Inside Booking.com’s Strategy to Become the Best Partner for Property Managers - with Ian Ackland

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex 

Annie Holcombe  
and I'm Annie, 

Alex Husner  
and we're joined today by Ian Ackland, who is the managing director of the Americas for booking.com and it's so great to see you.

Ian Ackland  
Great to see you too. Thanks for having me today.

Annie Holcombe  
Well, Ian, we're very honored to have you. You are one of the leading OTAs globally, and certainly making a lot of inroads into the US, and we're excited to be able to talk to you about it. But before we get started, for our listeners that maybe don't know you, why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey to where you are today within the travel industry. Yeah,

Ian Ackland  
happy to first of all, I'm kind of fan girling a little bit here, because Thank you for having me today. Avid listener of this podcast, so I knew this would be your first question, and I don't often reflect on it, but when I did, it really started to make me think that perhaps I was an OG host very early in my career. So career started in travel just over 30 years ago. I'll try to protect my age there, where I at a very early age and through the whole of our summer holidays in the UK for breaks between university terms, I would go to campsites across Europe, and on those campsites, there were pre erected tents and mobile homes that families from the UK and the Netherlands would go on vacation to and drive To. And my role throughout the whole of those summers was pretty much everything a host does, checking guests in, first of all, actually, before you check them in, cleaning the accommodation, checking them in, tourism information while they were there, checking them out. And you know, they would stay a couple of days, some might stay a week. So you would see them throughout their vacations, and you would manage somewhere around about 20 units. And so as I reflected on that just over, just over the past week or so, I thought that makes me a host, I think, at a very early age of my life. And I did that for four years through university, and it's at that point that travel gets you, and I think many people say this, that once travel gets you, you don't leave, right? So then my career took me through tour operation and hotel wholesaling in the UK. I joined booking.com just over 11 years ago, followed a path within booking.com of account manager. Management of global hotel chains right at the beginning, through leading connectivity partnerships for the Americas, through leading vacation rentals for the Americas, and then just over a year ago, came into this role of managing director of the Americas for booking. What

Alex Husner  
a journey you've been booking for a long time now. My goodness, wow. I'm sure you've seen a lot of different phases and changes throughout your tenure, too, and many more to come in the future. Yeah,

Ian Ackland  
the one, I mean I talk about a lot, because I think this is an interesting one, particularly in the vacation rental space, is that what started off around 2015, so COVID 10 years ago, was a meeting between booking.com and a number of large global hotel chains, and one of the things that they asked us to solve operationally was, please help us get rid of spreadsheets when it comes to how we work with you and how we automate with you. And so we started off in 2015 building what is now referred to, I think, as the Content API. Building the Content API with a view to serve hotels. And at the same time, we were having conversations with large vacation rental companies, some of which had 1000 listings. And so it became very, very clear very quickly that the vacation rental industry had a need to adopt the API technology to be able to manage at scale, and to adopt it fast. And so actually, what we saw was that many of the early adopters of of our content API were more in the vacation rental space than in the hotel space, and that kind of moved on from there in terms of how we saw innovation in the vacation in the vacation rental space, and how we saw that adopted throughout the connectivity ecosystem. It's still one of those things that says you think you're building something for one audience, but actually another audience finds a really strong use case for

Alex Husner  
it. Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, gosh, we know so many managers that have just had a lot of success in booking.com really, and in recent years, you know, I think it's really ramped up in a lot of different markets. But I'm just curious, and, you know, looking more specifically in the last couple years with what has happened, you know, post COVID, so much more demand for this sector. And looking into 2025, and knowing, you know, this is a so far, it started out as a, maybe not the best year for a lot of destinations. But I mean, how is booking.com Looking at this year and what is going to be different as opposed to the last couple of years, as far as demand and how you can continue to keep generating bookings for managers? Yeah,

