We’re Going to Italy! Meet the Team from Scale Italia

Alex Husner  0:00  
Welcome to Alex and Annie. The real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex. 

Annie Holcombe  0:03  
And I'm Annie. 

Alex Husner  0:04  
And we are joined today with Gianpaolo Vairo, Damian Sheridan and Cristiana Carpini from the scale show. We're so happy to see you guys here today.

Cristiana Carpini  0:15  
Thank you. Thank you for having us. 

Annie Holcombe  0:17  
Would it be appropriate for me to say buon? giorno? Is that? Would that be the right word? We're gonna work out.

Alex Husner  0:26  
For October, yeah.

Annie Holcombe  0:29  
We will work on our Italian. So we're excited because you guys asked us to be part of your scale show in Florence in October, and we could not be more thrilled and more excited about it. And we wanted to have you guys on the show to tell us about the scale family because you've grown quite a bit. We met Damian, I think through some clubhouses during COVID. And then some podcasts that everybody's been doing. And he's been a big supporter of ours in Europe. But why don't each of you introduce yourselves and then we can get into the meat of what scale is all about.

Damian Sheridan  0:57  
I'll start off guys, as I've probably known you guys maybe a little bit longer. So I'm Damien Sheridan, you guys will remember it. I've had the book direct co founder of the book direct show, which we had in Miami two or three years ago, and more recently joined forces with my colleague here, Gianpaolo, and we formed the scales, shows, which are a series of events globally now, where we have conferences dedicated to professionals in our industry. So for those who have generally 20 Plus units in the short term rental vacation rental industry, so I yeah, I'm an Irishman, lived in the UK for many time now, based in largely in Spain, and, yeah, loving life, you know, trying to keep my head above water with everything we have with skill, which is fine, but I've got some great colleagues here and I'll let them introduce themselves. 

Gianpaolo Vairo  1:46  
Okay, ladies, first, Christiana. Right.

Cristiana Carpini  1:49  
I'm Cristiana Carpini. Italian actually, really Florentine person. But living between Genoa and Lugano. Were actually my offices just this year, I took over the scale Italia show from Gianpaolo.

Gianpaolo Vairo  2:05  
Together with Damian Sheridan, then we are holding the scale, Family and scale shows all over, as you said, globally. I am Italian and based in Barcelona, since I'd say almost 20 years, and this is our life, dedicating most of my time, day and night to this project, because we are really passionate about education, vacation, rental and scale . Finally, because it was really hard at the beginning, is finally taking off. And you know, we over have nearly nine shows this year, we written the global presence with competencies in three different continents. Are we really happy about the

Alex Husner  2:47  
Excellent, well, we are super excited to be over in Italy, with all of you and your audience and just get to meet so many new faces. And we just think it's gonna be a wonderful experience. But leading up, you know, the last couple years, I feel like we've heard about the scale shows from so many more people. And a lot of us based people have gone over there because they've said it's just it's one of the best conferences they've ever been to. So I'm curious, you know, just get started, what do you think is the essence that makes this show so different from the regular conference

Damian Sheridan  3:17  
for us from day one, one thing we always felt that was hugely important was that every single piece of content on our show could not be a sales pitch, we didn't feel like going to many other events that it was really a product update for a lot of large companies. And they went on too long. And it was just a bit of a dull experience. So our feeling was before we even hatched the plan, that it needed to be education, which was next level, which for every person that came in the room, they go away with numerous takeaways, and they're not even necessarily thinking about the product that was behind the person on stage. So that's an alongside the fact that it's specifically for professional property managers, an area of networking, they for me are the two things that from the very beginning we wanted to kind of cultivate, and that's the best feedback we get from attendees, they really really love the

Gianpaolo Vairo  4:10  
show for me the key differentiation between SCADA and the other conferences out there is that since the beginning says things you will not the one from since day zero, we decided to have just professional managers not you know almost so this is a way to put under the same roof people with the same mindset same needs and same vision. So, is different provide content to very unified and uniform number of people with same interests have the same needs instead of having you know possibly more people with completed these homogeneous and not aligned also they need different kinds of application versus you know, large property management company, they are a different phase of their history. So for us for scale, providing content to them is going to be a totally different things. So, we saw that people coming to these kinds of conferences were super happy because they were meeting people with same vision, same needs, same focus. And this was a complete game changer for many of them say, Wow, I met people that really accelerate my business that really support where we are and where we are going. So you know, is really easier to find, you know, partners, providers, and partners in business, basically, because many times we heard successful story of people that met each other in one of our conferences, and now, they merge or they skate together, or they share experiences, and they help each other move forward, they own business, this is the key

Alex Husner  5:44  
that makes a lot of sense and are thinking about what's happened, you know, with vrma, and some of the state side conferences that have probably embraced more, or tried to embrace more of the STR the smaller host community, I don't think that anybody has really done that effectively yet. And I think a lot of the problems are kind of what you just for speaking to that, to have a one size fits all conference is very hard. And I think when you have people that are aligned about, you know, the reason that they're there, and what the similarities and the challenges that they face, that's where you can actually make great connections and have those conversations outside of the sessions to really, you know, build that network. I'm curious on your side over there, what the atmosphere is like? I mean, is it similar to the states that I think there's a lot of professional house that would rather completely keep the smaller house out? But is it kind of contentious between the two sides? Or is that just more of a decision you made just specifically for the content of the show and the purpose?

Damian Sheridan  6:40  
You know, there's so many conferences out there, we know that, Oh, totally saturated the amount of confidence. And in the US, you guys have next level amount of conferences to manage? Possibly we do have a lot in Europe as well, look, we're not helping things. What we try to do with this under book direct show is have niche conferences, whereby it's either, you know, for direct booking strategies to learn just that, or in this particular case, it's for those who've got 20 Plus properties, as John Powell has said, we want to have this kind of arena whereby everybody is ambitious and growing. That's not to say that we don't have a lot of companies who are a bit smaller to say, hey, where can we come, you know, we're growing, we're scaling. And that's really tough. You know, we have to say, a lot of times, I'm so sorry, but we have to put it off somewhere, you know, and this is how we put it off. Our first event was for 5050 units. Plus, we've kind of settled on 20 For most of our events, but it's not easy. But it's based on a lot of market research that we've done with property managers. And they have felt that they just wanted a different level of content kind of a little bit more advanced without trying to be condescending to hosts with smaller companies. But they're not starting off, they're established, they've been in the industry for 235 10 years. So they kind of know what they're doing. But perhaps they just want the next step to grow maybe a little bit quicker, or, more importantly, as well as the content to be amongst like minded people, I think that's the biggest thing that we can offer, you know, as much as we go out of our way to find the best speakers such as yourselves, and we do spend a ridiculous amount of time on our content. The best feedback we get is from everyone saying, Wow, I met some incredible people here. And because it's never going to be a vermut International, it's never going to be 1500 2000 people, it's always going to be you know, generally in the hundreds. Although that said, I know Christiana has some huge ambitious plans for numbers in Florence, generally, our delegates are about three to 500 slides about more intimate events where you can meet the same people again, and these are hugely established and professionals in our industry, and we all kind of learn from each other. It's a very collaborative event.

Annie Holcombe  8:48  
So coming from the US, you know, I think that we take it for granted that every state is still part of the United States. So like our big territory, there are some similarities from state to state. So I would be curious, again, as an outsider coming in, you are doing in various countries. And I noticed that you added when I think in Dubai in the fall, I wouldn't even have imagined that there was an industry in Dubai outside of like hotels, I didn't even think that that existed. So how do you decide to go into a market and what kind of research do you have to do because I would think that there are very different ways of operating and we talked about it kind of offline like the tone and the tenor and the language you know, that is used between these countries like how do you decide when a country is the right time to go in? And then what do you what is that boots on the ground? Like research that you do to start

Gianpaolo Vairo  9:36  
there are a lot of discussion going beyond the lines before starting a new conferences a new country, the first thing is we need to understand if there are enough professional managers in one country before going there and frequently I give you two different examples. So for instance, Germany is a very large market for property management, but we are still hesitant to enter in this market because now we have clear vision of The amount of unprofessional manager there in Germany, but until very few months ago, we didn't have that clear vision on how many managers are in this larger market. And this is one of the last big market that is still an undiscovered in Europe imagine while Dubai, many property managers from all over Europe, were sort of investing some money there. So I'm investing some money there in Dubai. And so he said, oh, we need to explore Dubai is a really promising lens and offer vacation rentals. So we had good contact there. So we went physically in Dubai over one year ago, me and Domine, we spent a week there. We've been part of a local meetup. And most of the property manager we met in Dubai, where the smallest we met was 400 units. This is crazy. So we decided to move forward. So eight This is the promise then for vacation rental, and then you know, exploring deeper, what is the market? What are the numbers? What are the people involved, we saw that there, there is huge potential here. And not only Dubai is the Middle East, so the region so Dubai, Abu Dhabi, so the Omen, all this area, possibly is the next level of vacation rental, because there is no restriction, there's no taxes. So investing money there is quite easy. A lot of people really want to be there. Because is that a trending market, and possibly for Europeans, especially European property managers having something there is a sort of, you know, completing the season. So if it's winter, here, they have something there. So it's also a good way to be always on peak season. And considering that people that go to Dubai, are high spending guests, is a market that makes sense for most property managers. So we started from European markets, the first show was in Barcelona, then we had one in Milan, one in Paris, that are established location in the market, but still they are suffering now from restriction for regulation. And recently, we tried to approach other emerging markets, I say, South Africa, for instance, was a huge read, because you know, is a crazy market for vacation rental. And once there we discovered that was really good. So we are trying to bring education and the markets like South Africa, for instance, there were no association, no support groups. So having the first vacation rental meetup there was a sort of eye opener for many operators there. So we discovered that many operators there never meet each other. Since when we bring that first short term rental event ever say, Wow, this is crazy. You're working in the same city for so long. And you ever met one with the other say, well, domineer if you want to add something,

Damian Sheridan  12:45  
yeah. So you know, like Dubai is culturally so different to what we're used to here in the UK, or Spain or anything like that. It's all the same South Africa. But what kind of drew us to it to these places is not that we wanted to bring this to the world. Actually, some property management companies said, Hey, would you think about bringing this to South Africa, and we had Nick Taylor from Knox, the nicest guy in the world, officially brought it to us at our first scale event in 2022. Said guys who've ever think of doing an event in South Africa, we said absolutely not, you know, let's just come. We just got one or two done first here, but we just kept on speaking every few months, and we kind of thought we ran some numbers, he was telling us that there are, you know, property managers there. So we thought, You know what, let's give it a go. And I wanted to go to Cape Town anyway, so I've never been before. But it was, as Jennifer says, was extraordinary. And now they're built creating a new association off the back of this event. I've happened we had about 170 180 attendees there. Dubai again, was kind of brought to our attention by someone else. And we went there last year and canceled Wow, this is a real, you know, there's a booming market emerging here. But it's not necessarily our intention to bring these events everywhere. It's just that you know, some associations or some large property managers say to us, Hey, would you consider now there are a lot of countries we have been asked about we say absolutely not because it's not in our bandwidth at all. We've been asked about New Zealand over the last couple of days. My goodness literally couldn't get further away in the world. So there's only so many countries that we can literally we've got the logistical skills to do this in full we're open to it and you know, a US is certainly on our radar if we can fit it into a very saturated calendar. The cultural differences is amazing, but it's really exciting as well when you're there to see these property managers who just they're alive and they're sponges absolute like a host might be for the first time when they go to any event so Christiana so we haven't let you speak at home when

Cristiana Carpini  14:49  
I was just going a little bit deeper in why this year we decided to get 50% of English speaker which is quite new for scale Italia just because this year is especially this year with a lot of restriction as it was mentioning before Damion, we had a lot of requests from property manager abroad, even from the United States, they wants to step in Europe, they want to expand the Europe and the first country they always request is Italy. And then France, of course, one of the reasons so it's really nice for them to come over Europe, and especially in Italy, and see how the temperature is. And vice versa. Imagine that initially, we have 9 million empty second home. So it's the biggest market with the incredible potential that you can find. At the same time, we start to get owners like 30%, on 2023 30% of the house were bought from foreigners in Italy. So you really need property management, and you have an incredible potential that is growing, it's growing, it's growing. We have nearly 600,000 homes in vacation rental. So imagine 9 million of April state, that's why we want foreigners coming and we have software's for the software's Italian software's as well. So we have Italian companies right now that they are looking to expand assured and foreigners company that they want to expand in Italy. So before that Daniel was mentioned a small conference, it was like, not really small. In Italy, it's a special market. So imagine that we have to under 30,000, property manager and it's full like last year, it was like every month I could go to two three small conference in Italy differently will almost same speakers. So we want to take something new, something completely different, something not yet done for the Italian market. Giampaolo, do you want to have something

Gianpaolo Vairo  16:52  
Yes, as Christina said, you know, there are international markets in Europe, but consider us is crazy big market, but different countries within the big one, no. But more or less, you have variety, because there are speakers from all over in Europe is different, because you have like Spain, France, Italy, and each country has different characteristics, different speakers, different events. And when you approach speakers, more or less, as Christina said, speakers, as always the same one because you know, Spanish, people used to learn from Spaniards, Spanish speakers, Italian, same friends the same, and Germans possibly the same. So you know, is really hard to provide education in English in a markets like France, Italy, Spain, because they are not used to that. So introducing new speakers in our countries like this is becoming difficult. So we successfully did it in Spain. And we were really surprised about the outcome. So people say, Oh, wow, this was really eye opener, because you know, many times when you bring external speaker speakers that are not from Spain, or Italy or France, they're bringing different experience, the different way of managing properties, different way of thinking, this is the basics, you know, and this is a culture shock, you are used to work out your way with your tools within your network. And all of a sudden you have someone coming from abroad, bringing you a completely different disruptive way to do property management. They say, Oh, wow, this is crazy. I want to try this many times. It's like cultural resistance, you know, you say whatever it is outside my country, it doesn't matter me. So I'm not interested in learning from other people. And what scale is trying is bringing sort of, you know, the mix of experiences. So well, now we have people from France, trying to bring their experience to Italy to Spain, the other way around people from Italy, sharing their experience to Dubai or to Spain. And the results are crazy. Because you know, people say, Oh, I had a chat with this guy from Italy. And there is they're doing this like this, and to me is really different than what I want to try. So you know that you're seeing people that they used to do their thing in the wrong way. Trying to understand other people from abroad, what they're doing is, wow, it's eye openers many times.

Cristiana Carpini  19:15  
Yeah, that's actually what I always found, you know, when you go abroad in conferences, and that's actually how I learned from scaler. My first conference was scaling International was in Barcelona. And I remember I was learning from all the speaker coming from all over the countries and not only Europe, actually, it was as well when America and it was like, Oh, that's interesting, you know, so I came back and I actually put in practice something that they were doing for the companies. It was some sort of fresher that we all need to go forward with our businesses.

Alex Husner  19:49  
I love that there's so much that we can all learn from each other and I think Andy and I are certainly going to be over there will be like sponges just to compare and contrast how things are different or maybe similar to how companies operate, you know, in our neck of the woods. But I'm curious. I mean, what are the hot topics over there? Like? What are the things that people are most interested in hearing about? Because at our conferences, you kind of hear a lot of the same topics, a lot of homeowner acquisition getting new properties on programs, regulations are talked about quite a bit, you know, book direct strategies, how to make tech decisions, like is it similar? Or are there other things that we should be preparing for, that they talked about that is just very different.

Damian Sheridan  20:27  
I'll pass over to Christiana, one second, because she knows much more being the host of the of this event, I do try to ask all of our registered attendees what they want to hear about as well. So we do try to curate content specifically about what they want. But we do find that quite often each event, it's kind of the same information that they do ask for direct bookings, always Hi. And then the interest emerges and acquisitions,

Gianpaolo Vairo  20:50  
acknowledged do the I recently AI course recently, investment

Cristiana Carpini  20:55  
forum actually, the investment forum is actually the news that I manage and Paulo, they're going to try it on On Dubai, the week before scale Italia. And we will do in scale Italia, because it's well, we have a lot of property manager that they're going on medium rental terms they're going to buy, they're buying actually buildings and doing sort of long term rent, mixed up with vacation rental, you know, to improve the occupancy as well. And we have real estate group that were stepping in vacation rental word. So it will be quite interesting. workshop, I think on this ability

Alex Husner  21:31  
with the book direct side to that's interesting to me that I feel like you know, short term rentals is certainly nothing new for property management companies in Europe. And I think a lot of them have been around much longer than ones in the states are but a lot of companies that were pre Airbnb, at least on our side of the world, whether they had a great book direct strategy, or not they at least they had been getting business on their own before these channels came out. But is it a mix of companies that are older and they are more modern at their books for direct strategies? Or is it a lot that are newer that they did just come out within the Airbnb era, and they're trying to differentiate in my

Damian Sheridan  22:07  
capacity as the book direction founder every year, we have a total array of attendees. So somebody who's got even one property, which always astounds me that people you know, the typically the ones who could just list on something on Airbnb and be happy with their lot. But from one through 2000s, the book direct element is is of interest to so many different people. It's for varying reasons, you know, but I think more and more people are aware of, you know, bringing that level of control back into their own business, you know, just reducing that reliance upon OTAs, not putting them out at all, because it's a tough, kind of unsustainable way of moving things forward. But just diversifying their channel management and being able to bring in some bookings themselves, being able to look at repeat bookings, and having the data to work with themselves is hugely important. So it answers your question, Alex, I think there's a variety of hosts, property managers, regardless of units that are interested in the book, direct side of things. So I'll

Annie Holcombe  23:07  
be safe to do a session on diversification of distribution, nobody's gonna throw tomatoes at me and boot me out of the room. Right? It'll be obviously,

Damian Sheridan  23:17  
you'll be safe. Okay.

Annie Holcombe  23:19  
I had a question related to again, you're in all these markets. And one of the things that we talk about a lot in the US and some Paulo, you mentioned the regulations in Barcelona. So that's been like front and center with everybody now, because it wasn't like, Hey, we're going to put some regulations in that are going to restrict it was we're doing away with all of it. And so just out of curiosity, is there through scale, a Advocacy Program, or anything that you're doing within each of the countries to help sort of educate people on what regulatory looks like, but then help them combat regulations as they come into play? This is

Gianpaolo Vairo  23:53  
something recent, actually, this is a side project we in place possibly is going to see the lights in 25, we want to be on top of regulation in Europe and, you know, European Union, you have sort of, you know, they are trying to sort of align all their regulation invocation rental and is something that is really tough, because you know, 27 countries is really hard to align all of them. Because we have no thing that people country in the north they actually think completely different impeded the countries in the south. So this is really hard to align all of them. But we want to have a sort of conference about regulation in Brussels is totally spoiler, no, we are not announcing this yet. But it's going to be a sort of event where we're going to invite all the main Association in Europe that are working behind the scenes to align regulation, vacation rental, we want to be there to support them. So together with the community, the school community, something that we recently launched is a couple of weeks ago, and it's a place where we're giving space to all them main European Association to provide support to, you know, local property managers and also to other association because it's really important to unite and sort of exchange information on regulation. And, you know, be on top of all the things are going on locally and you this is the two main actions we are taking over deregulation in

Cristiana Carpini  25:23  
Europe, we must think as well that this year, we're going to bring the Italian conference in a city that just announced No, but the new major of Florence just declared that it was absolutely supporting the major of Barcelona. So you know, it's in a foot building issue, right? I was like, why, okay, great, we are going to have the ski rental shoe there, which is great. I think it will be really strong messages, especially because we're going to bring on stage for not only Association, like I'm part of one of the Association as well. So there are two basically, um, but I guess we're going to bring as well institution that they are really happy to have vacation rental, and they got really interesting data that they will actually put, it will actually tell us on stage about what vacation rental does for the local economy. So I think the message will be really strong in Florence as well,

Damian Sheridan  26:18  
that's a tough one in Europe, as Jonathan was with all these countries, or working in different ways. And even within those countries, you're having different regulations for different cities, it's nine impossible for us to get involved in advocacy. But if we can facilitate it in some way, be at a conference next year in Brussels, or through our online community, we will continue to do so we have really close relationships with the associations throughout Europe and the European holiday film association. So I think we'll do what we can just to add

Gianpaolo Vairo  26:47  
something that is curious and possible is fun, we find sometimes that you know, there are Association within the same country that are in competition, one with the other, we try to give visibility and give voice to all the people that really passionate about vacationrenter want to you know, help this industry to grow and become sustainable at some point. And we're finding that sometimes we are giving visibility to some association and in other conferences, some others and reflect that they are at some point, they are sort of saying competition is good. But sometimes they don't understand that we are not giving priority to one or the other. We're just in the middle, we want to give visibility and voice to all the association involving immigration renter. So this is a strong message that we want to share, say there is no one big one that needs to lead the others, the vacation rental industry need to unite especially now that we are facing restriction coming from above. So Association instead of fighting one with the other should unite and work with us to make these positive and sustainable. So the message we have to share with property manager that in the end are the body of the industry need to understand that we are working together to support them, to protect them and to educate them. So this is the most important and is the big value, that scape random scare family is trying to bring forward. Yeah, that's

Alex Husner  28:09  
a major impact. And something that's so important. Because if it's happening in a neighboring country, even if these people might be happy about it, that means that they have less competition, it can happen to you too. I mean, that's the moral end of the story is, I mean, if it's happening somewhere else, then it's just a matter of time before you're gonna face the same situation. So it's better to band together. I mean, obviously, having more people that are fighting for a cause is going to be more effective, no matter what. So that's, that's great to see that you guys are shepherding the cause and hopefully getting people to understand that it's better to work together in something like this

Damian Sheridan  28:42  
on that, Alex, we had our scale South Africa event a few months back. And the biggest takeaway that everybody says in their testimonial videos afterwards, regulation is coming. There's no hint of regulation in South Africa at the moment, but several speakers from from overseas came and said, It is coming, you know it will come. You need to prepare yourself for this one day. If it's in one year, five years, 10 years, it is coming be prepared. But a lot of people took a lot from that

Alex Husner  29:09  
we were chatting before the show started that we shared. We had two ladies from an organization called roar on the show yesterday and they're in New York City. And it's happened in New York City and it can happen in any city and it can happen in any country. So it's definitely better to understand let's let's get ahead of that before those regulations come down. And I know just even being in the Myrtle Beach market and even where Andy is Panama City Beach, we're very destination Taurus driven economies that no one could ever imagine short term rentals being banned and one of these communities but it can happen it can definitely happen. I mean, it's it's a scary thing, but the more that you can plan ahead and get people educated and having a seat at the table. That's, you know, that's the best way to do it. But I'm curious too. Do you ever invite or have you had any city or country or state politicians or any other legislators? Do they ever attend your events?

Damian Sheridan  30:04  
No, not really, we really don't want to get too political with our events and having people on sides. No, we tried to kind of steer clear of that. That's not to say it won't happen in the future. But no, up to this point. Not really.

Alex Husner  30:17  
Yeah, we've talked about that in the US about, you know, maybe that does make sense to invite other different associations that are outside of vacation rentals, but that are, you know, working with these legislators to get them to really understand what it is we do as an industry and just understand how the professionals operate, that there's so much technology that has come about to, you know, make these communities still be able to operate just the same and that short term rentals don't need to be a nuisance. And in most cases, they aren't a nuisance, but I can't say that that's happened at the conferences on the state side, but it is definitely something people kind of talked about. But I think Damian, to your point, it could be a little dangerous, they might have to have some security.

Damian Sheridan  30:59  
We did actually, we invited Trump Hello, can you remember the position of the guy in South Africa,

it was the Western Cape Prime Minister of Tourism, something died

a few weeks before, and then we had a new person. And then they pulled out just a week before and we kind of thought, well, maybe this is telling us something about politics.

Annie Holcombe  31:17  
Yeah, I was recently at this gift short term rental event in New York City a couple of weeks ago. And they had a session that was a gentleman who has been in advocacies. And attorneys been very close to a lot of regulatory in the US, but then they had the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. And he talked about common sense regulation and how it was really important to be involved in the community, from his perspective to make sure that they were hearing all the voices. And so I think that, you know, there's people that are trying to do it. And and the problem is people are nervous about bringing politicians in, because it's like, you know, are they bought and sold by somebody who might have a contrary opinion of what's going on. And so I would imagine that as we move forward, there's going to be more thought about bringing those people into the fold, but being very thoughtful about how to bring them into the fold. Because it is such a touchy subject. Can I just

Cristiana Carpini  32:11  
say that for Italy, we tried to be overpasses, but we invited institution. So we got a lot of No, of course, people that don't want vacation randomly want to get involved, but quite few years. So we are not coming out with names and nothing because we want this to be sort of surprise, we don't want too much noise, but they will be actually politician in that panels, the moderator that we found for that panel is really over parties. And we'll just stick on that as just, you know, like, for instance we have was to the news that we have in Italy, what's coming from vacation rentals. So outside the rentals, 55, billions Euro, we're not talking about nothing. I mean, we generate a lot of money from shops from restaurants, you know, analyzing few markets. So we analyze few market, we got all these data's and that's what actually we're going to brought in comments on stage. Gotcha.

Alex Husner  33:09  
So tell us a little bit about the other side of the conference and what what sort of things are done in the evenings or their receptions? Or what is the networking environment we

Annie Holcombe  33:19  
need to pack for nighttime?

Cristiana Carpini  33:22  
Good shoes, girl, I can just say good shoes, because we are in this historical city center. Normally, I mean, this is up to jam Paulo in them. Yeah. And you can join our family to go for beautiful and nice dinner and have a few drinks with us. Why not? Okay.

Alex Husner  33:43  
That sounds great. Well, yeah, we

Damian Sheridan  33:45  
very often have sponsors who do after events, parties and drinks, so we will liaise with them over the coming months. So chances are there'll be one or two events going on official after party events with them. But yeah, you're You're most welcome to come up with the team. Around eautiful Florence as well, it's I don't know if you've been before, guys, but it's one of the most stunning cities in Europe.

Alex Husner  34:11  
We've never even been to Europe. So this will be our first time. Yeah, yeah. So

Annie Holcombe  34:16  
I had the chance. I just started working for next packs. He's a very large channel manager in Europe. And I was able to go to the Netherlands back in April. So that was actually my first trip to Europe. So I got broken in on the long flight. So I'm a little more prepared than Alex. But yeah, we're super excited and really looking forward to meeting people in Italy and Europe and engaging with this business that we is global in nature. We just sometimes take it for granted that we're in our day to day and it's just in our world, but we do have a lot of similarities and learnings to share so excited to be able to present our findings and learnings from over here in America. But what should we Aleksander perspective what else should we be prepared for when we come to Italy,

Cristiana Carpini  35:03  
but nothing is a normal country

Annie Holcombe  35:08  
so comfortable shoes to

Cristiana Carpini  35:10  
go through the normal life so bad words and nice words of course. Yep. You will be such an author. You'll see bullying, exhibitor areas. So you're going around. Of course we all the people are excited about this as you're going around that you can interview them. And they remember when we announced on scalar Italian linkage in that Alex anywhere Academy, I received a few, quite a lot of messages actually during the night. Really, are you joking? We have people come in actually, I had one good friend is actually based property manager in creation she was like, right, so I will do seven hours driving him a little bit more, to be honest. But I have to come to so oh my gosh, that's great. You have new funds in Italy. That's what you can wait.

Alex Husner  36:02  
Well, we will be prepared to beat everybody in chat and get some great interviews, I'm sure we're gonna get some amazing content and learn so much there. But we're super excited. And again, just wanted to say thank you to all of you for the invite. And it's gonna be a great experience for us. And I'm just excited to be part of it. But in the meantime, we've got a few months until then, but if anybody wants to reach out to all of you and learn more about scale and your events and community, what's the best way for them to get more information?

Damian Sheridan  36:31  
We've got various ways. We're all very active on LinkedIn. That's kind of almost like our second homes. We have the the website skill rentals dot show or our community with this community dot scale rentals dot show. And that's pretty much where we're at 24 hours a day. Okay,

Alex Husner  36:48  
great. Awesome. Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to AlexandAnniepodcast.com And thank you all again for joining us today and we will see you in Florence in October.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai