Mike Bayer
You're listening to the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. With over 1.5 million downloads, this is the place to be for all your short-term rental knowledge as part of the Vacation Rental Formula business school.

Mike Bayer
This episode is brought to you by the kind sponsorship of PriceLabs, who will help increase your revenue and occupancy with their dynamic pricing and revenue management tools. PriceLabs have just launched their 2023 breakthrough release of the next generation of revenue management. This brand new cutting edge solution leverages hyperlocal data to optimize rates and increase your revenue like never before. Visit the link in the description of this episode for more information.

Mike Bayer
Without further delay, here's your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer
In today's episode, I'm reflecting back on a great two days at the Vacation Rental Management Association Conference in Orlando. I also have a special guest who is joining us to give us his reflections as well. These are things that you do not want to miss.

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. Now I'm super settled in Gulf Shores. I've got my little podcast studio set up in the corner of the RV; it actually looks pretty good. I will probably take a photo and post it on my Facebook Group, which is The Business of Short-term Rental and Property Management. If you have not joined that, I would suggest you go straight across and do that right now, then you can see the picture of my podcast studio, which, of course, everybody wants to see.

Heather Bayer
Now, as I say, I'm settled and really reflecting back on the last couple of weeks, not only the journey down here, which was very uneventful, but just before that, I went to VRMA in Orlando and it was a fleeting visit. I didn't arrive in until late on the Friday afternoon. Friday? I didn't arrive 'till late on the Sunday afternoon and actually had to leave on the Tuesday evening, because I was completely disorganized and I was only able to book two nights at the resort hotel, so I had to get out early.  It got me home at something like one o'clock in the morning. Probably I will plan better next time and have a little more time, because there were over 3,000 people there. Just an amazing turnout.  It was great to actually see so many smaller operators. I met people that just had two properties and they were there alongside those with 500 and 1,000 properties. There was also something for everyone.

Heather Bayer
I blow hot and cold on VRMA conferences. This was my first one since 2019. I didn't go last year to Las Vegas, didn't go to San Antonio the previous year during COVID. I guess there's a few people who asked me about it this year and said, Should I go? I said, Well, I'm not going to say you absolutely should go because I wasn't sure I should go, but having been, it is very, very worthwhile, really worthwhile. Just for the exhibition hall itself, which was the size of a couple of aircraft hangars and it was just packed, packed with people, packed with inspiration. I guess this was the first time going to a VRMA conference when I haven't actually been a property manager. I wasn't there shopping, which probably made quite the difference because I think I probably looked at things in a different way.

Heather Bayer
Anyway, enough of the ramble. I'm just going to talk a little bit about my experience at the conference, a few of the people I met, and some of the new things that saw that were really quite exciting and I think you should pay attention to. Then I have a special guest for this episode, somebody that I have massive respect for, and that's Justin Ford.... I was going to say Chief Safety Expert. We have this discussion in the interview about Justin's title, and I'd suggested that maybe he should be Chief Evangelist, as David Angotti is now for Guesty, but at the end, I suggest maybe it should be Chief Frightener. But I think something in the middle would be excellent. I'm going to put a post out on the Facebook Group for you to dive in and suggest good titles, polite titles, for Justin. Anyway, that's coming up.

Heather Bayer
But first of all, a little reflection on what really resonated with me at the conference. I didn't get to as many sessions as I wanted to, mainly because I gave my own presentation on owner acquisition and I also was on a panel with Brooke Pfautz, Valerie Hawkins and Robin Craigen and Eric Thibodeaux.  We were talking about the mistakes we made. This all came out of Brooke Pfautz's book, Vacation Rental Secrets, where 52 property managers talked about the 10 biggest mistakes they ever made. We got to go on a panel to talk about our biggest mistakes, which really felt like a confessional because I think all of us on the panel came out with the really big mistakes that we made. But also along with those mistakes, we also talked about what we put in place to address those mistakes and make things better. The best thing for you to do if you're interested in this is to go to vintory.com and get a copy of the book - all proceeds go to advocacy. I think if you were at the conference, you could have got a copy for free, but from now on, I believe there is a charge for it. Definitely take a look if you haven't got your copy of Vacation Rental Secrets yet.

Heather Bayer
So of the sessions I did go to, the one that really stood out was a panel on sustainability. Of course, my good friend Vanessa de Souza Lage was on that panel and she made some really great points.  One of them really struck me and she said, If you are not paying attention to sustainability right now or you have plans to pay attention to it in the future, you may not have a business in 10 years. Now also on that panel, there was a representative from Booking.com, and he was talking about the sustainability survey that Booking.com do every year. I will put a link to that on the Show Notes, because it's really important you pay attention to that, because it has direct relation to what Vanessa had said. Because the upcoming generation of travelers are interested in sustainability. Not just interested, they are becoming passionate about sustainability. This is why Vanessa was talking to that extent that you may not have a business if you're not paying attention to it yourself, because your travelers want you to be sustainable. They want to stay at businesses that promote sustainability. If they want to do that right now, in 10 years' time you will be out on a limb if you haven't put sustainability practices into your business as part of the fabric of it.

Heather Bayer
For more information on that, and once again, whatever I'm talking about in this session will be in the Show Notes, it'll be quite lengthy, so go to Sustonica.com, which is the website that has been founded by Vanessa, because this is where you can work through and get a sustainability certificate.  It's not onerous. You don't have to go through a lot of hoops to get this certificate. The way that Vanessa has put this together is that you just have to meet a certain proportion of the criteria to get a certificate. Once you've done that, then you have to show every year that you increase your dedication to sustainability by meeting more of the criteria. As I said, it's not onerous. There's some very simple things that you can do to make your properties and your company more sustainable and anybody can reach these early criteria. So just getting that Sustonica certificate, that sustainability certificate, that and the badge on your website is just such a great step going forward to meeting the needs of these new travelers. So if there's one thing you do today after you've listened to this episode, go to Sustonica and get yourself registered and just look at the criteria to start with and then select the ones that you are going to work on. I promise you, it's really simple.

Heather Bayer
I have to admit I spent most of my time in the exhibition hall because that's where everybody was hanging out when they weren't attending a session.  So of course, I spent time with my good friends at Touch Stay, and it was so much fun to talk to them. The Touch Stay product just goes from strength to strength, and I love to see the innovations that they're creating. So take a look at the Touch Stay website. If you haven't done that for a while, it's a brand new website, it looks really, really great and you'll be able to see all the new features of the Touch Stay product and I strongly recommend you go to do that. If you're not using a digital guest guide at the moment, you should. That's all I'm going to say, is you should be using one of these. Travelers expect it now. They expect to be able to have the guide on their phone way before they go so they can check things out, they can find out what they can do, the activities. If they want to rent something, they're going to find that out as well. Make sure that if you haven't got a digital guest guide right now that that's an action point for your next quarter.

Heather Bayer
I spent a good amount of time at the HostGPO booth.  Now, a GPO is a group purchasing organization, which is a collective that leverages its total purchasing power to negotiate discounts and deals for its members. I'm reading this directly off the Frequently Asked Questions page on their website. Of course, I will put the website link on the Show Notes. But basically, if you can think about just about anything that you buy for your property, whether it's linens or mattresses or rugs or the smaller items that you want to buy for a kitchen, then you can buy them via HostGPO and get pretty good discounts. What happens is you become a member and then you can see what the discounts are and you just go ahead and buy them. You don't buy them from HostGPO, they just simply get the best deals. They facilitate the ordering process and they provide some guidance. Definitely go to HostGPO and check that out. I'm sure you're going to be hearing a lot more about this company. Their CEO actually took away the VRMA Award of Excellence for, and I'm just can't check on this, but I think it was the best newcomer to the industry. But I will do a fact check on that and add it into the Show Notes.  But definitely check out HostGPO.

Heather Bayer
I also, spent some time with Vintory. I love all the guys at Vintory, love what they do. As I mentioned, Brooke Pfautz, who founded Vintory, is the author of Vacation Rental Secrets. That's how I know Brooke, that's how I know Vintory. But I just want to talk about a new product that Vintory has just launched, or Brooke just launched at the VRMA Conference. That product is called Comparent. Comparent might be the first of its kind in this industry, because what it does is provides homeowners with a marketplace to seek out reliable property managers for their investments. I remember many, many years ago, when I was looking at actually starting up a property management company, and I wanted to check out the competition. I wanted to see who was in the area, what they were offering, how well they did. Comparent would now be able to provide this information. What it does is it allows homeowners to compare property managers in the area and provides the information for them that they need to make informed choices as to which property manager they will connect with. So it's a lot of transparency. And what it will do is introduce a really healthy dose of competition among property managers.

Heather Bayer
I love this product. I think it will be very useful not only for homeowners looking to find a property manager, but also to get property managers raising their standards. Because the transparency that Comparent offers means that you've got to be darn good and you've got to get some good testimonials to reach the top of the pack in Comparent. So it's really raising the bar for property managers. I think if it grows and Vintory can encourage property managers to list, then it will become a very valuable service all round.

Heather Bayer
The third one I want to mention is Minut. I love Minut. It's a company that offers noise monitoring service. What I like most about Minut is that you can use the same product inside and outside. Because when I was running a property management company in Ontario, we really never had the need for noise monitoring inside because most of the properties were very private. Noise inside did not impact neighbors. It's the noise outside that was the big issue. The Minut device can go outside, it can go underneath a patio table or on a deck, anywhere that people gather outside and it will monitor the noise levels, which I absolutely loved.  I wish we'd had that available to us when we were running the company.  So all these things I'm going to put links to on the Show Notes, so make sure you go and check them out.

Heather Bayer
Before I move on over to my conversation with Justin, I just wanted to mention the keynote presentation on the second day, which was by Duncan Wardle, the former Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney, a position he held for over 25 years; it was an absolutely inspiring and motivational session. I'd mentioned it in my newsletter last week, so you may already have seen the TED Talk that Duncan did, which was a briefer version of the keynote that he presented in Orlando. I'll put that on the Show Notes too if you want to check it out. But it was so inspiring. He talked about what he calls embedding innovation into everyone's DNA. Started out by saying, Who here thinks they're not creative? I think a lot of people raised their hands. I did. I don't consider myself a creative person, but I came away from that feeling that absolutely, yes, I am creative. You are creative. Everybody has creativity hardwired into them, you've just got to find it.

Heather Bayer
I'm sure that VRMA will be posting the entire keynote onto YouTube. They certainly have done in previous years. But if you just want to see that shortened version, head on over to that TED Talk and take a look. Yes, that was super, super motivating. I love that session. I also loved that Duncan didn't have any slides. He did everything with a flip chart with beautifully created cartoons on it. Of course, you would, having been in Disney for 25 years. But I did love the idea of just having that flip chart - I might steal that one for future presentations.

Heather Bayer
Okay, great. Enough of what I enjoyed. It was a great event. I'm now looking forward to my next event, which will be the Vacation Rental Women's Summit and the DARM Conference in December. Then thinking ahead actually to next year's VRMA, which is going to be in Phoenix. I always love Phoenix and going to events there because it's so beautiful. Just love that place.

Heather Bayer
Anyhow, I want to move on over and talk to somebody else about their experience of the conference and what was missing or what really didn't have enough attention paid to it.  He's going to be talking about insurance and safety and regulations. It's always a pleasure to talk to Justin Ford from Breezeway. So let's move on over to that conversation right now.

Heather Bayer
So as ever, I am super happy to have back with me once again, Justin Ford, safety expert. Oh, I tell you what, Justin, I just saw that David Angotti is talking about his new position as Chief Evangelist, at Guesty. Why aren't you Chief Evangelist.... Safety Evangelist?  Great title.

Justin Ford
I appreciate that. I've actually talked to my boss about a couple of title changes. He said he's 'marinating' on it. So we'll see where that goes.

Heather Bayer
Okay, Chief Evangelist. That really sort of means..... Does it mean something and nothing? I'm not sure. We shall take a look....

Justin Ford
......I'm happy for David Angotti. I'm good with not having that title, but I'm happy for David.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. So thank you so much for joining me, Justin. We're talking about the Vacation Rental Management Association Conference and our takeaways from it. I'd been talking about mine and what I got from it and the people I met and networked with. Then I came across a post by you on LinkedIn which really resonated with me. I'm going to read a little bit verbatim here. You said if you didn't attend the VRMA Conference in Orlando last week and relied on all the posts you've seen on LinkedIn about it, you'd think all we talked about was AI. You go on to say, It's apparent there's an essential perspective that hasn't received much attention. The critical challenges our industry is currently facing, which can't be solved by AI. The three concerns I see are insurance, regulations and safety. So I wanted to get you on here and put forward your position on this, because I completely agree with everything you said in that post. So I want you to share it with the audience today.

Justin Ford
Yeah. No, I appreciate that. And certainly AI is important, and AI does have its role in there. And I do give a lot of accolades to Brooke Pfautz, Vintory, and Wheelhouse. They're doing a great job, and you're doing a great job talking about owner acquisition, and certainly that's important. But we have some serious threats in our industry. I was in the Gulf Coast recently, and I was working with a rental company down there, and I was due to come back the next morning for training. I said to the gentleman, Could we get started at 8:00? He said, Yeah, it's going to take me a little while to get here. I said, Well, why is that? He said, Well, because I live an hour away. I'm like, You live an hour away from here? He goes, Yeah, everybody does. Everyone who works at this company lives an hour away. We're all inland. I said, Wow. He goes, Yeah, around here there's only two types of people who own homes, people who have two jobs or people who have two homes and people who have two jobs that have real estate. That really resonated with me. It's a huge problem that we have in our industry when it comes to regulations and all these fights that are coming up is, in our industry we don't even have our employees living in our markets to vote and support and help what we need to do with advocacy.  I think that's where we've got to go back to and start with this industry.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. I know this from what's happening in my neck of the woods up in Ontario, and certainly what happened in BC recently with short-term rentals being banned altogether in cities of 10,000 or more. Regardless of the fact that some of those cities are vacation towns like Kelowna. It's a tourist destination. And I'm seeing companies being decimated because from March of 2024, they won't be able to rent anymore. Yeah, it's a big issue. But let's step back a bit and just talk about the conference itself and what your thoughts on it were overall.

Justin Ford
Yeah, absolutely.  We're a pretty shiny looking industry right now. I remember seeing you at conferences back before 2010. You could talk to everybody who was there. Now when we're at these conferences, there's a blending of people that we haven't really seen before. It's been happening the last year or two, but we really saw it. I can't tell you how many people I talked to that said, I have one property or two properties, and there they were doing a lot of research with the intent of growth. The focus in our industry used to be that you had 100, 150 properties or more, you came to the conference and you looked down upon that. You said, Oh, those guys, they don't belong here. A couple of years ago, as you know, the VRMA said, We're going to let the smaller people sign up. Well, they're there, and they're smart. They were bringing in voices and thoughts on our industry that we haven't heard before and I think we can all learn a lot from them.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, totally agree. I remember being at a VRMA a couple of years ago, I think that was when they first started inviting the smaller companies in. Four or five, even less, and there was a reception and I was at that reception for them. The excitement that they had, the motivation, it was palpable. Some of the people I talked to at this event in Orlando who were at that one, they are now doing that growth. They're going through that growth phase and they are savvy. I met one young guy, I don't know whether you came across him and I can't remember his name. I will find it and put his information on the Show Notes. He was 23 years old. He was starting a company in New York State, and he was there to just take everything on board. And every time I saw him, he was animatedly talking to different people, just taking on the information. And when I spoke to him, he said he wanted to talk to the people who'd been in the industry a long time. He wanted to talk to 'the old timers', the old guard, because they had the experience.  And that was wonderful coming from somebody of that age that was interested in learning from that experience as well as just driving forward with what's new.

Justin Ford
I can't even imagine.... I think I met that guy and I met another one like him working in the Washington, DC market. Young, excited. I've got two listings right now, but my goal is to have 30 by the end of the month. And you're like, Wow! Holy smokes! Could you imagine? I mean, you and I both been in the industry a long time.... I won't age us.... but I know that we were both at least before 2010 at conferences. Could you imagine that we could have walked into a conference and gotten some of the big players to basically open up all their secrets and tell us how they got there. And now that's there. That playbook is wide open because of the different great software. I mean we saw so many incredible technologies that are there at the conference. You can now go up in a company like Guesty or Streamline or any of these softwares, they're so well-seasoned, which they weren't when you and I started; some of them didn't even exist.  That they're now able to help quickly accelerate growth for someone who's starting out new, and that's pretty amazing.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. What I like as well is that some of those companies are out there creating space for those very small operators. It's not a case of we're not interested in you unless you've got 100 properties. I've seen the rise of OwnerRez from a company that was just dealing with owner operators to now really making their claim to the space.

Justin Ford
You know, I embrace those guys, the guy from New York you're talking about, the one I met. I embrace them because the reason they're at that conference is they want to be professional. They are good for our industry. That is who we want to see grow, is someone who's coming to a conference that wants to do the right thing. They want to be a good operator. They want to represent our industry at a professional level. That's a lot of what we've been focused on over at Breezeway as well. So it's good and I want to help them too. I'm happy to see them grow.

Heather Bayer
I'm going to take a short break just now to hear about our sponsor, PriceLabs, directly from one of their clients. We're going to be right back with more from this great interview in just a few moments.

Terry Whyte
We own three vacation rental properties and manage 43 others. I've always said the two things in this industry that will kill you faster than anything right now is your rates and your reviews. If you get either one of those wrong, you're going to get killed. I adapted very early to dynamic pricing simply because I realized very quickly I couldn't do it as well as they could. Even having 30 years of experience, knowing my competition very well, probably the two biggest mistakes I made was, I underpriced my inventory too low at peak season, I priced it too high at shoulder season.

Terry Whyte
When I started exploring dynamic pricing tools, revenue management and stuff like that, I realized very quickly that they could do it much better than I could. What you can do in an hour in a PMS, you could do in 10 minutes in a pricing tool like PriceLabs. On a portfolio level, on a group level, on an individual level, they're pretty powerful tools. I have great respect for PriceLabs. That's my go-to pricing tool. Between market data and my data that I pulled from PriceLabs, I'm in a pretty good place here.

Terry Whyte
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Heather Bayer
Thank you so much for that testimonial. It was great to hear how PriceLabs is working so practically with their clients to help them achieve success. Let's go on right back now to our interview.

Heather Bayer
In your post, you talked about the three elements. You talked about safety, insurance, and regulations. And you said, if we don't have insured owners, a market left to operate in, or you have a safety incident in a property, you're not going to be in business anyway. So let's just address these three issues that at the conference were out there in the seminar rooms. They were not as well attended, as we mentioned at the beginning, as some of the... What was the word you used? Flashy? Flashy to get it like?

Justin Ford
Yeah, you didn't hear too much.... I mean, in my slide presentation, I talk about what I see AI doing to help safety, but it's a three-second mention. You know, Tiffany Edwards led a panel discussion at the same time I did with a boot camp on Sunday on safety, and I peeked in her room and I knew what I had in my room. It was light attendance. But when you look at regulations, advocacy, what rent responsibly or what Tiffany... different organizations are trying to do, we've got some real challenges there. It's not just a case of writing a check. I go back to that comment I made at the beach. It's either people with two jobs or people with two homes. Our industry is kind of taking on a position right now of, Let's give money to the people with two homes, the lawyers, to fight for us, versus giving money and trying to build housing and get our employees back in our markets. So there's a lot of discussion to be had. When you're looking at the fact that Bozeman, Montana, just voted that they want to get rid of vacation rentals, yesterday, the state of Colorado just said, Hey, you know what?  We're going to call vacation rentals commercial. It hasn't had the final vote yet. They're going to vote on it in January, but to even get to that level. Now your property taxes are going to quadruple. You're paying seven, now you're going to pay $28,000. That's a huge threat to our industry.

Justin Ford
Then the other one is the economic impact studies. Advocacy is focused on this. This is one of the things we're supposed to be raising money for, but we're not doing a good enough job yet. Now we just saw a case in Nantucket in Massachusetts, where someone who's against vacation rentals, short-term rentals, get out ahead of us. They did their own impact study and said, Hey, guess what? Short-term rentals don't do anything for the island. We don't need them, and here's the proof. That's now the leading headline story for Nantucket, not us getting ahead of it and saying vacation rentals are important. Raising money, creating that awareness, there isn't a state or a county right now that isn't discussing.... Of course, where you're from in Canada, the provinces, British Columbia, that big Airbnb fire that they had in Montreal has certainly got everybody talking up there.

Justin Ford
There is a tremendous amount of regulations looking at coming at us, and we are not yet armed to fight for it. We've got a little bit of help and a little bit of hope, but not when we're not filling the rooms up with people that get that this is serious.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, but this has been going on for so long. I remember when... Oh, gosh, how many years have they been pushing advocacy at VRMA and having the lackluster response? So what's it going to take to really understand that this is going to impact them in a big way?

Justin Ford
You're from Canada, and I love one of the things I often... I talk about you with this, but I also talk about with Canadians. Canadians generally, as a society, are more forward thinking. Hey, if I don't change this light bulb that's at 700 hours, it's going to burn out tomorrow, they're only good for 700 hours. Generally speaking, here in America, we wait till the light bulb's burned out and it's been out for two weeks and we've tripped and fallen and finally go, All right, I guess I got to replace that light bulb. That's what we're doing in this industry right now. We're all just waiting. It almost seems like it's too big. Advocacy and regulation seems so big, but the big players in this industry, boy, do they get really loud. I think of Jodi Refosco and her team in Maryland, two years ago, their state fire marshal said, Hey, we need sprinklers in all your properties. I love Jodi and Joe and they're great, but until that point, it hadn't been a threat. Then all of a sudden, they had to react quickly. And so when we look at that and see how quickly you do have to react when these issues come up It should be a huge wake-up call. You're not immune to it. We have to take on this idea that this is, yes, a very big problem, but we need to get the solution and we need to have a plan in place now and it's not just a couple of million dollars. This is more than a couple of million dollars problem and we've got to put more at it.

Heather Bayer
We're going to come back in a minute and talk about the virtual summit that Rent Responsibility is going to be the virtual… Did I say virtual summit?... that Rent Responsibility is holding next month? And we'll come back to that in a second. But I want to cover the other two issues that you mentioned were almost sidelined in Orlando, one of which was safety. But let's talk about insurance because that's another big one. And insurance is not a sexy topic for anybody, but it's such a paramount topic now.

Justin Ford
There was a gentleman walking around with a UK accent, similar to yours. I know you're originally from the UK, and I don't think many people picked up on who he was, but he was there from Lloyds of London. And if you didn't get a chance to talk to the guy from Lloyds of London there, you missed a huge opportunity. He was there because Lloyds of London is paying close attention. They back a lot of the biggest insurers in our industry, including Proper. When you've got insurance companies that are getting out of our industry, that should be cause for alarm. When I first started doing vacation rentals in 1997, you could walk into a State Farm an Allstate. There were companies like Vermont Life, Holyoke, they would go, Oh, you've got a vacation rental? Sure, we'll insure that. Not a problem. They didn't question it. You can't do that anymore. There's very few companies that are willing to take on that risk. Then even the ones that take on that risk said, Oh, there's been a wildfire near you in the last 10 years? We're not going to insure that.

Justin Ford
Down in Florida, if you want to go buy a vacation rental as an investment property right now and you are going to get a mortgage to do it.  You're going to get bank financing. The bank wants proof of insurance. You can't get the insurance coverage as an invested property because of all the hurricanes. It's a huge problem down there. There are people who can't invest in short-term rentals right now because they can't get insured. That should be a big wake up call. What are we going to do when insurance companies go, You know what? Vacation rentals are too much of a risk. We're not going to insure them. What are we going to do? What's the plan? Because that's happening. It's happening very quickly....

Heather Bayer
And so, what should people do who are worried about this? Where do they go? Who do they talk to?

Justin Ford
I want to just quickly give a statement. I know sometimes being an alarmist makes people turn everything off, and I'm not trying to be an alarmist.  I'm just....

Heather Bayer
Justin, we love your alarmist. I love your statement.

Justin Ford
....I see this stuff. What we need to be doing is taking a look at creating our own fund. I think that's a solution, and I know some of the leading insurance companies are doing that, but we need to create our own fund within this industry that says if we do these certain things, we're willing to insure these properties, and we should be taking a look at doing that as an organization. Other companies, other industries have done things like that in the past. I know that, and we'll segue this into safety, if that's okay. I know that, for example, the safety program that we've been doing with Proper Insurance now for four years, we're coming actually up on the fifth year anniversary, they're not seeing safety incidents from properties when they've adhered to all the safety stuff. They're not even seeing a tree fall on the house because that focus on safety is pulling those homeowners in line and then they're avoiding what are called shock losses. It's the shock losses that the industry doesn't want. They can be going along happily, everything's great. Then a vacation rental burns down in the Outer Banks, three people are killed, three people are in a burn unit.

Justin Ford
That's a multi-million dollar shock loss to whatever insurance company is involved, and that's not worth it for them because that just wiped out all their profits. One house, one incident. So if that house had been prepared better, that wouldn't have happened. So as our industry, if we say, You know what? We're going to set standards, we're going to adhere to these standards, and now we can afford to insure those standards, we might be able to keep pushing forward okay with that.

Heather Bayer
So how are you bringing people on board? I know you're doing... I mean, there's just you. You're everywhere. Not just here. You're down in Costa Rica. You're all over the US. It's got to take more than you.

Justin Ford
Yeah, it is.

Heather Bayer
What's the solution?

Justin Ford
I haven't figured that out. I like your son a lot, though. I know your son, Mike, has certainly been helpful. People are getting it, companies are getting it. There's a couple of vacation rental companies that aren't in business right now because they had a safety incident. I appreciated some of the software companies, the PMS software companies have said, Hey, Justin, can you come talk? Because we just realized we lost two of our customers. When we said, Why are you leaving us? It's because they had a fire death in their properties and now they're not our customer anymore. So we'd better talk about safety at our user conference. That's great. But yeah, you're right. I don't know if my voice is so big it's not letting anyone else in, and I'm sorry that's not what I'm trying to do. We definitely need… I appreciate Eric Thibodeaux with Safer VRs. He's certainly been a voice as well. But we've got to really take a hard look at this, because everybody else gets it. The insurance companies, I spend more time now presenting to code enforcement officers and fire marshals around the globe than I do vacation managers, and it's because they're trying to figure out how to do this too, and we've got to make sure we balance that out.  It's definitely a very important topic.

Heather Bayer
So if you had one message to give to operators and property managers right now about safety, what would that be?

Justin Ford
It's a two-part message. We are eroding the trust of our customers. The evening news, six o'clock news is not a story about a person having a great vacation. It's about yet another fire, another person falling down the stairs. We are eroding that trust. You need to make safety the core foundation of your company. It has to be true. You can't just say it. I'm watching people right now that are going, Yeah, we're committed to safety. Then you look and the smoke alarms dangling off the ceiling. No, you're not. You can't just say it. You've got to make it a practice of life and operations. Unfortunately, a lot of companies are doing it. Robin Craigen has been a huge advocate. We've gone in and worked with him in Colorado. You've got to do the same thing. You've got to say, We're having a safety month. We're going to have a safety policy, we're going to have a safety manager. We care about safety, because we can't afford to have incidents in this industry. It doesn't even matter if Robin is doing absolutely everything he needs to do in Steamboat and Breckenridge, if there's another fire in the Outer Banks, that's the nightly evening news, and now he has to fight that much harder.  We're hurting all of each other when we're letting one part of us not address it. So get on board, start your company again with safety at the core.

Heather Bayer
And where do they get this information? If somebody's up and coming and thinking, Well, I haven't really thought about safety yet, and I'm pretty sure I'm there, but how do I figure out if I am there? What's involved in a safety week?

Justin Ford
Yeah, so what we did at Breezeway is we put together all the regs [regulations]. We made a user manual. It wasn't easy. There's international building code, there's international residential code, there's international electrical code. Then there's the US Consumer Product Safety Council and a similar organization in Canada that mandates how bunk beds and cribs and hot tub covers go on and pool safety fences. And then we've got great leaders in our industry like Proper Insurance who said, Hey, here's the data. 83% of our claims are slips, trips, and falls. We've compiled all that together and said, You do these things - and we're not talking about putting an inflatable rubber ball around your guests. We're just saying, If you do all these things, you're going to minimize the likelihood of a safety incident. It's not hard to do. Once you do that, you're a good community player. You're someone who people in your community are going to go, Hey, we haven't heard any problems over there. Those guys are great. They line the trash up. We don't have parking issues. Everything goes good. We've put it all into the Breezeway Safety Course.

Justin Ford
The Breezeway Safety Course is free for all VRMA members.  It's free for a lot of the other organizational members as well as Breezeway customers. Otherwise, it's $350. Three to six hours online, you do this course, we get you certified. We have elevated your awareness of what safety is that you need to do. When you think about it, three to six hours is nothing. If you want to go load baggage on an airplane for Southwest Airlines, you're going to have two weeks of safety training. This is a very short, focused course that can make sure that you can help prevent these issues from happening.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, you mentioned quite a few things there, and there's just one thing that reminded me of something that we did when I was running CottageLink Rental Management, is that I think whether it came from you, I'm not sure and it was just a simple thing, that I found the recall site for products in Canada. It's just simple. We used to check that once a month. I went to that recall site and it could have been, I don't think there were smoke alarms on there, but I remember there being stair gates, baby gates. We went out to every owner and said, If you've got this baby gate, then you need to return it because there's a recall. That was just such a simple thing to do.

Justin Ford
It is so simple. There's two vacation rental companies in our industry right now that are fighting massive lawsuits over deaths in elevators. They were both in elevators that had been recalled a number of years ago, [this] received significant press, but they didn't address it, and now they may not survive. There's good examples of where to put someone on your team, even if you're a one-person company, when you're sitting down having a cup of coffee in the morning, quickly browse that site because, yes, almost weekly there is some item that's in our vacation rentals that's recalled for some safety issue.

Heather Bayer
I will put… I'll make a note of that, I will put the links to those recall sites and I've got the Canadian one, I will find the US one as well and put them on the Show Notes because, as I said, simple thing to do. Simple thing. Another thing I remember is probably coming from you was about hot tubs and having instructions and guidelines clearly posted by the hot tub. Because, if there's a liability claim, if it was a claim for hot tub folliculitis, which we had on a couple of occasions, and we were able to point directly back to the guidelines that simply said if there is foam in the tub, or if it's discolored or smells odd, you stop using it. We were able to sidestep any claim by just referring to that and other things that we put in place for hot tub use. So it's just another....

Justin Ford
Those signs are important. While we're filming this, we've just had the tragic news of Matthew Perry, who is a big television star, passing away in a hot tub. But that highlights over 300 people a year die in hot tubs. You've got to talk to the doctor and make sure you don't have heart issues and you shouldn't be in a hot tub more than 15 minutes. Those are both issues that we know that have happened in that case. But you've got to have that sign there to let your runners though. They may not think about that or know it. They don't have a hot tub at home. They never cross their mind that, Well, wait a minute. I shouldn't be in here longer than 15 minutes, and I do have a heart issue. I'd better call the doctor and make sure it's okay. If you don't warn them about that, then you're liable. So yeah, absolutely.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. A lot of people don't realize about how liable they can be and how they can offset that liability by being very upfront with the issues that I guess it comes back to being the Chief Frightener.

Justin Ford
Yeah.

Justin Ford
One of the things that was discussed at the conference in the back rooms and occasionally in the bars, and I didn't realize... I knew it was a little bit, but not as big as it was... but how many managers in North Carolina right now have been contacted by a law firm that wants them to testify against one of their peers in North Carolina because of a safety incident. And it was interesting. I was able to see a couple of them came up to me. They're like, Yeah, this law firm wants to pay me $200 to testify against this company that had a death at one of their properties. I'm like, Don't do that. That's in your market. You don't want to testify. They're like, Well, 200 bucks. I just was talking to this other guy who was down the road from you. They offered him $1,000. It's interesting to note when you get into these conferences that people are getting contacted by law firms and they want them to stand up and help them win these cases because there's so many of them. A lot of people learned about that at the conference, certainly too, and that wasn't obviously on the agenda.

Heather Bayer
Well, this has been a great conversation. I don't want to keep you any longer, Justin.  Let's just go back to the Rent Responsibly Virtual Summit. You said everyone in this industry should attend it and it's free. Anything else you want to mention about it?

Justin Ford
Yeah, we're proud at Breezeway. We give money to Rent Responsibly, and I know a lot of other companies do. We need to keep doing that because they're helping the small players and organizations. I'm going to a conference next week as well for the Vermont Short-term Rental Alliance - they're funded by Rent Responsibly and help fight regulations. A lot of VRMA members have properties, Killington, Stowe, and Vermont. All these different organizations, they're supporting and helping fight these regulations. It's important you understand, and they're bringing on some of the best speakers in the industry, you're going to pick up tips that will help you run your business better. That time of year, we're leading into Christmas, things are slowing down. There's no reason you shouldn't be tuned in and fully paying attention to what's happening. I'm excited that I'll be presenting at that along with my peer, Koryn Oakey, from VRMA who, by the way, has just joined the VRMA board - Congratulations to Koryn.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, congratulations, Koryn. I'll be seeing you at the Women's Summit, no doubt. Yes. The Rent Responsibly Virtual Summit is the 12th and 13th of December, and that's virtual and that comes right on the heels of the Vacation Rental Women's Summit and the DARM Conference, which are in Nashville the week before. So get on that conference circuit, whether it's heading there face-to-face or virtual.

Heather Bayer
Justin, it's been an absolute pleasure. It always is to chat with you. We just had such a very limited, almost in-passing chat in the halls of the conference center in Orlando. But this was nice to have a really sort of sit down, focused discussion on the things that really, really matter in this industry.

Justin Ford
Yeah, no, absolutely they do. And I appreciate it. And, Heather, I talk about you almost every session. The fact that you use safety as an owner acquisition tool is a model that others should have. So thank you for everything you do for the industry as well.

Heather Bayer
Well, thank you for being Chief Frightener. There is the title for you. We'll put our heads together and think of something. So if you're out there listening to this, we think Justin needs a new title. So let me know or go to the Facebook Group, The Business of Short-term Rental and Property Management, and let us know what you think Justin should be called - politely, of course.

Justin Ford
Politely, please.

Heather Bayer
Well, thank you so much for joining me on this one.

Justin Ford
All right. Thank you, Heather.

Heather Bayer
Thank you so much, Justin Ford. It was great to get your perspective on the conference and to hear a little bit more about the issues that are so important to us in this industry and the issues that we should be paying so much more attention to, and that is safety, insurance, and regulations because all of these are impacting us and they could spell the end of our businesses if we don't spend time on them right now.

Heather Bayer
Okay, that's it for this week. It's been slightly different. You've got a much greater introduction from me, so I am going to make this 'outro' very, very short and simply thank you for tuning in once again and for being part of our listenership. Please head to the Show Notes for all the things I've been talking about. It'll be quite a long list. Take action. There's quite a bit in this episode where I've said just take some action. Do something today based on something that you've heard in this episode. If you go to the Facebook Group at the Business of Short-term Rental and Property Management, let us know what action you've taken. I'll be in there holding you accountable.

Heather Bayer
Anyhow, sun is shining here in Gulf Shores. The water is sparkling. I think I might head out to the beach, go for a walk, and plan out the next few weeks of great interviews and podcast sessions. Don't forget to check out our Monday episode, which is called The Tipping Point. It's a short 7-10 minute episode that just covers some teaching points on one specific topic. We've done 10 of these now and they've covered everything from the About Us page on your website, a business plan, standard operating procedures, hiring a VA, and many more. We're going to continue to build on this inventory of Tipping Point episodes and I'd love to hear from you if there is anything that you'd like to learn from them. Thank you once again. I'll see you again next week.

Mike Bayer
We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. Don't forget to check out our sponsor, PriceLabs, and their dynamic pricing and revenue management tools. Click the link in the description of this episode for more information.

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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