Winning Hospitality Strategies: Aligning Guest Values, Loyalty Programs, and Marketing Efforts with TravelBoom CEO, Pete DiMaio

Speaker 1  0:01  
Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. With more than 35 years combined industry experience. Alex user and any Holcomb have teamed up to connect the dots between inspiration and opportunity, seeking to find the one story idea or strategy or decision that led to their guests big aha moment. Join them as they highlight the real stories behind the people and brands that have built vacation rentals into the $100 billion industry. It is today. And now it's time to get real and have some fun with your hosts, Alex and Annie,

Alex Husner  0:36  
welcome to Alex and Annie the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex and I'm Manny and we are joined today with a repeat visitor. This is actually the fourth repeat of Pete DeMaio. Travel boom, marketing. The thank you so much for coming back to see us again.

Pete DiMaio  0:54  
Absolutely. I'm so excited to be back in the raining repeat champion for now. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  0:59  
I don't know, we have to find a way to like give you an award for that like they do on Saturday Night Live to give you those five timer jackets. So when you get to five times, we're gonna give you some special prize I don't know, again, might be a coffee mug. I don't know.

Pete DiMaio  1:12  
Money is always appreciated as well. Whatever you guys, yeah, well,

Annie Holcombe  1:15  
we're not making any money.

Alex Husner  1:19  
Well, we'll figure something out for you for sure. Well, and we're extra excited to have you back today, Pete because we actually we didn't see you at all on the show and 2023 and 2022. We had a three peat we have three episodes that if you haven't heard these episodes, these are ones we definitely recommend going back to they're just absolutely jam packed with very insightful information, especially for those of you interested in marketing. We had the top six tips for to recession proof your marketing that was in December of 2022. And we'll link to all these in the show notes. We also had the six P's of preparing for the disaster zone, which we talked about how marketing can get ready for hurricanes and different disasters that can happen ahead of time so that you're not scrambling when you're in the danger zone and the top five things that vacation rentals can learn from hotels. So we are extremely excited to have you today. And I think you've got an amazing study that travel Bloom has just implemented for the hotels sentiment study, and a lot of similarities between what you've seen on the hotel side and vacation rentals. We're excited to dive in. But thank you

Pete DiMaio  2:23  
so much. Yeah, this is the first episode, I guess that doesn't have like a Top X number of items. We're changing it up a little bit. But we did do both of those studies, the 2023 leisure travel trends, and then we just came out with the hotelier sentiment study, which is kind of like the sister where we did a little he said she said comparison between what hoteliers are thinking and then compare that to what the guests are thinking and found some pretty cool things in there.

Annie Holcombe  2:46  
So you did the guests study in 2023? You said and then this 120 24 Is this the first time you've done this study? Are you do you do this every so often?

Pete DiMaio  2:54  
So we've done what we call the leisure travel trends study, which is the guest facing side for years. Every year we put that together. This is actually the first year we said let's take those same questions and ask them to the hoteliers themselves in vacation rental managers. In many cases, the questions were verbatim taken from one to the other. In some cases, we reward them a little bit or try to get some insights of what are the stressors that are sitting on a hotel, your shoulders day in and day out.

Alex Husner  3:19  
And just before we get started, Pete, for anybody who hasn't heard your previous episodes, can you just give us a quick bio on your background so everybody knows who it is that's sharing all these insightful talks today.

Pete DiMaio  3:30  
Just a random guy off the street that I've been with Halliburton marketing, which is the name of our company. I'm the CEO with our team here. And we've been in the hospitality space helping Hoteliers and vacation rental properties succeed online. We're a boutique digital marketing agency that really does everything under the sun from a from a hoteliers perspective to help indepent hoteliers, you know me personally, I've been I'm showing my age. This is my 24th year in the travel and hospitality space. So yeah, I've kind of been around the block. I remember doing printing with film all the way to AI generated, you know, PPC images. So I'll go through so I think I've got some good insights to share.

Alex Husner  4:11  
And you've worked with a lot of vacation rental companies to by means of ones that are condo resorts, especially here in the Myrtle Beach area. So you're definitely familiar with our side of the pond too.

Pete DiMaio  4:21  
Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're starting to see more and more of the vacation rental space in the hotel, your space blend together. We were talking before we started recording about how more hotelier years are moving to vacation rental typical marketing avenues and vice versa. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  4:38  
So moving moving back to this this sentiment study that you did just to get kind of things started. What do you think were the biggest takeaways for you from it like maybe some of the biggest surprises or maybe underwhelming surprises, things that you just you know, were already staring you in the face? You just needed confirmation of them? Yeah,

Pete DiMaio  4:53  
there's a couple of big ones. The first one which I don't think we've released probably spent a lot of time on but staffing is still have a huge problem. And I think a lot of the stuff that we'll talk about, there were other key takeaways, kind of go back to staffing and how to kind of help you solve some of those staffing problems with, you know, being a little bit smarter in your marketing. But yeah, I think that's one thing that we're seeing across the board is hoteliers are having a hard time finding the right people in the people who are going to stick around the longest.

Alex Husner  5:20  
And that's definitely happening within the vacation rental space as well. And actually, our sponsor of the show right now is extend team. So I know there'll be happy that we're talking about this topic. But it's definitely still an issue. And I think, you know, for the hotels and resorts, the hospitality businesses, restaurants, they still are facing that challenge more so than vacation rentals, because they have to have that staff that is actually at the property versus so much of the vacation rental site can be remotely done. So definitely a challenge and just being able to get visas and H COVID visas. I know that's been a challenge over the last few years as well getting some of them in but yeah, that's definitely happening on both sides of the aisle. Yeah.

Pete DiMaio  5:56  
And I think it kind of goes down to the economy. And, you know, the inflation, I would say is really what the cause of all that is because we see the guests, both the guests have said that in our earlier study and hoteliers are saying it in this study is that, you know, prices are becoming a frustration point which results in obviously staff wants to get paid more utilities, more expensive hotels have to raise their rates. At the same time, guests are getting frustrated, the rates increasing. With that being said that we are finding that the guests are grumpy, yet accommodating. So they're not happy that they're having to pull out, you know, more money from their wallet. But I think they're saying that it's something that is taking place beyond just the the travel space, but definitely what we should be concerned about, because at a certain point, those prices are going to start becoming bigger hurdle for people who might be a bit tighter in the wallet,

Annie Holcombe  6:49  
I think we're seeing that across the all kind of spheres of travel is that they've had to raise their prices so high. And for a while there was no problem it was every eight people were going to pay whatever they were going to pay because they needed to get out. And some you know, in some places, they had that money that they were given by the government to kind of get back into the economy. So there was there's some of this like not this, I don't know, cognitive dissonance if you will, about what pricing was. And now all of a sudden, it's like it's the pricing has hit every sector of every part of your life. So it's reality. But I think the one thing that I've learned to be true is that regardless of the economy, there's two things that people are always going to do is they're going to play and they're going to pray. So they're going to go to church, they're going to still give money to their church, and they're going to play, they're going to go on their vacation, they're going to be on their sports teams, they're going to do whatever they do. And those are just the two factors that people are always going to do regardless of what the economy does. So that's good for travel and hospitality, but how do you manage it? So it doesn't become a growing piece of friction? Yeah. And I

Pete DiMaio  7:44  
think the other thing too, is when you make sure your marketing is doing everything it possibly can to be efficient. But from your perspective, have you seen length of stays getting reduced? Or are people opting for, you know, in the vacation space, the three bedroom unit versus the four bedroom,

Alex Husner  7:58  
I would say the length of stay has definitely gone down to the booking window has shrunk. I think there's more demand for the larger units now than there used to be. I mean, those are getting booked up well in advance. But it's tough to say. But I think people they're not booking the same way that they used to that the typical Saturday to Saturday model in most markets has gone away. And people want to take more than one vacation a year. And if they're going to do that they can stay for a few days. But then maybe that accommodates that they can do another trip or dad can do a golf trip or something else. But you're right. And even people are always going to travel, we saw that in the worst of times a 2009 and other bad times over the last 10 years or so that I've been in this business. But people will always still take a vacation, they'll cut where they can. And I think in a lot of cases, that guy that gets down to the restaurants and attractions and things like that, that they actually ended up taking a big hit.

Pete DiMaio  8:48  
Yeah, that's where you have to pull out your wallet a lot more often on a vacation is every time you go out to eat every time you go to an attraction or wherever it might be. I think that's a real concern.

Annie Holcombe  8:58  
You mentioned marketing. And so kind of going into like, you know, what people need to be doing for the marketing and a lot of people got away from in on the vacation rental side they got away from and didn't have to use the OTAs. But now we're kind of seeing that reverse itself and go back to what it was kind of pre pandemic, when there wasn't this overwhelming demand for all these markets, there's actually more inventory than there is demand. And so it's really about making sure that you're positioned, well, you're in the right places, and then people are using more OTAs and they have in the last couple of years. But what are you seeing on the hotel side of it

Pete DiMaio  9:27  
the same thing where the OTAs are such a behemoth and they've built in a credible mousetrap both in terms of data collection, their loyalty programs and the breadth of services that they can offer. I think when you look at things like one key, which you know, VRBO and Expedia and all them kind of rolled out together. It makes it a really compelling story for a guest to want to book to the OTA but it can be very expensive to I think you know, hoteliers have to understand that it's a major part of their marketing efforts needs to be in the OTA. is to have a presence there. But you also have to have a presence outside of that. Because you know, while you're getting business from them, you're also competing against the OTAs on meta search, on paid search on communication, even back to your guest history that may have originally come through an OTA. And I think like you mentioned, there's a lot of people who do multiple vacations a year, not always to the same place. So if you're an independent property, they're booking through Expedia, one time on a vacation, and then booking directly with you, you've got competition to get that guest back to the property. So definitely hotels are seeing OTAs being a heavier weight on their their marketing budgets. One thing that we found in the study specifically is just kind of set it up, it was about 50 responses total. So it was a relatively small study, but it was all owners of either independent properties, vacation rental companies or principals within multi property management companies. And what we found is of all the properties we surveyed, the average OTA commission was 16.3%, which I think is actually a little bit down. I think we're talking about that prior and yeah, a little bit lower than you expected. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  11:03  
yeah, definitely definitely was, but it speaks to the mix, it just speaks to the mix of and that there's more people playing in that space that are bringing it down. And again, giving these people more opportunity to be in front of more people.

Alex Husner  11:15  
Yeah. And even when you take the vacation rental OTAs that are typically less than what a hotel is paying Expedia or booking when you factor in, if you're paying a channel commission or anything else, I mean, that's probably about right, if you look at a property management business that's doing VRBO, Airbnb Expedia, booking some of the other ones that are there. But the one thing that I've noticed over the years, too, I don't feel like the vacation rental management companies are as critical of the OTAs necessarily, because of the cost the commission that they're paying, it's because of the just difficulty that they have working with them and not being able to talk directly to the guests. And, you know, those are things that hotels have had to deal with for the long haul. And, you know, I think some do a great job of being able to capture that guests information, when they come stay at the property, some kind of do a, you know, it's somewhere in the middle kind of approach or effort to get that information. But we know that's super important. I mean, if you're gonna get the guests from one time from the OTA, you want them to come back to you the next time, especially if you're in a destination that people do come back year after year. But I think you know, the way that the OTAs are taking that commission out, they're taking it out before you get paid. So it's not like you're writing a check to verbo and Airbnb every month, it's you're getting paid by them, quote, unquote, paid. So that amount really kind of gets swept under the rug. And, you know, to see that you found that the average hotel with 166 units, is spending almost $400,000 in OTA commissions, my God, I mean, to take even half of that and put that into direct booking efforts would be very impactful.

Pete DiMaio  12:51  
Yeah. And kind of where we came to that number was both of our own data and some some good third party data. But we figured an average of 16.3% commission from OTAs, the average property that we surveyed had 166 rentable units, okay, so kind of keep that in mind. As we talk about things, the average occupancy for all hotels across the US as of 2023, was 66%. So most places have a much higher occupancy rate. And then the average ADR for a hotel room across the US in 23 was $148. Again, from a vacation rental space, that's gonna be significantly higher. But when you do the math on that it comes up to $388,000 per year in OTA commissions alone. And Alex to your point that doesn't include channel connectivity, or anything that goes along with getting your rate to the OTA. So your The question becomes is with that 33 180 8000 or round up to 400,000, what can a vacation rental company or hotelier do to take that and still make best use of the OTAs but not necessarily give them the booking the second and third time and Hoteliers and everybody really has to be really really really careful about how they're communicating with guests. The moment they get a booking, reaching out and getting them part of that email database so that you can have that relationship with you know, Alex's amazing vacation rental company Yeah, yeah, first is oh, I don't remember where I booked it from it it was on Expedia yeah Google somewhere

Annie Holcombe  14:17  
yeah, but you were gonna say versus Annie's OTA and then I was gonna be

Alex Husner  14:22  
that would be the best OTA

Annie Holcombe  14:25  
everybody would want to use

Alex Husner  14:28  
Yeah, now that's a good point are you think I'm curious? For the hotels that are really making an effort to make sure that they get that guests email once they book when they get them into their database and their email marketing platform? Are they segmenting those guests outs separately so that they have different communication with them? Post stay that might be a little bit of a different communication method or cadence?

Pete DiMaio  14:50  
So some do I don't think as many are doing that as they should be. Yeah, because you know, once someone books that's a great time you You do have the ability to email that guest directly through, you know, OTAs, you know, so starting that communication and getting it back and forth, you don't necessary want to take away that booking. But you do want to remind the guest post stay. Hey, did you know on your next step, your trip booked direct, and since your past guest receive 16.3% off your rate, whatever you want to call it, because you had that ability, where you don't take that money back from the OTA, get it back to the guests in terms of smart marketing or value add to them? Yeah,

Alex Husner  15:28  
I think there's a lot that can be done in that. I know, in my experience, we always, we had it set up as different segments, they eventually got added back into the greater pool, but just the communication that will go out a few days after they stayed of, you know, trying to educate them more about booking direct that. Yeah, it's it's a big opportunity, I think, to really focus on that this year

Pete DiMaio  15:48  
into the one thing I think you on that point when you mentioned, like email, communications and drip campaigns, is, to me, one of the most important ones is your guests, your booking anniversary message, to have the email go out to a guest 30 days prior to the anniversary of their previous booking. So most people take a vacation in the summer, if you see you're getting summer bookings that came through an OTA letting that person know, before they typically make a booking, to put yourself back in that decision set is a great opportunity for something that's going to cost pennies on the dollar compared to waiting passively for that guest to come to you via an OTA. Yeah,

Alex Husner  16:25  
exactly. And that should be automated. And I think that's one thing I've definitely seen in the last couple months of talking with managers that they are not, they're using, like Constant Contact or MailChimp. And they're downloading lists from their PMS and uploading lists. And it's extremely manual process. There are services out there with it within vacation rentals that are connected to the property management system, that those are definitely things that you want to have automated so that you never have to think about it. But it just becomes a really nice recurring revenue. Yeah,

Pete DiMaio  16:55  
I would say all this as the OTAs are a great partner for hoteliers, and vacation rental companies. They are not the bad guy. And I think sometimes I kind of could be perceived as kind of having a bad rap against the OTAs. And I don't think that's kind of how I feel. I really feel like if you're using them smartly, you're using that to get access to a massive database or audience, you're getting new guests. But then what are you doing to get those guests to become your future repeat guest? And I think that's really where the OTA power lies. I agree.

Annie Holcombe  17:22  
So one of the big topics that has come up, I think they're they did some sessions at Vermont in the spring. And then I know I think there was some conversations, the dorm conference maybe was about the loyalty programs within the channels and loyalty programs have been hotels have been doing it for a very long time. I mean, the most powerful one out there is like the Marriott bonvoy program. I mean, they've done a really great job. And they did a good job incorporating their vacation rental component into that. But how does a small property manager you were saying that the other your average of this study was less than 200 units? So someone who has a hotel that's less than 200? Units? How can they create a loyalty program cost effectively and feel like you know, they're not throwing money to the wind, I would

Pete DiMaio  18:05  
say this is looking at the things that are actually most important for a loyalty program. And when you take the word loyalty, you're thinking, Oh, repeat guests, repeat guests. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  18:13  
because it's really just about choosing your brand over somebody else's, it doesn't necessarily mean it always choosing that brand for every vacation. It's just when you're going to the market, it's the brand. Yeah,

Pete DiMaio  18:24  
so what we found is actually really interesting is that when people are looking to book or join a loyalty program, it is instant discount was the most important thing, you know, so if I'm staying in a property one time, and if I can become a member of their loyalty program and save 10%, on joining that loyalty program immediately. So independent properties, that's great. I mean, you're able to deliver the most important thing from a loyalty program, you know, followed up by free perks and benefits. Again, it's something that is a great thing that any property, vacation rental, or hotel, whomever might be, if you're a member, and someone checks into your vacation rental, and there's a deluxe welcome gift waiting for them, because they remember that alone is more than enough to get them on your loyalty program. Yeah,

Alex Husner  19:08  
I mean, think about how many websites that you go to that you're gonna buy something and you get that pop up that if you sign up for their text messages, or their emails, you get an immediate discount on what you're buying. And I do that all the time. Well, but in a lot of cases, I ended up not actually going through with purchasing what I was going to buy. And then now I'm still on that email list, right? So it's like, it's also a great way just to get emails whether the person ends up booking or not. But that's an area that I very rarely see vacation rental companies doing. They're promoting to either join a loyalty club or to join their newsletter list or whatever it may be. But there's no immediate discount on that. And I think you can do a promo code or something to give the guest email them a link to go back to book I think that's highly valuable.

Pete DiMaio  19:51  
Yes, are clamoring for these loyalty programs because like you said, you've been trained by your shopping habits to join these programs to get the best deal what we found is in 2020 to 45% of travelers were compelled by loyalty programs. Last year in 2023, that number was 68%. So more and more and more people are saying, hey, sign me up for loyalty program, if I get a better deal, or I get more of a VIP level of service, so anybody can do that. And that's the cool thing. But unfortunately, people aren't hotels, vacation companies, has done a poor job of making that happen. I think

Alex Husner  20:26  
most stay on the sidelines, if they are only in one destination, thinking that that's a prerequisite to be able to have loyalties that you've got other places to send guests. And well, that works great. If you do, you can still do it. Without that you can do it from a sole location, just knowing that they're not going to come back every single year. But to Andy's point, if they choose you every time they go back there, it's worked.

Pete DiMaio  20:49  
The data says that people don't mind they'll use it for a single purchase. So take advantage of that. We'll

Alex Husner  20:54  
be back in just a minute after a word from our premier brand sponsor, extend team.

Ad  20:58  
My name is Jane field, I work for Del Mar vacations and manage the Guest Services Department. And we just started using extend team in the first week in January of 24. So we're a pretty small local company here on Cape Cod and all of our staff is local, we have up to 400 houses that we manage, and we need to be available 24/7 for any guests that are in house and any problems that they're experiencing so that they can call us and we were having a hard time with staffing to be able to provide that coverage. You know, we have a lot of inquiries that come in, especially from like Airbnb at night. Guests are looking to book pretty instantaneously. And if we're not responding to them pretty quickly, real time, we're less likely to get them to book because I think they're just looking to book right then and there. So now we have somebody that can answer any questions or anything coming through very quickly and get bookings for us, which is good. And then like I said, she's also helping with some administrative tasks that we in the office just don't have time to do throughout the day to day. Since working with extended team, it's helped us provide after hours coverage to in house guests and also be able to help ensure that we can get bookings all day long, and that guests aren't waiting for communication from us. You know, until the next business day, which is really helped us.

Annie Holcombe  22:33  
The best news is extend team has an exclusive offer just for listeners of Alex and Annie 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  22:51  
It was interesting to in this study or the guest side, you've got things that are most important to guests on what types of offers that they like to see. And the stay three get one free 70%. So that would be influential in their state or in their booking process. I thought that was really interesting. We see sales all the time. And it's like 25% 35% 45% At some point, it's like of what I mean, if you're just raising the rate to be able to offer a huge amount those offers get really stale. But just thinking as I was reading the study, I was thinking about it from my own perspective, if I was going on a vacation, I mean, like to get an extra day somewhere. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that's that's actually a good offer that that would make me book too.

Pete DiMaio  23:30  
Well, it's all about ABX testing. I mean, one thing we always say is abt always be testing. And I think that is one of those ones. Where is it? 25 is a 20% discount better than a book four nights get the fifth night free, your customer might be a little bit different. They might be like, Oh, absolutely, that's fantastic. Other people who are booking a shorter length of stay might be like, I'd rather have 20% It's the same deal. But what resonates,

Annie Holcombe  23:52  
here's the question for you,

Alex Husner  23:54  
I know vacation rentals this comes up a lot now to have in there's different services that do this, but reaching out to the guest if you've got an additional night before after their stay to get them to extend. Are you seeing that hotels are doing that? I don't know that I've ever had a hotel reached out to me in that capacity.

Pete DiMaio  24:10  
I think they should I don't see it as often as I would like personally, particularly if you're looking at your revenue looking at your occupancy and you know, a little mix so we can't have a podcast without saying AI least once but looking at the data and saying wait a minute, this room is available for the next day. Yeah, you know, reaching out to that guests say hey, I'll give it to you for whatever you want because empty is harder than the vacation rental side where people have this you're kind of feel like you're more locked in in terms of I

Alex Husner  24:37  
think it's I think it's probably harder on the hotel side because if they're in even the condo resorts if they're assigning the room the day of check in now they've got to really quickly be able to reach out to the guests to tell them you know, you could extend your stay for an additional part at the end of the trip but with vacation rentals if you know you've got several days ahead of that that are going to be open. It's it's worth it. In a lot of cases

Annie Holcombe  24:58  
I've stayed with hotel And mostly on the brain, I'll say on the brand side were part of a loyalty group and they text you to like, give you your key to check in. And they'll you can check in like two to three days in advance. And if you check in like, then they'll send you a message that says, like, Oh, your room is available for early check in, and they'll but you have to pay for it. Like they're selling you extra services. So I think like, vacation rentals can really take advantage of that part of it. And I do feel like vacation rentals are doing a better job at communicating with the guests with technology versus hotels, I think a lot of hotels, especially in an IT space, they're still really dependent on sending an email. And if you send an email, who's gonna read it, like there's no, there's no call to action for somebody to get click on that email right away. Whereas if you're texting them, or you're working through an app, which a lot of the vacation rental space works through app technology to handle like, guest communication, guests, check in guest keys, all the stuff that they're doing. So I think vacation rentals could teach this is where vacation rentals can teach the hotel side? Yeah.

Alex Husner  25:58  
Yeah, texts plays a big role in that for sure.

Pete DiMaio  26:00  
Yeah, I think that's what we saw in the study is, you know, people are not investing enough in emerging technologies and kind of how they can automate their way out of the staffing problems that they have, you know, can you have that automated tax? Can you do it in a way where you it makes your life easier, so you can do more with less, which kind of solves the first crime we talked about, which is rising costs and harder to find stuff.

Alex Husner  26:21  
Yeah. Another thing that I thought was interesting was about the revenue management component that I've thought that all hotels have been doing AI and dynamic pricing on revenue management. But as from the looks at the study, it looks like many of them are not, I

Pete DiMaio  26:36  
was super surprised at this one. So when we ask them kind of what technology are they rolling out? What we found is a relatively small portion, we're using AI driven rate management strategies. They were just they might have obviously rate strategies. But a lot of it was much more manual than I think we expected. And keep in mind, we're talking to a lot of independent hoteliers in this case. So you they may what we did find is the cohort of the study that was a multi Property Group or larger properties, they were much more likely to have more advanced revenue management strategies, which you'd expect smaller properties has some catching up to do. But yes, I think, you know, rate management strategies, loyalty programs, social media advocacy, there's so many things from a technology perspective that hoteliers really haven't aggressively adopted, that would make a lot of sense. I think the vacation rentals have done a little bit better job of that maybe

Annie Holcombe  27:28  
I think it was for vacation rentals. Was that a necessity? Like, there was just we had to do it. And we just were falling so far behind hospitality in general, we had to catch up and I think we ran past some levels.

Pete DiMaio  27:40  
Talk about the thing that vacation rental really has over hotels that we found in the study as well, and that was the misalignment of some of the amenities. So to me this was the craziest thing of the entire study. We like said this is a he said she said study from the leisure study we did earlier in the 2003 study we did guest said an in room kitchen or in suite kitchen was one of the top three amenities that they wanted 39, almost 40% of the guests said that they wanted that top three minutes, we asked hoteliers? What are the top three amenities your guest want. Only 11% said that a kitchen was important at all. It's a massive miss communication between. Yeah, I mean, if you're a hotel, and you have a kitchen, or you can include, you know, some type of kitchen like amenity on remodels and stuff you need to do that vacation rentals in that space

Alex Husner  28:33  
right now. They're probably thinking that way, the ones that don't have kitchens, and just being cautiously optimistic that hopefully guests don't want this because good. We don't have it now. But yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And it totally loops back to what we talked about earlier in the episode that I mean, if guests are having to spend more on their accommodations, they're going to have to pull back somewhere. So if you can at least cook breakfast and lunch in the room that saves for a family. I mean, that can be a lot of money that you could put into doing other things on the trip. Yep,

Pete DiMaio  29:04  
exactly. And I think that I think it does as well is the price of everything is going up, we know the price of accommodations are going up. If you can offer those guests an amenity that your competitor set does not have that can help actually save them money. If you can say to them, yes, this room is increased 20%. But we have an in suite kitchen where you can prepare your breakfast if you want to, or little stuff, you know, throw some microwave popcorn in the microwave, little things that you can do to help save those costs and you educate the guests while your prices are going up. You're also now adding more value to make you more of a trusted solution for their vacation. Yeah, for sure.

Annie Holcombe  29:39  
Since you do deal on the hotel side of it. And we actually interviewed Susan berry from top floor podcast this week and we talked to her about the creep of vacation rentals in the hotel space and vice versa. And so like as you know, for a while it was the hotels just acted like I'm the case rentals. They're not they they are not affecting me at all. And the vacation rentals were like we're here. You know we're here. Part of this business we want to be part of this. And COVID just completely up ended that whole CES, that whole belief that they were two completely separate in the eyes of the consumer, the consumer started to see to your point like kitchens, Oh, I get a kitchen and I get a separate living room and a bedroom and maybe two bathrooms, like, they started to see the benefit of it. And so now it's the hotels are finally realizing, Oh, my God, they're here. They're not going anywhere. And I don't know that it's necessarily like they're getting along. But they know they have to coexist. And there's the brands are starting to step into that space, they're wanting to be more in the vacation rental space. Because as we joke about all the time, it's where the cool kids are, let's face it, everybody's here. Everybody wants to be part of it. But from your perspective with talking with your accountant, your partners that you work with, what is their take on what vacation rentals mean to their business and their success in their business and potentially the threat of their business?

Pete DiMaio  30:53  
That's an interesting question. And I don't know if I can actually answer that directly. Because I think everyone's a little bit different based on their amenity set, a lot of the properties that we have that are more condominium sized properties, you know, they can lean in on that, because they do have that amenity set. I mean, you look at what some of the brands are doing, like with home, two suites, and the other, more extended living S type properties add, you know, little kitchen area and things like that are really booming. So I think hotels are seeing that they need to get in that space. The other thing I'll say too, is we look at what New York City did recently, I think it was in December, they really put their foot down on Airbnb ease, largely at the request of major hoteliers, who are seeing people say, hey, there's another opportunity for me to stay in New York without the hotel experience, I get little extra space. And you know, it's it's definitely a changing environment. I think hotels need to adapt,

Annie Holcombe  31:49  
which to that I saw some interesting studies that New Jersey, because of that New Jersey is seeing the highest demand increase in vacation rentals of any market in the US directly relate that to that shut off of things in New York because people still wanted to come, they still wanted to stay in that type of unit. So again, it goes back to like there's a customer out there for both types of inventory. And you know, does it say that maybe the hotel world has overdeveloped in some areas? I don't know, question for their development teams, I would imagine.

Pete DiMaio  32:22  
Yeah. And we're working on some some additional studies, talking to guests about different types of accommodations that they like, that's gonna be a kind of a future study for this year. But I know even just anecdotally, when we go on vacation as a family, if it's an overnight hotels a great choice. If it's a couple days, we're absolutely doing a vacation rental type property because the two kids and you know, my wife and I it's like, we just need a little space. You know, we cannot sit in a 300 square foot hotel room.

Alex Husner  32:54  
I can't when people have done that all these years.

Pete DiMaio  32:58  
Later, listen to your dad, nor oh my

Alex Husner  33:00  
gosh, I can't take it. Yeah. Yeah, and Airbnb is definitely going hard right now on those commercials that you see him just everywhere of, you know, basically saying exactly what you just described of why would you stay in a hotel room when you can rent this larger space with all the extra amenities there. So but you know, I think it comes down to your point to that when I travel, if I'm traveling for business, or if it's just my husband and I yeah, I like I like a hotel, I like a hotel that has a restaurant and that I can call downstairs, if I need something. I like having that service. But if it's, you know, something where we want to be able to cook and there's more of us a vacation rental. Makes sense. And people just have to have those choices. At the end of the day. I mean, it's going to take something away from the hotels, but if it elevates the destination, if it makes people come back to that destination more eventually, I feel like it all kind of goes together. And it helps everybody. So yeah,

Pete DiMaio  33:51  
I kind of wrap it up with saying that if you're being a true innkeeper, and you're thinking about the guests needs and trying to do everything you can to give them an amazing experience, you have to come to the realization that both vacation rentals and hotels have a very important role. And honestly, there's no reason that you can't have both in the same building like a lot of condominiums type properties house.

Alex Husner  34:12  
Yeah, that's very true. Well, that was a super interesting study. And we will link to it in the show notes. I would highly recommend everybody go over and check it out. There's a lot more information within it and great statistics, but we wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to throw a question out there for you, Pete that I get this often we got it through listener of the show recently and it actually prompted me to pitch this as a presentation for vrma that by the time this airs, it'll already have happened but we'll be in New Orleans, about what things in marketing should be done in house versus what should be outsourced. And I've seen many different ways of looking at this scenario. And you know, I think there's a lot of considerations that come into play based on the size of the company the growth goals. You know what type of staff that they currently have, what initiatives are they trying to bring on? That would be outside of that skill set. But I wanted to get your take on it from the hotel side of, you know, what, what makes sense for taking, like the average property that we talked about from the revenue standpoint earlier? 166 units? What makes sense to keep in house? And what makes sense to outsource?

Pete DiMaio  35:20  
Yeah, that's an interesting question. And I'm glad you asked me that in advance of the podcast because I'd say the tough one. It's the my answer kind of came back down to what we just talked about being an innkeeper will whatever marketing you keep in house prevent you from being a great innkeeper, if you spend your time saying, I'm going to become a pay per click campaign expert, and you're in your back office doing that? What's happening to really the reason that you're in business? And do you think you can effectively do that? Even if you say, I'm going to hire a full time person for PPC or this and try to do that all in house? The question becomes is, Are you hiring the best person for that job?

Alex Husner  36:00  
Right?

Pete DiMaio  36:01  
Working, actually doing the best they can, I would say, do kind of like a crawl, walk run to figure out what you actually can do? You know, it might make a lot of sense to Well, first, I'd say your organic social, keep that in house as long as you possibly can. Yeah, yeah. Remember, if you've ever watched Billy Madison, where he tells a kid to stay in school, as long as you can, you can stay as long as you can. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true for social media is when you outsource your social media too quickly, you end up losing authenticity, from organic perspective, hey, absolutely, there's experts who do it every day, you're not going to do as well as they do outsource that. Make sure you're staying organic and authentic with with social, it is so so so important, and you don't want necessarily lose the connectivity with your guest. Because you hand that off to somebody, things like your SEO campaigns or PPC campaigns, there's people who do it every day, and they do really, really well, you have a hard time competing against them. And it might be more expensive for you to try to keep it in house than to just pay whatever the commission rate is for somebody to do it the right way and give you a lower cost per click. But yeah, there's always the option if you're a smaller property, and we see some success with this with consultants is have somebody come in, get your stuff set up for you, and then have a quick, you know, monthly meeting or whatever it might be, you have your small property, it's gonna be hard to afford paying someone to do everything for you. But maybe you can kind of find some hybrid solution. Yeah,

Alex Husner  37:26  
that's definitely what I've seen too. And I think, you know, one of the biggest mistakes that companies make is, initially, they'll hire somebody that they assume is just going to be this all in one marketing person that can do everything. And that's not the case. I mean, marketing spans such a wide gamut of so many different disciplines, that you're not going to find somebody that can do all those things. But you do need to find somebody that has a smart head on their shoulders understands the greater picture of the brand and the goals of the company, and can bring the right people to the table. And what I've seen just most recently, now, the vacation Well, companies that are doing the best and doing like, you know, I would say really well leading their market, they all have a fairly high level marketing executive within the business that is overseeing the work of some part, internal team and part things that are outsourced, if I had to come up with the perfect org chart for a company that I think is what you would aspire to have, in lieu of that. I mean, if hiring a you know, top tier marketing executive is just not in the budget, you know, a strategist consultant, of course, that makes sense, come in and figure out what things can still be done by the team that you have, and then teach the company how to really hold the vendors accountable, and your and your internal team accountable of what are the things that they need to be doing? How are they measuring it back to you in terms of it's not just busy work, but it's actually, you know, growth in revenue generating a lot of companies, I think marketing ends up becoming a support arm of the business and not at an arm of growth and innovation, I think you've got to have a support. I mean, for us, the listing management is a big deal of descriptions for all the OTAs. And we just onboarding a property is a typically follows on marketing side. And that can be a lot of work. But you know, that eventually is going to generate revenue when they get bookings on the channels. But marketing should have some time that's allocated to looking for things that other companies in the market are not doing, you know, where are the blank spaces?

Pete DiMaio  39:24  
A lot of times this is we talked about how independent properties are having a harder time adopting AI based rate management, things like that, is because if they're doing something that works, they're not trying to find the next thing, right. Yeah. If you're a PPC expert, you know that Google has been rolling out the ability to create AI generated images to go along with your pay per click campaign is an independent vacation rental management company going to go down that rabbit hole and realize that it's okay sometimes but sometimes those images are just horrific and you don't ever want to go that way. Yeah. If you do things right, and you do have a good agency partner and I'm saying this is a the agency partner meiotic, right, you should have a better return on your investment using an agency, then try and do everything in house. Yeah. But you also have to make sure that you have the goal setting, and you have a solid analytics platform to hold them accountable. Because they need to be able to prove to you 24/7, hey, you're you may have spent 20% commission on this pay per click campaign, but you had a lower cost per click, your return on adspend was significantly higher. And all of our other metrics are in the right direction that you couldn't have done otherwise. I think it's

Annie Holcombe  40:34  
also just being again, the accountability, but just really being able to have those analytics, that you can do all the things and sometimes people just say, like, well, I didn't get the booking. So they're generally they're looking at everything with it's the booking, I need the booking if I don't get the booking. And yeah, that's the end of the day, that's what you want. But there's all these other factors that go into play. And when you're, when you're fighting against, you know, a market like Myrtle Beach or Panama City Beach, you've got 1000s and 1000s of operators in the market, that the noise to the consumer is ridiculous. So you have to make sure that you're standing on it. So you can if you can prove that you're getting more clicks to your page, and you know, maybe getting more calls to your, your reservation center. Like that's what people need. And I think as a as an operator, sometimes they don't get the analytics back from their providers, and they need to make sure that they're asking for good reporting, so they know what they're getting out of what they're putting out. And everything

Alex Husner  41:22  
has to be part of that connected strategy. So one of the slides that I have for this presentation is about that marketing flywheel. And when each different part of the flywheel operates in its own lane or silo, and I see this a lot, that companies will have different vendors performing different parts of the work. And none of it is being communicated together in that connected strategy. And it's like, okay, you're doing all those things. And yes, I mean, they might be able to report back to you that is generating X amount of revenue, but they're very disconnected in terms of you know, what the overall goal is, and going back to what we talked about earlier today, and it's about trying to get more business to your brand, even if you get them on the OTAs, you want to be able to get them back through the next the next time. Or if they book direct through, you want to get them to book direct through you again. So really having that connected to a strategy related to the communication and cadence with that guest is important. And so many factors. I mean, the website, your pictures, I mean, there's so many things that you could have the best marketing in the world. But if you don't have the other elements in place a call center great reservation agents, then none of the efforts are going to be as fruitful as as they can be. So yeah, it's a it's a lot to it's a lot to look at. But it's a lot of fun, too.

Pete DiMaio  42:35  
Oh, absolutely. I think what you said is probably the most important thing is you're not gonna do everything in house. But if you can have that marketing, executive type role, who is with you through thick and thin, and can help manage all of the clowns in the circus? Yeah, exact same things. And I think you, you really do have the best of both worlds. Because some things you can do in house, you can crank out an email if you need to in house, whatever. But having somebody to coordinate, everything is so important that really should be in house.

Alex Husner  43:04  
And I am sure you would agree with this. I mean, agencies like to have a point of contact that is going to be active and working with them to I mean, like that just makes it a better, in most cases, a better arrangement for both sides. Because now the agencies getting more feedback, they're not having to wait a long time to get approvals on things. And campaigns can just execute a lot more effectively that way.

Pete DiMaio  43:26  
Yeah, it's cheaper, because you have someone to hold that agency's feet to the fire and say, Wait a minute, we met last month. And you guys were saying don't do this, this and this, the analytics and data suggests that you didn't, that's not necessarily a problem. But let's understand why let's Yeah, make sure that they're moving in the same direction that you need them to?

Alex Husner  43:43  
Absolutely. Well, we could probably dedicate a whole episode to that. It's a deep process, but certainly recommend travel boom, for anything related to the SEO, PPC, digital marketing space, you guys do a phenomenal job. So we'll make sure to connect everybody after and if anybody wants to reach out to you directly, though, Pete, what's a great way for them to

Pete DiMaio  44:05  
reach you probably the best way is definitely on LinkedIn. I'm at Pete DeMaio. There, but you can find us at travel boom. marketing.com is where you find everything needed about travel boom, as well as how to contact us and whatnot. And then also if you're going to travel Boom marketing.com/hotelier You can download that study that we've talked about today. And it's free. And you

Alex Husner  44:25  
have an amazing podcast that's on that website that people can access as well. We do.

Pete DiMaio  44:29  
We have the hotel marketing podcast, which is getting into its I think, depending on when this episode is releasing, we'll have the 258 episode out and

Annie Holcombe  44:42  
so we're nipping on your heels. Pete, we're

Pete DiMaio  44:46  
back on our podcast and Alex, I know you've been on our winner once or twice, but

Alex Husner  44:51  
yeah, yeah. And we'd love to come back. We'd love to come back.

Pete DiMaio  44:54  
It's fun. It helps me become a better marketer. I think and you guys probably say the same thing is if you're talking about this stuff you really have to know it and be able to convey it to your clients and everybody else. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  45:04  
I just got to ask lots of questions. So I like yeah, my curiosity is always piqued by stuff. So I love this.

Alex Husner  45:10  
Awesome. Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Andy, you know, you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com Thank you so much for tuning in everybody.