Direct Bookings Aren’t Dead, But Your Strategy Might Be | with Chris Walker of Direct Booking Tools

Alex Husner 0:02

Welcome to Alex Canadian, the real women of vacation relevant. With more than 35 years combined industry experience, Alex User and Amy Help has key done to connect the dots between inspiration and opportunity. 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. We'll start the show in just a minute. But first, a word from our premier brand sponsor.

Sponsor Spotlight: Direct Booking Tools

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Hi, my name is Tim Smith. We'll go by Smithy. I am the owner operator at Cassago New Squarda Beach and Cassago Daytona. We've actually been using Direct Booking Tools just about two years now. We decided to go with Direct Booking Tools primarily for the data. We wanted to do two things. Number one was if we're driving people to our direct site, we didn't want them to find the perfect property to go to and wonder if it's going to be cheaper elsewhere. Also using direct booking tools has all enabled it to make sure that the guest knows when they're looking that this is the right spot for you. If you like this property, this is where you can book it for the best possible price. They don't jump to your BB or a verbal or anywhere else. They see that this is the property I want, and oh it is the lowest price when we draw. We also wanted to get all the data from DirectWorking Tools. I believe in using data to operate the business. And having the data that DirectWorking Tools provides allows us to then see how our direct work data works are happening, how they're working. Are we driving people to it? And then for some reason it falls off and they go line. Is this open the property? Is it my descriptions? Is it the price and what might it be? So having that data is just helped us really fine-tune our listings to all the level. And then the other thing is there's been several times where it allowed us to see when an event was coming before starting to search for the event. So we could change our revenue management approach and really take full advantage for the owner and get it in the best rates of that. It happens, we're 100% occupied and we're way below what we could have done for pricing for the owners. Direct booking tools has made it so that I can run the business fixed on daily and not like that. If you want to know how your listings are actually performing, direct booking tools will actually give you that data you need to have deeper conversations with your marketing team, with your holders, and with your revenue financial team. If it's an operator, you have your own direct site and you're on the fence about using direct booking tools. I would highly recommend it. It's very simple. It's very affordable for the data you get and for the uplift you get and guess the confidence that they're buying and looking at the right price. The price is negligible for that. It's worth every penny that you would spend on it.

SPEAKER_05 2:42

Strengthen your direct booking strategy with direct booking tools. Their platform helps improve the guest journey, increase direct revenue, and give your team clearer booking insights to make more strategic decisions. Alex and Annie listeners get 50% off for the first three months when you use code AlexandAnie2026. Click the link in the description to get started.

Alex Husner 3:05

Welcome to Alex and Annie, the relevant of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex. And I'm Annie. And we are joined today by Chris Walker, who is the broker and owner of the real estate company Luxury Homes of Hiltonhead, as well as the partner CEO of Direct Booking Tools, powered by Booking Insights. Chris, so good to see you. Thank you, guys. So good to see you all. Nice to see you.

Annie Holcombe 3:29

It's great to have you here. I feel like we I feel like I see you at shows, and we never get a chance to like sit down and have a conversation. It's always like running past each other, um, getting quick introductions. So it's nice to actually sit down and and learn more about your business. But before we get started, I mean, we were talking off camera. One of the things it's I we love about this business is that we get to talk to so many people that had been in the property management side and they saw kind of a challenge, an opportunity on the technology or kind of the supplier side of things and moved over to try to help solve some problems. And I think that's exactly what you did. But why don't you tell us a little bit about your background?

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Yeah, well, um 25 years in selling real estate here on Hilton Head, uh, 19 years as a property management company as well, focusing on luxury brand here on Hilton Head Island. Uh and yeah, after being in the business for about 16 years in the vacation rental world, um, I I didn't feel like things were going as stellar as they could be with our own direct bookings and being able to capture our clients. In fact, one story really kicked it off for me was I had, I think her name was Miss Jones, uh, was staying in one of our properties and she'd been staying there for five or six years, and she kept rebooking on the OTAs. And I'm like, Miss Jones, why don't you book direct? She's like, Well, I love the OTAs. I'm like, Well, I'm I'm glad you do. And you know, but uh I think you're spending more money? Okay. You're paying a little bit more than you need to be, but okay. And a couple of years later, we came out with this product and she hadn't booked on the OTAs, OTAs again because she saw how much she was overpaying. And then, you know, um, you know, the OTAs are great, they've done a great job for our industry, but um, but I wanted to take more control of my my destiny, my company. So uh, so we my partner and I, Josh Setmari, um, who's really the tech tech guy, he's he's the he's the brains behind the operation. We came together with this little simple tool, and we've been going ever since.

Why trust is central to direct booking conversion

Alex Husner 5:23

Very cool. Yeah, and and I think, you know, most of the software, as Annie mentioned, that that's out there that is, you know, the founder has that background. It it really answers a need. It's not just a nice to have, but it's a you know, something that's really going to move the needle. And it's it's amazing to me though. I mean, Miss Jones is a perfect example, and she's not the only one out there, that you know, they people are okay. Sometimes they don't know that they're paying more money, but sometimes they're okay just even still paying more money because they trust the OTAs, right? And you know, in that time that you got her to change over and start booking with you, you she trusted you, but there's something about the experience that she did on the OTAs that obviously she was comfortable with. So, like, what are some of the things that you've done to instill trust to increase the direct bookings for your company? I mean, but besides the tool, like what are some of the other things that you've done?

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's it's not a one thing fits all, you know, one thing's an ultimate solution, although this absolutely builds trust for people when they're on the website, especially for a smaller operator such as myself, where you know I've only got 25 properties. And so trust is a big factor. And when people see that they can save a couple of hundred to almost a thousand dollars by booking direct, the trust factor goes way up through the roof. There's no doubt about it. Yeah. Money speaks volumes, but um, you know, the the you know, the the likes of the, you know, whatever how many billions of dollars the OTAs have spent in marketing, you know, they're they're they're smart marketers. That's what they've done. They've basically blocked perception, and that's what they've done, is perception becomes reality. So as operators, we have to overcome that. We have to do our own little tips and tricks to to increase the the value of our own sales as an operator, increase that trust value. And a lot of that has to do also not just with our tools and and getting people to stickiness of cart staying on your website and seeing what you've got to offer, but you know, making sure that you've got all the right things, that you know, you put your association labels on the websites, that you ensure that you have trust accounting, you know, say it on your website, make sure your website obviously is is uh is protected. Uh that could those types of things uh are very important that a lot of people don't have on their site. I mean, they might be a member of the VRMA or the VR Nation or Chamber of Commerce, and they don't have any indication on their website about and those things do raise trust with consumers. Consumers need to see in different little tidbits about that you're a true operator and you're there for their best interest because everybody's so apprehensive today. Every it seems like everywhere we turn, we're trying to get scammed one way or another. Uh, and so we've got to overcome that with the consumers, and you do that through these trust signals on your website.

How price transparency can influence guest decisions

Annie Holcombe 8:05

Yeah, that's super interesting. And and in my consultancy, that's I've seen a lot of that where I'll go to the first thing I do is go to somebody's website to kind of get a look and feel of their business. And a lot of times it's they have nothing. They have no, Alex and I've talked about this, nothing about their story, nothing about who they are. So they're not even trying to really build that trust. But in talking with them, I think that so many just assumed that it was like you build it and they will come. Like if they put the website out there, all of a sudden it was like an automatic conversion tool that was there. Um, but going back to like the OTA thing, so you know, there's been discussion and there's been hashtags and there's been days devoted to and conversations devoted to webinars, a lot, you know, all the things of direct booking and trying to get the direct booking. And, you know, you to your point, you're fighting a really big marketing machine in these OTAs. I mean, they're spending literally billions of dollars. So it is difficult. But I think that what we're seeing is AI is kind of upending what people's perceptions are and their and their habits. And, you know, I think there was a stat we were talking to somebody the other day that, like back at the end of the year, about 25% of people were searching through using LLMs to find a vacation, um, find a rental. But now it's somewhere in like the 70, 80% range. So it's just completely, you know, gone in favor of, but you also have to be prepared for that. So, in building your tool, what did you think about doing? I mean, you built it before AI became the thing. Um, but obviously that you already have that credibility built up within web searches. So you're kind of there. But what things have you put into your tool that was able to capitalize on direct booking when you're fighting something as large as an OTA and their spend and and their placement, you know, on Google?

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Well, that's just it. It's it's our tool is is is quite frankly, so simple. It's it's it's keep it simple, stupid in in life, right? It doesn't have to be difficult. So when someone, you know, there's ways that you can use the OTAs to drive traffic to your own website, and we can talk about that in a minute. But to answer your question is, you know, when once people finally get to your site and then they see they do a price quote and they see that, you know, the stays$1,500 with you,$1,800 with uh, you know, scenario A or$2,000 with scenario B. Again, I'm not here to throw anybody under the bus. Once they see that difference, it's just that simple that pricing is that much savings to them. And certainly in a lot of key markets, such as uh, you know, um uh Myrtle Beach, uh Panhandle, uh parts of the Panhandle, places where uh, you know, a lot there's thousands of villas, a hundred bucks makes a difference, can move the needle with the clientele. Um, and that that is where this is really effective. And and conversely, you get under 30A and you look at prices that are$30,000 for a week, and you're saving$3,000 by booking direct. I mean, you're gonna you're gonna convince a consumer to stay there and find what they're looking for and book direct. So the the tool itself is is not complicated. It's just it's just about delivering truth uh to the consumer. Yeah.

Alex Husner 11:08

I'm on your website right now, and and a few of the things that we've mentioned immediately stand out. You've got your review score there, 4.86, which out of 1,035 reviews, that's quite impressive. Really? Yeah. And you've got your compared, actually. I don't know. Congratulations. Yeah, that's huge. And I mean, the you know, the the complicated thing is too. I mean, Hilton had his, you know, one of the most probably competitive markets on the eastern seaboard, if not the entire country. And you know, there's there's a lot of choices for somebody. And it's like, how do you make your how do you make yourself stand out? And I think it's it's all the things that we've talked about so far, and we'll get into more of them, but it's also it's delivering a quality stay that is consistent and that makes somebody, you know, once they've gone past the point of realizing they're paying too much money on the OTAs, but that makes them want to keep coming back because you've built that consistent uh experience that when they come, they know what to expect. And it looks like you guys have done a really good job of mapping that out and you've got the FAQs and you've you've got a lot comforting to somebody when they're looking for a stay.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Yeah, there's a lot that goes into a stay from our standpoint. We want to make sure that people are well communicated with. They go through about a 14 uh point touch program from the time they book to the time they leave uh with our company to ensure that they are in good hands. Because again, people just don't trust people. They don't know who we are. I love that you know how many point how many touch points there are. That's impressive. Yeah, well, it's and everyone's important. You know, it's the confirmation of the of the reservation. Then it's like a two-week follow, you know, before arrival follow-up, a seven-day before arrival. The night before, hey, don't forget this and this and this. And the day after arrival, hey, hope everything's going well. Day before departure, hope, oh, well, actually, during their stay, hey, here's a calendar of events. So you're staying in touch with them with information and things that they need to know, but not being pushy in any way. They're short, they're sweet, and they're to the point. Day before, you know, please let us know if you encountered anything that's problematic. Let us know. Day after you get home, hey, hope the trip was safe. Please write us a review. You know, that kind of thing. It doesn't have to be intense and it doesn't have to be, certainly don't make it long. Be intentful how you communicate with your people and just show them that you really care about their experience.

Annie Holcombe 13:22

Yeah. So tell us about the growth of the platform. So it's been around, you were kind of post-COVID, which was a good time to kind of come into it was everybody was everywhere. Um where are you at now in terms of your numbers, conversions, um, adoption with uh, you know, partners in the industry?

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Wow, we've come a long way. Um, you know, going into it, we thought that, well, this should be easy. It's a simple enough to understand, it's easy enough to implement for sure. Uh, the cost structure is very affordable. Little did we know being a new product, completely new product in the industry. No one had been able to had ever done this. And and and technology-wise, we know why now, because of all the different systems and websites and everything. I think we're on the 480th different version of the product since we've started.

Alex Husner 14:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Um, you know, just to just to keep everything between, you know, again, all the different websites and and we're not PMS centric, but we are going that direction as far as API connections and things. But it's been a it's been a lot of changes and a lot of iterations of the product. But um, we just hit a milestone this past weekend, 20 million price quotes on the platform. Um that we've touched on uh, you know, given that everybody gets about two price quotes, but you know, give it say on average two price quotes, three price quotes, somewhere between seven and ten million people have seen our product. Um it's pretty cool. Uh that's that's exciting to see. Uh we've got over 300 property managers, 30,000 properties somewhere in that range on the prop on the platform today. And and it's really starting to take off. I mean, because people are seeing the impacts, giving the positive uh responses. We just had one company that joined us uh three months ago and we raised their conversion rate on their website by 500%. Wow. Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah.

What website traffic can reveal about booking behavior

Annie Holcombe 15:15

My goodness, that's impressive.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

You know, the thing is, it's you're driving all this traffic, especially as larger operators. You're spending all this money on all this pay-per-click ads, all this social media, you're writing all these blogs, you're doing all this stuff to get people to your site, but people aren't converting. The industry average is about 0.32 percent. Larger operations, somewhere around the 0.6, 0.7% conversion rate. That is you gotta draw a lot of people to your website to get your numbers up, your reservations up to make that happen. So if we can take you from a this particular company was at a 0.4%, we can take you to a over 2% conversion rate. What does that do for the number of people you have to drive to your website? Dramatically, dramatically. My own site, when I started this, I was at 23% and I do about 600 reservations a year. I needed 180,000 people to come to my site to get those 600 reservations. Today I need less than 70 to come to my website to get those reservations.

Annie Holcombe 16:11

Oh my goodness. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

That is a huge impact. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. So not only do you not need that many, but you know, what are you doing actually in advance of what people were doing before? People are booking further in advance, they're staying longer, they're paying rack rate, you're not getting last-minute bookings like the, you know, the OTAs typically book a lot of last-minute stuff. It's just massively impactful to your operations.

Alex Husner 16:37

Yeah, and I think it simplifies the process for the guests who we've had this conversation on the show a few times this year that, you know, back in the day, the average number of sites that somebody would look at before they book a reservation, it was like 12 or 14. I mean, it's someone just, I mean, astronomical amount of websites that people would have to go to. And, you know, the hotels had a tool similar to this prior to vacation rentals. I can't remember what it was called, but I mean, essentially it's, you know, I mean, you're comparing the other OTAs against each other, you know, sometimes the direct site, but that made it easier for consumers on that side. But I think in vacation rentals, why it's always been complicated is one, it's hard to, if they find that property on your site, if they want to go look in other places, it's hard to find it because we a lot of vacation rentals don't use the actual property name or the, or the name is something that it could be called something different on the other channels. So it's like it's always been a very complicated thing for people to price shop, but all they hear in the media is make sure you're price shopping and looking for a deal. So it's like they still have to jump through hoops. But um, it would be really interesting. I don't know if you've done this before, but for especially since you have the rental company and you've got the tool, you kind of have like the the two ingredients to get the most out of this, but to interview like some of your like new guests this year and ask them, you know, you booked on our website. What did you think? And were you surprised? I mean, I don't know how you asked the question without like leading them to it, but like, what did you think about when you saw the comparison on prices? Did you have any idea that you were this was the route to go to get the best price, or did you just happen to stumble on the website? I think I think it'd be really interesting to know because I mean, we're all in this and we feel like you know, we know it day in and day out. But what does the average person coming in Hilton had? Do they even think about that? Did they even think that it would be cheaper going direct? I I don't know that direct booking marketing really has clicked with consumers the way that we feel that it has, you know, but when they see something like this, it makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Well, we've reached 20 million price quotes, so we've we've inflected, you know, eight to ten million people out of the country, I think, with at least some sense of that they're not. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alex Husner 18:42

You're leading the charge on that, actually.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

It's we're it's changing the market, it really is. And yes, we've had numbers of conversations with people that uh that have stayed with us before and go come back to the website and book, and they're like, holy cra I had no idea that I was spending this much more. And so even part of that, we we include a little snippet of our tool in our email marketing back to our database. So think back five years ago, we were at seven uh 70% OTAs or 75%. And so we would email back into that market saying, hey, rebook next year, be sure to book direct and have a little screenshot of our tool in there. Our email marketing went from 0.5% conversion rate to two and a half percent conversion rate on emails over a spring period time. I'm not saying it was one email. Over a spring, you know, normal course of soliciting your your database, we raised our conversion rate from email by by five five times. Those little tricks are uh can help you as well. But yeah, there's been so many times that people would call up from the OTAs because they have a question about a property and this, that, and the other. And we don't, you know, we're not dragging them away, but we, you know, hey, you might you know check this out and they go check it out. And they're like, wow, you saved us so much money. This is such, you know. So your reviews are gonna go up when you, you know, as well, because you're saving people money. Money speaks volumes for me. Another thing back to something you said was that how people can't go back and find the competing property, you know, in different locations. And that's the thing we take a lot of time with with our clients is we review their their listings, their OTA listings, and we do some comparisons and give them some notes and tips and tricks. It's about it's all about little breadcrumbs. There's no one, you know, star answer to any of this. But if you play enough breadcrumbs around, you know, they're gonna find you. And so it is about making sure you name the properties exactly the same from one platform to the next. It's also making sure that you say professionally hosted by your company, where a lot of people say Jane hosted by Jane Doe. Well, that's that's great, but no one knows you, Jane. But if you put your company in, you you know, getting smarter to where they're reading these OTA, you know, inputs and and they're they're picking up on these little these little nuggets. If you if you drop them around, they'll pick up on them and and go Google search, you know, one, two, three, Main Street. If that's the name, you know, name of your of your property kind of thing.

Annie Holcombe 21:03

Yeah. It's that's funny you say that because I've worked in the OTA space for the last 15 years, and that's one thing that I've always coached. You know, I came from property management and we always had our property name in all of our listings, anywhere we could put it, like always, like always be branding, like always that. But when I got to OTAs, you know, it was like, oh, you can't do that. I'm like, eh, sorry, it needs to be done. Like it has to, especially when you're in a market like Myrtle Beach or Panama City Beach, when you have a building that has 700 properties in it and you have 10, 12, 15 management companies sometimes. Like you need to be able to do that. And I had to make that case when I was at the Expedia group about the reason for the companies to have their name because of that. And it and it won over. But I still see people that that will like their Airbnb listings, it won't have their name in it. Like it'll just have two bedroom ocean front. Well, you how many two bedroom ocean fronts are there in Destin, Florida? I can tell you they're overrun, you know? Yeah. So it is interesting to me that the the number. People that still don't take advantage of that. And I think that at least you know that some of the channels and booking.com's done a really great job of offering kind of like your profile. So whether you want to list as a host or you want to list as a property manager, you can put your logo a little bit about your company, like a little bit about your host. Like so doing those kind of things, but it is really like insane to me that people just think like, I'm gonna give you my listing and I'm gonna let you tell me how it should be listed because it's my property, it's not yours, you know. So I think that's the point. But I wanted to go back to if I'm a property manager, what does the integration look like? Is this a widget that sits on their website? Does it how does this all work? So walk me through it like you're selling it to me as a manager.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Oh, well, it's it's very simple. It takes about five minutes of your time as a PM to give us a couple of pieces of information. We build the product out on the back end, we give it to you or your web developer. They drop it in the footer of your website and you're up and running.

Annie Holcombe 22:53

Nice. Okay.

Alex Husner 22:54

So I've been personally with clients before, and I know it is super easy. That's probably the easiest integration that I've had to do in my almost 20 years doing this. So keep it simple.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

It's super easy. Uh, it's super easy. Yeah, it's not not meant to be challenging and it's instantly effective. And you know, besides showing up immediately on your website, we start collecting a little bit of data as it activates on your website. And we start, and we can, you know, and we'll meet back with you in 30 days and review your data and talk about your interactions on your website kind of thing. So it's it's it's actually a two-fold product, uh, besides the forward-facing tools. But uh, but but installation is super easy, super easy.

Annie Holcombe 23:35

You don't have to have a PMS integration to do this. This is all just about putting it on the website.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

Absolutely. Perfect.

Annie Holcombe 23:41

Okay, well, that's good because I think that that's where some people get lost is like, oh my gosh, it's another tool. It does it integrate with my PMS, and you know, okay, that's perfect.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

I get those calls all the time, and vendors calling me for my property management company. And I'm so busy, you know. Obviously, I've got three companies, but I mean, I'm you know, but everybody's busy, right? So, but last thing somebody wants to stop and do is go through some arduous integration process to get a new product up and running. And and I'm, you know, unfortunately, some of them are like that. I mean, certainly like PMS. That's that's gotta be the worst integration anybody can do. But then there's others that you have to spend a lot of time integrating. They're they're probably value-oriented in what you want to get accomplished or what you would like to have in your business, but you got to spend a lot of time to make that happen. And and we're not that, we're keep it simple, stupid kind of thing, you know, just like the forward-facing product, you know, just very simple, very easy, not not a load of time off off your table, off your plate.

Annie Holcombe 24:35

Well, I think that resonates for people these days for sure.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Yeah.

Alex Husner 24:39

Yeah, it does. It does. And actually, um, on your other website, on website for the tool, directbooking tools.com, you've got a great playbook that listeners can go and download. And I'm just browsing through it right now, but it's got a ton of great information in here. One thing that I've enjoyed about using the your product for the clients that I work with that use it is the analytics side of what it's actually showing on what people are searching, what properties are being opened from search results. And in most cases, you know, companies don't have access to that information. And it really leaves a big gap in between you know marketing and operations of like and revenue of okay, we need to, we know we need to move these properties, but are they even being opened? You know, I mean, like what are are they is it something more cosmetic? Is it the first picture that's in the listing? Is it the price? Is it, you know, what what is the issue there? And I think you can really draw a lot of interesting conclusions, you know, by seeing what that conversion rate is and how many times the property is open from their site. But uh maybe tell us a little bit about what other things that you can see as far as the analytics side, because I know when I first saw this, I didn't realize it had all of that. I thought it was just the tool, but there's a lot more behind it.

How operators can use data to improve pricing decisions

How to strengthen conversations with owners using real data

SPEAKER_02 25:51

It is, it is. So early on, we decided or we figured out that because it, you know, request the information every time it's on a property page with dates. So it that's when we go out and get the information. And it's real-time information that we're delivering on every every price quote. We're able to see what the dates were, the property, uh, all that, all that information. So we're able to collect that on the back end and we put it into a dashboard. The really cool thing is you can see how you're trailing week over week or month over month as far as in this is about engagement on your website, right? You know, are people engaged? Are they shopping? Not just they are looking for golf courses, tennis courts, beaches, restaurants, whatever the case may be. These people are actually engaged, looking for a place to stay. So this is much further down your booking funnel and journey that these people are in. And you can actually take this information and roll it all the way down to a uh a neighborhood or a villa complex. Uh, you know, if you're working, if you've got a lot of inventory in one villa complex, or if you want to see how one complex is performing over another, uh, you can actually roll it down to the property level as well, which I do a lot for my ownership when they call up. Love my owners, but you know, no one calls with a with a happy story. Everybody's calling with a concern of some sort, you know, to talk about. You know, hey, what have you done for me lately? kind of thing. Now you can go into our dashboards, pull up that property, say, hey, Mr. and Ms. Jones, look, over the last 90 days, we've driven, I don't know, 500 people, have gotten 1,500 price quotes for these dates for your property. We've booked these dates, but you haven't booked these dates because we think it's a little bit high on price. You think you need to, you know, you need to, you need to move that price because we've done our job as a marketing company to get the people to take a look at it. It's your job to work with me on what my recommendation is on what I think we should do to move this. I mean, you've got you've got to have that data, and a lot of owners love that data. When you can show it to them, you can actually download it and send it to them and show them exactly what dates for price was and what the length of stay was for those dates. And you know, so some people are having to shorten their uh their seven-day minimums in the summer. Some people are, you know, maybe seeing an opportunity to actually lengthen the minimum uh night stays. And in the shorter seasons where they had it at three, they probably can move it to four or five nights. So there's there are all different types of components that you can look at this and and analyze it into your your current market and where you're trending. And so it'll actually show you from month to month. People were price quoting. So if right now I wanted to go look at May, which is the next month coming up, I could see what people are looking to travel in May and where I where I'm lacking in in come in interest and where I'm actually strong in interest right now. You know, so do I make some pricing adjustments or minimum night stay adjustments at this point to get that conversion before we actually get to May, kind of thing. And you know, of course, further out, I can start to look at the fall. How's the fall starting to come along? Of course, on Hilt Med, June, July, and August is gonna sell out. So some of the points, another cool one we just came up with, and um I don't know if you guys have actually seen this one, is is we've got one where a property was price quoted so many times for the same exact date and you sold it last year for let's just use five thousand dollars. You're you know, for whatever reason, your system came back out with a price of$7,500 for that same arrival week for the next year. You can see how many price quotes you got that people didn't book it at that$7,500 rate because you're probably too high on market. And then you can see how you drop the price and you're still probably still trying to offer it at$5,700, whatever the case may be. You still haven't even met where you sold it last year, and so you need to make some business metrics around that because and you know, these pricing models are great things, but a lot of people don't know how to control them. You've got every one of them, you've got it, you gotta know how to put the levers on them and and bring them into their box because they'll do this with your your pricing if you if you're not really careful with them. Um, and so there's ways to box them in. But I mean, if you're overpriced by 25% of what you sold it for last year or 50% of what you sold it last year, those hundred people that got those price quotes, not only did you lose them, but did you maybe disenfranchise them from your brand as well. Yeah, you lost trust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, these guys are out of their mind. I'm not paying them 50% more than I've seen this for last year.

Alex Husner 30:11

Exactly. Yeah, that's that's a market's a really good point.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

Yeah, the market's not stupid. You know, I mean, so you know, we you know some of those tricks that a lot of people try to pull with 100% pricing, 365 days out, it's actually costing them business and loss of traffic because people are looking. And if they're not booking, then what are you doing? You're possibly literally disenfranchising people from your brand. It's it's not it's not a good thing.

Sponsor Spotlight: Hospitable

Alex Husner 30:36

Yeah, well, especially in these markets like a Hilton head, where you get so many repeat people that are coming back, and you know, if not to the same, if not to the same home, they're coming back to the same neighborhood or for sure the destination. And you're 100% right. I I remember that from from Condo World days of we'd have somebody that they maybe stayed with the competitors, and when they came to us, they'd say, I can't believe they jacked the rate up to this this year. This is ridiculous. And then I'm sure if we did the same the next year, they were saying that about us. But it's like people remember that and and they they get really fussy about it and they don't want to book any property, even if they find one that's in their price category because they feel like you're you're gouging them. And I think that's the hard part of you know, working with owners that they might think, okay, well, if they've done renovations, that they want to get an extra, you know,$500,000 a week on something, maybe more than that. But you have to be really sensitive because it's not going to be that apples to apples, and especially with the repeat guests there. And and one thing I wanted to mention too, that you touched on, which is really important, I think, and definitely a byproduct of maybe even how you guys market what this tool is. But in the clients that I've I've worked with that use direct booking tools, the revenue team is actually the team that is using this as much as marketing. That when we would have revenue meetings with Sarah Franzen and Eve and uh the team at RevZent, they would be looking at that and they'd be, you know, making adjustments based on it. And then, and just to your point, taking it back to owners. If you've got owners that do not want to go below a certain point, it's like, okay, well, I've got evidence now here, and you need to listen to me as the professional. Like you're kind of building a whole case of what's going on within the business that it's not just about deterring them from the OTAs, it's about giving you ammo to make better revenue decisions and the backup that you need when you go to your owners to tell them what's going on. Absolutely. We'll be back in just a minute. But first, a word from our premier brand sponsor.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

My name is Eli Stoughton. I am the owner-operator of Lahaina Studio. I have three vacation rentals in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, and I've been using Hospitable for over seven years now. I would say I realized pretty early on in my hosting career that managing everything manually wasn't going to be sustainable over the long term. When I started using Hospitable, the primary tests that I was able to automate were the automated messaging and the AI messaging, where Hospitable will draft a response using my previous messages and my knowledge hub and everything that I've set up there. Oftentimes I find myself just getting a message from a guest, opening up Hospitable, saying that they've already drafted a perfect reply for me and just hitting send. And it also saves me a lot of time when it comes to dynamic pricing. If I had to manage all of my pricing manually for multiple properties, that would take a long time to get that in sync. Hospitable has had a massive impact in how I run my business because I don't know if I would have scaled my business up over time had it not been for the fact that I had software that could help me do it. Having Hospitable save me a bunch of time per week, opens up a lot of possibilities, and it also opens up more time for me to spend with my family. And you can go on a trip and not have to worry about that your business is going to run into so many pitfalls because if everything is automated as much as possible, all you have to do is sort of oversee everything. My experience working with the hospitable team is great. They're very involved in the community forum that they've set up, and you can get direct responses from the founder and CEO or from the other team members. And I found that you don't often have that kind of level of communication from most companies. I highly recommend Hospitable to other hosts out there who are looking to grow their business, take their time back. I recommend that you drop in on one of the hospitable town halls, that you join the hospitable community and see what this team and this company is all about. It would really help your short-term rental business.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

You know, they're they're shopping. And and if you've got that data to say, look, it's been price quoted this many times for this date, and it has not booked, we need to move. The market has moved. They found other alternatives. I I know you got a I know you got a three million dollar house. It's a beautiful house, but they're not willing to pay what you're willing to, you know, you're trying to get in rent. Right. When you're at$22,000 at the height of the market, you need to be at 17 now. And I'm sorry it's$5,000 less, but it's five, it's$17 more than you're getting with it sitting empty right now. So I don't set the market. We only can react to the market and and be in the right position at the right time. And and the ideal is to get that position well in advance at the at the highest rate you possibly can, but you're not always going to get the same rate you got last year. And to your point, like renovations, you know, the people that stayed there for 10 years, owner comes in, paints a few walls, puts some new carpet in, and wants to raise the price. Well, I've been coming here for 10 years. It's doing it.

Annie Holcombe 35:59

I clearly didn't have a problem with the lack of the paint on the wall.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Well, well, or that, you know, this is what you're supposed to do. This is your maintenance cost. Why are you raising the price in me for such a simple improvement that, you know, it's just simple maintenance costs? So yeah, it's it's a fun battle game that we all go through uh with our owners, you know, and and and knock on wood, most of us have great owners, but most of us also have, you know, 10 to 25% of our owners are are, you know, in our thorn, in our side at some point, somehow, some way. They own the property, and but you should be able to have an educated uh conversation with them, right?

Annie Holcombe 36:33

Yeah, but I mean, having that analytics to be able to go back to show them is is super helpful. And I was curious, is there a way through the dashboard to set up any automation so that, you know, if you have prickly owners that you could just send them a report every month? Is there something like that?

SPEAKER_02 36:47

There will be. We've got a next, we've got a little next gen product coming up this fall that we're working on that's gonna do a lot more than what we're doing today. And we've listened to a lot of those requests and those things. And um, from an automation standpoint, we do automatically return back to the PM on a weekly basis. So, so anytime our tool fires and say there's a there's a special on you know one of the platforms and it ends up lower than your own price, we'll never show the consumer that because we're not real sure one if it's accurate, two if it's you know, whatever it might be. We just shrink the product and then we'll report that on the back end and send that to the PM on a weekly basis. Hey, one, two, three, Main Street came up lower than your own price during these dates. You might want to go check it out. Well, maybe it's a new property on and they're getting a 20% discount, or maybe they're running some kind of discount, or maybe they had a fat finger discount, you know, where people in there messing around didn't quite plug something in right, uh, and they can go fix it. And that way they're not short selling themselves on the on the uh on the OTA side. But but to answer your point, we're building some robust solutions that we'll be developing out this fall or rolling out.

Annie Holcombe 37:52

All right, so big announcement at Verma.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

Yeah, that's really exciting.

Annie Holcombe 37:56

Stop by the stop by the rec booking booth at VRMA and you'll get all the all the information.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Alex Husner 38:04

And how how has, I mean, we can't go an episode without talking about AI, but how has AI supercharged your efforts as far as what you guys are developing?

SPEAKER_02 38:13

Well, that's gonna that's gonna be part of what we're doing. I mean, you know, everybody seems to be super AI focused. AI is just gonna help us do some development on the back end as far as delivering some actual metrics to our clients. Um, and it's it's important. And certainly AI is, you know, impacting everybody's business. I mean, we just had a meeting today with the company that's actually gonna start doing some AI overlay with our own business operations type stuff, you know, just to get some framework around that. Because everybody's so stretched, so busy, and and these little tools can seem to help you, you know, an hour or two a week kind of thing by taking a few things off your plate. And that's a great thing. Um, I envision AI as almost uh 2002 with with internet. So it wasn't brand new in 2002, but it was still well early early. You still didn't know what the internet was gonna do for you know the world, you know, people are still trying to figure it out. We're you know, I think this is gonna move a lot faster. It's not gonna take 20 years to get where you know the internet uh is today, but uh but it's it's definitely interesting what's happening. I mean, there's a lot of changes coming, a lot of positive, obviously some negative consequences in that. You know, and and actually, you you know, we had a deep thought on it the other day was you know, if AI is really going after this, the the white-collar jobs, it's not going after the blue-collar jobs. It's not gonna go out there and, you know, for lack of better terms, I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but it's not gonna go out there and dig ditches, right? Although they might make a machine that does that. But I'm just saying you need people that weld, plumb, you know, electric, you know, still tables, you know. I mean you need the trades, right? You don't you don't necessarily need a uh bookkeeping, accounting, uh attorney, you know, I mean, contract writing, things like you know, that are that are gonna have some real effects on an upper tier clientele. You really should focus on making sure you can do as much as you can to keep your repeat business, get your repeat business up, uh, keep those people engaged with your company because it may have some effect on on you know their upper-end leisure travel uh as this thing goes into effect. You know, I mean people are gonna ebb and flow, they're gonna figure out different ways to go and that kind of thing. It's just, I mean, look at the kids coming out of college, they can't hardly find a job because you know, companies are choosing to uh choosing to go an AI route instead of uh hiring a college graduate. So I'm not trying to be Debbie Down, I'm just looking 10 years down the road, what uh these impacts on travel could be could be impactful, you know. And what it probably would be is actually just a reduction in rate from the you know in the in the market itself, not uh not a reduction in the in the in the actual volume of you know properties. Well, certainly some, but I don't know. It was just an interesting discussion we had on and and how is this going to affect the long-term situation with travel.

Alex Husner 41:03

Yeah, well, and and and as far as our industry, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's like, you know, building those relationships with your owners, building the relationships with your guests, because that's kind of the one thing that we feel like is, you know, kind of keeping all of us with a job at this point, is is, you know, it is the knowledge that we have, but it is the relationships and the the human capital that you know can't be completely uh erased in in a lot of cases, but it becomes easier to erase or eliminate when uh you don't have those relationships. And I think one thing that stood out to me when I first met you a few years ago was you said, I'm a small company on Hilton Head, I've got 50 properties, but 50 properties is still a good good size portfolio. And in Hilton Head, one property is like the size of 10 in Panama City or Myrtle Beach, so then it's still a big portfolio. But you've intentionally kept kept it at that size. And I wanted to ask about that because that's kind of the theme of this year uh for what Annie and I are talking about a lot on the show is that we've seen these companies that it's like just growth at all costs. Let's get as many doors as possible, let's build something, we can sell it. And in some cases that works out, in some cases, you know, the company goes down in flames because everything was just on fire at the same time and they end up losing as many homeowners as they're gaining, and it's like that it was just not worth it. But maybe tell us a little bit about your decision over the years, 19 years later, since you had the company, to be able to stay that size and how that has contributed to your sustained success over the time.

Why Chris believes quality and intentional growth still matter

SPEAKER_02 42:29

Yeah, I mean, way back when I actually went to culinary school uh and was and did high-end stuff in culinary, served presidents and and did big stuff. And and I I couldn't take the hours of that anymore. So now I work 90 hours for myself, but still. Um but uh I I it was always quality over quantity, was my mantra. Quality properties, quality owners, quality guests. That's just who I am. I like to serve quality people, you know, and that's just what I stick with. And and yeah, I could have 150, you know, high-end properties, but again, you start to lose that connect with your ownership, with your with your renters, um, you know, on a personal level. Uh, and so I've always just kept it in intentful, uh, very uh family-rich feeling when you when people deal with us. Because my wife is in the business, my mother's in the business, my kids. Um, one of my son, my son is at Clemson, he wants to come back here and take over the business. My daughter wants to do the same thing. So wow, that's good. Yeah, if they want to come back and do 200 properties, they can have it. I won't be having anything to do. Well, I'll be around, but I won't, I won't be the driver of that situation. So it's always about quality over quantity because it, you know, uh again, if you can sell a property for ten thousand dollars a week worth versus one for twelve hundred bucks a week, you're still doing the essentially the same thing. You're doing more work. It's not it's but it's not it's not apples to apples work, you know.

Annie Holcombe 43:57

I mean, but you're still putting it.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

in the same you know effort to get it done so yeah just yeah you know we've got you know we've got more employees per unit than anybody on the island and you know so the intent is that we actually manage assets and then we manage revenues so and those high those high net worth clients appreciate that when they come in they don't have a scratch on the wall they don't have problems to deal with everything's taken care of and that's that's just sort of the niche market. So if you if anything to anybody out there find a niche market and go with it because everybody can't be everything to everybody. Like you said those companies with units nobody knows who those owners are know those knows nothing about those properties there's you know but there's a market for that there's some owners that don't care. They bought it for the volume just go for it. You know maybe the rock bottom commission and just turn and burn baby and that's a that's a clientele. That's a niche market. That's not my market.

Annie Holcombe 44:51

So yeah I think people are starting to see that change though just because of the amount of people that bought after COVID again at the high, you know the high that everybody was on. And so now they're starting to see these owners where maybe they should have been more selective with who they took on. They took on these beautiful properties but didn't think about the fact that these owners were paying top dollar for them way over what they you know way over what they would have paid two years prior. And so the expectation is leveled up you know tenfold and they just can't meet it. And I think a lot of property managers are struggling with that now because it was a great opportunity to grow and they had they had made their you know their imprint on the market where that they were reputable and they could be trusted and they were doing a good job. And now all of a sudden they've got that you know that what 20% of their inventory is just dragging them down in terms of operation. So maybe that's where AI comes into play. But I also think to your point that's where as a manager you have to really kind of say what are my goals for my business? What is it that I want to be doing with this and if it's you know you want to build up something for your kids to take it's funny you say that your kids want to do it because I always remember our conversation with Sarah Bradford and she talked about when she was planning to sell her business and she went to her kids and said, you know, do you want us to leave this and they were like absolutely not we don't want any you know they were just like we saw what you did we you don't want to do it. But I think it's you know that's nice that your kids want to do that. But um I think I think managers are faced with so many decisions nowadays that they weren't 10 years ago. You know and it's just and it just changes it just changes constantly but I think for you you've been very mindful and and purposeful about how you built your business. You've created a tool that can kind of bridge the gap between needing OTAs and needing direct business and kind of slowly wean back from that. I think that's the challenge that people have faced is like what is the solution if you don't have the money you know how do you how do you compete in that market? So you've done a lot of really great things for the business and still stayed you know active as a manager and owner and um in a very competitive market. So I give you like major props for being able to do that and not go crazy.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Well thank you. Uh yeah I appreciate I really do because we've worked really hard at what we've got um again it's service oriented but but you know to to most of your managers a little message I'd like to get is everybody just thinks that driving direct bookings is going to be expensive. I've got to have marketing I've got to go spend money on ads I've got to go do all this you really don't you have to look at the basics institute the basics and we'll teach you how to do some of that on your you know your marketing with the OTAs and things like that like we've talked about. But you know make sure you've got that customer follow-up system make sure you've got the email marketing system in place. You know that those things don't cost a lot of money and everybody's just just instantaneously overwhelmed that it's going to cost them a lot of money. Now there's also people quite frankly that are lazy in the market they want to be lazy they're never going to have a direct booking uh success program and they're gonna be leaving money on the table. And some people are fine with that. We've talked to some that says look we're an inner city location and so and so OTA is our perfect match and that's just where we are okay well if that's where you want to be that's fine. And other people same thing they'll say well I don't want to go do all that work or you know it it's just too expensive. No it's not expensive. It's just you have to change your mindset. And once you do that you wouldn't believe what it means to your bottom line to actually change your mix from 20% to 70% direct because you've got so many metrics that are coming back to you. You're holding the money they're not so your escrow interest is going to go up massively I mean I think I went from five thousand dollars a year in interest to forty thousand dollars a year in interest alone that's$35,000 lift you can do a lot with$35,000 right and and you didn't you didn't and you didn't do anything. People just gave you the money and you stuck it in your in your escrow account right that people are buying further out and so that you're getting full rack rate.

Why direct booking strategy needs more than awareness

Alex Husner 48:52

They're staying longer because they're saving the money they see that they're saving money by booking direct we even have a checkout tool that says hey you save$1200 by booking direct why don't you consider buying travel insurance we all know we make money off of travel insurance using it using it to push other upsells I hadn't thought about that but that's a cool angle too yeah yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of little components that come together that add up to a big to add up to a big number um well and even looking at it if if you see that on Airbnb and verbo it was fifteen hundred dollars and on the direct side it was you know eleven hundred dollars whatever it is okay well now that's four hundred dollars that I was gonna spend that like I could stay another night you know I mean like there's so many different things that I'm sure people you know make that correlation there of like okay well we now we can spend to do something more we can go out to an additional dinner or we can rent jet skis or you know whatever the case may be but you know one thing that's just kind of hitting me in this conversation too is like we're talking about in different ways but it's like it's about doing more with less you know and like for the direct booking side I agree with you you direct bookings I mean they're gonna cost you something it's not like they're just completely free. I mean like you can you can you know fix some things. But if you want to do it intentionally I mean there's different ways to approach it. But the first way whether you're gonna go all in or you just want to make sure you're getting your fair share is everything that you just mentioned of make sure your your marketing house, your foundation is in order that you're gonna, if somebody comes back to you or somebody comes to your site, you have a much higher likelihood that they're going to book or rebook with you. Like get those things done first because there's no point in going out and spending a bunch of money on PPC and and email marketing and buying software and everything else and hiring consultants and marketing agencies if you don't have that foundation done. So it's like get that done first and that that can be done normally pretty affordably. And it's like it doesn't take necessarily a marketing genius to figure out but it takes the time and as you've said the intentionality of mapping things out. How many times do I want to communicate with my guest before this day during this day after this day and what's the goal? Do I want them to leave a review? Do I want them to rebook for next year while they're in market you know like thinking about it from that perspective. And then on the on the other side of doing more with less like you said early on that you had 1500 you only need 7000 people to get you know the same amount of revenue. So it's like you can spend less on marketing spend less on PPC if you are a company that's is heavily into that game but just get your conversion rate back. You know I just I think that's a theme for this whole year, even with the owners I mean you can do more with less you don't have to have 500 doors you could have 200 doors but really great homes that are going to be better and and the owners aren't going to drive you nuts.

Annie Holcombe 51:36

Absolutely and it's also the tools you know you don't have to have all the tools like my husband just started with a property management group out in Park City and he's been just consulting kind of like he had clients on the side but he's kind of been out of the industry since COVID like just after COVID. So he didn't see the proliferation of all these tools and he got there and he was like do you know that there's a tool for like literally every single thing that this business does and I was like yeah like that's what the and he was like I don't understand any of this. So for him it was just like a total shock and just going through it. And so like they're doing a PMS migration right now. And so like you know he walked into like the thick of it but just to be just to like the number of things that were repetitive in nature where one tool did one thing but it crossed over into another tool's area but they didn't realize it. And so like you've got two tools that are really doing the same thing but you know they need to do independent ones but cross and and it's just like so people just were look looking for the right answer or the the easiest way to like take something off their plate. So it was a tool it was a tool it was a tool and it's like it's about having the right tools you know and so like for what you guys offer this is exactly the right tool. It's not about spending gobs of money for placement. It's not about all of that. It's about understanding like the traffic that you do have coming and how to convert it and give them the right message and going back to the beginning of the conversation the trust and we've been talking about that for I feel like the last two years is how do you build trust? You know, and it's it's your brand has to be front and center. You have to communicate things you have to show them and what you do is showing people the value of working with that manager in very black and white terms. Like there's no denying when you can see you're saving$3000 on a vacation. I mean that that's a no-brainer right there. So I think it's it's great what you're doing because you're giving somebody a tool that has tangible value right from the start. And it's not about having 17 different ones to do the same thing in different directions. So anyway great I absolutely love it.

Alex Husner 53:33

So yeah I wanted to though just remember that it does it points out because this can happen sometimes if your rates are wrong and your rates are lower on the OTAs than they are on your site site, right? So it's like when that happens obviously the tool doesn't show on the page but it's a huge red flag for revenue and marketing of like what is going on here is an issue with the PMS is so that was you were talking about the report that goes to the manager though, right?

Annie Holcombe 53:58

Is that what that reference That's right that's right.

SPEAKER_02 54:01

Yeah that's right. But Andy back to you one last thing for me as well is all the tools we're is from what I can think of we're the only one in industry that actually impacts revenue. You know a lot of the tools are operational tools and and tools you want it for efficiencies in your business. But we're one that actually helps you convert the traffic that you're driving and actually drive revenue. And it's not you know and it's not you know it's not it's not an arm and a leg to have it on your on your site and it's simple to understand and easy to install.

Annie Holcombe 54:34

So you know I don't know well I mean easy to install is music to anybody who's listening's ears because I think that that's where that's where the technology starts to trip people up is it's like oh god how long is it going to take so five minutes is perfect.

SPEAKER_02 54:47

Yeah I've got one right now that someone sent to me and I'm like man I'd really you know I think I'd like to pick up on that but I hear I'm going into season and I'm like everything else I'm like I can't do that rock just can't do it. Yeah I'll probably pick it up in the fall when it's quieter and when we make some reservations and stuff. But it's that was a decision. It's gonna take me too much time. I don't have enough time for this right now. I can't do this right now. Our deal is just give us a couple of pieces of code that we need from you and and we'll build out the product and it's in your site in literally 10 12 minutes of your time.

Annie Holcombe 55:18

So that's yeah well I I will have my husband get in touch with you guys I think he probably needs to have a conversation with you easy peasy.

SPEAKER_02 55:29

Pause for one second is there an offer that you have for our listeners Chris yeah hey um you guys are welcome to join us just mention the uh podcast and we'll give you uh your first 90 days at 50% off oh wow okay and where do they need to go to get that just go to directbookingtools.com cool wow 90 days for free I mean that's a no-brainer right now especially yeah 90 days half off yes wow wow okay okay that's good yeah so you know I mean we we're getting to where we can flex and do that and offer that because we did have a 30 day free trial your option is to do a 30 day free trial as well but if you do the numbers the 90 days at half price is a better better position for you. Yeah we because we've gotten you know we've we've made it across the hump as an operational situation and and you know we want to partner with the companies my biggest thing is I want to make sure you're successful that's that's the biggest thing that I want for the company is to make sure that we have an impact on your operations. That's so that's what we got.

Alex Husner 56:31

Well if there was ever a no-brainer product out there I think this would definitely qualify this is it this is it this is it wow that's awesome yeah thanks so much for joining us Chris if um somebody yeah if anybody wants to get in touch with you what's the best way to do that uh directbookingtools.com or 843 816 1640 i'm my phone's always available still old school phone guy you gotta love that hey you know you may not get me because I'm always on the phone but I'll call you back awesome well if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I you can go to alex and anniepodcast.com and until next time thanks everybody