How Xplorie Helps Elevate the Guest Experience Through Local Activities with Adrienne Clark & Caleb Yaryan

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie, the real woman of vacation rentals. I'm Alex and I'm Annie, and we are joined today by Adrienne Clark and Caleb Yaryan, who are with Explorie. It's so good to see you guys today.

Caleb Yaryan  
Likewise, good to see you. Good to be here. Yeah, thank

Annie Holcombe  
you for having us. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We've been wanting to have you guys on for a while, and we're super excited that you guys are sponsoring the show. So first of all, thank you for that. We love we love our sponsors, and we love to be able to collaborate and interview them and learn more about their business. But before we dig into exploring, why don't you each tell us a little bit about your background within I guess what brought you to explory, but maybe you know your background in hospitality and travel.

Adrienne Clark  
So my name is kind of a career path that unfolded unexpectedly. Came back after college to Dustin. My husband was born and raised here. I didn't know anybody. It was spring break in the panhandle, and at the time, the founder of explory, formerly ASI, was hiring for the spring and was like, it would be a good way to learn the area. So it was a way to help out, and definitely not a planned, plan thing as an economics major, and it turned into a great career. I love hospitality. I love being a resident in a tourist area that actually gets to see the positive of all the tourism, connecting lodging and activity providers together. So just kind of one project and task turned into a lot of a lot of project and tasks later. And so here we here we are now. And just, you know, each chapter seems to be better than the last one, so it just kind of stayed and became came along. Long career here that's been very rewarding. That's great.

Caleb Yaryan  
Thank you. Caleb, yeah, so a little bit different path. I come from a technology background, so I've owned a couple of technology companies. One of them was in the tourism attraction space, which is how I was originally introduced to these guys. And then I've spent some time overseeing development at other companies, but really, about three and a half years ago, was introduced to explore through a mutual friend, and wasn't at the time actually looking for a job. I was traveling full time with my family. I just sold our house, and I'm like, now's not the time to look for a new job. But met with the team and really fell in love with the business model as far as I've been in a lot of places that either have a really good product and struggle with marketing or really great marketing and not a great product. And this was a good mix of just everybody gets something out of it. There's good value proposition for everybody, and it's a good product I can feel good about. So just fell in love with that in the group of people, and so joined just over three and a half years

Alex Husner  
awesome well, and for anybody who's not familiar with exploring, maybe just give our listeners a little kind of glimpse as to what the program is. So we

Adrienne Clark  
work in leisure vacation markets and connect local tours, activities, attractions to short stay lodging units. So as you come and stay in these units, you might be coming, for example, on in Destin coming to Dustin for the beach. But we all know there's lots of other great activities you're going to do outside of the beach, fishing, dolphin cruises, golf, aquariums. And so we put together the packages for the lodging providers to be able to offer free tickets to their guests to for a value add for their unit. If you come and stay and you can go do all these great local attractions in your area, and you get free tickets to go and do so. So it's been it's a great way to differentiate your property, add value to your property for the guests. It's a great way to help, you know, even figure out which of the 10 dolphin cruises am I going to go to? Because we do. You know, it's local. Curate it. What's the best of the best the whole, you know, travel like a local. Where should we go? And then it gives them the benefit of, if, unfortunately, if it rains, like you guys saw in Charleston last week, or whatever, you get one place to call and modify all your reservations, versus having to spend your time on vacation calling, you know, each individual activity to change plans. So it's just grown over the years now across all of the US. So what started just here and here in Dustin, it's just spread throughout the US and different leisure

Annie Holcombe  
markets. So I used to be in property management in Panama City Beach. And when I was I remember every January having to go around to every business and every attraction and every restaurant and make deals for our group. And it was, it was fun, because I had great relationships with people, but oh my gosh, the amount of work that has to go in to be able to do it and then coordinate tickets and make sure you got them at the front desk and all the things. I mean, I think that that's where what you guys do. It removes some of that work that some managers were doing in other markets, but it makes everything streamlined so they can access these things better. I wanted to, you know, I know, just the Panama City Beach market. There's so many things there, and Dustin somewhat similar. And I think, you know, and Alex. To Myrtle Beach. But how many markets are you guys in? And then what does it look like for you to be able to go and create these relationships within each market so you can access the tickets and attractions for the managers? Yeah,

Adrienne Clark  
so I think currently, it's a little over 70 destinations in the US, and I think it depends on how you count them out, like we can say Emerald Coast is one or we count it as destin at Panama City Beach, but it's basically 70 leisure markets across the US, and that encompasses about 1400 plus or minus activity provider partners. As far as going into those markets, just like, you know, lodging companies, you have some activity partners, everyone from Mom and Pop owned businesses to corporate companies that own attractions across multiple locations. So really, we use the lodging providers and a lot of lodging partners, like you said, have always been doing some sort of connecting of activities or things to do pages on your website, because guests always ask them, What do I go and do when I'm in town? Where is the best so and so to go? Where should I go eat at? So we kind of start there in a brand new market of what is the thing, if I Google going to x, y, z, destination outside of the beach, mountains, whatever geography might be there, what is the main attractions that people want to go and do, and then we have a team that goes in and builds those relationships with those activity providers. So again, the activity providers are just as important to us as the lodging providers, and it's kind of the chicken or the egg which comes first. You get lodging first, and then activities, or activities then lodging. I think that's still to be decided in a market, and everyone has a different field, which is first, but they're both equally important to the success, as Caleb says, it's a, you know, somebody, everyone gets something out of it. So deciding what that is and who is, just a lot of conversations and partnerships of, you know, for the activity providers, is there a business need they're trying to solve, or a group of people they're trying to reach, and then obviously, with the lodging providers, what's the best value that we can help them provide to their guests, to help get bookings? Because if they get the bookings, and the guests are in town, and we'll go do the activities, and it'll be a win all the way around.

Caleb Yaryan  
And I really think that's an important distinction for us is the relationships we do have with all the activity providers, because they're not just people that we're listing their products with. So we have those ongoing relationships, most of them, we have direct integrations to their software that they're selling from. So we have real time availability. We're able to book through their systems. But it's important to us that we're sending your guests to these activities that we know them. We have relationships with them. We know the quality that they're providing.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, it's interesting. Adrian, one of the points you touched on of did guests book attractions first or accommodations first? I know in one case in particular, I'm in the Myrtle Beach market, and for sure, guests traditionally book golf before they book the accommodations. So I mean, like they're coming, if they're coming here for a golf trip, they're coming here, you know, for a specific reason, they want to make sure they can get the courses and the tee times. And to be honest, golfers, they actually don't really care about where the heck they stay. They just want to make sure that it's a good location to the courses and then where they're going to go out and have fun. But, and I'm sure in every market, by different attractions that kind of varies, but the end of the day, you don't want to go somewhere that there's nothing to do. I mean, I think everybody at some point in your travel journey, you're you're looking for accommodations, but you also want to make sure when you get there, especially if you're traveling with family, that there's enough stuff to do. And was also just thinking from the from the marketing perspective, you know, I think exploring plays a good role here that if you're trying to get your website to rank and to be a site that people you know, stay on, you know, for a longer duration, and then people keep coming back to and they see you as the expert within that location, you have to be writing content about what to do. And the nice tie in here is if you're just writing about content about what to do, and you have no relationship with the vendors that you're promoting for free, that you're doing it to get, you know, more SEO value for your site. But in this case, you know, I've seen some of your partners that they they write a lot of content about the attractions that are part of their program, which makes a lot of sense, because it's like now you can use that content not only in your website, but you can push that out through emails and social. So it's it adds a another, another arm or advantage to, you know, being able to push other things than just accommodations,

Adrienne Clark  
yeah, and also, to be good, it's all about hospitality. So we need to make sure that those lodging providers and activity providers, in particular, the activity providers, provide that same level of hospitality that the guests are going to get from the lodging provider, because at the end of the day, these aren't explores guests. These are the lodging providers guest, and we want to make sure that when they go to these activities, they are treated the same way they got treated, you know, at check in, by their lodging provider and by their host. So again, that hospitality experience and just making. That keeping that front in mind and top of mind at all times helps with that. That way to your point, Alex, if they are booking ahead of their lodging, during their lodging, their plans change. If it's, you know, Fourth of July in Panama City Beach, you're going to be booking your stuff well in advance of your arrival, because it's busy, versus if you just show up in November, you can, you know, do it as the day comes. Okay, today, I want to go golfing. Tomorrow, I want to go do something different, and then we can level set those hospitality expectations for the guests really well.

Caleb Yaryan  
I want to lean into something else you said, and that's the marketing side of it. One of the things that we do. And I've felt strongly about this is the, you know, if I book something that even with my family, that the first thing I do is, what do we want to do? Where, where do we want to go, and what are the events that we want to do? And we see, universally across the board, that people are booking their activities very close to when they're booking the lodging. And so it's a big part of why they're going to these markets to begin with. And so when we sit down with our partners and we look at, hey, this season, these are the things people are going to this is actually when they're booking. So we can help inform their marketing when they're reaching out to people the next season, of saying, Hey, we see that ski start booking at this time, and so they can market specifically to those, or if they're struggling in the shoulder season, we're able to come in and say, Hey, here's ways that we could leverage these activities beyond just the activity itself. But again, this is the reason they're coming to market. How do we help you with your marketing to leverage that with

Annie Holcombe  
covid? I'm curious. So I mean, because explorer has been around for a long time, and I know obviously in the panhandle, how did you guys handle handle that? Because there was a time period in which, like, people couldn't access activities, or there was only certain activities, so like, maybe some of those relationships that you had in place, I mean, that had to have been pretty hard to manage, especially in multiple markets, to know at a at a moment's notice, like, which ones were actually open and which ones weren't. So how did you guys navigate that? And then, like, kind of moving forward, what are you seeing in terms of what people are looking for? Because I think that one thing that covid taught us is that people want to be outdoors. There's there's more outdoor activities that people are seeking. So have you seen a trend to move away from, like, the inside attractions and more outdoor attractions, or, like, you know, what? What kind of trends are you seeing? So I guess you know, two fold question, how did you handle the covid issue, and then what did that look like coming post covid, in terms of what people actually were wanting and what they what they want now?

Adrienne Clark  
So like everyone else, it was like drinking from a water hose, because it was eerily quiet for that short amount of time that I think most of us were still processing. Is this really, this really happening, and not coming in to work, and not having anybody here to win, especially Florida, opened, it was, I mean, the flood gates just opened with everything coming in. So I think it again, it took a lot of people, a lot of teams, and we all wore different hats. There was no there was definitely no titles and exploring. We were all guest service agents answering phones. And then, if you weren't answering phones for guests, you were helping manage the activity providers and, you know, their relationships and schedules and what, what's open, what's not open. Some people, you know, like you said, they were so busy being outdoors, there was never availability. So it's just setting that right expectation and the communication. But luckily, you know, we do have a lot of integrations with some of them, so we knew that real time and we could replace an activity. If you know one was not available. What's a like activity replace it with think that was one advantage of having all of these relationships for so many years and most markets, unless there are just a few things, there's multiple of each category of activity. So we can there might be a primary one, and we can replace it with other ones. So we we did that, but we all wore different hats. So we were all especially in the mornings, when guests tend to call. You know, even 30 years later, 7am to 11am is still our busiest time on the phones. We were all answering those phone calls. And then if you weren't answering and speaking with guests, you were on the phones with activity providers, getting the most up to date schedule, and then they took advantage of it if they had room to add capacity in any way, shape or form. They did, because I think they saw the opportunity to, let's, let's capture this while we can

Alex Husner  
interesting. And you know, we were talking before we hit play here that back in 2019 before covid, I mean, things were so different that, you know, at that point, we were still all kind of fighting for reservations. And it wasn't just this infiltration of so much demand, but, you know, things have obviously leveled out at this point, and companies are really trying to think about, okay, what are some things that I can do besides just dropping rates? To get guests in the door, and not only just for one time, but how are they going to stay with me and remember that experience, that they'll remember to come back again, but maybe tell us just a little bit about kind of explorers philosophy on how offering this to their guests helps them differentiate within the market that's now more crowded and competitive than ever.

Caleb Yaryan  
Yeah, and I can jump in and kind of also dovetail on the last conversation around, you know, what has changed post covid, and how does that relate to what we're seeing going forward? And then how do we strategize on that? So that I always think, oh, there's some pattern we can see here. And then you start to drill down, it's like, Nope, that's not that. So it's really hard and difficult to see. The short answer is, how have things changed? Because it's a very, very, very hyper local so something that's on the beach at Myrtle Beach, where you are, people are going frequently. They're spending a significant time on the beach and then or golf, like the purpose of their trip. So indoor versus outdoor hasn't changed so much, but weather and destination and seasonality like there, it's very cyclical in that, and we see pretty consistently that the changes that happen are typically weather based. So we'll see people go inside. You know, it's raining, but that's a last minute decision. So as they're booking out there, they're almost always, you know, outdoor activities are definitely the predominant ones. Still, as far as how we're leveraging it, I and I again, back to what I love about our product. Is, at the end of the day, if you have two products that are very similar to each other. They have the same number of bedrooms, they have all the same amenities, and they're really the same price. This is a value add that sits on top of that. And so as a consumer, and we see this frequently, Myrtle Beach is a great example of this that sometimes they included activities are the difference between a family being able to do an activity or not being able to do an activity. So, you know, as budgets are obviously tight for everybody to go to Myrtle Beach and they want to take their family out to a dinner show, it's a significant investment. And so when we look at utilization of the activities, it's not infrequent that the activity usage is close to the cost or exceeding the cost of lodging. And so it's a big part of you know, when I travel again food, I love food, so I look at, where am I going to eat, and then what am I going to do, and where am I going to stay? And if we can simplify that process for people, both financially, but also in the booking process, it really allows people to enjoy more more on their vacation, and they tie that back to the lodging provider, because they're providing it. So now this isn't something that was, you know, purchased, it was included in their stay, and they really view that as a huge benefit. So it brings loyalty as well to people booking in the same places.

Annie Holcombe  
Well, actually, Alex and I went to Italy last fall, and I got cooked on the Viator app to do my do my activities, and have used it in other destinations. And I was curious, do you guys have a similar app? Because if you do, I apologize, I don't know about that. Is that something that you're going to do, or because you only book through the managers, they wouldn't actually book Yeah.

Caleb Yaryan  
So we do have a web platform that people can book in, but we're not an open marketplace. So one of the things that separates us and why we're able to sell some of the tickets we have, so two fold. One, we're in leisure market. So viators typically heavily in high tourist destinations, but not always leisure market. So as you go down into a leisure market, the scale of the operations that are there are smaller, and so typically they're not listing on a Viator, and then the the fulfillment of that is the kind of difficult part there, because there's no technology to tie into. So it's a very high manual. Hey, today I have this much availability, and so we we do provide a system that allows our activity partners to do that. But one of the reasons that we're able to offer a lot of the activities is because we're not offering them just to the public, like you have to be a guest of these properties in order to get these activities, not anybody can log in and get them. And really, our primary emphasis is not around selling activities. It's really about the complimentary activities bundled with the stay. And so it's not viewed as competitive to the local attractions, because in a lot of these small towns, they don't. They have a captive market. They don't need someone else selling it. They don't want to list on a Viator. They don't want to list on a third party marketplace, because they have limited inventory. And so with us, the reason that they do like working with us is, A, we're not available. You can't buy outside of the ecosystem. And then B, we give them an opportunity to get their product in front of guests before they're ever in market, which is something that they struggle with. And so those two things together kind of are unique, but it's why we'll never have I should. Say never, but we will very likely not have an app that's consumer facing, because that's just not our model. We're really not trying to sell more tickets. We're trying to leverage the activities to partner with you, with the lodging providers.

Alex Husner  
I have to share a little bit of a horror story. So speaking about Italy,

Speaker 1  
hopefully it's not too bad.

Alex Husner  
No, no, not with you guys. But when we were in Italy last year, we, Annie was much more organized going into the trip that she had all of her plans at each destination already mapped out, and we did not. And so we were just one day, we got into Tuscany and wanted to do some sort of a wine tasting tour. And I found this horseback riding wine tasting tour on Viator. And I thought, I mean, the pictures looked great. You were by the pictures. It said we were riding horses to different places to drink wine, which riding horses and drinking wines in the world. So I've booked it immediately, but it was on a Saturday, and we were going to do it on Sunday, and I got an email from them that it made it seem like they were kind of caught off, caught off guard, that they weren't planning to have any bookings for that day, even though it was active on the platform. And I thought, Okay, well, it should be fine. It was not fine. It was literally the opposite of what those pictures show that it was this gorgeous vineyard, but they took us, I think they just had to find some horses that they could put us on, and it took us, like 20 minutes away. The horses were not clean. I mean, they hadn't been groomed or brushed. And it was like a really, really not, not run down. I mean, the horses, they were taken care of, but it was just not, not at all what the pictures made it seem. And I was so disappointed afterwards that I tried to write back on via door, I tried to call them. I couldn't get in touch for, I mean, days after we got back from Italy, and finally they got back, and they they refunded it, but it was a nightmare. And I think that's one advantage to have you guys have a call center that it's like, if something goes, goes wrong, or if guests have to, you know, reach, you know, change their plans, they can actually reach out to somebody and, like, get good service, like you said, Adrian, that it's like, the same level of service of as if they were checking in at the property that they've got somebody that's there

Adrienne Clark  
to help. And same with the activities, knowing that the activity, like it's we've vetted this activity, made sure it's something you would take your family on, because the last year, we might hear from you, but you know who we're also going to hear from is we're going to hear from that lodging provider that's like, Hey, why did you send our guests? They just booked a stay with us, and now their experience is this terrible horseback riding, not to a junior experience. So that is why, I mean, that is one thing, you know, going back to Annie's question about post covid, there was a lot of people that a became lodging providers that may or may not need to be in the lodging provider business, but there was a lot of people that started to open their tour boat company or some sort of business, and they don't need to be in the activity business, or it wasn't, you know, what it said to be. So it's important for us and our team that the activities that they're vetted, that we you know, one of our team members have done them, been there, experienced it, you know, give them any of that feedback. So it's really important, just like for lodging providers, they want those five star reviews from guests. We want to make sure our activities that the guests are having those five star reviews. And it's the right experience. They have the right capacity, the the right attitude. Because, again, we all know, you know, guests are here on vacation, and guests are always, always right. So we need to make sure they're, you know, treat it that way through the whole experience. And yet, the call center is important to us. You know, self serve platform was something Caleb and his team over the last couple years we've worked on, and that came from years of people being like, you know, I would love to when we get done dinner, we finally decided what time we want to go on that dolphin cruise. But now your call center is closed. So for years, we heard we would love the ability to be able to book on our own, which is what Caleb and his team, you know, finally, we deliver to everybody, but the call center will always be the heart of our company. As far as somebody being able to reach out, it may they still get, you know, lost in this day and age, like, where do I park? I'm running late. I need to make this, you know, change in plans, or they just want information. It's amazing how many calls are still just information that people want to talk to someone and ask the questions, and we want to always have that available for them to be able to talk to. And then a lot of reservations change. And the last time they pulled it, we just pulled one category. And Caleb help me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's like 22% of all reservations on activities have a modification. So either they're adding to it, taking somebody off, changing time, updating something or another. So it. Mean, it's a lot. It's not just Here's your ticket and we're done with it and we move on. We're here for that entire time, and those modifications could be weeks ahead of their stay, or all the way up until the day of the event.

Annie Holcombe  
That's a lot. So I had a question, just thinking back on my property management days, one of the things you know, this is a great value, because it does kind of help the property manager differentiate. However, the challenge is, my question is, for you, do you limit the amount of partners and not, I don't mean attraction partners, but I mean, like property manager partners that you have in a market, so that every single property management doesn't offer this. I mean, obviously the boat captain is going to sell as many tickets as he can sell. He could care less where they where they actually come from, but from a property management standpoint, if I'm competing with 17 other management companies that all are offering the same thing, like, how do we how do we differentiate ourselves? So how do you guys balance that ability to get people in, you know, within exploring and using your system, but then also not over saturate as to how many partners you have in a market?

Caleb Yaryan  
Yeah, so it's a great question, and when we get asked frequently, actually, because as we go into new markets or we go into existing markets, it's incredibly important for us to cap how many units we work with. So it varies by market. And we look at how many professionally managed units there are in totality, and then how many companies are those, and then generally, per market will have a hard cap, because at the core of it, it is a differentiator, and it's no longer a differentiator if everyone has it. And so we really, and again, it's varies per market as to what that is, but it's a small percentage of the total market that we even will allow to exist as far as our relationships with them. And so we generally go in and try and find the top property managers that we can partner with. But that's a very non specific answer to your question, just because there's not a like, Hey, we're always at X percentage because it just depends on the market, depends on how many units there are, how many property managers there are, that

Annie Holcombe  
kind of but you do take that in consideration. That was my my curiosity, that it wasn't just like everybody and anybody, and at some point you've hit like, you know, full capacity for the market, and then nobody's really standing out. So that that's a great, that's a great, I think that's, that's great for partners to know, because I actually wasn't sure how you were going to answer that question. My

Caleb Yaryan  
sales team, I think would love it if we said, no limits, and they could go sell right one of the differentiators, and we don't. We're not a we're not trying to be everything to everybody. We really want to have good partnerships with our clients, and so we spend a lot of time with the individual partners and tailoring their offerings, but also working with them on their marketing and pulling data and looking with them. And so we just it's not something that scales across the entirety of a market either, because of the depth of that relationship.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, for sure. And I'm sure also, I mean, depending on the market, the most popular attractions varies, right? So maybe kind of give us some insights as to what are the most popular ones in, you know, like a Panama City desk and a beach destination, versus in the mountain markets like a Gatlinburg. Just out of curiosity, yeah, so

Adrienne Clark  
I'll take, I mean, for the panhandle, for example. Again, it varies by season. In July, all the on water activities are by far the most popular sunset, Dolphin cruise, take the cake. Water Parks are right behind it. But come in the shoulder seasons, golf will switch to the most popular because now it's not as hot. It's a great time of the year to play, to play golf, you go to the mountains in Tennessee, and your Dollywood is obviously the most popular. Most people are going there to have Dollywood, but those dinner shows are right up there as the, you know, next most popular. But you know, right behind it are the mountain coasters and, you know, the indoor like Ripley's Aquarium attractions, wonder works, things like that that take families. But again, even seasonality on that will will change as well as to what they're doing. You can tell when schools back in, you have less of the families and more couples that'll in across you know all the destinations that will change. Horseback riding is very popular out west, and of course, skeating is the most popular in the wintertime, and horseback in the summertime out west. And then I'd be remiss not to admit parasailing is extremely popular and all the destinations so we kind of by market. Know, if you said we're going into a beach market, different categories of activities. Hey, we need to, like the AP team knows you need to get one of each of this category, because you just see that across even though Myrtle Beach is very different than destin what people tend to do as far as on water is the same in both destinations. So kind of those categories is where they will start to go and acquire those activities.

Annie Holcombe  
Have a weird quote. Question. Well, I say weird question. It's a question, what is the weirdest activity, or the most like? Not like, maybe an activity that's only available in one specific market that you have? That's a

Adrienne Clark  
good question we get, we get asked by a lot, and then there's some that come that, again, also don't, don't work, not because it's not a great activity, but to that capacity in volume. But I'm trying to think some of the Haunted tours, like in St Augustine, are pretty interesting, or the escape room. Some of them get very interesting with their themes. Some of them a little scary, and some of them, I'm not a clown person, and the amount of clown escape rooms is frightening sometimes, but I don't know the most unique one. Caleb, what would you say? Would it be the most

Caleb Yaryan  
don't have too many niche like, well, I've never heard of that or seen that. The short answer is, I think it's probably the stuff you think of when you think of going to these places we and it kind of goes back a little bit to the story about the horse riding thing is generally the ones that are more niche don't have the capacity that we can comfortably with them, because they can't support the people that we would send through. So there's kind of this balance of, you know, finding unique things, but also companies that will work well with the volume that's going to come to them. So, yeah, I can't think of anything. I wish I had some crazy one I could tell you, but

Alex Husner  
I do know I have a favorite. So I've gone on a couple different exploring tours that you guys have been so generous, and I've been staying in Gatlinburg to give tickets, but went to an aquista in Gatlinburg, and that was amazing, like, I could stay there all day as so much fun

Caleb Yaryan  
while you were there. I think it's called Astro Luma.

Alex Husner  
Um, I don't, I don't know. I know I work.

Caleb Yaryan  
It's, it's, but Adrian laughs, because every time we go up there, I like, drag someone else to it. I love it. Is

Alex Husner  
that the the roller coaster or not roller coaster, but the mountain coaster

Caleb Yaryan  
park hours when the when the sun goes down, they have light experience that's like lasers and fog and music. And it's, I don't know, wow, I just find it particularly interesting. But Adrian, she's like,

Adrienne Clark  
No, it is. It is so much. I just think it's funny how much Caleb loves it each time, like we've been in March and froze walking through it, and then we were just there in July and hot in a thunderstorm, still going through it. And it is amazing. But unlike you, Anna Keystone, I could do something different and spend all day there. And I think it's, I think it's just amazing what they've done with an activity like that, and that's what I love to see, and it continues to grow. But what each person and family, or even reading some of the different guest reviews that come back, what everyone liked about it is everyone has their one thing that they love about it, and it's all different. So it's it's nice to be part of in a world that can be so negative and down. Sometimes, like, I just love sometimes reading through the guest reviews to be like, Okay, I might be here in this office looking at spreadsheets, but someone is out there having an amazing time on vacation right now, and that makes it worthwhile going through all of these spreadsheets or whatever mundane task is being done at the time.

Alex Husner  
I mean, I think that applies for property managers too, right? That also fixated on, you know, optimizing things and the stress of guests and technology and everything else, but it's like, at the end of the day, like we're creating, whether it's experiences or the accommodations, we're creating incredible memories for these families and travelers that come and stay with us and get to explore the destination. So it is. It's a humbling and definitely a feel good moment when you need it sometimes. But maybe tell us a little bit about I know one thing that I remember when I've heard about the program that I thought was really interesting was how property managers can use explory to also help a bad situation. So say they get to a to the rental company in the home isn't ready yet and it was supposed to be, or something like that. They can utilize those tickets, kind of as a way to soften the blow. So to say,

Caleb Yaryan  
yeah, so we have a couple different programs like this, but it, it's really intended for exactly that. So, you know, a guest check some of the air conditioners broken, you can send the party to the zoo or to go do an event while it's being fixed. And it really, it does a couple of things. One, it's financially a tool for them to not have to discount rate. It turns what ultimately is a negative situation into a huge positive that they're getting to go do something. And so that's something that all of our partners leverage quite a bit, actually. So there's that, and then we also, obviously our partners employees, will use it for them and their families as well, so they're able to do that, but it's significantly leveraged when. There's guest stays, or, you know, a lot of people have, you know, it's an anniversary, or it's a special event. And so sometimes the property manager will go and do something above and beyond what is included with the program to really, you know, celebrate whatever special occasion it is. And then we support that as well.

Annie Holcombe  
I had a question related to, like, new attractions. And I was just thinking, in Panama City Beach, we just had the new Dolly Parton attraction that open, and I guess so you guys, will you have large, you know, large agreements with these, these enterprises. Do you get, like, do you get first dibs on access to tickets over, like, the local market. Or, I don't know how that works, like, obviously you know that there's going to be a new attraction coming, just like the market knows. I mean, they're obviously, they're watching it being built, but do they notify you and say, like, tickets are going to be available X date, and then we're going to give you access to so many of them and you purchase them. Or how does that work out?

Caleb Yaryan  
Yeah, so it's really variable by so in that instance, we do have a really good relationship with the group that does that, so we knew long before they announced or broke ground that that was coming. We don't, they don't necessarily give us access before external people, but in many instances, we're the only third party that they allow to sell their tickets. And it really goes back to kind of the same thing before is we're not competing with them because we're not trying to sell in a marketplace, because, particularly larger attractions, they don't want to consume their own sales. And so in that case, they may come in, like there's a handful of very large attractions that we're the only people that are reselling it because of our model. But again, I'm not aware of any that we get. We do, I guess, for dinner shows like we have, obviously amounts held for inventory wise at some point, but not as far as a new attraction opening. I'm not aware of any that were given access prior to people we definitely know heads up before. And in that one specifically, like, we help them test their API, because we're one of the partners that only partners that they do that with. So we do testing with them before they're live

Adrienne Clark  
even. And again, you wouldn't want to hold tickets either, because, as a you know, a resident just like you living in Panama City Beach, I wouldn't want us holding tickets you we want to be part of to help. Like, Hey, how can we help you guys launch this activity? You're launching it in the summertime, which, you know should be ideal and good, but you know, dinner shows are expensive, and you're not coming into a year that everyone's watching every penny. So it's more. Let's strategize together. We might be one of the first kind of strategic partners. Of, hey, what can we do about, you know, getting people to this, you know, can we introduce you to local people? So as the team was down here, you know, looking and overseeing the construction, the marketing teams, we did introductions to not only people that we knew as explore, but I knew, as Adrian, a resident of the area. And hey, you should go, you know, talk to the PTO at elementary school, because they're always looking for field trips and group activities. And, oh, you have event space here. Go talk to this person that, you know, handles weddings and big corporate events. And so, again, it's just being, you know, just a good partner all the way around. So I think we're more thought of, of, hey, let's go talk to explore you as that strategic partner, and what are the different ways you know they need to be successful in the market. And I don't know that even that one, for example, is worried about summer, but you've got a shoulder season coming around. Like, what do we do in that shoulder season? To be to be creative. Tell me about the market. What do you know? You guys have been here and around and operating. What does your you know? What does your data show you? What can you tell us? And I think that's where you know, as far as coming to maybe first, is some of the first phone calls that we get to help with that sort

Caleb Yaryan  
of stuff, and I will emphasize there, so we're not, we don't have, like, batches of tickets that are being held. We're able to book in their system through our integration. So that's an advantage from just bookings, like you're getting the actual fee, you're getting a real time inventory, so there's not the risk of, hey, my family shows up and I have these vouchers, but I've got to trade them in for this thing over here, and they don't have the inventory. That's, you know, an important component for us is to be able to ensure that, hey, when there's a when we're holding these tickets, those are actually tickets that are there, yeah.

Alex Husner  
What happens when a new attraction comes to town? I mean, in Myrtle Beach, there's always something new every year. Do you guys have your pace on what's going on in the market and reach out to those when they get there? Yeah.

Caleb Yaryan  
So we have, one of our main sales teams is on the activity side, and they we both have in market, so people that are there visiting in market. And then a lot of times we'll have logic partners reach out to us and say, Hey, we heard this new thing is coming. And so yeah, we will have people that are in market. Keeping track of those and looking we really again, try and be a little bit of a walled garden to say, like, hey, is this an activity that is going to be a good fit? Is this an activity that's going to be of the quality that we want? Because we get the number of inbound requests we get both from lodging partners and from activity partners saying, Hey, we've heard about you. We'd like to work with you. But then we've had them, and it's just not a good fit for, you know, a multitude of reasons. But yeah, we definitely have people in in market, on our activity team that are keeping a pulse on what's going on. And, you know, we'll have, it's not uncommon for a renovation to come up or something where it's there, there's a season that they're not going to be open, so we'll get heads up on that too.

Alex Husner  
Okay, gotcha, yeah, because, I mean, as quickly as they come in, they leave too. So you want to make sure you're choosing ones that are going to stand the test of time. Because when you're also going out, you're, you know, getting content for the attraction so that the accommodations can market it and everything else too. So it's definitely an investment of time on explore his part to make sure it's a good fit, not going away. Well, this has been awesome, guys, and just great to hear that things are still going well and that you guys are really helping companies differentiate. And I think that's going to continue to be the theme. We're going to continue to be closer to 2019 than than ever as we continue on. I mean, the alternative is something crazy happens, like a pandemic, and none of us want that. So I think we're happy to just be like 2019 but find ways to really be able to get in front of a very crowded marketplace, whether it's your own direct bookings around the OTAs. So I think exploring solves that.

Annie Holcombe  
And I think, um, one, one thing that we wanted to touch on is you guys are heading into your 30th year, I believe, next year. So are there any big plans for any celebrations this fall at any of the conferences, or starting into into the next year?

Adrienne Clark  
So I got vetoed by the marketing team. I wanted, I wanted to go into this conference season like leading up to it. But I was reminded, hey, let's capture that like, because our anniversary is in January. So let's do it all for 2026 oh, okay, so we're going to kind of roll into 2026 and they're putting, you know, putting a plan together. But you know, as I told the team, it's like, Y'all should take a lot of pride in the fact, you know any business this day and age? 30 years is an amazing accomplishment. And you know, just the history, they laughed at me in July, we went up to Charleston for a leadership team meeting, um, and I brought this basket of stuff. And, you know, because a lot of people are newer within the last, you know, five to seven years. And so I, you know, went back old school the last 20 plus years, and was like, Hey, here's how we used to do it. Like, you think that's okay now, here's the papers that used to go in the check in packages that we had to proofread and print and get them hand delivered to all the clients prior to check in day so they could stuff all the packages with the keys and all the different assets we've used, you know, over the years to facilitate the program. And it caused a lot of good laughs. And, you know, a lot of people would be like, how did you guys do that? Like, you know, they're, you know, fax machines were a thing, and they fax So, yeah, we look forward to celebrating it, and just for the team, because it takes it literally, takes a village and a lot of people and a lot of skill sets, and it's not, it's not easy every day to do in this industry, I think people take for granted, because as a consumer, you like the fun side of going on vacation, And unless you've been on the other side, you can appreciate what all these logic, providers, yeah, providers, all of the vendors, you know, everything that goes into making someone's vacation a great experience. So yeah, we look forward to celebrating that next year.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, definitely. Well, excited for you guys, and we're excited to see you at the conferences this fall. But if anybody wants to reach out ahead to the conferences and learn more about explory, what's the best way for them to get in touch with

Adrienne Clark  
you? You can reach out to I mean, mine's a clark@explory.com but hello@explory.com would be the best way to reach out to us. You can fill out a form online, or just go ahead and email us.

Alex Husner  
Okay, great. Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com and until next time, thanks for tuning in. Everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai