Throwback Episode: Building a Start-up in a Grown-up Organization, with Homes & Villas VP Jennifer Hsieh

Speaker 1: 0:00

We'll start the show in just a minute, but first a word from our premier brand sponsor, casago.

Speaker 2: 0:06

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

Speaker 1: 0:25

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Speaker 2: 0:38

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Speaker 3: 0:43

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

Speaker 1: 1:20

Hey listeners, it's throwback time. Today we're looking back at a very special episode from 2022 with Jennifer Shea, vp of Homes and Villains by Marriott. Here's a fun fact Annie had just completed her final interview for the position of director of business development with Jenny just moments before we recorded this episode. A lot has changed since we first started this podcast and it's fun to reflect back on past episodes to see how far we've come individually, collectively, personally and professionally. We are so grateful for everyone who tunes in to listen to the show each week. Stay tuned for our October 1st of the month bonus episode that airs this Sunday with Hunter and Ginger Harrelson of Beachball Properties, the 2022 reigning winners of the VRMA Property Manager of the Year Award. We also wanted to say a big thank you to our premier brand sponsor, kossigo and co-sponsor Revan Research for their support of the show. Welcome to Alex and Annie, the Real Women of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex.

Speaker 2: 2:22

I'm Annie.

Speaker 1: 2:23

And we are joined today with Jenny Shea, who is the vice president of Homes and Villains by Marriott. Jenny, it is such a pleasure and honor to have you on the show today.

Speaker 4: 2:32

I'm excited to be here, ladies.

Speaker 2: 2:35

Thank you so much for indulging us. We've been a big fan of yours and we got to see you last year at the Women's Conference and you just did a phenomenal job, and so we kind of put you in our, our, our roll deck with people that we wanted to have on, but a long time coming because you're a very, very busy woman.

Speaker 4: 2:51

There's a lot happening when you have a startup, and so I'm excited to finally be here and spend some time with you guys. Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 3:00

So that's probably a good way to start it. Let's, let's let's look a little bit back at your history, if you can just tell our listeners about what your career has been. I know you've been in Marriott for a long time, before Homes and Villains, but in in that now it is more like a startup and a grown up organization. But tell us a little bit about your past and how you've gotten to where you are now.

Speaker 4: 3:20

Yeah, really good question. Well, Marriott is the longest company tenure I've had at any company, so I've been at Marriott for 13 years, but maybe I'll go back a little bit further. And so very early on in my career I was trying to figure out, like, what is it that I wanted to do and wanted to be? And I worked in a small consulting firm for a little while and realized like I loved business. I loved how things work, I loved people, and that prompted me to go to business school. After business school, I knew I wanted to learn as much as I could about everything, but my passion was really around customers. I really love thinking about like why does a person choose what they choose? What drives people to make certain decisions, what makes them happy, what brings them joy, and all in the context of business. So I joined management consulting and I worked at Deloitte in strategy and operations for a few years and then I made the move into Target Corporation. So for your US listeners, also known as Tarjay and I did work in strategy and innovation and that was really like when we were when I was at Target we were looking at really great questions. Because if you love thinking about customers, you love thinking about okay, well, what makes this particular customer buy this type of bleach versus that type of bleach? Or what's a great strategy to get that mom with two young kids to come into our store and to stay in our stores? And the answer was fashion. And so we would think about problems like should Target enter food and grocery? How do we create a beauty section that resonates for our diverse customers? And so I was really there thinking about ways to create new programs, ways to grow the business, and I loved that part of it. And so my husband works at the federal government and while we were Minneapolis he had an opportunity to come back to the DC area and I started to look in the DC area to say you know, what are the customer focused companies there where I could take what I love, which was thinking about people and helping them kind of whether it's like their day to day lives, improve it through what they buy at a retail store or something deeper. And Marriott came to the top of my list. It was one of the few hotel companies here at the time. It's grown. This area has grown quite a bit for hospitality now, with Hilton and Choice up here, but at the time, marriott was really the biggest and best player. And so I remember going into Marriott and interviewing for a couple opportunities. And there was one in retail doing work at that time this is 13 years ago retail stores within our hotels. And then there was another opportunity that was really interesting and they were telling me at that time it's a new division that we're starting and we brought together the most creative people in the company and it's going to be called creative operations and I thought hmm, that sounds weird Because it's like an oxymoron Right, right, right, Right right. Exactly, alex, that's what I thought too, and I thought this seems really interesting, but they were really interested in my experience in innovation and creating new programs at Target, and so I said you know what? Let me go there, because that feels like I have the ability to grow and do many things within hotels, not just staying within a retail lane. And so I joined the team and that team evolved over the course of 13 years to become really focused on corporate innovation and my last kind of. Prior to leading Humps and Villas, I led the enterprise innovation function for the company and we were really tasked with innovation big, medium and small and I remember my very early days there. We were doing everything from brainstorming names for our newest and latest brands, and so if anyone's a bond point member, you'll know the autograph collection. Yeah absolutely, and so I think it was like my first month there. I sat in a room and they're like we've got this new brand, let's think of a name for it, and so we would start brainstorming it to visioning. What's the future of the meeting experience for the company? What should the future wellness be? We just entered all inclusive, so my team led a lot of the experience design around. What does that experience look like when you're at a Brits Carlton versus when you're at a Delta hotel? And one of the innovations that emerged out of my time there was Humps and Villas, and so, being in the world of innovation, my job was to oftentimes look at the future. What is it that customers are doing? What are they buying? What's changing, and we saw the sharing economy really take off. I love telling the story. People used to say I would tell them the world's changed a lot If you asked us 20 years ago. One of the biggest tenants that your mom tells you never get into a stranger's car.

Speaker 5: 8:47

That's what we do all the time Exactly.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 4: 8:53

I mean, things have completely changed, and so in innovation, we saw the shift towards the sharing economy, this desire for deeper, slower, longer travel and experiences, and we knew the growth was happening very early on, because this was like 2017, when we were beginning to do some deeper looks there, and that's when we began to see, hey, there's a growth and there's a particular reason why. At that time, over a quarter of our customers were leaving a Marriott property and instead going to rent a home, and so we began to develop new ideas and concepts. We had a travel incubator. One of the startups in it was a property management company. Oh wow. And so we had an incubator. We did it with 1776 and Accenture. They were one of our finalists. We launched a pilot with them, and so, when I was leading enterprise innovation, our job was to say what's the newest, greatest, latest thing, what are consumers shifting towards that we need to be mindful of, and how do we test and create new things there? And so we did everything from Alexa and hotel rooms to chatbots, but this one held a pretty special place in my heart, which is how do we better respond to this growth and popularity around vacation rentals and the sharing economy broadly and we kind of defined well, there's some things that we're not comfortable with. So, if we're working out with the user interface infrastructure, that we're now comfortable sharing a home with somebody who you don't know, right. And so in the very early stages, when we were doing the concept, we were trying to think through, like, what is it that's in our core values, that merit? Then what's the promise that we make to our customers just with a brand? It's a promise around trust. It's a promise around quality, safety, security, all of those things. And then how do you enter a space like this in a way that still holds that promise true to our guests? And so we came up with a concept with this startup, a really pilot, called a tribute portfolio homes. We launched it in oh, 2018. I think we like built it really fast and we launched it in 2018 with them. We tested, we started in London, we expanded into a few other cities, like Paris, brown and Portugal and Lisbon in Portugal, and that worked really well, like it resonated for our customers. People loved the experience, we loved working with that property management company, and so then we made a pitch to make this like a it's no longer a pilot. Let's go from idea to a pilot, to a business, and that's when we pitched Hubs and Villas and got the approval I think December of 2018 and six really intense, crazy months built it based off that pilot we had and then we launched Hubs and Villas in 2019. And so my journey in merit has been phenomenal. It's been really about thinking about customers, new products and experiences, new ideas, tests, and then I got the privilege to take this test and build a business out of it.

Speaker 2: 12:09

That's awesome. So the target thing I have to go back to that Cause I'm I'm a target.

Speaker 4: 12:14

You had an idea. So good, I love that company.

Speaker 2: 12:17

Thank you for what you did to make me want to shop there incessantly and go, go in for one item and come out with a car and stuff I don't need. Right, I'm not going to like that I've met you now because, yeah, I'm going to like somebody. So I like, what a great like, what a great arc for your life. I mean just so much, so much stuff there. So when you, when you did this startup and you pitched it, I mean again, as Alex said, you know you're, you're a startup within this giant and very big company.

Speaker 5: 12:48

Well, a solid alienation.

Speaker 2: 12:50

How did that evolve? And I mean that had to be pretty daunting to want to go in and honestly like we need to start this whole little business. That might be perceived as a conflict Cause I was probably was.

Speaker 4: 13:04

Oh my gosh, any really really good question. So first, you can't go in there and be like I think I want to start. You got to go in there, like we have to be in this business. Right, yeah, very confident with it, like I'm going to share with you data on why this is going to be relevant for us and right for our guests. And so I think you know it's interesting, because I do see a difference between entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, and one of the things that I love about the vacation rental industry is it's so full of people like minded with me, which is entrepreneurs, like people who like to start businesses, who evolve, who change, who pivot. I also earned, probably with like 10 hard years of like learning how to create new things that are very operationally driven company. Yeah, and I learned lessons very early on and I think and I had to learn those lessons to get an understanding of true operations in our hotel, an understanding of stakeholder preferences. I remember this really like fun and light and what I thought would give me a really easy project early on in my career where we were trying to make our hotels more family friendly and encourage more the kids days, et cetera, and we said, hey, look, something really simple that we think the hotels can do is just you guys should do like milk, just like you do cocktail hour. Sometimes there should be a milk and cookie hour, right. Yeah, family is right before bedtime Get the kids in yeah, sweet as that Right. And then I learned like early lessons, because then someone turned around and they're like sure we could do that. But here's what you would need to do Every cookie would have to be individually packaged and labeled. Oh my gosh. We need to have a staff person there standing distributing the cookies to make sure there was an adult and there weren't any food allergies. You would also have to install a refrigerator to hold the milk which has to be individually packaged, and et cetera, et cetera, Right. And then I said you know what, forget it.

Speaker 1: 15:21

That's like why creative and operations don't normally go to get Right.

Speaker 4: 15:24

Exactly Because I had to learn very early on, like here's kind of the complexity of this organization and here's the complexity of rolling things out. And a lot of your listeners will feel and hear that as well, Because people will come to you with ideas like why don't you do this for your customers? And it's complicated to roll out at scale.

Speaker 1: 15:45

Yeah, In theory it sounds like something you'd want to do, but the execution of it can be very difficult.

Speaker 4: 15:50

And so I learned some very early lessons and those were all helpful to me in actually pitching this. What I really think is a game-changing idea and you can't pitch it full, in its fullest view all at once, right. And so I started with the, where, early on, kind of laid the groundwork for people to learn, kind of the language of innovation, which is like let's test, let's learn, let's start small, so if we fail, we fail fast and then we can learn and change and iterate. And so I started small, I started with an idea, I started with a pilot and I started high, right. And so, like Annie you said it, which is like this idea felt really controversial to an industry that hadn't been in there before. And so you know, stephanie Lennart, who's our current president, and Arne Sorenson, who was our fantastic CEO, they knew that they had to be a part of this, they had to really support the growth, the test, and they knew that if you didn't have for an idea of this kind of controversial, different, it was just different, right, it was easy when we were saying, hey, let's build a new brand, that's a hotel. And let's replicate what we've done, but this was really different. And so you start small, and then you recognize that if you have an idea that has some controversy around it, you make sure that the leadership is ready to stand behind it, and that takes time. You have to build the case. You have to be able to give them data that says you know, 27% of our guests are leaving our portfolio to go right homes. And then I always used to start my presentation with how many of you have rented a home.

Speaker 2: 17:47

And how many people do you?

Speaker 4: 17:49

have. Oh, that number has changed materially.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Oh gosh yeah.

Speaker 4: 17:54

You would see a good number of hands go up in the company, and that's pretty telling, because when you work with Marriott, you have the most amazing associate rates at our hotels. And so it's not a financial choice, right, because financially you probably would do better renting the re-runs, right? So it was a product choice. It was a choice when I asked people, well, why did you rent a home? And the answer is always well, we had a big group, we wanted to spend time together.

Speaker 1: 18:29

Yeah, situational, it's a family reunion.

Speaker 4: 18:31

We call it trip purpose, and so you have to make a really good case and then you do a little prayer. You know it's like you've got to do everything you can do to be ready for it, but then you also have to have a little bit of luck on your side.

Speaker 1: 18:47

Yeah, absolutely, and I think the heart of all of this comes down to the brand and obviously Marriott has done an incredible job and I think you touched on earlier when you were trying to think of what brands you would want to work for and Marriott came to mind. I can understand that feeling. I mean, marriott really is just in my mind, is just such a respected company and I've read so much about Bill Marriott and Arnie Sarnson and just the leadership team and how they've built the business. It's just, it's very intriguing to me and I think how they've expanded into these multiple different hotel brands has been really interesting. There are so many times now that I travel that I book something and then I don't even realize it's Marriott until I get there because it's Moxie or you know. There's so many different versions now that it's really interesting. But the way that you've tied it together, I think it makes a lot of sense. And it makes sense while you brought Hums and Villas onto, you know, into that whole family of brands, because people that love Marriott, they want to book with Marriott and if you don't give them those options, you have the potential of losing that customer right. So it's really listening to your customers what they're asking for and knowing that you know, bookings are situational. My husband and I, when we travel, we'd mostly stay in hotels because it's just the two of us, but if we're going somewhere with a group of friends then we'll book, you know, a cabin or a beach home. So having those options and making it easy, especially through your rewards program, it just it brings all of it full circle. But I'm sure that the early days were a little bit chaotic and I think, to say the least, right To say the least, yeah.

Speaker 4: 20:24

For some long nights and a lot of technology glitches, but we got there.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah, and the technology will get to that in a second too, because that's a whole other whirlwind. But from the outside it seems like the biggest difference between the two. There's a lot of similarities to. I mean, marriott is essentially a franchise model company. You don't own these hotels, or very few of them, right? There's just a handful, yeah. So it's a similar concept, but the main difference is that you're not you're. If you're looking at a property management company, they're kind of like one of your franchises, but the difference is that you don't have full control over it, right. So you are part of their distribution, which is different than a franchise where you know you really have oversight onto pretty much every part of the business. But that would be kind of. My next segment is how. What was that process? Like how you were going to bring property managers into the ecosystem and just what were the biggest surprises when you started having those conversations and pulling the properties in and I know there's been a lot of revelations but, like, how did that process go?

Speaker 4: 21:34

Well, you know, one of the things which I love, alex, is you really understood the nuance of our business model, which is different than any other competitor out there. Right? We only work with professional property management companies. Right, that is our differentiator, it's our position, it is how we see success, and we did build that model off of what we do with our franchisees. Right, and so, in some ways, this idea that we had, which is at its heart, like we build the brand, we build the channels, we have the customer base and then we build the standards. These are the things we expect our partners to do, and then we go out and find the best partners in the world to be able to do that and they work with us and we grow together. How do we do that? Right now, one of the things you said which I was like, ooh, that would be so nice which is, like our hotel franchisees we have full control over, not the case.

Speaker 1: 22:34

Sorry, you don't Okay In theory, Not the case in theory.

Speaker 4: 22:39

Yeah, but what is true, though, is like they fly a hard flag, that is like it's the aloft, or it's the residence in, or it's the West, and whatever that may be, whereas in this model so we have a similar model, which is our job is to and we're in the marketplace very intentionally as a hospitality company, which is very different than our competitors, who are tech companies, and, as a tech company, their promise is like we're gonna create a marketplace that brings demand and supply together, and we're gonna do our best in kind of facilitating with that, with the technology. That's on our position. Our position is we're gonna curate the best homes and the best partners from a professional property management perspective, to support you for your day For your guess.

Speaker 5: 23:28

For our guess right and we're gonna curate that.

Speaker 4: 23:32

And so we go through kind of the process of trying to find kind of best partners, and it is while we take inspiration from our franchise model. I'd say like the model that we have in Humpsonville is a much lighter version of it. Right, Our franchise agreements are hundreds of pages long. Standards are fairly exhausted, right and so, and what's so funny is I laugh and I say, even though we know it's a light version relative to the industry it can still feel like heavy, so you can. you're just kind of sitting in the middle of in some ways, and so we have a model where we believe strongly that professional property managers really are fantastic in the work they do. And I spent a lot of time during the early phases of our pilot before the pilot, doing the research, spending time with property managers walking the houses, following on operations, looking at the back of the house how do you manage keys, how do you manage linen deployment? And I think one of the things that we recognize early on is it is not the same as running a hotel.

Speaker 1: 24:40

No, it's not.

Speaker 4: 24:42

It is completely different, and so it is one thing to have. I often talk about it and I still think the same thing applies for us right. In a good hotel, housekeeping is the background of the hotel. If you don't have really great housekeeping, you have nothing. Everything kind of falls apart around it. You can have great marketing, but if you don't have people that are doing the operations and the housekeeping, you have nothing yeah cleanliness is like king right, and so we have that same principle, and I would watch our partners, and so this is why my background on studying people and customers and loving to see how things work. We spent a lot of time with our partners watching the day-to-day learning and seeing their expertise, and we appreciated the fact that it is not at all like what hotels do, like in hotels, sometimes you have a housekeeping staff who's phenomenal and they've been at your hotel for a dozen years and they've cleaned that same room for a dozen years. And you got linen getting deployed all within a staff in that building. It's a very different proposition when you've got dozens of homes across Merrill Beach and those homes are like 10 plus bedrooms and you need to deploy a team, and then you need to get linens and you need to get equipment from place to place. And so I think one of the things that was very like true to kind of how we think about innovation and creating new things is we got very tight with our professional property management partners. We watched, we toured, we observed, we spent time and we saw that was quite different, and then we adjusted our expectations right and we said there are some things for which Merrill brings a lot of expertise, and that is around brands and building standards and ensuring safety and understanding our customer. But then there are other things that we think our property manager partners are much better at. They bring the history and the expertise, and that's the model that we're gonna do, and we frankly need to celebrate the ones who do it really well, elevate the ones we think are really close but not quite there yet, and then recognize that there are gonna be some partners that we won't ever work with, and that's okay because there's a match for every type of product. And so when we started working with those partners and sharing kind of insights, I think the biggest ahas and the early ahas was how different some elements of that business is and how we needed to make adjustments to really accommodate those. Like when you get to a hotel and you wanna check in early or check out late not that hard right.

Speaker 1: 27:26

Can't do that when it comes to homes and we can't force that right.

Speaker 4: 27:30

You can't say, hey, I've got a titanium member and they wanna check in early. Doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 27:36

I wish we could offer those things more easily because we get FOMO reading all the articles about how we can better use upsells and things of that nature. It's really not as executable within vacation rentals as it tells. But especially I mean a lot of the destinations that you're in those are Saturday turn day locations. So it's like on Saturdays in the summer we're turning 500 condos. So the operations that goes behind that is really it's quite incredible. But I really think you hit it on the mark that it's the experience that has built property managers over the years by trying and failing and getting sometimes our processes. They might seem from the outside that they're not the perfect standards, but really they get the job done and every company does things differently. That's the really hard part too, and just because one company does it differently doesn't mean that it could still be delivering the same level of service, but it's just how it's been built behind. It could be different versus hotels. There's so much more that is standard on the backend of how it operates. We'll be back in just a minute Afterward from our premier brand sponsor, costco.

Speaker 5: 28:49

I've done every position in this company. I mean, started from a grind. If I was done right, I just did everything. So I've done it all. Not to say that I don't still enjoy vacuuming. I love that you get burned out a little bit and you lose your. You know, you may be like I don't know if I can do this anymore.

Speaker 1: 29:03

That's Kelly Hill, Costco's franchisee from McCall, Idaho. Her company, Dunright Management, had been a leader in the market for many years, but as larger national companies started to gain ground, Kelly felt like she was losing control of the business.

Speaker 5: 29:17

I was my way out the door before Costco came. I really was. I think I was considering selling the company because I was at that point where I was getting like, yeah, maybe this isn't for me. Ryan had approached Ryan and Steve approached me and it was like they sang a song to me because I was like this is what I need. I need direction. I'm looking at the bigger companies and they'll say you know, the cost is out there and I admire them for a lot that they do, but they have a lot of bandwidth here, they have bulk and so they can do things a lot cheaper and their systems are great. I looked at Costco as the opportunity that we needed to get there to have some of those advantages.

Speaker 2: 30:06

We asked Kelly about the transition to becoming part of Costco and her thoughts on the benefits of becoming part of their franchise model.

Speaker 5: 30:13

We had just switched to a different PMS system that same year, so it was a real challenging year but it was so worth it because Streamline is just, I mean, it's the best of breed and I loved having that. When I meet with owners I'm like, yeah, we use Streamline software. It's the best of the interesting, that's. One main thing is that the training and the support that they've given us, I mean they are just there. I mean anything we need, anything we need.

Speaker 1: 30:39

No way Story is one that resonates with many of our franchisees. Switching software is a big decision. Costco's full-time support staff are here to help make this process significantly easier and more efficient than a regular software switch.

Speaker 5: 30:53

Ryan and Steve. They just really said you can. You can still do this. We're here for you and if we have all these things in place, your company can run smoothly and it does. And I think that I can take off for a week and I know I'm going to come back and everything is running as good, if not better than when I was here. So it's great.

Speaker 2: 31:13

Visit costagocom forward slash franchise to hear more stories from franchisees like Kelly and inquire about territory opportunities and available markets.

Speaker 4: 31:22

Well, and that's part of like if you think about our what we call our select service hotels. Like the residents in the courtyards, those are prototypes. So, they're the same product replicated in many parts of the world, whereas, you know, we are like snowflakes Every house is different. And it is like sometimes you can't like it's really great when you have a housekeeping team that knows a home Right and it's consistent with that home, because they will know that cobwebs tend to collect and leaves tend to collect in this corner of the balcony. That looks terrible when the guest gets there. So I'm going to make sure that's taken care of Right and so yeah, so different. But you know, on the balance we also hear from our property management companies like they still want to learn. They know we have 95 years of hospitality experience and there are things that you know we have done over the past few years, like we have deep relationship with ECO Labs. So we did, right when COVID happened, a big educational workshop on like what does it mean to clean in the age of COVID? Right, the type of chemicals and what's the right method. We've had classes or sessions that we've done with specific property managers. When they get some cleanliness challenges on scores, we can support them with like a housekeeping kind of refresh and we get experts in that tell you like for your housekeeping team, here's the path that is the most efficient for how they go about and clean a house, and so those partners can take those tips and apply them or choose to say you know what. That's a really good tip, but it doesn't necessarily fit. Our job is to kind of share the information and hopefully elevate the way our partners operate.

Speaker 2: 33:11

You know one thing? I think that would be really interesting and I had worked at a Marriott service work years ago, in my hotel days in the 90s, and one of the things I loved about working for Marriott was the training that we got, like the customer service training and the sales training and all the different aspects of it, and it would be really great if that was something that you could offer, because I know that you talk to property managers and everybody has a part-time retaining staff, but I think it's also about training that staff and training them efficiently and understanding the various ways to train them, and I think that they just get so mired in the details of running the business that that's something that they maybe don't they want to do, but they don't focus on or have the time to do it, so your partners could probably access, you know, some of that. Marriott is just like the best at those skillsets.

Speaker 4: 33:56

And we have like. This is the beauty of being like their pros and cons to being part of a big enterprise. Cons are sometimes things move a little slower, but pros are we have world-class experts, and so we have world-class experts at building interactive training and, you know, we have world-class experts at service. I mean, for goodness sakes, we have the Roots-Carleton right and they have a full like institute on how you deliver service. And so one of the things that we are often thinking about and we're not quite there yet right, we've been, these are all the opportunities that we have is how do we bring more service-driven courses?

Speaker 5: 34:36

and make those available.

Speaker 4: 34:37

Because we know there's some truths in hospitality service that we have that I don't think that we are quite as in place within the vacation rental industry right, and so it's this notion, like we know from being in hotels, that when something goes wrong, service recovery is critical and that when you recover that error, that customer will give you a higher score than if they had not had that problem. And so we know the value of service recovery, but I don't know that in the vacation rental industry that we're quite there yet right, because when something goes wrong it's like oh my goodness. I got to get such a search out and do X, Y and Z and it's just. I think some of it's like logistics, it's operations, it's staffing model, but there are things that are truths that I think have our truths across industry and service recovery and how you care for your customers.

Speaker 1: 35:38

I think is a big one this spot on yeah, yeah, in our business or in our business at least I can say the exact same thing that, honestly, some of the best reviews that I read are something that went wrong and how we handled it. And that's a really good way to look at it, especially in today's day to age, where a lot of guests don't check in at your office anymore. So, unless something goes wrong, it's almost like you're. It's like a blessing in disguise when something goes wrong, because it gives you that opportunity to fix it. But, yeah, I think overall, just there seems to me just to be a really big opportunity for Marriott to help our whole industry from the communication and the conversation standpoint of how do we learn from you, how do we work together. I mean, I think it's when you came in. I remember when you presented in New Orleans in 2019, I think that was like the official launch right that was the official launch. You did a great job. I remember watching that presentation being like gosh, they have nailed it with this, like there's just so much that makes sense about it. But I think our industry has been pretty welcoming to what you've put together and, knowing that there's a lot of value. There's a lot of value for companies to say to their homeowners that they're partners with Marriott. I mean that's like oh boy, because they can't do that on their own right? No, and there's so many.

Speaker 4: 36:58

I can't tell you how many times I get a Bomboy customer who is so excited they're like my house made it on your platform or I have a brother who has a house in Marriott Beach and they're on, and so they want to figure out if they can get a picture with a logo. I'm not really sure. But I mean it is fantastic and that's because, like people, are proud, it's the brand that we built as a company.

Speaker 5: 37:22

It's the standards. Yeah, it is. Thank you all so much for watching. Bye, forgive me. Bye, yeah, I have a friend that travels.

Speaker 2: 37:28

She works for a government contractor, so she travels constantly and so she's accruing her bond boyfriends all over the place. And when the company Lexicon that I worked for we started working with Marriott, she was like Okay, so can you help me find a place? Am I allowed to use my points? How does this work Right? Yeah, exactly it really became a game changer for her because there are some trips where she, before her daughter went to college, she took her daughter on some trips together so they could just, you know, experience these towns, arizona, like Sedona and those type of things. And she was like it'd be so great if I could bring my whole family on these trips in the summer. And so they've done some of that now, where they she's going to take my whole family to be able to rent, because otherwise she's got kids and a girl multiple. Logistically it's just hard to do all that. So it was a game changer for her and just the surprising delight every time that she was able to use those points and it's just such a great one that's so good.

Speaker 4: 38:27

I love that. It reminds me of the story when I actually felt like I made it. And so I was at home and I think like our cable had gone down or something, and this was just a couple of years ago. We were like a few months past the pandemic and so maybe homes and villas was maybe a year old and you're in a half old, and I had a female cable kind of repair person come in and she and I were just chatting and she's like, oh, you work at Marriott. And I was like, oh, yeah, I work at Marriott. She's like you would not believe I had the most awesome experience. My son and I were going to do a trip away to Vegas at one of your hotels, but then the pandemic hit and we weren't really comfortable and they have this amazing new product called Homes and Villas, and so I took my oh, great To book that home, and so she didn't know what I did at Marriott. Yeah, like that's me.

Speaker 1: 39:24

And.

Speaker 4: 39:24

I was like how did you like it? And I pray she's like it was great. And then I never told her what I did, yeah, yeah, like that was when I felt like I made it as a business, like my cable woman came and was like there was a saw, some product that merits offering, and now I, you know, i- was like oh my gosh, it validated.

Speaker 2: 39:44

It validated what you wanted to do yeah, and it's great.

Speaker 1: 39:50

You know one of the things that we talk about a lot is just, I mean, the overall brand of the professionally managed vacation rental industry and how we have just been kind of grouped into Airbnb, just whether you're a manager or not, and the implications that that's had. You know, trying to be proactive and positive on how we reframe that, that opinion, and just the story of what we tell. How can Marriott help help with that? You know, like, how can we figure out a way that Marriott's a big brand too, right? I mean, obviously Airbnb is huge, but you guys, if anybody can, can help us in a way that is mutually beneficial. I feel like it would be a Marriott. But do you have any thoughts on how we, how we brand the industry, since you guys are so good at it, and make it into its own, its own thing?

Speaker 4: 40:38

Yeah, I think it was a little bit about back to kind of the core identity. My identity in Hemson Villas is this is a hospitality business. At the end of the day, it's not a tech business, right, and I think the vacation rental industry and it's hard is really about hospitality. It's about care for your guests and taking care of people when they're on probably a vacation they've been saving up for for many years and it's probably a really important vacation, and so I do think that there is a lot of value in making sure that you you continue to think about hospitality at the forefront. And there's a lot of hype these days, sometimes with tech and growth and scale and all of those things that become important and has made the vacation rental industry kind of short term rentals is the fastest growing sector within the accommodations, right, and it's easy for kind of the media and the analysts to think about it. As you know all these tech startups and you're going to suddenly come up with an app where you need nobody.

Speaker 1: 41:54

Yeah, exactly Millions.

Speaker 4: 41:57

I haven't seen it happen yet, but it's not in theory, and so I think that that gets sometimes distracting from what the industry really needs to be about, and that is about taking care of guests in a way that is consistent, reliable, human Right. And so I think, like, if anything, that's what I would encourage the industry or the collective of us to say, like this is what we're about. We're about hospitality. We're not about the tech that just exists, like, at the end of the day, these are humans, these are people's homes that they're going to like great, great experiences for you.

Speaker 1: 42:40

So that's what I would encourage, yeah, and I just have to feel like there's such an opportunity there, because you touched on earlier. I mean, it looks like it's easier. It's easy to come in and put an app in place that can eliminate the people there, and I think there's a lot of the investors and the new people that are getting into this new thing called short-term rentals, which we know it's not new, and they are just assuming, okay, we can go in and we can streamline processes by using technology that these mom and pops have not been doing and so, inherently, that's going to make a better guest experience, but that really has not come to fruition in the same way that we're all able to deliver hospitality, and I think that's where, with Merritt's background as a hospitality company, these are the conversations we need to be having to really make that click those folks who are saying that probably haven't been stuck outside at home. Right, exactly, and the Wi-Fi is down right.

Speaker 4: 43:37

And so, and you know, you're in a really tough place if you can't get in touch with anybody to say because, like, things like that happen all the time. But if you don't have like a lifeline to say, hey, look to the property management company, I need some help. Or sometimes, if they can't reach the property management company, they reach us. And so, for, at homes and villas, like, our customers know that we're there as a safety net and so things are always flawless. We try and design it and we have great partners who try and get there, but stuff happens and that's why we're here to help in terms of just, you know, catching folks when something unexpected happens.

Speaker 2: 44:16

Yeah, so in that, in not being perfect, but you're as close to perfect as we could possibly imagine somebody coming in this is doing not being in a very, very long time, what do you think are some of the opportunities and maybe struggles and challenges that you've had in building homes and villas, not only just you know again, a complimentary style business within a business, a woman presenting this business in a fatalities are fairly male-dominated.

Speaker 4: 44:47

It is a male-dominated industry. So I mean, I think you know what's interesting when you come into the spaces from a business perspective and you all, I'm sure, have been in companies that feel this way like people want to know if you're going to succeed and what your long term plan is at the game.

Speaker 1: 45:07

Yeah, exactly. And so, like yeah, sometimes, their long term plan is making it till tomorrow.

Speaker 4: 45:17

So I often talk about like I'm a toddler. I'm a three and a half year old and I've changed a lot in the last three and a half years and I've done it hopefully for the better, because I've learned from great partners out there. And so I think one of the challenges is like we grew. We came in and we grew fast because we knew when we started we hit 2000 homes. That's not enough, right. We had millions of customers all over the world. Okay, I want to go to, you know, port Aransas, which we didn't have a hotel in Port Aransas but a lot of Texans who are part of our members, and if we only had like 20 homes in Port Aransas and you wanted to go during like a peak season when kids were out of school and you weren't at school, you weren't at school. And so, like, we quickly learned, okay, 2000 is not enough, and so we got a crow to be able to respond to our customers needs and be in places where they want to go, and then enough depth. And I think that that was a real fast lesson we learned right. And then we quickly said, all right, like, our technology is not at the level that we need it to be, we can't. We need to broaden our opportunities and begin to scale. So I think we took that as the second opportunity and said, okay, how do we not only grow supply, which is the homes we have in the right places, but also make our technology better to make that growth a little bit easier? We continue to grow. We're a global business. We just launched some pretty stunning homes in Kuala Lumpur and the Netherlands and, you know, I want to be able to like whether you're a US citizen that wants to go over to Asia Pacific or to Europe, or for European who wants to come to the US, I want to be able to be in all the places that you're at that you want to go to, and so that's a big opportunity for us. And I think the other big opportunity is with growth, and fast growth is we always have to continue to monitor the quality component. Right? Our business got built on three big insights and pain points that customers told us. Customers came to us and they said hey, look, I want to home, but every time I searched, thousands of things come back and I can't figure out what's good and what's not good. Right, yeah, and so that's why we curate. And then the second thing they said is like and when I do book these homes, I'm booking on behalf of a bunch of friends from college or my extended family, and if I mess up and we arrive at that home and it doesn't look like what the picture said, they're all going to look at me, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 47:48

Absolutely. It's a big role. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 47:51

And then the third thing was like they were telling us look, I'm afraid that when something goes wrong and I'm at the home, there's no one that's going to help me because the person I rented it from is now a ski trip and unavailable. Yeah, and so we built that business on those three insights. We need to make sure, as we continue to grow the business in terms of scale, that we are still staying true to those customer insights, like those promises that we make to solve pain points for our guests. Continue to kind of be true in our business, otherwise it's, you know, you lose your purpose, right? So that is the big thing. I think the other thing, like being a woman in this industry, is definitely different, you know, and being in the hospitality industry is one thing. Going into a new industry, like short term rentals, that's pretty kind of. It's a small world Like everybody knows everybody else.

Speaker 5: 48:48

Yeah, it really is.

Speaker 4: 48:50

And so you know it's interesting. You have to be confident in what you stand for and your values and recognize that. You know there may be folks out there sometimes and I conflate the two, but I don't necessarily think that they're totally different that may say, hmm, I don't know if she knows totally what she's talking about or does she really understand the industry? And so it's kind of a challenge to like do those questions get posed to male leaders? Who in the industry? Right?

Speaker 1: 49:20

Right, yeah, and so.

Speaker 4: 49:23

I think you know really understanding who you are, what your values are, what your business is about, and so firm, I think is important, I think really being collaborative, understanding that just because we're married doesn't mean we're the smartest folks in the room and it means like you've got great partners out there. Let's listen to them and let's understand, and so I think it's a balance of both of those. You have to go in confidence and understand your values and be sure of kind of what you stand for and what your business means and what's kind of your North Star, and then also being really humble and understanding, like this is an area that we're learning and growing and we're continuing to refine as we go. So I try and navigate using both of those.

Speaker 2: 50:12

Yeah, that's great, and I think being a woman while together is definitely it's different.

Speaker 1: 50:18

Yeah Well, and I think you, merit, has done a really great job of being that vulnerable and being honest and humble about things that I don't think. When you came in, it seemed like you were saying you knew everything about this and you had been planning this and plotting for years that this was gonna take over the whole industry. But I think you've made changes to the program throughout the years and that's been based on the feedback that you've gotten from property managers, which that shows the intent and the willingness to work with all of us, because I mean, at the end of the day, you've made it clear Merit's not gonna go out and buy a bunch of homes, so if you want the product, you have to be able to work with the people that are cultivating that product and build those relationships that are mutually beneficial. So I think your approach to it is excellent. But you're an incredibly inspiring leader, and one other question I wanted to ask was before Target, what got you? How did you even get there? I mean, like what did you have role models or mentors along your journey that have pushed you and motivated you?

Speaker 4: 51:25

You know it's been interesting. I've had the most eclectic set of role models. No, barl, right Like my very first one, is this tiny British NDPHD man who, like, focused on quality, and he's the one that, like, taught me the fundamentals of like great process, great systems, great structure. And then, as I got through kind of my career, I've had many women leaders who I look to, who, you know. I watch everyone's style and at every job I pick up like. Here are the two or three things that I'd love that this person does and that I really want to bring into kind of my ethos. I've often chosen jobs for people the leader I choose to go based on where I think there's somebody that I can learn from. My path to this role and this life, you know, has been very wiggly. When I was in college, I studied biology and art history, neither of which are generally relevant to what. I do today.

Speaker 2: 52:36

Other than my personal passions.

Speaker 4: 52:38

But I think there is something about just really like, when you look at people, people get so caught up sometimes in what I call the corporate ladder or the career ladder, like how do I get from manager to senior manager to director and then keep going up. I didn't get so wrapped up about it. I really thought about now, absolutely, am I ambitious? Yes, am I ambitious about what I can do and what my business can do and what our company can do for a guest? Yes, but I wasn't very focused on being an expert in one thing and getting up that ladder really fast. I kind of took the time to say, like, what would I love doing? What brings me joy? And then, how do I bring together a team of people who have the same values, who care about customers, who care about a guest, who care about partners, and how do I build an ecosystem? Because life's too short to not love your job and not love the people that you work with. And so I totally agree. You know the goal is to get to a position where you can like create that for yourself or be a part of that. And so in my career choice I've often thought about, like, do I love what I'm doing every day, do I find purpose in it, do I love the people I'm working for and can I learn from that particular leader? And so that's just what guides me, and I took a really wiggly path, but it's worked out well.

Speaker 1: 54:06

That's, yeah, perfect, wonderful advice. I mean people and purpose. That's what it really comes down to, but oh awesome.

Speaker 2: 54:14

I also talked a lot about the signs. Like you just recognize the signs along the way that kind of lead you down the path, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a straight path to get you where you are. And it's the benefit of hindsight that you realize all of those pieces were put in your path is exactly the reason that you needed them now.

Speaker 1: 54:32

Yeah, you can't connect the dots until you're looking back. Yeah, until, like, totally right.

Speaker 2: 54:38

What would you tell your? I think I saw that you went to University of Virginia. Did you grow up in Virginia?

Speaker 4: 54:44

I did. I'm a double who. I went to UVA twice, twice, twice.

Speaker 2: 54:51

I grew up in Virginia and so I have a lot of friends that went to UVA and I will say that all the girls that came out of UVA very driven, very passionate, very amazing, all amazing women.

Speaker 1: 55:02

So whatever they taught, me it's a great school, for sure, the water they cut in there, but yeah, it's really good.

Speaker 4: 55:09

I mean and, annie, what you said, I mean that's one thing I would tell people like, as you look at other, like junior female leaders that are coming up. Sometimes when you're in the woods, you can't see the forest from the trees, you can't connect the dots, and that's when a really good mentor is there to help you, to say all right, take a sit back and we'll talk about, like, what makes you happy, what has the highest growth potential, and then those are the types of things that I think are really important, not just for other female leaders, but all the people who you work with yeah, all leaders, all people. Yeah, yeah. And then you have to step back and kind of help people connect the dots for them, because you know I'm fortunate to have had the wisdom of lots of wiggly paths and things where I've done things that I retrospectively like, oh, that probably wasn't like time well spent. And then other things which is like wow, that really worked out.

Speaker 1: 56:00

Yeah, that catapulted you to where you are.

Speaker 2: 56:03

It all made you who you are and the great leader that you are, and so you've helped us connect a lot of dots to you and to Marriott and your experience, and we can't thank you enough for your time and we know you're very busy and you've got a lot going on and I believe we will see you soon in Vegas at the VRMA. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4: 56:21

I'm excited about that.

Speaker 2: 56:22

But if anybody wants to get in touch with you. What's the best way to reach you?

Speaker 4: 56:26

Reach me on LinkedIn or you can feel free to always email me. It's Jennifersheyatmarriottcom.

Speaker 1: 56:33

Perfect, great, we will include that in the show notes and if anybody wants to contact Annie and I, you can go to alexandannipodcastcom and Jenny. Thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure and we look forward to seeing you next month just in a couple of weeks actually, at VRMA.

Speaker 4: 56:49

So thank you again. It's good I've really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1: 56:52

Thank you both. Thank you, thanks everybody for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time. Hey, thanks for having me.