Scaling Up in Italy: Behind the Scenes at Scale Italia 2024 with Alex & Annie

Alex Husner  
Hey everybody. So for today's episode, we just wanted to fill you in real quick, as you may have been following along on social media, Annie and I have been in Italy this past week for scale Italia, and we were at the conference. I was in Florence, Italy. I have stayed a couple days extra to explore Rome. Annie is on her way back home now, but today's episode is going to be a mash up of some of the interviews that we had, just walking the floor, talking to people and getting their input on the conference. We'll say it's a different kind of conference that we'd ever been to. Is the first international event that we've been to, absolutely amazing event. The hospitality in this city was unbelievable. Christiana Gianpaolo Damian, all the staff at scale were just incredible to work with, and just made us feel so welcome and just really interesting to talk to. Some of the operators. The language gap was a little bit hard. A lot of the actual the managers were mostly Italian speaking, which Annie and I do not speak a lick of Italian. So the interviews that we had are mostly of the US based friends that we know, getting their take on the show. But we hope you enjoy it, and we will see you at the nice scale event. And we hope that you will be with us too.

Alex Husner  
We're back here with the Queen Bee of Scale Italia. We've got Cristiana carpini, who is the CEO of Tara Home Consulting and runs the show here at scale. So, so good to see you. Cristiana, 

Cristiana Carpini  
thank you. Thank you for coming. It was really great to have you here at scale Italia. You had a lot of success. So thank you so much. 

Annie Holcombe  
Well, we are so honored. You invited us last year, and Alex and I both decided that we had never been to Italy. We both wanted to come, so we had to do it. Although you made a very persuasive case in being our I think you said you are our number one, first fan to listen to Alex and Annie from Italy, so you have an award for the furthest, first fan that we had. So thank you very much. But thank you for inviting us, and we were telling your team earlier. The hospitality has been amazing. Your team is very welcome. This is such a great event. It's small in size, but it's big in its power for the industry. So I think one of the things that you guys have been challenged is some of the regulations that have been going on, and you've been very active within Italy to try to combat some of those things. Why don't you give us a little bit about where you're at with the regulations. 

Cristiana Carpini  
But in regulation, I'm part of the Amba. So Amba is the National Association for the no hotels accommodation. We are working with the institution and trying to get them in the correct way and just tell them that we are 2 million people. They do.

Cristiana Carpini  
This job and all that comes with these jobs, you know, all the cleaners, all the service people. So yes, definitely we are talking as well right now. We put, actually, Florence, which is not really the most welcoming place for us, and as team, we fight, like one year, just to get all the regulation and all the documents that they wanted, because they don't want any more vacation rental. So it was returned, of course, but we're still fighting on that. 

Alex Husner  
We're definitely just being in the city for the last few days. There are a lot of hotels So, and almost everyone that says hotel in the name, so it's easy to spot them, but I'm sure that's been a big part of the fight here, I imagine, 

Cristiana Carpini  
yeah, but you know, when you talk with hotels, they really understand that it's not the same, yes, yeah, it is. They have a couple that they want just to have coffee rooms done every day, easy life and actually fam vacation. Rent is more for friends. It's more for big families, more for couple with small children, for me with two big dogs. So I will always go on holiday homes, just to be a little bit more quiet. It's really political things. I don't think that they're going to do too much in Italy, because we have a really high average of owners of second homeowners, even third and fourth in Italy. So they cannot really do too much if they don't want any revolution. Is like France, basically. So this event, this is the first time, or the second time for Italia. This is the third edition of our first edition actually has Sarah home consulting. We took over from Gianpaolo last year, Gotcha, okay, we changed a little bit the location so it's not more Milano, little bit more international. And that was something that I remember. Dam was like, Oh, why so many foreigners? Because this year, as consulting company, we had a lot of requests from company assure, even in United States, they will say, oh, I want to come in Europe. So the first two destinations that they're always looking for is Italy and France. 

Annie Holcombe  
There's just so much going on over here, and it's so fascinating. So being in Italy for the first time, I mean, every town is different, and what we found as travelers from the US, it's not as daunting to come here as we expected that it would be Rome. Was like, everybody spoke English. We came here. It's, you know, it's kind of mixed, but everybody's so welcoming. I think that's the thing about, like, the industry, and regardless of where you go, I mean, hospitality is what it is. It's always going to be the same. And we're such a great industry, and I said this in my session yesterday, is that we collaborate really, really well together, and it doesn't matter that there's this giant sea between us. You know, we collaborate together, and I just appreciate the fact that you outreach to us and to our audience and to our listeners, to bring all of us over here. And we hope that we can do more collaboration with scale and with tower home consulting. 

Cristiana Carpini  
Yeah, next year we have the women vacation rental conference. So new location, new places, we decided, with scale, to take people to see new places, even because it's so nice for the cities to see all the vacation rental professional people there. So it's true that Flores was not really welcoming us, but I think that we show that we are really good industry next year, for instance, the region that we're going that's vigoria, Portofino, Genoa. They are really, really waiting for us. So they were asking our presence there, and they are so helpful in all the organization, actually. 

Speaker 1  
Oh,

Alex Husner  
Oh, that's exciting. Was just looking at the conference scheduled for 2025 over there with boom, just a few minutes ago, we saw your events on there, so I'm excited to hear more about when all that comes out, and we'll be, of course, talking about it on the show and keeping our listeners up to date with the latest scale news. But thank you again, so much for having us so nice to finally meet three blondies in person, we must get here. 

Cristiana Carpini  
Thank you so much. The three blondies I loved so much. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
thank you. Hope you get some sleep after

Alex Husner  
this that

Unknown Speaker  
are able to scale UK next week, so I'm not sure,

Alex Husner  
almost there final stretch. Thank you so much. Thank you. 

Deborah Labi  
  Hello. Hello. I'm Deborah from Have You Got. Hello, Annie and Alex.

Alex Husner  
So good to see you, Deborah.

Unknown Speaker  
And you So

Annie Holcombe  
Deborah, we're here at the scale Italia event in Florence. Exciting to meet all these friendly faces that we've seen on LinkedIn. Of course, we've had the opportunity to meet you previously. Wanted to ask you a couple of questions, just some fun ones, just to kind of get your take on things. So the first question that I had, what does STR mean to you? 

Deborah Labi  
Str means family. In fact, I've been in the industry for a long while, and this industry, given that it's hospitality, it's all about welcoming and warmth, given that I know so many people in the industry, to me it's like family. It's like welcoming your family into your home. I love that. It's just the industry that I work inside

Annie Holcombe  
that's a great answer. 

Alex Husner  
Amazing answer, what is the biggest issue facing your business right now?

Deborah Labi  
Right now, the biggest issue is actually changing the mindset. So my new platform is all about collaboration, and collaboration is a tricky one to convince people about. Everyone's all about competition and holding on to their guests, so right now, my target is to change that mindset. Yeah, people

Alex Husner  
do one of our favorite sayings that we always credit to lino is Coopetition, right? So collaboration over competition every day. Well, you're doing great with it.

Annie Holcombe  
All right. So next question is going to be, what is your favorite booking channel?

Deborah Labi  
Well, that could only be have you got, so have you got your great booking channel? Because it's a direct booking channel. It's a listing site, and you get direct bookings. You're in complete control of the booking. The guest is yours, and it's the best channel. 

Annie Holcombe  
So, and this goes back to the Coopetition that we were just referring to

Deborah Labi  
the guest referral platform and a direct booking listing, perfect.

Annie Holcombe  
Okay, so we saved the best question for last. It's a trick one, so make sure you answer correctly, 

cats or dogs.

Deborah Labi  
It has to be cats.

Alex Husner  
Oh, do you have cats?

Deborah Labi  
I used to, I used to, I traveled too much to even have a plant. No, but it's always cats, cats, little cats, big cats, old cats. Oh,

Annie Holcombe  
my God, okay. Well, there you have it. Cats. For 

Alex Husner  
cats, cats, cats. 

Annie Holcombe  
All right. Thank you so much. 

Alex Husner  
Thank you. Deborah, bye.

Alex Husner
We're back with the one and only, Richard vaughton, Richard, it's so good to see you. 

Richard Vaughton  
Yeah, you too, both of you, Alex and Annie, that's us on the show.

Annie Holcombe  
It is such an honor to finally meet you in person. I feel like we've been friends on LinkedIn world and obviously the clubhouse forever. So it's an honor to meet you and have had a wonderful chat with you this morning. So this is our first scale event. I think you've been to several of them. 

Richard Vaughton  
I think I've been to nearly all of them, except the more exotic ones recently, which have South Africa and Dubai, the two I missed. 

Annie Holcombe  
So they try to do them different by Country. So obviously, there's a different flavor in each area. What are your takeaways from this Italian event?

Richard Vaughton  
 've been to all the Italian ones, I think. And the reason I come is despite the fact that there's a lot of Italians here, and I don't speak fluent Italian. Me, personally, it gives me a completely different flavor on what's happening in the European market. So 27 different states. So it's an opportunity for 27 different scales. Of course, you get a different understanding of how things work and how the technology needs to be different, and how everybody's thinking, and for me, also what's happening in the m&a market. And you just get a different flavor. It's different to the UK. UK is a really different place right now. 

Alex Husner  
Yeah, for sure, I know just for us being here, this is our first scale event, also our first time to Italy. And it's just been eye opening that you'll meet a manager that has one property or five properties, and then the next one you meet could have 3000 or 5000 so the range of managers has been really interesting to me. 

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, no, I think that that's something that I've learned in Europe, is that there's a lot of large scale managers. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of like in between. It's like you're either kind of a smaller operator, maybe under 20 and then 1000s. 

Richard Vaughton  
Yeah, no. It's also surprised me, yeah, because we keep stumbling across companies have got several 1000 and we've never heard of them. Yeah, you know. But actually, if you look at all the stats generated often by American companies like host Philly, they do a report every year. Their numbers show that there's like 140,000 managers worldwide, I think. But in Europe, the average number of properties for a manager, a professional manager, is somewhere between 50 and 70. So there is actually a big mid ground somewhere. So all I think is happening is you're getting the small guys coming here to be educated. And I just watched Damien on the book direct stuff, which was really good, actually, and he had a full room, so you got a lot of people there thinking, I'm gonna need a book Direct, which means that they're not, they're not fully fledged. Been in the industry a long time, and then you've got the big guys coming here, and they're coming here for all sorts of reasons, and I suspect they're coming here for Tech because they're a lot of companies are tech embarrassed right now because they've been out in such a long time, but they're also coming to smell the atmosphere and see if this to be predatory. 

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, we you and I had a conversation this morning about differences between the US market and kind of the European market. But I would imagine that within Europe, it's very different from because you're in the UK. Very different from UK. You did operate a business in Italy at one point, so you had your foot on the ground here. What are like some standout differences that you see between just UK and Italy? 

Richard Vaughton  
Labor on the ground. Who's going to work 24 hours a day? Yeah, you might have to bring in foreign workers for that sort of stuff. No disrespect to Italians, but they have a great lifestyle, of course, as well. The other is, of course, there's eurocracy and administration. We have an awful lot in the UK still, and we're trying to get rid of it, according to our new government. Who knows? But in Italy, and I used to work in Italy, I used to work in Milan, and I used to work in logano, everything carries a lot of community stamps. For example, if you want to do something, there's a lot of barriers put in your way to actually affect something. So administratively, it's a very difficult place to exist. And financial reporting go back to the 80s and 90s, when they cleaned up the mess that was financial management. Yeah, it still exists in terms of administrating it. So, yeah, quite difficult for that. 

Alex Husner  
Awesome. Well, we know you have a session coming up, so good luck with that. And Richard, as always, so great to see you. And thank you for you've been wearing, you don't have it on today, but you've been wearing our sticker on your lapel all week, and it's much appreciated. 

Richard Vaughton  
Everybody now thinks I work for you, yes, so the invoice will be, we're not going to corrupt them. 

Alex Husner  
We can be associated with you. That's a great thing. Lovely to see you, though. Thank you. Thanks, Richard. 

Bob Garner  
Hello. My name is Bob Garner from envirorental 

Annie Holcombe  
Hey, so Bob, we have a couple of questions for you. They're not to work questions, just some fun questions, but we'll start off with one that's pretty easy. What does STR mean to you? 

Bob Garner  
So Str means to me, a community, a group of people working in our industry with the same goals, the same aims, and hopefully the same objectives, trying to make a difference for people to be successful in their business and also be making sure that their communities thrive and flourish.

Alex Husner  
What beautiful answer. We didn't even queue you up on what the questions were going to be okay. Next question, what is the biggest challenge facing your business, specifically today? 

Bob Garner  
Well, my business, I'm a host in Italy, so there aren't any great challenges for my business, because it's been running for 20 years, and it's really successful, and I'm very proud of it. My biggest challenge on my other side is running envirorental which is about educating our community around sustainability, and it's trying to make sure we get enough people involved property, to manage, to really understand the business benefits of sustainability, that it can be a real asset for the business, and getting them to be engaged, so getting them over the line to take the first step and engage with us, that's always a challenge.

Annie Holcombe  
Okay, so next question is, for your rental side of the business. What is your favorite booking channel?

Bob Garner  
Well, my favorite booking channel is the book direct, because we get 90% of that directly through our website. So we also then use booking.com for the show periods as well. Okay, much of our bookings come back. Good,

Annie Holcombe  
right answer.

Alex Husner  
Okay, and last but not least, cats or dogs. 

Bob Garner  
Dogs, 

Alex Husner  
finally, perfect. Thank you, Bob,

Bob Garner  
okay, you're welcome. You.

Alex Husner  
We're back here, live at scale Italia, and we have Alon Goldboim with Boom, Alon, So good to see you, 

Alon Goldboim  
likewise. 

Annie Holcombe  
So we're actually filming this at the conference in the trade show floor. Well, one of, I think three trade show floors. We are sitting across from boom, and you've had some incredible traffic here. So so far, what do you think of this conference? This is the first time for you to attend, correct? 

Alon Goldboim  
Yeah. So I think, first of all, it's a really nice conference. I really like the vibe. I really like the attitude of the people over here. Think the Italian market in general is a really interesting market for us. With Good idea, good operators, they really want to advance. I feel that the current market is using a lot of like local solutions that are not necessarily the edge of technology, you may say, but they are comfortable with it, and I think that they are getting to a point that comfortable isn't enough, and they want to progress. So for us, it's been successful so far. 

Alex Husner  
So you did a presentation yesterday, and actually a presentation, a panel, and talked about how AI is impossible for some of the legacy systems to really be implemented into. And I think that's a really interesting point, because a lot of them are saying, Now, you know, they're getting into AI, but tell us a little bit about how boom was built and why there's such a difference between that influence of AI and the software. 

Alon Goldboim  
Okay, cool. So before I even touch about like aI itself, I think it's really important to talk about a kind of like the structure that all of those old PMS were built upon. So the PMs industry was used to work in a model which is called Best in grid, which means you have your PMS, which, in general, not much more than a booking manager. And then on top of it, they build APIs and other solution went and then got into the ecosystem. So basically, you have kind of like an environment that you have the PMs that kind of knows what it needs to know, and then you have a lot of other system that each one of them is taking care of a specific thing. Let's take, for example, task management. So you would usually have a another system on top of your PMS that has all of the data when the plumber is going to come, or what the situation of the house, and that creating fragmented data. Now what boom has done different that from the gecko, we created a whole ecosystem, which means when you're using boom, you don't need to use any other solution, whether it's pricing, task management, whatever, we can basically do it all for you. We have it all in one ecosystem. Now this was even prior to AI. Now, if we'll take the last two years that AI started to get into the kind of like ecosystem and into the market, I think that it even became much more, you know, important to have all of the data in one place and all of the functionality in one place, because otherwise the AI is losing a lot of his functionality. Like, basically, instead of, for example, a guest is complaining that the flow is dirty. So if it everything is in one system, the AI, could just create a task for the contractor, letting know through the CRM or whatever other media you're using, and basically solve it all in one place. Versus, if you have a PMS that has an AI and your task management has an AI, they are not connected. And even if they are connected, it's not a good connection. You don't have a quarterback that is basically seeing all of the field right. And the idea is that it would be a lot harder for those big PMS that also have a lot of client to change their whole infrastructure. So I think that's why boom is different. We're already built all of the ecosystem. We added AI in each and every one of the elements. A big difference. 

Annie Holcombe  
I was talking to one of your team members this morning, Mickey, and we were talking about these different ecosystems. And so essentially, as a property manager, each ecosystem is customized to their operation and the way that they do their business. So I wanted to kind of look into, if I'm a property manager and I come to boom, what is that process of creating the ecosystem and teaching it to handle the operation. What does that look like? What's that time frame? 

Alon Goldboim  
Cool. So first of all, it's a really good question. I was never asked it, so it's a really, really good question. So in general, when you're thinking about, boom, because it's a whole ecosystem, it's not like when a client comes to me for onboarding. I'm not just. Putting him on the channel manager and making sure that he's on Airbnb booking.com that's the easy part, right? When you're onboarding, boom, it's like you would onboard eight different products nowadays, because you have your PMS and then you have your task management, your accounting, your upsells, your guest experience. And the idea is that in boom, we don't just give you the technology and tell you good luck. The idea is that we have a team that would on board with you. Obviously, you would set your priority. You would tell me, my operation sucks. We need to push on that way. We'll push on that front. But the idea is that we're pushing on all front. And unlike your regular PMS that will tell you, yeah, we have, I don't know ends or do or whatever you can do a guest experience in boom, because it's a part of the product will push you will make sure you're making up. So we'll make sure that the process is defined well. Plus we bring a lot of knowledge from the industry ourselves. A lot of the employees are kind of vacation rental industry experts, and regarding timeline, it would usually be between two weeks to a month and a half, really, depending on on kind of like the client. A lot of the stuff are coming pre built, which means that a lot of like the messages, or the up sales, or all of this, you're getting them kind of seeded already. So we try to give you kind of a like a best in practice, or already building best practices, and then you can modify it full time and make sure that you're doing the best for your company. But the idea is to really, we call it plug and manage. You plug, boom, and you're starting to manage your company. Obviously we can later on, do improvement, getting more accustomed to your way, but the idea that it's working out of the box, 

Annie Holcombe  
well, it was interesting, because the way he explained it to me, and I thought this was a great analogy, was that, you know, when you change a PMS, it's a heavy lift for a company to be able to do that. And he said, but you've got the core, the heart of your business, and you have to transplant that heart from one system to another, and that your team is making sure that that transplant goes smooth. So you have a team of people that are going to keep the heart pumping and move it over and get everything all put together. And I thought that's such a great way to look great. 

Alon Goldboim  
So I think when you're talking about onboarding in general, there are two parts. First of all, is the heart transplant for me to make sure you're managing, I don't know, 100 properties you want all of them to run on Airbnb or booking.com, the main channels, we have to get that up and running within a day or two. And the first step we're actually doing for you, because we don't want any mistake over there, especially on a large scale. So we usually do it for the client, which also removes a lot of the stress level that clients usually have with the transfer. And then afterwards, the second phase of onboarding. Once the heart is there, everything is good, then we can start working on the muscles on the rest of the body to make sure that it's working properly.

Alex Husner  
So what if a property manager, if they're using an external system right now, like a breezeway or another sort of task management maintenance module, you're moving things from their PMS, but are you also having to move things from those systems as well, or what is that so, like, 

Alon Goldboim  
so again, for the kind of like, more, let's call it bigger system. We have migrations planned that we can do. Usually it's, it's rather quick. Not a lot of problem regarding that. I don't see a lot of issues regarding like, those, those type of moves, the main, main move that people are really afraid of is usually just the channel part, yeah. All the rest is kind of like, yeah, yeah. Because it's real estate, you have to produce money. It's your owners. It's not your 

Alex Husner  
Well, we're excited to see that there is a PMS that can actually deliver on promises to do a quick onboarding, because we've been in this for many years, and you know, onboarding PMS can take six months up to a year. I mean, it's very monotonous and can be very frustrating. 

Alon Goldboim  
So I think you interview a couple of our clients, 

Alex Husner  
yeah, yeah. I've never heard somebody said they love their PMS, but I've heard many of them clients say that. I'm like, this is pretty cool, but awesome. Well, thank you Alon, and so good to see you and finally, meet you in person too.

Alex Husner  
We're back with the one and only Marcus Rader from Hostaway. So good to see you as always. 

Marcus Rader  
Great to see you as well. And welcome to Italy

Annie Holcombe  
thank you so much. We did just talk to you yesterday, and so you've relocated from Canada. Are now in Warsaw, Poland. You're probably the most well traveled CEO that we know, wanted to get your take on coming to scale Italy, what this conference has done for your business. 

Marcus Rader  
I think the scale events are absolutely fantastic because they're they're very local, but proof of that here is that most of the sessions are in Italia. So if you want to get a gage of what's going on in a local market, this is a really great event. We're here because we have a team in Italy. We have a lot of customers in Italy, but we are looking to expand. I came to check it out in person so that I know what's going on, and now I have all the information I need. I can go go home, or we can get our team working. 

Alex Husner  
And you gave us some great pizza recommendations, so we're very appreciative of that. So the. We were talking a little bit yesterday, and you were filling us in on, I mean, you guys have just grown so much in the last few years. And you have, I think, the most property managers in the most different countries globally. So what's the plan next? I mean, you world domination seems like. 

Marcus Rader  
I think the software market is called solid data. It's been for many years in the US, it's been consolidated mostly in habit IQ. I guess they have been leading that, but habit IQ hasn't really worked too well. For example, they bought libres, and then turns out they can't update the system to meet the needs of their customers, so they bought lmpm and three day bid to library sign, and now they want people to switch. But turns out library sign doesn't suit the need cedar, so we're getting a lot of customers from there. Meanwhile, guest is also acquiring a lot of companies. Typically, there's two ways to grow. One is organic and the other one is inorganic, which means you buy other companies that hope for the best. Both are okay, I can say organic growth that we're doing. It's a lot harder, because it requires you to make sure that your customers are extremely satisfied, that they all give you five star reviews, that you have a steady stream of new customers, that you're constantly innovating the product, and that you're not playing any tricks with anyone, that you're friends with everyone, and that's really, really hard to do going out. Are we getting money and buying other companies? That's very easy. That's that's the easy way to go. We never wanted to go the easy way. We want the hard way. We want to be challenged by our customers, by our partners, by our staff, and we're doing that every day. 

Annie Holcombe  
So one of the things that has been kind of hot topic of all the shows this fall is AI, and the AI component being in the PMS is, what do you see? Because I think, you know, to your point, there's a lot of PMS out there, and they're not able to deliver upon the promises that they had for long term viability for a property manager. So what is hostaway doing to be able to integrate new options, and I guess, add the AI within the system. 

Marcus Rader  
You know, we're always trying to be the first ones. So this year, we were the first to deliver AI generated responses to guest questions. We have since also, you can edit property descriptions. Soon we'll have replies to reviews and guest reviews by AI. I mean, I've been to a few European conferences. Regulations seems to be a much harder topic than AI, right? 

Alex Husner  
Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've got a big event coming up very soon. Here, you've got host cello, which is going to be the biggest PMS conference. It sounds like that's happened to date.

Marcus Rader  
Yeah, I've been to a lot of vacation rental conferences over the last 10 years that there's, there's three things that are missing from every single conference. Some of them have a part of it, but I wanted to see a vacation rental conference that combines neon lights with palm trees and heavy metals. And there's not a single vacation rental conference for that. Yeah. So we thought, let's do exactly that. We'll have those three things get together in perfect harmony. 

Annie Holcombe  
Now, are you wearing this? A similar jacket? Is this the one you had yesterday with the Yes, yes. So Mark Marcus's jacket, if you can see that there, he's a quintessential hard rock, heavy metal guy. 

Marcus Rader  
I've got to ride the lightning here, because the song creeping death is one of my favorites. It's been really inspiring to me. 

Annie Holcombe  
Great. Well, Marcus, thank you so much for stopping by. It's good to see you. We hope to see you at another scale event, maybe in Poland. Who knows? 

Marcus Rader  
Yeah, I went to Vacation Rental World Summit, and their DNA was giving a presentation. So war show is the fastest growing short term rental market in the entire Europe. Wow. This year, Europe is growing a lot faster than North America as well. So I'm in the right spot.

Annie Holcombe  
Was that planned? Or just like people are following? 

Marcus Rader  
I was just shocked when I saw that. But it makes sense, because 20 years ago, people went to Italy, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, people went to Spain. Yeah. 20 years ago, nobody went to bowl, and now a huge amount of people are going there. So of course, it's growing faster than a market that's two years old. 

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, well again, thank you. Always have great insight where we cannot wait to hear how your cello goes. We know we'll see that over social media, but thank you. Everybody. Talk to you soon, 

Alex Husner  
and we're back with a familiar face. We've got John An, who is the founder of tech tape and great friend of the show fo many years now. So good to see you, John. 

John An  
Good to see you ladies. 

Annie Holcombe  
I'm so excited to have you on. I have been a very bad scheduler, and I apologize. You've been wanting to, like, sit down and talk with us for a long time. So sorry. But we did come all this way to Italy, and it will be happening internationally, right, right? Exactly. We have to go all this way to see each other. So you've been traveling the show circuit all over the world this year. Wanted to get your take on the scale events related to like, maybe the events in the US. And where do you see the differences are?

John An  
I go to a lot of scale events, and it's really good because it brings a very local market and culture. IWith, kind of the International right? And so I was in Dubai a couple weeks ago, and you learn about that Dubai market and what they're going through, but then we can bring kind of some of the things advancements or new technologies that we, you know, that we use in the United States, and we're in Italy now. And so again, if you look at, you know, all the exhibitors and vendors here. Most of them are very local, right? Local companies. But then you have, you know, like the hostaways and others that we're all familiar with, it's not the same thing all the time, and that's one of the reasons why I like to go to the scale events I learn about the different markets. 

Alex Husner  
Yeah, just looking around this room right now, there's so many vendors in here that I've actually never even heard of before. So it's amazing how many companies are out there, how many amazing and different ways there are to do this business. Briefly, tell our audience a little bit about tech tape, because I remember when you first started it, you were telling us about the idea of and I think it's great what you're doing for the industry. So tell us just a little bit about it. 

John An  
Yeah, so tech tape, at a high level, we're basically enabling property managers to get the best out of the best in class technology that's in the industry. So the two services that we provide, we provide revenue management services and we use dynamic pricing tools that everybody else has access to, but we're able to actually implement the right strategies and adjust it according to their preference and their market and whatnot, and we oftentimes have some, you know, eye popping results because we're able to implement that the other it's in the same vein when property managers have their tech stack, and unfortunately, they're always going to have pain points with their tech stack, and we're able to tailor many solutions that sit on top of their existing tech stack to make it work for their business. But really the concept is that we're not trying to recreate a price labs. They've created a great tool, and we're able to work with the great tools that are out there. 

Annie Holcombe  
Well, great. Well, I think what want to do, John is, have you on for an episode to really talk about that, because I think that the PMs technology right now is going through a metamorphosis, especially with the AI component. And would love to get your thoughts on how this is going to move forward with what you're doing with tech tape. So just as a wrap up for this, what is your big takeaway for scale Italia, 

John An  
of the scale events that I've been to much stronger local flavor here than some of the other events that I had been to. It's almost like there's a niche industry just for Italy, but they have all the different, you know, solutions that we have, just different companies doing it. So big picture, you know, I would imagine that some of the larger players could probably look at merging or acquiring with some of the smaller, you know, some of the players here, but the event overall, I mean, I think the combination of sessions in Italian and in English, you know, it all kind of merges everything together. And, you know, getting a lot out of this, this conference together, for sure. 

Alex Husner  
Well, thank you for stopping by, John. We will definitely get you on for a full episode. We've been meaning to do this for a long time, and it's our fault, but wishing you the best of the show and safe travels back home. You guys, too. Thanks. Bye. You.