Conquer Social Media and Turn Posts Into Revenue with the CEO of Revpar Media, Calvin Tilokee

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. With more than 35 years combined industry experience, Alex Hussner and Annie Holcomb have teamed up to connect the dots between inspiration and opportunity, seeking to find the one story, idea, strategy or decision that led to their guest's big aha moment. Join them as they highlight the real stories behind the people and brands that have built vacation rentals into the $100 billion industry. It is today and now it's time to get real and have some fun with your hosts, Alex and Annie.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex and I'm Annie, and we're joined today with Calvin Toloki, who is the CEO of RevPAR Media. Calvin, it's great to have you on today.

Speaker 3: 0:54

Hello, yeah, it's great to be here, happy to get into this with you guys, and I like how you said, the sound like a real housewives intro there. I have been sucked into the real housewives world with my wife so I'm pretty well versed in all that reality TV stuff. So we can go there too if you want.

Speaker 2: 1:12

That's great that you're you admit it. Most people won't even admit it. So I think we're starting off on a good note here.

Speaker 3: 1:18

Yeah, oh yeah, no, I have. I'm like way into it now. I actually have emotional reactions to some of these things. We're watching some last night. We are watching the one that the Miami wanted. I'm like this woman, she's like she's pissing me off. I can't watch her anymore.

Speaker 4: 1:32

I'm into it now, yeah, yeah. So what is your? We have to know which is your favorite, which is your favorite city.

Speaker 3: 1:38

Oh, the favorite city has a show. Yeah, they're all pretty entertaining. I would have to say probably Potomac, oh, yeah. I went to school in the Maryland area, oh yeah, and I went to an HBCU, so I think I can relate to them.

Speaker 2: 1:55

Yeah, I'm like yes, A lot more.

Speaker 3: 1:56

It's gonna be one else Like I. Just, I get it, but 90% of the girls I went to school with were like this Were those?

Speaker 4: 2:02

Oh yeah, they were them.

Speaker 3: 2:05

Yes, I can predict the behavior pretty quickly on that one, but they're all really good. They've all got some really good characters and, yeah, some really bad ones too, but it's good entertainment.

Speaker 4: 2:17

So I think we could have another episode about the real housewives and talk about all those I grew up in the Potomac. I'm from the Washington DC area too, so I watched that one to see if I like knew anybody on the show, like in the background.

Speaker 1: 2:28

But didn't know any of them.

Speaker 4: 2:30

But I think what we wanted to talk to you about was your business, your rev problems. I became a huge fan of yours a couple of years ago and have been following you ever since, and you delight me every day with something hysterical, something that I know all the people that are in all your memes. So I appreciate those. But why, don't you tell our listeners are mostly vacation rental folks, so not hotel people. So tell us a little bit about you and your business.

Speaker 3: 2:56

Yeah, this all really started with me just being silly at work, making memes. When I'd get off a conference call with some co-workers and stuff like that, a funny situation would come up and I've always had this very silly sense of humor. It's just I've been, I was born with it, I've been blessed with it, I've been able to really it's and I've come to find out it's my. It's like a stress relief for me. When things get tense, I'm usually the person that will cut a joke and kind of so it's just you get off. These stressful calls, budget calls, forecast things happen, and I've found a way to to just turn those into jokes. And this originally started out as a Facebook group of very small with the company I was with at the time and I did it with the intention of having the whole company just dump memes into this group and we'd all have a laugh. But after a while it became my group. People just started calling it my group because I was the only one who could make one every day and I realized that I have a skill for this. I'm I have some creativity that I tapped into that I didn't really realize I had up until then, but anyway, I'm also sure I did went to Instagram. This is maybe seven or eight years ago. I moved to Instagram because, because it was a small group and because everyone knew who I was and where I worked. They thought the incidents I was joking about happened at that hotel. But so one morning my analyst walks in not hello, good morning, nothing. She's freaking out. She's what did I do? I'm like, hi, I have no idea. First of all, good morning. And she's I saw your meme. I was like it was a joke. I think I said when your analyst I guess they're putting a room in list or something like that and I was like, no, I'm just joking about a situation that we've all been there I was like, no, you didn't do anything wrong. At that point I realized I needed to go to Instagram and for the first few years I was baseless on Instagram. No one knew who I was, with the exception of the people who were in that group yeah, which is maybe a couple hundred people. And then from there, as I said, I think how this has evolved into a business is I've grown quite a few followers. So I do marketing through my, through my page, I've marketed for hotel chains, hotel companies, revenue management, trainings people that want to reach the hotel audience, the people who are working in the industry know that they can come to my page and see a very captive audience. My engagement has always been very high and I think, more importantly, learning the skill of social media wasn't really too different from revenue management and I've realized that just knowing the same way, you need to know your market, you need to know your guests, you need to know what they like in order to present your hotel in a certain way, to price your hotel in a certain way. If you have a five-star property, you're probably not going to put out a Labor Day Sale discount that doesn't really vibe with your clientele. So something as simple as that is simple for revenue people. Because we look at things that way. Your sales and marketing is very similar with social media, like you mentioned in the intro and the people in my means, because we've had work with these people.

Speaker 4: 6:01

I am the people in your memes. I think the thing that I love is I've done revenue and I've done sales, and I see the dynamic between revenue is always crimping their nose up at sales when they're asking for an extension on a room block, and sales is always crimping their revenue management saying you can't have more rooms and we're going to raise the rate, and so I just remember looking at all of those and I'm like, oh my god, that happened to me, and so I see where your coworker was coming from. That she took that internal because I absolutely looked at some of them and I'm like he's been in some meetings with me recently.

Speaker 1: 6:32

You know what's going on.

Speaker 4: 6:33

So I think you took like real world scenario and you made it like it's, it's regular, it's happening everywhere, in every property across the country, all the time. Yeah, absolutely, I saw one today that I love it and it's always. I worked at an Expedia for several years and I remember when we would go in and try to convince brands to run promotions, and so I saw one today that had like OTA promotion. It's a girl dancing in like a sailor outfit and the hotel manager is like staring at the OTA smiling and the brand girl is giving them the hotel the evil eye

Speaker 1: 7:05

like you're not supposed to be doing that and I was like oh, my gosh.

Speaker 4: 7:08

I just don't remember like getting hand slapped because the brand would call and go. You're not supposed to be doing any of that.

Speaker 3: 7:13

So it's all great. Yeah, you send those emails straight to the junk file.

Speaker 2: 7:18

We didn't get them. You've run those overnight promos with the OTAs.

Speaker 3: 7:25

And oh yeah, I don't know what happened. It was a nigger. It turned off and on.

Speaker 4: 7:29

I don't know. You must have been drinking when you looked that up, right?

Speaker 1: 7:31

But you talked about you could get followers.

Speaker 4: 7:34

You've got 25,000 plus followers on Instagram, so it's not anything to shake a stick at. He's turned this into quite a little business.

Speaker 3: 7:41

Yeah, it's grown steadily. I would say there were two periods where I grew a lot. There was one year where I just challenged myself, as I mentioned before. It was like I could do one every day and I was like, why not two every day? Let's see if I can do two a day, and it was just like a personal challenge. It wasn't really any intent behind it other than let's just see if I can do it. And I was posting twice every day and again, like a true revenue manager, I timed those. So, again, knowing your audience, I would post it at lunchtime and I'd post it at around 5 o'clock when everybody was on their way home. So I know that you're either on break or you're on your phone, or you're on your commute and you're on your phone. So, doing that for about a year, consistently, I grew. I went from about 4,000 followers that year to close to 10,000. It was over 9,000 by the end of that year. So I grew about 4,000 followers in one year and it's been consistent growth ever since then, and then again during the pandemic I got maybe between March and May of 2020. I probably got about 5,000 followers. Wow, that's incredible. I think during that time, people just needed that comic relief more than ever. And yeah, it was shooting up. I would pick up my phone every morning and it was like another 200 or 300 followers and on average I get maybe 200 a month new. I was getting that every day for a while I was like what is happening? I haven't even done anything differently, but looking back, I think that's where it was. I think we were all looking for that community people doing a lot of live videos, virtual happy hours and stuff. We all missed that personal connection and I've always built it with the intent of having a community. I always said this, as you mentioned before, and every hotel in this country and I even take as far as I don't care where you are in the world if you worked in a hotel, you're having the same problem. Revenue and sales are having the same fights. Front office and guests are having the same fights, the same complaints. Housekeeping and front desk are fighting about who's going to check the discrepant rooms. It's all the same everywhere. So we have that common thread and I think someone mentioned it a while back and called it the biggest inside joke on Instagram.

Speaker 1: 10:07

And I think that's what it is.

Speaker 3: 10:08

If you're in the industry, they're super funny. If you're not, you might get it, but I think if you've been in these situations, you know exactly what it is and that I'm trying to convey with these situations.

Speaker 2: 10:23

I think having a lighthearted approach to things obviously goes a long way with people, because at the end of the day, it's like you can. Andy and I got great advice. We first started the podcast from Stuart Butler, who you might know from Fuel Travel. He used to be a Fuel Travel back in the day hotel marketing company, but he said that your podcast the first goal is that you need to entertain people and then the second goal is information. But if you're just information first and then you entertain, you're not going to keep people coming back, and so we've always taken that approach of we want this shows to be fun and lively and conversational and I think that resonates, and certainly the way that you're doing it with the comedic part is resonated too. But I am curious I saw on your LinkedIn you were with Highgate for several years and Highgate has they're in the vacation rental space and I think that were they in vacation rentals when you worked with them, or was that?

Speaker 3: 11:15

OK, no, that's new. Yeah, that definitely happened after I was there. So that's a company I referenced earlier when I was telling the story. So I was with Highgate at that time and at the time Highgate's way bigger now than it was then, but even then I was in New York and they had hotels all the way as far as Hawaii and we'd all see each other once a year at a conference. So it was a way to keep everyone together. But no, at that time they weren't as big as they are now and I know that they had this whole vacation rental of the business. But that's new to me. Yeah, that's not something I was involved in when I was there.

Speaker 2: 11:51

OK, that's it.

Speaker 4: 11:52

So you took your comedic talent, you took your revenue management talent and you merge them together and you have repar media. And so when you and I had done our pre-talk, you talked about you do a lot of consulting, so you've taken this over to a whole other level. And so do you think that the comedic value that you're bringing is what opened the doors for people to want to have you? And because you mentioned to me that you actually are helping people with their social media, like you figured out what the secret sauce is and then you can go in and help them. But are you doing just the social media? You're doing social media and revenue management. What all does your consulting include?

Speaker 3: 12:28

So F-BAR media is started out as a social media marketing agency and that's primarily, that's the main lane. We'll call that the best available rate segment. That's 80% of what I do. My whole idea that was all born out of working again working on the hotel side, being the revenue manager and working with a lot of the agencies. And what I've discovered is the agencies they know social media, they know cadence of posting, obviously, quality of content, but they didn't know the hotel business. And I worked at a couple independent properties where we ran into an issue of having a lot of followers but very low engagement. So if anybody out there doesn't know, for me that's a pretty everyday term, but engagement is how much someone interacts with any particular post. So, for example, this property at the time had about 18,000 followers and you'd get six likes on a post, eight likes and one comment. So the engagement rate was very low, less than 1%, which is to put it another way if you have an email database for a business and you've got 18,000 emails in that list but only 0.1% of them are even opening the email, you've got a bad list. They're not interested in what you're sending out. And that's basically the same concept with social media. Now, as a revenue manager sitting there, you'd get from your GM hey, let's put out a promo on social media, and it's going to be pointless because nobody's really looking at what we have. So, as someone who's worked in hotels for as long as I had which this point is over 20 years being able to take that knowledge while also understanding how social media works and putting those together. So, for example, I worked at a property that was going to do some PR for the final season of Game of Thrones. So what they wanted to do was just come in, do this nice photo shoot and get it published in the New York Times and all of these different publications. So I'm in this meeting, in a PR meeting, and I'm like how much are we selling the suite for? And everybody went quiet because they had no intention of actually selling it. It was just hey, these are some cool pictures, which is great, but you've got to have that bottom line like how is this going to impact your bottom line? And I think that, in a nutshell, is what RETPAR Media is all about. You can have the pretty social media stuff. But how do we get people in the door? How do we turn that into money in your pocket for the hotel? So what we ended up doing with that Game of Thrones suite is that show came out on a Sunday night. It would air on Sunday night, which is a dead night in most hotels and most markets. So what we did is if we could operationally pull it off, where we could decorate that hotel I'm sorry, decorate that suite. Every week we sell it. We sold it for $1,800, $2,000 a night. It came with a full-spread dinner. We put the flags up, we put all the banners for all the different Game of Thrones houses, goblets, wine, huge turkey leg and stuff like that. So we really played into the whole medieval thing and, yeah, we sold that. So we made an extra $20,000 in revenue by the end of that season, the season of the show, selling rooms that would have went empty anyway. And that's how you merge hotel knowledge, revenue management, bottom line. How do we use PR and social media to get people in the door and put money in your pocket? Because in either way, if we just know the social media way, they don't understand that. They don't really understand. That's not there. That's not the top of mind for them. Let's just put the pretty pictures out there, get some followers so it looks good. But what does that really do for you?

Speaker 2: 16:17

Yeah, yeah, I love that. I think we talked about this quite a bit on the show that even in our space it's the same thing Revenue management as a standalone practice, marketing as a standalone practice. They're both equally important, but just on their own that's not going to move the needle. They need to work together. I don't know that I've seen quite that level of creativity, or not often in our industries. I think maybe that could be something that we're working towards to promote, because I think that is, and obviously there's more flexibility in a hotel type of a property where you can do things like that, versus independently owned properties makes it a little bit more complicated, but it's definitely a skill set. It's a very different way of looking at things, but it makes sense.

Speaker 3: 17:01

Yeah, absolutely Like I said, you've got to, I think, between my experience of being a creator on Instagram, as well as all the hotel logic fall right in the middle, and I see both sides of it, Because the mistake we made on the hotel side was we just nobody really has the time we're constantly short staffed or we'll just give it to the. We give it to the youngest person in the hotel and say OK, you're the social media person now and it's a multi-million dollar asset. Most of these hotels the last couple of hotels that worked at talking about a budget of $18 and a half million in top line revenue, and you're giving that to a 20-year-old kid who that's not their full-time job. You bought them to be a sales coordinator or front office manager or whatever it is. But also we want you to market this multi-million dollar product on social media that has billions of people on it and expect results. It doesn't work. So then we pay, we just give the agencies to do it, but we don't give them any direction either. This is these are peak seasons, this is the customer base that we have, where a luxury hotel or where corporate are guests of mainly male, female age demographics. These are all things that you as a marketing person, as a revenue person in a hotel, we know this stuff because that's how we price, that's how we know what packages to come up with. But we didn't give that in, any of that info to the social media team and just say, hey, do it. So, we've got to merge it to, and I think, because of my experience on both sides of it, I fall right in the middle. So that's what RefPAR media is all about is really using social media to help hotels to really make it part of the marketing funnel and treat it as a vehicle that can drive guests to your properties.

Speaker 4: 18:51

And you took the part of the business that the sales team would always look at and go, oh they're a thorn in my side, and vice versa. You took the part that was generally reserved. Again, the revenue management was reserved for the spreadsheet nerds, the revenue, the numbers, people.

Speaker 1: 19:07

And you made it fun.

Speaker 4: 19:08

You made it a lot of fun, and I think what's really interesting is on the vacation rental side is that our teams properties are pretty lean. In me, the revenue manager is the sales person, is the owner relations, a lot of times the actual owner of the company. So I think on our side we've all learned to do multiple things. So there's not a siloing that the hotels might typically have just by structure. They have everybody. There's different departments, and so what you've done is done. Something that we had to do, just based on the way our business model works, is that you have lots of inventory and a little bit of staff, whereas at hotels you have a lot of staff and a lot of inventory and you balance it out, I think, making it fun again. we talk to different people all the time and they did pieces of the industry. We had somebody recently talking about safety and we're like he's making safety sexy again.

Speaker 2: 19:54

I was like I don't know that ever was sexy and went away but,

Speaker 3: 19:57

it's sexy again. You've made revenue management Bringing sexy bags. Yeah, that's right, bringing sexy bags.

Speaker 4: 20:02

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 20:03

Exactly.

Speaker 4: 20:05

I actually had to ask you. I was looking at your website because, again, you've got a lot of different stuff that you do. You have a little store so you sell some shirts and fun things and really cute stuff, but your logo is the dog. Tell me about the dog.

Speaker 2: 20:18

I love him.

Speaker 4: 20:19

He wears a tie and a suit and he's just adorable. Is that your dog?

Speaker 3: 20:22

Who did he come from? He was my dog. He passed away four years ago now, I think, yeah, 2019, early 2019. But his name was Snarf, so for anybody, who knows? Anything about that obviously I grew up in the 80s. There was a show called Thundercats and there was a character called Snarf. If anybody listened to it, go out and Google it. You'll see what he looks like, because when we got him he was this big and he's had this huge white mustache. It was just like and the character on the show had a similar kind of mustache. But yeah, so I named. I used him as the logo because at the time I was actually a few years back I had a few different channels, so I had Ruff Parvos with the memes. I had originally what was called Ruff Par Travels, so when I would travel I'd do hotel reviews and stories and things like that. So we used him as the logo because he was a very, very chill dog. He was very, very discerning about what you would feed him. I always joke this dog could never be poisoned because he would sniff everything. You would sit next to him and, by comparison, we had another dog at the time who would just no matter what. He could give her a stone and she'd eat it. And then she'd realize, oh no, this is not about spit it out. We would turn this time over everything. And if it wasn't up to his standards he was like no, I don't want her. So it was just a way to, because he had the personality of hey, I'm choosy about what I do. I was bringing that to my travel blogs and stuff like that as well, because as a hotelier, we're going to be pretty picky about where we stay. We'll notice all the little things that may not be up to par at a hotel or vacation rental or something like that. Yeah, and then I think I made him the logo shortly before he ended up passing away. He had cancer at the end, so we knew we were on borrowed time, so it was just a way to keep him around and just use him as my logo. I got verified a while back on Instagram and I had to change the logo.

Speaker 4: 22:19

That hurt, because that can have to be your face when you're verified, right? Oh yeah, man, I was like I wondered that. I'm glad you said that, because I remember you did. That's how I first noticed that it was your actual logo.

Speaker 3: 22:29

Like your logo, but you went away and put your face in there.

Speaker 4: 22:31

Okay, yeah.

Speaker 3: 22:34

So if you guys are on the page you'll see it on the highlights. I use him as he's still on the highlights. So when I do the hotel reviews I had a great artist make some a bunch of logos using him years ago. So he's got one in the suit. He's got one in like pajamas.

Speaker 2: 22:47

Oh, I love that. Those are for the hotel reviews.

Speaker 3: 22:49

That's great I've got when I go to do the restaurant reviews. He's got a little bib on.

Speaker 4: 22:53

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 22:53

I've got a bunch of different ones. He's got a Hawaiian shirt for like travel stuff.

Speaker 2: 22:58

You know you're giving us way too many ideas right now. I know, I know We've seen our logo.

Speaker 3: 23:03

It's two cartoons and we have a dog. So yeah. Yeah, I love your logo. I'm seeing it on the back of your microphone there. It's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:12

Yeah, yeah. So, calvin, tell us your take on short-term rentals and revenue management. I think it's interesting when we get to talk to people that are on the hotel side, but I know you don't really work in short-term rentals, but do you follow any of the trends or what do you see is going on in the revenue management side of short-term rentals? That is interesting to you.

Speaker 3: 23:34

Yeah, I think, going back to the beginning, I was obviously in hotels when this became such a big thing. Airbnb was just stealing Cheryl over the place, especially starting out in San Francisco.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:46

I think we know what's happening in New York now with vacation rentals in New. York City at least, but it's one of those things where I'm going to date myself, obviously, but I've been in the hotel stays for 20 years. At this point and notoriously, as I generalize the industry, we're very short, we're very slow to react to new things in the market. I remember when TripAdvisor first became a thing and I was speaking to the managers of the property at that time. But hey, stop looking at TripAdvisor. Oh, that's just where people go to complain.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Brush it off Right.

Speaker 3: 24:25

Now, I think we all know how important reviews are. Tripadvisor is number one, but this, Google reviews is everything.

Speaker 2: 24:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:32

Social media. People leave in comments on your Instagram or Facebook pages. So now reviews drive almost everything. Again, as a revenue guy, the amount of times I'd get upset because we've got to give a refund to somebody who is an idiot. But hey, they're going to leave a bad review, unless not, it's now it's driving so much of what happens in the business. Yeah, it's a very similar with vacation rentals. When it first came around, people were like, eh, nobody's going to want to do that. People are just going to want to stay at hotels. Really, you don't think that we may at least want to assess what's happening? But then now again fast forward a few years and it's a huge piece of the customer journey. It's a huge thing to fight against for a hotel. Now it's even going so far as you can book a hotel on Airbnb or some of these other platforms, because who was like, hey, let's get a bit of a type of thing. So I think I said I would like to say, I think, what has really led to, I think, how it's helped the hotel industry because there is, it's forced hotels to become a little bit more experiential. And I have a friend who works in sales and I'll never forget it. He told me years ago that sometimes when he wakes up in the morning he'd have to look at the phone and in the hotel room to know what city he was in.

Speaker 2: 25:56

Oh, wow, because he was traveling that much. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:58

He just had no idea. But what? For me, what made it click was you're staying at boring hotels, because when you go into a place, you walk into a building that's cool or experiential. You don't forget it.

Speaker 1: 26:11

You know where you are.

Speaker 3: 26:13

So that tells me you're staying at a cookie cutter? Yeah, you're not going to be. Yeah, hilton or Mary, I just see a regular cookie cutter hotel that looks the same in every city.

Speaker 2: 26:21

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 26:22

And now the way. I think that the vacation rental aspect of it is because you can book a home in Vermont, or the lake, in the woods, at the beach. You can do so many different things and there are so many different places that I think that's why a lot of people gravitated towards that. Hey, instead of staying in a hotel room, why don't we get a house? Why don't we get this apartment? The first time I did it, my wife and I went to Switzerland, and the first time we went together because she went to school there years ago but the first time I went with her we stayed in a hotel. But it's a small room. You're not going to hang out in the room.

Speaker 2: 27:04

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 27:04

But it's also the way we were in Switzerland. It's not the kind of destination where you're like, hey, let's go sit at the beach. There's no beach, but it's not an active place. You'll walk around the lake, you'll hang out, but you really just want to sit in the place and just enjoy the view. So the next year we did a vacation rental. We rented a house and, like I told you guys in the lead in I felt dirty. The first thing was like I'm a hotel guy, right.

Speaker 4: 27:32

I can't believe we're doing this. Don't tell anybody, right.

Speaker 3: 27:35

Not only that, I'm a revenue manager. I'm not so blessed to be helping this industry, but it just when we did it. It was so much better. It felt like your day was just so much longer. Because you don't have to run out of bed to go grab breakfast by a certain time. We can wake up whenever we want. We've got a kitchen downstairs and we can make breakfast. We go out, we walk around the lake, do what we want to do, shop whatever, come back home, but then you've got the evening, because now you can have dinner outside, sit, enjoy the lake, have a glass of wine and stay out there until 9, 10 PM and just enjoy what that destination is really about. Now, if you want to stay in a hotel and have a view of the lake and a balcony, you're going to spend a lot more than we were prepared to spend at that time. So I think how it's helped as hotels have been forced to create more experiences more. You'll see a lot of a lot more brands and a lot more hotels have good public space. When you come into a hotel think of a brand like Arlo, or a lot of small boutique hotels where the rooms may be small but you've got great lobby space and what they call now Instagrammable shots in your lobby. Right. There's a reason they're doing that. I think a lot of that is, yes, social media. You want to be able to take these pictures and have people. But again, it's because you want people to know where you are Right. If you just walk it into the regular Marriott in downtown, whatever city America, take a picture in the lobby, they don't know where you are. That could be any hotel in any city in this country. But if you're at a fun boutique property, that's done some really cool things in the lobby, hotels that have candy shops right in the lobby or some cool photos or something like that that you can take pictures in front of. That's how I think the vacation rental aspect of this is actually help hotels and it's force hotels to change, because there's another game in town for guests. Now Guests can they have that choice as opposed to just having to book at a hotel when you go to a city or you go anywhere. You can book a nice house. You can sit outside and barbecue and grill and don't have to deal with somebody knocking at your door at 9.30 in the morning at 9.30.

Speaker 2: 29:50

Right, you don't get that.

Speaker 4: 29:52

Casagos founder, steve Schwab, has been quoted as saying you can only be a local in one place. This simple yet profound statement is the basis of Casagos franchise model, which allows locally owned vacation rental management companies the ability to compete at a national level by leveraging the system software and support the buying power of a much larger organization.

Speaker 2: 30:12

As a Casagos franchisee, you have the freedom to run your business with the support of a community of like-minded professionals, while leveraging the economies of scale and buying power to increase profitability and reduce operating costs.

Speaker 4: 30:24

Visit casagocom forward slash franchise for more information. It's interesting you say that because I think one of the things that we talk about a lot and it's been a very hot topic, several hot topics but is the standardization of vacation rentals and we've talked about how do we make people that are hotel people, who are coming over into vacation rentals and they're expecting linens and they're expecting housekeeping service and they're expecting these things. How do you service them and not ruin what the vacation rental experience is? So we as an industry have been very focused on how do we elevate operations and not to do away with the uniqueness of a property and its destination, but to be able to have a level of standards that if you go to a vacation rental in Switzerland or New Jersey or Florida, that you're going to get the same level of service like you would with a hotel. So it's interesting to hear you say that this has made the hotels think about the way they operate, which I started in hotels and was in vacation rentals, and I see how both of them have synergies that can work together and they're very complimentary to each other, and while vacation rentals is where my passion lies and I certainly feel like we have a lot of opportunity. Covid gave us a really great spotlight, a great stage. It's made us think about how, the way we need to operate. But clearly there's no slowing hotels, because they're still developing them. They're still building them all over the world. There's still an appetite for that. But I think what's really cool is, and what this all means to me, is that we can now coexist. There are times when people are going to want to stay in a hotel. My husband and I we stay in hotels all the time. It's just he and I. Now, if we travel with our son or other family, we're going to run a vacation rental because we want the space. If we go to a city, we're going to tend to stay in a hotel, because the person at the hotel knows that city and until we get the lay of the land, maybe next time we'll stay in a vacation rental. I think you bring up a very valid point that both of us can learn from each other. I have a question related to the revenue management and your rev par media. Do you have a lot of your clients that actually now, maybe 18 months ago, never mentioned vacation rentals, but now they're very interested in? Hey, there's rentals right down the street from my property. How do I price against them? How do I compete against them? Do you have that come up more than you've ever had? I would assume so.

Speaker 3: 32:35

It depends on the market, I think to the point you just made. You tend to have less of that in bigger cities, but I have some clients that are in smaller markets middle America and you'll definitely have to look at it. You have no choice but to look at those stuff and even going back again to the beginning when you had more of a Airbnb starting out and stuff like that Cities like New York and San Francisco you would find yourself looking at these listings and pricing because people, for the same $300 you were charging, some might get an apartment with with kitchen or something like that, and it's in the building next to you, you know. So I think in the largest cities, because of all the legality and all the things that have happened since this is we're talking maybe 10 years ago, it's probably a little bit easier in that sense in a big city now, but in smaller markets it's still a big thing. I think if you're driving to places like Palm Springs or Orlando, these kind of places, where they're not big cities and people are going for more Vacation type things You're a revenue manager in those areas You're going to have to be paying attention to what the vacation rentals are charging and price yourself accordingly and again, know your audience and know that guests. Are your guests really looking for more space they don't want to be able to do their own laundry or are they looking more for the convenience of being in a hotel, the fact that you could just get out, roll out the room and somebody's going to clean that for you by the time you get back? I've seen some really funny memes recently about staying in a vacation rental where somebody's like, hey, you've got to take out the trash.

Speaker 2: 34:18

You need to get the bed and wash the car.

Speaker 4: 34:21

The list of chores.

Speaker 2: 34:23

Those videos and videos are hilarious.

Speaker 3: 34:25

There's definitely some good ones out there. Absolutely. Again, it's about what guests want what and when they want it. Just like you and I've been on both sides. I stay at hotels quite frequently and, depending on where we're going, a vacation rental just makes sense. Sometimes it depends what we want at that time.

Speaker 2: 34:45

Absolutely.

Speaker 4: 34:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:47

And I think for vacation rental revenue managers that's probably one of the more challenging parts of the job now is for hotels. You're looking at our pricing, but we also have to be looking at hotels too, because in some of the markets that you mentioned, you can't just be looking at just vacation rentals, because there are a lot of hotel products that are suites they're two, three bedrooms, and so that is a comparison set for the traveler. But beyond that, it's not just you can't just look at the professionally managed vacation rentals. You need to be looking at the self-managed vacation rentals. And I know at Crossigo that's one thing that is definitely in our core competencies there, and strengths is really looking at those comp sets within a market and looking at the hotel, the star data, looking at transparent, looking at key data, depending on what market which one makes the most sense to compare. But it's the touch points that revenue managers have now to be able to make decisions and look at things. I guess if you're a revenue manager, it must be great because you can see things a lot easier than you used to be able to. Yeah, it's got to be overwhelming. Would you agree that, with so much information, like are revenue managers just completely stressed out these days.

Speaker 3: 35:55

I'll answer that question with a story. So I never thought I would end up in revenue, because my first job looking at a full service Helton like director revenue was consistently stressed. Yeah, this man would walk in Like he'd walk in as he had perfect sits in his office and his keys. I was like that job sucks.

Speaker 4: 36:16

Yeah, never give up.

Speaker 3: 36:18

Yeah, that's exactly what I told myself as a kid, coming out of college and trying to figure out what avenue to take in this industry. I was like, could I go into sales or want to go into operations? And then I was like I would never do revenue. I was like that guy is overly stressed out and I could understand why there's a lot to look at, there's a lot of pressure, right, because then you have to not only manage all these channels there's more and more channels Every year, if it's not again dating myself, but I remember before OTA's were a thing. It was the same reaction. It was like people are just going to call hotels.

Speaker 2: 36:56

Okay, yeah, that's right. Now 30% of the business Right, big time, big time.

Speaker 3: 37:03

And then one of these commissions so high because we acted like we didn't need them and everybody was like wait, I can book this for myself. I would have happened to call somebody.

Speaker 2: 37:12

Yeah, I think I'll just do that.

Speaker 3: 37:14

Yeah, but anyway, yeah, it's all it's. That's only going to become more and more. The more tech forward the world becomes, the easier it is going to be for people to check different things. If you had to, if you had to go to a library, they got on a laptop to check the vacation rentals in your area or versus the hotels. You're just going to call somebody. Nobody's going to do that. But now we've got all this information at our fingertips, you can go on an OTA and see vacation rentals at hotels next to each other.

Speaker 4: 37:44

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 37:45

Yeah, it is tough. I'm sure there are plenty of stressed revenue people out there because it's just more and more to look at and while you're trying to do that, you've got sales not going to need to ask about an extension of a cut off date, right?

Speaker 4: 37:57

There's only so much a person can handle, yeah, yeah. And an owner saying how are you going to increase my revenue by 20% next week? Right, yeah.

Speaker 3: 38:06

And as soon as you get off that phone call, sales is waiting for you to say oh, we need to lower the rate for this group because we have to preserve the relationship.

Speaker 1: 38:13

Exactly, yeah, and I think you're trying to present my job.

Speaker 2: 38:17

There's a lot of in my experience in the Myrtle Beach Market I know this is similar to where Annie is to in Panawasote Beach but there's a lot of properties that kind of sit in that hybrid space that they are run more like a hotel but they are vacation rentals but they've got a front desk and people check in there and they more prescribed hotel based revenue management, I would say, and software choices and things like that. But there's a lot of finger pointing. These departments are quite large with resorts that are ran that way and people are always. There's always a problem with something but, it's definitely a stressful job. That's one of those things.

Speaker 3: 38:55

I've had a lot to say on that over the years. To me, that all comes back to Del, because it's about to leadership. Yeah communication. We do a terrible job generalizing the industry, but again we're talking 20 years. I can name you two of the hotels where I got a proper onboarding experience when I started Interol where they would take you around the property and you'd have to maybe spend a day with every department to see how this all works. Luckily for me, one of those properties was the first property I worked at and I was the reservations manager and I spent the day with front office, I spent a day with sales, I spent a day with housekeeping, and I'm glad I got that experience, because that's how you see how everything works together. And don't get me wrong, there's reasons for that. We're constantly short staff, we're constantly having to turn over people, so we don't always have the time to train every single person properly. However, if we want to eliminate this problem of every all the silos and every department arguing with each other, the reason that happens and I see it all the time on my Instagram page is because people don't understand what the other job is. Yeah, exactly. And they're assume it's easy. I've got the bat many times for salespeople. I actually a couple of years ago a colleague of mine, he may know Ken Patel, he's the CEO of. Fox.

Speaker 1: 40:21

TV Hotels yeah.

Speaker 3: 40:22

So Ken did a poll on his LinkedIn page asking who should get the most credit when the hotel hits a financial goal like a perfect sell or hidden forecast of budget. Right, he did a poll to Google votes. Housekeeping got over 20% Wow. Front office got a little bit less. General manager got like 4%. Sales got two Wow, that's very interesting. Yeah, and these are the people who are following and interacting with a page, like you're, like Ken's. These are people who are in the industry. These are VP's, these are GM's, and it's the latest Like I. Honestly, it bothered the hell out of me. I talked about it on my Instagram page and I ruffled a lot of feathers, because I'm like you either don't understand the business you're in. I don't even know if there's another option. You don't. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:18

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 41:20

If you think a housekeeper plays a larger role than a salesperson and meeting a financial goal, what are you? What are we talking about? Here, yeah, but as people don't get it, they think sales is just going to happy hour and client lunches, and while I jerk on that all the time, they are jerks, you know what I mean. That's what it was. One of those things is I could joke up my family. You can't do that.

Speaker 2: 41:47

Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 41:50

But I've seen it's. Sales is such a tough thing to do. Yeah, the constant rejection, the constant preparation to rotate you. Eight months to land a piece of business, and there we need you to do it. The front desk is check them in properly and sometimes y'all can't do that and then you want to get upset that you weren't given all the information. We had a meeting for that there's a resume that's four pages long, right. It's the band. We put it in the and we put it under the desk right in front of you. Yeah, right there. And it's. I think the issue is not enough. People have done enough roles in this business.

Speaker 2: 42:34

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 42:35

Agreed Again. I'm fortunate that I was able. I went to hotel schools. I've worked front desk, I've done housekeeping, I've done everything except night audit and engineering. So we wouldn't want me fixing anything Just ask my wife yeah, what's wrong with? You, would I be nothing. We know working pipes in that room but we, if we, to eliminate that problem, we've got to get back to like mentorship, we've got to get back to these manager and training programs where you have people yes. They're on the whole time because they don't understand if the joke I just made, if those front office people that are checking in these guests they understood how hard it was for you to land that piece of business and how long it took, they would treat it much differently.

Speaker 2: 43:23

Yeah, yeah, and that's a really good point.

Speaker 3: 43:25

And it was. They understood how important it was to make sure that, hey, when that VIP gets here, they need to make sure the room is ready, they've got their amenities and we don't screw it up, because that person is making a million dollar decision for this hotel and if we don't get it right, they're not coming back next year.

Speaker 2: 43:42

Exactly, and what?

Speaker 3: 43:43

that means is we got a million dollars less, and that means we've got people that we need to lay off now.

Speaker 4: 43:48

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:48

Unless we can find another piece of business. But people, they don't understand that. That's not their fault, that's the fault of leadership, that's our. Gm's and our VP's fault for not making sure we have a culture that people need to get it.

Speaker 2: 43:59

Yeah yeah. It's the famous line it's not my job, that's not my job and, I think, a lot of people if they're not brought up the way that you mentioned them when you first started it the one property that did onboarding correctly if you're not being shown the full circle and scope of what the business is, you just don't have that under appreciation or understanding of it, and I think that just inherently creates silos and also creates arguments, but within the same company when it's like you're all fighting for the same thing, but it becomes just more infighting at the end of the day, and we see that in vacation rentals too, If you're honest, Steven in roles that I've been in. I've never been in operations, I've only ever been in marketing. But in a lot of companies like that we're in, marketing and operations are definitely very much the same thing. They're very separate. I went to Costco University back in December and got to really live in the field of operations and get to see all the things that go on in the day to day of maintenance and housekeeping and I was blown away. I've been in this business for 14 years and I had no idea some of those things that they have to go through. And I think everybody really no matter what industry you're in, I think it's just important to be able to have that full scope of what the business is. It just takes leadership, to know to take that time in the beginning to get people in the right path.

Speaker 3: 45:18

Like I said, there's a lot of reasons why it doesn't happen, but at some point we've got to. We've got to just suck it up and realize that, hey, this is only creating more. So it's we've got to take that time, even if that means, hey, your GM's got to work a front desk shift, because we need to make sure that these people we hired understand the business. And that's also why there's so much turnover, because if you just get thrown in at a desk, you haven't been taught what you're doing or how important is that role is. To get bored, or you get frustrated people yelling at you all day. You don't see that this is going anywhere, you leave and then we fill that position again.

Speaker 1: 45:55

We do the same thing, absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 46:00

So what's next for you with RevCarMedia? Are you going to do? You think you'll branch out into vacation rentals? Do you think you just want to stay in the lane of hotels Like, where do you, where are you going to take this?

Speaker 3: 46:12

I'm not picky. There's vacation rentals out there that need social media management.

Speaker 4: 46:17

Oh, 100%, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 46:19

Absolutely, and I think I think it's even more important because you don't have that hotel thing behind you. You don't have that. That would be what we would call the billboard effect. It's sort of down that line of the difference between a branded hotel or an independent hotel. Again, the good thing about those cookie cutter hiltons and Marriots is that you know what you're getting and everybody knows them. You know where to find them. They're easy, right they're. You open up a hilton, you flip the lights on. People are showing up because, hey, I know what I'm getting at a hilton. If you're an independent hotel, you've got to do a lot more work. You've got to do PR, social media, email marketing, because nobody knows who you are, so you need to explain what that is, but at least they know you're a hotel. If you're on a vacation rental, not a lot of people even know what that is. What am I getting? Am I getting an apartment, a house? What does it look like? There's a lot more work to be done for those type of properties to be successful and I have seen a few. During the pandemic we were going to Vermont a lot and a few of the ones that we found was because the owners had a social media page for the property so they would have pictures of the different rooms and the views and little tours. But that's definitely an area I think there's a lot of room for improvement. But yeah, I'm not just a hotel guy, I'll social media market anything.

Speaker 2: 47:40

So bring that idea. I love that yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:43

You know what?

Speaker 2: 47:43

Honestly, Calvin, we would love to have you come to one of the vacation rental conferences. I know the vacation rental data and revenue management conference in December would be a great one for you to attend.

Speaker 1: 47:53

Yeah, ok, nashville in December.

Speaker 2: 47:56

Yeah, and I think it would be great to involve more conversations and panels that bring different sides of revenue management, and that typically has not yet been done at the conferences that I've been to. But I think there's a lot to be learned from both sides and I think the perspective of putting a creative spin on it is definitely something that is not talked about a lot, so hopefully we can get you down there.

Speaker 3: 48:19

Yeah, that's been to Nashville once. I absolutely loved it.

Speaker 4: 48:24

It's a great town and we have a great town every time we get to it.

Speaker 1: 48:28

I think it would be great to have Alex, annie and Calvin hit Nashville.

Speaker 4: 48:32

We can go down to Broadway and do some social media from there.

Speaker 3: 48:36

All right, sounds like a great time. Count me in, all right.

Speaker 4: 48:39

Calvin, do you mention before we got on that you had some project or an announcement or something that you have coming up and this is going to air next week I guess this week when it comes out? You want to share it, and we're waiting to hear what it's going to be.

Speaker 3: 48:50

I'm excited, Absolutely yes. So you guys told me this was the Alex and Annie news networks.

Speaker 2: 48:55

Put a little bit of that, just a little bit.

Speaker 3: 49:00

But no, so I'm really excited about it. I partnered with an investment banker Late last year. We had a conversation because he's worked Wall Street in a lot of these larger brokerage firms and he has a lot of people looking to invest in hotels, specifically women and minority-owned hotels, so helping out people who will have a harder time getting financial backing for their hotels and or vacation rentals. So we've partnered together. So part of RepRede now is another company called Lighthouse Strategic Advisory. This is the first place. I've announced it, as I mentioned. By the time this comes out you guys may see it on my LinkedIn, but we're really excited about it I will bring, obviously, the hospitality asset management knowledge. So part of the deal would be you work with us, we help you find the funding, which is, first and foremost, most important, but we don't just leave you high and dry once you get a hotel built up and say, ok, what do I do now? You have someone like me who can help you from the asset management side, help you market the property, obviously, revenue manage. I have those skilled as well. But yeah, really, we're really excited about it because I think it's really important that we all help each other in this business and especially the people who have it a little bit harder. I don't have to tell two females how hard it is in the corporate world out there. I see it first hand every day with my wife and what she deals with, and obviously I'm a minority, so is he and we just feel like bringing that allyship and if we can really help people who make that path a bit easier, because we've seen it so many times where you know and if you go to a JP Morgan Chase or these big, they're not really going to invest in small projects. But we can help you do that, we can help you. You don't need to have a $20 million project in order to get funding. Now we can find people who are looking to invest and help women minorities realize their dreams of property ownership. So really excited about that. We're going to be at the Lodging Conference in a couple of weeks down in Phoenix. But again, yeah, this is. You guys are getting it on the ground floor. This has not been announced anywhere yet.

Speaker 4: 51:19

Not even in my.

Speaker 3: 51:19

LinkedIn. So yeah, we're really excited about it.

Speaker 4: 51:22

That's super exciting. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, congratulations. We love to help people get their next leg up, get next step. And it's funny Alex mentioned the Revenue Management Conference. There's actually a conference like right before it. It's a women's summit, women's conference for vacation rentals, so it's just women in vacation rentals and there's been a lot of talk the last couple of years about women who dominate the roles within the business. But, they're not at the senior level or they're not the ones that are owning the business.

Speaker 1: 51:48

And so I think what you're doing is going to resonate very well in the hotel space.

Speaker 4: 51:52

But I think there's also just putting a plug in there. There's an opportunity within vacation rentals. There's a lot of women that have the ability to really do strong management for vacation rentals. That would probably be very interested in talking with you guys.

Speaker 3: 52:07

Absolutely, like I said, we don't discriminate hotels, vacation rentals. You want to rent out your tent in the backyard?

Speaker 2: 52:13

We'll help you do it? Yeah, exactly Well you do it.

Speaker 3: 52:17

But no, yeah, obviously, like I said, I'm really passionate about it. I think it's important for us all to bring like to it and help how we can. But yeah, so it sounds like I'm spending two weeks in Nashville. I know I mean that's the place you've got to be If you've got nothing to do the first week of December.

Speaker 1: 52:35

We'll see you there.

Speaker 4: 52:36

But, Calvin, thank you so much for again, multi-tasking, scheduling, doing all this stuff with us. It's been a little crazy, so we appreciate you. I said this to a few people, but I said this to you I am such a huge fan of yours. Every morning I look at your Instagram.

Speaker 1: 52:49

I love it.

Speaker 4: 52:50

We'll make sure that we include that in the show notes, but if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach you?

Speaker 3: 52:57

So you can probably link them. It is the easiest way. Calvin to Loki just looked on me there, linked in, of course. Rep problems on Instagram, if you want to laugh about working in the travel space, lighthousehospitalityco is live so you guys can check us out there to find out more about that, and also refproblemscom I could do some travel blogs and a few more things there. You can buy some swag with my dog on it.

Speaker 2: 53:22

Very cool.

Speaker 3: 53:24

But yeah, so it'll be in places, but started linked in and we'll go from there.

Speaker 2: 53:28

Awesome, very cool. Congratulations again on the new venture. We're excited to be able to launch that and get that out to the world for you, and we'll be closely watching to see how things go and hopefully we'll see you in December in Nashville. But, calvin, thank you again for being here today and thank you everyone for tuning in. If you'd like to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to alexandannipodcastcom. And until next time, thanks everyone. Music.