Planting Seeds: Marcus Räder Reflects on a Year of Massive Growth for Hostaway

[00:00:00] Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex. And I'm Annie. And we are joined today with Marcus from Host Away, Marcus, it is so good to see you again. Likewise, thank you for having me on again. I think we've missed you. We were joking off camera about how last time we had you on you gave us these like really great pearls of wisdom and little nuggets that at the time we, it was really enlightening, but then as Alex and I got digging deeper into it and the meaning and lining it up with what was going on in our lives, it's I joked with you, you became like a Nostradamus you were like foretelling.

The direction that we were headed and opened our eyes to see the signs and know that we were planting seeds along the way that we're going to sprout into really great opportunities. So thank you for showing us that, but in the meantime why don't you reintroduce yourself to our listeners?

Some of them may not know you. I feel that can't be very many people, but introduce us and catch us up to where you are today from last time we spoke. [00:01:00] First of all, thank you very much for the for the compliment. If you like that chat, you should join our internal calls here at HostAway where someone asked me what's going to happen in the industry.

And of course I have all the information cause I'm sitting on a crystal ball,

but yeah those of you who don't know me, my name is Marcus from HostAway, I'm the CEO and co founder of HostAway PMS and channel manager, or. As it's known these days, a vacation rental software. We work with thousands of property managers around the world and basically the software does, it's an all in one solution.

So it does pretty much everything you need it to do from marketing to communication, automation, smart home payments, accounting, and so on and build a websites pretty much anything you can imagine. If you want the owner portal on a mobile app for your property owners. Yeah, we got that too.

And we have we, we are one of the youngest players in this in this industry. We're only seven years old, actually, we're going to turn eight soon. [00:02:00] So I need to change, but compared that to a lot of the well known solutions that have been around for 20 years or 15 years. We're certainly young, but despite that we have grown quite a lot.

Just four months ago, we announced the biggest funding round ever for vacation rental technology of 175 million. Incredible. I remember when when you announced that you did an incredible launch from a marketing perspective of the video that shows you going through the desert and really shows the highs and the lows of everything that you went through but it's just, it's been so much fun to watch the journey of the company and I think.

Seven years, that is, you're still, you're a young company, but the growth that you've seen in that time is just astronomical. And really in the last couple of years it's just skyrocketed. We're excited to continue to watch that, but how have you seen things change?

I guess I would ask in the last [00:03:00] couple of years, because. Obviously, post COVID, Airbnb, a lot has really intensified the development of a lot of these tools. The competition has gotten pretty fierce, but what have you seen as the major change in the last couple of years as, as far as the industry goes and how has that affected HostAway?

The industry has been super interesting and I'm actually surprised over how much change is going on. First of all, if we speak of the industry as a whole, there's been a major shift. From a demand to supply in the, before 2021, everyone was talking about how to generate bookings, how to drive revenue, how to optimize growth.

And basically the only thing the industry is talking about now is how do we get supply? How do I get more properties to manage the OTAs? They're doing everything they can because they know what people are clicking. They know what they're searching for. They know what's in demand. But they just don't have the supply and that's been a very [00:04:00] interesting shift.

And it also means that there, there's a lot more collaboration within the industry because these tools that we are building they're being used by a larger population of hosts and property managers than before. And the OTAs, Airbnb, Verbal and Booking. com they have found in us a great way to get that inventory that they need to run their business.

And what it means is actually that when property managers have challenges or problems, they talk to us about it. And we then have the power of authority to go to the OTAs. And actually not only that, they ask us, Hey, what are the main challenges your customers are facing? And then we can call them as a voice of authority, because it's really difficult if let's say Airbnb has.

15 million homes and you're managing, let's say a hundred of them. If you have an opinion, that's really, it's going to be really hard for Airbnb. To justify any of, regardless of what the opinion is, it's still 100 homes out of 15 [00:05:00] million. Yeah. But if we have a large market share. And Airbnb comes to us to ask, and asks, Hey, what's up?

Then our voice, or the voices of our customers are heard a lot better. Yeah, much, much lighter voice. The voice of the managers so you have it collectively. How do you guys prioritize? Because I think a lot of and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of your management groups, they're not a lot of large management groups.

They're little. They're smaller. They tend to be smaller. But prioritizing the needs of those managers when you're looking at your development roadmap, like, how are you doing that? Because there are so many changes, and I think one of the things that we're seeing, is that a lot of the technology providers are becoming an all in one solution.

So the channel management is not a standalone piece anymore. A lot of these softwares for housekeeping, maintenance, accounting, they're really being bundled into one system. But you've got a very broad a broad customer base. How do you prioritize what pieces that you're going to Add [00:06:00] on, build on, iterate on.

Yeah, it's, we have from the beginning always thought that we, it has to be an all in one solution because there's too many moving pieces. If you think about the value chain, the money comes from a guest who makes a booking and eventually it goes into the pocket of whoever owns the real estate, but there's two companies in between.

There's there's a lot of, there's OTAs, but actually the OTA doesn't even get access to that guest. They have to pay someone like Google or maybe a TV channel to do advertising. So there's a whole ton of companies in between. When we started looking at this market seven years ago, we found out that there's way too many companies in between.

Yeah. Basically the amount of money the guest pays and the return on the real estate investment the investor gets, there's just too many companies in between and that's, that creates inefficiencies. A bit like Amazon has a broad selection and good prices [00:07:00] because they essentially removed 15 layers of logistics of wholesalers and so on.

And now any manufacturer can go and sell directly to the consumer with only one middleman. I'm not saying that we're going to be that middleman, but this is why the industry is focusing on all in one solutions. Because it is inefficient whenever you have multiple systems talking to each other, there's going to be mistakes.

And that's why we built an all in one solution to begin with. Yeah, we talk about that quite a bit, that, our industry, it's unique, but at the same time, any kind of industry that is a tech enabled industry, and that's essentially everything these days, had to have gone through this metamorphosis at some point, because, tech was built for any type of business.

Very differently than it was back in the day. And there's a lot of bolt ons and add ons and now it's almost this is like a leveling out of the playing field of that Mulligan mindset of if you could do it over again, this is how we want to do it. And I think that's the advantage that you guys have of coming in only seven years ago versus [00:08:00] coming in 25 years ago, where you still have to keep doing some things because to rework it as a complete rework of the entire system, but, would you say that the clients that you guys are bringing on now, are they, is that a core focus of why they're choosing HostAway because they feel like they have too many parts of their tech stack or they, there's just too many things in between? It's it's still a very fragmented place and I actually wanted to just explain a bit more about the prioritization.

Basically the needs of a property manager. Are very different compared to another type of manager. It can be based on location or size business model. There's many factors that go in, but the actual challenges the business is facing, those are the same. And there's the same challenges that any business is facing.

How do I how do I grow my business? How do I manage my staff? How do I increase my sales? How do I increase my profitability? And [00:09:00] these are the same challenges for all the businesses. It's just a question of how much do you prioritize each? For example, someone who's working alone, one person, doesn't have a problem managing their staff.

Compared to someone who has a hundred people employed full time. And that's why we don't really have the luxury of prioritizing. We need to bring solutions to all these groups. Because we have clients that are small, mid size, and large. And they're... Their geography is very diverse. Just to give an example, we're one of the market leaders in Australia.

So our solution has to work well in Australia, but we also have a massive sales team in UK. And of course, US is our biggest market where we have a majority of our customers and our staff. But still, we have to serve every segment of the market. And what will happen next is unfortunately the boring part where things become commoditized.

Yeah. So what [00:10:00] this means is that software like ours that was pretty exciting five years ago, maybe it's exciting today, but at some point it won't be exciting anymore. It will be like QuickBooks, really exciting. Yeah. Today, nobody would associate the word exciting with quick. That's such a good point.

And I'm trying to answer here your question about why do property managers choose us? I think... When solutions become commoditized like like cars, it took them 50 years before they all agreed, today, all the cars have have seatbelts or they have four, but before people agreed that it took 50 years and we're reaching that stage now where this type of software becomes commoditized.

What usually happens in an industry once it happens is that consumers choose. Simply based on what's convenient what what other people are doing. Imagine it this way. Some of your [00:11:00] friends drink Coke, others drink Pepsi. Why is that? It's because it's convenient. It's right there. It's what others are doing.

But there was a stage maybe a hundred years ago when people had entirely different reasons for choosing Coke, maybe because it was exciting. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think, you're spot on that tech is no longer an advantage. And in some markets that I go to, you can see the companies that have, adopted more modern technology.

They still have that advantage over the ones that haven't yet. But there's only so long that's going to last for. And especially with as many new property managers and vacational companies that are coming up through the ranks that all they've ever known is this more modern technology. But I think at the end of the day, one of the complaints that we hear the most of any software is that people really have a hard time with the support with any tech that they use, that the support is not there for them.

And it becomes the biggest pain point in the business. And [00:12:00] I think, companies that really truly focus on the support, that is what is going to be the difference, I believe, in what technology is going to be the non commoditized or stay as like the cool and relevant one that you want to choose.

And what that comes down to is the people. People do business with people they know and trust. And if you're going to support them, and sometimes support isn't that you can fix everything right away for somebody, but it's hearing them out. It's getting quick responses back to them, not making them feel like they are just giving opinions and they're never going to be implemented because there's a lot of great ideas in our industry.

People want their ideas heard. But I think it's the companies that are going to win are the ones that really focus on the support and the people and letting that be the brand of why they're different. I absolutely agree with that. And I think personally, actually, just about 70 minutes ago, I spent an hour interviewing one of our support staff members quit their job.

And I wanted to find out what went [00:13:00] wrong. And I think support is one of the most important aspects of, I think any business and support isn't just, answering. Question. It's about how you design the product. It's about how it's built into the, to the marketing and sales. Process, but I take support personally.

There are people out there who have had a bad experience with Host away and they go out and say the support was terrible. And then I look at the numbers and every day there's thousands of people who are getting really good support. , but I don't know. I have O C D I, it takes one though, about almost thousands of people.

I hear about the warm things. They have bad support, and I feel it personally. Someone has a bad experience cause I had a lot of bad experiences with companies and usually talking about it. Is a way of moving forward, but a lot of companies are missing. Is that way to have a dialogue? And I'll give an example.

I have been a loyal fan of American express since 2011. [00:14:00] So that's 12 years, but they made a mistake. Let's say like that. And I called them and I said, look, you've been my friend for 12 years and what happens now? And they apologized and they sent me, okay, it wasn't the letter, but they sent an email where we say, we recognize that we did this wrong and we're sorry.

And we hope we can be friends again. And it made me feel really good. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I know it must be a bit strange to hear something like that. No. Yeah. It makes perfect sense. Yeah. I think you hit on you hit on the thing about our business, though, is that it's like we are all in this because we have an emotional attachment to some aspect of the industry.

Like I hope. Travel is, by nature, I think it's a very inherently emotional business, whether the, it's not like banking, it's not cold, and it's not just, it's experiences, and it's people's memories, but I think it's incredible that you would reach out to an employee that left as a CEO of the [00:15:00] company.

That speaks a lot to your character and kind of the culture that you've developed. And one of the things that I think is we've been talking a lot about in the industry, a couple of things, but about the culture that is built in organizations. How do you maintain a culture when you're like across continents?

You're working on multiple continents. You're working with. Varied types of cultures within each continent. How do you as a leader try to navigate and bring those together but allow each one of them to operate within the cultures that exist in their space? That's a really good question.

Yeah, indeed. We, I think we got people who are in 28 or 29 countries, so we don't have employees in every single country yet, but we're working on it. We do have customers in most of the countries though. It's, I think each company has a unique culture and the more, so just to put things in perspective, we are extremely, the investors call it capital efficient.[00:16:00] 

What that actually means. Is that we have the right people working with us rather than having a mix of the right and wrong people in our staff. That's what a lot of companies end up with some people who are right and some people who are not right. Yeah. And and what that means is we have the right people, which allows us to do more with less.

And and so we are. Let's say we have competitors that have 200, 300, 600 staff, and we're doing more with 150. Yeah. Yeah. But that is because we put in an incredible amount of time in making sure that this culture that we hire the right people for the culture and that we maintain it. For example, I, as the CEO, I have quite a busy schedule because there's a lot of moving parts all the time, but even then I talk to every new staff member.

Sometimes it takes them three months to get, 15 minutes into my calendar but [00:17:00] I want to talk to everyone. Same thing with everyone who leaves us. I see that as a failure. Either we recruited wrong or they chose the wrong company or we, someone did a mistake and I need to find out what it is.

But a lot of the people that start working with us, they say, wow, I had never spoken to a CEO before. And it just makes me wonder, what are these other CEOs doing then? Because the only value in a company is created by the people. Unless maybe you're relying on a patent or if you got royalties from an album that someone wrote.

But most companies, they have to proactively produce something of value in order to get money for it. And it's the people that are doing it. If a CEO is talking to every single employee, then what are they doing? I get it if you have, let's say a hundred new employees starting every day. Then it's impossible, but if you're only hiring, let's say 300 people a year, [00:18:00] then you should be able to talk to everyone.

Yeah. That's great. So how do you determine who is in the right seat and how do you determine when they're not in the right seat? Or do you guys do culture index or predictive index or any of the personality type assessments? Yeah. That sounds like something HR would do, which is why we, you don't have an HR department at least not yet.

I think the seat changes with time. We've had people who've been with us a long time who have grown into a new role. And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't, if you start as a lone warrior, let's say, or the only one doing sales or the only one doing support or designing the product, eventually you're going to need to manage a team of, let's say 20 or 50 or a hundred people.

But what if you don't want to manage a hundred people in that case, some companies let them move on, tell them kindly, Hey, your time is up [00:19:00] now, go find a better job, but in nicer words, and we're trying to reposition them because those are the people who have got us to where we are today. And that has been so far very successful.

We have been able to, we do a trifecta model where we want a people to do what they enjoy doing. But they also have to be good at it, and then it has to bring value to the company. And I think a perfect example here is, you said that one of your favorite recordings last year was with me. Yes!

It's something that I enjoy doing, but... I take your review as as a confirmation that you also think I'm pretty good at it. But then it also brings value to the company. So that's why I spend a lot of time in podcasts and interviews, because it's that trifecta of what you enjoy and what you're good at and what brings value to the company.

That being [00:20:00] said, there's a lot of boring things that you need to make sure take place. When a guest arrives at your property, you've got to make sure there's a proper number, there's an optimal number of toilet paper rolls. And it's always higher than zero. But you need to make sure that there is more than zero toilet paper rolls in the property.

And that's something that's, small, very boring detail, but it has to be done. So first, you can't every day just do what you enjoy and what you're good at. You also have to make sure that those boring things get done. And I think that's how you find good staff is people who know what they enjoy.

They also know what needs to be done and they can find a balance like that. Cause there's no manager in the world that's going to tell you what your balance is. You need to find that within yourself. Ooh, that was very deep. Yeah, that, that was it everybody. That's such great advice. And I think at the end of the day.

You, there's three things that you have to be in a role in a position that you are happy and you [00:21:00] have to believe in the mission. You have to like the people that you work with and you have to enjoy what you're doing. That's what I like what your take on that too, that not only do you enjoy it, but you have to enjoy it to be good at it.

It has to have value there. I think combining all of that's, that forms an employee that will stay with you. It will become an advocate for your company, for the team, look out for the new people coming up underneath them. And that's really what culture is based on is those core values and how they align.

And it makes sense. And you're obviously the leader that your team needs to be able to see those things. And I think doing the exit interviews is really interesting too. I don't think you hear much about that. And in our space, I think, larger companies maybe, but and other industries, but that's an important one for our space to, I think that's great that you do that.

Marcus this, it's been a pretty crazy year, so I think everybody came off the high of last year and the last two years out, post COVID, really great stuff. Everybody's excited. And I think this year's It's to some degree [00:22:00] shocked a few people about where the numbers ended up, where the industry was going.

I don't think it's slowing. I think that it's, it's just getting back to like normal. I would say whatever normal it could be defined at this point. What are you seeing from your position being again, a global provider, you're engaged in, in, you said 25 plus markets. What are you seeing in terms of technology and in terms of the direction of vacation and short term rentals?

Yeah there's certainly a lot more noise than there is actual action. There's to be really honest, there's not much going on and I'd be very surprised if any company announces funding like us this year and early next year at the same time, there's things are quiet and I think they're quiet in a good way meaning a lot of.

Property managers, they're getting bookings. They're not setting records, not everyone, some are. But [00:23:00] they're also not empty. They're also not losing properties. And it's a bit like the real estate market right now, where a lot of people are sitting on low interest mortgages and they don't want to sell the property.

But then that means that nothing is happening. You're not going to buy a new house if your mortgage rate goes up because of it, because you can't afford that. So it's we're basically sitting on and waiting as an industry. And that's both on the tech side and on the vacation rental side.

And that's actually a really good thing because what we need now is for the demand to stabilize. What we'll find out in 2024. Is where the consumers are going to settle. So during COVID, there was a short dump of demand. Basically, nobody traveled because everything was canceled. But then there was a massive spike in first, let's call it cottages or rural areas.

People [00:24:00] suddenly wanted to rent a house in the middle of nowhere. If it, in the middle of the forest for no reason. And the demand for that skyrocketed. What we've seen this year is that people are now bored of the cottage. They want to go to Europe. They want to go to Japan and everyone's doing that. So the demand for plane tickets has skyrocketed.

Now, when it comes to longer term consumer trends. What these type of spikes usually mean is that there's a percentage of the consumers that will change their behavior forever. So for example, let's say someone who has, I'll use Coke as an example, someone who's never tried Coke before. If there's a big thing where everyone tries Coke, someone will try it for the first time and they continue drinking Coke for the rest of their lives.

The same thing here. Someone who has never been to Europe, went to Europe first time this year, maybe they go every second year their entire lives from now on. What we will see in 2024, and why the numbers will be so interesting, is we will [00:25:00] see, okay, how much does the cottage go down? How much does the city tourism go up?

And what will be the new normal? If I were to take a bet, I think that the hotel industry is a lot more worried about that than the vacation rental industry should be. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's definitely, this was a normalizing year and I think next year is going to continue to get more back to normal of what we remembered pre COVID.

I think it's going to get a lot more competitive for trying to procure bookings. Really focusing on a direct booking strategy is going to be important for companies going into next year. Obviously Airbnb and BRBO, the demand that these channels generate is massive. But when there's less demand from the guest side, you're just, you're all competing and there's so much more supply in those channels.

But I'm curious what Host Away is doing to help your partners or assist them in direct bookings? Is that something that you focus on? Absolutely. We have an entire customer [00:26:00] success team that we, we launched this year to help our customers specifically with that. They help with other things too.

For example setting up their accounting or helping them. But just general advice, sometimes you need an outside consultant to have a look at what you're doing and see if you're doing everything right. So we're now on a third edition of our booking engine that can be either be a standalone website or integrated into your existing website.

And what we also did, we were one of the first companies in the space to integrate Google Travel, and we see a lot of bookings coming from there. I know that there's probably someone out there who has tried it, and you either got a lot of bookings or you got zero bookings. But... I, yeah, those are a couple of the initiatives that we've done just this year.

I think Google travel is going to be great because Google doesn't go into a space to lose. They have [00:27:00] lost a couple of battles, but they picked up 20, they lost one. So they have a fairly good chance of doing it. Think about Yelp and restaurant reviews. Where are they today?

People look on Google Maps, it's that simple. Yeah. So on that, I wanted to ask you, cause one of the recent two recent announcements in the last couple of months were had been hinted for a really long time, but American Express and then Hyatt. What is your take on those two entering in?

And do you think there's going to be more of the credit card type companies and more of the hotel style companies coming in? Yeah, this is a very interesting trend. Actually, I'll tell you an anecdote. My, so I speak Swedish with my daughter even though we live in Toronto and we went to... This there's an international organization called the Swedish School.

So every Saturday I can take her and play with other children. They can speak Swedish and learn Swedish. And I met someone who was a travel agent. So I asked her what do you actually do for a living? And she said, she helps [00:28:00] people organize their trips. So I asked her Does that include vacation rentals?

And she says, yeah, a lot of customers would prefer to have their own house with a pool rather than staying in a resort, but there's no kickback to her. So she benefit from arranging trade. Yep, that's true. The same thing with airline and credit card loyalty programs. , you can, you can get a credit card and then you can go on a bunch of flights and then you can use those points to book a resort.

But you can't do it with Acacia Rental and I'm actually quite surprised how the point systems out there like Marriott or Hyatt, how they caught on Acacia Rentals before travel agencies did. Because travel agencies still exist. There's a lot. Oh yeah. Yeah. And especially if we're talking about the luxury segment.

A lot of people who travel, they don't want to spend any time figuring out which flights to take and which place to stay at. They are more than happy to pay someone to do [00:29:00] that. But within that business model is, that's great for resorts and hotels. I'm very excited about those two initiatives and I think we'll see more of that.

And it also proves the point that... The shift in consumer behavior that I mentioned earlier, that some people in the last three years tried a vacation rental for the first time in their lives, and they're going to continue doing it. That supports that argument because otherwise, Aircon Express wouldn't enter that market.

But what it actually means for the vacation rental industry. I don't think it will have much impact because it's still the same value as before. It doesn't really offer, someone who doesn't want to rent their own house for a vacation is not going to do it just because you can do it your highest.

So it, it's not, it's more adopting to the to the new reality of the space and the newer kind of terms that are there, it's not going to shape it. Yeah. [00:30:00] Yeah. Yeah. It's not creating more demand. It's just shifting where it actually comes from essentially. Yeah, but it also speaks to loyalty programs and the ones that are focused on their loyalty members and doing a good job communicating to loyalty members and Understanding their what their loyalty members are looking for and adapting to that that's where I think it makes sense you look at homes and villas with the bond boy membership.

That's a big that's a big component of their success So yeah, I think that It's going to be interesting to see where we are 18, 24 months from now with these new entrants to this space, but I think the, what I have always been super excited about is that the more people that want to get in, it just validates everything that all of us that have been in the business for a long time have been doing and fighting for Alex.

Like we, yeah, we always joke about it, it's, it is validation that all this stuff and the blood, sweat and tears that we put in as property managers or. Talking about the industry. People finally have heard us and they're adapting and wanting to be where the cool kids are.

It is interesting though. And I think that's, this is something that [00:31:00] is probably not talked about enough. Loyalty and then also, the travel agent side of things, those are two big topics that you don't really, you don't hear companies talk about that a lot. And I think I know in my previous role at Condo World, we went down a pretty significant.

Process of trying to figure out how to do a true loyalty program across multiple destinations with multiple partners with different levels of where you're making some areas are much more profitable than others. And it's really figuring out like a matrix of how that makes sense back to the business.

And it can be quite complicated, but whoever can figure it out is going to win pretty big in it. And I think obviously Marriott is, has done that in a little bit of a different way because they already had that and now they added on the inventory. I think there's a bigger play that it's almost surprising that Airbnb hasn't taken it on, they've got their own, they definitely have their own brand loyalists that are gonna go back to 'em no matter what, but I think there's definitely an opportunity for somebody within the property management space or a technology provider to develop [00:32:00] something that is a true loyalty program that really gets get, gets guests to come back.

That's. Yeah. There's a lot of companies that I talked to that they're still 95 percent OTA business. And that's just crazy. Those guests are going back to that destination year after year. They're just not staying with you. And it's not just about the discount. I think loyalty is also about all the things we've just talked about.

It's about the people. It's about the support that you get from the company. It's about the exclusivity, I'm feeling like you're part of something and it's hard to probably bundle up and that's why it hasn't been done really that well in our space yet. But if anybody's listening, there's a huge opportunity there.

Yeah. Expedia did a fairly good job, I think on the one key that allows them to connect, air travel and car rentals and hotels. But these loyalty programs, they're also they're, they have a certain boom and bust cycle. So right now, where [00:33:00] the economy is doing a bit too good according to some and it's doing terrible according to others.

But the fact is that GDP is going up and prices are going up and we have record low unemployment and record high employment. So those are good factors, but that's also when the loyalty programs. Really work well, because everyone is going on business trips. Yeah. Then, five, ten years later, when everyone's laid off, suddenly those points don't matter.

What matters is, if you can afford to fly, you're gonna book the cheapest flight you can. And you don't care at all about the points. People only care about points and loyalty when there's an economic upturn. They don't care anymore when they're fighting to put food on the table. So maybe that's to those who are listening, if you have an idea, I'm more than happy to hear it.

Keep in mind that if the boom ends, then it's going to be very hard to launch that. Yeah, that's a really good point. Had not thought of it that way. Very interesting, Dave. Marcus, we are about to [00:34:00] be back in conference season, so we're just right ahead of VRMA right now, and I'm curious, what are you most looking forward to heading into Orlando, the biggest event the vacational industry has ever had?

What's on the agenda for HostAway? It's going to be extremely exciting because the industry is completely different than it was just a year ago. And it's also going to be very exciting because it's been, I was in Orlando nine months ago and I think it's been too long. So this time I'm bringing my family.

Unfortunately the event is in Disney World. So I get to take my five year old there. Let's hope it's not too hot and crowded. But I'm really looking forward to meeting all my friends from around the world. We have people coming from Europe, from Australia from Africa and Asia, and that's going to be really fun.

VRMA International is, I think, my favorite conference of them all. Unfortunately, there were many other good conferences this year that I couldn't [00:35:00] attend, and there will be many others X4RB in Cancun is also one of my favorite ones. But I didn't have time to schedule, so next, next year I will be in more conferences and scheduled dosing.

I think, yeah. Is v r a sold out already? It would be good to know. I believe so. I know the hotel definitely is . I'm not sure if the tickets are, but we're probably pretty close, if not. It's, we're at that point where it's tough to find a space that can accommodate that many people.

We're, it used to be, I think when we were in San Antonio two years ago, Andy, that was maybe 1, 500 at the most people I'd say. Yeah. You have to grow by a thousand people. It's just, it just shows how much the industry has grown in the last few years too. Yeah. I think they shared a number on our on the membership committee that there was 2, 100 registrants as of last, earlier this week.

I think Wednesday. That's, it's ahead of where we were this time last year, and I think they cut off about the same time, cut off in terms of registrants, but the [00:36:00] space is a little bit bigger, I think, than the Vegas space was, so they could take a little bit more, and obviously we could take more, there's more accommodations close by that people could stay in, and a lot of houses have opened up, it is going to be exciting and I think it's great for all of us to finally get back together. It feels like it's been forever, since Vegas, but there's just a lot that's happened since then, so it'll be good to talk to everybody. Yeah, absolutely. And there's been been quite a lot of things going on in the industry.

There's a lot of tech vendors there and there's been a lot of mergers and acquisitions. Some companies have stopped existing and a lot of new AI companies as well are out there. So it will be very interesting to see how the landscape has changed. I remember standing in the vendor hall last year Annie, it was you and I and Simon Lehman and he said to us, take a look around right now.

And he said half of the, I can't remember what the percentage was, but he said, there are so many people that are in this room that will not be here next year, companies and people. And unfortunately, that's a, it's a, this is sad and a hard truth.[00:37:00] There have been a lot of layoffs and a lot of businesses in the last few months in news.

And, but at the same time, also a lot of new people coming into this that every year I feel like you go to these events and it's who are these people? Like it used to be that we walk in and we know everybody, but it's just, it's grown so much. But we are very excited to see you in person, Marcus and your team.

If anybody wants to learn more about host away what should they do at VR mesh? Did they come up? Did they have a demo with your team or what does that experience look like? We have a booth and we also, if you're a host away customer, we have a party. So you can sign up for the wait list. We'll figure out there's there's a limit on the amount of people that can be at the same time, but we're doing it all night on Monday oh, , get us there and and yeah, we will have a booth and you can always reach out to me as well, or to our team on host way.com.

And you can find me on LinkedIn if you just Google for Marcus Hostoway LinkedIn. Great. Awesome. Annie and I, we will be at the show as well. [00:38:00] I believe Costco's booth is 244. Annie, do you know what your booth number is? The Homes and Villas is 815, I believe. We have a very large booth. I think actually have some meetings with Marcus's team at our booth.

It's exciting. Yeah. We'll see everybody there. Yeah. We're excited to see everybody. And until next time, you can, if you need to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to alexandanniepodcast. com and thanks for tuning in, everybody. We will see you in Orlando.