Live from VRNation: Unpacking The Real Story

Alex Husner  0:37 
We are live here at VR nation. Super exciting. We are in Austin, Texas, at the JW Marriott. We have these very official mics this time. So we're reporters, real reporters, yeah, have you ever been to Austin before? 

Annie Holcombe  0:52  
I have not, 

Alex Husner  0:53  
yeah, I haven't either this, this is all of it's new to me. 

Annie Holcombe  0:55  
Yeah, it's got a fun vibe, like Nashville

Alex Husner  0:59  
yeah, a little more southern, I think, yeah, everything's big, a little more urban. Ish city kind of feel to it so far, but lot of people here. There's about 400 attendees, I believe, at the conference. So good turnout. Jason Gann and Julie George are on stage right now. So we're actually, we're missing them, unfortunately, but I've heard they were just spectacular this morning. 

Annie Holcombe  1:21  
Well, I mean, we know Julie and she got so much energy, and then Jason, yeah, yeah, yeah, can't be missed, so we'll be recording for the next couple of days here. But yeah, yeah. Just can't wait to share the stories and everything that's happening,

Alex Husner  1:36  
absolutely and if you're here, come stop by for an interview.

Alex Husner  3:51  
Welcome back. We've got the one and only. Heidi Hendriksen, who was the executive director of VRNation, this fabulous conference that we're at. How are

Heidie Henriksen  3:59  
I'm awesome. Happy to be here and doing great. 

Annie Holcombe  4:02  
So Are you exhausted yet?

Heidie Henriksen  4:04  
That was a cover up. So yeah,

Annie Holcombe  4:07  
it's okay. We believe in true transparency and honesty on the show. Yeah,

Heidie Henriksen  4:10  
and be your authentic self. We thought of we believe in transparency. VR nation too. So yes, I am very tired, but I'm very happy. I feel like it's been a success. 

Annie Holcombe  4:17  
So one of the things that I've been talking with other people about is your nation has always been kind of out west. It's been in northwest. It's that was where the association kind of growing and came up, and so now, or when it was Northwest. BRP, and so it's moving and branching out. And so you've moved kind of more to the center of the country. How is it going in terms of getting your message out and resonating and growing the association within, you know, I guess expanding into other areas of the

Heidie Henriksen  4:41  
US. We're definitely seeing our membership grow. We're seeing our board of directors expand across the country from this conference. Just being in Austin, I think the exposure has been fantastic. And everyone's come to me and said, You guys are buzzing. I hear about VR nation everywhere, so your marketing team gets a little pat on the back. Good. We've been working hard at it. Yeah,

Alex Husner  5:02  
Yeah. No, I do have a question. Last year at the first VR nation conference, we did not, we're not able to go to that when we went to NW European the year before, but last year, you did an announcement about the kind of like an OTA or a portal website that was gonna be for all managers. And I heard that that's, that's kind of not as much of a push. But could you tell us

Heidie Henriksen  5:22  
maybe a little bit about that? Yeah, I think we kind of shifted away from being another OTA, but still creating and offering that option to get more direct bookings. So we do have that through our website and for our membership as a benefit. But yeah, we really wanted to focus more on being an association, supporting the industry, finding the gaps and trying to help fill them. So that's where we shifted our focus just slightly. But so far, it's been Ultra positive, well received. Yeah, makes sense, yeah. So

Annie Holcombe  5:49  
I think that the one thing is, I think all the associate, several associations within the industry, are trying to find their footing. I mean, it's just been crazy since COVID. There's a lot been going on. There's a need to educate people. There is a lot of fragmentation in our industry. There's been a tremendous amount of growth in kind of a smaller operator. How do you guys see your place in that, tapping into that smaller operator and the newbies that have entered the industry and trying to educate them?

Heidie Henriksen  6:15  
Absolutely. I mean, there is a lot of fragmentation, for sure. And VR nation has expanded our membership to not just vacation rental managers or property managers. We also work with individual hosts and welcome in. Welcome them into our membership. We support them with education, different initiatives. We even have an advisory board entirely devoted to helping those types of hosts Excel and grow and know that they have an association they can come to for support. And I think that's probably one of our biggest differentiators, actually, is 20 plus percent of the content we focus on, both here at the conference and throughout the organization, is devoted to those individual hosts, making sure that they're supported. Is there

Alex Husner  6:54  
any sort of an online community part that goes with this or good

Heidie Henriksen  6:58  
question? Yeah, it's coming. It's been in the works. It's been in the works. It's been something we've been talking about with our members for a while, and just a couple of months. It's kind of like a social media home where everybody can collaborate and come together, have different groups based on content type. You take Facebook and broke it down and made it just for our industry. That's essentially the community that we're building right now. Yeah,

Alex Husner  7:19  
I think that's what people want. Yeah, they want a place where they can ask questions and sometimes just being on LinkedIn and posting for the whole world to see as part of the forum for it. So that's, that's a good way to do it. What do you think for the future? I mean, this was a great success here, but where? What's the plan for 2026

Heidie Henriksen  7:35  
any idea? We are definitely planning for the future. So next year, we'll be in Denver, and we're already isolating where we're looking at 2027 Okay, and beyond, yeah. We've also been putting on local road shows that have been hugely successful. We started those quarterly this year just to kind of test the market, see if this is a good idea and overwhelmingly positive response. Yeah. So I think next year we'll probably see one for a month potentially, instead of go quarterly. So lots to COVID. Was there one in your

Annie Holcombe  8:05  
area? There was one in Florida that's coming, coming next week. Yeah, it's in Florida. It's not, I don't think it's on your hand. It's in Sarasota, Arizona. Yeah, that's why I didn't participate, because it wasn't anymore close to me, where I didn't get to Okay,

Heidie Henriksen  8:19  
the best part was, when I told our board of directors, it was in Sarasota, they all decided, well, I'm coming because I want to go to

Annie Holcombe  8:27  
the beach. They're looking forward to it's amazing what you do in a nice destination, you know, getting people motivated, right? Yeah,

Heidie Henriksen  8:33  
baby powder sand. I'll be there. Yeah?

Alex Husner  8:35  
Well, we asked everybody one question. We said, What is the biggest problem in vacation rentals? And answered one word, but we didn't get to ask get to ask you. So curious what you would

Heidie Henriksen  8:44  
say. I was, I was really thinking about this one, and the only word that kept coming to mind was wild.

Alex Husner  8:49  
So many call us the Wild West, right, right? Yeah, just

Heidie Henriksen  8:54  
we are. We're trying to professionalize, we're trying to find more standards, but we're still pretty wild and young and growing up. Yeah, I

Annie Holcombe  9:01  
want to keep a little bit of the wild factor, right? That's what Get, get our game together. But, yeah, absolutely, what you guys are doing is amazing. I think it's a great turnout. You know, Alex and I've been fans of this association since they were P It's just a wholly different vibe than some of the other ones. And it feels like family when you talk to the people and they're, it's just, it's just a good group, and so I think you guys have a lot of runway to grow, and we're excited to be a part of that and help cheer you on. Yeah, we're

Heidie Henriksen  9:27  
excited. You guys are here. Thanks for coming. We always love having the pink table at our conference, and everybody loves you guys. So thanks for the opportunity. Thanks

Alex Husner  9:35  
for having us. Thanks, Heidi, 

we've got Orliw Benjamin, who is the founder of Lasoh so good to see you.

Orlie Benjamin  9:41  
Hi. Thank you for having me. 

Annie Holcombe  9:42  
Yeah, early. It's so great. You and I met a couple of months ago. You reached out to me to kind of like, get my feedback or talk to me about what you were doing, and I was really intrigued by what you're what you're doing. And one, we always love women who are in tech, and women are doing advancement in the vacation rental industry. So why don't you tell us a little bit about just tease a little bit, because. Going to be launching soon. Tell us a little bit about what you have going on. 

Orlie Benjamin  10:04  
Well, I basically am an owner operator that looked around and felt like the technology I wanted wasn't in the market, so I decided to build it. And lasso was really a platform that helps vacation rental operators own, their own, their own book of business, and drive revenue through the relationship of the guest and essentially a digital app experience that I've created for operators of vacation rentals. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  10:29  
and so you're based in Ohio, that's correct, which is, which was really fascinating to me, because I thought when you came to me and you were building this product, I assumed you were going to be in, like, some major destination, some traditional vacation rental market. So how long have you been in vacation rentals or in short term rentals? About

Orlie Benjamin  10:43  
two and a half years. We have a lot of really lovely state parks in an area called hocking hills. In fact, it was one of the know

Alex Husner  10:51  
that the name of that, Stacy, St John has a property there. I think in talking Hill, I think so. Yeah, interesting. Stacy, if you're watching, are you in Tommy Hill?

Orlie Benjamin  11:01  
If you run the numbers on growth in vacation rentals, that's one of the highest growth areas in the country. Yes, hocking Hill specifically, really, yes, check it out. Yeah, yeah.

Alex Husner  11:12  
So okay, tell us a little bit more. How does it work? Like, what? How does the property manager use your system? So for the

Orlie Benjamin  11:19  
property manager, once they set up the interface, anyone who is a guest through their PMS gets an automatic invitation to the digital experience that's branded for their business, and so whether it's on Airbnb or it's coming in through a direct booking, it's essentially like an app, like a Marriott app, for their business, that enables them to know all the fundamental stuff around the stay, not just for the person that booked the property, but for the whole group. And by doing that, the whole group gets to have less friction around communication. It all happened when my sister in law planned a trip, yeah, that's when the idea happened, and it was so poorly planned exactly, and so I was like, There's got to be a better way to manage the communication across the group. And coming from a background in E commerce at Victoria's Secret, and coming from a background in experience strategy at NetJets, which are really best in class on a global level. For both of those things, I really thought to myself, how could I set up this industry? And myself really because I was trying to solve my own problem, how can I set it up that the guests have this great experience that drives extra revenue through upsells and through add ons, that also enables the operator of the property to get the guest information for everyone, not just the person who books it right. And I know, stay fi does this at the point of arrival, but mine, mine does it prior, and the guests experience from booking to arrival is the opportunity to sell things and plan things and drive upsells. So

Alex Husner  12:49  
now one thing that just came out with Airbnb, their new off platform rules that you are not allowed if you collect an email address from a guest, you're not allowed to use that email for marketing purposes. So what do you do in that case?

Orlie Benjamin  13:01  
I have no idea how that's legally possible. I'd love to see that go to court. I believe it's a restriction of trade. Airbnb is essentially leveraging the infrastructure of operators as their inventory as if they own it, and I just can't imagine that that's allowed. So I'd love if they have arbitration agreements that they To my knowledge, because I had lawyers look into this. I've had to my knowledge. Nothing is ever public. I believe this is going to be, actually something that goes through the courts at some point. If you look at all the other OTAs, they don't create that restriction. Airbnb is the only one. So I can't wait to see how it legally shakes out. I

Annie Holcombe  13:38  
wonder, because it, to me, is like saying, you know, here's a consumer that's standing right in front right in front of you, but you're not

Orlie Benjamin  13:44  
allowed to talk to them. It's like Target saying, Hey, I'm gonna sell your hair product, but if somehow I can link that they went to your website, we're gonna cut you out. That's crazy. You can't do that. Yeah, without

Annie Holcombe  13:57  
the inventory, you don't have the platform, and there's no reason. So yes, I think that's going to be an interesting thing, but I think what you're doing is helping the managers, like you said, they're going to own their data, they're going to own their communication. Yeah, so you're here at VR nation, meeting with people and walking around, getting ideas. Are you looking to meet with property managers here? Absolutely. Okay, yeah, great. And so is this your first VR nation or it is? Yeah, it's my first

Orlie Benjamin  14:19  
time at VR nation. I've attended some other conferences, but not this one. Yeah. Not this one, yeah. And so we think, so far, I actually love the vibe everyone. That's what I love about this industry. Hospitality. Everyone is so kind. It's, it's just like the service heart is natural here. So from my perspective, everyone's been so, I mean, I, you know, so friendly and kind, and I've had a lot of really great conversations with property owners. I love to hear people's complaints, because with every pain point is an opportunity to create something new. And that's what I'm here to understand, is where's everyone's pain so I can try to help solve it. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  14:53  
we were just talking about, I was telling her about our interview with Boogie from track. Yeah, I know he said that. You know, feedback is a gift. Shift, yeah, talking about it, the show is a perfect place to go and kind of like, have those raw conversations about, yeah, bad, ugly. But for you, you know, you're still kind of in that learning stage. This is really great, but excited for you to launch. Do you have a date when you're going to launch it? You want to share with us? Are we still kind of end

Orlie Benjamin  15:16  
of May? Absolutely, end of May, right? Yeah, we're here,

Annie Holcombe  15:19  
yeah? Well, this is exciting.

Alex Husner  15:20  
Yeah, we'll definitely, we want to have you come on the show and we'll do like a whole rundown on the system and hear how it's going. So we'll definitely check in with you later this year, but

we'll be back. Thank you. 

We're here with Dylan Bozarth, who is the General Manager of 30A Escapes Dylan, so good to see you. 

Dylan Bozarth  15:38  
Yeah, thanks for having me. 

Annie Holcombe  15:39  
Well, thank you for coming back and giving us the opportunity to actually record audio with you this time. So is this your first visit to VR nation? It is, yeah, what do you think it's

Dylan Bozarth  15:51  
been great? Yeah, had a lot of fun. Yeah, good content. Seems, as a property manager, has been very engaged. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  15:56  
you were on a panel earlier today. It was, yeah, tell us about that.

Dylan Bozarth  16:00  
Talked about cancelation policies and a new software or insurance called Rome, yeah, and cancelation insurance, okay, we'll get to that

Alex Husner  16:11  
last time that we saw you in person. We were in Nashville for the track conference. And during that whole time we were there, we came up with this great concept with for a series called chilling. Chilling with Dylan, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll come on site and we're gonna, we're gonna get to see behind the scenes of some of the operations and things. But one of the questions in the children with Dylan series was, how do you keep it cool when things get hot, like my guest is complaining, when an owner is complaining, what do you do to keep chill? Um,

Dylan Bozarth  16:42  
I think just after a long time of having having things come up that seem way worse than they are, and then you get through it and you succeed or move on. You know, gotten through everything to this day. Yeah. So just a mindset thing.

Annie Holcombe  17:03  
Yeah. So just chilling with Dylan is a

Dylan Bozarth  17:08  
mindset, not always, but we try, try our best.

Annie Holcombe  17:12  
If you had to say, what is the biggest problem in vacation rentals, but you could only use one word,

Dylan Bozarth  17:18  
what would that be? I think a popular one would be advocacy,

Annie Holcombe  17:22  
okay? It's probably Yeah, that's a good one. And you're in the Panhandle and you're in Florida, so you know that that's a big problem. Yeah? It's

Dylan Bozarth  17:30  
kind of a new, new thing that I was talking to someone in 2015, 1617, those were not yeah fears, yeah. That might arise in it in a year. Yeah, and it might affect you. And revenue, it's definitely starting to become,

Annie Holcombe  17:48  
yeah, like everybody, more of a concern. Yeah, you can't, you can't ignore it anymore. It's now. It's here, and right? It hasn't hit you yet. It will right? And

Dylan Bozarth  17:56  
not that we wanted to ignore it. We're what we're trying to do is work with the local Yeah, the community. We want to be good neighbors, yeah, and we want to co mingling. We want to bring good guests to our beach, and hopefully we can eliminate a lot of the problems that way, instead of having to have surgery. Rules, I agree with that fines and penalties, if you know, kind of whistle thinking maybe sometimes. But if everybody were good actors, and the

Annie Holcombe  18:25  
world would be a great place, right? Everybody would be chilling with Dylan. If the world would just come around in the mindset of chilling with Dylan, we'd be fine, yeah?

Alex Husner  18:35  
Well, Dylan, as always, great to see you. Thanks for having me. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  18:39  
we love having you on Alright.

Alex Husner  18:43  
Thanks. We've got two very important ladies right here. We've got Tera Lorimer , who is the founder of Luxury Getaways, board member for VR nation, and Heather Van Wie, founder of Cottages on the Key, also a board member for VR nation. Ladies, so good to see you. Good morning. Good morning.

Annie Holcombe  18:58  
So Heather, this is your second conference, first conference as a board member,

Heather Van Wie  19:02  
second conference officially? Yeah, I was elected in elected last April. Yes, 2020, at the first conference at the first VR nation. Congratulations.

Annie Holcombe  19:09  
And you're in Florida, so you represent probably the furthest, most expansion for the association, right? Indeed, very exciting. So how has it been so far?

Heather Van Wie  19:18  
I love it, yeah. I mean the conferences, or the past year the association, I'm all about it. I'm 100% in support of it. I just and I was so glad that they actually put me on the board, because I was like, This is great. I can't wait to help them expand into this national level. Is it's really going very well for me.

Speaker 3  19:37  
I flew down to give her a thorough interview three days of interviewing heaven. 

Annie Holcombe  19:47  
Was there any spa involved? I might ask,

Unknown Speaker  19:49  
unfortunately, beaches, beach time,

Alex Husner  19:53  
we were hard at work. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So what do you guys think about the conference so far? About attendance, how the vibe has been. Is it what you expected? I

Tera Lorimer  20:03  
think it's better than I expected, really. I think I think the vibe is good. I think people are happy. There's a buzz. Everybody's in a good mood, maybe a little tired this morning, but the keynotes blew me away. I was thrilled with that. I think it's going good. Yeah, good. 

Annie Holcombe  20:18  
Well, this is we were at Northwest VRP in Reno. That was the first time. Okay, everybody, and we've just been in love with you guys ever since. Like, the vibe in the association is just so welcoming and warm, and it's like family. So we're really excited to see you expand. So you were mentioning to me that that's one of the things that's happening. Not only is the association expanded, you've expanded the board. So how many board members do you have now we're at 14. 

Tera Lorimer  20:39  
It's a fairly large it's a fairly large board. We're debating going down a couple, maybe in a year, going down to 11 or 12 orsomething, but it's a little bit easier that you anticipate, right? Yeah, yeah. And we went from state representatives with NW, VRP to we had to eliminate states, and we went nationwide. So we're shifting and learning. And, yeah, yeah, we brought Heather in from the south, Kevin in from Denver, Dana's in California. And then we have two new board members that just came on officially yesterday, yeah. And unfortunately, they already had other conferences they were going to but Mary Ann and she, Mary Ann from PMI, okay. She's in, I think, Utah, okay, and she's going to be at our road show in Sarasota next week, and then Heather and I will be there. And then Tony staccato, staccato, he's at his own conference, so he's a Michigan all that. It's not all large, like enterprise operator, 

Annie Holcombe  21:38  
Because Tony is like, yeah, not. He's not a newbie, but he's relatively new in the terms of, like, the, you know, the industry and but he's just made a name for himself, and he's done a really good job growing and been very methodical. And so that's where I think the growth opportunity is in those smaller operators. And we were talking to Heidi about that earlier, about, like, how do we bring them into the fold? And so that's a really great move to bring someone that came along, and we need someone from the northeast. Just Hint, hint. I was actually just gonna ask

Alex Husner  22:01  
that, because I feel like the Northeast kind of gets neglected a little bit in some of these conversations. And maybe I don't think that's neglecting them, but I think they just, they're not as willing to come down and travel and go to these events. But you know, Alexis Miller is here, which is fabulous.

Tera Lorimer  22:17  
Introduce us, please. Yeah.

Alex Husner  22:21  
No, she's great. But there's, there's a lot of operators up there, and they're, their situation is so different that they are June, July, so the timing of everything is important. Yes, it's great to see you guys expanding and growing. I think there needs to be more options for people to get together and share these collaboratives. I think that

Tera Lorimer  22:40  
was one of the reasons why we started the road shows. Also, not everybody can go to this conference, and, you know, not everybody can make it to Texas in April. And we want smaller operators to come, our videos to come, even if you can come for a day, come to a road show. We picked four different regions this year, one per quarter. Next year, we're doubling the number of road shows. So if you can't make it to the conference, we get it. Yeah, but try and try and make it to a road trip, if you can, it's a full day pack of education, yeah. So

Alex Husner  23:06  
we've got to ask you the question that we have asked everybody so far by become a victim the vacation rental world. What is the biggest problem in one word,

Heather Van Wie  23:18  
hospitality

Alex Husner  23:19  
I assume you mean, yes,

Heidie Henriksen  23:24  
it's a dying art Yes, agree, yeah, agree

Tera Lorimer  23:28  
with yours. I think it's saturation. I think in some of the cities there's too many there's too many units, and COVID everybody came on and thought that they could be their own Airbnb host. And maybe it's slimming down. Now we're going to start slimming down, but I've got some properties in Phoenix, and I see a saturated market, 

Annie Holcombe  23:46  
one of those really high growth markets. I think they saw like 100% increase year over year, like two years ago. But I did see this morning that Jamie Lane presented some data that said that that's that trend is slowing. It is. It's not not that we're losing inventory, but it's not growing at the same pace. So I think that that's definitely something that we all can agree has been impact, yeah, yeah, my town, and I think it's a it's good to see it slowing down, and I think now that everybody can kind of, like, take stock of what they have and, like, get their house in order and really start to get back to hospitality, right?

Alex Husner  24:16  
Well, there you have it, folks, thanks for stopping by, ladies.

Tera Lorimer  24:19  
Thank you. Appreciate it. Love your

Alex Husner  25:00 
We've got two of the head honchos here. We've got Brian Olson, Matt Tisdale,

Matt Tesdall  26:00  
 I thought you guys were the head honchos. Well,

Annie Holcombe  26:05  
thank you, yeah. Well, thank you for having us again. You had us at Reno, and we had such a blast with you guys. We just were looking forward to coming back. So thank you for having us. We appreciate it. This is the first official VR nation conference. Right last year was the name change, but this is the actual official and we've interviewed a couple of your board members, and we interviewed Heidi, and we talked about the growth of the association and kind of where it's headed. So from your vantage point, looking at this conference, where do you think you guys are in that growth and that expansion phase? I

Brian Olson  26:34  
think we're, we're on track. I think what we talked about and really wanted to do, we accomplished this year with the number of attendees, the quality of the sessions, and those things, that was kind of our vision last year. I think we really hit that out of the ballpark actually this

Annie Holcombe  26:50  
year. Yeah. What about you, Matt? Yeah,

Matt Tesdall  26:52  
I would agree with what Brian said we worked as a board and and the advisory boards that we have to have put so much time into membership and conference in event planning, and I'm just really proud of what the what the team has done.

Annie Holcombe  27:07  
Yeah, and you were a hesitant President Elect from Brian stamp, well, he wanted you. You didn't want it. But aren't you glad you did it? Yeah, he's the hard guy, right? Yeah, I can't imagine. But aren't you glad you glad you did it? Yeah, 100% Yeah, good.

Brian Olson  27:22  
I'm very honored. Yeah, yeah. I felt it was in good hands when I was after I gave up, when I was done being president last year. I felt, with President, Vice President, with Matt and Tara, that we were on the right track and with in good hands for it,

Annie Holcombe  27:34  
I agree with that. Yeah, right. And

Alex Husner  27:36  
we've heard a lot about the road shows that you guys have coming up. Everybody's excited about those. Unfortunately, not gonna be able to make em. But What's are you going to continue to do those next year

Matt Tesdall  27:44  
as well? Yes. So this year we'll we have, we did Portland, we're doing Sarasota, Florida, here next week, May 6, and then we have wreck and Ridge, September, September, and then October. Trucking, yeah. Trucking, Tahoe, yeah. So four this year, yeah, which was a big accomplishment for or I think it's good accomplishment. We want to do eight next year. It's lofty. Yeah, that is lofty. But really the purpose of the road shows is to go out and meet the people. Yeah, not only 10% of property managers come to an annual conference like this, or, yeah, for sure, whatever, but yeah, so this is the one that where we can go out and meet people where they're at, yeah? A quick, three, four, rough, five hour event. It's

Annie Holcombe  28:24  
a great attitude to have. And I think sometimes the associations forget that. You know, not everybody can get to them well. And I

Matt Tesdall  28:30  
think the other thing that we can do with those is we can bring our frontline employees, yeah, so I brought at in Portland, I brought my housekeeping department, I brought my head of housekeeping, my scheduling manager, and so they could come, which they they, I've got one that doesn't fly, so she's not coming off, you know, but she could go to Portland, yeah, get find out, and get certified by dirt, and do those things. And I think those road shows are really going to do that. The thing that I was amazed about is we had hoped for 50, and we had 90,

Alex Husner  28:59  
oh, wow, for the road show,

Unknown Speaker  29:00  
yeah, so that

Annie Holcombe  29:02  
proves that people are hungry for that information. Yeah,

Alex Husner  29:05  
I think, I mean, just generally, at conferences, it's really hard to get people to visit all of the pools, right? You know, I think that conversation I've just been hearing with some of the vendors, of like, how do we going forward with any of these conferences? How do we get more interaction with because there are so many vendors here, I think with the road shows, it's nice because it's just a smaller grouping that's that's going Are there any other ideas or things you guys are thinking about for the future of, like, how you get more people just have to go to all the booths.

Matt Tesdall  29:36  
I actually like that idea. You know, we've tried different things, and, you know, a scavenger hunt. Yeah, it's super unique. But I would welcome, you know, vendors to serve on the events committee and actually come alongside, say, and a lot of them are, I'm not saying they don't, yeah, they are doing this. And then let's figure that out. Because honestly, if I was them, I would want to everybody to come by. But

Annie Holcombe  30:00  
too, yeah, it's as a vendor. I mean, I speak, I'm like Alex, and I both on on the vendor side of things. It becomes harder and harder every year to decide where to go and you want to support all of it, and it just it's difficult to do it. So I think by you guys adding the road shows in, it presents another layer of opportunity for you know, the vendors as well. I

Brian Olson  30:17  
also think with this event, and I've heard this from vendors, they feel like it's great because they see the decision makers here, yeah? Like, there's four of us here. We're all for decision making. Yeah, it's not. I love bringing my housekeepers, but we all know that's a swag pickup. Yeah, they like something, but then they gotta convince the decision makers. So I think the decision makers come specifically looking for that, like we did this year, yeah, specific things. So

Annie Holcombe  30:41  
maybe we need to have a decision maker conference and lock them all in a room. There you go. Exactly, yeah, yeah,

Alex Husner  30:51  
great. Well, thank you guys for stopping by. Thank you for having us, yeah. Continue to participate. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  30:59  
Thank you for doing that. Thank you.

Alex Husner  31:01  
We are here. Mustache team with send squared. We've got Nick and Roy and our trusty little stashes. Doing

Nicolas Wegener  31:09  
all right, yeah, doing great, yeah. I know it's it's a bit confusing, but that's okay. Yeah, you can Roy zone, yeah, go ahead. Oh no, sorry, you can't.

Annie Holcombe  31:19  
Cannot, cannot. It might hurt a little Oh, we don't want that. We don't want that. So you guys are here at VR nation. Is this your first one, second one? Okay? And you are doing a lot of marketing with them, and a lot of helping them out. And so you're seeing kind of firsthand everything that they're trying to do, and it seems like they're doing all the right things.

Nicolas Wegener  31:39  
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we've been helping with their email marketing, along with their text marketing as well. So getting those out, like before, all the different events here, so seems pretty well received. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  31:48  
I mean, I know where I need to be. Well, there we go. That's helpful. I know exactly where I need to

Roy Collins  31:56  
be. We can't help with getting you there. That's on you guys. It just

Annie Holcombe  31:59  
reminds me that I need to be somewhere. I think

Nicolas Wegener  32:01  
it's helpful for, like, the part, like, the parties and the after events, you know, because there's always so much like, where are you gonna go? Where will you be? I don't know,

Speaker 4  32:08  
right? There's too many choices. Yeah, exactly. So, Nick, we

Alex Husner  32:11  
had you on the show CBD, six to eight months ago.

Annie Holcombe  32:16  
Yeah, about a year. Yeah,

Alex Husner  32:19  
it's been really great. I get to work with n squared with you guys, with one of my clients now. So I've gotten to see firsthand the product, and we've been really impressed and happy with it so far. Yeah,

Nicolas Wegener  32:31  
always. But really, COVID, you

Alex Husner  32:33  
guys have built, as far as I know, the most comprehensive phone phone system solution for the full CRM, the text and with the email, everything all underlined,

Nicolas Wegener  32:46  
yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, it's

Annie Holcombe  32:53  
not, it's not a new venture. Yeah,

Nicolas Wegener  32:57  
right. We got started in 2018 So, and before that, Roy was at track, yeah, spent

Roy Collins  33:02  
three years there and helped build some product over there with those guys. And it was, yeah, good time, yeah. So

Alex Husner  33:09  
what's on the roadmap for this year? And I know kind of what I've seen so far on the product

Nicolas Wegener  33:15  
there is, it's really cool. We're calling it conversations, and it's a reinvent on the inbox. So everybody has a unified inbox, and so it's just bringing all of those contextual layers into one conversation. And I'll let Roy talk a little bit more about it. Oh, I was

Roy Collins  33:32  
gonna hold it, but I don't even need to. I know, right? It's flipping, flipping the scripts here. So yeah, so we re envision sort of the inbox. And As Nick said, we're going with conversations, is what we're calling it. It allows you to have all channels of communication with both guests and owners in one streamlined view. You can actually see emails, SMS, voicemails, call recordings. You can click and have the call recording right in the view of reservation stream, call stream. It's an entire overview of everything that's happening with that guest across all channels right in front of your eyes. Yeah,

Nicolas Wegener  34:07  
and it's in one timeline too, so you don't have to go anywhere else. You don't have to worry about folders. So the same kind of visualization you would have with this, like text message thread on your phone, similar in context. So

Annie Holcombe  34:19  
when the guest says they didn't get communicated to you, have a clear shot of saying, No, we really did. Yeah. So everything, no digging. It's all right there. That's super helpful. How long did it take you to come up with, or, guess, put that together and make it that's a lot of things to integrate, right? And

Nicolas Wegener  34:34  
it's accumulative. It's and it's the cumulative of it. And the only reason why we can do it is because we've been at it so long with building out the entire ecosystem, yeah, so anywhere from like the phone app to the phone calls you were regarding, to email marketing and seeing that too in the conversation, oh, they just got that great offer. Now, you know, that's their last email that they got from you. Yeah, and really

Alex Husner  34:57  
close to where you can build up personas based on. GUEST and now how you how to communicate with them. Profile gets built out really some neat stuff. Yeah, thank

Annie Holcombe  35:08  
you. Well, I'm excited to see where this goes. I imagine that the own, the people that you've talking to about this are, I'm assuming you have some beta testers using it, or is it out in market, or

Nicolas Wegener  35:18  
the conversations, yeah, that actually comes out this next month. So you know, we were previewing it here during the show. So it's very well received. Yes, well, we made some initial announcements that some folks knew and came over. So, yeah,

Annie Holcombe  35:31  
very cool. Very cool, awesome.

Alex Husner  35:33  
Well, thanks for shopping. Bye guys.

Nicolas Wegener  35:36  
Thanks as always, thank you. We've

Alex Husner  35:38  
got Ann Gardner, who is the Executive Director of the rmacu. Thank

Anne Gardner  35:43  
you. Thanks for letting me visit with you both for a few minutes. 

Annie Holcombe  35:47  
I mean, you can pass up the opportunity to talk to you. You're here in another associations conference, absolutely, kind of getting a lay of the land, but also, like Goodwill, it's like, we want these associations to partner and work together, and I think that you've been a big proponent of that, and kind of the cross collaboration. And so what's your what's your take on the conference? 

Anne Gardner  36:05  
This is really wonderful, and it's great to see, you know, so many of our members here. It's great to be, you know, hosted, obviously, by Matt and Heidi, and we hosted them in Phoenix, of course, in October. And so just to be able to discover where those synergies are, and where we have opportunity to have impact, I think, and just really advance the industry. Yeah, that's great.

Alex Husner  36:26  
We enjoyed the conversation that we had with the four of you on the show probably about a month or so. Yeah, and I think it's just, it's just a sign of the times that things are becoming more collaborative within the associations and understanding that people can't go to every conference every year, but sometimes the decision comes down to when it is, where it's located, and you want to make sure that people have every opportunity to go to as many as they can. That's really where it's

Unknown Speaker  36:52  
absolutely, absolutely

Anne Gardner  36:53  
and we all have different we have different strengths and we have different focus. Yeah.

Annie Holcombe  36:58  
So, yeah. So you are leaving this and then you'll be head down focused on exec conference coming up in May. We're super excited about that in Miami Beach. Yeah. So tell us about that. What can we look forward to? Well,

Anne Gardner  37:11  
we can also call it the first event that I will be participating in for the second time. So I the first event for VR may that I will be a second time participant of, Oh, yeah. I saw the executive summit when we were in Boca Raton last year, and we got, I think, a lot of great feedback and a lot of energy there. And we just said, what what happens if we just reimagine it? Yeah. And so we brought to bear just every single resource that folks I've met along the way that have said anything we can do to help vrma And our industry move forward. And we just asked everybody to come together and just say, this is an executives conference for executives, business owners, leaders. And we know that you know the areas that you need to focus on in your business. And so we really sort of turned that loose and said, Let's just reimagine it all. So it's super exciting to see the content that we have, the conversations, and to just really see the momentum that is happening right now with the events.

Alex Husner  38:12  
It seems like it's like a think tank you've put together right managers, suppliers from the industry that kind of come together to help with the content for that show. Are Travis Wilbur, Rachel all day, I'm forgetting,

Annie Holcombe  38:25  
yeah, Judy Clark, Campbell, she's on there. Marianne headers, part of us with PMI, lot of really good like thought leaders, but all from different markets and different kind of pieces of the industry.

Anne Gardner  38:38  
Yeah. Well, well, I will tell you that the that is a wonderful assemblage of talent. And I will say that our chairs to you know, Tom Goodwin and Rachel Alday, they were very insightful, I think, and very purposeful about bringing together a team that could really talk about the industry issues moving forward. And so when we sat everyone down, we, we just basically said Tom Rachel, like, take it and go, yeah, it's you know, you you know what you need in that. And so I think they have been really inspired, and they've really challenged one another, and they've been willing to surface conversations for this coming event in two weeks that maybe we're we're not part of conversations in the past, and so not to be provocative, but just to be just to just actually bring it in the room, and bring it in the room, and let's problem solve and and let's just move forward on solutions and help one another. Are there any like big things that are going to happen that are different in this changed environment that you can absolutely, absolutely, I would say that we have sort of a duality, if you will, of its content. It's about leading forward, but it's also about being able to sharpen the saw, but also have that reflection, that rest, that beat of how do you renew and keep things going? And. And really keep that energy, because you're leading teams, you're leading businesses and initiatives, and so how do you do that as well? So taking care of both, I think, is is really going to be the focus that folks

Alex Husner  40:12  
will see, going to be a risk for all this hard to not feel taken care of there. Yeah, it's very true.

It's very true makes big shoes to fill, because last two years spectacular, like the rent is going to be right up there. So if anybody hasn't booked your tickets yet, definitely recommend going overdue. So what's the best way,

Anne Gardner  40:35  
absolutely, to be on vrma.org and if you see our events and experiences, we have it right on the front screen, splash screen. We still have some seats left for it, and I will say that it is going to be a fun time.

Alex Husner  40:48  
See,

Anne Gardner  40:51  
we are not revealing our MC yet. As a matter of fact, we have a bit of a bit of mystery there. But I will say that the program that everybody has lined up is still just really fast paced and topical, and I will say that our supplier members are certainly part of that. So it's an integrated event. It's really fully immersive, and I think the experience is going to be something new for everybody. Yeah,

Alex Husner  41:18  
we'll be set up

with the podcast there as well. Yes, yeah. We're so excited. We're excited we did the we did our first time that was actually our first time doing anything live. Was at an exact conference, yeah, three years ago, one. So this will be nice to come home again. Yeah, yeah, it'd be good, yeah. And Thanks for, thanks for spending a few minutes, and thanks for doing what you do. Thank you. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai