In this bonus episode this week, we have podcasters Scott Fasano, Adam Norko, Conrad O'Connell, and Wil Slickers joining together with me to talk about The Great Debate, Short-Term Rentals Versus Vacation Rental Management. Is this something we really need to be concerned about and can we resolve it? Listen in.

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.

Well, hello, and welcome to this bonus episode this week of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and super happy to be with you. No lengthy introduction today, just a brief synopsis of what we're talking about. Adam Norko from the Art of Hospitality Podcast did a post on LinkedIn a few weeks ago called The Great Debate, and it talked about the conversation, shall we call it a conversation, the chasm that has arrived seemingly between those who call themselves short-term rental operators and those who call themselves vacation rental managers.

It's not a new discussion, as you'll hear, but it is one that probably needs resolving. We're hearing about this a lot. I hope this discussion lends a lot of wisdom to the subject, and maybe it will contribute to resolving what is becoming somewhat controversial right now. In this roundtable, we had Scott Fasano and Adam Norko of the Art of Hospitality Podcast. Wil Slickers from the Slick Talk Podcast, Good Morning Hospitality and the Hospitality FM Network, and Conrad O'Connell from Heads in Beds and Build-Up Bookings. This was a great group of people. I was so honored to be a part of it and I hope you enjoy it.

[No further proof-reading/editing has been carried out on this third-party debate.]

All right. Well, this is weird. This is like an inception moment right here. Podcast on a podcast on a podcast on a podcast maybe?

Very meta.

Very meta. Well, this is fun. This is a conversation I've been looking forward to. I know we've all been chatting to build up to this moment. So for all the listeners of all the podcasts that are listening to this episode right now, this is a fun roundtable discussion. I'm going to call this for myself, The Great Debate, as Adam's article that sparked this all as the Great Debate of Short-term rentals versus vacation rental managers as the title. What do we call ourselves? Who are we? What's this industry? It's becoming more and more of a thing. So that's my intro for this. I guess I'll leave the mic open for anyone else to jump in or kick off. Adam, it maybe makes sense to have you start at all.

Yeah, happy to maybe run around and give quick introductions, but at the same time, maybe build some context around what we're talking about here. So this stemmed from a blog article that I had put out a few weeks ago, and I'd post on LinkedIn, and there were some conversation around it. To Will's point, the title was The Great Debate: Trying to Discern Between Short-term Rentals and Vacation rental management. One, is there value in trying to define the differences between those two models? Are there differences between those two models? And what's the value of trying to create some of those differences? It's been some really interesting discussions. And before we hit record, we were commenting on how the discussions have carried on. So I think that was probably three weeks ago since I posted that article on LinkedIn. And since that time, we've seen multiple podcasts that have come out talking about a similar vein. What is the difference between short term rentals? What is the difference between vacation rentals? What are the guests' and homeowners expectations? What are the manager's expectations? So I think there's a lot of value in this discussion. And we can get into where some of those value pieces are, and not only on the guests and the homeowner's side, but for us as managers.

What is the business models that we're creating? So definitely looking forward to this discussion and getting input from this group.

Yeah, I want to say, Heather, I want you to maybe pick us off. Let's have the OG.

This is not a new conversation. This is nowhere near a new conversation. I remember back, and here we are going back into the late 1990s, having this exact same conversation, because at that time, Vrbo was VRBO, which was vacation rental by owners. This discussion was going on because Vrbo, see, I've actually got to Vrbo now, VRBO would not allow property managers to list on their site because they were seen as not being as hospitable as the independent owners were. So here we are, 23 years later, 24 years, maybe 25 years later discussing the exact same thing. So that's where I'm coming from. I have some views on this, and I'm sure those are going to come out. But it was interesting to see the VRMA Conference opening with this question, and there was no resolution there. It was a really strange opening at VERMA for those of you who were there. We're all used to somebody lively and dynamic climbing on the stage and firing everybody up. And instead we were hit with this discussion on are we short term rentals or are we property managers? Who else was there?

Yeah, I was there. Yeah, same team back.

Yeah, I won't name names, but someone looked over at me and said, if this was a podcast, I would have turned it off already.

Oh, gosh. Hopefully that won't happen on this. I think, Heather, you just said something, though, that I wrote down in my notes leading into this conversation. And I think we could all agree potentially I would love to hear if anyone doesn't. But I think we could all agree the term property manager doesn't really address anything. I think we should scrap that off the table because I know people that are property managers on an apartment that I've leased an apartment from and they're a property manager, just like how I could be a property manager of a short term rental or anything else like that. So I would love to to see if you guys have maybe a different opinion that property manager can just be scrapped or not.

Well, I think the benefit of saying property manager is that it can be descriptive of both of these types of inventory, right? So you could manage an apartment building in New Orleans and say that you're a property manager. Even if you allow short term stays versus long term stays, you could also say you're a property manager if you're in the Outer Banks or Myrtle Beach or Ocean City or something like that. So it's a nice general catch all. So that's the pro maybe to it in that respect then. I think the con is that, like you said, it's... Well, back to Heather's point too a little bit the idea that a single host would be more professional in 2,000 than a property manager. I mean, it depends on the host. Nowadays, I would say there's some hosts that do a phenomenal job. Go look at reviews and ratings of a superhost of a single property or two properties on Airbnb that takes it really seriously. And they might have better reviews than your average or below average property manager. So that's the trouble, I guess, with it. I've always bucketed it into three buckets of single-property host, multi-property host or property manager.

And that's not perfect, but it feels like the most app description that we've come up with. And we're quickly trying to categorize someone for our own purposes, for lead generation and marketing and things like that. But I don't know if that's optimal. I don't want to put 15 options at a drop-down. Do you do short term, long term? Are you urban or whatever? So I pick three just to make things a little bit simpler. But I don't know if that's actually optimal from my point of view.

We spent 20 years as a cottage rental agency. Property management never came into it, but we did the same job. But I think it was a little bit more descriptive.

So that's a good point. And I think Will, to your point, property management is pretty broad. And the only time I'll really use property management is if I'm talking with someone in the industry who understands, hey, I'm talking about property management. I'll use that as shorthand just to cut through some of the noise. But I agree that that's too vague. But, Heather, when you talk about cottage management, that outside. Is that niche to the Canadian market that you were in that people referred to it as cottage marketing? Because I think some of this is really a search question, right? Are people not going to find you if you didn't use cottage?

Yeah, I think for the Canadian market, cottage rental, that's what they're searching for. They're not searching for short term rental. They're not searching for a property management company. They're searching for a cottage. They're searching for the property that they're looking for. So it could be in Europe, it's villa, villa rentals.

I was going to say holiday too, Heather, right? The idea in the UK you would call it a holiday. You would even call it a vacation, even if you were thinking of similar markets. So there's lots of language nuance as well.

Yeah, holiday let is what it's known as there. Right.

So some British listeners like listening and saying, Finally, you guys got to that point. They were probably banging their head against the headphones the whole time not realizing that we didn't get there. So that's the trouble, too, I guess, right, Adam? It's like even if we're doing, quote unquote, the same thing in a beach market in the UK versus doing in a beach market in Florida, we're catering to a similar type of audience. Even the words we use to describe it wouldn't be the same. But I think maybe the way that you brought it up, right, Adam, was this idea of urban versus vacation. And that, I think, is a more meaningful distinction. The reason that you would go to a beautiful cottage in Muskoka is the same reason you might go to Blue Ridge Georgia. So we use different words, but I think the guest persona is the thing that maybe I would like to go into next maybe is who you're marketing to and the reason for someone traveling is a more meaningful distinction in my mind. And that's where you can draw some lines around why someone's traveling in the first place.

Conrad, and maybe you've got a feel for this from the marketing side, I don't. But do you think that guests are actually searching for short term rental, or is that just a term that we use in the industry?

They do, but at very, very low rates, relatively speaking, to terms like vacation rentals, right? So whenever we have a client in an urban market, you can find people searching for New York City short term rental, or you can find someone searching for Miami short term rental. Those searches are out there. But in some cases, I've seen them be 10X, 20X, 50X less than other searches in certainly destination markets. So if you look at Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Beach vacation rentals, there might be 25, 30,000 people a month searching that keyword during a busier search time and offseason might be a lot less. Obviously, it's very seasonal in the search demand side of things. You might see 200 searches for short term rentals in a market like that. And then potentially the volume could be flipped the other way in an urban market or more people search short term rentals than vacation rentals. But the trouble with that, even I've learned is that going bidding on those keywords and Google ads and getting traffic from them is they're short term rental? Sometimes people are looking for things that aren't really what we offer either. So they're looking for temporary housing or corporate rentals or they're looking for something like that.

So even that term, I don't think, is that well defined because Google is constantly trying to show, if you were to bid on that term in Google, Google would keep showing your website or other websites next to things that are very different from the traditional average, so-called average short term rental property manager in my mind. So that makes it even more cloudy. But to answer your core question, yes, but it's often we're talking on this much search volume, 20,000 versus 200 or 300. So it's almost meaningless in terms of actual intent in many markets.

I want to bring in what Zach, Bozycruz was talking about to give him one a little bit of a shout out for not being here next time, Zach, you better not decline and have another meeting pop up or else we'll hunt you down. But if he's listening, I doubt it. But figured I would love to know maybe, Conrad, on the search side, I have had a lot of owners. Again, we're a property management company, or maybe I'd take that word, we're a vacation rental management company. We're not big, we're pretty small. But a lot of our owners, either they're interested in signing with us or have come to us and sign an actual contract, have actually said that they found us either searching Airbnb management or other things like that. And so from the consumer standpoint, Heather, I know this has obviously changed as you've been in and you've seen it from cottage rentals to property management. And this conversation has been happening for 23, 24 years. But now that the consumer side is getting so heavily Airbnb, that is it even fair to say that we need to define a term for the industry, for the consumer?

Because I doubt, in my opinion, I don't think we can ever change the consumer side. I don't think I can tell all my travelers and all my guests and all your travelers and guests, Hey, we're not Airbnb. We are short term rental or vacation rental. I think we needed to find the name for our industry. And I've always gone to STR is Urban, VRM is Destination. I look at Moving Mountains as an example. They're definitely not a short term rental manager. They are a vacation rental hospitality brand versus where you have Front Desk, who I love, Jesse Di Pinto and the whole team there, but they're definitely an urban side, but they still offer hospitality. They're just in an urban market with a multifamily building. So that's where I struggle with. I don't want to change my consumer or my guests. I want to figure out why does this have to be fully defined, I guess, as VRM or STR and have a versus again against it, because I think you guys may have tuned into the panel that we had with Amy Highnote, Steve Milo, Mike Sjogren, Eric Mohler, Matt Landau, myself. But it definitely seemed like the industry was at each other's throats in that conversation rather than actually saying, We're all doing the same thing.

We use the same tools, a lot of the same tools, if not similar tools that maybe one person's on Guesty and one person's on Host of the Way or whatever, but same product, right? It's a PMS. I guess maybe is the conversation more defining this for each other rather than the guest?

That's the way I see it. This is an argument we're in for our purposes and not for the guest purposes because it all boils down, doesn't it? Regardless of what market you're in, if you're an urban market or a destination market, how we perceive, how we meet and how we exceed our guest expectations, it doesn't matter what market you're in, we all should have the same goal in mind. And does calling ourselves something different make that a different experience for the guests? It seems like we're spending such a lot of time talking about names and not getting down to the really core stuff that if we can actually embrace, if we can create the experience for the guests that they expect and then exceed it, then we're embracing hospitality and that's what the business is about.

Yeah, so I agree. And I think this has been right. And you can feel there's tension sometimes and there's other times. It's just like, Oh, God, here we go. We're having this conversation again. But I think the tension comes at the highest level, and that is most of us will blame all of the regulation on the single property hosts. Hey, they're just loading stuff on Airbnb, and they're the ones creating all the problems. And I look at it, right? So you've got the host and you've got the customer, right? And my view is more where they're both trying to commoditize the business. I think in the passionate heart for the industry, I think that's where the rub comes from my perspective. What we're building with Delmar Beach Vacations is the complete opposite of commodity. I'm looking for a very specific set of owners, very specific brand, and we're going to build it so people know who we are and they're going to come to us. I despise the Vacasa model because they're just churn and burn and it doesn't matter. They don't care if they're answering the owners. They don't care if they're really handling the guests.

There's plenty of both and move on. That's where I feel like the dynamic of tension exists. We just want to look and say, if you're just in the churn and burn, then just go over there and churn and burn. If you're in it for, hey, I want to grow a brand, I want to grow a business, then go over here. I think there's a line in between where those two models do conflict sometimes. And, Will, we just finished listening to your podcast with Eric. And one of the things he said, and you guys said a lot of really good stuff, but one of the things he said is most of my guests through Airbnb are only going to stay once. And then I'm just off to get the next one and then the next one and the next one. And again, that feels like churn and burn to me, right? And you just let them go. And again, there's an all right model and it's going to produce money and it's going to do all those things. But really, I want to look at it and say, I think the vast majority of us believe we're building a business that's going to be here and we're going to have a brand name and the people are coming back to us.

I think that's where the tension exists, but I could be wrong. That's just my personal view.

But I think some of that could be market dependent too, Scott, even within the world of vacation. So I've given this example before, and it's the property managers in Hawaii. They actually have very low repeat booking rates, not because it's not a vacation. I mean, it's a very vacation thing to do. You aren't probably traveling to Hawaii for business. I mean, some people are, but it's the minority. But you just don't go to Hawaii very often. So especially if you're an East Coaster. I don't know if you've been to Hawaii, Adam, but it might be something you do one or two times in your life if that. We might go if you're on the East Coast, you might go to Bahamas or you might go to, I was just in a few weeks back, places that are easier to access. So I learned that I had a property manager that I worked with in Hawaii for several years, and the repeat booking rates were sub 10 %. It was like eight % of people would rebook if we looked at a 24-month window, which was very low. And at the time I was like, It makes our list a little bit less valuable, too, because we're not marketing back to a list that actually wants to stay again.

Well, they want to stay again, but they're just like, Yeah, took forever to get out there, though we're not going to likely book again. All the repeats were people who lived in California, they lived in Washington, they lived in Oregon, or they lived in BC. That was really the only people worth marketing to again. Contrast that with Heather's market that she was in for a long time. And people live, I assume, Heather, maybe a lot of them live in Toronto, they drive up, it's two, three hours away. I imagine you probably had a 20, 30, 40 % repeat booking rate if you looked over a 24-month window. Six. So that can be okay, that's way better than that. That's well above average. That's fantastic, right? So that's part of the piece I think, a little bit, too. I would argue, Scott, is what type of experience are you going to give the person, give the guest to where they want to book with you again? And then they don't look at other alternatives. Because I think with Vacasa, I'm sure they want to get people to repeat book. I don't think that they don't want to repeat booking to happen.

But I guess the question is have they set up their business to deliver so far above and beyond what the guest expects that that is occurring at a regular basis? We don't know because we're not inside their numbers. But I would suspect they probably don't get as high of a repeat booking rate as they could if they focused on it. But they just see it as there's a see if opportunity out there and we're just grabbing our pieces there. So that's my frame on it at least.

Yeah, I can see that as well. But I also think there is value in the discussion. So I don't think this is just semantics. I think there's value from a search perspective, like we just talked about. People are going online and they're searching for something, so we've got to help them define what it is that they're searching for. As an industry, I agree with you, Will, that we're not going to change consumer behaviors, but we can help guide them. And we can also not be set in the ways of today and think that that's going to be the way of the future endlessly, right? Just because Airbnb is popular today doesn't mean that Airbnb is going to be popular forever. It doesn't mean that every consumer is going to call it Airbnb forever. It just means that that's the habit that's been built over the last five years, let's say, right? Heather talked about Vrbo. Well, Vrbo was the Airbnb before Airbnb disrupted Vrbo. So it's the same concept. I think that this can change over time and evolve over time. The reason why I think there's value in it goes back to the expectations on the guest self.

So we just described how there's a huge value in hospitality, and I think that everyone can see that value. And I'm very happy to see the industry driving towards that value. But there is a significant difference between service and hospitality. Again, touching on the Eric discussion that you just had, Will, you mentioned on this one, and then you and Eric talked about it in our previous discussion, that roundtable that you had where it got a little heated. Well, Eric talked about how his view evolved since that discussion, and he evolved from what he termed as an Airbnb or an STR into a vacation rental company, into a hospitality entrepreneur. Those are two different concepts. And I think that when we start to discuss that to Scott's point about churn and burn, Eric's point in that discussion about hands-off, the goal of being exceptionally hands-off is antagonistic to the vacation rental hospitality perspective. Now, I don't say that in a way that, hey, you couldn't evolve, Eric clearly evolved. But if the mentality is that I'm going to build this business to be hands-off and be transactional and try to push as many people through this unit as possible, I'm not making a judgment about that model, but that model is different than vacation rentals.

And I don't think that as an industry, we should call those two models the same thing and have the same expectations from a homeowner, from an investor perspective, from a guest perspective, from a business model perspective. I'm going to build my business completely different when I have those ends in mind. From a hospitality perspective, I'm going to build it with a lot of touch points, with a deep team that can go out and build those relationships. I'm going to focus on my guest list. I'm not going to focus on that initial acquisition. I'm going to focus on how do I build that relationship over time and how do I get to know them better? That's a different model than what that churn and burn, Airbnb, put it up, get as many people through the doors as possible. In my mind, that's a different concept.

Well, you gave the example earlier, Will, on Front Desk. I'm not too familiar with that company, so I can't speak to it too much. But I was thinking Sonder. Maybe you could speak on that, Will. What do you see the value of Sonder versus because you could argue that Sonder is the maximized public market version of what you were describing a minute ago, I would say, where it's like we manage urban units. We take a multifamily building and we convert it into short term rentals. It's like a hotel, but not... There's like a lot of somewhat gray area there, but that's the Sonder model. And the Vacasa model, I think, Scott, you've spoken about your disdain for it in some respect, but it's more similar to what the traditional vacation manager is doing in terms of we're managing these resort markets, et cetera. So maybe that's, I don't know, a better example, Will, I don't know what your perspective is on that Sonder versus Vacasa even, as like public market comparisons.

From a public market comparison, this is something I've thought about, but not too much because I don't think there are examples that any of us want to look at as what is leading our industry in the sense of name or title. No shade towards those companies. I know from an entrepreneurial standpoint, there's a lot of blood, sweat and tears that have gotten them to that point. And it's not easy. It's not easy to become a public-traded company even if they're not trading at the highest value right now and have had to split stock and do all this other stuff. But we had on our Good Morning Hospitality podcast, we had Chip Rogers, who is the President and CEO of the American Hotel Lodging Association. And he mentioned that short-term rentals need to play the same field as hotels. And he brought up Sonder as an example. And I think if we're going to go that route, it's only because of the regulatory standpoint. Granted, as you're seeing all these things happening in New York and all these other major cities that are more urban-operated property management or vacation or short-term rental management companies. But I don't think Sonder is the example that we should be looking at because of that when you open up that can of worms of that hotel conversation where it comes to being taxed like a hotel.

Again, they have pretty similar tax tax, different stuff. Under the hood isn't too much different. But again, maybe just not the example that as an industry, we're on a point and be like, look at what we are represented by. I think there's way better examples. And so going back to what Adam was saying, I think the hospitality brand is the shift that we all need to make. Moving mountains and looking at even the Costco franchise model and looking at all these other companies are creating a brand focus that obviously is hard because you have to manage. Now there's hospitality. And I've had many conversations with Seth and Tory Bolt from Bolt Farm Tree House, which was featured on Netflix. They're creating a hospitality brand, but they're also trying to outthink the way that hospitality has been consumed by the guests and other things like that in the hotel world and the short term around the world. I don't know, the hospitality brand piece for me is the more exciting piece because that's where you have that beautiful, hey, we're hospitality. It's not service because we add color, we add moments, we add that. But you still have to be a business, right?

You still have to profitable. You still have to treat your team well. You still have to pay fair wages. You still have to have good linen, good property upkeep, maintenance, all the stuff. So it's a hard balance. But I think shifting towards that hospitality brand sector or titling or naming is probably better for as we're especially with 2024, I think it's going to become pretty incredible to watch the shift. But that's just my perspective. I would love any thoughts.

Well, I wonder, Wil, if the person who manages a property like the Tree House properties or who manages these really uniquely built ones like I know Isaac from Live Oak Lake. I've talked to him before, and he markets his property. I think he just sold it, actually, if I saw that correctly. But he talks about his stuff. And I feel like he wouldn't want to be compared to a vacation rental manager who has 10 of the same three-bedroom homes in a resort community. It's like each home is clean, it's nice, it's probably offered at a great value for your money in terms of number of people that can sleep there. But he might say, No, what I've done is actually far above and beyond what even a typical either great host or a great property manager would do because I've designed something unique and experiential. It's not just a track home in a resort community. And we have a lot of clients that have that type of inventory. So I see where he's coming from. And the problem with that type of inventory, even if it is in a traditional vacation rental market, is that it doesn't always stand out from the crowd.

So as the market goes, that property goes. It has no pricing power. It's just you're one of 55 other three-bedroom homes in that community. If yours is a little bit nicer, has a few more amenities, you might be able to hold the rates a little bit longer, but you're just like, I call it like you're a dead fish in the tide. If the tide is going in, you're going to go in. If the tide is going out, you're going to go out. You don't really have any power. Whereas people that build these more unique experiences, to your point from the second ago, well, I feel like they're almost in a different category because they're like, I have a limited amount of space. I have something that's really unique. There really is no comps. There's no point of putting properties like that into a pricing tool because when you go and look in the market that they might be in, there's no other properties that are similar in terms of design or esthetics or anything like that. And then they've almost separated themselves further in some respects with what they're doing from a design and property standpoint.

So that's a whole another, not to throw a monkey wrench in the middle of everything here, that's a whole other thing, which is the property itself, I think, has a lot to do with how the guest perceives it and their desire to actually vacation or stay in a place for whatever reason. There's a lot there too. Well, I.

Want to shout out to Rob and Craig because he's one of my favorite examples. But they're not a unique stay type of vacation rental management company, but they do have a unique experience within every home. And so I think whether you're out in the woods and you have tree farm, tree houses and mirror cabins and domes versus luxury ultimate high houses that are 10,000 square feet or whatever, that still to me, it's providing hospitality. It's just giving a different taste to the traveler, right? So I may not want to go to Steamboat and be around a bunch of ski and snowboarding bumps and people walking around town and doing all this stuff, I might want to go actually rest and unplug and do that stuff. I'm still getting experienced. So I think that hospitality brand piece still comes into play because even though they're different, we're still part of hospitality. And that's why I think we're coming from the hotel world, initially, when I discover short-term rentals through Airbnb, through my parents, that was like, Oh, this is my way of solving my problem of having a horrible queue at the front desk and having key cards that deactivate every five minutes and all this other stuff.

But it's still an awesome way to provide hospitality by creating a space that's used for moments, used for that type of experience. I don't know, maybe there's some connecting dot. It's just rather the turn and burn, as Scott said, or the old days of the arbitrages who wanted to just get as many units as possible, get as much cash flow. I did want to say there's nothing wrong. Thankfully, we're in an amazing country called America where you have the right to create what you want as long as it's legal, right? They're not selling drugs and then you're doing pretty good. I think you have the right to create that lifestyle business. But I think we just want to make sure as an industry, we're not accepting that as a standard, right? I think it's more less of a naming discussion, and as we all mentioned, more of a standard discussion. And what's the barrier to entry?

Well, maybe, Scott, I'll play host for a second and pass it your way because I feel like that isn't that part of the problem maybe or the concern that you have with the Vacasa is that imagine someone tries vacation rentals for the first time. They go and stay in a Vacasa unit and they get bad service or they feel like they're overpaid or whatever. And then they're turned off by the industry. They're not going to come back and maybe stay in the future with another property manager because they think, oh, all these people, they rip us off. They don't give good value, that thing. Isn't that part of the problem why we should have hopefully better standards so those problems don't occur in the first place?

Yeah, and I see it on both. Both on the guest side and the owner side. I think some of these churn and burn people, the cost of being the biggest one. And even as we're going now through the owner process and signing up new units, these owners are so jaded from that model. I can never get a hold of anyone. Are you sure you're really different? And then they've all seemingly got their own ring doorbell now so they can watch their house to make sure that the guests aren't trashing. I mean, it's like the owners have now tried to compensate for the failures. And then you sit them down and like, okay, here's what I expect. I need everyone to look at my ring camera the day they check in. I need to know that it's only them. I need to check their cars. And it's just like, wow, all this, because no one managed their rental, right? Their asset was left unmanaged. And I think it's the same on the guest icon. The cost of looks at it, Airbnb looks at it, there's plenty more behind them, right? It just doesn't matter. We're going to just keep the marketing machine going.

Yeah, till there isn't. And that's the viral backlash. I don't know if you're active on Twitter. Well, I know, Heather, I know sometimes you're on Twitter. But it's like you'll see people very adamant that they're never going to book through Airbnb again, that they had some negative experience. They got charged a cleaning fee, they got a big chore list, whatever. And they're adamant that I'll never say in a short term, well, they'll say Airbnb. I'll never say in Airbnb again. They'll only ever stay in a hotel. And it's like, because one night, bad experience can cut them off. And I think you're right to some degree, Scott. There's people until there isn't. And then it's like, oh, where did everybody go? And some markets that's already happened a little bit.

Honestly, I think that's part of this core discussion is scale, right? It's wondering, trying to discern in this industry that is probably 30-plus years of really being trying to be professional, I'd say it's in the process of still professionalizing, but trying to determine how do we scale and can we operate at scale. And we don't have anyone that's demonstrated that we can do this at scale. So we've got a lot of guests that have come in and are interested in this space over the last say, five years since COVID, since Airbnb. And Airbnb's only way to continue to grow and build that revenue is to add more properties. So they're going to lower their standards in order to bring more people in to provide the scale because the guests are ready to book. But as a result, we're going to continue to reduce the standards. So the question starts to become, what is the scale where this is sustainable? When are we able to provide the level of hospitality and guest experience that we truly want to as great hospitality brands versus when does it start to break? And we've seen this time and again.

We've saw it with ResortQuest. We're seeing it with Vacasa. Scale is a problem when you start to manage vacation rents.

Good. And my layman's view of that, Adam, is that the best way to have scale is to have the hotel model or even the Sonder model where it's like, Okay, we're going to do scale by having 150 of the same exact unit. That's the same dishwasher and every single one of them. It has the same, the electoral system is the same, we pay all the utilities through one company, but then it loses what is somewhat appealing sometimes about the vacation rental itself. It's a unique home. You go there, it's more private. You have more space. I have a family of three kids. I want four bedrooms. The things that make it appealing, when you apply the scale business logic to it, make it unappealing. It's like, oh, okay, it's just like a drab, big hotel room. That's not really what I'm after. So then it goes back to the fragmentation. I'd rather book with professional host, John Doe, over here who does a good job and has a single home or maybe has two homes or something like that, and then you go back to getting a better experience. And we've done the restaurant analogy, too, on our show that we've done together where it's like there's McDonald's and you know what you're getting and it is scale and that's food.

If you need food, sometimes that works for you. But no one ever looks forward to it. You don't want to spend a lot of money on it. You go to the small local restaurant that really takes care of people where you can meet the owner and talk to them and provide that experience. And we probably would all rather eat at our local favorite restaurant if it was easy and access for us to do then go eat at McDonald's every day given the choice of those two things. And that's what that model is, right? So if.

That's from a guest expectations, and I'll use Durham going to Nashville as the example, right? For me, going into Nashville, I didn't really care where I was staying, didn't really want to stay at the hotel. Let's find a short term rental, Airbnb, whatever we want to call it. That's an easy one in and out in two days. Don't really care what my guest experience is like. But how do I, as the traveler, know that that's the experience that I'm going to get versus someone who's going to go all out on hospitality when I get there? Is that just a surprise for me? Or is there a way for us to understand that as consumers, as guests?

I think we're missing out on some of the hospitality issues here. I mean, my big area that I think most people are missing is nothing to do with the property itself or the hospitality when you get there. It's what happens between booking and the stay. I've stayed with the last three or four occasions. I have stayed anywhere. I have had zero communication between booking the place and staying at it. But that's such a massive hospitality opportunity. I went to Barcelona in May to the SCALE conference and I dropped so many breadcrumbs in my email to the property management company. I said, I am a woman traveling on her own. I've not been to Barcelona before, and I'm going to a conference. That is gold. That would be gold to somebody who wants to deliver hospitality. They could have provided me so much which could have been automated by segmentation and they didn't. There was nothing. I end up dragging my bag from the Playa de Spania 15 or 20 minutes down a road to this, finally finding this tiny little alleyway and this property and being so thankful I wasn't there at night. Then finding my way in and feeling that they could have done so much more for me.

I didn't want to be escorted, but I would have liked to have had some information. They also knew I was going to a short term rental conference. I rest my case on that one.

But I think what I'm trying to say is that we were trying to distinguish what we are, but basically we're all doing the same thing. On that occasion, I was a business traveler. On another occasion on that same trip, I went to vacation rentals because I was a vacationer. But I was the same person all the way along, just with different expectations from different places.

How.

Can you found that out prior to that, Heather? Because I think that's where I'm getting stuck with some of the discussion is how do we know the difference between those managers? How would you, as the guest, know I'm going to select this manager because I know I'm going to get a great hospitality experience versus this manager who's never going to email me during my booking process? How do we know that? Yes.

Yes, sadly, all these. I know I went to Miami back last year for another scale conference and stayed with another property manager that also disappointed big time. That was in the lead up. It was also in thesay and it was also in the follow-up. And that was also in the follow-up. That was a recommendation and a recommendation by somebody who's big in this business. So great question, Adam. How do you find them? I think you find them in the branding, don't you? I mean, I look at Laura Madewell and Auntie Bellam's Cabins. If I was going to go to the Smokies and I came across Auntie Bellam's cabins, I would want to stay there because there is warmth that exuded from their website. In my notes, littered through my notes, Will, is Robin Kragan. Because everything in the About Us page on his website, it's pictures of him and his family and you feel like you're going to be welcomed. So it's in there. Once you get in there, there is that feeling that they are immersed in hospitality.

Well, also you got the, sorry to cut you off, Conrad, the cassiomas too. I think of the cassiola, they're a great example of that. And the part of me is hard because we have this high expectation of Robin Kragan and Casiola and Casagoes and and and. There's a bunch of people that we all know and love that do provide such a high standard and such a great example. But then we also have to remember we all started somewhere. We all were that one single property host. We were all that one single property this or maybe you started with five based on one owner or whatever it is. But we all started very small. And so backtracking to Conrad's earlier point of of scale, I don't like there's scale and then there's Blitzscale, which is Sonder. Sonder did the WeWork model where they just paid $100 more per square foot because they wanted to get into the door. Not sustainable. But then you have the Robin Kragans. And again, sorry, Robin, for all the shoutouts. Not sorry, you're getting all the love here today. But 25 years of scaling and that scale from their business perspective of 25 years, at one point they were at 300 homes.

I think they're around 200-ish. But that's because they get rid of properties and they recycle and they refresh and they make sure that their inventory. It's not just great inventory, but something that they're able to service. I think scale is subjective, depending on how... Robin doesn't want to have 1,000 properties all over Colorado. I think he wants to have 350 or 400 in those two or three or I think it's three or four markets that are really great and they get filled and they produce good revenue, but they're also able to serve. So it's a very different part. I think time. You've been having this conversation, Heather, for what? 20 years? 25 years? There needs to be time for a lot of these brands and these newer operators and entrepreneurs to, I think, realize like, Hey, the linen that my mom had on that bed wasn't probably the best linen to keep. Now my listing looks weird and I'm trying to figure out, Oh, yeah, Airbnb doesn't really care about me. They're just trying to get me lower my rates so they get more bookings. I think it just takes a lot of time and learning.

There's a lot of things. You mentioned, Heather, you're human. Whether you're staying for scale rentals conference in Barcelona or on vacation the next week, that's the consistency. We're human or we're trying to figure out what does this really look like for our lives, for our guest lives, our team's lives, the community that we're in, the five of us on this podcast right now. That's the hospitality piece coming back into a close of my thought. That's, I think, the more important aspect.

I don't know if anybody came across this. There was a young guy at VRMA and his name was James, and I think that's all I remember. I know his last name is around there somewhere up here. He was 23. He had five properties on his portfolio and he was aiming to get to 30 by the end of next year. He was sucking up everything. He was talking to everybody and he was talking to us. He was talking to myself and Richard Voughton, and he was talking to the old guard as well as sucking up information from everybody who was there, who hadn't been in the industry as long. That, to me, is the future. I don't know what you would call him. I wouldn't call him a property manager. I'm not sure I'd call him a vacation rental manager. He wanted to be the best hospitality provider on the planet.

Yeah, it's funny, and I'll take that because if you think about who we've talked about, think about all the names, Lauren Maidwell, Robin Kree, Cassiola, Casago. They all start with real clarity on who they are. That's their biggest thing. If you look at all of them, they know exactly who they are. They know exactly what they want to be. And I think that's their basis. I mean, I had an interaction with Robin. He and I have actually had two. One was funny. I reached out to them with an investor. This investor had a couple of million dollars and wanted to buy out there. I reached out to him and said, Here they are. They're looking for a 10% return. They're open. Here it is. And Robyn, unlike anyone else that I think that we all work with, said, hey, 10 % in this market is going to be really rough with this real estate market. It's just not here. I'd love to have them, but I don't want to let them down. Done. Right. And again, you look at that and go, you turn that around. And in most cases, people are going, oh, yeah, I'll make that happen.

Here you go. Spend your money. Spend your money. That clarity that these people have. Lauren Madewell, I'm going out to stay at one of the tree house, the sanctuary tree house out there. And we're actually going to stay over in one of Lauren's properties as well, just because. Just because I've watched her in the bear suit and all that stuff. I just think it's incredible, right? And I want to go experience what they have to offer. But again, I don't even know what unit we're staying. We haven't even picked a property. I just want to go stay there because of the experience.

The only thing I was going to ask a few minutes ago, Heather, you were talking about the booking to arrival window. And I don't know, because I don't have a lot of experience, I don't know if you do is I've not stayed at really, really high end hotels, but I've stayed at hotels that were certainly a four, maybe five star level quality. And to be fair, I don't know if I've gotten that experience either from them. And it might be fair to argue and say, Well, if the Four Seasons hasn't figured hospitality, once you're in the property, you get treated incredibly well and they remember everything. I did notice that about Four Seasons. If you say that you like this, then somehow the next time you get up to your room, my Coke Zero will be sitting in the fridge if you stayed at a high end hotel or resort like that. So they do a lot of things in the property. But I don't know if I've experienced it just because I don't have a lot of stays under my belt to say what happens if I were to book now for the Four Seasons for my birthday in June, what would happen between today and June that they would do to welcome me that I don't know.

I don't know if you had any other examples from the hotel or resort space.

Well, Touchday did an interesting survey recently and looking at guest experience and what guests were looking for. And one of the what I thought was not the most surprising result, but one of the outcomes was that guests are looking for between three and five communications from the host between the booking and the stay. And most get between one and two. So they are out there looking for something a little bit more. And I think it's particularly when you're talking about vacations, people are planning and they want more information to help them plan. There's nothing worse than getting on a vacation and finding you want to go snorkeling or you want to go whale watching and you should have booked three weeks ago. And you've just gone to this destination where you've got the bucket list thing of whale watching and you can't get on a boat. I would have liked to have known before I went. Yeah.

I mean, I think that as an industry, as much as we talk about hospitality and some of the players that are doing a decent job at it, I think even those players would say there's still so much room to improve. We are just scratching the surface on what hospitality is. Now what I'll do is maybe go back to your point, Will, and say from a scaling perspective, I get it. I understand that we all started somewhere. And someone who's got a small number of properties can still offer a fantastic experience. And you've got the James that Heather mentioned at Verma. But what I would suggest is that as an industry, we should also protect ourselves. So if what we do is allow Airbnb to lower the standards and continue to allow people to have very low barrier of entry, then we're going to continue to get a large group of people that are not experienced at the level of care, the level of hospitality that we aspire to. And you could name any number of industries. You can't go out and be a Masseuse unless you get some certification to open that business. But anyone can go out and open up an Airbnb, and Airbnb will actively encourage you and tell you how to do it and get you going.

That is not a great recipe for fantastic hospitality within short term rental, vacation rental, cottage rental, whatever we want to call it. That is not the recipe that gets us to the place that we want to be. And I'd actually argue that the place that we're talking about, the fantastic hospitality that everyone on this call agrees that we are all working towards, Airbnb is actively undermining all of our activity when they build the model that they're building. They're inflating real estate. They're lowering the barrier of entry to the hosts and the managers. They're asking people to lower their rates. Will, you mentioned this as well. Their goal, at the end of the day is to their shareholders, not to this industry, not to the hosts. They are actively looking to support the guests. So as much as I recognize I want to support the little guy who's willing to learn. What I would also suggest is we need to findto James, who's out there soaking up every bit of information that they can get to be the best manager, whatever we want to call it, that they can be, and not continue to push people into sharing their bedrooms and building an Airbnb portfolio by renting out other people's properties.

And I think we're going to see that die out relatively quickly. But again, when we do that, we're almost pushing Airbnb into a corner and they're going to have to lash out and try to figure out how do I get more people. Their shareholders aren't going to allow their revenue and their stock price to continue to drop. So we are at odds with this industry. I think that as much as it'd be nice to say, hey, everybody's welcome, Kumbaya, we all love everybody. That's just not the reality of where we are in this industry right now. And I think as managers, as people who have been in this industry building it and supporting it for a very long time, we should protect it. And I don't see enough... I think we're trying to make everybody happy versus protecting what we've built and what we continue to build over long periods of time.

Adam, can I ask? Because then I agree, there's 100 % and you bring up a good point. My mom's a massage that my mom is a massage therapist, she had to go through schooling. I remember those days as a kid, she had to go through school. And I was always like, What the heck is my mom do? And going to school. But that is a standard that was needed in order for her to now work on people's bodies. So if there needs to be some certification or organization for people to come into this industry and operate whether it's on Airbnb or as an independent brand, hospitality brand, I will say organizations like VRMA and the loud people that support the VRMA and on push advocacy and donating your money there and really being that, that's not an organization I think even that can set that standard for us in order to create some certification or anything like that. If there is going to be some barrier or level of entry that needs to be higher, it's not going to be through them, and it's not going to be through the really loud people that support that and push the false narrative that the only way to be involved in a professional standpoint is to have advocacy dollars backing it, which, of course, I do agree there is advocacy in multiple ways, shapes and forms.

But the question comes into then, how do we all unify to create that certification or that organization that does allow the hospitality brands and entrepreneurs that want to come in, the Jameses, the James to Robin Kragan, right? If we want that transition, if we want that shift, then I wouldn't say we have anything in place that really shows any type of consistency or standardization from an organization level or from an industry level in general.

This is what we've been looking for for the last year to 18 months in our business. One of our goals is to curate the best education in this industry. It's a tough, tough job because there is so little out there by way of education, unless you want to earn a million BNB in six months and not lift a finger and pay $2,000 for it.

But there are- It's like 15, 20 grand, but yeah.

But there are people out there that are training, they are teaching, they're consulting, they're coaching that are really, really good. If we could find some way of pulling these people together and creating some form of cohesive education program that people could go into, they could drop in and out of as necessary or perhaps do the entire almost degree courses in this business. I think that is going a long way to unite where we are now is with this great chasm that we've come upon with the... Call us old timers, but we've got a lot of experience. And on the other side is those people that are coming up like James who want to bring all the up to date technology and modernism into the business, but they need that knowledge to do so. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

How do we create the Cornell? Do we got to create the Cornell of.

Well, that's what we're trying. That's what we would like. That's what we would like to do. I've been researching Cornell and looking at methods of getting certification and some form of cohesive dust in the education that's out there.

I think it's a desperate need, and I think that's part of the frustration with VRMA, right? I mean, I think people have frustrations, a lot of different frustrations with Burma, but I think that's what everyone is eager to get back to. I mean, talking to Amy High Note and even Adam, and they both have said it over and over. They remember the verma days where they went and took a bunch of notes and came back and did things with them. We were all at verma. I don't think any of us took notes, right? I mean, not to the level of they were... Back when things were pivoting, they were all learning, right? What do they have to do with Web? How is SEO work? All that stuff. And it seems like that's been conquered, which is the opposite. But then it's just this nowhere track. So I agree, Heather. And I mean, I think it's a I think it's a desperate need and I think it's a desperate want. I think people want to do better. I think everyone's looking to say, man, if I could only do this or figure out how to do this.

And I think they're looking. But where do you look? I mean, who do you look to to say, hey, right? I mean, go do this. I mean, when I'm when I'm struggling, I'll go look at everyone we talked about here, right? I'll look at a problem and go, all right let me go look at how Robin's handling this, or let me go look at what Lauren's doing. But, right? I mean, it's a small list. And James will never find those people until he's in and bumped his head in his wrist, in his arm and everything else. And then he'll be beaten and battered and go, Oh, I made it. I found Robin Kregan now. Here we go.

It's interesting because as we end this conversation, I guess, we're going right back to where we started. When I got into the business back in 1998, there was nothing out there to teach me how to do it, and I had to learn all by myself. It's really no different now.

Well, I go to a lot of these STR conferences, whether it's STR Wealth or LevelUp your listing now or these other ones outside of the VRMA and traditional old guard, as you called it, Heather. And a lot of them, they don't know what VRMA is. They're like, I've heard about Airbnb. I'm making money off my property. I'm also able to offer hospitality. I don't want to decrease my profitability by adding this tech stack thing that is confusing and overdone or maybe a little old. And then you have this whole piece that all of us are a part of, which is a great medium called podcasting. And they're here, and I'm guilty of this, obviously we have a network. But now they're all listening to these podcasters and people that have done it through Airbnb as a starting point to then even getting to a hotel or a certain portfolio size with a brand and operations and in destination marketing. It's hard because it's so scattered and they don't know where VRMA is. They don't know about it and they get to it and they feel like they're getting shit on, excuse my language, for anyone that doesn't like cursing on podcasts.

But then they go to VRMA and they hear all these people say like, You're just an Airbnb host. Well, you're the reason why we're going through all this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then they're like, Well, I don't want to go back to that. That sucked. I felt crappy afterwards and vice versa. Then you go to those conferences and you hear about the wealth side, right? You can make money and grow a portfolio and create a legendary legacy for your family and blah, blah, blah. The hospitality side of the business gets turned off by that. It's like, Well, obviously we're going to make money. We're not trying to do a charity here or a nonprofit organization, but there's an extreme on each end. I think from all of us, all five of us on this call are trying to quiet down the extremes on each side and come down to the middle of being like, Okay, there's actually something here that's more important. That's the hospitality, the whole piece. And as, Heather, as you just said, back where we started this whole thing 55 minutes ago.

I think that there's value and just having the discussion and have a narrative. So here's I guess as we close this out, here's where my perspective is. I'm a believer in the market. Will, you said this earlier, we're not going to change the consumer and the consumer behavior. That happens by trends over time. But what I am a believer in is the narrative that you feed into that market to help change those trends over time. So that's one of the reasons why I'm relatively vocal about this discussion. I'm also relatively vocal about Airbnb because I believe their model and what they're going after is at odds with the hospitality model that we've been discussing. I think that there are two totally different opposing views of how they want to approach this short-term rental, vacation rental industry. And I think that it's important for people that are in this industry to be vocal about what their view is and what their direction is because Airbnb is not being vocal about it. They are not coming to VRMA. They are not engaging with professional managers. They are only focused on that host side. So if the professional managers are not vocal and not sharing their perspective about Airbnb, then I think we allow Airbnb to create that narrative.

So my perspective is in the end, the market will win. And what I'm starting to see in your discussion today with Eric was refreshing because I think Eric's at the front end of this. I think that what we're going to find is those people that got in, and Eric was this arbitraged person that he was trying to grow into thousands of properties across the world, I think what they're going to find is that hospitality and getting into hospitality and building a brand and getting people to go direct to those brands is where the future of this industry is. So while I can understand the people in those other shows that you mentioned Will, not necessarily wanting to go to VRMA and it's a new place, I think the thing that they haven't understood yet is the cost of acquisition for those clients. They don't understand marketing costs that are going to be associated with building a brand and how long it takes to build that brand. So is their revenue declines? Is their reservations decline? Because they've been dependent on that one brand, now they're going to have to go wherever that brand tells them to go, or they're going to be way behind the curve trying to build the brand too late.

Yeah, I could see it. I could. Yeah. I feel like I dominated the conversation. Scott, do you have any closing thoughts? I'm curious. I want to make sure everyone gets a shared voice here, but I also don't want us to run over time. But do you have any closing thoughts as well?

Yeah. No, I think all of it. And I think if I were honestly reflecting, I think I'd go back to where Heather took us. And it's there's got to be training. This assumption that you're either on board and you're us or you're not, I think, and I reflected while we're talking about what Heather was saying about James, is why don't we turn and assume that everyone is James until they show us that they're not James, right? Everyone wants to win and everyone wants to do better. So let's pour in. And listen, if they decide, hey, I'm just going this way, then we can look and go, well, then you're over there. But let's assume that everyone is James, right? And that everyone wants to get better and lift our whole industry. Yeah.

I love it. Well, how do you close out five different podcasts at the same time? That's what I want to know.

Leave us a review. Subscribe rate review. That's always a highlight. Beg for reviews. We're going.

To leave a link in the show notes. So make sure you like to subscribe to five different podcasts all at once if you haven't done so already. And make sure, like always, you tune in again next week. Just kidding. But no, thanks, guys, for doing this. This has been so much fun. Great to finally do a crossover and really appreciate the conversation and insights. Whether we see eye to eye or not, I think this is a refreshing way to get the industry hopefully more band together. So I support the unitization here. There we go. Words are hard.

It was a great discussion.

Thanks, everyone. Appreciate that.

Yes, indeed. Thanks, everybody.

All right. Well, I hope you enjoyed that bonus episode for this week. It was certainly an honor to be with these other great podcasters in the industry to discuss this topic, which is one that I think will go on and on a little bit. If you've got some comments and I'd love to hear your take on it, please go to the Facebook Group, The Business of Short-Term Rental and Property Management, and let us know what you think. Who knows, maybe we come back to this in a few weeks time or a few months time and we have a resolution to the conundrum, if indeed that's what it is? Thank you for listening to this. Normal service will resume, of course, with our usual podcast episode every Wednesday. For now, thanks for being here.

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.