. So it was good to look at that and say it wasn't just me.

Robin Craigen

Yeah. Yeah.

Heather Bayer

Robin, thank you so much. I know I will get to see you, speak to you at a conference near us in the upcoming months. I'll look forward to that.

Robin Craigen

Yes. Thank you, Heather.

Heather Bayer

Thank you so much, Robin Craigen, for joining me. That was terrific.

Heather Bayer

Just talking about yachting and sailing around the Caribbean just reminded me that that's what I was doing three or four years ago or planning on doing when Mike and his wife took their year's sabbatical and bought a catamaran and that was just absolutely wonderful. I'd love to do that again. Maybe when Robin and Heather build out Moving Oceans I can get to try out a little bit of yachting again. That would be very, very cool. Anyway, it was super interesting to hear Robin's take on the industry and how he has built Moving Mountains to the huge success it is now.

Heather Bayer

And just as we'd finished recording and I was saying something about leaving the business after 20 years and he said he's not there there yet.  He's definitely not anywhere near that point of giving this up. After so many years, he's definitely doing something right.

Heather Bayer

So, as I've mentioned a couple of times, Brooke Pfautz's book, which is called Vacation Rental Secrets, is going to be available very soon. I'll put a link to where you can go and find out about it in the Show Notes and a link to the free webinar that's to be on the 29th of August, I believe, and you can just come along.  I think Brooke is marshaling as many of the 52 contributors to be on that webinar. So that's going to be a lot of fun as well. Is anybody going to get a word in edgeways? We all want to talk about the mistakes we made and what we learned from them because that's what it's all about. I love this idea. As Robin said, I wish I'd had this book when I was starting out. Me too!

Heather Bayer

Back in 2003, and I've mentioned this many times before, I had absolutely no clue how to run a property management business when I started. I made a ton of mistakes and was probably still making mistakes up until the last couple of years when we sort of got things really ironed out and running smoothly. So head on over to the Show Notes and you'll see all that information, or just go to vacationrentalformula.com and go to 'Podcasts'. You'll see it in the the bar at the top.

Heather Bayer

Go take a look at our new website. We're very proud of it and it really is coming along.  There's loads of information on there. We've got 10 Steps of the Vacation Rental Journey, if you like, or The Short-term Rental Management Journey.  You can go into each of those steps and each one is a learning piece of its very own, and I'm building on those all the time. I'd love to hear your thoughts on our new website and if you found it interesting.

Heather Bayer

Of course, we want to see more people on our Facebook group, which is The Business of Short-term Rental and Property Management. It's a fantastic group. There's just over 4,000 members there and it always makes me feel good when I see a question asked and within half an hour or an hour there's half a dozen responses and all these very, very clever, experienced people are jumping in and offering some help. It's one of the few groups that I know of where nobody has ever mean to somebody else. Some of these groups can be really a little bit harsh. Apart from the fact that I don't tolerate that and I'll remove any mean comments anyway, it is really a nice group and there's a lot of helpfulness and kindness in there. So take a moment if you're not a member of The Business of Short-term Rental and Property Management Facebook Group, to go along and join.  We'd love to have you.

Heather Bayer

Okay, as ever, if you've got any questions, if you've got any comments, if you've got any suggestions for the podcast or for me, let me know at heather@vacationrentalformula.com. If you are that way inclined, I'd love it if you would leave me a nice review, because the more reviews we get, the more people get to see the podcast and become new listeners, so thank you for that. And thank you for listening once again. It's always a pleasure to be with you, and of course, I'll be along next week.

Mike Bayer

This episode was brought to you by the kind returning sponsorship of OwnerRez. Don't forget, if you sign up, use the promotional code VRF30, that's VRF3 0, to get 30% off your first three months of usage of OwnerRez,  which is an internationally recognized leader in vacation rental software. You can click the link in the description of this episode on your smart device or head over to vacationrentalformula.com to find out more.

Heather Bayer

It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com.  We'd love to hear from you and I look forward to being with you again next week.

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