The Battleground Baddies: CJ Stam, Travis Wilburn & Julie Byrd Weigh in on New Innovations in VR Technology

Alex Husner  0:02  
Welcome to Alex and Annie , the real woman of vacation rentals. I'm Alex. And I'm Annie. And we're joined today with the dorm battleground baddies. We've got a whole crew today we've got Travis Wilburn, CJ Stam and Julie Byrd joining us who were the judges of the most recent dorm conference battleground of technology providers. Welcome to the show, everybody. 

CJ Stam  0:26  
Thanks. Great. foreverness. Appreciate it. Hey, nice, nice hat, Travis. Hey, buddy, you look good. I think we're going to cause a little bit of confusion. I hope

Annie Holcombe  0:36  
someone's gonna call you today and you try this. So speaking of which, why don't we make sure that our guests know who everybody is starting with the lovely lady, Julie, tell us a little about about your company and yourself. And then we'll go around the rest of the crew. 

Julie Byrd  0:50  
Great. Yeah, I am the president of Cabo villas.com and we represent over 150 properties in the Los Cabos region. We are a part of Nocturne luxury villas, which is our parent company. And we have locations under the nocturne umbrella in several different key markets that we try to go to places that have a heavy traffic of private jets sounds like good places. I was company for 22 years. And that was my first arm and my first battleground and it was a really good opportunity to learn more about what's going on in the industry. Great, Travis. 

Travis Wilburn  1:23  
I'm Travis Wilburn, the founder of stay Charlottesville, which is a tourism Hospitality Group in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is the case for a company that venue and a couple of other things. And then also started a thing called the hunter collection that has some of the best people and properties from all over North America, professional vacation rental managers and little brand and loyalty project that we've created. So 100 collection leads us over to CJ who's like,

CJ Stam  1:50  
I am a proud member of the 100 collection. Thank you Travis for putting that together to CJ Stam southern cover cabin rentals, Blue Ridge, Georgia, we manage about 200 homes, they're been in the vacation rental space since 2006. Started with acquisition of two homes and just kind of grew from there started managing some of the houses next door, turned into a vacation rental company turned into buying a company turned into building homes turned into a real estate company, full circle right back to just management and having a really good time. 

Alex Husner  2:23  
That's great. I think between the three of you just ate an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience in this industry. So makes sense why you would be the judges, you're using a lot of the technology and I know quite a bit about it. But before we get started, we're gonna go through the list just if anybody was not at Dharma didn't see the battleground of who was part of this competition. It was aI adaptive air DNA beyond guessed it, key data price labs, rentals, top key Venturi and wheelhouse and key data was the one that won and I believe all three of you had key data in your top three. And that's how the judging was done. Curious to know what what was it about key data that you all agreed was worthy of being in that top three? 

Julie Byrd  3:09  
Yeah, for me, it was the use of that dashboard that they're developing. I don't think it's in process yet. We're not using it yet. But the ease of being able to see your data all in one screen, instead of poking around from report to report, it's a heavily used system for my company. And you know, having the additional tools of being able to look at stats at the same time really is a game changer for us. 

Travis Wilburn  3:36  
I looked at it from the lens of what property managers really need. If it's not already in their tool belt, the construction worker doesn't show up without a hammer and what's going to be the next hammer. I think one of the things that always slightly puzzles me is how tough it is to actually take an internal look at your data to understand what's going on a lot of companies, I mean, we got to remember 17,000 vacation management companies in the US alone, they don't have a great vision into what's actually going on. They're just you know, receiving reservations from here or there. But I think if you you've got a great platform, a great booking engine, this is a tool that would be that the hammer that you would need to add. And so that's why it was easy. Number one for me,

CJ Stam  4:16  
 part of my judging process is always kind of what Travis just said, What is the company presenting that is not just a feature enhancement, but it's also something that the manager can put to use immediately. That's going to make sense, it's actually going to help them I'm a big bandwidth guy. I like to think of things what's going to help me buy some time back, either myself or someone on my team as the only way you're going to scale or become more profitable. And if you're either one of those things, you're typically going to be better for your customer and we've keyed out a dashboard. We were already looking at data rails to see if we can pull this kind of information from multiple places. So when they presented something that was already in our stack, like we use key data dashboard every The day, if you're going to give me something that I would be going somewhere else to get, but you're going to put it in something I'm already using. Now, that's a feature enhancement, I can apply immediately, just like both of them, I did actually get a notification, I will say that data is about to launch. So that's great. Very excited to get in there. The thing that really got me and I'm excited to actually see this in the wild, is that we're going to be able to pull like a Google sheet or an Excel form and other types of data from outside of key data into a single dashboard when you log in. So you'll be able to take your most favorite reports from key data, plus a couple reports from outside of key data and have it all in one place instead of toggling between two so from an executive or management level, that's going to be a pretty much a no brainer. 

Alex Husner  5:50  
What sort of reports would you pull in? Or what what platforms are you pulling out of reports? 

CJ Stam  5:55  
From Great question, we have a forecast revenue algorithm that we use in Excel as an example. And I would love to be able to see that we also have a little bit different pacing model that we use outside of key data, I would love to see that pulled in. Once we get in there, I'm sure there will be other things that are possibly in the PMs, several PMS is that you log into right now that have kind of a neat three or four screens that are presenting some data from inside the PMS. If you could also put that into key data, that would be great. So we're we're really excited to see what it will do once it's in the wild. 

Julie Byrd  6:29  
One thing I want to add to that is, you know, insights from maybe your revenue system, you know, any dynamic pricing system, because key data, once you've got enough property managers plugged into it, when you look at your benchmarks and your your comp sets you're competing against, you're looking at what the market trends are for professionally managed properties, but you aren't able to pull in like what the OTAs are doing or what their occupancy levels are and that you can pull from like a beyond pricing or another pricing tool. 

Annie Holcombe  6:58  
I was going to ask you about that Julie market, like Cabo being international. I know key data hasn't had the data points, and they haven't had a lot of participation in international market. But do you feel like they've got enough penetration right now to be able to give you enough data points that you can complement with again, wheelhouse or beyond or one of the other pricing tools? 

Julie Byrd  7:17  
Absolutely. But it took an effort on my part to get the other companies to get on board with key data. And I really did a big campaign on that and got a lot of property managers to join into key data so that we could have good reporting. 

Travis Wilburn  7:29  
Yeah, I was just glad that I spoke before CJ and are in between. So it's like, you got the smart people on that. And no, I mean, it's it's a tool built for professionals. And it is one of the cleanest data sources out there right now. So they get an easy one for us to support as a group for sure. 

Alex Husner  7:54  
Just to set the scene for our listeners that maybe haven't been to dorm or haven't seen one of the battlegrounds. I mean, these companies when they get up there, it's a little nerve racking, right? I mean, they've got you three there. And I've seen some other judges in the past. And Travis, you've always been part of it. Were you part of it last year to CJ, five years, I think.

CJ Stam  8:14  
Wow. Yeah, both of us have had the privilege of doing this for five years. And it's been fun out to go through the progression. I would hate to be on the other side. Yeah.

Alex Husner  8:26  
I've seen some very awkward ones. In the past before, 

CJ Stam  8:29  
I've watched several of the presenters the same ones year over year over year that have steadily improved, and there's some that have just, you know, one hit wonder, we've had a couple of those steps. 

Alex Husner  8:40  
Did you all coordinate, before going up on stage and taking the chairs on the questions that you're going to ask or is it just in the moment what hit you and using your industry knowledge to dissect the presentation that was shown? 

Travis Wilburn  8:54  
Funny this year, it was all professional companies presenting and by professional I mean companies that have been in our market I think for they're all known components that last adaptive was new adaptive was newer ones. Was that the only new one this year? I think top I'm talking was Yeah, top key. Yeah, they both of those guys have been around for a year and a half or so and been kind of going to the conferences and what have you and you've been last year. My point is, you know, we saw some presentations, where it was definitely a lot of one hit wonders, and they were making big claims. And we want to make sure that you know, I think it's like five minutes that they're allowed to present. So it's pretty tough to try to present your entire company in five minutes or whatever it might be. And so we last year, we did a lot more research this year. It was a conversation afterwards and watching, you know, just solely based off of the presentations, but I mean, there's definitely some fun moments in there for I think for Yeah, yeah, very much like a shark tank kind of environment.

CJ Stam  9:53  
It's nice that there's also a People's Choice Award as well. The audience is invested in and going and hearing everybody out. And it's almost like a lot of the times when I'm up there, you get energy off the crowd, you can tell when someone's like into something, if you're going if you're starting to ask the right line of questions,I often find myself looking out on the audience to see if they're really getting engaged with what we're doing. Or if it's just, you know, snooze snooze time out there. 

Travis Wilburn  10:25  
You know, and you guys brought this up a little bit earlier, as in your Siddhar. But one of the things that I think is always humbling and surprising, surprising is Amy Haida puts on one of the greatest conferences with the most professional managers there. And so you have people that you might have not ever met. But you can follow me on LinkedIn. But I mean, just the quality of people. It's like executive summit times. You know, it's 5x 6x. And, I mean, it's great, but it's a little nerve wracking on our side, too, because we're trying to sound smart with all these incredible people in one room. 

Annie Holcombe  10:59  
Great, thank you tell you're making Travis. Yeah, exactly. try really hard.

Julie Byrd  11:05  
I was kind of the reason why I would like top key that I didn't put that in my top three is because I believe that that system could be really good for somebody who's just starting out or doesn't know how to have a sweep account, or doesn't know things in the industry, that most people that are at darme would have already known, you know, kind of just the level of property managers that were there. 

Annie Holcombe  11:27  
Yeah. So maybe there needs to be two categories, like maybe one for like the people coming in just starting out or like the professionalized ones. But I think I'm Travis, I asked you off off camera, and kind of this goes to Julian TJ, right after COVID. That was when we saw like the biggest influx of new providers, new technology and advancement. And one of the things I think, I feel like we could all agree on is that there's been more advancement within the vacation rental space, and there has been in the hotel space in probably 20 years. I mean, some of the places are still using their technology from the 80s and haven't really adapted much, because it's just such a big infrastructure and the hotel world. But do you think that there's a slowdown and the amount of technology that's being offered or that the technology is just being more dialed in on specific skill sets, topics and areas, instead of being broadly across? Like the entire ecosystem of vacation rentals? 

Travis Wilburn  12:19  
I'm sure, yes, I think the traditional software's that we see the guides, the guests, you guides, or what have you, we're gonna see a lot of slowdown on that front. But you see a lot of optimization on these larger companies that are independently owned right now try not to say anything to hurt anybody's feelings. But some of the private equity groups are more worried about bottom lines right now than anything else. So there's also a slowdown on that front. But you do see a lot of private companies that are either going to emerge or better themselves, by all means that I think it's gonna be a race to the finish. And that's fun. But that also being said, I think, you know, AI adaptive is at the forefront, by all means, but I've watched a lot of companies jumped on the AI front, in the last eight months, I think that's gonna be really interesting to see probably this coming year, hopefully at darme. If there is one. Let's hope that there is one, Amy Hi, no. Love it. But it would be amazing to see how many AI companies are out there doing some solutions to make our lives easier. And so I think you'll see a lot of investment on that front that's coming here. 

Alex Husner  13:23  
Yeah, absolutely. And Julie, on AI adaptive, I think you're the only one of the three that is currently using it. But it is interesting to hear what they've done and would love if you could just share a little bit about your experience so far. And using that on your website. 

Yeah, I mean, we just, we went live last week, which is a portion of it, you kind of have to drip it out a little bit, because it takes a little coding on your website to make it work properly, we haven't been able to really see the results yet. Although we are seeing an increase in our online reservations on our direct website over the last week, what they do is they do a test group. So half of the traffic that comes into your site will see your site the way it was before, and then half of them will see it with the recommended properties. We've got it right now on our homepage. And on each of the property pages to recommend based on the AI that adaptive is powering, we'll be able to see the control group versus the NOC control group to see how the convergence and how the results were to compare the two to be able to see the value of the AI driven recommendations. I will say that I mean more than double the amount of reservations that we've had in the past week on our own direct website than we had last year, for the same exact week. And that is saying a lot when we see that our web traffic is down from that time period. So we're hopeful that this is going to be a really good return for us. And is that comparing the 50% to the other 50% that the one that has it is doubled bookings or I've been able to see that yet because they don't have enough data to present that to us. We'll see that in a month once they have, once they have a full month's worth of data, they'll present to us what the control group of conversions and the results were versus the other, we haven't even deployed all of it, we're about not even halfway there, and what we want to put on our website, but you know, I would say that's probably going to be there, within the next 30 days, there'll be recommending the properties on the search results would takes a little bit more work to get that done. And we're just now putting it on our emails. So we can focus on our emails a little bit more about the destination instead of focusing on a specific property that the customer may or may not be interested in. And then we have the adaptive put in the recommendations for specifically our past guests, because we really know a lot about them when we're doing email marketing to them. But for guests that haven't stayed with us before, they can do the, you know, on the emails that can't really pull the same AI as a could on a web browser. But we're able to do like popularity, or most book villas or things that maybe would get the clients of function in that email. So there's a lot still coming in, I'll be able to report back in a couple of months and how you know, it's going for us, it has gone very well for our sister companies, we've got two of our other companies that are using it currently, and they are seeing some good results. Every time the control group dip performs better,

I love that they rolled it out as a control group also that whenever we did anything of you know, certain amount of significance on our website, at condo world, we always did that exact same thing. And it's, it's such a better way to actually, you know, make changes like that. Because, you know, it was small things, probably not, but I just feel like, you know, a lot of cases when somebody wants to something new, it's like, it's just the whole new and now you can't go back and you don't know if it's really working or not. And not that you would discontinue using it. But it just just to get everybody ownership and understanding the value. It's great to be able to show that data. Yeah, absolutely. We've been impressed with what we've seen from the other companies. We'll be back in just a minute after a word from our premier brand sponsor turno.

Travis Wilburn  17:07  
Alright, industry is so picture ask, we got to have the nominal photos, why aren't we serving up the photos that need to be delivered to that right person and understanding that is exactly what AI adaptive has done. So just for your listeners, if you want to look at it, you got to call a villas.com and just look at Google Chrome, type it in and see the recommended just for you. That's AI adopted and if you go into incognito, that's what it would look like as the non control group. Right Julie? Probably yes, yeah. So it's I mean, it's pretty fun to watch. So Travis from from the 100 collection perspective, did you look at any of this technology and think, Okay, I would like to partner with them from 100 collection high level and get that out to all the members? Absolutely. I've started a company called adaptive AI. Know what they're doing is very necessary. And we are very closely paying attention to AI and how to apply that to our partners websites. I mean, we're very just concentrated on who our partners are, and how we can serve them. But I would argue that implementing a version of AI is quite necessary in the future of business, and also to optimize the people that you have on staff and to what Joy said, I mean, it's 100%. It's delivering a better product to your guests, which is who we all serve. 

Alex Husner  20:48  
Yeah, I think in any of the conversations that we've had recently with PMS, CEOs, we had guests it and hopefully, Margo and Brett on the show recently, the biggest things that they're talking about right now is how they're infusing AI within the software. I'm curious, Ben guest he was on that list. Was that what they presented? Was that the AI component? Do you remember 

Julie Byrd  21:09  
what they presented was mostly to their within their platform, their software? And you know, I mean, for me, that was just not even in the running, because there are specific companies that are there for pulling data. And that's what their expertise is, the revenue management side of things, we used to be on pricing. And I think that their algorithms been around a long time, and they're really able to do a good job of predicting pricing. So guests, he was rolling that out, but I would say stay in your lane. Well.

CJ Stam  21:42  
I want to dovetail into that, because we saw that with the rev Max with streamline. And there's a big difference here. What guests, the bill, I thought was phenomenal. I mean, it really was a very slick tool there. There. The person from guests II that presented did a very good job, the challenges is couldn't be for everybody. Right? Right. But from an actual, if I were a guest, the user or I was considering desti, that would have been something that probably a if I was on it, I'd say I want to use this, or be if I was considering guests, the I would want to know more about it in my valuation of that product. 

Annie Holcombe  22:18  
So which leads me to a question, it's, I'm glad you brought this point up, or reference, the all in one systems, one of the things that we're seeing as in and talking with the PMS is, is a lot of people are trying to be all things to everybody. And I just I don't know how that's I just don't know how that is a good way to write with problems. So Travis and CJ have an opinion here. 

Travis Wilburn  22:41  
Gemini people are becoming these closed ecosystems where they say they have the best products. For your listeners, here's what you need to ask as how many developers each group has find out who they are, how are they resource? Do they have enough resources? There's a lot of things, we see these like shiny objects, right? But imagine if Elon just built a Tesla, and they said, Hey, good luck. But nobody knew how to change a tire. And that's actually what's happening in a lot of different companies right now. And so you have this closed ecosystem. And you also have this thing called profit that you need to make, they're gonna pull back, and we're seeing more and more on those things break. And so what I would tell you in what I would argue for, I've yet to see a company that has a closed ecosystem where I would want every single piece of it the all in one, let us figure out what our hub is, which is your property management system. And let us attach our spokes, the way that we see that whether that's credit card processing, home management, reservation CRM, open it up, I just, I can add a lot more. But Julie, or CJ?

Annie Holcombe  23:46  
It's a hot topic, there's a whole different panel, it really could be a show. No, yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad you're passionate about it, Julie?

Julie Byrd  23:55  
Well, you know, we use Track travel Net Solutions, and we're seeing a lot of that happening within travel Net Solutions, and we haven't gone with all of their tools that they've added to it, we still stay with our plugins because we find them to be more effective. So I mean, they can offer it I think it's really a matter of giving you a choice in it and whether or not you have to pay for it is really imperative and you know, the distribution engine got rolled out, which is basically taking over the channel manager within the travel Net Solutions, space, but it's still a work in progress and you know, the support like what what Travis was saying is that, you know, how many people are behind it in the support and and how can you make changes when you see bugs and problems and how do those get fixed and how much time does it take that you know, people get stretched very thin. And when you are putting it all in one basket, you know that that you feel that a lot when you're trying to solve issues? Yeah, and I think the prioritization of what you know what's on

Annie Holcombe  25:00  
A fire that needs to be put out is what ends up happening when you got that many layers of technology. And I go back to an interview we did with lino Maldonado. And he talked about kind of your like, you know, leaning tower of tech, there's all these cases. And I mean, it's a really great way to put it, because there's just all these pieces. And again, if everybody's not aligning, you have the same resources to deploy to each component of it equally, whenever there's a problem, one thing is going to lean and that's that Jenga piece falls out and the entire system just crashes. But CJ, you have an opinion, and I'm really curious.

CJ Stam  25:33  
So Travis used the term walled garden. And I kind of want to go back to the previous question before the AI on, you know, what we're seeing in the space, more people or less people. And there's two terms, we hear a lot, right, a company wants to build a moat, right, they want to, they want to build their their technology in such a way that it's hard for other people to catch up to them. Right. And then you also hear the term walled garden, right. And from a property management standpoint, when you think of a walled garden, you want to think of a safe place inside the walls. Unfortunately, some of these companies are reversing that they are trying to trap people inside their crappy software. They are suing people, they are threatening, they are threatening them, if they don't like the service that they're getting. Too bad. You signed a contract? That's wrong. What that squarely is it, it will shrink their moat. Right? Yeah. People from the people from the inside will start busting down those walls, they're going to want to run from it. And it's a very, very unfortunate thing, and unfortunate. And it is unfortunate that it's driven by outside forces that do not know our space, they are foreigners, and they're not even trying to get to know us. Right. So that is that is sad. It's upsetting to me, because I'm hearing from people all over the place, what's happening to them. And it's not cool. It's not cool at all. It's so bad, right? What's going to happen, though, is that kind of activity is the opportunity that thought was going away, right? We thought, Okay, we've got these big guys, they're all loaded up, they're all protected, they're building these all in ones, everybody's going to be happy, and the walls are falling in. And the moats are drying up, I tell you, what I think we're going to see is a huge influx of opportunity for some of these smaller guys to come in and be super good at best in class. And the next PMS system that will be the best is the one that's going to have that really robust core for reservations, and financial accounting. And that allows us to bolt on the things that work the best, or the guy that has so much gunpowder and so many developers that they can actually build to test in class all in one. Yes. And they're ended and that that are cool, that are gonna be like, if you don't like that one feature that we signed you up for? We should let you out. Yeah, how exactly? How's a homeowner in my program gonna feel if I'm like, No, you can't leave? 

Alex Husner  28:07  
I was just thinking the same thing. I was gonna ask you that. Because I mean, think about it, like, I definitely prefer the PMS is that are the modular based you pay for what you actually want to use in it not for the whole kit and caboodle that you're only using a portion of it. But when you first sign on, you think all you need all of it, and then you realize you don't but at the contract terms, and it's not just software, there's other providers within the space is ludicrous. And a lot of cases that if they're not doing a good job, and you can't get out of it. I mean, that was gonna be my question. If you guys had a homeowner that was just completely upset about being on your program, you're not going to keep them in it. Right? I mean, it's like if you're not happy, leave me right. Yeah. 

CJ Stam  28:47  
Or, or even they might, they might love certain parts of what we do. But sure, I've done. I've done lawn care, and I've done my care bad. Yeah, let the homeowner out of our lawn care program to go there an individual to do it or trash collection, we are no different than the software providers. It's just a it's just a different class of service. Right? Isn't it ironic? Somewhere in the manufacturing line, right? 

Annie Holcombe  29:14  
Yeah. And I think it's ironic that, you know, as an industry, we talk about the individuality of you know, every manager operates differently. Every market operates differently. But then here we have the technology coming in and saying, We can handle Cabo, the same way we can handle Georgia mountains the same way, York City, and it's not and so like to get to like to the point of if you have a revenue management system, if they can't get the data sources that are going to be relevant to your market, because most of their customers are in another market, then why does it make sense for you to sign on to that? So again, this one size fits all mentality is just it's not good for the space. First of all, and like you said, I think both of you said like the collapsing is what's going to cause more problems or more harm than good in the long run. She was too much financial. 

Travis Wilburn  29:58  
It's way too much financial exposure. And one of the things I always think about with the all in one software, I'm always embarrassed to talk about it. But I'm this might be the first time is back in the day in 2011, I had accidentally bought a company that was a hyperlocal Groupon company, the very first thing that I did was put it on a all in one software, and competed with Groupon and LivingSocial. And we crushed them for a year and a half. But the problem is the company, the technology company didn't have enough funds, and they were gonna go belly up. And I had to go find a seller who either already had their own software, or I had to like, give up the company. And it was already a reinvestment decision or what have you. It's like it's too much exposure. And so what I think about is like going back to that hub and spoke model, it's, you know, when we talk about change management, like, if you've ever changed from a property management system from one to another, it's bad, your team, they don't like it, right? So it's like, think about the four tires on a car, I only want to change one tire at a time. I don't want all four tires. That's what this all in one approach is. And I just ultimately, these people are seeing us as financial levers, it's been said that we are financial levers. And so how many more levers can they pull? What's they put in there? Well, we can up a couple of points on your credit card processor. What happened is like, those are the things that make it really difficult for us, as large management companies to move forward, I think, yeah, 

Alex Husner  31:22  
I think everybody should have the choice of whoever they want to do business with. I think one issue though, is that, especially for these newer operators coming in, there's so much choice. And there is a lot of overlap between what a lot of these service providers actually provide as a service. And it can be really overwhelming. And, you know, I've talked to many of them that are like, I've got this and this and this and like all three of those things do very similar that you definitely can eliminate at least one of them. But, you know, I think that that goes back to the education in our industry that you guys all know it exceptionally well, but not everybody does. And I think some of these companies are just making a lot of money off for the people that don't know any better. 

CJ Stam  32:00  
To kind of clarify a point there is there is a place for all in one, right? I think my gripe is more along the lines of You know, know what you're best best at and your own tech stack, if you are an all in one and be reasonable with your bolt on tools. If your customer is not happy with the way that they're working, don't make them feel trapped in it. I mean, it's just, it's just that simple. I think there is a place for an all in one. In a company's development. Like when I started out, and I had a lot less units at the time live res was a really good all in one system, it did what we needed it to do, we trusted the people that were kind of selecting the partnerships, not just that they were building everything in one environment, they were just being really selective about the companies that they connected to. Right. And that's what created that ecosystem. So at the end of the day, what it ultimately boils down to is there is no one size fits all, you know, for any of us here, you know, on this call or in the environment. And I think that there's always the unintended consequences of good intentions. I think a lot of the companies that went to build these all in ones had good intentions. Again, my gripe is when they start trying to save you. Yeah. And they try they try to trap you. Because the their overlords, their financial overlords are saying you have to squeeze more out of these people. They're going to squeeze the people out because what they write and create an opportunity for, for others to get in. So that's I mean, it's just, we should move on. But I mean, that's really happening as we know, 

Annie Holcombe  33:38  
I hear it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, so let's let's do move on. Let's move on to something like we you alluded to it like we don't know if there's going to be a dorm this year, but obviously we think we all want it. Everybody agrees it's one of the best conferences out there. Amy just does such a spectacular job in curating the content and getting sessions put together and you know, getting the right speakers. And so moving forward into this year, what conferences are you guys looking forward to besides darme? And what do you think maybe we could add into into the conference ecosystem? I mean, I think one of the things that we can all agree on is some of the stuff that's out there doesn't have any substantive depth to it. It's just like the same stuff regurgitated over and over. We're not getting anything new out of it. It's the same you know, some of them are same people on stage every time. What do you think we need to do as an industry to like, mix it up and, and maybe not have the sensationalism that kind of sits over on the STR side? Because I think there's a lot of pomp and circumstance and like showmanship that happens over there, which is great. And it's fun. And I'm not saying there's not a place for it. I think on our side, our side if we want a little bit more buttoned up and maybe we do want to bring some of the fun showmanship into that but you guys are your veterans, you go to a lot of conferences. What do you think we could be doing differently? 

Julie Byrd  34:56  
That's interesting because I think that what happens is is like at The Vermis that's why I really, really liked darme was because the quality of the attendees that were at that conference I've been to Verma is such a wide range of levels of property managers, that the classes didn't excite me, I didn't come home with a big list of takeaways of things that I could apply to the business to grow the business and make it better. I will not be those conferences this year. So I think DOM is probably the highest quality one and probably the only one that I will attend this year. If it does happen, because I just didn't get enough takeaways over the others last year. All right, you guys ready? Yeah. Trump's putting

Alex Husner  35:43  
Yeah. 100 collection retreat.

Travis Wilburn  35:46  
Well, don't get me wrong. That's a fun solid. That's the partners but vacation rolled was designed Summit. High Point North Carolina. That's the first one. I think it's gonna be fun. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. That's a different lens in WV RP is always fun, great group of people that's in Boise, Idaho coming up at the end of April vrma Spring summit in New Orleans. I think it'll be interesting to see how that goes. I do echo Julie's points where I just want professional content. So what I love about darme is the high level of content. It's I want to drink from a fire hose. And I want to learn I'm a big takeaways, executive Summit, though. High quality people a lot of fun. I did just learn. I believe that skift is putting on a conference or short term rental Summit. There's always some high level education there and s&p are they doing in New York again? Is it New York again? I just saw him it just literally got an email about it today. I had flagged it and said it's insane. And then, of course, we have a 100 collection partner from it, which

CJ Stam  36:53  
I have to talk. All right. Hey, I'm going to DARM. I just asked Amy. Yes. Oh, yeah. Confirmation. When I got there is a caveat. She's working. She is working on the contract. Now. There will be a new location. I asked her if I could share. She said yes. She said she's working on Tampa instead of Nashville. Oh, cool. Same time of year, let's find

Julie Byrd  37:28  
it is missing is any west coast? Yeah, you guys kind of get cut out.

Annie Holcombe  37:35  
That's hard. That is hard. Well, I think that Cabo needs to host a conference for us to attend to maybe you know what, you know, what conference I've heard is really good as exports. And everybody keeps telling us that we need to go to that. I don't know if it's always in Cancun, but I know the last couple years it has been so that's on my radar.

CJ Stam  37:55  
So some of my favorites. I do like vrma Still from from a, like a grand scale. Like, I'm a hallway guy there, right? I love mixing and mingling there. I really do. And my team, my team gets stuff when they go from from the actual, you know, lectures or sponsors, promotions, whatever you want to call them.

Travis Wilburn  38:18  
Drinks. So

CJ Stam  38:21  
there is some value there. But the most value comes from honestly, this the smaller, more intimate events that I've been to a couple of Landhaus events that I've been to or for great.

Travis Wilburn  38:35  
And the with, with Steve Schwab. And then the Keystone events, those those were great. The Partner Summit that I went to at the 100 collection was fantastic. Certainly hope you're going to do one of those again. Travis. Sounds like Joyce having us in Cabo. Yeah.

CJ Stam  38:57  
You know, that's not a bad idea to be there.

But I do. mI do like the smaller, more intimate events. I think that those are really where you find the most traction. And a lot of times you also see who the true sponsors of our of our industry are like the guys that will come in and sponsor some of the smaller events, whether it's picking up dinners or just participating, you know, not being the salesy. You know what I'm saying where it's here, I'm in a booth waiting for you to walk up, but they're actually participating in the events. I think there's a great there's great value in that it makes us still feel more cottage, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, it there is a time and a place for the big trade show Expo style stuff. But I think a lot of a lot of the it's like when they say, you know, a lot of the business gets done on the golf course the small event is like a golf course, right? Yeah, yeah, that's true. 

Alex Husner  39:56  
I just saw my memories today that a year ago right now. Oh, no, I was any was Travis, you were I don't know, CJ, if you were there also No, Julie, you were not. But we were in Kansas City and this spring vrma. And I will I mean, it was it was a cozy conference because there wasn't a whole lot of people. Not intentionally cozy but but when I saw that, I'm like, gosh, no, I mean that. That was it. Unfortunately, that was a rollover from COVID that we had to have it that early. But, and in Kansas City, I mean, the venue was great. And I think we all enjoyed ourselves. But the timing of the year for it was not good. vrma Spring this year is in New Orleans in April at a much better time of the year. And I think because of the location being so close to the panhandle, other parts of Florida, Texas, there's there's going to be a good crowd at that one. But maybe we shouldn't deter them. If we like the smaller setting.

CJ Stam  40:56  
It came to mind while you were talking there was another, you know, event that I think is it was pretty unique at this last vrma Guest the had a side of it. And it was not salesy. It was very educational. And it was a great networking event. surprising enough. It wasn't all just guests, the users, there were a lot of other people there. And they were such good hosts, like the way that they catered the event and the format that they use was fantastic. I think there's a huge opportunity in that regard as well like these. We're gonna continue to have exactly as an industry, this big Expo event. There's a huge untapped opportunity for that. Yeah. 

Annie Holcombe  41:38  
So I know we're we're getting close to time and I think we needed to to wrap it up wanted to thank you guys for joining us. And I think we could have another conversation, maybe in six months to see where dually where your AI adaptive is gone and where the new key data dashboard is. And whatever Travis Are you demoing and whatever, Travis? Whatever, whatever you got testing out there, a couple of things. One right behind me. But everybody's bios in the show notes and all of the information to reach out to you. But thank you guys so much for joining us. Anybody wants to get in touch with Alex and I you can reach us at Alex and Annie podcast.com or connect with us on LinkedIn and anywhere on our website. Did I miss anything and I'm not normally closing I love it.

Alex Husner  42:29  
Thanks, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. See you guys. Bye. That was fun. Thank you. You guys are awesome.