VRBO’s Strategy for 2025 & Beyond: Exclusive Interview with Tim Rosolio

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 by Tim Rosolio, who is the vice president of vacation rental partnerships at Expedia group, Tim, it's so good to see you. 

Tim Rosolio  
Pleasure to be here. Long time listener, first time caller, right?

Annie Holcombe  
Well, we're happy to happy that you decided to join us, and you are joining us from a property that you're going to be showcasing soon. Right? Yes,

Tim Rosolio  
we are in Temecula, California, at a beautiful home that is going to be featured in our vacation rentals OF THE YEAR series over the next handful of months. Premier host, amazing property. I just took a conference call in a it was a bridal suite. There's so many weddings at this thing that there's a bridal suite. Wow, pretty fancy. Wow. Yeah. Well, before

Annie Holcombe  
we get started, why don't you give us a little bit about your background and your journey to that brought you to home away.

Tim Rosolio  
Yeah, yeah, that's right. And when I came it, it wasn't expedient, it wasn't VRBO, it was home away, yeah, so I am, my background really was in consulting. And when I was in consulting, I worked on all kinds of things, you know, I worked on a power plant company, and I worked with a company that imported parts of toilets from China and then put them together and sold toilets. I mean, I worked on all sorts of clients, helping them sort of accelerate their business. And after doing all that, and sort of being a hired gun for a period of time, I saw the opportunity to work with what was home away at the time that was 10 years ago. It was shortly before the Expedia transaction and I started working in the strategy group there did a variety of things within strategy, including sort of leading up to the deal where Expedia bought us, and then some of the things that we've been doing since then, I was chief of staff to John Kim when he was the CEO of the company, and when we started doing this whole transition of the business from being a listing site where you pay subscriptions, they asked me to help with thinking about like, what do with the the sales team. Now, we used to have this team, and that what they do is they sell subscriptions. They'd renew subscriptions, and they'd sell upsell subscriptions, and we're not going to have those anymore. So what? What should we do? So me and some other people, Kevin lowcraft, Jeff hust like we worked on this whole program to really think about transitioning into a account management team. And after I really helped with those efforts about I guess it was three or four years ago, now, I had the opportunity to actually lead that organization. So now I'm in charge of the partner side of our business, which includes everything from acquiring new properties to getting those properties ready to book. And part of that, and something I'm very proud of is a team of 250 global account managers that hopefully many of your listeners are aware of, that really like it's their job to help you be more successful on the site. So think about vacation rental supply all day, every day. And as you can see, there's some perks of the job. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
absolutely. Oh, that's great. And gosh, you're, you're definitely a VRBO Home Away. Og I mean, you've been there for quite a while, and you've been through a lot of different changes throughout the years. I was just thinking back as you were, you're telling your history there of this is going back probably, probably around 2015, 2016, and it was like, I think most companies, you either put all your inventory on home away or verbo, but most companies didn't do both. So it was like, I think, where I was at conworld at that point, we did home away because we thought that one seemed more like our type of inventory. But then, you know, a couple of years later, found out, okay, it's all just gonna merge into one under the verbo brand. But I, you know, I think we hear this all the time in the industry, that your group has, you know, treated the professional managers with a lot of respect over the years and really wanting to listen to what we need and take that to heart. That's something that just it seems like has been important to you guys, and is reflected back in the success that these managers have. Yeah,

Tim Rosolio  
I appreciate you saying that. I think the way that we think about it is there's only so many great houses on the beach. There's only so many great houses on the. Mountain. And then within that, there's only so many people that really know how to deliver that great hospitality experience every time. And if we want to be the site that's the trusted marketplace for families and groups, we want to partner with you to deliver the goods, to deliver that experience. And it's funny, you mentioned the, you know, sort of the fragmentation of brand stuff. I mean, that's part of our story. I mean, Home Away was an umbrella business that bought VRBO and or VRBO at the time, and bought abertel and bought stays and bought favor, which were kind of like the the vrbos of those countries, right, all rolled up VM and a separate tech, separate supply, all sorts of separate and then we were bought by Expedia, which was another company built via M and A, whether it's hotels.com, hot wire orbits home away then and like that's part of the complexity that we've Been trying to unwind for the past decade is all of this m, a buildup that was then acquired by m, a buildup in a world where moving fast on unified tech is where we need to be headed. And there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of challenges in doing that, but that's, that's the journey. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
I remember, I was at Expedia, kind of during the the time when they did all these acquisitions. So it was like, Travelocity orbits. You know, there were there, and then home away was like, the bit, the big one that happened in the middle of it. But I remember all of us talking, like, on the market management and account management side, was like, okay, when, when is all this going to go together? And one of the, one of the, one of the product people was like, just think of this as a giant Jenga puzzle, you know. And if we move one piece at the wrong time, it's going to collapse everything. And when he put it that way, it like, really made sense is this was, like, this was a long game. Like, this was something that was going to take time, but I think that you guys have executed very well and brought everything together. And what I wanted, I wanted to kind of jump off of that and look at last year. I think a lot of things were moving last year. And so maybe it wasn't necessarily, I won't say it was a bad year. It wasn't necessarily a great year in terms of, you know what, what, what was going on within the market for for VRBO. So why don't you touch on that? And like, maybe some of the things that you guys have learned and maybe are changing for 2025

Tim Rosolio  
Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to talk about that. I mean, I think, Listen, I I think the way that we thought about it coming out of the pandemic was you have all of this separate escape, yeah. Sorry, escape, yeah, that's a slip Expedia technology, then you have all this hotels.com technology, and you have all of this home away or VRBO technology. And the challenge was, we knew that, like the future game was you got to build better partner and traveler facing technology faster than the competition, so that you're having a better experience that you're delivering. And the problem was, every time we had an idea, you needed to build it on all three of those tech stacks. So we sort of, you know, sort of, we said we're going to take a few steps back here so we can take a few steps forward. And we started really bringing a lot of that technology together. Now, when you do that, you're going to lose a whole bunch of functionality that was built over the years specifically for the VRBO platform that was, you know, conversion accretive. And when we took those steps back, conversion goes down. When conversion goes down, it's harder to spend just as much marketing dollars and deliver the financial results that you want. And as such, we took our foot off the gas a little bit on marketing as well. And because of that, like, hey, like, you know, there's no doubt that in some places, we lost a little bit of share, but it was an intentional strategy so that now we can build, not only the stuff that we had on the old VRBO platform, but also build all sorts of new and innovative stuff that hopefully will surpass our competition in terms of the different opportunities that are out there for travelers and partners. So listen, it's some it's been an interesting few years. We appreciate our partner base for hanging with us through it, and we're excited about where it's headed. If you were to look at where we were last January to where we are now, like there's a dramatic improvement. And when I talk to most of the partners, they've seen that improvement, which gives me a good sense that we're on the right track.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, we talk a lot about the leaning tower of tech on our show, and how everybody, either within their business, or if it's, you know, a tech company like yourself, like it's just there's been so much that has changed over the years that it's like, sometimes you have to take that step back and be like, All right, we're making a concerted effort that we're going to try and we want it to be better. For the future, but we've got to get this fixed to get to where we need to be. So it sounds like that's kind of what's, what's happened with you guys, but going in a good path now. But I can

Tim Rosolio  
only imagine, I can only imagine how you see it in your consulting work,

Alex Husner  
right? Oh, yeah.

Tim Rosolio  
You get into these companies and, like, the stuff that they've accumulated over the years, and, like, probably some of them are like, brands that you hear, you know, brands and tech that you're like, that thing's still around, and it's powering CRM for us. And you're like, Oh God,

Annie Holcombe  
it's draining. The power is, what is?

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's hard for managers to make decisions on some of these things, because it's like, you know, their job as a property manager or owner of a company is to is to manage properties and to take care of their owners and guests. Most of them, when they started a business, did not assume they're going to have to be a CTO, a CMO, understand all these different APIs. And we used to always joke, it's like we needed to have a glossary for all the different acronyms in our industries. There's just so many things on the tech side, but it's complicated business, for sure. But I wanted to touch on the marketing for a minute, because I know you mentioned you pulled back a little bit last year, and I think that obviously had something to do with bookings being down for for managers in certain areas. But how, how complicated has it also become to continue to market in the way that you that you used to be able to do more effectively, probably more cost, cost effectively to just because of how much Google has changed, how much you know, AI has changed in terms of search results, and, you know, being able to get that organic traffic, but then also the paid is also more expensive, harder to get through. What is, what does that look like for you guys?

Tim Rosolio  
Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously, within a lot of the paid channels, things are getting very competitive, and there's a bit of an inflationary environment there, right? I think that it is our, our hope and intent to hopefully have more of our marketing mix over time. Come through, you know, come through brand and come through things that are more organic, so that we don't need to continue to go back to Google or other other channels to try to deliver that traffic. A lot of that, in my mind, is about really, like, just delivering an experience that people love, and ideally, then, if people love us for their next vacation, they'll come back for it. They'll come back to us exactly. Hopefully, you've seen stuff like, I mean, there's, there's very basic creative like that we've done with all of the Nick Saban ads that hopefully sort of paint the picture of how we may differ from some of the other OTAs in the space. But additionally, it's just so much about the experience, like, how do I make How do I make our app better? How do I make sure that the selection and the offerings that are provided are amazing. How do I build a marketplace design so that the property managers and individual owners that do the best job of taking care of travelers are getting more shots on goal. So I think that, like the marketing story, will come to life, if that we can deliver the goods in partnership with people like our, you know, some of the best property managers in the industry. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  
So on the on the kind of on the branding, and I think, like the stickiness of the brand overall. How do you think that the the new the one key program plays into all of this in terms of the benefits for the property managers?

Tim Rosolio  
Yeah. I mean, I think one key, what we find is that about two thirds of the people that burned their one key cash on VRBO since one key has launched were people that had never been to VRBO before. So if part of the strategy was that we were going to get people that traditionally have booked hotels and get them to book vacation rentals, it appears that strategy is working now, specifically for the property management space. There is, there's a complication that you guys are probably aware of, right? Yeah, because currently, what happens is you travelers are earning, are earning one key cash on their bookings with you, but they don't have the ability to burn, and that's because our property managers are their own merchant of record, rather than a merchant of record stack. So you know, that's one of the reasons that we are introducing an option for property managers to be on our merchant of record. But we also understand, like, hey, maybe that's not for everybody. So we're going to try to figure out what's the right, right way to really thread the

Annie Holcombe  
needle. Yeah. So I think you're taking, it sounds like you're taking some of the approach that, like the hotel, some of the hotel brands are they knew. They were losing people from their brand on the hotel side, going and seeking alternative accommodations and maybe going to overbought or, you know, a vacation rental site. And they're seeing it as like, how do we keep our our users within our ecosystem? So it's, you know, adding on that other side of the industry. So it sounds like what you're trying to do is just meld the two together.

Tim Rosolio  
I think that's right. I mean, it's all consistent with some of the stuff we talked about, the platforms coming together too, because, you know, through all the Alexa stuff that you remember Annie from your time with us, like a lot of people, like didn't even realize that hotels.com and Expedia were owned by the same group. So you need you the idea was, ideally, you have something that ties it all together. And one, the idea of one key was to do that was to really keep people within an ecosystem of brands. Because we also knew like, the idea of like, well, let's, let's kill hotels.com and just have it all be expedient. Like, well, that doesn't work. Like, yeah, right. There's, there's, there's different adventures that you perhaps can remember of people trying to do stuff like that, and it typically doesn't end very well, yeah,

Alex Husner  
yeah, yeah, no. I mean people, they're obviously going to have affinity for the brands that they use the most. I mean, different demographics to trend towards certain brands more than others. But I am curious on the one key side. So if Is there a way to roll that out, even if it's not, if it's just for VRBO, I mean, like is, I think the huge opportunity industry is creating for one of these, OTAs, one of the major companies, Marriott's doing a great job with it, but to truly create a loyalty program that, you know, it makes people want to go back to it, you know? I mean, Airbnb is very sticky, but they don't have that loyalty side. So I feel like that's a huge opportunity for VRBO. But could you have it so that even if the property manager is merchant of record, there is a way, I mean, even if it's just within verbo, that it's not going off onto the other platforms. Like, is that even possible in the future,

Tim Rosolio  
it's going to be tough. And the way I would describe why it's tough is like, think of one key cash as it's just like a currency. It's like Swiss francs or euros, and your your cash register doesn't take one key cash Yeah. Like, that's why it's hard. You know, I would say that we're willing to explore all options, I think, like, just transparently. Like, what I am hopeful happens is we can develop a merchant of record solution that has enough benefits that people decide that this is in my best interest to get on this solution. Because, like, the way I would think of it is like, we're not trying to build the merchant of record solution that our largest competitor forces you to be on. We're trying to build something that's more fair when I actually, like, start digging under the hood of like, so like, why? Like, why are you uncomfortable with merchant of record? And there's plenty of property managers that are uncomfortable with that. As you guys are aware, like, they're like, well, it just seems that on other platforms, if there's ever a dispute, they always side with the traveler, and they were controlling the money, and I don't like that. Well, I don't know. What if we built a solution where it was actually more mediated and that wasn't the case. Would that make you more comfortable merchant record? Yeah, that's something to consider. Or something like, Well, I just like getting paid at x time. Well, what if we built some sort of solution that actually enabled you to do that. So like, I certainly understand the concerns about merchant record, trust me, I hear it daily, yeah. But we're, we're trying to build something that is a solution that will work better for all, and by the way, like, we're going to try to leave it to be your choice. Like, I, I've spent, I spent some time earlier this week with Tim Cafferty, who both of you probably know, yeah, yeah. And Tim, Tim work, has a direct business, and then he works with VRBO, and he's basically told me, the reason I don't listen to other OTAs is because you let me be the merchant of record, and I'm not going to kill that golden goose like we'd be out of our we'd be out of our mind to say Tim, one of our best partners, some of the best properties in the Outer Banks. I'm mandating you to do this. He's either going to turn us off or he's going to turn on all the other OTAs,

Annie Holcombe  
yeah, yeah, yeah, on that. I think, I think one of the things that is that, you know, we hear a lot, and I certainly hear it with partners all the time, is that they feel heard by VRBO. They feel that if they voice a concern, there's somebody that is actually listening. It's not going into the void, you know, it's not just ending up in some support inbox somewhere that there's actually somebody that does that. And so I think that, you know, you guys are in a position of strength. And, you know, Alex pointed out earlier, you work with the professional managers, and I was curious, you have that reputation, and I think that's great. And do you see any any growth strategy that takes you into this shared inventory space like Airbnb is doing with like not whole homes, or the CO hosting scenario that they've got going on. Or do you really think that the niche for VRBO is solely working with these more professionalized managers that are providing a level of service that's, you know, really desired,

Tim Rosolio  
yeah? I mean, I think we're generally all in on what I would consider professional acting supply. Yeah, very often that's a true professional property manager. And sometimes it's a host, like, who owns this property here? It's somebody that they provide amazing experiences. They never cancel, they accept their bookings, they get great reviews, they deliver the goods. So, like, I actually think that's going to be core to our strategy going forward, as for shared spaces, like on VRBO. Like, no, we're not doing it like that's that's so inconsistent with our brand, yeah, if, in fact, you know, we find that that type of inventory potentially sells better on Expedia or hotels.com or as we really dial into, like, the whole B to B network or power supply for others. Is it something we would consider? Yeah, probably. But like for VRBO, no, that's not the core brand. Yeah, that's not what that's not what the brand is. And then co hosting, obviously, like we've looked at it, but part of me is like, I already have the best co hosts. They're called property managers, right? And I exactly if the idea is, if the idea of CO hosting is that her largest competitor is going to find rbos and get somebody to help them manage properties. There's experiments that we've done where we actually do those sorts of referrals with property managers. And I'd love to actually get into a world where we have an old ecosystem that's truly in partnership with the professional property managers, rather than CO hosting, which, you know, to me, seems like it's something that's kind of just trying to disrupt that industry, and it's counter to what I believe is One of the best assets of the industry, which is the amazing hospitality providers.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Good, great answer. So, one thing that also comes up quite a bit in talking about OTAs, and, you know, the different kind of guests that come from OTAs, is a lot of property managers don't feel like they are as good of guests that they're, you know, sometimes there's more trouble that happens and, you know, there's more risk and safety issues and things like that. But I don't hear that nearly as much about VRBO. But I mean, what, how do you guys look at at trust and safety in this process, both in protecting the property manager, but also the guest? Yeah, I think,

Tim Rosolio  
I think that we have the benefit of everything that our brand represents. And if you just look at our creative and some of the tools that we build in the product, like it's all about, how do I help families and groups do better? It's not, this is not, you know, teenage party house.com you know, although, when I was a teenager, I probably would have loved that site, the so I think there's, there's through the brand we've created, we're bringing in the travelers that really are, what I would consider like the Wagyu beef of of The Travelers, it's the ones that book The earliest, that spend the most, that have the longest days, and also respect your home. Now, I think we've done a lot of that, really through brand. I'd love to see us do better on it via actually building more functionality and technology. Like, for example, like, I think that there's, I'm advocating a lot for us to have more things within our process that enables traveler verification and perhaps enables property managers to actually target the exact types of travelers that they want. Like, you know. So for example, are there different things that we couldn't put in place, surrounding the way that you set up your inventory that makes you really be able to target those people that are like, let's say what I really want here is I really want somebody that's going to have a week long beach day like, that's actually our bread and butter. But. Also, then, what if we enabled more targeting capabilities? Where, if you had a Sunday to Tuesday that was open, and you're trying to fill that gap, but you want to fill that gap with still a good traveler, what's the ecosystem we can create that would actually enable you to do that? Like for me, it's about it's about developing audience targeting, but doing it away, we still have that backbone of trust,

Alex Husner  
right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how do you I mean, obviously, you can see where somebody is staying when they book, you know, different reservations on the platform, but is there anything else that your marketing and team is doing to learn more about the guests that are booking on verbo. I mean, as far as targeting, well, one

Tim Rosolio  
thing that's really good about that is actually one key, because if you're providing people incentives to log in and build history with us, that enables us to have more information. Like, kind of the holy grail in my mind would be like, if I could identify these are the travelers that have booked at Four Seasons in Ritz Carlton, and I could, one way or another, then show those types of travelers to the property managers that have the higher end supply like, that would be the Holy Grail. And theoretically, with one key a lot of the pieces are there, right?

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, that kind of goes, actually, to my next question is, you know, just kind of, if you, Tim, had your, you know, wish list of things that you could do, like, what would you what do you think is most important? Do you think it's most important to be able to provide more for the property managers? Do you think it's more ease for the consumer? Do you think it's a meld of both? Like, what? What do you what would you if you were to build your perfect scenario? What would that look like?

Tim Rosolio  
I mean, I think, clearly, it's a combination. I think that the main thing, the number one thing, in my mind is, how do we differentiate our experience for families and groups, largely on the traveler side of the platform, so that they want to come to us rather than to our competitors. And because, like, first and foremost, the reason that the partners work with us, like, Hey, I I'm flattered when people say that they love working with our account management team, and I love hearing that we have, like, you know, some of the better guests and stuff like that. But what they really want is they want is they want us to fill their calendars. So for me, it really starts with that traveler experience and a catered traveler experience that's very consistent with the traveler, with the traveler that the partners want. Now that being said, I think we got a long ways to do on the partner long way to go on the partner side too, like I think there's a variety of different things that we're investing in surrounding our ability to provide better information to your software providers so that you can manage your business better. And I think there's a tremendous opportunity with what's coming with our whole promotion suite that will enable you to actually target some of the travelers that you want, and that's something that we're really excited about. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
no, that is exciting. That's cool. That's awesome. What I want to get your your take on, just regulations, and you know, some of the discussions that are going on across the country right now. How does VRBO get does VRBO get involved in that with any of the like local associations or, you know, kind of, what is your role on the regulation side?

Tim Rosolio  
So we have a we have a strong government affairs team, and generally what they do is, rather than being the voice, the voice of vacation rentals. What we try to do is set up the Alliance, empower the Alliance, empower the local hosts and property managers to get engaged and involved. Because, you know what? Like regulators in Hawaii like they don't want to hear from Fortune 500 conglomerate based in Seattle Washington, about what they're supposed to do, what they're supposed to do with their what they might perceive as a health and safety problem, or what they might perceive as an affordable housing problem, like what somebody in Seattle Washington says they don't care, But they care about the small businesses in that region, they care about the jobs that are being provided by our industry. Like that's a message they care about. So our entire approach is to empower and to really help the local teams get organized and, you know, there's another there's another part of this that's probably part of the the ethos of sort is there are many property managers out there that believe that, like every home in the world, should be a short term rental if the owner. Wants it to be. And I don't know whether I personally agree with them or not, but I do know that that sort of approach probably won't win with regulators. We're gonna need to work with them to try to meet them halfway, whether it's zoning or data sharing or helping them collect their taxes, like there's something that we need to do to make them feel heard, that helps them alleviate some of their concerns, while also like enabling our industry to flourish and

Annie Holcombe  
grow. Yeah, so it's interesting. One of the things that Alex and I talk about, and anybody that knows me knows it's like a hot button for me, is the education of of the newer people that come in the business, and also to some of those people that maybe they've been in the business for five, six years, and they came in after COVID, and they grew like, they just grew like, way beyond what they had planned. They had no plan. They had no resources for education. And so what do you see verbose role in being able to help someone go from that one unit to, you know, scaling up and having access to that knowledge and understanding of, you know, what, what? What's the best practice for being a good host and and what is it, you know? What's the best practice for distribution? Like, do you? Do you feel like that your account management team can assist in that role.

Tim Rosolio  
I think on the regulatory side, I think a lot of it comes via partnerships, like we do with rent responsibilities. Like Alexa and Dave Krauss do a and Dana lovener, she's involved. Like, they do an amazing job of the education piece. And we, you know, we partner with them. We help sponsor them. We're do joint webinars with them. Like, there's a very specific Alliance we have with them, and also with Verma. Verma has been doing this for a long time too, via the Advocacy Fund. That's on the regulatory piece, and then I think on the, you know, on the how to be successful in distribution piece. Like, that's, my team's bread and butter. I mean, it is their job to understand these are the levers to pull to deliver the bookings that you need. And some people like you mentioned, like, you know, they kind of stumbled into this. There's different there's different degrees of sophistication. Like, there's some people that we're talking with, and we're saying, you know, we get you a lot more bookings. If you just checked that you have Wi Fi, right? Oh, I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that wasn't there versus there's other people that we have much more sophisticated revenue management strategies. And we have, we have team members that have been with us for 15 years that have a real wealth of knowledge in vacation rentals doing this. We have, I always like to tell the story of, you know, we have an account manager that started with us in property manager customer service, and talked to property managers with basically handling problems all every day. And then he was, he started working with some small property managers, and they worked with larger property managers, and now he's the account manager for Vacasa. That's a that's a pretty cool career path on that guy's knowledge and understanding of vacation rentals and professional property managers. It's his job to understand the levers to pull.

Unknown Speaker  
I love that. I

Annie Holcombe  
think that I think that that's what's great about our business, is you can kind of start from nothing and become something. You know, you don't have to necessarily know your path, but you're going to get there. You're going to get where you were meant you're meant to be when you kind of find your passion for whatever that thing is within the business,

Tim Rosolio  
yeah, it's so cool that we have, I have, we have a lot of examples of that, which is, it makes me, makes me very proud of those people, and sort of the journeys that they've been on, because, like, it's also one of those things where it's like, I know that money doesn't buy happiness, but I know that what that person made X number of years ago, and I know for a fact that they make today. And I don't know whether they're happy or not, but I know they make more money. And money and

Annie Holcombe  
they haven't going in the right direction anyway. Yeah, yeah. That is one thing I hear a lot about, is that your team has been around for been it's consistent. And there's there's consistency in that team, and I think that that's very unusual to find with some of the channels that are out there now, there's not a lot of consistency in the account management and support that they get it. It changes over a lot. And so I do hear really good things about the team that you lead, and how how they have been around and understand the business. So I think that that's that's testament to your leadership. So take that as a,

Tim Rosolio  
yeah, I'll take more I can get.

Alex Husner  
We say that all the time, that it's like you can have a not that verbose, a subpar product, but you can have a subpar product in a lot of cases. But if the service is great, companies are willing to stay with that vendor, supplier, whatever it is, because they feel like they've got somebody that has their back, that is going to answer them, you know, in a quick manner, and get back. To them so that they can keep running their business. But services, for sure,

Tim Rosolio  
people really seem to appreciate having a human being with a name, yeah, and they might even have their cell phone number, and they give them a holler, and hopefully they solve it immediately. Sometimes it takes a couple days, but like the fact that it's not going to the black hole, that's that's part of the value that we provide, yeah,

Alex Husner  
for sure, as far as onboarding. So for companies that are that are coming on board. Now, has that gotten any quicker? I know, I don't know if it was last year, the year before, but there was some different changes that some sometimes that was getting kind of backlogged. But what does that process look like now for companies, if they're not already on verbo, trying to connect, we're we're

Tim Rosolio  
the time has gone down significantly. The complexity has gone down significantly. We're feeling better about it. And perhaps more importantly, the thing that's on the horizon is something we call the property capability API, which does a variety of things, but it actually helps with true like one or two click self service onboarding. We're currently in pilot with a number of the software companies to have them code do it so that then the property managers can use it. And you know, at that point, I think we'll have something that we're extremely proud of. Yeah, nice. And, you know, for what it's worth, if any listeners are not on VRBO and are keen to be on VRBO, you can find me on LinkedIn, and I'll get you in touch with the property management acquisition team as well. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
awesome. Very cool. Awesome. Well, are there any things looking forward to the rest of this year that you're excited about that you can share with us, or maybe want to touch on and get get people excited about

Tim Rosolio  
I'd love to get people excited that we're not replatforming anymore. That's very exciting. And because we're not replatforming, we can actually build product and tech rather than smashing together product and unifying it. The first and foremost thing is like, I'm looking forward to getting you more bookings by building more great traveler tech. That's one thing. Then I mentioned the promotion suite, like, we're going to have early bird deals, last minute deals, member only deals to acquire travelers that are part of the one key program. All of that we're going to be coding to the property management software companies so that you can use them, probably later this year. So that's gonna be a big lever for us. Additionally, we're also just really looking forward to doing a variety of things with marketplace design, so that, you know, today it's kind of a binary program. It's like you're either premier host or you're not. And I think we're continuing to evaluate ways that we can differentiate merchandising on the site and differentiate, probably things like ranking and sort position to try to provide more bookings to the best of the best, and perhaps for those that actually aren't the best of the best, and maybe they cancel, or they don't do them an amazing job cleaning their property, they're getting less shots on goal. I think. You know, over the past few years, we've actually started a pretty significant process of like for partners that don't deliver an experience we're proud of, we'll tell them that we don't want to work with them anymore. Remove them from the site. And I think we'll actually probably be more aggressive about that over time, because I think generally, what I found is count of properties is kind of a vanity number. I think that delivery of consistent experience is actually what provides the stickiness long term. Now, like that being said, you don't want to be sold out, but

Alex Husner  
Right? Yeah, exactly,

Tim Rosolio  
yeah, yeah. When, when somebody comes to VRBO, you want them to say, I'm gonna have a good experience. Yeah. And, you know, the property managers play a big role in that, so, yeah, we're looking forward to partnering in that evolving marketplace design and giving more to the very best,

Alex Husner  
yeah. And I think that's, that's the conversation that's being had with within a lot of property managers and companies now too. That used to be. You know, we just need to be the biggest that we can be, and let's just get more and more doors. But it's like at the end of the day, you know what that does to your brand, if you're taking on properties that are maybe not up to par of what you would ideally like to have. And then it gets to that point where you realize, okay, we're working just as hard. It's hurting our reviews. We need to start letting them go too. So I think, yes, it goes both ways. You know, it makes sense on your side too, that you guys want to be selective and make sure that you know that it's somebody's always getting a great experience no matter where they stay when they book on VRBO, yeah. I

Tim Rosolio  
mean, you guys are running your own little marketplaces too with supply and demand. So, I mean, I there's, I've had this conversation a million times with. Uh, like, Mary Beth and Keith from vacation rental collective, or Miller Hawkins. Like, they'll sometimes say, like, Man, I just want to fire that owner. I'm, like, go ahead and

Alex Husner  
do it. Yeah, exactly.

Tim Rosolio  
They're, they're, they're pulling you down. Like, yeah, you, you want, you want your brand to represent quality too.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, sometimes it's okay to say it is you not me, like, you know, it's okay. It's okay to break up with people. I think more people should do that. But I think that at the end of the day, that also that builds the trust for the consumer, that they know that they can come to the platform and they're going to get what you know, get what you're selling. And then for the property manager too, that they know that they know that they're not up there competing with somebody who's, you know, Tom Dick and Harry that's not paying attention and providing bad service and bringing a bad name to the industry. So at the end of the day, you know, businesses, it's all about trust, and I think you guys do a great job with that. And I have to say you mentioned it earlier. So as somebody who lives in the southeast and watches Southeastern Conference football, not a Nick Saban fan, not an Alabama fan. But I love those commercials, and I can tell you, they resonate very well in the southeast. Yeah,

Tim Rosolio  
I've heard, I've heard I, at one point I I asked our marketing team like any chance we could get Sabin for explore fest, which is sort of the the new res fest, which will, yeah, definitely make sure we have to have you guys out at, oh,

Alex Husner  
that's coming

Tim Rosolio  
back. Oh, yeah. Okay, perfect. Well, I asked, asked them if we could have save in there. And they're like, Yeah, I don't think that's part of the contract. Can you imagine our southeast property managers and Sabin in there? Like people would

Annie Holcombe  
show up in jerseys, every Auburn fan and Florida fan, which I'd be in my Florida jersey. But yeah, yeah, like such a great opportunity, yeah?

Tim Rosolio  
Well, I'm, I'm a UT, well, University of Texas guy, I know ut can mean a variety of things now, yeah, so I'm technically SEC as well you are now, yeah, certainly, certainly a good time, but we'll see. There's actually, you know, I'm clearly not supposed to spill any beans, but there might also eventually be some additional hosts from hell that might be coming up. So, oh

Annie Holcombe  
yes, I think that's like my brain is thinking now

Alex Husner  
it's, will Rez fast be coming back for this year? Are you allowed to

Tim Rosolio  
say, okay, yeah, so we did it. We it's in every other year rotation. Now, okay, okay, we're gonna have it in September. It's in Austin. So, I mean, the cool thing for us is, I'm gonna 100 and 110 account managers there, so everybody's gonna get to meet their partners. It's gonna

Alex Husner  
be, oh, yeah, that's

Annie Holcombe  
great. I love that. That is, that is really cool. Do you have the dates

Tim Rosolio  
yet? Yes, it's in September, and I'd be happy to share it with you after this, that you guys can send it out to the partners, but it's,

Alex Husner  
it's a good time, I think, yeah, the last one I went to was in Red Rocks, probably 2017, or 18. That was actually the first conference that we went to as a company. I was a pretty good one. Yeah,

Tim Rosolio  
we stashed everybody out of Red Rocks. Yeah, yeah. Great property, though. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We, we, I think we learned that if you do it on this, if you do it on the strip, it's hard to keep everybody contained. You do it out at Red Rocks, it can be your show. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  
Very true. Yeah, very true. Well, Tim, if there is anybody that would like to get in touch with you, I think you said you're available on LinkedIn. I know I see you there a lot. Is there another better way to reach out to you. Somebody wants to chat about VRBO,

Tim Rosolio  
probably the best, best place to start. And if I can't help you, I'll get and get in touch with somebody who can All right, perfect.

Alex Husner  
That sounds good. Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com and until next time. Thanks for tuning in, everybody.

Tim Rosolio  
Thanks for having.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai