Most people in short-term rentals describe how they got started with a slight apology in their voice. They fell into it. They bought a place, put it online, and worked out the rest as they went. Jodie Odlin thinks that story has run its course, and this episode is about what replaces it.

Jodie trained in hospitality management and worked in five-star hotels before she started a rental business in the Cotswolds. What she found when she arrived in short-term rentals was a lot of beautiful properties with very little behind them in the way of standards. She began collecting host stories in a book called Hospitable Hosts, and that first volume grew into five books, more than two hundred authors, a publishing house, a training academy, an accreditation system, and a three-day summit in upstate New York at the end of September.

In this conversation Heather and Jodie work through what an industry standard would actually contain, why it has to leave room for the character of an individual property, how you hold standards together from eleven time zones away, and why the standards conversation has to include owners and guests as well as hosts.

Key takeaways

• A workable industry standard sets a floor for cleanliness, safety, and communication, and then leaves room for everything that makes one property different from every other one.
• Setting guest expectations accurately in the listing and in pre-arrival communication protects a review more reliably than any amount of upgrading.
• Standards only survive the owner being absent if they live in a trained local team and a documented process rather than in the founder’s head.
• AI guest messaging works best as a hospitality tool that is read every day, with a clear route to a human at the point where the guest says the problem cannot wait.
• Owner standards matter as much as property standards, because a property nobody is willing to invest in reflects on the manager’s brand rather than the owner’s.
• Holding a standard runs in both directions, and calling out a guest who leaves a property in a poor state carries less risk than most operators assume.

Resources and links mentioned

• The Global Hospitality Collective:
• STR Hospitality Summit, 29 September to 1 October, upstate New York, with a pre-registration gathering on the evening of 28 September. Registration through the Collective website.
• Hospitable Hosts book series
• Jodie on LinkedIn
• HostBuddy, the AI guest messaging platform Jodie has used since its early days
• Vacation Rental Secrets by Brooke Pfautz, founder of Vintory, built from the mistakes of fifty property managers

‍Episode sponsor

StayFi captures guest email addresses through a branded property Wi-Fi login, including everyone in the booking party rather than just the name on the reservation. Vacation Rental Success listeners get 50% off three months of StayFi at stayfi.com using the VR Success offer code.

Connect with Jodie

Jodie is straightforward about where she thinks the industry needs to improve, and she is equally open to hearing where you disagree. If the standards question is one you have been wrestling with in your own business, or if the summit sounds like your kind of event, she is worth reaching out to.

• theglobalhospitalitycollective.com
• hospitablehosts.com
• linkedin.com/in/jodie-odlin-119124225

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