Ian Ackland  
so let's start with what we saw last year and what we continue to see, right? So, 13 of the last 14 quarters, we have grown our vacation rental business faster than the industry. And the last few quarters say last quarter q4 the vacation rental business for us grew 19% which is faster than our hotel stay, our hotel stays, so we are seeing that traction come in to your point, as we continue to grow supply, as we continue to build products, as we continue to work in partnership, and as we continue to attract guests, We are bringing additional demand sources through to hosts and property managers. One of the things that we saw last year, you will attest to this. I think we talked about it in Verma, was we did see hosts and property managers looking a little bit more to diversify their distribution. And so we benefited a bit from that. We saw our supply grow by 8% we're now, globally at 7.9 million listings. I will say we do a little better with what I would call enterprise style partners in the US. And by the way, I'm deliberately not using the word professional here. I know that I've heard you use it a few times, but my just because, as I was reflecting on it. I thought if somebody told me when I was in 90 degree heat under canvas scrubbing a tent, that I wasn't professional, I don't think I've been very happy, right?

Alex Husner  
But it would hard to be enterprise and do that right?

Ian Ackland  
So I think we do a little better in with enterprise. And I think part of that is something that we're also thinking about, that the where is the next generation of supply growth for vacation rentals@booking.com and I think part of that is like, how do we how do we get to hosts when they're a little bit early? Earlier in their growth journey. Maybe they're just starting their professional career. Maybe they've got 510, listings, and they're working out, when is the time to diversify that that distribution, and that's something that we've been trying to solve over the past couple of years. I think we've got some very strong ecosystem partners, partners who have participated with you for like, host away, guest streamline, etc, those people who have got the the the entry level hosts, or the hosts with smaller portfolios, we're really looking at how we partner with those. We think that's what that that's the next area of our supply acquisition focus. That doesn't mean that we take our focus off the enterprise style. We have 16 offices across North America that provide account management services to enterprise style partners. And so it's more about how do you run account management services while also attracting perhaps those people who are a little bit earlier in their growth journey, or have intentionally decided that five listings is the cap, and that's where they want to stop, right? So that's one of the focus areas. I think you asked about kind of what's coming up for 2025 I think there's a few things that's kind of on our mind. One is about the expansion of supply. I think overall, Annie, we spoke a little bit about this again when we were at Verma. But overall, I think what I get excited about right now is how solutions kind of come together to simplify. Overall, we spoke a bit about payments. For me, this is probably one of our biggest aha moments. It wasn't last year. It was a couple of years ago, but certainly when booking first started serving the vacation rental business, it served it very much based on the we'll make the reservation, we'll send the credit cards to the host or the property manager, and that was causing some friction, so we launched a payment service which was not a great product, and Our partners told us it was not a great product, and so we went back to the drawing board, yeah, two or three years ago, went back to the drawing board and redesigned with partners in mind, and actually had partners tell us what they really need, and we redesigned it. And I think that's a such a big aha moment for us that says, hey, this is now actually one of the big friction solvers that we have been able to identify in the last few years. And so let's take that in terms of how we provide those services, and now let's think about, how do you now provide a holistic service to all of your partners? And this was the bit that you and I were talking about. I think one of the things you talked about with me was, hey, what? What's your account managers doing? And I remember saying that we have a lot of them, and they're in they're in 16 offices, and they provide great account management services. But my take on this is that service needs to be broader than account managers. We need to be able to think about multiple touch points, and we need to think about holistically serving. And what I mean by that, I think, if you remember, we were saying, Well, how often do you have to for the things you know you want to do? How often do you have to call Amazon to do them and and most of the time, part of that is, well, the things I know I want to do, I should be able to just do intuitively. And the account manager service should be able to augment my experience and bring me all of the insight that I don't know already. And so I look at what we're doing for 2025 and I really think about that holistic service space, right? We've got 600 connectivity partners who are all able to advise partners on the best way to optimize with booking.com We've got partner help. We've got aI jumping into the partner help space to be able to provide very robust chat bot advice as an example. And then we have account managers. And so I think if you layer all three of those, I'm excited about a time where we go actually this is just service where the partner needs it, rather than only one channel towards account management. Yeah.

Speaker 2  
So I think one of the things that I love, and I work with the booking, the US booking team really closely. Probably meet with them weekly, and we're doing some upcoming webinars and things with next packs and some other partners that we've got is, you know, kind of to Alex's point about the power of the channel. When we turn a partner on, they generally get a booking within 2448 hours, you know, just depending on the market. And I'm really fascinated about when I had worked for another OTA that's not named in this conversation. One of the things that we could, we could, like, boost properties when they'd go live, and I don't know that that necessarily needs to happen on booking, because I think that your platform is so powerful and there's so many eyeballs on the channel that it just seems to just automatically happen. Then, of course, once the booking starts, that algorithm just picks up and just keeps going with it, and like, just really knows that that property is the right property, and that this is what the guests like. And or the consumer likes and consumer wants. And I'm curious about, you know, for you guys in your growth, like, how do you get that message out there? Because I talk to people all the time that was, oh, booking, they're from Europe. They don't, you know, I want us companies, or they just only bring international and I remember being at the other OTA that that was what, that was, the power that you brought in initially was you could bring in the eyeballs from Europe, but now you really have a very good foothold in the US. And so trying to help your team through next packs and through our other partners, get in front of these people. And it's not just about the smaller operators. There's a lot of good size operators out there that still have not adopted. And so how do you think that message can get out there in front of enough people to help you grow? Yeah,

Ian Ackland  
there are, there are three critical answers to this. One of them is going to see me flat, and next packs for a while, right? So, so enjoy it for a couple of minutes, because when I hear you say, we build listings and we start to see our first reservation, that's 24 or 48 hours. The truth is, that's because you know how to build quality listings, and that's one of the areas that I talked about earlier that said there are 600 connectivity partners, and finding those who are truly our premier connectivity partners, like next packs, is means that you will benefit from being given the advice about the critical things to showcase at the time you go live. So there's a foundational element, particularly of those people who are using the Content API, and there are some there's a school of thought of some people that says, get it up and optimize it later. That's probably not the right way to go. When we start to look at our premier partners, like next packs, your focus is get it up to sell from day one. And guess what? You sell from day one, right? So the first element is actually making sure that together, we've done the foundational work. The second piece of that is about the discovery, discoverability piece. So a couple of things on there. First one is we know, and certainly last year's results show this, that the having one platform for all accommodation types actually benefits when the traveler has no specific property intent. And what I mean by that is they're coming on to look for any kind of accommodation, and they end up looking vacation rentals. It's a big it's a big win for the vacation mental space at that point. So first of all, we know that. Secondly, the use of AI over the last 10 years or so has been, how do we think about personalizing search results to be able to say we know that we know the behaviors and the habits of the person searching? Let's make sure the search results delivers the visibility for what they're looking for, and that's less about what did they actively search? Because normally they search a destination and a date, and it's more about what do we already know about them through machine learning and AI to be able to surface results and photos in orders, etc. So there's the second piece about discoverability. All of those, the foundations and the discoverability, are the two things that come together to deliver that first booking in the first 24 to 48 hours, right? The third area, then, is what drives us travelers and international travelers. But you were specifically asking about us travelers to booking.com in the first place, and it's been a very strategic priority for us for the past few years, around the work we do around demand and branding and sponsorships, etc. So you may have seen the our new stars this year are the Muppets, which is a great commercial, and so that runs through events like the Super Bowl. You'll see us sponsoring the MLB as an example, like America's game. So at that point, I think there's been a concerted effort to raise awareness within us travelers of booking.com and it's working, yeah,

Speaker 2  
and I think you've done a really good job. Also, what I've always liked about the creative that booking has is it's been entertaining, and it's been a lot of fun. And so I'm a huge Tina Fey fan, so I love that whole like Tina, the personalities of Tina last year and and all that stuff. So I'm looking forward to the Muppets because I'm a, I'm a die hard Muppet fan. Myself,

Ian Ackland  
by far my favorite Christmas movie. Yes? Me, yes,

Alex Husner  
yeah. I think, you know, it's interesting when you look at the marketing of the OTAs compared to a traditional hotel or vacational company. Obviously the sheer size. Is the biggest, you know, difference there. But the ability that you're able to drive demand based on your brand marketing is huge. You know, I mean, people know booking.com they know verbo, they know Expedia, they know Airbnb, because of the things that they're doing that are not directly related to paid search. And you know, areas where it's the performance marketing is, it's just it's very expensive and it's difficult to compete when you've got so many big brands going neck to neck on that. But maybe tell us a little bit about how has the marketing strategy evolved over the last few years for booking.com?

Ian Ackland  
Yeah, so it's interesting. You mentioned PPC. I'll call out, I think we just announced this, that kind of mid 60 ish percent of our total B to C bookings are actually just direct channel now. So part of that has come through evolution. Obviously, we we work very closely with partners like like Google through PPC and their emerging products, as well hotel finder, etc. From there, ultimately, I think that you know, the marketing strategy will work from a position of you'll kind of think back to 2016, 17. Booking. Dot Yare came in, I think through the pandemic space, a lot of people got hyper focused on performance based marketing at that point. We did too, and then we kind of continue that. And it's lovely to see booking dot, yeah, back. Honestly, I love booking dot, yeah, yeah. 

Annie Holcombe  
thinking about the vacation rentals and you were talking about content. And that's one thing at next packs, we see we started working with some traditional hotel PMS is that the partners have hybrid inventory, where they're operating hotels and they're operating cottages, vacation rental resorts. But they wanted to get on some of the more traditional vacation rental sites. But the PMS is, don't manage content, and it is to me, I guess, because I've been on the VR side of it so long, I had forgotten that the PMS is on the on the traditional side were just so rate, just rate in inventory. That's all it was. And all these other like bolt on. So we, while we think in the vacation rentals, they've got all these layers of complexity within their tech stack. I mean, the hotel side of it has to have it when they want to enter into our space. So do you feel from the vacation rental side that being as in tune with it and maybe listening to the partners more, that it's made you guys more adaptable towards the hotel side, because you've already created some things on the VR side of the business. So again, the content is a great a great example. But do you think that that makes you more adaptable and more able to work with a more diverse set of inventory, better than maybe your competitors? Probably, yes,

Ian Ackland  
I think they don't always plug and play, and so we obviously have significant product teams who are looking at what can be adopted and by whom? Because, to your point, one of the earlier sides that we looked at was a, yeah, a PMS can manage rate plans, which is also interesting, by the way, because quite a lot of vacation rental technology can't manage more than one rate plan, right? So, yeah. So there's just differences between the two. So in a hotel space you would you see a load of rate plans and a PMS. Can usually manage those. Usually manage the creation of those. Certainly manage the rates and availability from those. But then, to your point, they don't manage a photo or an image or something else from there, right? So very early. On. We had to look at this in a way that said we're going to have to allow multiple partners to provide only one source of truth, which means you can take the photos API and give it to a third party content management system for this property, and therefore they can manage images. And so part of that is, how do you, how do you support this in a way that allows modularization of actions, and within those modules, potentially, not always, but potentially multiple partners attached to one property, multiple connectivity or tech partners attached to one property. Doesn't always have to happen that way. There are there are tech companies who are solving for both scenarios. There are tech companies in the vacation rental world who are now rapidly realizing that one rate plan doesn't cut it. And so how do we make sure we support more? There are others who are looking at, well, actually, I've got in the hotel space, I've got a PMS and I've got a CRS, and I've got a channel manager and I've got a content feed, and how do I pull all of those together into one? It's

Annie Holcombe  
a crazy world we're working in. Yeah, I am a bit of an

Ian Ackland  
avid listener, but I on the train yesterday, I listened back to when you were in Italy, and they played the 30 a one. And what really struck from me. Struck me was this bit that says it's a complex world. The winner is going to be the people who don't make it complex for me as a property manager, the winner is going to be the partner that truly says, here's you go, we'll, we'll help you grow your business. We'll take away your complexity, and we'll just let you deliver the best guest guest experience you can possibly deliver. That kind of really resonated with me.

Alex Husner  
Yeah? I mean, it's true and profound, and I think everybody's in that kind of race now to try and figure that out. Yeah, a lot of different verticals. And the tough part is, it's not just going to be one provider or one part of technology in the space that can accomplish it. It's like, it's really, it's, you know, the collaboration between different sides of the industry, you know, figuring out, because there's no one size fits all solution, you know, we've debated that at length on the show. And then there just isn't, I mean, geography wise, size of the company, goals of the company. There's a lot of different variables that come into that. But I'm curious. I mean, you mentioned that you really, the enterprise clients are really where you you succeed, but you do work with the smaller hosts also. And so I'm just curious in how, how are you able to leverage your demand partners to be able to really service those smaller size hosts, and how are you working with them? And how's it going?

Ian Ackland  
Yeah, no, so it's going well, one of the things we know is that when the and again, to my point, it's not that we don't have any it's that what we see is that we have, we have a very good, very good adoption of enterprise style, and we have an opportunity to grow our mid sized hosts. That's where we are in the US. We have them, and they perform very well when they work with us. And I think there's actually some there's actually something in there which suggests that at times, I have a hypothesis, it's not proven, but at times they actually perform better. My hope, my hypothesis, is that if you've got 1000 listings, you, by nature, have a long tail version of those 1000 listings that might not get the care and attention it needs. And if you've got 20, you've got 20, and you look after them. So when they do join us, I think they they do very, very well. How do we serve them? So first of all, I think part of that is, if you're talking about 20 there's enough data there that says you've you've passed the tipping point. That says you're going to manage these manually. So anything kind of 10 plus is where the and some people even lower than that through choice. But anything more than 10 plus is really where you start to scale into I need technology to do this for me, and I'm not going to try and just do it all myself. So when you get to that point, one of the benefits that we have, and I mentioned it earlier, is that we are, we are well connected within the ecosystem and within connectivity partners, whether they choose to serve the list as listing 10 to 20, or whether they choose to really go after the 50 pluses or the 100 pluses, we are connected with the vast majority of them. And so what we get there is the ability to at scale for our connectivity partners to share important optimization messages. And it comes back to my previous conversation right around you, getting them within 24 to 48 hours, the connectivity providers, who are by and large, are premier providers. And if you go to our partner hub, you'll find the list of Premier providers listed there. Those are the ones who are truly able to tell you what to do to be successful on the platform. You then also have the access to the partner hub. You have access to our. Our our customer service team, etc. So there are service levels to be able to help you optimize, but fundamentally, most of that advice is coming from connectivity providers at that

Annie Holcombe  
point. Yeah, we have a that's one of the things I love within the next packs platform, and our team worked really closely with your team, and a couple of other providers did this too, to have this kind of seamless experience where some of these foundational functions from your system are in our system so they don't have to go in to your platform. But whether that all also allows for us is to make our system stickier, but we can showcase these content pieces, and they can look at all of their properties instead of individual listings like they would on your site. They can look at them together and understand like, oh, in you know, these properties, I have some content, like questions that I haven't answered, or I have I need more photos, or things like that. And I think that it's really important, because you have to adapt what the consumer is actually searching. And I know that sometimes it's like, well, you know, during certain times a year, they're looking specifically at the pool, so you want to make sure you have the best pool photo. But then certain times in the year, they're really looking at like what events are in the area. So it's, it's, it's kind of the combination of all of that. And I think that's why I, myself and my team, we talk to your team so regularly, so we're up to speed on what are the you know, what are the campaigns that you have going on? So that if we do need to update content, to look right in that campaign. We can do that. And I think that a lot of partners, just potential partners, don't understand that. That's what the benefit of not only a connectivity partner, but working with a large channel who has all of this, all of these resources, together, they can really help you mold out what works best, and you can replicate that onto other channels too. It's to take those learnings and and use them for your benefit. So I think what you guys have done and what you've done with your connectivity partners has been tremendous, and I hope that in the partnership that we have and the focus that I know that we're working together with your team on this year, that we can get it out to more people, because I know that the the opportunity to grow inventory for booking is vast. You We haven't even like scratched the surface, so to speak, in what what is available to us. But I hope that people listening will understand that this channel has a lot of powerful tools to it, and it's really quite impressive. And I think your team does an incredible job being able to communicate that out we just need to find more ways to get that out in front of more people, because it's wonderful. Alex, I know you consult with a lot of property managers, but I will tell you that their content and how they recommend things is far better than any other channel that I've that I've worked with. So I don't know if you had anything to do with that, Ian, but thank you very much for all your hard work

Ian Ackland  
well. First of all, thank you. I think that you know our team well, and you know both the vacation rental slash commercial team well, and you know the connectivity team well. And I think it's genuinely a case of, how do we, how do we listen and learn, but also, how do we use what is many, many years of knowledge, right? Krista leads our team for vacation rentals in the US. I know. You know her. She's led that team for a very long time. Don and Hayley, who, who then look into, how do we help new partners on board with us and other people in Dawn's team as well, but I know you know Haley personally as well, but I think that there are people who have worked with us for a very, very long time, and they understand what we do and what we do best. And the challenge is, candidly, the challenge is getting a team of six or seven people out to meet those mid size or smaller entry Size list, and that's why we have to think about this as the ecosystem. And working with you is amazing to be able to do that right?

Alex Husner  
Yeah, it's definitely your connectivity partner, and how you're actually getting your listings up there clearly something that's very important in this whole mix. And, you know, not all listings are created equal. I mean, no matter how you slice it there. But I'm curious. I mean, for advice for our audience, that's that is listening and hear this, and they're probably thinking, okay, maybe they are working with next packs or another channel manager, or maybe they're doing it on their own, or many other ways in between there. But if there's one thing that you think that vocational managers could improve, that you see the most of like, what would that area be in their listings? I

Ian Ackland  
think multiple rate plans would be the obvious one, if that's possible, right? So the platform of booking.com, lends itself to being able to be sophisticated enough to deal with non refundables and early bookers and standard rates. And so if there was, if it's a tool, possible, if your technology partner allows you to do it, and you have just decided not to, you should,

Alex Husner  
because most of the other OTAs do not. I mean, that's not something that. As possible. So Correct? Yeah, that's interesting.

Ian Ackland  
The second one I think you touched on it, I think, is that the ability to make sure that your content management is dynamic enough to keep itself fresh. And what I mean by that is either not only new photos, but photo orders and photo sorts. Now we're, you know, we use AI and machine learning to be able to think about photo sorts, where we need to as well. But I'll, you know, I'll take the obvious example of the one that you just talked about that says, you know, if you haven't, if you're in a ski resort and you don't seasonally, change your pool photo to a mountain,

Unknown Speaker  
right?

Ian Ackland  
Yeah, I still see you. We if you look for, if you look in a ski resort in January, February time, and you see a pool, you just think that Paul, you need to flip the seasons a little bit there.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, I am. I did a presentation in Italy about diversity and distribution. And one of the things talked about was that, you know when, when you are getting diversity, it's you also have to make pay attention to your content. And I had, and I decided not to do any photos from any properties in Europe. I decided to make it America. Americans problem like, look at what they did in America. You don't do that here, but there was a property that their lead photo was a bathroom, and it wasn't even an attractive bathroom. And I remember just constantly, whenever I've consulted with people, it's the first they'll tell me, I can't I'm not booking I don't know why. And I look at their listing, I'm like, it's so obvious your toilet is your lead photo. Like, you just really need to think about it. And I think the problem is going back to like, how do we make their life easier? You know, the job of a manager is so vast, and they're doing so many things and juggling so many balls, but at the end of the day, we need to make sure that they can serve as the guest. We'll get them the guests, but if they aren't giving us the right information to put out there, and then they're not checking it like they've got to get somebody in between that can help them. And I think that their people just forget that sometimes things go awry. Photo order gets you know that happens. I mean, it's not necessarily anything anybody did on purpose, but to have a partner that can help you with those little tweaks so that you're you do have your best foot forward. I mean, at the end of the day, that's that's your advertisement to the world, and you want to make it look right.

Ian Ackland  
It comes back to where's the tipping point in the inventory management, right? Yeah. So you might be able to go on to the platforms that you distribute on and check your 10 properties, because you only have 10. If you get to 100 and 150 it becomes much harder to do that and service the guests at the right time, right? So, so, to your point, I think there's, there's an option that says, Put yourself in the customer shoes and shops, that shops the platforms, or make sure that you have a trusted partner who's doing some of that for you.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, absolutely. Just kind of thinking futuristic. Ai, everybody's been talking about that. And, you know, I think I feel like it's, it's, it's not the new shiny panty anymore. Everybody knows about it. I know we're deploying it to tag photos and help with things, and you guys have been doing it for a while. What do you think is the next, like, big innovation, or maybe the next way that AI is going to be able to help us as an industry? Do you have any thoughts about that, or, like, prognostications?

Ian Ackland  
Yeah, I think you, I mean, you talk about AI, kind of generically there, right? So you're right for many, many years, over 10 years, AI, in the form of machine learning, has allowed us to identify specific criteria and elements and tags of of content, style ingredients, to be able to surface and personalize to the traveler. The piece that we see is very transformational, is where AI then becomes generative AI, right? So, and I think that's the bit that people should pay attention to, and we've heard it for a while, but let me give you a couple of kind of use cases there, because also this comes into, how do we make it how do we make it simple, right? So you go from having been able to think about personalization for 10 years to now genuinely, genuinely thinking about generative text and AI coming. Now, the use cases I tend to hear on this are, how are we going to use this to better serve customers or travelers? And I think part of that is like, how are we also going to use it to better serve partners? So we're already working on on this. So I give you an example. If either pre or post reservation, somebody asks a host or a property manager, hey, can you tell me if your property and the surrounding area is child friendly? Now, two options, one, we deliver that as a message. Message to the property manager or the host, and we sit back and we wait for them to respond to it. Causes work for the property manager and the host. Benefit is they get some in one to one interaction with the guest. What we can do at that point is say, hey, we can take all of the information that we know about your listing, because we've got all of the content. We can also take all of the information that we know about the things that have been said in past guest reviews to be able to work out how to answer that question. We can also take all of the external data sources around the specific location and what's around the surrounding area of your property, and we can generate the recommended answer. And at this point, we can say to the property manager and host, hey, scan this and just click it if you're okay with it, and we'll send it and we'll learn, and the next time around, we'll just send it for you. So at that point, we make this feel like it's a one to one interaction between property and guest in that way, but we're able to take away a lot of that. Hey, let's just sit this in a queue and wait until somebody comes and answers the question that I think is, when you talk about, like the AI piece, for me, it's the AI is, when AI becomes generative, AI, it becomes transformative, and when it becomes transformative, it solves for some of those operational complexities that we can remove from the responsibility of a property manager or a host. I love that. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
yeah, that's a great answer. Well, Ian, we like to end our episodes by asking one question, and that is, what, what do you feel is has is not being talked about enough within the short term rental industry, maybe

Ian Ackland  
how loyalty comes together around guest quality, yes. And so if I think about that, like from a genius perspective, for us, I think we, we now share this data, so I will share it, but I think it's just over, just over 30% of our traveler base are our genius level two and three travelers, which means our genius levels go 123, and they're based on frequency of travel. So when you get into the twos and threes, you know they're the higher frequency, higher value travelers at that point. And so that's just over a third of the traveler base, but they're booking about just over 50% of our total room nights. And so what you get from there, obviously, is the loyalty creates trusted travel at that point. I hear that quite often about, what are we doing around trust and safety as an example, right? And I, and I see that as a well. How do you how do you think about attaching yourself to a distribution partner who can bring you some insight into high frequency, high value travelers, which also helps for trust and safety in that right way?

Annie Holcombe  
Absolutely. Yeah, really good point.

Alex Husner  
That's really, really good answer, and I don't know that anybody has really phrased it like that before. So thank you for for going a question that we did not prepare you for, but great answer though, well, and this has been such a pleasure having you on. And actually, it's funny as as we're sitting here, I don't know if both of you saw it, but in my inbox came an email from vrma that has a picture of your page. Yeah, no, are you going to be at any the upcoming conferences?

Ian Ackland  
I'll always go to international. Always. Okay, I'll go there. But, yeah, I loved that. I saw the photo and I was going to ping you, but I thought I'd see you. I'll also maybe just point out because you asked this question. So I want to just make sure that people don't think I've put on some kind of fake background, onto my onto my video here. This is, this is my house. I live here. I bought a log cabin

Alex Husner  
because, if you're watching on YouTube, I

Unknown Speaker  
or, yeah, I I'll show you my house.

Alex Husner  
Normally, our guests are using a fake background and like Freaky Friday here.

Speaker 2  
Well, Ian, thank you so much. If anybody wants to get in touch with you or learn more about booking.com, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Ian Ackland  
I'll give you three ways. One, the first one, if you're not working with booking and you now decide you want to join.booking.com is where you go if you are working with us and you need some support and help partner.booking.com. Is where you go. And if you want to contact me, find me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to help get you to the right people.

Alex Husner  
Excellent. Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com and until next time, thanks for tuning in, everybody. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai