Breaking the Mold: How BnBFinder's Fee-Free Model is Redefining the OTA Landscape - with CEO, Eric Goldreyer

Alex Husner  0:00  
Welcome to Alex nanny, the real woman of vacation rentals. I'm Alex. 

Annie Holcombe  0:04  
And I'm Annie. 

Alex Husner  0:04  
And we are joined today by Eric Goldreyer who is the CEO and owner of b&b finder, Eric, so good to see you today.

Eric Goldreyer  0:13  
Thanks for having me. It's good to be with you. Ladies.

Annie Holcombe  0:15  
Thanks so much for joining us. So I got a chance to meet you recently at the skift event. And I'm excited that we just signed you guys on as one of our channel partners at Nextpax, a lot of things going on there. But I was really intrigued to learn a lot about you and your background and how our paths actually kind of crossed many, many years ago. So I would love for you to tell everybody your backstory and how you ended up at b&b finder.

Eric Goldreyer  0:40  
Sure, it's crazy. How much time do we have again, it feels like an eternity. I mean, it's it's been amazing. Because anytime you get the chance to do what we do in an industry that you love, I feel blessed. You know, I think it all started when my wife and I were dating before we got married, and we've been married 34 years. So I'll give you the abbreviated version, but we liked staying in bed and breakfasts. And this was back pre internet. And you literally had to get guidebooks and research every individual listing and find the one that had the hot tub and that was on the beach. And then by the time you called them, you know, they were out of business because the data was two years old or they were booked. And so cut to the chase, we ended up creating a website called bed and breakfast.com and we built it to be the leading website for true bed and breakfasts in the world. We also had the leading property management software that innkeepers use to sell rooms on their website, sell rooms through bed and breakfast.com. But we also created the first sin resor central reservation system where they then could distribute out to Expedia, Travelocity and the OTAs sold that in 99, to a company called World res, which at the time was a competitor to what is now hotels.com. But at the time was the hotel reservations network, which was a call center. I ran it for them for three years ended up buying it back. They didn't make it little flaw in their business model. After raising $100 million. They unfortunately went out of business. But I got Ben marcus.com back and focused on our niche. And we continued to build it and had a lot of fun. And we were getting ready to sort of roll into international at the time, our largest market was actually Rome. We had more listings in Rome than any other location in the world. And we were approached by Carl Shepherd and Brian Sharples at HomeAway. And they wanted to acquire it and we're like Not For Sale long story short after a year ended up selling the business to them stepped down. My kids at the time were 1210 and seven. So I got to be a dad and really focus on my family for a bit and then just saw the opportunity to do something else in the space and ended up creating a co founding a company called turnkey vacation rentals with one of my best buds John Van Zach. And we brought in guy TJ Clark to run it and I was on the board but not sort of day to day. And it got to sort of see where things were going in the vacation rental space John and I own still today and in just outside the Austin a 20 room boutique in called Sage Hill Inn and Spa. And so it was getting to sort of see what was happening in the industry from the supply side through my role at turnkey on the board, and through our ownership of sage, Helen and spa and just saw what had happened when HomeAway then sold to Expedia 2015. And over the next few years properties were forced to really participate in real time reservations at a commission or fee structure, you could no longer as the owner of Sage Hill, I couldn't spend 100 or $200 a month and advertise and own that relationship with the guest and not pay commissions not pay fees. I had to pay commissions. And it got really, really expensive. And so we just thought, okay, homeowners and property management companies are sort of getting, what's the right word? This is a podcast screen. Thank you. It's tough. I mean, because your largest channel becomes your most expensive channel. And when you create these intermediaries, you're creating someone else that's owning that relationship with the guests. And so they're sort of disintermediating you from your guest. And I thought, You know what, we have the background and the experience to fix this. And so we acquired an existing website b&b finder that has been around since 1998, a Lady Mary White founded it, and she passed away from brain cancer. Unfortunately, we bought it from her and 2019 rebuilt, put a real technology stack in place and spent the first few years really just dialing it in for actual bed and breakfast. And then we thought, Okay, it's time to really roll into the vacation rental space. And so just over a year ago, maybe 1313 and a half months ago, we finally sort of announced that we're coming into the vacation rental space. And you know, in the last year we've added over 100,000 vacation rentals to the website from about 1500 different property management companies. So I've been fine. I think what we're doing is resonating with property managers on the supply side and will resonate with travelers on the demand side we haven't really gone then to the demand generation side yet, because we really needed to get enough critical mass of listings on the site for it to make sense for us to go out and say, Hey, travelers, come check us out. 

Alex Husner  5:08  
Wow. Well, you've done a lot in the space and seen a lot of things over the years and how much has changed, but I'm interested now. I mean, on the BMB, finder, there's so many different OTAs out there, what would you say is the biggest differentiator between b&b finder versus the competition?

Eric Goldreyer  5:25  
Yeah, thanks for asking. I mean, I really think what that's where we shine, I mean, because you're right, you've got the big guys, you've got Airbnb, you've got verbo, you've got booking, you've got homes to go meta site that has all of those and some others. You know, our angle is really where the OTA, for property managers. So our value prop to travelers, and why we think travelers are going to come to us is we only list professionally hosted properties. So whether it's an innkeeper with a bed and breakfast, a boutique hotel, you're with a hotel, or a property manager with a vacation rental, we don't list verbose on our site. So as a traveler, you've got a peace of mind knowing that the property is going to exist, it's not going to be a ghost listing, because we probably all remember when Airbnb back last November pulled 59,000 Fake listings off there. Yeah, I think it was early this year, but I think they had verified one and a half million of their 7.7 million listings. So we think that the Furbo market is more ripe for fraud. And we also feel that property managers can provide a across the board a higher level of hospitality than an individual homeowner, not to say that there aren't some amazingly gray off the chart individual homeowner hosts out there. But across the board, we think that if you look at this gift data from the short term rental conference in New York a couple of weeks ago, 76% of travelers are looking for a professionally hosted properties, it's the Starbucks people want to know what they're going to get, they want to know that if the Bluetooth lock isn't working, they're not stuck outside of their place at 11 o'clock at night, because the person they rented their place from is, you know, in Europe on vacation or something like that, there's a professional to call. So that's one leg of the stool on the value prop to travelers. And the other one is that we don't have service fees. So you know, we all know, we all see all the negative press about fees, it adds anywhere from 15 to 20 plus percent to the cost of a stay, we don't have fees. So when a traveler comes to b&b finder, and they find a property, they lie, when they're getting the same rate, they would get on the property manager site directly and to they're not going to pay us a service fee, like they'd pay on the other OTAs, that 15 to 20% Savings means that they can travel more often upgrade to a place on the water or on the ski hill, they can stay an extra night, they can bring in a chef, they can take the group out to dinner, whatever it is, but it leaves more money in the travelers pocket to maybe even buy their airfare or pay for the gas to get there. But we think allows them to have more value and put the money where it affects the the memories and the experience that they have versus just paying it for the convenience of being able to make a reservation. So it's fees and it's professional manage properties. 

Annie Holcombe  8:06  
I wanted to ask you about the the b&b component because again, you started out bed and breakfast.com and that's a very niche type of Absolutely, man. And you mentioned that you know, they were forced into an ecosystem that was really outside their comfort zone. And I remember I was at Expedia and worked on your one of your the ladies that worked for you Sarah Schuster, and worked with the b&b account and and learned a lot about bed and breakfast, I just had no idea how complex it was, it is sort of similar to vacation rentals, because they're all unique. They all have different styles, they all have different, you know, looks and feels and things that they like to do. But going back to that time and these Bed and Breakfast being forced into like the larger ecosystem of of distribution. Do you think that they adapted? And you know, if they didn't adapt? Did they go out of business? Or is there a whole nother world that Bed and Breakfast operated in until you came out with b&b finder?

Eric Goldreyer  9:00  
Yeah, I would say I don't think they really did adapt. If you look at the number of bed and breakfasts and I'm not so sure how much of it is tied to the distribution and the cost of distribution, versus the overall landscape of vacation rentals weren't as much of a thing back in 2010 2012. And I think vacation rentals have filled the need that the market has and wants. And I think you've seen a lot of people that were running ins just decide you know, this is a lot of hard work and instead of turning on all these individual rooms and cooking breakfast and doing all these things, I'm just going to turn my bed and breakfast into a vacation rental or I'm going to just make it my home or I'm going to sell it I haven't seen data but there were 10 to 12,000 bed and breakfasts in the US back in 2010 I would guess now that there's three or 4000 You just don't see him like he used to

Annie Holcombe  9:53  
that's what I was gonna say I typically you have to really go look for him if you if it gets in your mind and there's pockets of them around In the country where there are certain communities because they're historic communities or what have you that have a concentration of them, but it does seem kind of, they've kind of passed and I hate that because I think that a lot of these bed breakfasts were very charming and again historical had a, you know, the gate got you to communities that you weren't typically going to

Eric Goldreyer  10:18  
absolutely agree. Interesting. And you even see that here, right? If you're in San Antonio or Fredericksburg, you'll see a good amount of bed and breakfasts. But you're also seeing a lot more vacation rentals. I know that a lot of the bed and breakfast that were here in Austin, Carrington slough and others, they're no longer Bed and Breakfast.

Alex Husner  10:35  
Interesting. I'm curious to on your days at turnkey and what that experience was like as a board member, and then what you saw as the company obviously sold to Bokassa, were you still involved at that point.

Annie Holcombe  10:47  
And on the board, the industry at large has a lot of opinions about how that played out. And wherever CASA is, what are your thoughts looking back on it? Like what maybe they could have done differently?

Eric Goldreyer  10:57  
Well, looking back on it, one, I wish we wouldn't have sold it, obviously, you know, what could they have done differently? Look, there's a lot of people smarter than me. And the room when that decision was made turnkey, we had raised outside money from some tier a venture capitalists and they were at the table. Obviously, John and TJ myself, Carl Shepherd, I think we all felt it was the right thing to do for our investors. At the time, a lot of our investors were in that decision making that decision, I think we were told that one thing was going to happen, which was, hey, we're going to acquire you guys. And we're going to leverage that amazing tech stack that you guys have built across our broader portfolio of properties. And somewhere between what we were told and what happened and what was executed, the ball got dropped because the Casa did not distribute our technology are being turnkeys technology out. And it's one of those things where we were told one thing, and that didn't actually become what was executed. So I think, yes, could it have been done better? The acquisition 100%, I think some poor decisions were made, there was some bad management in place at the time. I think some improvements to the management happened. John is a solid operations. CEO, he's a great guy, and he can really run a good business, I don't think he fully had the opportunity to, obviously he didn't, he wasn't he was in charge. And so I just think that, you know, maybe the strategic decisions weren't made and the consistent direction wasn't given for the team to execute on potentially. I mean, hindsight is awesome. And it's hard to deconstruct it and reconstruct it, we certainly built something of value at turnkey. And we'll see we'll see what happens with the cost. 

Alex Husner  12:32  
So it's always interesting when you have businesses that take the approach of bringing people in, that are not experienced at all within that type of industry. And I think sometimes that can work to get creative ideas and bring in you know, different levels of innovation. But in our business, I think it has to be you can have some of those people on the team. But you have to have that level of experience, because it's just such a nuanced business. And, you know, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the history of why things are the way that they are is important to understand. And it seems like some of the changes that they've made it because I think they've got just too many people that have just really not a lot of experience within this industry.

Eric Goldreyer  13:11  
I think that's a fair comment. Alex, I think, you know, that's one of the things that gets me excited about what we're doing at b&b finder. I mean, among our team, we don't put this on the website or anything, because people would be like, Okay, that's bogus. But we've got like, over 100 years of experience in internet travel, I mean, myself, I've got almost 30 years of experience, and any tribal knowledge in any industry is valuable, for sure.

Annie Holcombe  13:33  
So tell us about b&b finder, you took some time off, you did some cool things. We started talking a little bit about you to have a sauna inflatable company because that sounds decent, 

Eric Goldreyer  13:42  
bouncy houses, do bouncy houses, 

Annie Holcombe  13:44  
not given the credit where the credit is due. But I do want to go to Monica with you.

Eric Goldreyer  13:48  
Yes. I'm finally getting my wife to go this year like, Oh, she's there.

Annie Holcombe  13:53  
Tell us about that business. Because that's in between turnkey and b&b finder, but you still have it or is that sometime 

Eric Goldreyer  13:59  
I still own it. And I started it in September of 13, which was just after we had started turnkey, but I wasn't involved day to day with turnkey. And so I had time. And it was really as I said, the reason I sold bed and breakfast.com was so I could spend time with my kids who are 1210 and seven, and I'm a big kid myself. And so we were building a dock on Lake Austin. And we're trying to think about how we make it more exciting and fun. And we thought you know, if we had a slide off the roof of the second floor, that would be fun. And city of Austin is very hard to get permits for they're sort of known for being really hard to get anything through. So we thought, why don't we just come up with like a portable slide and inflatable slide, did some research into it discovered an opportunity in the yacht space, being someone that had sold my business but to spend time with my kids. I'm a big believer in friends and family having time together to create memories, right? It's sort of what we're about in hospitality. At b&b finder, and what property managers are enabling, and the thought of creating a product that got kids off their devices, and away from screens, and out in the sun and in the water and having fun, and everyone creating memories with friends and family was appealing, so we came up with fun air fun air.com We are the leading manufacturer of custom inflatables for mega yachts. We build, you know, slides off of the bridge deck that are 35 I think are the highest slide in the world. We did and it was 55 feet off the water off the top of a ship. I mean, it was crazy. Like I'm not sure I'm going down it now I would. I'd wear like a wetsuit or something. But yeah, and we do netted pools when a yacht is on the hook, as they call it or on Anchor, you know, it's it's swinging with the wind on Anchor, if it doesn't have a GPS anchor that keeps it perfectly still. And you don't want your guests to be swimming off the back of the yacht and the yacht gets blown over here. And now you're, you know, you've got swimmers, 100 yards away. So we just make things to make yachts you know, our taglines are we don't make yachts. We make yachts fun, sort of tongue in cheek, and we make toys for your toys. So yachts a toy. We make toys for their toys. So their yachts are more fun and they can just have better memories on their yachts.

Alex Husner  16:20  
I just pulled up the website and I'm absolutely in love. I think

Eric Goldreyer  16:25  
there's a lot of eye candy there. Yeah,

Alex Husner  16:27  
you got you have to visually look at it is fun. But not only the slides, but the pool that you can make like just tied up to the boat to you. That's

Eric Goldreyer  16:35  
really you know, we call that the beach club pool because a lot of yachts on the back, they've got the three to five feet to hang out. And it's like, that's not enough space. So you may have 175 foot yacht, it's not big enough for a pool could have a hot tub. Right and people want to swim and they really want to be at the water level. So we have those big inflatable pools that come off the back that are kneaded so they keep the Portuguese man of war the jellyfish away, they give you a place to hang out down at the water level. So if you're jet skiing, see bobbing e foiling, you've got a place to get on and off of those toys that Tinder can come alongside Tinder up to the inflatable. It helps the crew, the crew doesn't love us, because these things aren't super light. Hey, if you've got 175 foot yacht, you've got a crew of 11 people on your boat, they'll figure it

Alex Husner  17:26  
out. Yeah, climbing walls, everything that's really cool. Very interesting. What a different business compared to the ones that you had run before. And even the one that you run now. Yes,

Eric Goldreyer  17:35  
completely different. But something just was passionate about and just thought, hey, this could be fun. No pun intended. funair.

Alex Husner  17:42  
What's the hardest part of that business? Would you say?

Eric Goldreyer  17:45  
I think the hardest part of it is you're literally manufacturing every product that you sell. Yeah. And manufacturing anywhere is hard. And Guangzhou, China, which is where we manufacture it's really hard. I mean, you literally have to spec every single thing or it will be built wrong. And then you have to have someone on the ground over there completely double check all the measurements and all the strength of everything and the welds and stuff on the QA. So when you look at a business like bed and breakfast.com, not turnkey, so much but bed breakfast.com. And what we're doing now at b&b finder, infinitely more scalable, right, we can build a technology platform that ultimately will allow travelers to find professionally hosted vacation rentals, and not pay fees. And whether we have 100,000 or a million or 10 million listings fairly similar, as far as you know, your infrastructure. But when you've got a product that you're getting the it's called the general architecture, but the architectural rendering of a yacht, and building a product to the centimeter. It's just a lot of work. And you know that business will never scale to be, you know, the size of the business that it is today. It can grow 20 30% a year. It'll never grow more than 50% a year probably. Right. Which a business like bed and breakfast.com and Ota b&b Finder can just gotta get the flywheel going.

Alex Husner  19:11  
Well, it's a niche to because not everybody has a yacht. Small, small group of people to target there, but I wanted to

Eric Goldreyer  19:19  
do an ad just because we like to do you know, tongue in cheek stuff. I think I mentioned you know, or taglines, we don't make out to make yachts fun. And we make toys for your toys. We were going to do an ad that was by a slide get a yacht free slides like $49 million. I

Annie Holcombe  19:35  
love that. I love that. So you so you've been doing that. So obviously you're not someone to sit still. It seems like you've got to be moving constantly, right?

Eric Goldreyer  19:43  
Same reason I don't like golf. I gotta be moving. Yeah. I think any entrepreneur that you see opportunity and you see things that you're like, oh, wow, that'd be something that people could use and that people need. And that would be fun to do. And it's like it's hard. Sit around when you know that you can bring a solution to market that would resonate. It's cool this time because with b&b finder, I mean, when I launched bed and breakfast.com innkeepers didn't know what the internet was. Yeah. I mean, we're out there at state Bed and Breakfast conferences, talking to the innkeepers. We get all of our business and guidebooks, we don't need the internet right now it's going to change, you need to know No. So we had to really educate everybody. Right? Now everyone knows what the OTAs are about. They know what vacation rentals are. And if you look at our own data, or the skift data, people want value, they're sick of fees, and they want professionally hosted property. So here we are bringing a an OTA to the market that's unlike anything anybody else is doing in the space that we think really resonates with all the data that we've seen put out from the industry pundit focused on

Alex Husner  20:54  
that stat that what was that seven years, or 76 or 96%, that you say that was professionally managed?

Eric Goldreyer  20:59  
76. That's the skiff data.

Alex Husner  21:01  
Yeah. And it's interesting, though, because I feel like I mean, just the the perception around professional versus non professional has, you know, it continues to evolve and change. And a lot of the smaller Airbnb hosts have built up pretty professional, you know, small businesses around their portfolio, even if it's just one property. And I just wonder this would be we've talked about doing an episode like this, like I panel of guests, come on, I just want to know, from them, you know, is it that you want a company you really want a professionally managed vacation company to run from? And there's plenty that probably do think that? Or do you just want the place that you're staying to offer professional services a difference there. And I think, as travelers have changed so much since Airbnb, to me, I don't feel like people are saying, I'd have to stay with a vacation rental company as much anymore. They just want a nice place. They went to a nice place, it's well maintained, they can get in touch with the host or property management company very easily. I know. It's a big debate across the industry right now. But it's hard to quantify, you know,

Eric Goldreyer  22:00  
it is and I think it's a totally fair point. And I think you're right, I'm not so sure that travelers want a property management company, but they want a professionally managed property. Exactly. Yeah. What they want. People don't want Starbucks, they want to know what coffee they have. And what they're offering is, right. So what are people afraid of? Right? What keeps them awake? What causes anxiety, when they when they use those sites? It's well, first of all, is this a real listing? Yeah, am I going to arrive with my family at 11 o'clock across the country at night, and it's a 711, where I thought the house was going to be where I'm going to knock on someone's door, and they're going to be like, What are you talking about? We're not on that site, because someone created a fake listing. Secondly, they want to know, is it going to be as advertised was that a two degree fishing angle lens that made it look like the rooms huge, and it's really a New York, you know, closet, they want to know that someone's going to be there in case the AC is not working in case the hot water heater goes out? You name it. And I think the currently, you know, we've got ratings and reviews as an internet thing. Those help, there's nothing to say that all property managers are professional, right? Exactly promise you there are some bad property managers at bed and breakfast.com. Back in the day, we had a three strikes, you're out rule, if we got a serious complaint, like we dug in, and it's like, Hey, this is legit. Three times, we would pull a bed and breakfast off the site, because we're like you're doing a disservice to the industry. Yeah, we know you're paying us $200 a month, we don't care, you're gonna get people to think that Bnbs are lousy. So we as an industry have to do some self policing. We can have tools that allow travelers to rate a property manager, but I don't think there's any true black and white, there's Shades of Grey, we're making the assumption that if you're a property manager, and you're earning your living doing this, that you're going to go out of your way to make sure that you provide an amazing level of hospitality and amazing stay. Yeah. And we feel that that gives travelers a peace of mind over the randomness of one off for rent by owners. And as I said earlier, in this podcast, there's some amazing individual hosts out there, call them super hosts, calm, awesome hosts, whatever you want to call them. It's just as a on average, I would think a pm is going to give a better overall experience.

Alex Husner  24:30  
Yeah, I think the concept of innkeeper is also really interesting. And it makes me think about we've had Pete DeMaio on our show a few times. Now he's with travel boom marketing that specializes in hotel marketing, but they do have bed and breakfasts and he talks about the concept of if you're the hotel manager or if you're the property management company, General Manager to act more like you are an innkeeper and like he'll be from that position of it is your duty to make sure that these guests have an Amazing stay that you are looking out for them before they even know anything could be an issue that you're just really there to kind of shepherd the experience to be something that feels, you know, curated and like they've truly are a guest within your property home hotel b&b, whatever the case may be. So it's fun to hear you saying that a lot, because I think that's just a term that isn't really talked about a whole lot within you know, our industry these days. But it's also there's a lot behind what an innkeeper truly means

Eric Goldreyer  25:28  
was the term that you're referring to hospitality? Yes, yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I mean, I stated are in with my wife last night, right. And sometimes it's just hard for me to go down there because I can't turn it off. Yeah. And I show up. And it's like, Guys, this is out of place. You got to be a little OCD. I mean, I think the more OCD you are, the better of a job you can do as a host, regardless of what type of host you're because your job is to think about everything that that person could need before they do it. Exactly. Make sure it's there. Right. So they're like, oh, man, I need a Kleenex. Oh, gosh, there's some right there, or oh, I need a Oh, it's right there. You know, reading lights, whatever, whatever. And yeah, it's funny how you don't find that. And I think just like in the bed and breakfast industry, within keepers, you're gonna have a graph of great ones not so great ones, and all those in the middle, right? I'm sure it's the same with property management companies

Annie Holcombe  26:28  
Absolutely. Wanted to ask you relative to kind of the experiential part of how people manage properties, and the size of managers, what was one of the things that came up with the last session, that was its gift, and it's really stuck with me, because I knew the gentleman that was part of the panel, Phillip, canard a future future, Stan, he's been a friend of mine analysis for several years. And he works a lot with the smaller operators. And so again, to Alex's point, a lot of conversation about what does professionalization look like? How do we get standards? How do we, you know, how do we make sure that people are doing good service to the industry, all of these things? But the challenge that we have, like, I think, on the the traditional professional side of the business, is that the vast majority of the industry in the US specifically, and they touched on this is these people that have less than, you know, five to 10 units. And so how do we get out to them to ensure that one, they have access to the information? And so Alex and I have been very big champions of education, like how do we ensure that you know, you can take a horse to water but you got to make it you know, how do you get it to drink? It's like, well, first, we got to get into the water. And a lot of these people, Alex, and I've been on some panels, some webinars and things where the people are asking these questions, basic information that they just don't even know where to go get that information. So I think there is a need to work with those, what you would say is professional, but how do we get those people that want to be professional, but they don't know how to be professional to know what professionalization looks like?

Eric Goldreyer  27:53  
Well, I mean, question or challenge, right? Yeah, you can't force a horse to drink, right? I mean, to go back to your metaphor, you can put them in a trailer and take them to the water, but you can't make them drink. And that's what associations are for. Right? Their job is to set standards and educate the industry to bring it up. But you're not going to be able to force everyone to do that our job becomes helping people call the professional ones from the non professional ones, because you can't make everyone be professional that may could be above their mental capacity. They may not have any desire. They may not, you know, just even want to go there. So I think you provide the tools for those that want to do better and learn and then you help travelers understand the difference. I mean, right, I would go back to Verma if Varma had some type of accreditation, then property managers could get the Verma accreditation, and then there there's the stamp, they do have that.

Alex Husner  28:51  
Because I don't think it needs that's part of the problem of like, what does that mean to the average guest that they see that logo? They don't know what Verma it is, but

Eric Goldreyer  29:00  
that's a part of what they've got to do. Yeah, yeah. Don't stand for anything for the traveler, then it's not really worth it. Thanks, boy. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  29:06  
I agree. So many questions, not enough answers. It's a challenge. And I think that that's where, you know, we got to keep throwing that challenge out there. And we'll either rise to it or find another challenge to look

Eric Goldreyer  29:18  
the market or solve it. Right. Yeah. If property managers that truly get professional and do the right thing, do better than those that don't more of those that don't will say I need to do that.

Alex Husner  29:31  
And I think there's more of the ones that want to than the ones that don't want to Yeah, I mean, that's fair. Yeah, we don't really run into a whole lot of these bad apples too often. But they're probably trying to stay away from, you know, trying to access this or they just they don't put the emphasis or care to but you know, a lot of the people like Andy mentioned that are in these sessions with us like they're just they're thirsty for the information, and they don't know where to start, but at least they're starting and it's like, you know, any people the three of us include We all have to start somewhere at some point, too. I remember when I first started a condo world 15 years ago, I thought that we owned all the properties. I had absolutely no idea. And I think if you ask the average vacation, or if they rent from a professional property management business, they think the same thing to Yeah,

Eric Goldreyer  30:17  
did. They really do?

Alex Husner  30:18  
It's a fun business, a lot of different ways to do it.

Eric Goldreyer  30:22  
It is, it's a fun business. And you know, the more we can help the industry, the better off everybody is from the supplier to the homeowner to the traveler, where

Annie Holcombe  30:32  
do you see b&b finder going future? I mean, obviously, you've you've got a lot of listings down and you partnered with, with next packs for distribution. So you know, we're going to try to bring our partners partner to you, but where do you see b&b finder? You're pretty much in the US now. But I think there's plans to branch out internationally. Sure,

Eric Goldreyer  30:50  
sure. Well, you know, to create a marketplace, we're no good to travelers until we have supply. So we've really focused the first year on getting property managers and their listings on our site feel like we were successful in doing that will obviously continue to do that. And we'll add more API's to channel managers and property management software providers to make it super easy for property managers to participate in distributing and getting awareness on b&b finder. Now that we have enough listings, we got to make sure that the product works for mainstream, because it hasn't. It's been a product, but it was really a product for early adopters and innovators that were like, wow, I'm going to save 20% I'm okay with a not totally great website, because I'm saving 20% And I'm getting a professional has the property. Right now we're moving the process on our site from when you come to Austin, for example, and you find a vacation home that you want to stay in, what used to happen is you'd click on the bucket button, and we'd send you to the property managers website. Right? Well, that's a little bit of a jarring experience for a traveler, not all property manager websites are well done. So not a great UI, UX or user experience. We've got about half of our listings, now you booked them on our site, we're not the merchant of record, we securely collect all the booking information, we pass it through the API, to the PMs and on to the pm to make the reservation. So the Pm is the merchant of record. That's their reservation, it's their customer. But as far as a traveler goes, they're making a reservation on our site, just like they would on one of the big OTA. So we expect that that'll work better for the mainstream customers, probably by the end, the next month, the vast majority of our listings on our site will have full end to end booking for real time rates. We didn't have rate filters on our site till last week, we had average daily rates, because that's what we were getting through the API from the PMS. So we have to go in API by API PMS by PMS, and upgrade those so that someone can come in and say, Hey, I'm looking for Austin, Texas, July 1 through the fifth. And this is how much money I want to spend. Just show me those properties. We couldn't do that till a week ago today. So now that we have the functionality, we need to go in and upgrade the user experience. So it's a little cleaner use of the tool, but so we'll continue to work on supply. Now that the product is almost there, we'll continue to work on the product. But really, what's next for us is to start to lean in to the travel awareness. Right? We did a survey, we had 681 respondents that were 25 years of age or older, and had stayed in a vacation over the last 12 months. And we asked if you were aware of a website like Airbnb, or VRBO, that didn't charge service fees, would you use it? And 61% of people said they were highly likely to use it. Two thirds, almost two thirds. 30% said they were likely to use it almost another third. That's almost everyone.

Alex Husner  34:01  
I don't know why you wouldn't I mean? Who says no, I'm good. I'm envious. I'll stay right here.

Eric Goldreyer  34:08  
You'll look at the McKinsey data that shows that, you know, millennials and the willingness to change brands. If there's better value, you look at the trend towards better value. Maybe 75% of people are spending as much money or more than they spent last year on travel. But they're still looking for value, right. So as we go to pivot towards Travelers, we're excited because the data shows that they clearly want it now we've got to go out and let people know that we exist because we haven't been able to really drive business to PMS yet because we didn't have anything to show travelers to get them to start coming to the site. So that'll never pick up. It's

Alex Husner  34:50  
a chicken and egg situation. For sure. That's right. Yeah. Well, that's awesome, Eric, we're super excited to watch your journey and I know with any working with you now I'll also get That semi front seat to hear about how everything's going. Yeah,

Eric Goldreyer  35:03  
great. Great. Yeah, we're looking forward to it. Any back to your comment on international, that's probably q1 next year. Okay, we were approached by one of the top five largest PMs in Europe that wanted to get on now. And we're like, Hey, we're not ready. Let's, let's get you set up. So what we'll try to do is, get that one ready. And then let's go get the other top five. So when we roll into international, we can launch another 200,000 listings.

Annie Holcombe  35:31  
Very cool. Very cool. Well, I love it. And I you know, I think just getting to know your team and knowing that we have some, like back history with each other that we really didn't know existed. It just it kind of felt like old home week. So that was cool. Yeah, so your team is amazing. You've got a lot of really smart people working with you. You're an incredible leader, you got a lot of energy. And I think that's just evident in how you relate to people in Spain, Alex and I, Alex and Mike, we love to cheer on the people that kind of speak to our soul. So we're excited. Well,

Eric Goldreyer  36:03  
Fabulous, thank you for those words and sits a fun industry to be in and when you get to work day in and day out with like minded people that are fun. That's it makes all the difference.

Alex Husner  36:14  
Absolutely. We agree with that. Eric, if our audience wants to get in touch with you and find out more about b&b finder, what's the best way for them to reach out find

Eric Goldreyer  36:22  
that out about b&b finder? It's all on the website b&b. finder.com. If they're trying to reach out to me, it's Eric er I see at b&b finder.com.

Alex Husner  36:30  
That's easy enough. Perfect. Awesome. Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie, Anna, you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com And until next time, thanks for tuning in everyone.