Vacation Rental Tech: What You Need to Know to Stay Ahead in 2025

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex

Annie Holcombe  
and I'm Annie, 

Alex Husner  
and we are joined today with Terry Whyte, who is the owner of Anna Maria Island beach rentals, Terry, it's so good to see you. 

Terry Whyte

Great to be back with you guys again. It's been a couple years, and a lot has happened since then, so it's great to be back. Gosh, I know it doesn't feel like it's

Annie Holcombe  
been a couple years. Feels like it's been just six months, but I think we talk to you all the time, so it's good and we get to see you. And we get to see your shows. So it seems Yeah, but why don't we just give a refresher on who Terry White is? And then we wanted to check in with you, because unfortunately, you guys were impacted one of the hurricanes this year. So let's kind of get an update on all of that.

Terry Whyte  
Manage 50 properties on Florida's Gulf Coast. Unfortunately, we had two hurricanes recently in two weeks, so we're still recovering from that, but we have started accepting guests in the last couple of weeks, so things are looking a little bit better. They're a long way from being normal, but we are getting back on our feet, for sure.

Alex Husner  
That's good. I was saying that offline that it was interesting when the hurricane hit down there, from a national news perspective, I didn't see it a whole lot. I mean, I started seeing things on on Tiktok and on YouTube about your area, but North Carolina really got the main media attention on that. But how are things now? Do you feel like are guests starting to think that they can come back? Or was there maybe more media attention than I thought? And it's, has it been an issue for Reynolds? Yeah,

Terry Whyte  
it's an issue. It's a Facebook issue. All the negative came, of course, all the news came from Facebook there. And then there was a devastation, all the photos and stuff like that. And then now it's slowly coming back, because we're seeing the new photos of the recovery and stuff like that. But people were under the assumption, you know, it's going to take two years to rebuild. Similar talk to Tom Goodwin about that when the fires happened up up there, that people stayed away for too long. You know, it was, they were actually back to normal. But Tom, I think we're working hard on our marketing aspect of it, trying to get the word out. I have over 20,000 people in my marketing list working with a new email marketing company, new direction there, and updated all my listings on the OTAs my website. You know, that were recovered. We're back, you know, new photos and stuff like that. So we're doing everything that we can on our end. That's

Annie Holcombe  
good to hear. And I know, as a someone who's been through a couple of those storms and some devastation firsthand, it's, it's tough, and I think the hardest part is you see the progress, and sometimes you don't get to see it as much as you'd like, but you definitely know that the consumer, the guest out there that's going to book is seeing a completely different view of it. And sometimes on the, you know, on the socials, people share the doom and the gloom and not the really the great progress that's being made to hopefully, you know what I've seen out of Anna Maria, and I know that the destination marketing organization there is really strong, so I think that that bodes well for your future. Yeah,

Terry Whyte  
yeah, we're trying, you know. And there was a post on Facebook. I was just furious after I seen it. I just got back from there, and then some girl or lady was on there, posted bunch of these pictures. Oh, this is my favorite place. And look at like 80% of the island is recovered. And she took 20, she took photos of 10 or 20% and posted, oh, look at the devastation. Oh, wow, that's the kind of thing we're up against. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
yeah. Some people like to be doom and gloom all the time, so it is hard, yeah.

Alex Husner  
Well, good to hear that things are on the up and up, though it's never easy in that situation. But so we want to talk to you today about tech in the vacation rental space. And Terry, you've kind of built up a reputation and a name for yourself as being, you know, really at the forefront of, you know, understanding the systems that are out there. And I think you're a very curious mind that you want to know all the different options. And a lot of people look to you for advice on things, but to kick it off, just kind of want to get your your perspective, the lay of the land, a lot's changed in the last couple years. But what, what's some of the software out there, and some of the things going on that are has caught your eye? Well, can

Terry Whyte  
I, can I start by reading to you. I keep notes, you know, on all your podcasts, you know, other podcasts and stuff. This has been exciting year, because what has happened this year is what I predicted, what happened in 2018 and can on, can I read, you know, some of the notes, yeah, yeah,

Alex Husner  
no one's ever COVID.

Terry Whyte  
I love it. Okay? So January 24 not a rival podcast that compliments you guys here, but Steve Davis from Alberto, after they purchased DAC, you know, he says market leaders will emerge, and then there will be the rest Alex and Annie's podcast. September 14, at the 48 minute mark for red from guesty said, it makes no sense for the industry to have 1000 different tools, tiny tools. January 22 boom was on. I pulled this. I think office gift here. Boom will become the One Stop solution for all property managers, LG, the appliance maker, televisions, they're not even in an industry yet. They said they're going to build the best all inclusive, all in one software. So they're poor in the Kool Aid. They're not even in our industry yet. So Alex, I know you'll love this one. Richard vaughton from yes consulting. Listen. Of this here, instead of the PMs being having dynamic pricing, the guest app owner app, guest communication, operations, management, software, local recommendations, software, chat box, CRMs, emails, agents, the industry will see a big tech evolution where one tech stack does it all, just like with boom displayed at the boom boom now at the air success show in London. And then on March 22 Fauci was on there, saying the industry will evolve into dominated by smaller, bigger companies will play the biggest role, you know, smaller, big companies. And then just look at what's happened here. Let's just take on the supply side. We have booking.com we have hotels. We have vacation rentals, flights, car rentals, attractions, restaurants, cruises, Airbnb. You know, they say they're going to enter two new verticals. They've never been into two per year for the next number of years. And I know, Alex, you were in the room when I was on with was that VR May and I was on a platform with a panel with Amy high note, and Wendy Glover, and we were talking about this. The actual topic was the all in one or the best in class kind of thing here. And I said this best in class thing was the most delusional, delusional theory in our industry. And then you look at what happened with boom this year. I think it's two stories where hopefully we can talk about this before, in the after becoming a PMS, but everything that has happened in our industry this year is what I predicted in 2018 you're

Annie Holcombe  
officially Nostradamus of vacation rentals. Yeah, you have the crystal ball, and it works every time. I

Terry Whyte  
love it. And then when I posted, you know, after I've seen boom for the first time there, I posted this has revolutionized our industry. This fact we have never seen this before, and I didn't, I can't believe I'm even saying it, because I didn't think was ever possible. But before boom was a PMS, they revolutionized the industry to the point where it was so deep, and it's the deepest platform I'd ever seen, including a PMS, where you could actually take a lousy PMS that could take only take reservations like a glorified preservation software and a pretty good distribution software, and have one of the best tech stocks in the industry. And no time in our history has anybody ever been able to

Alex Husner  
say that, yeah, I think their entry into the space has been, you know, super interesting to watch. And just, I mean, the speed at which they're developing now is incredible, you know. And obviously I work with boom, and I met them, though, probably about a year ago at DARM, and I remember, you know, Shahar goes around with his iPad, and he says, I'm going to show you something that's going to blow your mind. And I didn't have time, I had to go to a session, and I said, I gave him my card, and I said, let's set something up later. But he did a demo for Annie and I, and we're looking at it, we're like, wow, this is actually, you know, pretty mind blowing. We agree with you. But at that point, they hadn't announced that they were going in the PMs route. So when I started working with them and realized that was the direction, I was like, okay, you know, it sounded like that made sense to just go on top of the PMS is, but it's tough to do that, you know? I mean, not everybody wants to necessarily play together on that side. And I think their intrinsic knowledge of the property management business, because they were property managers and managed a large portfolio in Florida, they built what they needed. And I think back to my days at condo world, we had our own PMS, and we built what we needed, and it was, you know, spectacular for that use. But that's, to me, the biggest difference between a lot of the tech that's out there, whether it's a PMS or a platform, the ones that are built by people that it's for their own use case, and then they realize, I've got something really good, I'm going to take it to market. Those are the ones that are really valuable. And you can have millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars, but like, just understanding the business sometimes doesn't necessarily require you have to have that much, you know, and

Terry Whyte  
boom, they're kind of marketing themselves as the AI PMS, but, you know, it is. They're doing no question of doing a fantastic job with AI, but just to look at it as an A AI platform, would you're really missing it because it is so deep, it's so much more than an AI platform. It is. It is crazy good. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  
Tara, wanted to ask you so recently, there was an announcement that host away got another large sum of money, and obviously they'd done that before, and guesty got a lot of money. What do you think that investment is going to do for those two companies. But like larger picture for the technology within vacation runs, it's

Terry Whyte  
a little bit confusing, and to the point where I'll tell you why is host away has targeted the smaller, you know, property they haven't. They, they say they've targeted the smaller property managers. But the reason that they're not, they haven't targeted the bigger ones is because they don't have trust accounting and they can't so I think that host away will be the litmus test of our industry. Can they ever move past the smaller operator and in without trust accounting? But it has really changed to the point where there's some big players now where before trust accounting was everything in our industry. It's not like. In Europe. So you know, you guys know over here, unless you have trust accounting, you're really nothing with a PMS, but that's not you look at host away. Now you look at host fully. You look at Boone doesn't have trust accounting yet. I think they will at one time. So this is changing in the way, but I think we're missing the bigger picture here on the funding, we're not recognizing, remember, in habit, they just announced major new funding here. I'm expecting some pretty big things to come out of inhabit as well. And Annie, to answer your question directly, I think this is going to be the year of acquisition and mergers. And I think within habit, we're going to see something pretty big. As far as host away, they're a good PMS. They got a lot of work to do still. I think it's interesting.

Annie Holcombe  
I know we've entered into next packs is entered into the APAC region. And Australia is really big on trust accounting too, which I wasn't aware I thought that was a very single us thing. So if people want to start expanding, I think trust accounting is going to be something that's going to continue to develop and be implemented in more more areas of the world than just the US and and Australia. So it's good that you pointed out that that's kind of a deficiency at this point.

Terry Whyte  
Well, Andy, you said that. And I asked at the at the ARMA, there was that panel that, you know the where the referees thing on, I said, Trust accounting up there. And I think you know how our industry is facing unfair regulations and other that this will be mandated on PMS that you have to use trust accounting. I think it'll be introduced in almost every state, and I think the impetus for that will be, there'll be some property managers that probably become insolvent, probably get people get, you know, what happens when people become insult, when companies become insult, and then people lose a lot, a lot of money that, I think, event you just said it, and it's It will be to us,

Alex Husner  
yeah. Well, and there's a big announcement that's going to be coming shortly after the New Year from boom that they do have cut trust accounting. It is coming and going to be rolled out very soon. So I want to make sure to mention that. But I think on that side too, one reason they've been able to implement this so quickly, they've, they've taken, you know, some of the top tier CFOs within the country that manage very large portfolios and gotten their input to build like what the perfect accounting system would look like. Personally, I'm not, I don't use the accounting systems within any of my clients, so I'm not the one to evaluate it. But as soon as that's rolled out, certainly, Terry, you're on the list to take a look at it. I'm sure I'll

Terry Whyte  
never concede that that isn't the way that our industry is going? You have, I just mentioned that, you know, there's boom, there's hostily hostile, you know, which are good PMS is and they don't have it. But can they really, really gain the traction necessary in our industry without it? For sure?

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a critical part. What else is running your company right now, what are some other standout vendors that you feel are really helping you, and that you see is have a lot of potential in the space? Yeah.

Terry Whyte  
Okay, so when I said in 2018 what was going to happen, I also said that people ask me, and especially streamline. They ask they've asked me this a lot, like, Why did I pick track over streamline? And it drives me crazy, because people think I thought that track was better than streamline when we put them, when I scored them, when we put them in Qualtrics, or when Matt and I went out now, we built our own software and stuff like that, they scored exactly the same. There was 107 for both of them. So no, but what I said was the future of our industry, the future of the PMs would be built around the CRM and I was right. I was really right, but I was only partially right, and what I didn't realize at the time was our entire industry would be taken over by the CRM So, Alex, you just asked about what you know you look at the best tech out there. Now, that's not a PMS. They're pretty much all CRMs. And I'm going to start with breezeway. I don't think Jeremy would give too much pushback when I, if I, when you move the operations part of the software, it's 100% it is a CRM, and then you look at send squared, you look at Enzo, you look at DAC, you look at roo baru, you look at hakia, Dov. You know, even, even now, Alex, what you're doing with happy guests. That's, that's a CRM and CRM, it's the CR but I said it would happen with the PMS. What I didn't see coming was how it would overtake her industry, you know. And so the ones I just mentioned there, that breezeway, Enzo send squared, dac roubaru, hopefully accurate. That's where I see, you know. And then one other thing we should mention too, on your podcast with Amy high note. Just a couple weeks ago, you guys touched on it. You said it perfectly. Do you actually have any clue how strong the softwares you are using are, how much you can do on them, how much overlap there is now in our industry? Give you three examples. Now, what are the three staples of tech in our industry? Everybody is doing. It's a unified inbox. It's upsells and upsells, unified inbox and guest screening. You know, we talked about, almost everybody now is doing guest screening. Alex, we talked about, we talked a couple other days of one tech in our industry that I think is in big trouble is guest screening. That's all they do. These companies only do one. Thing. You know, look at Enzo has been doing it for three years now. You guys are doing it, Alex, you're doing Yeah, yeah. And then we have breezeway said they're going to be doing it direct, PMS. They say they're going to want, once direct starts doing every PMS, is going to be doing it. And then when you, when you're only doing one thing in our industry now, there's just, I just don't think you have a very bright future at all. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
yeah. And really, I mean, like, you know, the heart of you can do multiple things, but like, what's the main vision for the company? What are you trying to solve? And I think Mike O'Connell and I were super excited to show you happy guest, which is a company that I'm a founder and the other day, because what we started with again, it comes back to the same situation, Mike and Kane and one of the other founders were hosts, and they had a portfolio of, you know, eight to 10 properties, and where they had a problem, and so they solved it, and then decided this is something that we should take to market. But, you know, the companies that are trying to do too many things, I think they run into trouble. But if you are just doing one siloed thing, you know, your your your shelf life is just not going to be there, and you could be more easily replicated. I will say, one of the things that I've noticed, too, that like, makes the biggest difference in any of these platforms or softwares is the service, you know. I mean, it sounds, you know, not that's not nothing, uh, crazy to say, but it really is true. And getting to work with a lot of other platforms now, and PMS is with a variety of clients that I work with. I've gotten to see some things, and I'm like, gosh, you know, it can be actually a subpar product, but if the service is there, and you've got somebody that's willing to enable to help you, it makes such a big difference that some of the things I've used that are, I thought, probably a higher end, better program, because the service isn't there, it's like, I don't know how to use it, and I'm not getting the responses back. So that's, that's a big opportunity for our industry, and you know, certainly within any of the companies I'm working with, is like, that's something that we look at really strongly when deciding what vendors we're going to choose. Yeah. And

Terry Whyte  
then, you know, we talk about fragmentation all the time in our industry, but I don't think it's near as fragmented as people. There's, like, we just said there, if you have a robust PMS and you have a robust CRM, the ones that I just mentioned, they're like, you're in pretty good shape. They're, of course, you know, you still need pricing tools, you know, and stuff like that. But you you have a CRM and you have a good PMS, you're not as nearly as fragmented as what the industry says you are. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
yeah. Back to knowing what the PMs will do though. You know, I've talked to some people as of late just with different with the channel management component, and just trying to for them to understand what it is that they're either the limitations or the components of their PMS that work with the channel management that will help them optimize those channels that they want to go in. And I think that people are almost overwhelmed by, especially by these all in one sales pitches that they get. It'll do everything, but then they can't get into the nitty gritty of like, you know, really need to define what is it you need out of it, so you know what to learn from it.

Terry Whyte  
Yeah, and there's no doubt, it's very complex, and you just look at you just look at any pm as a good PMS, whether they are so comp, they're so strong, they're so deep, there's like to learn. It is mind boggling, because they are so strong, you know. And the CRMs are getting like that now too. And

Annie Holcombe  
with the with the turnover and staff, it's also hard to keep some money, keep the people up to speed, and then the rate at which things are moving so like a boom is a great example that they're moving in there. They're progressing so quickly it's like to keep up with that is almost a full time job in itself, have

Terry Whyte  
you? Yeah, there's, there is so much turnover in our industry. It is incredible. Yeah, yeah,

Alex Husner  
yeah. Well, people probably being frustrated, yeah, because they have to use so many tools. Yeah, I will say what, you know, one thing I've definitely learned now this year in my own business too, and working with different companies, like, it's really hard to get people out of the PMS. I mean, you know, especially if you're talking about frontline people maintenance, you know, maintenance operations, like, because they're doing so many things, and they're expected to be in multiple places all at one time. Like, it's, just frustrating when you've got to go into different platforms for things, you know, and on the CRM side too. I remember being at VMA in Vegas, not two years ago, but before that, so probably three, four years ago, and meeting with some of the, some of the bigger players in our space now that are PMS is, we were looking at it, and we're like, okay, it's a unified inbox, it's a it's a booking management system, but it's not even taking anything into consideration for, you know, we do, you know, at that point I was with condo world, we were 95% book direct business. So that's business coming through our website, not just about Airbnb and verbo. And I think a lot of the software that's come up in recent years just focuses on that. But you've got, you know, if you want to get companies in the US or these legacy players, they've, they've got, you know, anywhere from 40 to 60, maybe even more percent of direct bookings, and a lot of that is phone volume. And I will, I will say one of the clients I work with is on track. And I think track has by far the best phone CRM, as far as you know, being able to. Back to advertising and, you know, all that side of stuff that that has not really been done in some of the other ones, but it's so different. You know, how much has changed. But exciting to see you asked a question

Terry Whyte  
there about some of the new technologies. I've seen so many new technologies in the last couple weeks here through demos, but one and you just met, the only reason I mentioned Alex is because you just said, you just set a track in their communication. One I'm really big on is host AI. And I think, I think it's the future of communication in our industry, you know, and it includes phone. What do they do? It's, it's that unified, that whole ecosystem there, although, you know, it's primarily an AI platform. It is a unified inbox. It connects to your PMS, so everything is pulled from there. And it doesn't matter what platform it is, doesn't matter what OTA, your own direct booking website, all your texting, WhatsApp, everything, phone calls, everything on one platform. And so, you know, there's two that I've seen. I know you guys are big in technology, and we're talking about two that I've seen this week that I'm really big on, is host, AI. And have you guys heard of sweet op,

Speaker 1  
no, sweet up. Sweet op, no, I have none. Okay, sweet okay. Are they a US? Is it a US company?

Terry Whyte  
Yeah, it's a US. Remember, remember, remember, we said it here on your podcast. You're gonna, you're gonna hear from them. Okay,

Alex Husner  
interesting, yeah,

Terry Whyte  
you should get them on here they Yeah, you're gonna hear from them. Get them on before somebody else does Okay, look

Alex Husner  
them up, do that. Yeah, I'm curious there too, and I'm not sure if this is how you operate. But do you do consulting for vacation rental companies who are who are looking to switch PMS, or is this just something you're personally very interested in? Yeah,

Terry Whyte  
I do. I do. It's not big. I have clients in Ruba and some other ones. It was more prevalent when Matt Landau and I were like, working together in real and we were out there, you know, Matt had such a reach there. So lately, it's died off. But, yeah, I do do some, but I can tell you, like somebody took a job at Direct, like he called me, he said, Okay, I need your opinion, you know. So there. And then most, most of these software companies, what I get out of it most now is they want to show me what they're doing. It's been a year since we've been working on this. We have some integrations coming up. Can we show it to you? Can we get your opinion on it, you know? And stuff like that. So it keeps me up on top of keeps me relevant on all new softwares that are coming in, you know? So that's where I really get the value out of it now too, yeah. And

Alex Husner  
I'm curious too. So when, and if you do work with a company that's thinking about changing PMS is, what is the process that you go through with them? Or what would you suggest? Because I think there's a lot of companies that you know, they're they're thinking about switching, but they are nervous about how much a heavy lift that's going to be. But like, Have you found any sort of formula that you've put together for how you get to that decision, how you make, how you make the move to do it. Yeah,

Terry Whyte  
it's a really deep evaluation of where they presently are with their tech stack. How could their knowledge of tech and then really breaking it down into and it's not as complicated as you think, but Alex, you just said it, there is when people come to me. They're really smart business people, but they're not smart tech people, and they don't even want to be. They don't want to pretend that they are. They're just afraid of making mistakes. They probably made a few mistakes, and they probably outgrown what they have. They know they have to make a change. So they're just come to me for just, okay, just tell me what to do, kind of thing there. So, you know, I'll break it down. They'll look and I'll say, looks. You guys are here. You can't be there. You can't make this mistake. And I'll give you an example. I see this all the time. Is I say to people, show me your your credit card processing, how we print, you know? And how many times have I seen this? Oh, our credit processor is stripe. Okay, so what happens if stripe says we're dropping you? You we don't like your chargeback ratio. We don't like this. We don't like that. You're out of business. People come Yeah, I said you were one email away from being out of business. Yeah, you know, they just, there's just mistakes that you just can't believe people are making in this industry. Have

Alex Husner  
you seen that happen with stripe, with companies? For sure. Yeah, I

Terry Whyte  
can tell you. I'll tell you off the air, who had happened to

Alex Husner  
Oh, okay,

Terry Whyte  
yeah, for sure. And I tell people it's not, it could happen to you. This has happened, and this will this. If you put yourself in this position, you're you're one email away from being out of business. You know, there's just stuff like, like that. And then Annie, I'll tell you this, you're gonna remember PR may 2017 coming out of Orlando, and the imminent demise of the channel manager. And then how, how many times have we been through this? And I say to people like, This is the craziest, like the 2018 when I said, what would happen? And people come to me and they say, all these PMS is going to be direct integrations with their you guys had them. I said, This is the craziest thing I've. Heard like this makes no sense at all, and you had him on your podcast. He's one of the most recognizable faces, and I'm not going to mention his name, but he has one of the three best PMs on the planet. He came to me, he said, look at all my distribution is going through. Channel manager, I am so sick and tired of my PMS not having in the API what they want, what they're calling for, I'm going 100% in to a channel manager. And when people come to me and say, I want to get all my distribution on my PMS, and I said, No, you don't, and you're never going to do that if you're working with me, that's never going to happen. Because, yeah, I would never have a PMS that doesn't have a connection to at least three channel managers, at least three, you have to and because there's not only that, not only can things go wrong, but there's certain channels that PMS has that channel managers have access to to start with. And then some channel managers do a better job with some channels than others. It's just a fact. You know, one of the best I ever seen was Annie, when you were at lexicon, you know, people, you know, it was a small, you know, booking.com was there any, was there any better platform and results than lexicon and booking.com

Annie Holcombe  
I haven't seen it, yeah. I mean, I was very proud to, very proud to be there. But that, that brings up a really good point, actually, I wanted to ask you about that. So when people are are looking at PMS is, you know, it goes back to that all in one and so some of the, some of the PMS is, and I won't specifically call anybody out, but I think they, people know who they are. They are buying the pieces of tech that they don't have. So now they own, you know, they own a channel manager, or they own a payment processor. And so they, are starting to remove the choice from a manager to be able to have the one that they're comfortable or the relationship that they have. And I think it's a really good that you touch on that, because I personally have and in working with currently and will be working with in the new year, managers who have used their all in one for everything, and now we're moving off of it, because it's just like they realized, kind of to your earlier point about stripe, they're one email away from everything being shut down. And do you really, really want all your it's that all eggs in one basket theory. So how do you coach somebody to think, to think like you might be saving $1 here and there, but at the end of the day is the frustration and the lack of that full transparency of technology, being able to have the relationship that you want with each piece of it. Is that worth it to save that dollar?

Terry Whyte  
Okay, so there's two issues here, and we need to make a pack on here that nobody in this industry ever uses the word all in one again, that's a stupid thing to say. It's impossible to do. You could get guesty streamline, boom, $100 million say, build the perfect all in one. They can't do it and and be careful what you wish for, because I'll give you an example here. You just mentioned on payment processing here. So okay, so my payment processor has, okay, so my PMS has a payment processor, which I don't use. But so what happens if that payment processor drops me and they say no, so I'm out of business. So why would I do that? You'd be okay with linbrook group if you're streamlined, because they are the underwriter. So you gotta know who the underwriter is, okay? So let's move on two pricing platforms. Okay, so I have 50 properties. I use three pricing platforms. My PMS owns a pricing platform which I do not use. I use beyond I use price labs, and I use wheelhouse. You use all three. Of course, yeah, because, yeah. Some do better with two bedroom on. Some do better with three bedrooms. Some do better by market. You guys seen this some, some guys do better by market. You know, just because what, what market I'm in, and I use, and, let's say I use price labs, it doesn't mean it's going to work for you in Myrtle Beach. You know, they're just right. Don't ever swallow that crap there. And then, yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. You know, when you have to, what I said was doing more on one platform would be in 2018 I said that the ones. And we just, we went through them there, the PMS is, you just look now at, you know how fragmented the PMS is, but the ones that have really seen it now, and it's really, it's the big three now. So PMS, you have streamline, you have track, you have guests now, you have boom. Is part of part of that equation. That's the big three. Boom. So we're going to see they haven't stood the test of time. Now they have to go through the test of time to see if they can weather the storm. So you've got that there, and then you've got some of the other small players. But then you you can't put yourself in that position where we just said Credit Card process, distribution. You can have one. You cannot have your PMS doing all your distribution. What happens if something goes wrong? What happens if new channels come in? What about you have? And then we just talked about pricing tools. There is no pricing tool. If somebody comes to me and they have 300 properties and they say, I use price labs, I use wheelhouse. And I said, like, what are you doing? You know, it's just like you can't. So this industry we have, we have to stop saying this all in one solution. It's a stupid thing to say. It's never going to happen, and you better hope it never happens. I'm

Alex Husner  
just curious for my own knowledge. But I mean, do you think that with the pricing tools, that some of them are better because of the size of portfolio that you have? Is that what you're saying? Well,

Terry Whyte  
Alex, that's a good question, and I don't know, and I've talked about this, and I just had a meeting with beyond this week. That was an hour before I got on with you there. And I can't help but think, you know, all the things AI in our industry, I can't help but think AI, the biggest beneficiary to all these will be the pricing tools. Because, oh

Alex Husner  
yeah, you would think so that's what they do. Is dated there.

Terry Whyte  
And then what, where we're going in our industry now, especially with AI, is if you don't have your pricing right, you're going to get killed. Um, now, because I'll give you an example, like, let's say, let's say Annie wants to fly from Boston to New York, you, you know, and or, let's say you Annie wants to come and stay with me. And Anna Marie Allen, she searches and she searches and she searches. And Alex, you know this conversation, people come to us and say, I've been searching for three weeks now. I am so sick of searching, I just want to book something. But it's not going to be that way. With a, you're going to be able to go into and say, give me the lowest fare from A to B, give me the lowest car rental price from ab. And it's going to be they're going to produce that in seconds.

Alex Husner  
That's going to be a huge thing, because I know that it drives me absolutely crazy when I'm searching for flights and I'm trying to evaluate different days or which, like city I land in or arrive to, and it's like there is no way that I know of at this point that you can just tell them, yeah, I want to leave either from destin or Panama City Beach, and I want to go to Phoenix and just give it to me, not make me have to search forever if you want to compare things. But yeah.

Terry Whyte  
And to answer your price on the size of the portfolio, I don't know, Alex, you know, I just, I've never, I've worked with so many of them and so many different companies with different size portfolios, and just look at me with I only have 50 properties, and I use three of them,

Alex Husner  
yeah. And so do you have a revenue manager on staff too, or are you using me systems? You okay, okay, so you're using the tools. It's

Terry Whyte  
not that in, I've talked in every pricing tool I talked to, and I said this to beyond pricing. And I, you know, I said, I'm not criticizing you. I'm saying, but I'm very, very leery of scrape data, and to me, I my revenue manager is key data. I have an account manager over there. I'm sure both of you know her. Name is Jennifer Talbert. At we meet every two weeks to discuss what is in key data, what my pricing tools are saying, what's working, what's not working. What do we leave alone? What do we mark up? What do we mark down? I've

Annie Holcombe  
always told people that you can't have just one. You've got to have it. You've got to have a bare minimum of two key data being one of them, because it's not scrape data. And that's where the thing is, like, scrape data depending on how often it's refreshed. By the time you go to action, it's totally changed. And it's like, when revenue managers are trying to make decisions based off that, it's like, and that's always my first question to people is, like, do you have anything that's derived actual data like that? You know, you can look real time, because if you don't, you're making decisions based on something from you, potentially two weeks ago. Yeah,

Terry Whyte  
yeah. And I pay very little, tell you the truth, very little. And all my, all my decisions I made are made through what key data, you know, saying, I do pay attention to pricing tools. They do have good, they do have good data, you know, and stuff like that. But I'm very leery of what I listen to. Another question

Alex Husner  
for you, are you using demand IQ on your website? Yes,

Terry Whyte  
yeah, yeah. I do have demand. And I was one of the early adopters of and I think I did some of the beta for it too. But Conrad, who is, you know, Conrad is in my digital marketing, yep, he probably uses it more than I do, you know? We'll go, yeah, and we'll go in and have a look at it. And very, very useful tool, for sure, yeah,

Alex Husner  
I would say, you know, we got asked this all the time, was it just on a panel at Don about how revenue management and marketing can work together? And I think, you know, a tool like that, or, you know, different versions of it's everything, because, I mean, you don't have a right problem if you're not booking for March right now, but nobody's searching for March. So how you're going to make those decisions if you don't know people aren't even looking for it right now? But yeah, I think having that information is a big one. Curious. I know you're, you are investing more in marketing, or you always have, but like, it sounds like you're, you're doing some kind of sophisticated things and working with some really great vendors there, but switch back being one of them for the email marketing side, tell us about what your direct booking strategy is. This is

Terry Whyte  
a non negotiable for me. So we spent, you know, I spent a lot of money on my website, you know, it looks good, and then we spent PPC. We spent a lot of money on that. Email marketing. We spent a lot. But for me, the number one non negotiable is content marketing, yeah, so, so I go to Conrad, and he says, you know, people say, is, is SEO? Is it dead or not? I don't know, and I really don't care. I said, You do whatever you want. I just, I don't care. But one blog a week, and I have, I have two websites I have in around beach rentals and I have and around condo rentals and. I said him, this is non negotiable. I need one, and Google loves new, relevant content. So, yeah, my whole focus on marketing is content marketing. You know, I do that, I do the PPC, I do social media, I do all that, but it's content marketing.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, I agree with that completely. And I get into this conversation, often with with companies and with some of my clients. Of you know, it really is. It's the marketing flywheel. And there's so many different parts of the things that you need, need to be doing when you have to have the website that builds trust, you have to have a content platform and a content strategy. You have to have social media, you have to have PPC, SEO, reputation management, all all those things. But you know, the when you have a good content strategy that enables you to make some of the other parts of your advertising and marketing work so much more effectively. And what I see very often is just that companies, you know, their email marketing, is just it's sending out all the down properties that need help, and it's like week after week after week, and it's like it just becomes so product focused that you lose sight of why are people even going to that destination in the first place? You know? I mean, they're going there for the restaurants and the things to do and the memories that they make, and that's how you make that come to life, is through your content strategy. But I applaud you. You're doing it right. Well, a

Terry Whyte  
lot of my focus was I had so much respect for condo world, when you were there, and I was on your email marketing list, and I used to come in every Sunday morning, and I would read it faithfully, you know, I learned a lot, you know, just, just from, I don't follow condo world anymore since you left, but when I was on, I a lot of what I do, and then way was structured. I learned from condo world.

Alex Husner  
Oh, thank you. I love that. That's very nice to hear. Yeah, we were doing, at one point, we were doing, I think, like, four or five blogs a week, and this was when we were expanding into other destinations. So it was, it was intense, but not that everybody needs to do quite that much, but it definitely we were able to do a ton of emails and a ton of great things on social, because we just had so much to share that was not just about the properties that was

Terry Whyte  
a marketing machine, for sure. Yep,

Alex Husner  
it was. It certainly was. Well, Terry work, let's throw this to you. We often ask our guests at the towards the end, what's one thing that's not being talked about enough in the industry? We talked about a lot of different things today, but what's one area that you don't think is getting enough attention, you

Terry Whyte  
know. We always talking about the supply side, you know. And we talk about Airbnb, we talk about booking.com we talk about cruise lines, you know, and all that. But no one's talking about these all inclusive resorts. They are doing such a good job of marketing now. They are taking such a big chunk of our industry, the people that used to come to stay with us or vacation. They're, they're going on these all inclusive. No one's taken serious the threat that's like,

Alex Husner  
that's a great answer, really, yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
love all I love and all inclusive when I can do it too. Yeah, you do it a lot in Mexico, right? Yeah.

Terry Whyte  
And, you know? And another, another thing there, my, I have a short and a long view of what the future of vacation rentals will look like for us. And my short view and my long view both have the same common denominator, which is domestic travel is going to be king. Now let's start with short a short term outlook on it the economy right now and probably never seen this so much is based on the strength of the US stock market, you know. And it's an incredible story. It's an incredible accomplishment. Where the labor market you guys have been at one time, it was common theory that you could never get your unemployment rate underneath 5% and that was just the people that couldn't work or wouldn't work, you know. And consistently, you've seen the US 3.2% 3.5% 3.7 you I think what's going to happen here? And we have avoided a recession for a long, long time, you know. And part of it was fueled by COVID, part of it was and all the money coming in. And then part of it was fueled by either 0% 2% interest rates, you know, and stuff like that. Was that was nothing but rocket fuel for our economy. We all gained from it. I bought three properties. I was retired and bought three properties. Whoever does that, you know, yeah, because of interest rates, you know, stuff like that. But when the US labor market hits 5% all this, that's going to Europe and stuff like that, drive to markets are kind of come back in. So I'm really big on short term us travel looks really good and long term. My personal feeling on this, and you guys can edit this out if you want, is the single biggest threat to travel will be radical Islam, and it won't be too too long where it's going to be too dangerous to travel west or travel east of Germany, maybe France, but probably Germany. And when that happens us, domestic travel has a very, very bright future. Yeah, interesting. That's my short

Speaker 1  
and long term view. Yeah. Well, political nature of all of this political junkie,

Terry Whyte  
I follow this, and I'm, yeah. I'm just I think US domestic travel has such a bright future. I It's

Annie Holcombe  
interesting you say that because I had a conversation with our CEO recently, an exchange of emails about some data points that have been shared about, like, the growth of the market and and he's like, What do you think about it? I said, Well, I don't necessarily think that it's going to grow at the rate that they're saying in terms of, like, inventory. I think inventory is going to pull back, but I think what's going to happen is the dollar is so strong for us to go internationally, but it's not good for people to come to the US. So markets that are dependent upon International, Orlando, as an example, will struggle, but everybody else is going to go crazy, because the drive markets are going to they're going to be king. I mean, we're going to be traveling everywhere within the US. So I'm right there with you. Terry, yeah,

Terry Whyte  
yeah, that's the way I that's the way I see it. Us. Domestic travel has a very bright future. Yeah?

Alex Husner  
Well, we are going to have you back sometime next year. For sure, we should actually just make this a holiday tradition that we Yeah, yeah, end of the year recap and the crystal ball thoughts for the coming year, but so good to have you on again. Terry, it's

Terry Whyte  
always great you guys, you know, there's three podcasts that I have zero compromise on that I don't care how busy I am, you know, I have to listen to him. Yours is one of them. So you guys are, you know? And I was reading the other day, there's 3.2 million podcasts now, three, 3.2

Alex Husner  
Yeah, it's unreal. Yeah, 1.2 million,

Terry Whyte  
2 million. And to have a voice and have a following, you guys are doing a good job. So keep it up. Thank you very

Alex Husner  
much. Thank you. We appreciate it been a lot of fun because of guests like you, to be honest. I mean, that's you know, to spend an hour getting to talk to somebody about the stuff we love and that are just good fun people, not a bad gig at the end of the day, if anybody wants to reach out, Terry, what's the best way for them to contact you? LinkedIn,

Terry Whyte  
I'm always on Yeah, I watch everything you guys post and everything on LinkedIn. I spend way too much time on LinkedIn. I'm sure that's

Alex Husner  
like all only place I am these days, too, besides this office. Okay, great. Well, we will include a link to your LinkedIn in the show notes. But if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com thanks, everybody.