From Fighting Regulations to Shaping Better Policy with Tyann Marcink Hammond

Tyann Marcink Hammond  0:00  
Some county assessors decided that they wanted to switch the classification from residential to commercial, and what that does is it almost triples your tax bill at the end of the year. So one of my properties went from $4,000 to $10,000 overnight.

Annie Holcombe  0:17  
You know, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. They're trying to like call the menu down to a few palatable items, and if this is one that's just not palatable right now, they just completely push it aside, and then you get the danger of regulation happens in a dark room somewhere with four people and nobody's present.

Alex Husner  0:31  
It's hard for people to understand where to even begin on something like this. I mean, if they hear this and they're concerned and they want to make sure that they are at least contributing input to what could potentially affect their livelihoods here.

Tyann Marcink Hammond  0:42  
The only way we can do this, the best way, is to educate. We're not encouraging them to do it just to make that money, which is the perception that we're just greedy people.

Speaker 1  0:58  
My name is Anthony Rallo. I'm the co-founder of Awayzing Stays with my wife Whitney, and we manage about seven of our own properties all along the East Coast. And we've been using Hospitable for about the past three years. If I'm thinking about how much time Hospitable has saved us, it's really going to be hard to quantify because it's countless hours. We're always looking at ways to improve the guest experience, and that's through upgrades in our home to special touches. So, having Hospitable as our software partner really allows us to keep that guest experience focused, kind of front and center. And without Hospitable, I don't think it really be possible. Now that we're partnered with Hospitable, we feel fully equipped to continue to scale our business. In the past, we would have had to hesitate to bring on a new property. It's going to be a big challenge to kick it off. That's not even a concern anymore, and that allows us to focus the energy on the acquisition of the property, and the enhancements of the property, and the build out for how the guest is going to be feeling when they arrive to the property versus any of the technology or operations challenges that we would have had to think about-that's all taken care of. Working with the hospitable team has been incredible. What stands out to me is that they're really there to listen and learn. Their roadmap is clearly derived from user feedback, and that's one of the most important aspects that we see from our partnership. A lot of other PMSs out there are growing in the ways that they think they need to grow, but they're not taking into account the actual users. And I think that's where Hospitable is light years ahead of any other platform out there. If you're thinking about switching to Hospitable and seeking a product that's driven by engaged users, looking to provide class-leading capabilities, a robust community of owners and managers, you're going to be in the right place coming to Hospitable.

Speaker 2  2:41  
Run your short-term rental business on autopilot with Hospitable. Alex and Annie listeners get a 14-day free trial plus 25 off for the first six months. Click the link in the description to get started.

Alex Husner  2:58  
Welcome to Alex Noone, the Real Women of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex, and I'm Annie, and we are joined today by the one and only Queen Tyan Marsink, Queen of Guest Experience, Queen of a lot of things in Vacation Rentals, but also the owner of Branson Family Retreats. Good to see you, Tyanne.

Tyann Marcink Hammond  3:15  
Thank you, Alex and Andy. Really appreciate you guys asking me to come on and talk a lot about fun things, and I'm not using that sarcastically as much as I love sarcasm as a communication tool. I also love humor and fun as well, so I'm excited. I

Annie Holcombe  3:31  
feel like everybody knows you, so I don't want to belabor the point. I mean, you, like Alex said, you're kind of the queen of all the things. One of the things you've been become known for is your kind of style of handling presentations and taking topics that aren't necessarily fun, sort of sometimes a snooze fest. The regulations and advocacy, and that's one of the things. It's like it's it's not a topic people enjoy talking about, but it's something that we have to keep talking about and we have to keep educating people about. And so I think about it from the lens of like Annie and Co. I'm working with a lot of smaller hosts that don't even know that they need to be involved in some of these things. And so you did a presentation at the VRMA Exec Summit recently, and it was great because you told a story and you talked about how relationships are so important, which from our industry that we all agree. I mean, we're a relationship business in all aspects of it, but I don't think that anybody ever quite articulated the importance of the relationships as it relates to advocacy the way that you did. So, wanted to start out there. Maybe tell us a little bit about how this came to be and and and why you decided to present it the way you did, and and maybe just tell us the backstory of what was going on within Missouri.

Tyann Marcink Hammond  4:46  
Thanks, Annie. So the thing with advocacy and regulations, I was exactly what you mentioned: is someone who just didn't think about it. You, it didn't. I felt like it didn't affect me. So therefore, it's like a. Hey, I have more important things to do. I have marketing to do. I have guest experience to do. I have to answer guest questions. I have to give my bookkeeping in order to file my taxes in a timely manner, which has only happened like once in 20 years, type thing. So it was always pushed to the back burner of this is not important. This is not the biggest fire. And then several years ago, it became important, and it was a fire that we had to start fighting. And it's not something that you can always just jump right in and immediately put it out. It is something you have to work on for a very long time. So in Missouri, the issue that came up for us was property tax classification, and yes, there are other issues that go on that a lot of others people are battling right in their local areas, including zoning issues, regulations, permits, zoning buffers. There's, or even to the straight, flat-out ban of your property rights, basically, and yes, those are urgent. Also, what we pinpointed with property tax classification in Missouri, because Missouri has property tax, not every state does. There are classifications, and there is a percentage that is applied to every classification. And several years ago, some county assessors decided that they wanted to switch the classification from residential to commercial, and they had a basis of why they thought this. Now, in Missouri, you have 113 counties and one city, and every single one of those has an assessor who makes these decisions. Well, over 100 of them agree it stays residential. Those other handful started to change it, and what that does is it almost triples your tax bill at the end of the year. So one of my properties went from $4,000 to $10,000 overnight. So when you're running a slim margin type of thing, and it's like this is a lifestyle business for me. This this supports our family, and I support a few other families, and then we take care of properties. It's not like we're making a ton of money. And when the the state takes away that slim margin that I can't put back into the property, and and it causes my rates to go up so much that visitors are saying, "Hey, wait a second, can we really afford to stay at your place, and all your other expenses are going up too. And some of us pinpointed like this is a real issue that could cause a domino effect, not just in vacation rentals in Missouri, but additionally in our tourism economy and into our real estate markets, into the job market, into the economics of living in Missouri overall, and one of the things I love to look at is what is the root cause of something, and where can we go to the root to change something instead of just doing the symptoms. So, on one hand, we started working on the symptoms of okay, what can we mitigate now, and then what can we do to attack and and change the root of this? So when they said, "Hey, will you tell us your story? Immediately, my brain said, "Well, this is my story, and then I started thinking, "Fresh Prince of Bel Air. So this is my story. It's all about how my life got turned flipped upside down, and my life truly got flipped upside down. So yeah, I'm like, you know what? We're just gonna wrap this out to open it, get people's attention. That you know, yes, advocacy and regulations at first sounds like, oh, this is boring, and do I really have to start digging into this because it is dry? It's a lot of words to go through when you start digging into things of why things are the way they are. But in reality, it is sustainability of your business and your activities and your properties and your guests. It affects everything, and being able to understand the foundation of your property rights and how bills are, and and how everything relates to each other is huge.

Last summer, I ended up sitting in a four-hour meeting in a little tiny town of Lebanon, Missouri, and in the front was 20 of our state representatives and our state tax commissioner chair and the attorney, because the governor last year had called a committee together and said we need a fixed property tax. It needs to be reformed, and so we. We were able to pull our chair up and be a part of that conversation, but it also gave us insight of how things actually work in Missouri with property taxes versus just looking at what's in my newsfeed and social media or what does AI say about something. You know, really understanding all the background of it, and then we were able to help others, and it helps us understand. With okay, this is what we want to clarify in our state bills, and this is how we need to go about doing it. How do all these pieces fit together? Because you have so many different stakeholders. There's not just us as property owners. We have to look at the wider picture as well. And as as you mentioned, you know, collaborating with people and other businesses and all the different stakeholders as you reach out and build those relationships, depending on you know, because you need them all. Okay, I'll take a breath now. It's a lot to spit

Annie Holcombe  11:00  
out. It's a lot. Well, I mean, I'm

Alex Husner  11:01  
not. I'm not surprised that you're, you know, at at the forefront. Even though you know, probably feel like you're you're left behind here in some ways, but a lot of areas and people are are not paying attention to this nearly as closely as you are. But have you heard of anything similar happening recently in other areas of the country?

Tyann Marcink Hammond  11:18  
Yeah. So Idaho, I am just like so proud of Idaho. This this past session, they were able to get a state exemption bill passed, and what a state exemption bill is saying, they they literally were able to identify and clarify and define what a short term rental is, and be able to the state telling everybody else, you may regulate in only these manners, and this is what a short-term rental is. It is fair, it is reasonable, and it protects property rights. And I, I think it's wonderful, absolutely wonderful that you're able to do this, and then other states can look at it and even possibly copy it. Our legislation for the property tax, we looked at the bill that Idaho wrote, and we took a part of that and applied it to our our bill when we we had to redo some of the words, and it was simply they had bullet points to help define, and we had never had bullet points to define things, and that right there helped to clarify such a simple thing to do. It clarified for the legislators to understand what it is we're including and not including with our legislation. So it's something that you need to look at. Words matter, and formatting matters because our brains just they absorb and understand in different ways.

Annie Holcombe  12:49  
Yeah, and I think also too where it's always it always seems to have gone sideways is that whenever you get the legalese people involved, you know, lawyers and and and the like, and they start writing it out in terms that like nobody can agree on what it's actually saying. It depends on well who's reading it and the tone they use and and and so I think that to the point that you can get to bullets and make it very simplistic. I mean it's easy and and that I feel like is one of the problems that the the industry has suffered from is that kind of goes back to the conversation about standards. It's like there's no there's no standard methodology to describe the business or language, or and so it varies by market. It varies by how people are doing it. So if you get a good framework together, I mean, I think that that's what's really good about what you've done and what Idaho's done and what other municipalities are doing. Is like we're sharing this information now, which where you know you go back five six years ago, when all this kind of started to really, really come out, people weren't sharing information. It was everybody was operating in you know in a silo of their own state or their own municipality and fighting their own battles. But I think you know with the with with BRMA, you've got Rent Responsibly, the Right to Rent Collective, you've got all these entities that are out there trying to help shape what the language, the standard language should be. So I think that that's really important.

Tyann Marcink Hammond  14:05  
And adding to that, Annie, you know, earlier before we started recording, we started talking about how important relationships are, and with those relationships, that is how we have been able to. What I feel, even though we're two years, we're going to file again for our third year. We're confident we're going to get it passed, but it's a long process, and you have to have those relationships. And we've been able to utilize relationships that have been building over decades. And with those words that you mentioned, we're looking around and finding what are other people doing with throughout this last year, in the process, one of the relationships we built was the Kansas City Area Realtors Commission. Is it commission or association? I don't know, but it's the Realtors Group that is under the Missouri Realtors, and the Kansas City group said, "You know what? We agree with you all that property rights need to be." We agree that there is nothing as far as the ordinances on the city and town level that is a good, reasonable regulations for people to follow. So, without our prompting or anything, the realtors created a model ordinance, sent it to us at Missouri Vacation Home Alliance, and Susan and I read through it, and I'm like, Susan, I'm going to take this opportunity to give feedback that includes my wish list of the perfect ordinance, and she's like, Okay, yeah, let's do it. Like, all right. So we send it over. Not two days later, they send back the updated model ordinance that they wanted to make public, and sure enough, 100% of my wish list items were in there, and they'd even improved a couple items that I didn't even think of that made it even better. So it's just incredible to me. So one, if you need a model ordinance for your town to copy, let me know. I've got access to one. Happy to share it. I need to get that up on the Missouri Vacation Home Alliance website so folks can access it as well. And two, start building those relationships and those collaborations because you do have so many stakeholders that are will partner with you, and just come with an open mind and talk to them about what direction you're coming from. Because a lot of people think, "Oh, Kansas City. It's yes, politically, and I this is not a political conversation, but just something one part generally leans one way towards regulations, and the other one leans the other way, and in Kansas City, it does have a lot of regulations to the point of a couple years ago, short-term rentals were essentially banned in the city. But because of our relationship building and reaching out at the city level, we even had two-day live events and invited the city to come to share on stage with folks. How do you navigate the regulations and permitting process? How do you navigate submitting your taxes? We invited them to come, and we built those relationships. And working with them, the mayor came and opened our second event. After a couple years ago, he banned short-term rentals. So, and now he's welcoming them. That's a nice

Annie Holcombe  17:24  
turnaround.

Tyann Marcink Hammond  17:25  
It's just incredible what relationships can do, and that you're educating and working with your city, with your area on what is this really about that we do. That you know, there's there's perceptions, and for people, perceptions are reality, right? But you can change that by giving them the facts and the education, and and showing up and showing your integrity. But that means you have to do the communication, and you have to build the relationships.

Miller Hawkins  18:03  
My name is Miller Hawkins. I'm the president and broker in charge of Boo Realty, as well as the Atlantic Resort Group. Both are under the Monarch Collective umbrella. I was asked several years ago while I was on the VRMA board of what my exit strategy is. Kind of hit me. Of you know, I'm approaching 60 years old at the time, and I'm not ready to retire now. But at some point, I've got to have an exit strategy. I was introduced to the Monarch Collective a little over three years ago. I did not want to sell and give them the keys and leave. I wanted to stay on board for 345, years, and that's what their M.O. is. They don't want to buy a company from somebody and automatically go in and assume operations, they basically said from the get-go that when we do partner with a company, we work with you and support you in your current role as president to make life easier for you. We will support you and work alongside you until the day comes when you do decide to leave, before acquisition to after acquisition, as far as the brand, nothing has changed at all. The only thing they've done is support it. They brought in the resources, what they brought in, the support team, everything on the back end: marketing, revenue management, financial, accounting, everything. They want to free up our time so we can grow our company, run our company like we've done without the burden of all the back office things. We have grown a number of owners. We've grown financially. The loyalty and the attitude with our owners, the attitude with our guests, the attitudes with our employees has done nothing but go up. The advice I would give to a vacation rental owner who is remotely thinking about selling their business in the next five years. Don't wait until that time to start the conversation with the Monarch Collective. Reach out to them now. They have an acquisitions team that will fly to your location. They will meet with you. They will get to know your business. I strongly suggest you reach out to the Monarch Collective now. The best business decision I ever made was. Was to buy Boo Realty back in '95. The second best decision I have ever made was to partner with the Monarch Collective the way we did.

Speaker 2  20:08  
If you're curious about what the next chapter for your vacation rental business could look like, Monarch Collective offers a free, no-pressure conversation to help you explore your options. No strings attached, just a straight conversation with people who deeply understand this industry. Visit gomonarch.com/partnerships to learn more.

Alex Husner  20:28  
It's hard for people to understand like where to even begin on on something like this. I mean, if they are not, you know, active, but they hear this and they're concerned and they want to make sure that they, you know, are at least contributing input to to what could potentially affect you know their livelihoods here, but there's so many different groups that are attacking this, and I think you know that it is good that there's a lot of different approaches here. But I mean, you've got Rent Responsibly, you've got VRMA, you've got the state associations, you've got the Chamber of Commerce. I remember being at a chamber or CVB DMO meeting a couple years ago, and was with some I would say hotelier hoteliers, but they are condo resort managers, and and those are vacation rentals that are in their building, and and they were kind of you know not really as enthused about worrying about some of the pending issues that could affect ordinances for vacation rentals. I'm like, guys, it's we're the same thing, you know. At the end of the day, like this is going to affect you too. But I mean, where do you where do you suggest somebody goes first? Like, which how how do you find the right group that you can get involved with? So

Tyann Marcink Hammond  21:33  
your local group is always a great place to start, but there's not a local group in every area either. So we're in Missouri. I reached out to my competitors, so my local property managers. You know, it happened to be my family as well because we're we're competitors. You know, and you know, start talking to them and saying, "Hey, are you seeing the same issue? Or what do you think? Hey, let's collaborate together because it affects both of you. And then after that, you know, sharing things online, looking online. Where are the people talking for your area? Do you have a Facebook group? Do you have the state group? I know Airbnb has had a state Facebook group, but now they've switched to their own platform. Plug into there to reach the other hosts and managers in your area. So when I was on Facebook and I saw someone mention the property tax issue, that I didn't know that county was doing it. Now I commented there, and that's where Susan saw my comment, and she goes, "Hey, we don't have this in Kansas City yet, yet. She's like, I think it's gonna come if you guys are having it happen to you, and sure enough, within a year, it the assessor in Kansas City said, "Yep, we're changing all of you to commercial, even if you decide to host one night during the World Cup. And can you just imagine your property tax bill skyrocketing because you hosted a visitor for one night during a major event when your city has asked you to help you. Getting all of our collective knowledge together was key because I I had very little. I've been to the state to to testify at a hearing for a bill many years ago, and that was the extent of my legislative experience. But when I connect to a citizen, she has walked this path with another industry earlier in her life. So we started talking, and she goes, "We need to get a bill passed. I'm like, "Yes, I don't know how to do that. She goes, "I know how to do that. I can do that part. Then she goes, but we need money and we need people. I'm like, I got that. That's my wheelhouse. So being able to you know partner together and then bring in our we built our board for the Missouri State Education Home Alliance, and looking at okay, what kind of of knowledge and talents and skills and representation can we get onto our board, and to have passionate people, people who understand. I mean, like right now, my energy. I don't know if you guys can feel it, but I'm just like so passionate about this subject because because it affects not just me and my family, but it affects every single family that comes to stay in Missouri, and it just spreads out. And so, when we looked at who who has that passion, who's willing to give of their time and even their own money to do this, and we found, I mean, like the most perfect board ever, including Lance, who has worked in is is in Jefferson City at the Capitol Building almost every week because of what he does and how he volunteers, and he serves on a as a commission chair for the lottery as well. So he's got the relationships that he's been building at. State level, and then learning all these different pieces of step by step. How do we build these relationships from the lobbyist and how the lobbyist works for you, and how to understand those things? How we can work together. How how we can reach those gatekeeping points of passing a bill and how important they are. So not just getting our bill through, but if something comes up that is negative to us and harmful to us, at what point are we able to either get it pulled back or get it changed and compromise and collaborate? So it's been really, really interesting, and it's not as hard as you might think. It's just you don't know what you don't know, so just taking it on step by step and not getting overwhelmed is really key for that.

Annie Holcombe  25:51  
Yeah, and I think we talked about it before we hit record. It's just the complexity that we have within our country about the way government works and the way it should work and the way it's actually functioning right now are two very different, very different conversations. So I think I think again, it's important. It's important that people just you know goes back to Alex says it a lot on the show. But you know it's like if you're not at you know if you're not at the table, you're on the menu, and unfortunately you know not you you're on the menu, and a lot of times it's like I you know I've said this to a couple people recently. You're 86. I mean, they just automatically, if they put you on the menu, they're trying to like call the menu down to a few palatable items. And if this is one that's just not palatable right now, they just completely push it aside. And then you get the danger of regulation happens in a dark room somewhere with four people and nobody's present to to be part of it, but I wanted to sort of pivot off of the regulation conversation because we are. You mentioned the World Cup, and like so that that is an interesting topic because it affected so many cities, and we're in the heat of it right now. It's it's it's wrapping up as we record this. They're getting close to the end anyway, but we're halfway through. Maybe I think is what it is. It opened people's eyes to, and Kansas City, I believe, was a great example of it. Is like when they started calculating the rooms that they needed, there was no way that the hotels were going to be able to fulfill that. So, great example of why you shouldn't cut off your nose to spite your face, and in terms of what these destinations have done. But it was happening in other places, and so I think the next big one that this is going to happen to is in LA, and so with the Olympics, and you know you look at like the the events are going to happen from like San Francisco down to San Diego, and I think like even further inland, they're going to happen all over the state. You were able to do some education, like these host groups, to like give them a toolkit to not only have the regulatory conversation to be able, but to be able to if you're going to do it temporarily for an event. Pop on the scene and be good about what you know what you're doing. So if when you pop off, people aren't like, "Well, we shouldn't have made that decision. So the next time we're not going to do it. Give us a little bit of your take on why it's important to have put together this toolkit and what you think this means moving forward for other events as they kind of migrate around the country, yeah.

Tyann Marcink Hammond  28:02  
So World Cup, as as you mentioned, Kansas City was expected to have up to 650,000 visitors, and they only have 65,000 hotel rooms, and so there was this huge gap that is there. But the other part is, remember I mentioned there was a basically a ban on short term rentals in Kansas City. The amount of inventory was, gosh, I my numbers might not be are not going to be exact. So it's just about there was about 1200 or so short term rentals back in 2022 or so 2023 They put in the new regulations, and they were cut down to about five or 600 less than half, and so all of that was lost. And now you have the additional gap of all these people coming in, and you can't just pop up a hotel either. You know, it's one of those things where short-term rentals and people hosting in their home for these flex events is very helpful as these big events happen and people are have access to travel and to go do these things, and so then I looked at this and like you know what we have this opportunity to make sure that short term rentals do not become another scapegoat of an event, because we've seen other events where something goes wrong, and all of a sudden, short-term rentals are the bad guy because someone decided to do it because they saw some influencer on social media with the umbrella drink in their hand at the beach, saying, "Ah, just throw your property up there. You'll make lots of money, and you know you'll be all good, right?

Annie Holcombe  29:43  
Passive, passive, passive, passive,

Tyann Marcink Hammond  29:45  
right? There's that Sarcasm again that I love. Yeah. So I like this is not going to happen in my state. No, no, no, not anywhere. So I'm like, the only way we could do this. The best way is to educate, and so one goal was to educate folks. Hey, if you want to do this, here are the tools. I'm leading you to the water. You can drink it if you want, but I am giving it to you and letting the cities know we are here to educate. We're not encouraging people to just do it outside the regulations. We're not encouraging them to do it unsafely. We're not encouraging them to do it just to make that money, which is the perception that we're just greedy people. And it's like, no, we are here to serve the community, to serve the guests coming in, and we want to show them at a fantastic time. So I'm like, you know what? Let's do this. Let's do a two day event and get the city there. Get the best teachers across the country from the short term rental industry. And then, in addition, we brought over guys from the UK. So James Varley from Host Planet to come talk about what it's like hosting during the World Cup. I don't know if you ladies knew, but James Varley used to work with the World Cup in marketing, and his grandfather was an official photographer for the World Cup as well. So it was really cool for him to show these photos from past World Cups that his grandfather had did, and to talk about the experience that the fans are looking for, and then the second time around, we brought Andy McNulty over, who's a huge soccer slash football fan and is huge on guest experience. And also, I'm like, well, you're the former CFO of Gucci, so you know, tell us about the experience and what these these fans are wanting from us, because in Kansas City in the Midwest, we don't make our tea the best way. We'll throw it in the microwave to warm the water up, and letting letting my fellow Missourians know, please have a tea kettle for the rest of the world coming to visit. You know, down to those little things, but also the education was to help them to understand as travelers and guests themselves when they go somewhere. This isn't easy at all. This isn't easy to host. This isn't easy to prepare for guests or to take care of them. Just to help them get that wrap their mind around that understanding, because a lot of folks think, "Oh, they're greedy. It's easy. They're just mooching off of me, and here I'm staying at their place, and they're not even providing anything. It's like, no, there's a lot more to that. But we're also all human, and we don't. We're not all 100. There will be some mistakes, and the folks that can show grace as well, and and show their love to people by serving them is just a dramatic difference. So I think the data, as you mentioned, that the the data before was big. I am loving watching the data and the stories come out during the World Cup. For example, Kansas City has had the most increase in properties. They've also had the most need, but they've been able to increase that dramatically. The stories of people just loving Kansas City from they're coming from all over the world, not expecting to love something in the Midwest that most people look at as a flyover state, and they're discovering the magic of Missouri and the area, so that just makes me super happy.

Annie Holcombe  33:25  
Yeah, the stories and the social media aspect of these visitors has been entertaining, and and we talk about it all the time, like Bucky's. I mean, we've experienced Bucky's, but now these people are coming to America and like, what in the world is this Bucky's? And it's just so funny to see it from a perspective. But I think it's been really nice. And I think Jen Barbie put it in great terms. She was like, you know, the America needs to have slumber parties more often. You know, like it's just that's what this is. It's just one big giant slumber party that's happening to last, you know, for a month. But what a great, what a great story. And I think what was cool in watching you put this together was the excitement that people put behind it, and I think it's it was a it was it was something that's replicable in other areas, and I and I and I just appreciate the thought that you put in to it to make it happen, and and so I hope that other other destinations will utilize that kind of blueprint that you've put together moving forward,

Tyann Marcink Hammond  34:21  
and to be very clear, there is an actual blueprint as well. Yes, there is. Yes, anybody can contact us at Missouri Vacation Home Alliance movha.org and you can access that blueprint as well. Because I did all that foundational work, and I don't want it to go to waste. I mean, yes, we use it over and over again, but anybody can access it and use it and figure out the entire planning to work within your community. And that was one of the big things: is just communicating with the community that we are here to help spread the economic impact, so every. One can participate, and this was one of the things that the local news stations really grabbed on at our events. We had the news reporters streaming live news reports all day from our event to tell people that this was happening and that we we were giving back into the communities. It's it was so cool.

Alex Husner  35:20  
Yeah, that's awesome. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to share something that we believe matters for the future of this industry. Every property manager wants more direct bookings. You invest in your website, your brand, your guest experience because owning that relationship matters. But travelers still need a trusted place to discover vacation rentals before they decide where to book, that's why Savvy exists. It's a direct booking marketplace built exclusively for professionally managed vacation rentals, and it's not just another OTA. When a traveler books through Savvy, you remain at the center of the relationship, so there's no platform standing between you and your guest. You communicate directly with the traveler, receive payment, set your terms and conditions, and nurture the ongoing relationship. Here's what really got our attention: Savvy's booking growth has been consistently climbing almost 40% month over month for over a year now. Travelers are finding this option and fast. We love what the team at Savvy is building for property managers and the direct booking movement. If you're looking for a distribution partner that's actually built for you, not around you? Check out savvy at savvy.com/alexandanny Well, for other updates, I mean, we could probably talk forever on regulations, but how are things going for you this summer? I mean, as far as bookings and just overall trends that you're seeing within the rental portfolio,

Tyann Marcink Hammond  36:43  
we're seeing what I think is a lot of stories for everybody is these last minute bookings. Even during Memorial Day weekend, we literally booked. I want to say a third of our properties that same day of arrival, which think would be just so odd for someone to book a five-bedroom house while driving to their destination that they didn't plan earlier, but it's one of those things where I think there's enough inventory within Branson, and people were watching the weather. They were looking at: Do we have enough in our budget? Do we really want to do that? Is our time opening up, and the fact that Memorial Day weekend fell at a really odd time? It was so early. Wait, I think a lot of people realize. Oh wait, it's Memorial Day weekend. We forgot to book a place. We're supposed to go somewhere, and then they then they do it. So just these shifts that you you have to take into consideration when you look further out, when you're pricing, when you're all those different things, it's just constant. And yes, as a small property manager, it wears on you too, because you do have to communicate that with your team, with your homeowners, with your cleaners. And we had conversations of, you know what? Yes, right now the weekend, holiday weekend, is not booked, but this is what we expect, and these ones could turn into a same day turn. So please be prepared for that. And then, sure enough, it's like, yep, all of a sudden, same day turns happening. It's like, okay, someone's arriving in three hours. Are you going to be done with the five bedroom house, and so just looking ahead and preparing for those types of things. Otherwise, I mean, the summer's been fantastic. Once my brain gets over the fact that it's the last minute, which feels like whiplash. After you know, I'm coming up on next weekend's 19 years that I've been doing this, and so it's like, oh my gosh! 19 years ago, we only booked Saturday to Saturday, and and if we weren't fully booked for the summer by February, I was lowering prices with the magazine ads going at that point, so and newspapers and everything. So yes, yes, yeah, on that marketing fact, though, Alex, what you said about magazines-I've actually gone back to some of those things. So we we have a feature in Missouri Life Magazine this summer about us, and I've gone-I've got a commercial running all summer in a very targeted area of Kansas that has our target guest. So it's just really interesting looking how the you know older marketing things used to people got away from them. They're coming back. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  39:33  
yes, yeah. It's it's nostalgia because I think it's interesting. Like there's a there's been a a lot of talk lately. I've seen it on like social media and stuff, and then articles and and on the news channels, but about the Gen Z, Gen Z, and some of the younger or the yeah younger millennials are wanting to go back to the way we grew up with landline phones and and really and really like disconnecting from because they're they're starting to really feel the pain of all this social media. We know what it was like before we were so hyper connected. So we can, I think, we can balance that. They, you know, I think Alex, you, you basically-that's pretty much all you know, right? Like, I mean, most of your life has been hyperconnected through technology, right? So,

Alex Husner  40:14  
well, I think because I mean, I'm a millennial. I'm a-I was born in '85, so I mean, I'm like kind of in the. You're an elder

Annie Holcombe  40:20  
millennial. millennial, old

Speaker 3  40:22  
old

Alex Husner  40:23  
soul, have new age

Speaker 4  40:25  
here,

Alex Husner  40:25  
but but yeah, no, I mean like, and I say the same thing to to clients too. It's like don't dismiss some of the you know the foundational things that work in advertising. And I think when you look at things in a in a broader perspective of if you're a company that's really trying to build your brand, you know, there are certain initiatives that make sense, and you're not always going to be able to track the ROI on those, and that's okay. You know, I mean, like, yeah, don't go spend an insane amount of money if you really have no visibility into it. But there, there are ways still that you can, you know, use different URLs and landing pages and dedicated phone numbers, so you get some idea. But when you start, when you start hearing from people, I'm seeing you everywhere, and you start. You've just added in a couple different marketing things, like you know something has changed, and I think it's it's really important to be thinking of different opportunities right now because you know everybody has access to Verbo, Airbnb, the OTAs. But what's going to be the one thing that you do differently as far as your marketing mix that makes you stand out, and you know some of those more traditional ways of advertising certainly make sense. But I think I've you know I've told you this as a as a side note, but for Tyan, I don't know how much you know about this, but I got in back into horseback riding this year after 26 years away, and my real memory of of magazines and print media was actually about in that time frame when I used to ride horses a lot growing up. That the magazines were always a huge part of this industry, and coming back to it now, it is the same thing. I mean, we get at least two to three like nicely produced magazines a week about the horses, and it's people advertising. But it's amazing to me that they have not yet caught up to the digital trends here. So I don't know. I think you have to kind of take everything with a grain of salt, and maybe they need to come a little bit more up to speed. But maybe we need to be looking at some of those other things to diversify. I

Tyann Marcink Hammond  42:16  
think it really comes down to who your target guest, the target booking guest, and what they are consuming. So I am absolutely in that printed magazine that is in every single roadside travel rest area in Missouri with a QR code because my my target booking guest is stopping at those rest areas and they're picking up the book, and yes, they might not be booking right away, but I'm looking at next year already because it takes families time to go ahead and you know get the idea and think about it and then research it and all those different things. So when people talk about, oh man, I had this video go viral, and we made $30,000 off of it, and there was just this one thing. It's like, okay, let's take into consideration what type of property they have, where their target gets located, all of this, and it doesn't apply to every single one of us. So then it's like, okay, don't feel so bad that you can't replicate the same thing because I do that myself. I'm like, oh, why am I not that good? I was like, no, keep keep it steady, keep it steady. I can do this. So one of the things we're really that I am focusing on this summer is not just showing off our houses, but mainly showing off us because we we're what no one else can replicate. So if you go to my socials for Branson family retreats, you will see my absolutely wonderful husband, who is such a good sport, dressed in dressed in his kilt. He's full kilt, everything, and yeah, it's just lots lots of fun. Because one of our values is humor, and that is something I just try to infuse as much as possible with our guests because humor is a communication tool, and I'm going to use it. And it's something that I grew up with, and it's something that we use within our team and with our guests because it also helps stress levels come down. So. so go check it out. I don't want to say anything more, but there's

Alex Husner  44:27  
I can only imagine. But I mean, it's humor and it's connection. It's like you know that's that's not a new thing that you know showing your team works, but it is completely underutilized as far as what I see a lot of property management companies do either in their meta ads or in their emails or even on their website. I mean, like that you really can't even find a soul on the on their marketing. And it's like you know people connect with people, and especially in today's day and age, really. I mean, you go on Instagram or TikTok or even Facebook, and the ads and the videos that make you stop are normally. People talking about something. I mean, somebody is watching this episode right now and probably on you know Facebook and saw reel and stopped because they saw us talking about things. So there's you know something to be said about that. But I know not everybody is comfortable getting in front of a camera. But at the same time, it's like you know you don't. This doesn't mean you have to be perfect. But just getting on there, showing your face, talking about why it matters to book with you or to list their property with you-it goes a long way. Like, and it's totally underutilized. Yeah, but again, goes back to exactly what we were talking about-back to the regulation. I mean, this is a relationship industry, and people want to be connected with people. And the more technology gets dumped in the process, the more hungry for that connection, people are going to continue to be. So I think it's a this is a you know hold space for this. It's going to continue to you know change and evolve, and and we'll be talking about something completely different six months from now. But at the end of the day, we know that hospitality is is connection of human people, not

Annie Holcombe  46:00  
you know connection of technology, and so I think as long as we focus on that core principle, like everybody can find their way.

Alex Husner  46:06  
Okay, yeah, yeah, awesome. Well, Tayan, thank you for stopping by, giving us a little update. It's always we love having you on the show. I think you're up there with the most amount of repeat visits to the show. I think we're at least three or four with you now. So, as Annie always says, we're going to have mugs one of these days. That we do

Annie Holcombe  46:26  
the Saturday Night Live five timer jackets, but that seemed a little excessive. So, a coffee mug's probably where we'll land.

Tyann Marcink Hammond  46:34  
Well, thank you so much for having me.

Annie Holcombe  46:38  
Yeah, we appreciate it. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to reach out?

Tyann Marcink Hammond  46:42  
Yeah, so I am on all the socials personally at Diane Marsink, and then my Brains and Family Retreats is the main active social for business at Brains and Family Retreats, and then you can visit my websites and all the websites and everything are together on one as well. If you just want to go to one spot, and that is aka the queen.com Love it!

Alex Husner  47:04  
And if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to alexandannypodcast.com And until next time, thanks everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai