Vacation Rentals vs Hotels: Coexisting in the Evolving Hospitality Landscape - with Susan Barry of Hive Marketing

Alex Husner  0:36  
Welcome to Alex and Annie the Real Women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex. And I'm Annie. And we are joined today with Susan Barry who is the president and Queen Bee of Hive marketing, and the podcast host of the top floor podcast which is an excellent show. If anybody hasn't heard it, You definitely want to check it out. Susan, so good to see you today.

Susan Barry  0:56  
Well, the pleasure is all mine the way we look on the screen. I look like I'm your little buddy in the neighborhood like you guys are the big kids and I'm your little friend. I love it.

Annie Holcombe  1:08  
Well, speaking of being from the neighborhood, you're from my neck of the woods, so your city so we have some history, but our listeners don't know all about you. So why don't you give us a little bit about your background and how you I guess came to be the queen bee of Hive marketing?

Susan Barry  1:25  
Well, well first we have to talk about Panama City because that's where we're both from. And my mother grew up near there in graceful Florida. I don't know if you know that but it's like teeny tiny right outside of Dothan. And so my father who grew up in New Orleans, big city man that he is always said that all roads lead to North Florida because anywhere we would be my mom and her friends would see people they knew like in Rome or wherever. constantly running into people from North Florida and it's true man. It happens to me all the time. I've interviewed people on the show, and they're like, Well, I live in Czechoslovakia now but I'm originally from Destin, Florida. Oh. So these were I was born and raised. And Annie if the listeners don't know has two sisters, Debbie and Vicki and Debbie and Vicki were my good friends in high school. I never knew Annie I wish I had but cut to adulthood and now we compete for the same a war and both are in hospitality both have podcast is like we're living

Annie Holcombe  2:38  
parallel lives. Just to say that you should have known me because I was the cooler sister. Because they're not here right now.

Susan Barry  2:47  
Yes, absolutely true. I think you're probably 100% correct about that. About your sisters that was like such a breath of fresh air as they had good taste in music. Like when you grow up in a place like Panama City in the 80s and 90s there is no music like it was like Madonna or nothing. And I went away to nerd camp so I got to hear all this great music from people from big cities. And then I'm you know, we'll come back to Panama City and be like, here we are. Anybody got a Conway Twitty record they want to play or whatever. Okay, so Debbie and Vicki had great tasting music. I was like, Yes, finally, some friends who know what's up. It was amazing.

Alex Husner  3:28  
Wait, I have a question. Annie. Were you more of like a Madonna typical 80s type of gal or were you listening to her sisters stuff?

Annie Holcombe  3:36  
My sister and I we had the same taste. It was like Depeche Mode, the care like all the alternative and I think

Susan Barry  3:43  
that's what I remember. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  3:44  
Nikki love The Smiths. Yeah, definitely. I can totally picture

Alex Husner  3:48  
you with the scrunchie and a side ponytail and the leggings. So I hope

Annie Holcombe  3:53  
you guys weren't liking pictures

Alex Husner  3:54  
from those days. Well, transitioning now to way past the 80s. But take us back a little bit through your career, Susan, because I know you've done some amazing things and worked in hospitality marketing for quite a while but I

Susan Barry  4:06  
have so my big girl career started in the 90s and Tallahassee, Florida. I went to FSU and hung out in Tallahassee for a good long while after I was finished with school after I graduated. And so having waited tables throughout college, I worked for this restaurant group that had an off premise catering company. So when I graduated, they were like, Hey, you want to run this catering company? And I was like, sure I've nothing better to do because I've no idea what I want to spend my time on. So I did that for like two and a half, three years. It was hell. literal hell, like I slept in my car in between events. I had a layer of baked beans coating my trunk from where they spilled out like it was horrible. It was so hard, but I learned a ton. And I met my then boyfriend And now husband, Shawn, and we decided to move to Denver, Colorado. Had I ever visited Denver? No, no, I had not. But hey, you know, young love. So when I was moving to Denver, my mom was like, Listen, you just devoted two and a half, three years of your life to going through absolute hell, but you learn something, and you have a good title on your resume. Rather than like trying to write the great American novel or whatever silly foolishness you think you're going to do? What are you trying to get a catering job and just see what happens? So I was like, Okay, I guess I'll do that. And I applied, I didn't know the difference between banquets and catering, which is a big distinction in the hotel industry. But an off premise, they're like all one in the same. So I was just applying for every thing that seemed like it would fit. And I got a job as a director of catering at a hotel, y'all when I tell you that I think I was like 23 or 24. Like, there is no world in which I should have been given the title director of catering. I fooled them. It worked out beautifully for me. So that was my entry into the hotel business. And then here we are years later, and I am still around. So the official career story is that after that I was a hotel Director of Sales and Marketing for Starwood for 10 years. This was long pre Marriott acquisitions. So you know, 90, late 90s 2000s. And most of what I did for Starwood was open new build hotels in those days. And for that company, the Director of Sales and Marketing was the first person to get hired because you were the only person who could do anything when the hotel was a hole in the ground. So I loved it. I opened a Westin in the Washington DC market and a W here in Atlanta, where I still live. The thing about openings that appealed to me was there was a lot of learning because you were constantly being pushed into doing things you'd never done before. And there was a lot of autonomy, because again, first employee only person there, I could do whatever I wanted. Now, that sounds like what I wanted was like at five Martini lunch. What I wanted was to work. Like I was a super nerd. I was trying to win awards and stuff. I just wanted people to leave me alone. And as the staff would get hired for those openings, there's like all these people around all of a sudden, like, wait a minute, I can't I run this hotel by myself, no. So when a lot of other people started minding my business, I realized I had a real high value for autonomy. And I left to start my company in the spring of 2009. So almost exactly 15 years ago, and my business is hive marketing. We do business to business, marketing and commercial strategy for the hospitality industry. Meaning that we work with brands, management companies, private equity ownership groups, startups and vendors to sell market price communicate, talk to each other, versus helping them attract consumers as guests to stay in a hotel. Wow, that was a long speech. Why don't I Hashem let you get a word in edgewise.

Annie Holcombe  8:13  
I love it. And it's really cool to save someone from Panama City. I just did an interview on another podcast recently. And the gentleman said that the reason he wanted to talk to me was because he said that really big things can happen from people that come from small communities. If they just put themselves out there, like there's just opportunity that you want, and you saw it, and you took it. And I love the fact that you went to Denver, because I know you had no clothes to be ready for the first one to go. True, that in itself is a leap of faith. So you started high marketing, did you have a client when you started it? Or is this something that you just said, I have to do this? I know I have the skill set, and I'm gonna go find a bunch of clients that

Susan Barry  8:55  
it was part two, and maybe it wasn't that I knew I had the skill set. So when I originally started the company, this was you know, 2009, I had just opened the W Atlanta downtown here in Atlanta, and we did a social media campaign for that hotel. Now remember, in those days, Facebook business pages didn't even exist yet. When we Yeah, Twitter was very new and all that. So it was very, like wild, wild west days. It was successful. The campaign ended up getting replicated, you know, we sort of were test case and all that. So I was like, Well, clearly, I'm a social media genius. And I better get on this and start a company. So I originally started the business to help individual hotels, like make their Facebook page and do content and all that I was far too early. I mean, I remember having these conversations that now people would be like, That's not real, where the general manager would go like, well, we just start you know, that's really probably not it's a fad, it's probably not gonna last that long. Or we have a Bellman who will do Wait sometimes on his day off for us, so we don't really need help. Can you? Can you imagine now? Yeah, we're just like, nothing, no big deal. But

Alex Husner  10:08  
I remember that so clearly. And specifically, I was at a marketing agency, this was part of 2009, before I went to go work for Kondo world, but when business pages started coming out, and the marketing agency said, okay, we can start selling this as a service to these resorts and rental companies. And there's somebody on our team that said, that's like selling a library card to somebody, like, how do you do that? Like, they can do it themselves. And we were all kind of scratching our heads. And I think that was kind of the response that you got from hospitality clients at first two of like, we don't need you to do that we can do that on our own. And even if you do, or we do it, like, it's a fad, it's not really gonna go anywhere from here. But I love looking for things like that now, in this new era of like, what are the things that we're looking at is like, is it a fad? Is it something that's going to be around in the long haul? And, you know, another 15 years from now, we'll be like, we're so glad we started that when we did, because the companies that did invest and jump into Facebook very early on definitely have benefited?

Susan Barry  11:03  
Yes. Well, what ended up happening was, you know, I mean, I wasn't like living on the streets, I did find some people to say, also found a lot of people outside the industry. And I don't know that this is true in vacation rentals in short term rentals. But it is for sure true in hotels, that hotels want to not only not be an early adapter, they want to be not just a late adapter, but last, they want to go last. So any, like new innovation, hotels are like cool, well, I will be walking to the end of the

Alex Husner  11:40  
line, we'll do it after they do it. Let's see, I'll catch

Susan Barry  11:43  
you in a couple of three years. So I found tons of people who wanted to hire me outside the industry. And then at the same time, people in the industry, were asking for other types of consulting projects that I didn't even know existed. So like I would get, can you come and review this portfolio of luxury hotels and tell us what we're doing wrong and catering? We're not making enough catering revenue? Or can you see if this is a good place for a new hotel to be built? All stuff that like, Did I have particular qualifications for certainly not? Did I figure it out? Yes, yes, I did. So over time, the business evolved and sort of iterated multiple times over the 15 years to kind of get where we are today. And some of those things that people asked me to do are now like some of my favorite things to do, like, help someone figure out if a new hotel is going to work, Sign me up. I love doing that. We've

Alex Husner  12:43  
got way more data now to write I mean, back then it was probably pretty limited as far as you were bringing your best judgment to the table. But now my gosh, you've got so much at your fingertips to help with

Susan Barry  12:52  
that. Yeah, that's definitely true. I mean, you can certainly do a desktop feasibility study without having to hire one of the big consulting companies. It doesn't hurt to pay for that information. But you can do it like if you want it's I'm sure the same for rental property owners who are like, is this gonna make sense yes or no and kind of desktop it and figure out whether supply and demand are there, you

Annie Holcombe  13:15  
know, ask the question kind of out there. Like if vacation rentals, short term rentals was like adopting things quick, like, unlike the hotel space. And I think that for the longest time, I would say, yeah, very slow to adopt. But COVID was like the spark that just lit the industry on fire. And it was just really about survival. And that survival mode kicked in. And there was so much technology that kind of came out of that time, that space that everybody was grabbing for whatever they could grab and like gasping for air. So I feel like from the technology side of the equation, rental space has actually leaped past the hotel space in so many ways. And Alex and I see it a lot just with a lot of the people that we have on the show that talk about their technology. And just some of the stuff that's been developed just in the last five years is, you know, again, it took us 3040 years to get to that point and then went in five years, we blew past everything that we had known and it's really, really interesting, but I wanted to ask like So you started doing this? And so, you know, one of the things Alex and I talk a lot about is we talked to a lot of women that are in hospitality and you know, coming from a small town in the south, there's a lot of that good old boy networking that happens. Alex experienced it in Myrtle Beach, but you were in Atlanta, you know, you had been in Denver in Atlanta. So you've been in like some city environments. But certainly I would imagine you experienced a little bit of that breaking out of being just a manager or a director at a hotel. Yes, you were with a big hotel company Starwood was a huge company. But how did you find it as a woman starting a business within hospitality that had been very dominated by men

Susan Barry  14:51  
are such a hard question to answer because I don't think that there are geographical or Sighs population restrictions on sexism. I think sexism is a system that we all exist in. And it happens in small towns, it happens just as much in big giant cities. And it's not just the like old school stuff that our moms are like, hey, chase me around the desk and pinch my butt, like, you know that I think there's more pervasive sort of subtlety around that stuff. I don't know if I'm answering your question or giving a speech. But the piece that I think that continues to be important for women and hospitality is to recognize and remember that no matter how often organizations try to tell us that we just need to improve our self confidence and stop saying, Sorry, there aren't individual or personal solutions to systemic problems. And so if we spend all of our time doing personal development work, finding the best mentor or sponsor or champion we can, changing the way that we talk and dress and look, none of those things are going to change the fact that women still don't make as much money as men do. Yeah, very well.

Alex Husner  16:10  
That's very true. I think the nice thing about the role that you're in and that I'm getting to see though, too, is one, you get to choose who you work with. And that's a nice thing. So I feel like it's a good way to be able to steer around the people that are going to value you. And obviously, you know, when you got into it, initially, you had a ton of experience leading up to that. And whether you knew how to do something or not people trusted you

Susan Barry  16:32  
or I was really cheap, it's hard to convince, I

Alex Husner  16:36  
don't think they trust you. And I think you are good. And there's something to be said about people that can get in and figure something out. Because a lot of companies when you're stuck in your own zone, and you've got the same people feeding you information, and you're not sure if you're making the right decisions on things, it just it helps to have get that outside perspective. And even if that means having to figure out some of the things that they're asking you to do that that's sometimes part of it. But you're obviously a creative problem solver. So

Susan Barry  17:00  
you know, there's also something to be restlessness that we, I think we're talking about before we started recording, where I really cannot just create one service that is infinitely scalable, and just be like widget producer over and over and over again, I can't even though I know that's probably like the quickest path to riches, I will never be able to do that because I am restless, and I will get bored. So the idea that, you know, at some points in my company's life, more than 50% of the work that I accepted was something I'd never done before, just to like keep my brain alive. Yeah,

Alex Husner  17:40  
I understand that completely. I have one question. Now, before we hit play, you were talking about within the industry, that there's a big push within the hotel industry, for sales, marketing and revenue management to come together. And that's another thing we talk about a lot and vacation rentals. And there's very rarely a director of sales in vacation rentals, that's more of like if it's real estate sales maybe. And I think that comes down to I mean, hotels, obviously with the different things that they are selling between the catering, the banquets, the events, things like that. But just bringing marketing and revenue management together is something that's that's talked about a lot. And I think there are still pretty few companies that have done it really well in a meaningful way that things are really working together and not in silos. And by working together, it doesn't just mean these properties are down, let's send an email blast. It means let's get ahead of things. Let's plan things out for the year. So interested for your take on you know what that means and hotels right now? And what are they trying to accomplish by that? And is it possible?

Susan Barry  18:37  
I think my take is very skeptical and controversial because there is a whole runway of history that leads up to the notion that what people are calling commercial strategy in hotels is new. So I'm going to try to explain this as quickly as I can, because it might be boring, but it's important back in the day. In the olden times when I was away last, the revenue management discipline a was new and be reported in to the Director of Sales and Marketing. And so if you were good at your job, you learned revenue management because you had to because you had to manage the revenue manager then at some point in the early 2000s that revenue management discipline was elevated out of the sales and marketing arena separately to a position that reported into the general manager there were good reasons for why that happened. There are also still some like huh, what an interesting move questions I think to me, so that happened and when that happened, all of a sudden the sales leader and the marketing leader didn't have to know that stuff. Meanwhile, it became completely tech based. So here you have Director of Sales and Marketing who bless her heart or his heart probably like me started with a giant reservation book where you took up Hensel and drew a line through a meeting room. And then he raised it when they didn't book and whatever, like some foolish nonsense, right from that to a tech revolution that they now no longer have to pay attention to, because it's not their problem. So directors of sales and marketing gave an internal market share in a hotel, they were like, Oh, I'm just not tech savvy. Let me get my fax machine out. And And meanwhile, the revenue strategist is like, oh, my god, are you kidding me right now, like, we have got to do this better, faster, we can't have an Excel spreadsheet, run our hotel, all of us to say this division happened. Now what's happening. And of course, this is not true for every single person. And every single one of these positions. It's just kind of like a general observation. So now the revenue team thinks then instead of the old way, where the Director of Sales and Marketing is their boss, and instead of the current way where they're equals that may be a revenue management discipline should be leading sales and marketing. And again, there are good reasons for that, because one side has a lot more data and technology than the other is it right up the judge. But it's not as cut and dry as like, people love to say, we're eliminating silos. Really, thank you so much like I was I loved silos before, nobody wants a frickin silo. That's not the issue. The issue is who is the boss of each other that is what people are trying to sort out in my controversial, nosy opinion.

Alex Husner  21:37  
We'll be back in just a minute after a word from our premier brand sponsor, extend team.

Speaker 2  21:41  
So I'm Cheyenne Hayes, working with Red Rock vacation rentals in southern Utah. And we started working with extend team for almost a year ago. So we have used them for our guest servicing department. I know that they offer employees for different things, but we've used them strictly for guest servicing, we work really hard to kind of protect our brands and kind of have everybody operating at the same level of service. And when we considered going with extend team, and we told them kind of what our apprehension was. And they reassured us and they have completely delivered on that promise. So we were very clear to extend him of, you know, we want somebody that has some hospitality background, huge customer service focus, we specifically were looking for somebody that could continue to manage all of the leads and inquiries that were coming in, as well as handling all of the in house guest communication that's going on through the evening. Without question, partnering up with extend team has been one of the best decisions that we've made in the last year, we take a lot of pride in the customer service that we can offer during business hours, and to be able to extend that all the way to midnight every single day with the same level of customer service. And the response times has been absolutely amazing. Our guest review scores have gone up, our team members are feeling more connected to the process going in 24 hours a day almost. It's been a huge blessing in every way. It's been helpful. As far as labor management, it's been helpful for continuing our brand, you know, more hours of the day, guests get responses faster. Everything about the partnership has been a huge blessing for us, we would do it again. For sure.

Annie Holcombe  23:24  
The best news is extend team has an exclusive offer just for listeners of Alex Nene podcast, receive 50% off your onboarding fee when you visit extend team.com forward slash Alex and Annie are mentioned our podcast when you contact them.

Alex Husner  23:45  
I mean, you can have the best marketing in the world. But if your rates are wrong, it's it's not going to get booked. Right. But on the one hand, I mean marketing will drive demand rates don't drive demand in that same way that I mean if you have bad marketing, they have great rates. That's still not the answer to the problem. So contest

Susan Barry  24:02  
supply and demand AB artificial intelligence. I hate to break it to everyone. This is not going to be robot housekeepers, cleaning rooms going to be the major compression of above property revenue strategy, that work can be done. It's math on the other hand, a brainstorm that you have in the shower about a crazy new package or campaign or way to position your property. I don't think a I take showers right so yeah, they're having those I don't know obviously I'm biased but I'm also a revenue person like I am super nerdy. I love to do that stuff. And I think

Annie Holcombe  24:44  
you start to lose the personality of a property when you allow the numbers to dictate things from top down. Not that you don't need to have controls and you need to have and it was funny as you were talking through all that I was picturing like some of the hotels I worked at in different scenarios where revenue manager had way more say than the Director of Sales and Marketing and like what that did, and it always went back to giving it back to the sales and marketing side. And always I've never I've never been in a scenario where revenue one long term like short run Yeah, absolutely. So I'm kind of in the camp that you are might be controversial to some people as well.

Alex Husner  25:19  
I mean, hotels have access to a lot more data. And I think they have their eye on the ball with their data, way more than vacation rental companies do. I mean, that's one thing that we're still behind in that respect. We've had great advancements from key data and air DNA and some of these different providers of insights, but you ask any good any hotel and ask them any statistic on their ADR, their occupancy, I mean, everything like they, they know it, and they're looking at it on a daily basis. So I think, you know, somewhere in the middle there, there's a lot to be learned on both sides. And you know, the advancement part and hotels, I would say a lot of why the technology and the quick adoption of different tech that's come into the space for hotels has not caught on is because of how flags are set up. I mean, most flags have a lot of their own internal tech. And there are not tons of independent hoteliers out there in the same way that vacation rentals. It is the wild west that we're all doing our own thing. And we've got suppliers, but it's not just top down in terms of the choices that

Susan Barry  26:18  
we can make. It's two different things too, because hotels have like that three legged stool of who's responsible for anything. So is it the brand? Is it the management company? Is it the real estate owner, nobody wants to pay for it. But the other one is, this is where I think vacation rentals and short term rentals really benefit and can seize the day. So many hotel companies have these like antiquated on premise systems that costs a bazillion dollars to install. So they're pot committed, like you know, when you're playing poker and you your pot committed, you're just in too much. And everything for short term rentals is in the clouds. So it's much less expensive. You don't have to have a whole room exerted to, you know, it's easier to be nimble, I guess. Yeah, very true. You're dealing

Annie Holcombe  27:03  
with the companies, but doing more of the management company wants to find out who other companies are out there that they can manage and want to sell their services to the management. Are you doing anything in the vacation rental space? That could be I guess what you're doing now? Could you put that into the vacation rental space?

Susan Barry  27:20  
I think so I think it would be probably similar. So the idea sort of where I've planted the flag, and what we stake the company on is that business to business marketing is about I hate saying the word awareness because everybody thinks that's fluffy. But it is it's about awareness and legitimacy, making sure that people recognize your name and giving people information before they're ready to have a sales conversation. So I'm not doing SEO for these websites, right? Because there's no owner of a hotel who's out there going doo doo doo, what management company should I hire? They're going what does my banker think? What is my lawyer think who have I heard good things about who have I seen speak at conferences. So all of those pieces, like before someone's ready to have a sales conversation, we just want to establish some key messages like we are this we are not that we are great at this, we are great at that, you know, like here are our executives, they're very visible in the industry, our employer brand is good. So you can rest assured that we're going to keep your hotel staff like all of those things. What I think is tough is that sometimes people and I mean, I run into this with clients, and I'm sure that y'all have to think that like every LinkedIn message is part of a sales conversation. So they're like, if you need help with cleaning your grill, call one 800 grill cleaners.com I'd be happy to help you. You're not in a sales conversation with your LinkedIn audience. You're just not you're in a conversation, a real conversation, maybe a fake conversation, but it's a conversation. And so lationship Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's all of that work that you do has to be like what real humans do when they talk to each other not put her there.

Alex Husner  29:13  
Yeah, you wouldn't walk up to somebody on a street and just offer to sell them a grill cleaner. So it's like, what's the difference? I mean,

Annie Holcombe  29:19  
maybe you know, maybe, yeah.

Susan Barry  29:22  
So that's so funny that Andy because maybe, and maybe it would work one time. And then the one time at work, that client would fixate on that one stupid tag, like a lifetime of proven tagging forever and ever. Amen. It's

Alex Husner  29:39  
interesting. I mean, on our side of things, for property management companies wanting to grow their inventory. So to get more homeowners, I think that is one area that is not really utilized because of the audiences so wide, but really using LinkedIn to get more property owners on your program. And for the most part, I feel like when you see things about other companies In our space on LinkedIn, they're showing that for other companies and within the industry, but it's not geared towards homeowners when that's the what the buyer is for us versus for your types of clients you're trying to attract for your clients who represent they're likely on LinkedIn. So if that's an easier or better use of it, I guess it

Susan Barry  30:20  
would be hard to target but I think you could do it because I think you could create a reputation of giving really good hosting advice. Yeah. And then slowly, but surely be like, here's a good hosting advice. Leave a basket of fruit don't have time. Guess who does? You know?

Annie Holcombe  30:40  
Exactly. Do you sit home so that brings me to the hotel world and the short term rental world colliding. There's a perception on the short term rental side that the hotel world hates them. And there's a perception on the hotel side that the vacation and short term rental is coming together. truth lies somewhere in between.

Susan Barry  30:55  
I mean, I hope hotel people think that I have spent so much time in my career feeling like Cassandra from Greek mythology like, hey, dummies, let's look at what the supply impact is of all of these vacation rentals in your marketplace. Hmm, you had a bunch of cancellations short term for the Superbowl. Gee, I wonder how that happened? Could it have been that people put their houses up and hotel people being like, that's not our customer? Oh, yeah. Tell me more about this. So person searching for lodging is not your customer. What do you sell? This is the thing. Hotels think that they are selling service, as an experience, short term rentals are selling an experience as a service?

Alex Husner  31:41  
Yes. So well. So yes, I love that.

Susan Barry  31:45  
Anyway, it's crazy making to me. But I hope you're right. I hope hotels are starting to see the short term rental industry is more of a threat or at least like pay attention to it. Right? Because it is a threat they should I think it's

Annie Holcombe  31:58  
just in general, like the both sides seeing each other one way. And again, I think it's lies somewhere in the middle. I think that we saw it in Florida, you know, when COVID happened in that the governor kept vacation rentals opened but said that hotels were unnecessary, you know, service, because again, you said they're selling a service, we're selling an experience, we're selling a memory making tool, we're not in a space of giving you an accommodation for night when you drive through town like that. It was very tactile in that. And so I think that as the vacation rental industry, we saw that in just in Florida. And I think with regulations that's being replicated, that we're coming after people and getting into other people's space when there's enough people traveling that could probably all get along. Now. Does that mean there might be too much inventory sitting in certain market that is short term versus hotel? And does it make sense that, you know, some people can rent apartments out when they shouldn't be renting apartments out and an apartment complex? You know, there's there's all happening, but I do think it's an interesting depending on which side of the coin you're on, having worked on both sides of the coin, like I see, it just sits in the middle. It's like we got to get along guys, you know, we just we can be friends.

Susan Barry  33:04  
I mean, if people were smart, they would build businesses that are a spectrum of lodging types versus deciding that they are one or the other. I think and I actually have been wanting to ask all this. So I'm just going to I feel like anecdotally that I'm hearing from real estate investors who own vacation rental units or properties is that their eyes were bigger than their stomach because of the pandemic like things were going so well, that they overcommitted and then maybe are starting to scale that back. Is that accurate? Absolutely.

Alex Husner  33:38  
Yeah, I think in a lot of cases to people that bought during COVID, the projections of what they were told by the real estate agent of what that property would actually produce. That was during COVID, that they were giving those projections that they needed to go back to, you know, 2019 and prior to give accurate projections, but that's a separate issue. For sure.

Susan Barry  34:00  
The reason I asked that is if you had the spectrum of lodging types from glamping and hostel to short term rental and vacation Villa to upscale hotel midscale hotel, like, as a company, I mean, like as a huge, you know, you're an investor or man, whatever you are hedging against those different demand patterns. And any to your point, like if you're over supplied in a particular market economics is gonna take care of it, right. And

Annie Holcombe  34:29  
that's what I always think so like the biggest company that I worked for in the Panama City Beach market had hotels and vacation rentals. So there was a good balance. So when we had convention space, so we had convention space that we could bring in big groups, and we could sell the condos to the groups and they could use the vacation space and the hotel space. So I think that that's why we're seeing that real time with some of the brands companies who are getting into vacation rentals, short term, mid term, long term. They're getting into all that because I think people are starting to see which I feel like Alex and I've talked about it For a long time, and we were in being in vacation rentals, I think we all needed to find ways to survive through the offseason, if you live in a beach market. I mean, you know, you grew up here after Labor Day, things used to just shut down and there was nothing going on here. So it was like survival of the fittest, the most creative things, what you can do with that inventory during different times of the year. So I think that vacation rentals as a as an industry has always been a little scrappier than hotels had to be. But now again, the worlds are sort of merging. And I think that the branded companies are seeing the benefit of having, you know, if you've got a customer that comes in travels for business, five nights a week, four weeks out of the month, and is constantly on the road, a road warrior, but they're not bringing their family, but the one time they do go somewhere really great. There's a conference in Hawaii, they want to bring their family, they're not going to rent four rooms, so all their kids can have a room. It's not sustainable for a hotel company to be so short sighted to think that Bob who always stays in our hotel, every time he comes here, he's going to bring, you know Susan and the four kids to stay in four rooms that it's just it doesn't make economic sense for him. And it doesn't give him a good experience because trying to share a couple of hotel rooms that are linked together with no kitchen. You got to get everybody together to go to dinner. And plus

Susan Barry  36:13  
you have to pay me $1 million for that dinner if you're having a towel. Well,

Alex Husner  36:20  
Airbnb has anything to do with it. I'm sure you both have seen the commercials now. I mean, they're just everywhere with you know, why would you stay in one room when you can have a whole face to yourself? And I mean, that's commercials are hitting pretty hard this year, which is

Susan Barry  36:33  
an answer to Hilton's for the sting day where they're like, here, welcome to your Covenant House, please clean the bathtub or whatever. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I thought those were hilarious. But that's a good example of the short sightedness, like what happens in the next God forbid, we don't have it pandemic, what inventory does Hilton have to offer that people can actually stay at? And

Alex Husner  36:58  
at one point, there was a rumor that they were getting into vacation rentals. Is that still out there? I haven't heard anything on I haven't

Susan Barry  37:04  
heard, but I wouldn't be surprised. It seems like they went pretty aggressive. If they are planning that, you know? Yeah, it

Annie Holcombe  37:11  
definitely would be if they came out with a program people would be like, Yeah, but you didn't like us before? Like, why would we work with you? How dare you? We can't be friends. I think what I

Alex Husner  37:22  
see often in Myrtle Beach market and other similar markets, that Panama City is another good example to it, when you do see the groups that they've either they've got hotels, but they have a portfolio of vacation rentals, or vice versa, they're going up from one side to the other, really, the technology at the end of the day comes down to a foundational issue because properties operates so differently, and the systems are so different. And I think when you try and put one bucket into the other, it just does not work well specifically putting vacation rentals into hotel tech. I see that all the time. And it really limits that growth.

Susan Barry  37:56  
I think you're right, there's something and I'm gonna say it but I don't know very much about it. So we'll plant the seed and people can go Google it and figure it out. But there's something that I've been hearing telev lately, which is property management systems that do not base everything on the room, they base it on the guest like you know, right now you have 100 room hotel, one, a one, one or two, one or three. That's how your property management system is set up. These like new generation or more modern property management systems are doing that based on guests. I don't exactly know how that works. But you could see that it sounds like it would make sense, right? Like if you have a guess based probably should be called a CRM, not a PMS, but whatever you have a guest based system, then it doesn't matter what kind of inventory they're using. Because you're tracking the guests experience, not the box. I don't know, I kind of just talked myself out of thinking that was a smart thing to say. So

Annie Holcombe  38:50  
I think an interesting take because I think that hotels could do that with loyalty within loyalty you have like those different avatars. But you also have like you have enough information about that guests to know that like for me as an exhibit, like I don't like to be in or the elevators. I don't like to be on the ground floor. I don't want to be by this, you know. And there's various things which every single time I stay in a hotel, that's exactly where they put me

Susan Barry  39:12  
through, you have to fill out all this information and say all this stuff every single time. Nobody ever remembers anything like yes,

Annie Holcombe  39:19  
and supposedly it's sitting in your profile. But if they were actually using your profile, they would know that I didn't want to be by the elevator on the ground floor. I could see I could see it working to some degree. Now.

Alex Husner  39:29  
One thing we haven't covered yet, Susan, your podcast, which that has been a huge inspiration for Andy and I know when we first got started and he sent me some episodes and she was like, We got to ask her like, what she's using for mics and how she does editing and we pick your brain quite a bit but tell our audience a little bit about it, how it got started and how it's going Gosh,

Susan Barry  39:49  
it is the love of my life. The show is top floor and this sort of lame way I describe it as it it's about the future of hospitality. because we started the show to be a show about hospitality marketing, and then another show on my podcast network where I started stopped airing episodes. And so it gave me the opportunity to talk to more people. It's a guest driven show that basically follows my curiosity. So if I'm curious about something, we're going to talk about it top floor does not just cover the hotel industry, although we are pretty focused on that just because that's the people that I know. But we've talked to people from cruises, short term vacation rentals, restaurants, wineries, like the full gamut, all kinds of interesting people. And yeah, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. So I've been making the show for a little over two and a half years. This week's episode I think was like 135 136, something like that. So we're an always on weekly show that doesn't do seasons or anything like that we're always on. And the reason that we can be always on is because I have a sound engineer slash producer named Jonathan Albano, who is a genius and does everything hard. So all I have to do is write questions and talk that

Alex Husner  41:06  
was the secret to it, we learned that pretty quickly, when we first got started, I was doing just about all the editing, and that was definitely not sustainable. But we've got a great editor that we work with now, and that it takes a lot of stress off our plate, but very similar. And we were always on to I hadn't really thought about it like that. We've never missed a Wednesday, I think there was like a couple times where we were almost going to miss it. And we decided to rerelease in an older show that we thought was relevant for the time. Being that consistent, it pays off. I mean, that's really that was great advice that we got from you and some others when we first started and that definitely makes a difference. I just

Susan Barry  41:42  
knew for myself as a listener, like I was an avid podcast listener before I ever started the show. And so I just base my show on what I liked. And always on was one can be inconsistent. Like don't miss I have missed one. I missed one a couple of weeks ago, I feel embarrassed to tell y'all that I did an avoidable one. And like almost three years isn't bad anyway. And also, the thing for me is that I love shows that have segments and sounds that I can recognize. So we put a lot of that into top floor too, because that is like the focus group of one. Probably everyone else is like, Why do you have all these bells ringing? Because I need these sounds to let me know where we are in the episode. Thank you.

Annie Holcombe  42:27  
Yeah, I was one of the things that we ask everybody that's on with us, regardless of the industry. But because we're talking hospitality, typically it's vacation rentals this question is posed to but what do you think within the hospitality space? That is a topic that's not being talked about enough? Oh,

Susan Barry  42:43  
wow, that is such a good one. I'm going to say black and people of color executives in our industry. I think that every brand management company, and many independents have organizations that are designed to help women further their careers, which is fantastic. And believe me much needed, I don't see the same thing for black people and people for color in our business. And those folks are so underrepresented in the C suite and the executive level. And I think that's probably the thing that doesn't get talked about enough. I think people feel like they check their diversity box when they have a women focused organization. And it's not just women, I might be a little bit of a buzzkill. You probably didn't want politics for the answer like

it's swimming pools.

I do feel very strongly about

Annie Holcombe  43:40  
that, that comes from what you see real time with you working with groups. I mean, that's not like it's just a thought that you're like, oh, there's got to be some people out there that aren't being represented. I mean, you must be seeing that or you wouldn't feel that that was being missed.

Susan Barry  43:52  
It's true. And before the Castile project was sort of absorbed by the HLA, they did at least two years worth of a study about lakh executives in the hotel business similar to the study that they did about women. And for some reason, that study is no longer being done, but it would be interesting to see what was going on. Yeah, yeah,

Alex Husner  44:13  
it's definitely not something that's talked a lot about in vacation rentals. I know that I mean, I think diversity is it really is just limited to you know, women topics, I'd say it's been a pretty low volume topic at conferences, but I'm glad you brought that up point. Well taken pleasure people. Well, Susan, it has been just a complete joy to have you and this is a long time coming. We were on your show two sets of jobs ago for both of us. But so much fun to chat with you and we'd love to connect you with our audience. So if they want to get in touch with you what's the easiest way for them to reach out

Susan Barry  44:49  
I think that email Susan dot berry at hive like a beehive dash marketing.com or LinkedIn, LinkedIn is my favorite place. To hang out and stir the pot kick the hive as one of my friends says.

Alex Husner  45:06  
I love that. Well if anybody wants to reach out to Andy and now you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com And until next time, thanks for tuning in everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai