Rewriting the Rules: Orlie Benjamin on Building Lasoh for a Better Guest Experience

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie: the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex and I'm Annie, and we are joined today by Orlie, Benjamin, who is the founder and CEO of Lasoh. Orlie It's so good to have you on the show. 

Orlie Benjamin  
Thank you both for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Annie Holcombe  
We're so glad to finally have you on and we talked to you at the recent VR nation conference, and that was really great. I think it was one of the one of your first conferences, so we were really keen to get your kind of your your take on the industry, and I think you've been you've embraced it, and they've embraced you, and we're so just thrilled to have you as part of it. But for the listeners that don't know who you are, why don't you tell us a little bit about you and your hospitality journey and how what brought you to Lasoh Sure,

Orlie Benjamin  
I'm the founder and CEO of a software company which is marketing technology specifically built for the vacation rental industry. The objective of the software is to enable operators to drive bigger profits through deeper relationships with each guest, essentially relationship marketing with the whole bunch awards in front of it. And the way I got here is I had a pretty robust career in corporate America at some brands you would recognize, such as American Airlines, Victoria, secret, net jets. And during those experiences, I was always at the intersection of marketing and digital. And then I went on and worked at a startup, and also decided to build my own business up a vacation rental business, and that was the moment that I really had an idea around Lasoh, because I recognized that a lot of the marketing technology that I expected to exist for the industry didn't exist, and it was all the sort of stuff I would expect from my time in larger companies. And so with the spirit of solving my own problem, I cobbled together a mediocre tech stack based off of what was available in the market, and decided to actually go ahead and pursue building the software that I thought would bring operators a bigger edge in terms of owning their Bucha business and driving more direct revenue, because I've worked in primarily vertically integrated businesses that own their customer relationships, and I think that it's key as an operator to know who Your customer is drive your business backward from the pains and the needs of your customer. And then, of course, retaining customers is one of the smartest business strategies anyone can have, because practically an annuity, right? Someone that comes back and tells their friends is it's a flywheel that you don't have to pay for it. So for me, those are some of the philosophies that I put into the thinking with Lasoh, and the goal is to empower other operators out there to really own their Bucha business through good marketing tech, you

Annie Holcombe  
actually had properties, correct? You had rental properties, and so you had a pain point in your own situation, correct? Okay, that's

Orlie Benjamin  
right. I operate a vacation rental business out of hocking hills, Ohio, called the acres

Alex Husner  
Gotcha. So explain to us exactly what it does like take us through how somebody uses Lasoh in a real life situation.

Orlie Benjamin  
It's essentially a digital portal. You could think of it as being comparable to what you'd experience at Disney, or what you would experience if you're a Marriott user. And that digital portal enables the operator of the business to elevate the guest experience by giving them a digital companion in terms of what they may need when they need it. It's much, much more than just a guidebook. It's a whole interface that has everything from fundamentals for this day to recommendations to actually, we're currently working on experiences where the operator very similar to what Airbnb just launched. We've been working on that, and that we're not that far away from launching it where the operator can actually drive incremental revenue through that interface, because it's like blending E commerce and experience strategy together, just like Disney does. The other aspect that's really great around this is the CRM component, which means that all of the information that is captured by the digital portal is actually stored in a CRM, and then from there marketing, direct marketing can happen, and we gather customer data at the point of booking, not at the point of arrival to a property, which is how some Wi Fi operators out there are doing it. I strongly believe that starting the relationship with the guest at the point of booking is critical, because that's when you have the opportunity to drive incremental revenue before they arrive. And that's that's kind

Alex Husner  
of the key distinction here. At the point of booking, how are they presented with Lasoh? So it's essentially

Orlie Benjamin  
all through automations and API integrations. So let's say, Alex, you're coming to stay at my property in hocking hills, and you booked through Airbnb. The PMS integration that exists with Airbnb would denote that you've created a booking. There would be an automatic message that would be triggered. In this case, it would be a phone number that I received from Airbnb. So then the automation would come in via text to you to your personal number. Then it would say, Hey, Alex, we can't wait to host you at the acres from June 3 to June 7. We have a digital portal that helps you plan for your trip and has a whole bunch of key info as well as experiences and upsells for you. I mean, that's not the exact language, but it's foundationally the language. And then there's a link, and from that link, you click on that link and it already. Has identified your phone number as your username to log in, so you just get a six digit magic link code. You don't have to create a passcode. You don't have to download anything. And now you're in. And now you have a personalized Disney app, sort of experience specific to your stay, where a variety of the features that exist in the digital portal are available to you, you can add the rest of the group so that you can reduce the friction of having to communicate to others. I call that role the party captain, the person who books property, the booker guest, because in many cases, there's larger groups that are traveling together, and that person has to then organize everybody else and give them all the information. Adding everyone else to the portal removes the bottleneck of communication, and more importantly, it now has everyone's information that's been captured, that's been added to the digital portal, because you log in with your phone number, your email address. So

Annie Holcombe  
the million dollar question that is, I think everybody's mind right now is with Airbnb new rollout of like, the off platform booking, and how you're not supposed to be talking to the guests. And I think we talked a little bit about this. And about this at VR nation, and it feels a little, I don't know, just feels like this wall is being put up and they're being told like, yes, you have the property. It's your property, and the guest is in your property, but you're not allowed to speak to the guests. Like, it just feels very, it just feels very dystopian in terms I was just a man, and so how do you think Lasoh can work for hosts in that scenario where they are listing on Airbnb, and there's that, there's that point at which they're saying you're not supposed to communicate with them on these these ways, these levels.

Orlie Benjamin  
I think the history of the industry is that operators of vacation rentals and guests have been around since before Airbnb, and Airbnb has injected itself into the value chain, which is really smart. It's a market place, right? Very similar to how Amazon has, right? People have been buying and selling things forever, and now there's been this intermediation that Amazon has created. But I think the distinction, and I think it's actually very much a legal question, and I would love to see the FTC or the DOJ or an attorney general syndication come together, which is, is this anti competitive? Because it feels like a restriction of trade to me as a unofficial opinion, all of the terms and conditions from Airbnb go to arbitration. There is absolutely no litigation that's been in the courts that anyone can refer to. I really think it's a rule with no teeth. I think they could remove someone from the platform, but legally, I don't think there's legal teeth. I say this again, unofficially. I, you know, although I did go to law school, this is not a legal opinion, but that, you know, I, and I think the reality is, is that operators are bringing customers into their business. Airbnb does not control the inventory. It does not own the assets. And there's a real question here of what level of control it thinks it can exercise over people's actual businesses. It's, you know, it says it's a step beyond a distribution channel. At this point, it's operating with a level of control that's pretty unprecedented. Yeah.

Alex Husner  
I mean, you're reaching to the choir. We certainly agree with you on that, and and, you know, I agree too. Also, I don't think that there's a legal case to be had, but beyond that, just the ability of Airbnb to strip these listings and ability to rent properties from these hosts or managers. You know, I mean, that can put a person or a company out of business really quick, especially the companies that are 100% dependent on Airbnb for their bookings. And, you know, obviously we understand there's a bigger picture out there, and that you should be diversifying your distribution. You should be pushing to be more of a direct booking company as much as you can. But in the meantime, how are you getting around that of if, if you're not supposed to be asking for that, those emails like, Are you, are you still asking for them from the guest, or are you doing something different for Airbnb guests? And we're, honestly, we're asking any of the guest apps that we're talking to this question right now, because just very interested to know how everybody is dealing with it. Well,

Orlie Benjamin  
let's see if my personal property gets taken off Airbnb after this interview, but I can tell you how I'm doing it, right? So I

Alex Husner  
do know a lot of Airbnb people listen to this podcast?

Orlie Benjamin  
Yeah, so Lasoh turns Airbnb into lead gen, right? So Airbnb is a booking. It goes to the PMS. PMS is are actually intermediating the relationship between Lasoh and Airbnb. There's no direct connection with Airbnb. There is no way for Airbnb to know what Lasoh is doing, just like there's no way for Airbnb to know if a person who's managing a property has a conversation with their customer in real life, right? Because it's not happening through the Airbnb platform. And so there's, there's absolutely no digital connection with Airbnb, and there's, there's a whole world that happens outside of Airbnb that Airbnb has no jurisdiction to use a legal term over. And so what Lasoh is doing is it's just leveraging the PMs integrations. Just like the PMs can integrate with any software to enable the operator, the vacation rental, to provide an optional platform for optional things, the marketing opt in is. Optional. The value that the digital portal provides is intended to provide value to the guest in a way that does capture marketable guest information, but happy guests do want to be marketed to. They do want to come back. They do want to tell their friends, and so it's very much a consensual process, because no one's forced to go into it for anything. It's not like you're forced you're forcing someone to go there for the door code or forcing them to go there for any sort of critical information. It all still lives in Airbnb, but there's value ads in the portal that are not in Airbnb that you know provide the guest group with value.

Alex Husner  
Sure. Yeah. And what are you doing for the marketing portion? Like, what options do people have to use Lasoh to then now remarket to their guests?

Orlie Benjamin  
Yeah. So the specific focus of marketing for Lasoh is not acquisition marketing. That's where Airbnb excels. And I think you know, anyone who's got a direct booking page, they probably are doing something on the acquisition side, such as pay per click. If they're doing the page, they're doing SEO. What Lasoh helps with is retention marketing and organic marketing. And so I'll give you some examples. Every single one of those guests that logs into the guest portal at the end of the stay, not just the booker guest, every single one of them now gets asked, how was your stay, and if the rating was a four or five, they get thrown over to Google to leave a review. It's a lot of organic search engine optimization ranking that can happen right there through that automation. And by the way, if the rate, the rating, isn't good, it's a one through three. It took it takes it into sort of a net promoter score process where it's like, what can we do better? Please give us feedback. And so that's very, very common in the world of retail. Trustpilot is a software company out there that specializes in doing this for retail. I'm just bringing the playbook of things that I've seen in my experience. There's also a CRM component to Lasoh, where all of that information that's been gathered from Lasoh, if you use the guest portal only, it lives in a spreadsheet, and you can export it like a digital sort of spreadsheet at the table, and if you can export it if you want, but if you want to take it a level further, you can actually drop it into the CRM that we're providing. And now you can actually run campaigns, segmented campaigns, for example, Hey, Alex, it's been nine months since you celebrated your birthday with us. We'd love to have you come back and give you 10% off so you can celebrate with us again. That's the sort of thing that if you know who the person is, you know when they came, and you know why they came, you can have those sorts of campaigns in an automated fashion. There's, there's, there's no way to do this manually at scale. And that's why large companies have technology for marketing, because you do the marketing in automated fashions at scale.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah. So you've been, you've been working on this. I think you and I met a couple of months ago when you were still kind of working through some of the processes. And so you just recently launched your website, which is Lasoh.io for anybody that wants to go take a look at it. And so what does it look like in terms of an actual launch? And like, I'm assuming you already have some users, and you've tested this out, and people are happy, and of course they would be, because this is a great component to add to their operations. But what does it look like in terms of, you know, Lasoh going forward? How are you are how are you acquiring customers? Are you looking at a certain profile of manager, like hosts in general? Are you looking for enterprise operators, or just run the whole spectrum. I've

Orlie Benjamin  
been purposely using the word operator because I think some people are property managers, some people are hosts. They all are operators of some sort. And I like that word because I don't think it matters. I think it's less to do with the portfolio size and more to do with the life stage and sophistication of the business model. Anyone who has a direct booking site, anybody who has a PMS is who last it would be relevant for because they've committed, at that point to own their book of business through some sort of direct booking channel, and they've found value in technology from an operational perspective that enables them to operate in a way that is much more sophisticated. There are people out there that are operating on Airbnb that have hundreds of units that don't use a PMS. Don't use a PMS, and there are people out there that have two units and they have a direct booking site and they have a PMS. So I don't think it's about portfolio size. I think it's about business sophistication and how much they're really trying to sort of diversify their distribution channel strategy, so that they're not entirely reliant on one OTA to run their business. But because if someone is entirely reliant on Airbnb as their business, then they haven't taken the steps to diversify the risk that comes with that. And I think that's a more sophisticated operator that's sort of recognizing channel diversification, risk mitigation, owning your customer, those are, those are more sophisticated strategies,

Annie Holcombe  
all of the, all of the things that we, we like to talk about, and we've heard so many horror stories about people who have all their eggs in one basket for with one channel, and then overnight, you know, their account is suspended, and they went from, you know, making a million dollars a year, literally, to nothing. And. There's nothing that they can do about it, because they, you know, you get stuck in the black hole of communication as to why and how and all these things. So we always talk to people about the the importance of diversification. But I also think it's driving home the importance of, like you said, owning your guest and understanding that, you know, you got into this business because you wanted to provide a service to somebody. Why wouldn't you want to keep that connection that you were able to get and gain while they were in your home or your condo, or whatever it is, and build off of that, instead of just thinking, Well, I'm waiting for a channel to just send me business. It's like it, yeah, those are the people that are educating themselves off YouTube, I believe. But that's a whole nother topic.

Orlie Benjamin  
I mean, I think this isn't a new story, right? If we look at the hotel industry, we've already seen this play out the expedias and the orbit says of the world, we're sending business to hotels as distribution channels. And then hotels kind of woke up and said, All right, well, we're going to create loyalty programs, we're going to create digital apps, we're going to create value ads. We're going to own our guests. We're going to who they are, and we're going to own the relationship. And I actually when I say the word Marriott app, although it's obviously downloadable, because someone may go back from a brand loyalty perspective, Lasoh is not an app that lives on your phone. It's a web app because it's a fractional software offering for the brands out there, and many guests may go to many different operators with many different brands. And I just don't think people are going to download an app on their phone for one vacation, but they will engage on their phone if it gives them value at the right place at the right time. And look at Marriott stock price. Look at their 10k I mean, you know, I've qualitatively come to understand that roughly 80% of their revenue comes from 20% of their customers, and and that's because they own the guest relationship. They drive repeat bookings, they maximize revenue. It's certainly not the same when you're a, you know, multi billion dollar hotel chain, first being an operator of several units. But the playbook still applies. It's and, and this industry is young. There's going to be consolidation. There's going to be a lot of consolidation, and whoever is going to win is going to be who's operating at the next level of sophistication, not just entirely allowing their Bucha business to be white labeled Airbnb. I mean, there's a reason why people say I stayed in there being on a vacation rental, because Airbnb has essentially owned inventory from the customer perspective. Is owned brand. Vacation rentals are not brands. If they come in through Airbnb, and the operator of that business doesn't establish themselves as an actual business.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah, 100% I mean, it's, we talk about this. It's the difference between hunting and farming when it comes to customer customer acquisition. And people come to me all the time and ask and say, you know, we want to get into direct bookings. And if it's a small operator, I'm like, okay, like, what are you thinking? And they immediately want to dive into we want to do PPC and email marketing and all that stuff. I'm like, okay, yes, but, like, you have to kind of crawl, walk, run to get to that point. And I mean, I've managed a $2 million a year marketing budget, 95% book direct. Like, I've seen it all the way turned up, and then I've also seen it from a small scale of managers and hosts that are just trying to make sure they're getting it's the lowest hanging fruit, right, like the customers that you already have to be able to get them into your ecosystem. And honestly, they might not ever come back to stay with you, but if you get them to write a review to refer you to their family and friends. That's a win. And having having the technology that facilitates that is is really important. And when you start doing that at scale, that every guest that comes in through Airbnb, VRBO, any of the platforms, they're coming now into that system, that you're giving them that opportunity to review you, to share user generated content, to introduce you to their family and friends, like, that's that's how you start building that part. And when that, when that's going well, then you can start investing in some of the things to go that's the firing. Now you can invest in some of the things to go hunting. Go get your, you know, swords and ready for battle, because you've got a little bit more behind you. So it really, it's like, it's a balance between the two. But it's amazing to me that, you know, we Annie and I's experience has been working with professionally managed large operators for many, many years, that all of this stuff is is kind of, it's commonplace. But with Airbnb managers, this is all brand new. You know? I mean, like they, they've, they've never even thought of it, because all that they knew was that the business was having an Airbnb business, and it's just, it's fascinating me, because a lot of these people, they're very smart business people, like, they've done other things in their careers, but like, they've got themselves into thinking it's, this is the business. It's like, take yourself out of it for a second. We're still in the real world here. Like, there's, there's also, like, you know, economics and like, how you get customers. And I think that's why it's interesting your perspective of like you're coming at it from a very deep marketing experience in other industries, and looking at this, and you were like, no, like, it's gotta be better than those, right? But it's the opposite of how some people are getting into it. So it's super interesting to listen to your story when

Orlie Benjamin  
I. About the evolution of business models, right? Like, let's use, I'm just consumer packaged goods. CPG as an example. Back in the day, CPG, it was like, Well, you can't distribute and make products, so let's just be really good at making products. And that's been completely broken, because now what's happened is direct to consumer as possible. Shopify has removed barriers to entry for anyone to be a direct to consumer operator of any sort of product, right? And that's the evolution I see coming to this industry, using the analogy of Airbnb and Amazon again, right? Or even, let's use Target. Target started as brick and mortar before Amazon existed. Target is a retailer. It gets its products from businesses, and I'll use the distinction between businesses and brands. Businesses are going to be really relying on the distribution of target. But you know, anyone who's kind of a direct to consumer minded brand who wants to own their customer relationship, who there's a reason for it's gonna be really hard to get me to go to crest.com and buy toothpaste, but if it's Magnolia home, I would absolutely go and shop for the Magnolia line on their website instead of walking into Target, right? And so the question is, is this something that a customer would do on their own? There's a lot of reasons. Yes. One save 15% off of Airbnb that alone is like a very economic reason. Second, when I think about what Airbnb really is, in addition to being a marketplace, it's a trust economy. There's no world in which any person would let someone come into their house unattended and sleep there, or there's no world that I would go sleep in someone's house unattended if I didn't know who they were. So really, what Airbnb is doing is creating a trust economy that's great for a first time transaction, but if there's a guest and they're happy and there's a portfolio of units led by an operator that's got a brand ranging from ski destinations at these destinations, and that guest can know that they can rely on a similar experience, and the Trust has been enabled. It's a no brainer to go direct to consumer. That guest just needs to be engaged within the way that enables that transaction. That's classic digital marketing. I

Annie Holcombe  
think that's the root of why Airbnb is doing what they're doing, is, is they understand that people like you said, like hotels got wise to it, and they just they shifted how they were operating and engaging with the with the guest, and now that these operators are, you know, they're building these empires up, and they're like, wait a minute, you know, we're gonna lose, we're gonna lose some of this empire to someone by them doing it direct. And I think it, you know, it's, it's a, it's a smart, savvy move on their part. Now what whether it actually holds up, like you said. I mean, it feels a little disingenuous in terms of, like, saying you're a relationship, you're a partner in this. If you're saying, Well, we're going to send you the business, but you're supposed to put blinders on and, like, act like you're a mute, deaf person that's just taking care of this guest. When they come in and out and not have any interaction, and act like they never were there, you know, like it's that you can't do that. You can't provide that level of service and not connect with people. It's just not who we are. It's a classic bargaining

Orlie Benjamin  
power paradigm. Right air movie is a $90 billion software company, and those operators have one to two units. And so what can the little guy do? Oh, exactly, yeah,

Speaker 1  
yeah.

Orlie Benjamin  
They can take on their own approach if they want to put in the work. And you know, the little guy might be okay with not doing it if they're like, this is worth it to me. But once you get to once you have three, 510, 100 Yeah, the economies of scale makes so it's a business at that point, it's a no brainer to own your business at that Well, I think a

Annie Holcombe  
lot of those people, though, too, that they the scale kind of happens to them without them realizing it, and then all of a sudden they're so beholden to one way or the other of operating that they don't even know what to do. And it's like, that's what Al Can I talk about all the time with people? Is like, how do we educate people from that very first unit so they have a plan of when the second unit, third unit, fourth unit, or or all of a sudden they decide they want to buy something because they really like this business, and they're going to buy a company. But the way that they've been doing their business is not solely down one path, you know, like that. They have a plan for if I get to this point, this is the direction I'm going to go. And I think that people just don't understand what's out there. And there's been so much of this build your empire around the sun that they haven't ever noticed all the other planets that are

Alex Husner  
out there. Great session name for one of the conferences, building your empire around the Airbnb sun. Yeah, yeah. It's so true, though. So I'm curious also, though, on two fronts, one, I know you do upsells, right? So that's something that's offered through Lasoh. Curious to know more about that. But then in kind of in tandem, what you think about also how Airbnb has introduced these new experiences that kind of take a little bit ability away from platforms and hosts to be able to offer those upsells. It's i. Classic

Orlie Benjamin  
intermediation. First, Airbnb put itself between the guest and the host as a marketplace. And I think, you know, I get it. Why Airbnb is doing this. The way you make money is how many customers you have, how much they spend per transaction, how many times a year they come back. Airbnb is not getting any more customers. They have four, 50 million guests on the platform, 7.7 million units and 5 million operators. They've mapped out on the number of customers. So now they need to go to how much you spend per transaction and how many times per year. So the spend per transaction becomes very logical when we know 30% of a person's vacation is spent on lodging and the other 70% is spent on everything else. They just want to go for the bigger pie, because they've already consumed the entire vacation rental pie, and 20 to 40% of hotels revenue comes in from food and beverage. So again, these are not new these are not new concepts. They're they're existing playbooks that can be adapted to this sort of disruption to lodging. So I also think Airbnb is like, well, we're a publicly traded company. We have to continue to grow for our stock price to stay good. And the next frontier is the remaining remainder of the stay. So the word lodging now is probably more appropriate to vacation rentals. And then the stay is this concept of the whole trip, the experience, however you wanna refer to it, and they can only they can only take so much of a slice from so many people. Obviously, the person who's providing the service needs to get a portion of it, because they need to be the one who's coming in, whether it's the massage therapist or the chef, and they need to get paid. And then obviously the guest is going to pay something. An Airbnb is third in line, so the host ends up being fourth in line. There's nothing left for them, and the host can do it themselves. If they want to, they just have to get smart. And that's part of what the experiences aspect of Lasoh is doing is enabling operators to set up those relationships on their own and run their own experiences and take a cut. And it's not just Lasoh that's doing this. I mean, shout out to quite a few softwares out there, right? And the vision for Lasoh is not to take a cut at all like the host co epicurate. There's quite a few software companies out there that are creating amazing infrastructure of experiences. Lasoh will never be creating experiences like in those sort of infrastructure ways. It's just going to be sort of the E commerce environment in which operators can give their guests full experience in one place, yeah, and

Alex Husner  
so you're not taking a cut of it. So is it? What's the payment model? Is it a flat amount per property per month? To be it's a

Orlie Benjamin  
sales platform, yeah, it's per unit per month. Back on

Annie Holcombe  
the launch of things. Do you have any campaigns that are getting ready to go out? About, like I said, I know you launched the website, and you'd shared a really great little video with me about how you were going to promote it. Is that? How do you see getting to these people again? I think one of the things that in in my day job, I work at a channel management company, and they're based out of Europe. And the Europe mindset in vacation rentals is a little different than the US market. They're just kind of the way the fragmentation of it is not as prevalent in Europe as it is here. Like you just have so many operators that are so small, so really kind of getting out in front of the people is more of a challenge than it is over there, because you're dealing with operators that have 5060, 70,000, units that they're taking care of. And obviously we don't have that here. But how do you, how do you propose getting out to people? Because you said there are other other companies kind of offering similar services. I love what you're doing. I love that. You know, all the metrics you, you've you've been very methodical about putting this together, but now it's like, okay, you got to get boots on the ground. What's, what's the approach for that?

Orlie Benjamin  
Well, this is the thing I should be good at. This is my background, right? I don't know tech. I'm just figuring that

Speaker 2  
one out, marketing. So marketing, yeah,

Orlie Benjamin  
and I was just kidding. In all seriousness, my commercialization strategy is three pronged one, property management, software integrations. There are marketplaces and operators have to have their tech work together, right? It just has to work. So we already have several integrations, which I don't want to even say, because by the time this comes out, we might have more. So go to the website and see what we have. It'll be the most up to date. And that's table stakes. Also, I plan to partner with other businesses in the industry that have the same customer but have a different value proposition. Because I think that cross marketing is really powerful. Just let's just use epicurate as an example. I just met them at VR nation, right? They're enabling chefs and other service providers that they've vetted through geographical locations to be matched with operators. I think that can happen through their platform. But what also happens when you have seven other things you need to tell the guest, had to do that all via email links, that's a terrible guest journey. So what Lasoh does is it provides one source of truth, right, like the Marriott app or the Disney app for all the things, and then you can use that as your source of truth. To navigate through things, and there's no charge to epicurate or to the operator to link that in Lasoh. It's part of the value of owning your own digital experience. For the guest, it's like owning that relationship and owning the guest journey. So for me, it's really about operating with others that there's sort of a one plus one that equals three. And then finally, traditional sales and marketing. We I've got a couple of folks I'm working with on content creation. We actually just went down to my cabin, we shot some content, and we're coming up with thought leadership articles. You know, I'll be personally putting a lot of content out from my own LinkedIn page as well as last so we'll start having a sort of marketing presence. And then finally, conferences are very relevant. And, you know, I think that outbound sales are very relevant too. If it's targeted and it's meaningful, nobody wants to be spammed, right? Nobody wants like, that cold intro where they're like, there's absolutely nothing relevant about it. And you know, for me, it's about being really smart and precise around. How am I finding operators that have PMS software that have direct booking sites, because if somebody only lists on Airbnb, they're, like, three steps away from being able to use Lasoh. But

Alex Husner  
you know what? I almost feel like, that's like, really the core audience, though, because, like, the people that they have the direct booking websites, and then they know these things, like they're doing it one way or another, right? So like, I think the mass audience that's out there are the people that they're not at that point, you know, and like, they they need a website. But, like, even, even without a website. I mean, if your system, I'm not sure if it does, but if it supports texting and email that I can even send them, I It's crazy that's coming out of my mouth, but if it could, even, in the meantime, send them back to the Airbnb listing to rebook. It's about getting more bookings back, right? I mean, obviously you want to get them direct, but in the meantime, before somebody has that set up, and there's, you know, Mark busley, and a lot of the other great ones that we know that they they do these pretty easily, spin up able websites. You know, there's, there's a path forward,

Orlie Benjamin  
and I think that there's crawl, walk, run around all of this. I think if anybody has an Airbnb site and wants email and text messaging capabilities, they can just go out to the marketplace and get like a MailChimp they don't need what I've built. What I built is very specific for an operator that wants to own their book of business and wants to really focus on the combination of direct bookings and revenue through channels. It'll never be only direct bookings, unless you're like, amazing at marketing, it will always be some mix. But, you know, shifting the mix, and it's not just about the mix, it's actually about occupancy rate. The average occupancy rate for a vacation rental is 55% Yeah. So if you can get people to come in on Tuesday through Thursdays, because they've been and there's a last minute deal, like people go to Airbnb when they have high purchase intent, when they have high demand areas. But what about all the off season and the shoulder season? That's when your existing customers may come back, because you remind them there's a special deal. There's a special event. Whatever it is doesn't have to just be a deal. It can be very value add. Kind of Annie, you and I were kind of bantering about that not so long ago on LinkedIn, right? But like, find other ways to provide value. To fill up the books. Don't just settle for a 55% occupancy rate. Airbnb business, yeah,

Alex Husner  
100% so I'm actually curious about some of your days in corporate America working for Victoria's Secret and net jets. Like, tell us some stories about those days. Like, you've got to have some good

Orlie Benjamin  
ones. Well, I can't tell you the fun stories on this podcast. Save it out for the next conference

Alex Husner  
next week in Miami. We're at the executive center, but that's right, what are some things that you learned from those days that, like, I guess, that you're applying, I mean, besides what we just talked about, but like, I mean, just kind of from the big box perspective, like, what did you learn in those days?

Orlie Benjamin  
I mean, fundamentally, both American Airlines and Victoria's Secret and NetJets all three of those, they all have distribution aspects, and they all are incredibly good at owning their book of business, being vertically integrated and maximizing revenue through relationships with customers. They have great marketing departments. The retention rate at NetJets, of its customers are called owners, because they have fractional jet shares, 85% 85% on a three year contract term. These people each spend $5 million and they retain 85% of them. And the goal, when I might that was a long time ago, who knows? It might even be better now, right when I was at Victoria's Secret, you know, I think just some of the business philosophies around like, you know, being a business that can defend itself, the more you rely on distribution, the less control you have over your value chain, and the less control you have over your business stability. And when you're a publicly traded company, you need to create stability and control and ability to drive revenue, because that's how your stock price maintains good value, right? That's how you stay in business. And so I think the philosophies that go along with that are very much customer centric. Understand the customer, know the customer, understand the customer's pain. Actually, listen if there's something wrong you. Pivot the business around that, if it makes sense. And you know, I think a lot of really good corporations out there start with a pain or a problem that a customer has, they find a way to provide value, they build a business model around that, and then the money comes because that's good business strategy. So for me, those are some, like, major lessons around, like, really valuing the customer. And I think something really interesting about American Airlines, and I referred to this similarly to Marriott, but American Airlines also has to do with distribution, but 20% of the customers drove 80% of the revenue, and that's because there's, you know, some element of geographical carving out with sort of hub and spoke, but also loyalty and also the ability to just keep that customer, and there's nothing more of a commodity than an airfare. If you've got three different airlines that are all going the same route, you're going to go off price unless there's some other reason why. And I think that lesson is really, really relevant in the world of searching for where to stay, because if there's something beyond price that vacation rentals can differentiate themselves on, you can win that way, whether it's a cool amenity like a sauna or a pickleball court or, you know, maybe some sort of other value add, it doesn't, Oh, you don't always have to compete on price. And I think it's really important, because the airlines are known to have had price wars back in the day, and they all figured out how to compete without, like, taking each other down. They

Annie Holcombe  
used to work with a guy that was a revenue manager for United, and I worked with him when I was at the Expedia company. And it was just interesting to me, because I never, in my like, in my life, thought that there was a revenue manager for the airlines like I just assumed that they threw out the seats. And that was just it all made sense when he explained it to me, but he was talking about, like, just the the mathematics that they would go through on a daily basis, and they would have to look at, you know, like weather would impact how they were pricing things, and, you know, obviously events. But it was just so much stuff that I was like, Oh, this is pretty similar to, like, the hotel world. It's just a different it's a different commodity that you're working with, but there's this very sophisticated, and it was pretty fascinating to learn about it.

Orlie Benjamin  
I worked in revenue management for American Airlines. So not only did I do revenue management, I also worked on some of the I managed the Priceline channel, which is considered liquidation. So there's that's the opaque channel, which I have actually a lot of promotional strategy plans for last so that are going to come later. But as it relates to the revenue management piece, the price has changed at the airlines four times a day on weekdays, and if it's a weekend, it's twice a day. And and you can override that and the amount of technology behind it, it's all operations research. I mean, it's, I think it's more complicated than hotels, because there's fewer players, and the markets are just a bit more consolidated, so the swings are just really crazy. Like, there would be little moments of just like, someone accidentally put in $25 for a ticket instead of 250 and then the machine would go crazy because it'd be like, oh, one of the airlines twice price this route at $25 now we got to put ours at $25

Annie Holcombe  
Oh, wow, yeah. You also had to factor in, like, fuel prices and things like that. That obviously, the day to day of a hotel operator doesn't have to consider, like, a day something that impacts you day to day. It's more like, well, it's not a consideration

Orlie Benjamin  
of revenue management in airlines, yeah, they don't. It's all competitive. Oh, really, yeah, wow, and supply and demand. There's no cost, no cost strategy around it.

Annie Holcombe  
Interesting. I would have thought you would have had to do that. Okay, yeah, it is interesting.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, I think we've, we talked

about this on the show occasionally, but I think, you know, points and loyalty is probably the biggest thing that the independent or a couple destination vacation manager have. Not really, nobody's figured that out yet, right? Like, there's some companies that are using it, but not any that are really doing it to the way that it's driving a lot of business. And I think when you mentioned earlier about, you know, people will change airlines, they will, but I know Annie for I know this for a fact, she will always fly Delta, because of her points.

Orlie Benjamin  
Let's fly American, because I can call someone internalized Southwest for one direct flight to Nashville. But otherwise, yeah, and,

Alex Husner  
but it makes sense. And I think points have just been something that, you know, obviously homes and villas, we just had them on the show. And there's companies that are larger than what we're all used to that have come into the space that understand this and have been able to infuse it a little bit better. But I think there's a huge opportunity for somebody to really own the loyalty game and the loyalty points game. We met with Simon Lehman back, I don't even know, probably seven years ago, when I was at condo world and asked him to come in and kind of give us some thoughts on loyalty. And, you know, it's just, it's really tough, like we were multi destination at that point, and to try and figure out, even within one destination, your portfolio likely doesn't necessarily all pay the same amount. I mean, you've got different amounts of commissions based on the property that, to just give a blanket amount of points, you have to be really careful that you don't end up shooting yourself in the foot and really driving up your customer acquisition and retention costs in that process. So it's really, it's like a matrix. I don't know that anybody's truly so. Solved it yet, but I think that's also a big opportunity on the board. I

Orlie Benjamin  
think about it all the time. I think the only way to do it is by spend. That's what Southwest has been doing forever. And actually, some airlines have moved toward that. There's an element of how much something is worth. There's also an element of how you can redeem it. Those are two completely different questions. I'm actually kind of a points junkie now. I mean, journey has come out. I mean the points guy, I'm forgetting his full name, right now, Brian, something. They're trying to crack it, and I can't wait to see what they do. I think there's room for a couple of players. I also think there's a question of who receives the points, right? Is it the person that books the property? Is it? How do you what do you do when there's multiple stay? Now, I know in a hotel room, you can have multiple stays, right? I think there's a dynamic that's different in this industry, because 50% of the inventory is large homes in the United States. So what do you do about that? Is there a major, completely different model that no one's invented yet that has to do with stays and maybe some other value that can be provided, versus who books it? So I'm noodling on it. I've got a lot of work ahead of me. Yeah,

Alex Husner  
your mind's obviously spinning, so I figured with you and see if you can figure it out. Circle back, I

Orlie Benjamin  
have a strong point of view, but I think in terms of priority order, I have to really focus on fundamentals. And honestly, the one thing we haven't talked about yet is AI? I mean, AI is going to change the game. Yeah, I think AI can make marketing really easy for people who don't know anything about marketing, because it can suggest the right things. So it becomes a push system versus a pull system. I think there's another that's one of the areas I'm also noodling on, but I got to start with my fundamentals. How

Alex Husner  
do you foresee Lasoh utilizing? Or how do you utilize AI right now, and how do you foresee it in the future? We don't,

Orlie Benjamin  
and we purposely don't, and here's why AI trained poorly can be more harmful than nothing. And training an LLM is really, really important. And I know it's, you know, this is part of why I think the CRM and the data capture is really important. The AI knows about the customer or the guest, the better the AI can be. And so I really want to focus on fundamentally getting the right sample set of data into the infrastructure first from there, training it on specific use cases. But it can never it can never go wrong. It has to be right or nothing. And I think there's a lot of sloppy AI out there, particularly in some of the communication spaces. And it's more frustrating to deal with a bot at this point than it is to just like, have to wait for a response.

Annie Holcombe  
True. I agree. Because if you get the wrong, wrong information and continues to give you the wrong information, it's just yeah, yeah. Do it right? Absolutely. I always say this out to people all the time, like, I'm still, I see the value of some of the AI, but I absolutely see there was an article I was reading the other day about, like, college students using it, and how, like, there was people going through school that, like, by the time they're, you know, in high school, into college, like they're not going to understand how to research a paper, how to write a paper because they're so dependent. And not that the not that the tool can't be helpful, but it's just they're depending on it to do so much of the work. And I our friend Amber, she's been doing a lot of training with people about, you know how to, like, use it to get your foundational information, or your foundational framework for something. But you need to let you need to infuse your voice and AI can't take your voice away from you. You want to keep that as part of the part of the the makeup of AI, but people are just giving themselves wholly over to it and saying, Oh, well, they did it, and it looks like it's spelled right. And, like you said, some of the communication that's out it's like misspellings, bad grammar, not the right tone for the wrong information. Yeah, well, all of it, I mean, it's just, and it's so and it's, it's kind of frightening, because you think about how bad actors can use it for, you know, news media, or just falsifying stories, or, you know, putting out things that are not true, that could potentially cause a war. I mean, like, literally, I mean, there's just things out there, and so, like, to me, that's like, that just freaks me out. I'm have that like, Doomsday mechanism in my brain always thinking and tried not to do it. But I think AI is just, like, brought it to the forefront. For me, it's

Alex Husner  
so funny. Our perspectives on AI are just so different. Like, whenever we talk about AI, it's interesting that that's the one thing that you think of. And like, I think of, like, how it's, like, efficiency stuff, like, I don't even think about the risk. Like, I mean, it's just, you know, and not that either of us is right or wrong, but it's just, it's, that's the conversation that's being had, of like, how are we supposed to be thinking about these things right now, you know? Yeah, well, that

Orlie Benjamin  
makes you guys a good team, right? Because both of those we

Annie Holcombe  
definitely are that point counterpoint on things.

Orlie Benjamin  
Yeah. Have you guys ever put your Have you ever asked chat GPT to tell you about yourself?

Speaker 1  
Oh yeah, spot on mine is spot on mine

Orlie Benjamin  
is not. Spot. On, and then what's interesting, and this is what's really interesting, is that it only can summarize what's out there. And if what is out there is not entirely accurate, or it doesn't understand what's out there, then it gives the wrong summary. And you know, any journalist knows that, like first hand information, right? Like Primary sources are important. Ai, going back to this concept of mediation. AI is any sort of GPT interface. Is, by definition, an intermediator you've now taken away all the critical thinking around. Is this a primary source or not? Is this accurate or not? Ai can't tell you through critical thinking right now. If it's good or bad or right or wrong, it just digests a whole bunch of stuff and spits it into something. And if you as a college student don't actually go and think about what that primary source is like, the disinformation is very terrifying, because people are losing the critical thinking that's

Annie Holcombe  
that's where I'm at on it is. And we actually, it is funny, you ask that, because we actually were together back in was it February, when we did this in Nashville, and we were sitting there, we threw our names into chat GPT, and then, like, threw in some extra scenarios. And it was, like, it was actually we did the roasting of each other, and it brought up, and it actually brought up some stuff that we're like, Oh my gosh. How could it find like and not like? It wasn't bad things, but it was just like stuff that you're like, is that really like? Is that relevant or whatever? But, you know, I think that you could, theoretically, you could put something out there on the internet that's hidden, that probably nobody sees, but just, you know, you know, maybe in a blog post, you say, and like, all of a sudden that becomes the gospel, and that's the that's the source of truth for AI, because it can find that information so quickly. And like you said, it can just be bad information, and somebody doesn't go, oh, well, that can't be possible because she doesn't live in that town, or has never been to that country or whatever, because it just Chai T said it, it's out there. It's, you know, therefore, it's like people say, you know, I read it on the internet. It has to be true, you know, the internet,

Orlie Benjamin  
I believe in both of your opinions. I mean, as much as I think there's risk, I think there's reward, and I agree, yeah, you know, like, I'm mindful about what I let my son engage with in terms of technology, but I also don't want him to be technology lists. He's got to learn how to be responsible, which, as a nine year old boy, there's a lot of help that he needs and learning how to be responsible. So I think we as adults also, it's hard for

Annie Holcombe  
us too. Yeah, so much to process, and this only time will tell where it's going to be six months from now, or six days

Orlie Benjamin  
from now, in technology, it's about to do, like, quantum leaps, which,

Annie Holcombe  
I mean, you think about it, 20 years ago we didn't have, like, the iPhone, you know, like, I mean, just where we are with that piece of technology alone. So

lots of good things coming. Lots of good things coming. When I moved to

Alex Husner  
Myrtle Beach in 2007 I mean, most people I knew did not even have a Facebook page back then. Yeah, it's early. Wow. Yeah, our joke was, I worked at a marketing company, and businesses were just starting to think about having a business Facebook page. They didn't really know what that meant. And the company I worked for said, Well, we can, we can sell social media marketing, and we can sell these companies their their Facebook page, and somebody had the great comment said, that's like selling somebody a library card. It's free. You can't sell it. They have to know how to use it too. So, but gosh, I mean, it's, it's fascinating, really, if you see how fast, like, even though that feels like forever ago in the dark ages. But like, my god, I mean, think of thinking of what in the world will be going on from now in 15 years. Oh, my God, it's scary. It's actually pretty scary. That's part I'm scared about. I'll agree with any on that part. I am scared about that. I'm excited too. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  
well, early, um, so excited for you, and we've been it's been such a pleasure to get to know you. And I know lots of people are gonna have a lot of questions and want to want to learn more about you. So what is the best way for people to get in touch with you? The website

Orlie Benjamin  
has a lot of the material already around. What Lasoh does. You can book a demo call or connect with me directly through my Calendly link, which is in the in the call to action there on the website. You can also find me on LinkedIn through my LinkedIn profile. I'm, I am seeking to connect with sort of early adopter mindset operators that are willing to, you know, be a contrarian and think about owning their Bucha business and taking a little bit of ownership into into the space. So anyone who's got that mindset, I want to talk to them. I want to be pushed. I want to have discussions. And if the product feels like it's a good fit, I'd love for them to use it and and give me feedback too. Because one thing I'll say about Lasoh is that it'll be very, very customer centric, and complaints will turn into product development. Because I very much believe that fixing pain for customers is a good business strategy,

Alex Husner  
and that will be your tickets and success.

Annie Holcombe  
Our friend Boogie says that feedback is a gift, so, you know, use it for what you want. That's a good attitude to have, though, too. It's

Alex Husner  
such a good attitude to have that that will be that I'm serious, that will be your your ticket. Of success, because you've got, you've got all the right ingredients and the know how and the wherewithal to do it, but you have to have that feedback, and you have to be open to what's working, what's not working, but so excited that we met you and that we're going to continue to get to see you at the conferences now, and thank you again for coming on the show. We're excited to watch your journey with Lasoh and see where where you take this thing, if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I you can go to Alexandria podcast.com and until next time, thanks everybody. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai