After the Applause: Real Takeaways from VRMA 2025 with Tim Rosolio, Ela Mezhiborsky, and Jessica Gillingham

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie,: the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex and I'm Annie, and we are doing a little bit of a recap today. So we were at vrma International in Vegas, and we are looking back on some of the amazing people that we spoke to and that we wanted to continue the conversation when we got home. So we have none other than Tim Rosolio, oh, with VRBO, Vrbo, Expedia group, however you want to say it. And so excited to see you again.

Tim Rosolio  
Tim, yeah. Great to see you. And then whenever people do the VRBO homeway Expedia group thing, I always think, like, we still have a lot to do to clean up our brand

Alex Husner  
situations. And like, in this in the same conversations, sometimes I call it verbo. Sometimes I say VRBO. It's like, it's I can't keep it's tough. So yeah,

Tim Rosolio  
the concept of VRBO no longer exists, but where we're it's taking time to coach our travelers and partners that that's the case now. Fun fact, VRBO stands for vacation rental by owner, and one of the reasons that we changed it to VRBO was, you know, we're so tied to the property management community that we thought we felt like that. The acronym no longer is applicable at all. So

Alex Husner  
yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, that's the best intro about this. Because I think people have actually wondered about that for years. And about that for years, and I don't know if anybody's explained it the way that you just did. So mic drop moment,

Annie Holcombe  
you are coming to us from Rome today, so you've been quite the jet setter since Verma, but wanted to go back, and we had some conversations there about the show and kind of what the association meant to to verbo and to your team, the supply team, as you pointed out to us that you handle the supply, why don't you tell us a little bit about how the show ended up being for you and your team, and kind of maybe some takeaways from the conference? Yeah, I

Tim Rosolio  
think, I mean, the biggest thing for me with Verma is listen like the contents good. The speakers are good. That's great. But, you know, I like the quote that people do business with people, and there's not a better place for me to see all the people that I want to do business with, that at Verma. And that sort of is not just, not just for me, but for my directors and managers and all of our individual contributors, their account managers. It's an amazing place to have a dialog with, with some of the biggest accounts that are in their portfolios, with all the great things that we have rolling out now, is a really captive time to do that. So that's the, that's the, you know, the main thing that is value about Verma for for verbo, and then beyond that, I think it's just important that we have these associations that come together and really band together as a regulatory body, because we know that the hotel community is very well organized, and we need to be organized too. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
absolutely. And so, okay, you've traveled across the world now. You were in Australia last week, and now you're in Rome. So, I mean, from your perspective, like, what's the difference at these shows? Like, what's or what are the similarities on the same side? Yeah, I think

Tim Rosolio  
you know, what's interesting is there's across all three super regions, a high degree of camaraderie, a high degree of people really looking to not really view each other as like, cut through competitors. Everybody's saying we're in this game together. A lot of great best practice sharing. I think that probably in all three regions, it's one of these situations where you see some of the same vendors that are the ones that have really become mature players that service our industry. And then you see some interesting startups. And we all know that, you know, with the startups, some of them will be the mature players that we'll see in every region in a few years, and some of them also might not exist so, but it's always interesting to see what sort of unique ideas are out there. I would say the just like the, I don't even know how to put it, like the the vibe in the different regions is, is very different. Like here in Europe, it's very buttoned up, very, I don't know if it's any more institutionalized than it would be in America, but it's, it feels more formal versus like, you know, you know, our buddies in America, it's very, it's very Hawaiian shirt wearing. It's sec, it's SEC country crowd.

Annie Holcombe  
Well, we like the SEC go gamers. So Tim wanted to ask you, you mentioned, kind of the hot thing about the good thing about Verma is like regulatory and getting together to kind of have a good voice, have a strong voice. And so are you seeing now that you've been in three super regions, are you seeing that same issue as kind of a way to bring people together, as the regulatory discussion and how people. Are advocating for the industry is at large in each one of these regions? Yeah,

Tim Rosolio  
I think people are banding together. I think the the approaches in the different regions are quite a bit different. I think that here in Europe, the regulatory environment, I would actually say, is perhaps a little more intense than it is in America. However, it's less fragmented. There's more like, data sharing across the EU which enables at least like for us as OTAs, in terms of like, how we process all of this information and do D lists that people want, if regulatory environments want us to like we have the ability to do that, but it's definitely more intense. And then the big thing in Australia is actually a little bit, I was connecting the dots a little bit to some of the stuff we saw in Colorado A few years ago, where the whole thing's taxes. It's about, how do the tax rates that you know that go towards the commercial operators are really at commercial rates, not what you would think of traditionally as residential rates, and as such, the way I think about it is like somebody needs to pay for it, either the either the property managers no longer going to be wrongful or they'll pass it on to the guests. And I always question whether that's the right end game for a regulator that's trying to make money, because I think all you might be doing is curtailing the growth of the industry,

Alex Husner  
right? Yeah, I have two questions. The first one's maybe just a quicker one, but second one a little bit different as far as verbose distribution worldwide. I mean, like, how much of the business is in the US versus everywhere else,

Tim Rosolio  
public company stuff, probably can't give you exact percentages, but certainly listen Expedia. Expedia is a brand that was founded in America. VRBO is a brand that was founded in America. Both of those companies were developed via M and A we. Verbo bought a retail and famous direct in Europe. Verbo bought stays and book a batch in Australia. So there's like established brands and then similarly, Expedia is a global company with hotels.com What if, and a variety of other channels, you know, I would say that one thing that makes Expedia particularly relevant, international, though, is the B to B network. So this is an example where we probably have the strongest at least, in the hotel space thus far, coming to vacation rentals will be how we distribute our partners supply on channels that aren't necessarily our own, I mean, and some are really big brands, like, I mean, Delta Airlines is America one, but Revolut is a big one. In Europe, there's major financial institutions and airlines in Asia that we power a lot of their the supply that they sell. So that's one of the ways that we've been able to drive a lot of relevancy outside of America. And the good news is, if we bring that captive demand via B to B, it helps our domestic brands more, because if I go to a property manager and I say, we're going to deliver you all of these bookings on a third party site that exists in Asia, and they give us some sort of interesting promotion, well, that promotion we also get for our native brands in that region as well. So it's sort of some of the, some of the the the power that we've put together with the B to C brands and the B to B distribution environment.

Alex Husner  
Gotcha. Okay. And then the second question was, because we talked about this at V RMA, was similar to the distribution and how things are changing, as far as properties that are on verbo, how they are now able to get, you know, represented differently on Expedia and some of the other channels. And I think Annie, you had a question to Tim about that we were at the show, but maybe tell us a little bit about what, what's changed on that side.

Tim Rosolio  
Yeah, so listen, I think everybody that's in the industry knows that we've been doing some housekeeping on our side. We we historically have had a very separate VRBO platform and a very separate Expedia platform. We actually had a separate hotels.com platform, but in terms of the traveler facing template, we've merged them all onto the same thing, which enables us to, if we do something on the traveler side of the business, we'll do something on VRBO that's good for vacation rentals. We can also make that very strong for Expedia as well. On the back end, though, we still have two separate stacks. You have the traditional VRBO stack, which is really catered towards single unit homes, versus the Expedia stack, or we call it core OTA, which really caters to. Tells and multi unit VR, and multi unit VR, I would think of as, you know, it's a building in Myrtle Beach that has a variety of a variety of units, and those units want to sell with room types and rate plans, rather than necessarily, just like one by one condominiums based on its hard work we've done. We have the ability to have the condominium show up on VRBO, and we have the ability to have the standalone traditionally, like beach houses show up well and sell on Expedia. And because we're on the traveler template, it's like historically, that was done in a way that was effectively the same pipes we use for B to B. Now it's actually done in a proper way with amazing AB testing to optimize the performance of trying to sell that type of inventory.

Annie Holcombe  
Awesome. I'm excited about that because I think Alex and I both come from markets where that kind of inventory, kind of it goes both ways, and it just depends on each company, how they market it, and what they do with it. So I think that's exciting. And I know that I met with some of the team when I was there in June, and there's somebody that's actually focused on kind of getting that multi rep inventory for VRBO. So I think that that says a lot about where the channel is moving towards. You know, I guess I always say like CO pollinator, pollinating, co pollinating, the inventory between the various sites, cross pollinating. That's what I was looking for.

Tim Rosolio  
The multi unit space is a big opportunity. I think we probably historically thought of the binary world of like, well, it's a beach house or it's a hotel, and, you know, for maybe a shorter trip or a smaller group, a condominium is a terrific option. And we have a full, dedicated account management team led by a guy named Wolfgang pag hall that you may know from way back when, Annie that that runs that team, and he's, he's sort of the guru of all things, multi unit,

Annie Holcombe  
VR, that's very exciting. So I wanted to pivot to innovations, kind of, you're doing this, and it's a focus, but innovations for for verbo and kind of things moving forward. I think we touched on some stuff that you had not really introduced at Verma, but you had introduced previous at your explore event back in the fall. So why don't we recap for our listeners some of the things that you guys have done this year, and maybe if there's anything that's coming up for the new year that we could look forward to?

Tim Rosolio  
Yeah, so it's actually, it's especially timely that we're having this conversation now. What we what we announced initially at explore at the end of September, was really three main things. It was kind of the thing we just mentioned, where it's like, we're going to bring you more demand, because Expedia group VR is not necessarily just about VRBO anymore. It's about VRBO plus Expedia plus the B to B network, and overall, that's like five times more eyeballs. That's the first one. The second one is post. All the three platform work, platforming work. We're building technology at a rate that we never have before. We have three major API's. One of them is the promotions API. The second one is much faster, self service onboarding for property managers. And the third one is verbo payments, which is our merchant of record solution for those that care to and allow us to be merchant record. We know that some people are kind of in the Over my dead body camp with that one. Then the third one, which is probably more relevant to what was recently announced yesterday, is verbose. Double down on quality. We are generally of the belief that in some respects, the overall quality of this industry has gone down, especially post pandemic, as there's been individual homeowners or newer, less professional, professional property managers that have come on the market. And we think there's plenty of supply out there, and we are very much indexed on making sure that the vast majority of that demand goes towards the best of the best that provide the right hospitality experience, that never cancel and make people want to come back to VRBO for the next day. So that was the Explore message yesterday, we continued that discussion with the VRBO brand relaunch, which was a lot of PR around things like VRBO care, which is effectively a improved Book with confidence program where if, in fact, traveler gets canceled on last minute or there's a poor experience, we're really there to protect that traveler and find them another home. So it's just an example of how we're doubling down on quality. As we talked

Alex Husner  
about this a little bit we were in Vegas too. I mean, the what AI is going to do for OTAs and Expedia group in particular. Can you maybe share a little bit about like, how the company is looking at how you're going to work with travelers that now, I mean, I do it myself. If I met having a hard time finding something that I want or where I want to go, it's so much easier to just go to chat GPT and say, give me the best place to stay. But where do you see that going?

Tim Rosolio  
I think that AI has been a three step journey for us. The first one was within. Service experience, chatbots, like some of our internal stuff. How can we solve problems faster? The second one was really within the traveler experience, where we've done things like review summaries. Ai review summaries so that travelers don't need to go through 300 different reviews. There's summaries that take the key themes and data points from those 300 so that somebody can, in an easily digestible way, understand what's this property all about, and book it. And then the third one is rethinking the traveler journey and the traveler shopping journey. I mean, I think the old way things worked was people go to Google and then they go to, hopefully, an OTA, and then that gets connected to supply. And we think it's very important that we make sure we are highly visible in all of the different language model tools like chat, GBT, because we kind of view it as it's the new Google, it's the new SEO, it's the new way that people are going to shop. So that, you know, I don't know how deep you've gone down the path, Alex, but some of these, you can do the shop, and you can click a button, and suddenly all you need to do is put in your credit card and push the Checkout button and you're done. And I hope that when, in fact, they do that, it's on. Yeah.

Alex Husner  
Well, it's amazing though, too, because it's like Annie and I actually just did a presentation we were in Italy about, you know, how to stay relevant with search changing so much. And, you know, SEO is not dead, but it's, it's search engine everywhere. You know, is the way that we look at it. It's like, so our search optimization everywhere, like you're you have to be able to show up in the traditional places like Google, but, of course, in the llms. But the way that people are searching is so much more detailed now that they're not just saying Myrtle Beach condos or Panama City Beach, beach homes. They're saying, I want a home in Panama City Beach on the west end. That is $300 a night, you know. And it's like those are things that people never typed into Google before. So I think for marketers of all sizes, I mean, you guys down to small vacation rental companies, this really changes what the strategy is of what you're putting on your website. I mean, how you're making yourself visible to where people are actually searching now that is, it's much more intuitive than it was, and it's almost like, feel like we're going to look back on Google, you know, pretty shortly here and be like, I can't believe that I had to sort through so many websites to find what I was looking for, when I can find it immediately,

Tim Rosolio  
like, as crazy as it is, like, 20 years from now, the idea of the old Google experience might feel like the like the old catalogs, the catalogs of how people found your properties. I mean, it's I

Alex Husner  
many of them on my desk. I mean, people still do, oh, you know, it's crazy, then I do

Tim Rosolio  
agree that's a longtime marketer in the vacation rental category there.

Annie Holcombe  
That's right, yeah. Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining us from Rome and from your jet set around the globe. So I it's about time to go get some pasta and glass of wine. Is there any go to the airport? Oh, hopefully you'll be able to sleep on the plane. That's not something Alex and I have mastered on those international flights yet, but

Tim Rosolio  
hopefully you Oh, yeah, there's gonna be a good rest for sure. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  
Well, thank you so much for coming back and talking to us, and we look forward to having you again. But are there any like parting thoughts you'd like to leave us as we this will kind of be the, probably the last time we'll talk to you this year. Good

Tim Rosolio  
luck everybody for what will be a very exciting, busy booking season that's coming up, and we hope that VRBO and Expedia will be a big part of it. We have a lot of new tools that will help you do it, and if, in fact, you're trying to figure out how to, in fact, do that, let's get you in touch with your account manager. If you don't have a counter manager, reach out to me. There.

Annie Holcombe  
You heard it. Tim's your account manager. If you don't have one. Awesome.

Alex Husner  
Well, thank you, Tim, and thank you for tuning in Everybody until next time. See you next time. Thanks. You.

And we're back. We've got Ella measureborski, who is the president and co founder of auto host. Ella always a pleasure to see you. Nice to be here, guys.

Annie Holcombe  
Thanks so much, Ella. Sorry about we had some conflicts with our technology, which, again. We're the talent. We're not, we're not the AV equipment folks. But we were just at Verma with you, and had some really good conversations there. But run into like, post conference, get your thoughts on the show. And you know, we've heard a lot of really good feedback on how this year's conference went, and kind of wanted your take on it from, you know, the auto host perspective, yeah,

Jessica Gillingham  
echoing a lot of what I've been hearing. I think there's been really good energy. I feel like some just be an old relationship, seeing people again. Maybe it's also very like subjective to me, because I haven't been in a few events recently. So for me, it was really great just to kind of, you know, re revisit some of those relationships, friendships, a lot of new, really good conversations, and just like good energy all around I got to talk to a lot of the attendees. They were really happy about the sessions. I feel like everybody struck a really good balance between, you know, the tech conversation, the AI conversation, vendors, their quality information there. So overall, really, really good sentiment. And for me, it's always great, even though Vegas is overwhelming, but, but we did it,

Alex Husner  
yeah, and we're just saying before we hit hit play, that we always end up having, like, a warm up around with you. So we're going to recap what we had chatted about out there, which started a little bit earlier, actually, before the show, but just talking to you about AI and what's going on in the world. And a lot of people are still there's a lot of people on both sides of the fence, people that are really leaning into it, people that are, you know, not sure, and trying to avoid it at all costs. And then probably the wide majority of people that are kind of somewhere in the middle. But what did you see at the show in terms of AI that maybe made you think any differently about it? Or what are kind of some tips of when you're talking to people, how you're saying they should approach AI.

Ela Mezhiborsky  
So I think that did come up during the show as well. I think that the point of that we were saying is, it's funny how you split people into those groups, but you don't really get to avoid AI. So you know, the people that are trying to avoid it at all costs, like it's there, whether you'd like it or not. And so the discussion really needs to be. How do you a, embrace it and B, remain aware of it, at least for, you know, whatever good and bad it can do. So the kind of the discussion, as far as we see, it, is kind of split into the areas of AI for efficiency, you know, how can we make things better, operations, quicker, automate things have the actual AI brain plugged into things we spoke about, you know, the benefit of maintaining the human element hospitality for the sake of hospitality. But then, and then, what we were really talking about is that I feel in representing auto hosts here really is that we feel like it's really important not to lose sight of the fact that AI, and all of you know, in all of its glory and the magic of these tools, anything that's used to improve your business and make the world a better place, can also be used maliciously in the wrong hands. So as we work to either embrace AI or just accept it because it is what it is what it is, and it's here to stay. I think it's important that we don't lose track of the awareness of AI that can be used maliciously, be it, I mean, in the world that we're seeing, be it for impersonation and fraudulent reservations and those types of tools that in the past may have, maybe have been, you know, in the hands of professionals, and it took so much more to fabricate a story or create a really good fake ID or mask something online, whereas right now, it's a, you know, 15 bucks a month, and you can clone somebody's voice or have a fake ID that won't be detected necessarily. So all of these things we really need to be, you know, aware of and rethinking, where does our gut feeling play a role and what's no longer a valid strategy to, you know, keep us safe against AI while we're working to embrace it.

Annie Holcombe  
So for managers, that just opens like this whole other conversation, I feel like managers were frustrated and fighting fraud all the time anyway. I mean, it was coming up, and so now you've added this whole other element of like, you really don't know what you don't know. And you don't know if things are fraudulent, and you're looking at something you're saying, Well, it's a person. They look real, they sound like the person I talked to yesterday, or they sound like the person I know. How do you, how do you tell people that they can, I guess, embrace the technology without being scared of what it can do. I mean, I guess like to your point, it's like you need to embrace it because it's there. But then if you, if you embrace it, and not have any precautionary measures in place, you might be really setting yourself up for some things down the road. So from the auto host perspective, what kind of guidance are you giving managers to go ahead and take this new tool and utilize it to its best ability. So

Ela Mezhiborsky  
the beautiful thing is that if you kind of follow the rule of objective, you know, in our world, it's kind of screening and guest verification and so on, if you follow the rule of avoiding bias and discrimination and focusing on your objective data points, then a. I doesn't really change anything, as long as you're still maintaining you know, let's look at the objective data points. Let's look at real stats out there. Let's look at ID being verified and selfies matching and watch lists being referenced and so on. The issue really becomes when people are using, let's call it yesterday's defenses against today's risks, right? So if before you were kind of saying, Well, I know my business better than anybody, and my gut feeling, or even systematic gut feeling, and some rules you have in place, you know, seeing whether a story checks out, or whether something seems legit to your team or not, that's exactly where risk comes, because you need to be aware of the fact that AI can now fabricate things that in the past, if your last resort was, let's just pick up the phone. Let's just call them if they sound good. They're normal, they're great. That strategy goes out the window. So it's not so much that I want to be alarmist. I'm just saying that it's important to be aware of the fact that in the hands of bad actors, AI can be used maliciously. And therefore, as long as your methods for screening those guests are just as objective. They're not going to fall victim to, you know, your judgment call, or your bias, or somebody sounding like they're a lovely person coming, you know, for a seven day stay to be a tourist, whereas actually it's a it's a crime ring. That's just like masking the story, because the actual criminal stories are no longer going to sound sketchy. On the contrary, they're going to be the ones, you know, getting their hands on tools that are easy to get their hands on, and they're never going to trigger your gut feeling criteria.

Alex Husner  
It's a lot to consider. And I mean, and you're so spot on, of like, that's how operators have have dealt with this over the past. Of like, you know, they feel like they've heard from stories, from so many guests that they inherently know what cues to pick up on. But you know, the those days are sadly out the window, and even just even meeting somebody in person isn't necessarily enough either. I mean, in

Ela Mezhiborsky  
person is probably like your but you can do that, and especially in short term rental and vacation rentals, and especially when you start working at scale, hotels need to screen as well. But the one thing that vacation rentals and short term rentals don't even have is that front desk right? Is that sanity check? Now, mind you, somebody in person can still be impersonating and there's lots of other areas of criminal activity that can still fall through the cracks, but, but when it comes to all of those, yeah, like, I still call them the gut feeling umbrella, and, I mean, I did that, and it was reliable, like, it's not like, that's that's your best we're in hospitality. It's a people industry. It's a trust based industry. It's a beautiful industry, and you want to trust and you want to give them the best guest experience possible, but yes, when you're being exploited, that's when it gets a little bit ugly.

Alex Husner  
And one other question on that, I mean, do you think are hotels ever going to go in this direction to do this level of screening? Because, I mean, really, you're saying at a hotel, if you have some bad apples in there, I mean, you're putting everybody in the building at risk. It's just different than you're just in one home. But yeah, my answer would

Ela Mezhiborsky  
be absolutely, but probably for different reasons. So I think that hotels are more likely to go that direction, and they already are for the guest experience side of things. So the you know, the criticism right now is more around long lines in the lobby and check in process and checking in 24/7 so hotels have a lot of incentive to move towards pre arrival registration that will include guest screening. Mind you, the guest screening done right is not an interrogation. It's very guest centric. It's built around a strong guest experience. You just still make sure to collect whatever information you need about the guest. Dot the i's cross the T's, make sure everything checks out, and then the guest is ready to go. They're going to get their access code. Everything's going to be a smooth experience. Yes, hotels will absolutely go there to streamline the process. I don't know where the safety consideration is, whether, like, they're placing it as high as they should, but for whatever reason, we're also ahead of things or channels are looking to minimize staff, and, you know, not necessarily run 24/7 concierge services and so on. I

Annie Holcombe  
feel like they are using the or they're going to need to do more checks on guests, especially around like the human trafficking component, because that's such a like, at least in Florida, there's a lot of training that's done at the hotel, at hotels for human trafficking and to identify kind of those things. I don't know that necessarily identifying somebody to verify that they're a real person next necessarily catches it, because until the person actually gets caught by the authorities, you don't know that they're doing these type of things. But is there? Do you think that there's something there that can catch some of these type of things that are happening before they happen?

Ela Mezhiborsky  
So I wish I can say catch, but I would vouch for prevent so if we can spot that somebody is not who they say they are, or a an identity that's being booked because they're not booking with their real identities, and sometimes, even if they're booking with victim identities, that has also been a trend, they're still less likely to have the right IP address and the right device and an ID and a selfie and a credit card that matches the name and all. These data points matching. So I am going to say that with proper screening, prevention can take place. Do we know in events, whether it be like, you know, gang activity or money laundering or drugs or escort services or sex trafficking? Unfortunately, we don't know exactly which type of criminal activity it would have been, but we do know that if somebody is looking to master identity, then they're up to no good, and maybe the hospitality industry is a really unfortunate enabler that it's our responsibility not to let that through the door, whatever the crime would

Alex Husner  
have been. Yeah, makes sense. And I mean, where does auto host fall into this conversation, as far as what you guys have been doing, you know, differently or more extensively, I know you've really always been the leader of the pack, you know, from what we've seen of, you know, your cyber security company, I mean, that's what Roy always says when we're talking about things like you've always really had more of it seems like a very, very keen eye on doing things already in a much more sophisticated manner. But now with AI, where do you go with it? Yeah,

Ela Mezhiborsky  
so and thank you. And we, we love that role, and I think we're really proud of raising that awareness. And it's really that the fact that we come from cybersecurity at the core means that from the get go, and before, you know, AI tools kind of became more common. The focus was still really to focus on effectiveness and prevention and flagging risk when it happens and before it happens, especially when companies work at scale. What we right now are doing is kind of listening where the industry is going. And over the past couple of years, we've worked internally in a lot of evolution to really make sure that auto host as a product can now be embedded in many of the PMs systems and guest apps and kind of tech tools out there, so that, you know, as the market is saying, We want all in one solutions, but we don't necessarily trust that, you know, any given PMS will will create that solid all in one we're kind of merging those two worlds. So we're going to say, like, we're that point solution, but like you said, because we since forever really focused on the core of auto host and all of the data points and flags that come into our system. We're now working with quite a lot of the tech vendors in the space to really just be that blanket coverage. So if we can keep, you know, keep the industry safe, so that whatever guest journey or guests are going through, hopefully whichever platform you're using, you'll be able to just enable that extra step in the process to make sure that your guests are screened. Just because we really have gone from ID verification being like a nice to have, to absolute table stakes and like, you can't even just like, you can't imagine going a plane without a passport, no matter how good of a person you are and how you know, not sketchy you are. Like, it just, it's the standard. We there already. It's not the future. We're there. And so on. Autos perspective, we really did make sure to bundle auto host as much as we can so that it can be embedded as part of any tech tool out there. So you'll see a lot of PMS systems and guest apps. Now we'll start having more and more guest verification just as the possible part of the journey, and that's something that we're really proud of.

Annie Holcombe  
Do you see? I don't know if there's any comparable but, like, with Delta now, and I think other airlines are doing it too, like I have, where I have agreed to, like, facial recognition. So, like, I don't necessarily, some airports, I don't have to show my passport anymore. I just, like, go in and they scan my face and say, like, you're a real person. You match what we have on record. Do you think that there's a or is there something being built out there, like a database within hospitality that hotels and and vacation rentals could share into, or, like, maybe one master database that could be access for this type of stuff? So

Ela Mezhiborsky  
per company? Yes, for the industry, no, there's always been, especially because you're not, like, it's one thing to talk about, you know, white lists of where, supposedly you're a frequent traveler, so they trust you. It's a whole other moral story when you go the other way around. So now we're talking about No, you know, not allowed lists and blacklists. And that's kind of where it gets very, very subjective, where one operator would put somebody on, you know, on their blacklist, because it said no shoes in the house, and you wear shoes in the house, and another operator would need to have, you know, a meth lab, explode for you to find your way to the list. So in general, what I think, there's been attempts in the past to kind of create industry wide list, but at the end of the day, like, I mean, you know, Alex on a business trip is very different than Alex at a bachelorette party and risk with guests is not necessarily that they're fraudulent or not fraudulent, but just for any given reservation, you should be vetting your guests and validating the reservation when it comes to problematic guests and fraud, we do work with databases where we don't release personal information, but we would have a lot of we have over, I think, 20 8 million records in the system of flags being triggered. And so if a reservation is made from an IP address that's been flagged before, or a credit card that you know has flagged in the past, as somebody trying to stuff 18 different cards that didn't work, and then the 19th one way through. So these types of things systems that have a lot of that network effect, and have been doing this for. Years, we do have a lot of data to go by, but it wouldn't be, you know, Annie's risky, and Bob isn't not going to be person level, but there's enough data and information that we can kind of spot who's a real person, that you know they are, who they say they are, makes sense? Yeah.

Alex Husner  
Well, hello. We continue to track this conversation, and we would love to have you as kind of you know, one of our reporters on the scene out there, bringing us back what you guys are seeing in the development that you're continuing to bring to the industry in an area that's very important. So it's it's interesting to see how much this has become way more clear that it is an issue now than it was even three four years ago, that people thought it was a nice to have, but now, just like you said, it's like having a passport is just going to become, you know, just regular, common day operating procedure, that this is something that all managers need to have,

Ela Mezhiborsky  
and it's a good thing. It's industry. We're not industry for anonymity.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, absolutely. Well, if anybody wants to reach out, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Ela Mezhiborsky  
I mean, I'm on LinkedIn. We try to share quite a lot of information, so visit our blog and LinkedIn, you can always reach out, either for any like tips, advice, or just to connect. I'm always happy to have a conversation.

Alex Husner  
Awesome. Sounds great. If anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I you can go to Alex and Annie podcast until next time. Thanks, everybody. You

all right, and we've got Jessica Gillingham, who is the CEO of Abode worldwide. Jessica, so good to see

Speaker 2  
you. Great to see you too. Both of you, Alex and Annie, really good to be with you talking as well. Well.

Annie Holcombe  
We had such a great conversation at vrma, and we wanted to, kind of like revisit and get your your key takeaways from the conference. We all walked away with it, I think, feeling renewed energy in the association. Definite. Great attendance, good, good content, good education, and we talked with you about a few things AI related, but kind of maybe, why don't you give us a recap of what you took away from the conference this year? Yeah,

Jessica Gillingham  
absolutely, it definitely was a really good conference, and I think that was across the board, anyone that I spoke to kind of had that feeling. There was a good energy, there was a good amount of people, there was a lot of the right people. So it was definitely right. And it wasn't just the puppies

Alex Husner  
that made it. Was definitely a highlight for sure,

Jessica Gillingham  
definitely a highlight for many, but it wasn't, I mean, when you have conferences, everything's important, like the venue is so important. And I think that was it was a really good venue, wasn't it? So, so I think that the RMA has listened, and that's pretty evident. There was a definite, real, engaged sense that the association has been listening to its members and really putting into practice and into implementation, you know, a lot of change.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, for sure, yeah. And I think you know, from the PR side and the world that you guys live in, a lot has changed in the last couple years with with AI and llms, and I think that's everybody's question right now is, you know, everybody's invested in in SEO and done all the right things for these years, but you know, traffic is down, and how are you able to really still keep showing, showing up in a meaningful way? And in your case, when you work mostly on the on the B to B side with technology players and some of the larger operators, and PR has worked incredible for that. And I'm just curious your take on on what you've seen there, and maybe, maybe some tips for property managers that that doesn't necessarily make sense for them to work with a PR agency, but how can they, you know, kind of benefit from the strategies that you're using on the B to B side?

Jessica Gillingham  
Yeah, definitely. And it's a topic that I learn about myself every day, read about, think about, every single day. And just yesterday, I was reading a report that said 90% of budget that goes into SEO. SEO budget goes into Google. However, 50% of purchases or sort of searches are now done on LLM so it's like this real disparity that we have. Everyone was putting everything into Google. Obviously, Google's still so important, and we'll talk about that in a second, but actually realizing that there's whole other budgets and whole other places that people are finding. Finding information and getting information from so that's changed, and not everyone's caught up with the fact that LLM discoverability is kind of where everyone is going to be going for for searching, not just for vacation rentals, but for new tech, for for everything we're going there. So and then the other thing I wanted to talk about, actually, is today, Google has just announced the new way of searching and discoverability. You go, go into Google AI, and it's bringing up options for so if you're looking for, let's say, a family holiday in Texas, it will bring up different types of accommodation choices, and it shows where they're getting their information from, where it's sourcing these recommendations, if you like. And it's not the obvious places, you know, it's not the big chain hotels, it's not the big all the big OTAs, but it's getting its information from all sorts of niche websites, different places. So I guess on one level, it is you need to be everywhere, but on another level, it's about being really, really strategic and focused about how you want to show up, so your long tail keywords, etc, etc. And I think it gives the independent vacation rental market, almost like an opportunity to be to be more visible in a way that perhaps isn't always the case. So so these are things that just as as we're talking now, it's all kind of unfolding, and it's changing. But I've long said that I think that what AI is doing to search and discoverability is the thing that's really interesting for our sector. The second thing that's really interesting is the opportunity to really do personalization at scale is another real, kind of interesting, exciting thing that we're seeing.

Annie Holcombe  
And I think we talked about this too. One thing that I see as an opportunity is for some of the larger managers. And I go back to, you know, over the years, Airbnb specifically has put out some studies that will always highlight that these the smaller host have higher guest review scores, and a lot of that stems from the fact that property managers can't respond on scale, but also, because they have so many properties, it's harder to keep every property at a five. You know? I mean, let's just, let's face it, to be able to have a five across the board for hundreds of units is pretty rare, not that they're not trying to do it, but I think that being able to have aI embedded into responding, responding to reviews, asking for reviews and getting that real time information to a guest so they're not waiting for responses. I think that that is going to level the playing field, in my eyes. And I was curious what you thought about it. If you think that that will help you know the legacy, the legacy larger enterprise managers to play in that space of high review scores.

Jessica Gillingham  
Yeah, it's interesting, because I've been to quite a few other conferences since vrma, you know, now, now we're talking, there's been quite a few, particularly over in Europe, and the big conversation of the OTA. So we always get that OTA panel, they're all talking about quality. They're all talking about how quality, you know, we've heard this for years. This isn't something new, but about basically, really wanting to sort of shift off the inventory stock that isn't of the quality that they need on. You know, they need to be able to serve to their customers. And they talked a lot about how it is the professional property managers that are bringing the quality down. And I wonder if it's a bit more to it than just the fact that they're that they're not able to maybe respond to guests in a way. Yes, that's definitely one. But it's also about operations as well. It's around being able to do housekeeping at scale in a way that's good. It's around being able to make sure that maintenance is done in at scale. So it's much more than that. But luckily, AI can sort help with all of those things as well. So you know, everything from workflows to autonomous agents in operations, etc, AI can help with. But I think, I think that the fact that the individual hosts have typically got higher scores than professional property managers. Is probably quite complex. You know, there's quite a few reasons I would imagine that that's the case.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, it's almost like, I mean, when you become a large enterprise size manager, I mean, you're in the Operations Business versus the smaller hosts, I think a lot of them feel like they're more in the hospitality business and operators. I mean, they love the hospitality, and they want to be able to provide that. But at the end of the day, you know, there's so many fires going out in every different direction that it's like, you know, it's hard to remember the main task of what we're trying to do, which is to make incredible memories for these people that come and stay in the properties. But there's. A lot of different things that have to be checked off in order for that to happen. And I think the hospitality kind of ends up falling away, and that's, that's the hard part of when you get to that size, how do you continue to maintain that? And what are different, different ways to make sure that your guests and your owners know that you are really a person behind this, you know, company website, that this is a team, and that it's, you know, not just a corporation, but definitely, definitely a challenge on both sides, for smaller and larger managers.

Jessica Gillingham  
And you get a dust ball in a cupboard or a dirty knife and you've had it, basically, that's your review scores down. So it's, it's, it's making sure that you are optimized, to make sure you never have a dust ball under the bed or in a cupboard or a dirty knife, like it's those things that bring the review scores down.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you've also been to VR, Ws and scale UK, and I think you went to one other one since I've

Jessica Gillingham  
been to a couple of in the service living, and then I was also in Iceland a couple of weeks ago, doing a talk on tech enabled hospitality for Iceland's largest hotel chain called the Icelands Hotel. So they invited me to talk about do a talk on tech enabled hospitality and how technology is changing the way that we serve so that was based on findings from my book and so, yeah, so I was doing that a couple of weeks ago in Iceland, but also, was it scale last week and then vrws the week before in Rome as well?

Annie Holcombe  
So were there any, were there any key takeaways from any of those conferences that maybe you know I was talking with somebody this morning, how some of the trends that happened in Europe tend to come over to the US later, and vice versa. And so did you see any trends over there that are maybe different that we should be looking out for over here?

Jessica Gillingham  
Yeah, I think that the main one was the compendium of where AI adoption is, and AI education and AI comfort zones is really shifted. So at vrws, they have every like, it's a slightly different setup. You're on tables round I don't know if you guys have ever been there, but you're on round tables, and there's a lot of kind of round table sessions, so you're with the same people for a couple of hours, and we do things like icebreaker sessions and conversations that you get to know the people that you're basically on a table with. And in the first one that I was in in the icebreaker session, so it was literally in the bit of this is who I am. This is what I do. There were six property managers on my table. Two out of the six said in just that icebreaker bit, that their number one priority was rolling out agentic AI within their operations and so and then all four of the others in within the two hours, talked about how AI was their number one priority, what they really want To be focused on. And I think my point is, is that even for me, who works with a lot of tech companies that that are in this space, also, you know, do know about the AI that's in this space, it surprised me how quickly the openness to AI is happening, like it's that compendium of where you're at in terms of the level of knowledge, understanding, openness to it. We're seeing more like getting quicker and quicker, and at some point, everybody will be at an end point. But every you know, there are people who are at different levels of comfort, I suppose, with it, but that just that showed me that we're further ahead than we think

Alex Husner  
we are. Yeah, no, that's a great point. I thought maybe we could still not

Jessica Gillingham  
quite there where you would have short term rental property managers talking about deploying agentic AI within them. Yeah.

Alex Husner  
I mean, it just shows how fast the world has moved in the past year. I mean, I feel like a year ago, we were still trying to kind of convince people like, this is something that you need to embrace. And now people are just, you know, they trying to get as much information as possible and realize there is no avoiding it at this point. I mean, and it's, it's, you know, if you're utilizing it in the right way, it should be a huge benefit to the business and and not something to be scared of. But, yeah, it's great to see our industry really adopting it. You know, I think the hotels are trying to figure out their own game too, on things, and we'll be interesting to see how they're able to make an impact here, because a lot of the hotel tech is actually much older than the vacation rental tech that's out there. So a lot, a lot of things going to be moving around and changing in the next few I don't even know, months or weeks or years, all of it, I guess. But thank you, Jessica, for coming back on. Always a pleasure to see you, and can't wait to see you at the next event.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai