STR Global Unlocked with Simon Lehmann: Unfiltered knowledge for the short term rental industry

024: Curation Over Volume: How Landfolk Is Redefining Growth in Short-Term Rentals with Christian Schwarz Lausten

• Powered by AJL Atelier • Season 1 • Episode 24

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 52:02

Is short-term rental growth a volume game, or is quality becoming the real competitive advantage?

In a market flooded with inventory, inconsistent standards, and increasing AI-driven discovery, Christian Schwarz Lausten argues that the future of STR belongs to curated supply, disciplined execution, and brand-led trust. After selling his previous company to Airbnb, Christian returned with a deliberate strategy: say no to scale for scale’s sake and build something designed to last.

In this episode of STR Global Unlocked, Simon Lehmann speaks with Christian Schwarz Lausten, Founder and CEO of Landfolk, about what he learned inside Airbnb, why uncontrolled expansion dilutes trust, and how a premium positioning paired with proprietary technology creates resilience in an AI-fragmented future.

This is not a marketplace story about growth at all costs. It is a conversation about discipline, capital efficiency, culture, and why quality and trust are becoming structurally linked in short-term rentals.


In this conversation, we discuss:

  • Why saying “no” to inventory is the foundation of curation and how controlled supply strengthens trust.
  • What Christian learned inside Airbnb about data discipline, global brand building, and marketplace expansion.
  • The $21B European premium segment opportunity and how “affordable luxury” differs from both mass market and ultra-luxury STR.
  • How AI is reshaping search, authenticity, and guest expectations, and why quality becomes the anchor of trust in a synthetic content world.
  • Why owning direct homeowner relationships and achieving 70 percent direct bookings creates resilience in a fragmented distribution landscape.
  • The balance between human onboarding and automation, including personally interviewing every homeowner while deploying AI for instant guest support.
  • Why the next winners in STR will combine direct owner relationships, disciplined capital deployment, curated supply, and brand credibility in an AI-mediated future.

Explore more:

Connect with Christian Schwarz Lausten on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianschwarzlausten/] to learn more about Landfolk [https://landfolk.com/]

-

Podcast supported by Pikl
Pikl brings insurance-enabled flexible cancellation and new revenue models together for short-term rental operators.

👉 Get started with Pikl here

Resources

Stay connected:

SPEAKER_01

Provide great delightful user and customer experiences. That starts with actually saying no. We are selling dreams. That is basically the product that we have. The whole grail of our industry is cleaning, and it's our hardest not to crack, for sure. The way that you find and discover those listings will definitely change if you don't have direct relationships.

SPEAKER_00

The aspiration for going premium is a huge market opportunity. You're saying you're tech native, not tech obsessed? So that is really balanced between humans and tech, and I think that is really the future of the industry.

SPEAKER_03

You are listening to STR Global Unlocked, brought to you by AGL Otelier. The show where I speak with the leaders shaping short-term rentals worldwide. I am Simon Lehman, and after two decades buying, selling, advising, and investing, I've built a network that spans continents and categories. This podcast brings that network to you. Real conversations, global insight, no PR fluff. Let's get started. What if short-term rentals were never meant to be a volume game? What if scale did not start with inventory, but with taste, with trust, with standards? What if technology was not used to automate chaos, but to protect culture? Today's guest sold a company to Airbnb. He saw the inside of the machine, and then he went back to build something completely different. Today I'm joined by Christian Schwartz-Lausen, the founder and CEO of Landfolk out of Denmark. Christian previously founded Guest, which was acquired by Airbnb. He understands platforms, venture capital, and scale at the biggest level. But for the land folk, he chooses a different direction. Landfolk is not chasing volume, it is curating homes. It is building brand. It is shaping culture. And from a technology and leadership standpoint, it may be one of the most disciplined plays in the European short-term rental space today. Christian, it's a great pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks so much for the warm intro, Simon. I appreciate it. It's great to have you, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. There's a lot to unpack with your past and also with landfolk. I already had your opportunity to meet some of your team members, and we read a lot about you out there. And it's definitely a very great industry story to follow, also for our international listeners. And before we dive deeper into land fog, let's do a quick rapid fire. I give you two words and you give me one answer as short as possible. Growth or discipline?

SPEAKER_02

Discipline growth. Brand or scale. I would say scale for sure, but with a strong brand. OTA or direct? Direct. AI advantage or risk. Advantage. Marketplace or membership? Marketplace. Europe or global. Europe first and global. Curated or open. Curated. Five years from now, what is landfall in one word?

SPEAKER_03

I wanted to sort of touch on the fact that you sold another startup to Airbnb. Your experience scale from an inside standpoint. What did that experience teach you about marketplaces and that most founders potentially never see?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that was an incredible experience, obviously coming from what I would say, playing minor league to premium league, right? It I mean it was really interesting to see what it really entails to become a global brand, basically, right? And how do you flex those muscles in a in a good way, right? When you're when you're expanding. And I think what we learned was the the discipline around data and what data can provide to a company if it's if it's done correctly, right? I also think the ambition of expansion and and really striving for for building something truly, you know, big and magnificent was was just great to see coming from one of the smallest countries in the world and then joining a company that sees the whole world as a playground. I think that was just a very inspirational experience. And I think we we learned so much during those years. It was it was absolutely great to be part of that.

SPEAKER_03

How did that transition process work? What what did you fundamentally potentially disagree with in that process?

SPEAKER_01

Was there anything this was especially during the first the early days of of COVID, I think was that obviously people were wanted to stay closer to their home, right? And and when they to when they traveled. That was the big, you know, nearest the new far is what what we said at Airbnb at that time. And and I I think we we saw that vacation rentals in general was a bit uh it was not centerpiece on the Airbnb platform at that time. I I don't know exactly what the strategy is today, of course, but we found that all of us wanted to go out into the countryside, obviously during the early days of COVID, right? Escaping the city. And we really experienced firsthand how difficult it was to really find the real gems. You know, we could just spend hours with our spouses to to plow through web pages to find the right place to stay at. And then it was still a bit disappointing getting there because the photo quality was not fulfilled with the actual experience and so on. So I I think that was like some of those early experiences that we actually used as our leverage for the next thing, which would be landfall, right? Uh so I think it was very interesting, both from a positive side, but also from from more of the challenges that we saw.

SPEAKER_03

Would you do anything different in terms of what you build once you left? Is that or you just land folk is sort of the result of it, I can assume?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean being mature founders and having tried building several companies and and exiting them though, I think we had a very intentional approach to to building landfolk. Uh we did a lot of thoughts and analysis before we did this. And some of the the stuff we we saw was that we believed that that the future would be curated. And I would say that, you know, general as a as a general thing uh on the internet, right? I think that what digitization provided all of us was an abundance of choice and and selection and so on. And that is basically that information overload is still of today a big hindrance for great consumer experiences on the internet. So I think that curation is really a person, an expert, someone who really cares, who actually selects, you know, handpicks something out of, I would almost say love. I mean, that's a grand word, right? But I really think that is really important to emphasize that curation is such an interesting word, right? So we wanted to do exactly that, provide great, delightful user and customer experiences. And that starts for us with actually saying no, right? That's that's part of curation. You have to say no to something. And that's a hard one, right? Because you also always want to judge volume, volume, volume, right? But but saying no, I think is the groundworks of curation. And that is what we do even five years into the game with the landfill.

SPEAKER_03

The word no is probably the hardest word within the short-term rental industry on a global basis. I've been around the block a few times, and we're still talking about it, and especially in 25, we heard the word no many times, especially in relation to supply. And when you're doomed to grow and create volume for all the unit economics and profitability, and you have capital in the business, and then saying no is a very hard part. But the data that we've seen from companies like Price Labs clearly underlines the fact that the mid-market is struggling because the consumer has now different expectations, and we're not, you know, directing the inventory to the to the entire world. We we want to be very specific and we want to um dwell on that a little bit further. So, from the introduction standpoint, I think I can summarize that land folk was not just a reaction to uh the exit that you had with guest to Airbnb, but it was it you're also on an evolution, and that that's what intrigues me. And we're so glad to have you here today. So, curation over volume, you already talked about it. Landfolk feels very deliberate, and you clearly underlined that beautiful homes, strict onboarding, aesthetic discipline. Why start with curation instead of inventory growth? I mean, that's pretty gutsy, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I think one of the other great learnings from Airbnb was, of course, how how important a brand is if you want to drive direct bookings, right? And I think that vision of Airbnb really becoming this huge lifestyle brand was also very aspirational for us from the very beginning. We saw that land folk had to be equally a brand and a tech play. So we see ourselves as a tech startup, no doubt about that. But we also want to build a true lifestyle brand. And to do that, you need to have a differentiator, right? You have to really be competitive in many ways. And you have to figure out what should your vertical be, so to speak, right? And what we saw was that there was obviously a lot of platforms, you know, catering to the ultra-luxury side of the industry, right? With with one fine stay, the collectionist and so on, right? And also Airbnb Lux, of course, and the likes. And then on the other side, you had the more classic and traditional players in the industry, right? And we wanted to basically build what I like to call the Pandora, like the jewelry manufacturer Pandora or the Audi of the industry. Those are premium brands, right? I wouldn't call those luxury. It's not a Maybach and Audi, right? It's a premium brand. And we saw that position as one of the most interesting and maybe also untouched verticals within the industry. So we actually carve it out. We believe it's a 21 billion euro market in Europe alone. And we believe that this is really where it's fun to play because a lot of let's just take a young couple with a child, most of them would never be able to afford luxury, villas, right, or mansions. But they would save for an affordable luxury, a premium stay at the in in Tuscany, for instance. That is that is actually possible for them to get there. So I think the aspiration for going premium is is a huge market opportunity. And that's our analysis that pointed towards, and I think for the past five years, we have we have proven that. It's really an interesting domain within the STR industry.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I totally agree with you. By the way, recently we just had a luxury panel on uh STR Global Unlocked with the collectionist and Emerald and the Lux Nomad and Nocturne, and they're also in a challenging spot, regardless. And I think that's even more hyper-focused. This definition of premium, the position, the focus is going to be absolutely key for the success of landfall as well. While you're also trying a massive stretch that we can also, in a way, for the ones who have been around the block for a few years, summarize has been very challenging, where avocado position itself as a tech platform, and from 4.4 billion was 130 million left. So there is a lot of things that you as a business can learn as well. And having that stretch between the tech-enabled piece and what you're trying to execute as a brand, I think is definitely going to be a massive challenge. But I want to quickly go back and s and ask you, you know, the industry dilutes, are they diluting trust because of uncontrolled inventory expansion, do you think?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think the the huge Walmart-esque supermarket platforms that have been aggregating just thousands and millions of listings have somehow undermined their value proposition because the inconsistency of quality is actually now a hindrance to the consumers. I mean, there's still so many millions and millions, billions of consumers that have never tried staying at an SGR, right? It's still a super underserved market. Uh I think we have a big responsibility to delivering, you know, almost hotel-like experiences because that's what the expectancy is. So I think that that having, you know, just uh volume is is uh is a mistake. And I see ourselves more like a special shop, a boutique where you can really find great inventory uh that has been hand selected and cared for. We talk about loved and lived in home. That's kind of like our proposition uh with what we have. And that's why our curation criteria are super important. We we really stay strict to those. We turn down more than 50% of all applications. We want to make sure that the homeowners also feel like they have been welcomed into a carefully selected club almost. That's why the community is also a big part of what we're building. Also, of course, a blocker in terms of just wild scale, but I do think that we can scale. And I think our numbers and our unit economics show that we can scale very, very efficiently as well. Because one of the big secrets is in this industry, in my opinion, is that if you take second homes in general, one of the maybe the most underserved asset classes in the world, I think that that second homes, I think we talk about more than 7 million of those just in Europe alone. They stand empty 300 days a year for the majority. And more than 80% of them have never been rented out. These numbers are just mind-blowing. And and no one has been able to unlock this. And I and not even booking, not verbo, not Airbnb, no one had unlocked this segment, huge segment of second homes, until you do something different, right? So that was also part of the analysis. We have to do something different to be able to unlock that. And now 70% of our inventory is actually exclusively with us, right? So so I think it's a matter of positioning yourself differently, telling different stories to attract different homeowners. And that's what we are succeeding in doing.

SPEAKER_03

Amazing. When you start building land folk in Switzerland, please do let me know. I'll be more than happy to support you. I think Switzerland has probably the highest rate of empty homes where people just don't rent them out. It's it's a nightmare. I mean, people, it's an issue. We have a lot of cold beds and the ski destinations where people own it and use it for two weeks a year and and they don't rent it out because they don't need the capital. They don't want to have anybody foreign in bids. And it's different in other markets where it's an investment property. And you coming from Denmark with all your beautiful beach homes, and uh, you know, it's it's a cultural thing in Denmark as well, right? Whereas in Denmark, you're not allowed to own a property if you're not Danish. So that's very protective as well. And then you have your destinations outside of Copenhagen, where most of the owners are. So that's why short-term rental has become such an ingrained industry in in Denmark. And I have a lot of fond memories. But I think in your in your analysis, that's where you can grow substantially, also for owners to think, hey, I want to be part of this club in a way as well. So you're driving more interest, and with that, you're driving more quality of the inventory as well. So one thing you made very clear unit growth is not your core KPI within your business. It's a lot of other things. And unit economics, you talked about margins on properties, which is, I think, an absolute key. So I think you're you're onto something that could be very, very substantial. Do you think that quality is becoming the new growth lever, also like more as a general term for the short-term rental industry?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I we could all hope so, right? From a from a customer perspective, of course. Uh but I also think that quality and trust is inherently connected, right? And I think uh right now, what we experience with uh with with the with the coming of AI is is the tectonic shift is there. Uh I think what what what is being disrupted right now is our perceivance of what is really trustworthy, what is great quality, what is authentic quality and and content and so on. And I think that that it's really interesting to see what what that is going to to uh to do with with the consumer behavior. But I do think that you will be much more focused on are those photos on that listing, are they real, right? Has it been AI manipulated, right? Because it's still a physical asset, right? You still have to go there with your body and stay there, right? So it's really an interesting thing that that you have this digital, you know, profile page that is is somehow connecting you to something physical. So trust is extremely important. And I think quality is is of course the pillar of of uh of trust.

SPEAKER_03

So let me pick up that stretch we alluded to uh before in terms of tech versus versus building a business. So you know, landfolk, I would say is that they uses technology as a as a standard enforcer as well, next to many other things. You're saying you're tech native, but not tech obsessed. So how how does that fall into your execution, into your management, or into your culture of the business? Because tech enabled has clearly been abused as a term, and we talked a lot about that in 2025 with tech-enabled businesses. And most of the PMCs out there don't build their own native tech anymore because there's so much out there, and and you we want to focus on hospitality. We're in the hospitality industry. But at the end of the day, you came with a different background and you saw that this is a value creation, and the tech-enabled term was more innovative to get higher multiples on fundraising and everything else. And I think with the case of Ocasa and a few others like Saunder and whatever, that tech-enabled pillar piece did not materialize for the investors as the growth lever of the business. Because at the end of the day, we still need to clean, we still need to operate, we still have all the old standards. So it's a long question, but how does that fit together with the culture and and and your business strategy going forward, being tech enabled, but still being a premium brand in the in the hospitality industry?

SPEAKER_01

I had the pleasure of being able to bring on my previous co-founders for the company that we sold to Airbnb. And they're they're the technical co-founders, right? So Jonas and Chris, and they are obviously they have passed the the exam, right? They they sold something to Airbnb, right? So they passed the highest bar I think out there. And that's why we decided to build proprietary tech from the very get-go. We believe that controlling your tech stack is key to building something truly big. And that's also why we decided from the very beginning to unify all of our data into one complete data architecture. Because we know that if if data is siloed within 26 different entities, right, you will never be able to build something on top of that. So we we had a lot of mature decisions from the beginning, having tried this before. What we really didn't know at that time, this was back in 21, so it it's, I mean, it always feels like like decades ago. It actually was a very wise decision because it has positioned us very, very well for the AI possibilities that we see right now, where everything is based on data. And that makes it easy for us today to spin up new AI enabless and solutions that support our operation. So I think the operational leverage and the capital efficiency of what we're doing at Landfolk is super important. I think it's important to mindfully deploy human touch, the exact right places throughout the value chain. And we do that. So we interview each and every one of our homeowners. And that is that's an investment because what it does is that it builds direct relationships, it builds loyalty, and it sets expectations with us and the homeowner from the beginning. And they feel connected to land folk. Each and every one of our almost 7,000 uh hosts and homeowners, they have talked to someone at landfolk and they know who to reach out to. So that's a high touch. And we do that wisely. So we're not just throwing around human resources like that, but that's an investment, and we believe that's scalable as well. But in many occasions, a homeowner or I guess they don't want to talk to a human being. They just want to get an answer to their question and they want to do it fast and maybe at 3 a.m. in the morning. So that's where we deploy tech, and that's where we deploy our AI systems to make sure that you get an answer as quickly as possible to that exact question that you have. So that is, I think, how you kind of slice and dice your resources as a company. And that's why we can keep doubling our business every year as we've done uh over the past three years and still keep a pretty tight team on board and having been lowering our burn multiple quite significantly over those years and keep doing that. So that is really the balance between humans and tech. And I think that is that is really the future of the industry.

SPEAKER_03

I'm amazed how open you are with your secret source and and you know, thinking about my conference circus last year. It was all about efficiency, it was all about automating everything, it's all about bringing costs down because distribution costs are going up, OTAs ask for higher commissions, labor costs are coming up, technology costs are coming in. And you brought also the aspect of the source of truth. So you and I could talk for hours just on the source of truth and and where you. You want to build what you're building. And I think that's exactly the right answer, in my opinion, because that's what we're seeing. Because most of the people who entered the game entered the game from the hospitality side of things. And I think that's where you are ahead of literally everyone already, because it's about having that data that is actually available, using that as a source of truth through a single source to actually run your business as efficient and effective as possible, allows you to deploy more human capital to where it matters. Because at the end of the day, and sound like a broken record and a television preacher, the only asset that this industry has is trust with homeowners. And if you don't build this relationship, you're just going to lose that game. And that's where scale is very dangerous. So let me move on to that a little bit with AI and OTA. So we've seen some tectonic shifts, if you wish, 300 billion of market cap was eroded a couple of weeks ago in Nasdaq. We're seeing OTA share prices drop, uh, markets reacting to AI-driven search disruption, potentially bypassing uh traditional booking funnels. How does landfall prepare for AI-mediated discovery while you sit on a wealth of supply?

SPEAKER_01

Probably the only thing, maybe that that also keeps me up at night, of course, is how do we position ourselves here? We need to experiment with this, of course. We do that. The first thing we did was figuring out how would this look like from a customer perspective, right? And obviously, we could just uh lean back and then just wait for for you know open AI and anthropic and so on just to take over the world. We actually decided to try our teeth on this and build our own conversational AI search engine. And and uh we trained a clip model, an open source clip model on LLM with all of our thousands and thousands of high-quality photos of listings. And we trained it to understand what is the mood, what is the atmosphere, what is the vibe on those photos, and what are the amenities, uh, and what is the content of those photos. Because we thought to ourselves that the future of search and discovery is an important part of all of this, right? Never, no matter what kind of business you have. But since we are selling dreams, that is basically the product that we have, we wanted to make sure that it also reflected what modern consumers increasingly look for: Instagrammable listings. They look for something that they can relate to with their loved ones and where they can really truly relax and and recharge and so on. And that's not just about whether they have a parking lot or whether there's a you know a washing machine. Those amenities are like commodities. So now you can actually search for a beautiful log cabin in the Swedish forest with great sunsets, right? You can do that on our search engine, and it will spit up, you know, a huge number of photos reflecting just that, right? Or you you can search for for a great children-friendly beach close to the cabin. And and it will again show you all of those uh photos, and then you can start discovering. So that's one thing we did. The other thing I think is that having the direct relationship with our supply makes us a bit more resilient towards the future of all of this uh in terms of distribution. Because we're not really competing on distribution. We're competing on owned exclusive supply. However, I think it's it's it's important to follow this, of course. So so uh we have almost 70% direct bookings on our platform, right? So that that's the first thing that makes us a bit more resilient. And that's because of the investments we've done into the brand, right? But we also see that sales channels, which it basically is, right, are important, right? You have to have optionality in your distribution. That's that's a fundamental uh piece of advice I got many years back when I had my consultancy. Never be too dependent on just one. That's dangerous. So we have a number of sales channels, and we keep expanding on that. And and we're very mindful about that. So just as we have dynamic pricing, we also have dynamic distribution. So I think that's important to sell the right product in the right channel at the right time to the right price, to the right customer. I think that is super important in terms of building this. And this is again where AI and machine learning helps us do that. So that's also what what we're building at at the moment. So whenever the AI hype will partially settle is a big question. I think that that thinking back to 2008 when Facebook was the new shiny object, and everyone talked about that at the time, that all e-commerce funneled through Facebook, and we would all have our shops on Facebook and sell goods on Facebook and so on. Today, I mean that's a fun story thinking about that, because that's not how it played out, right? I'm sure that Zuckerberg would have loved to see that, but but but again, I think what truly is interesting is that the world is balanced. It always somehow finds back to a balance. And and the the equalizer, the grand equalizer of things will also kick in here. I don't think that open AI is going to win. I don't think that booking.com is going to win. I think that that there will be a balanced perspective on this. And we will all get a fair share if we do our work well and we deliver great experiences, right? I think we will all get our fair share of this. That's how I see it.

SPEAKER_03

I would struggle to challenge that. And uh that has also probably got to do with your own personal background as being Danish, very balanced nation as well. Very similar to Switzerland, even the same colors and in our flags, right? And I would definitely see that too. So, in summary, I could say, you know, the brand is becoming more important as well. Um, more important when distribution fragments. And I think what you've done is is exceptional. Having 70% direct bookings on something that is reasonably new is is unheard of. When you have classical companies who've been around forever, big brands in in the UK, for example, they still have 70, 80% uh direct business because it's one local market with one local supply. Um, but and they've been around for decades, right? So they've been able to nurture that direct piece a little bit longer. But mainstream is far away from that. And in the US, and this is an interesting aspect for the US listener as well, US is still very single channel driven, which is unbelievable. So to think about what you can do with a newer brand and already have 70% direct. And and and one analogy you brought in, which I'm gonna discuss with Sean Stewart uh very soon, is about pricing, where when you sit today in an airplane and a 737 with 138 seats, that there is 138 price points in this plane. And and we are far away from that. And I think that's where we can definitely need a lot more intel and data and and and and and brain work to see how we can cover that more flexibly to serve our needs uh within the did the within the business. And and the second piece I think that you have alluded to, which I also agree, is that the curated supply that you have is your golden nugget, also within an AI-driven world, because you you can use that to your advantage. And I have used your uh search engine already. Uh I was tipped off that this is pretty unique and uh it's very impressive how you use that data. This episode is supported by Pickle. One of the more important shifts in short-term rentals right now is how operators are starting to think differently about flexibility. For a long time, the industry framed the question too narrowly. Do we offer more flexibility to improve conversion and match the flexibility guests have come to expect on OTAs? Or do we keep stricter policies in place to protect revenue? That is where pickle comes in. Pickle is helping short-term rental operators build insurance-enabled solutions into the booking journey, making flexibility work better for guests, operators and owners alike. More importantly, pickle solutions shift the conversation from a single booking conversion to the economics of the booking window as a whole, shaping the booking confidence, pricing power, and broader revenue opportunities around each day. The next phase of growth in this sector will not just come from adding more inventory, it will come from designing better economics around the inventory you already have. Visitpickle.com slash str Global Unlocked to learn more. Let's continue with the show. So moving on, very seldom within conversations also of property managers like you, we we can't talk about professionalization versus risk of the business. And I think risk is something that has been something especially in 24, but also 25 more and 26 continuing being increased by two major aspects, one AI, and the other one obviously regulation as well. So the industry has struggled with inconsistent standards. So you're you're addressing that. Safety incidents is another one, regulatory pressure, uh, insurance complexity is something that we have never seen. And there's new companies who offer great coverages and take care of these risks, such as Pickle, who actually works with us as well. Do you believe the industry has a structural standard problem, or do we not need to resolve that?

SPEAKER_01

It's it's an interesting question. I think I I don't know exactly how no other businesses have, you know, being run in terms of all of this. I do see that the the right effects of actually curating and having high quality of listings is actually dripping down through the whole entire value chain of landfolk, which means that when we onboard a great home of great quality with great furniture and great interior solutions, and the host has been mindful about the decoration and how it's it's all set, and we have described it well with the listing description and the photos are accurate and so on. We have hardly no insurance claims, right? Our our compensations are mind-blowingly low, right? Uh it's it's just this rippled-down effect that if you go for quality throughout the entire value chain, it just turns out to be great. So, of course, we have some some kind of compensation and we do have incidents. That's just how life is, I think. But but not to the degree of the volume that we have with homes and bookings and so on. And I think that is that is uh one of the effects of of going for quality and high standard. So that's from my perspective, how we can see the efficiency of it.

SPEAKER_03

Should there be tiers in our business? I've been there for 20 years. We talked about star ratings, which are now provided by the reviews, obviously, but hotels are known with their one and two and five star ratings. Should there be tier ratings to separate the masses? Because now I personally believe that within supply growth and everything the STR industry has seen, being close to 14% of total global hospitality, I think we've reached a peak as an industry in terms of supply. And yes, there is a lot more opportunities out there of non-rented items, without a doubt. And that's where we're going after, not the ones who are already there. But the question is now where, you know, the industry seeing tough times. I mean, we're seeing the UK, Germany, where people are saving money. They might take a$500 all-inclusive trip to Turkey to a three-star hotel instead of doing a vacation rental. So spends are going down, which will affect our business. And we have already talked about that. The mid-market is really struggling in our industry. But does that mean we like the STR business as a whole are is being restructured by the supply and and basically seeing a decline in total supply because of the premium segment as well?

SPEAKER_01

It's a it's a good question if we should replicate some of uh of from the hotel business. Um I actually I don't know if that's the the right. I think it's it's it's too tedious and and too, you know, problematic to create something generic that that everyone would just you know adhere to. I don't I don't think that's possible, to be honest. However, I think that that you know the whole the Prohost segment is is is increasingly struggling, I think, because what they have created is these IKEA furnitured uh listings all over the world, right? And and they're just like really bland and it's just so generic, right? And and I think the market is is looking for not just quality, right, but also soul. I think you know soul is underestimated and and it's super fluffy, right? And it's very hard to put that on on an algorithm, right? But I think that is really also what we expect now. Uh we want something that truly stands out. And and with soul, I also think there comes a certain you know level of quality, because that's that's part of it, right? It it's attached to each other. It's not the greatest answer to your question, Simon, but I I think that that's that's what at least what we're striving for is trying to find those homes. And and that's also why we have very few professionalized homes on the platform. It's it's mostly you know people who actually use their own home as well. It's lift-in, loved homes, as we say. And and and that is maybe the strongest, I would say, you know, symbol for for for quality, uh, that people actually want to stay there themselves.

SPEAKER_03

So, in terms, like just to cover another aspect of risk, how does landfall in general look at the regulatory environment within Europe and everything else? We've seen that Spain, for example, as a destination, has lost 6% supply last year in total, which is significant, of being, you know, the second largest source market after France. That's significant. How do you discuss that with investors internally? How do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_01

I think our advantage is that we haven't built up, you know, thousands and thousands of listings and then have to cannibalize those and get rid of those, right? We come from from the bottom-up approach, right? So we are right now uh actually building up our supply in those markets, which means that we can actually be compliant from the very beginning. We know what what the tax authorities are looking for in Italy, right? And in Spain and in France. And and that that is our advantage that we can design our entire platform and our tax stack to to exactly accommodate that. So we are 100% compliant with GDPR, we are 100% compliant with the DAC-7 and so on, all those different regulatory frameworks that we have in Europe. Uh and and even though the the different markets and countries also have their own funny ways of handling things, and that's really a jungle to navigate for a small startup, how Italy is doing uh in contrast to France. I mean, France has 90,000 municipalities. I mean, it's it's really uh hard to navigate, and they all collect tourist tax. But but we're building for that. We want to build solutions that accommodate those countries' differences. And we we know that because coming from Denmark, coming from Europe, we acknowledge the fact that Europe is fragmented, that it is a multi-region complex. Remembering back to my time from Airbnb and approaching Europe, I mean, it was hard for the Americans to understand that Europe was such a fragmented market, right? And that Italian consumer behavior was not the same as German consumer behavior. And the payment options had to be accommodated accordingly to the country's specifics. I think that was a very interesting learning for me to see that coming from a huge home market with 300 million inhabitants, come and then entering the European market and thinking you could do the same was actually a big stumbling block. And we know that coming from Europe, we know how complex this landscape is. So we have built our entire tech stack to uh to accommodate that. So that's how we that's how we do it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, super impressive. So before we wrap this up, there's one other topic that I would uh cover, and which is also I know is close to your heart. Leadership and culture. That's something that also within the STR industry is human capital, is totally underestimated, especially now. And and I think that's an important point that land folk has a distinct tone when I look at your website and what I know. You're Nordic, trust-driven, long-term. How intentional are you about the culture that you're building in land folk?

SPEAKER_01

Extremely. It's both something that I spend a lot of time working with. It's also something that I think we have been building on purpose. Again, once of the one of the advantages of being a mature founder is that you know exactly what you want and also what you don't want. And I think culture is really what you know your employees do when you're not there. And I think that's that's how we have tried to set up this thing. It starts already from the very beginning of how we recruit. So we make sure that uh there's always a cultural interview with uh any random employee in Atlanta as part of the recruitment process to make sure that that we get good and and kind people on board that uh we would all want to sit uh next to on a flight to San Francisco, right? Getting stuck in a seat next to someone in 12 hours. I mean, you want to make sure that someone that you actually want to talk to, right? And and that's how we that's how we recruit. Uh and and then we are very mindful about the whole operating system within how our leaders are uh doing what at once on a bi-weekly level, and and how what are the talking points to maintain a great work-life balance as well. We have no turnover of employees. Uh, and that's something I'm very proud of as well. Uh, I think it's it's uh it's a it's an important trait in in a great culture that that people wanna wanna stick around. And and that's uh that's what we're trying to build. And uh and that also means that we we have a lot of trust built into the culture, and we uh we delegate a lot of of assignments, even to student workers. They have a lot to say. I believe that meritocracy is an important part of how you build something, that the best argument actually wins. And that doesn't mean that the CEO can just trump things down, right? It it's it's something that everyone with a great argument can actually come forward with. Uh and that's also how we build our product roadmap, and that's how we are you know allocating resources. So it's it's an important part of the Landwork way.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's super interesting. You just gave one other secret away. You're a talker on the plane, not a sleeper. So I'm the same, by the way. So I'm always.

SPEAKER_01

We have to travel together then.

SPEAKER_03

I'm always happy when I have somebody next to me who at least says hello and uh maybe have a few words. That's that's a that's interesting. Culture. I have a couple of questions. First, very short, do you have an office?

SPEAKER_02

No, I don't.

SPEAKER_03

So Landfolk doesn't have an office?

SPEAKER_01

Well, yeah, Landfolk, oh sorry, yeah, Landfolk has an office. I don't, as a CEO, have my own office. I'm just together with everyone else. Yes.

SPEAKER_03

But you have an office. Because I think, you know, post-COVID and everything else, I think it's getting a bit hairy as well, which has been a change in culture as well, and that need to be adopted. And so you have an office which can still bring people together. And I'm a gro a big supporter in in working 100% remote, I find that extremely challenging. Also for for people individually, they need to be part, you need to have conversations, you need to interact, you need to and I think that's an that's an important piece.

SPEAKER_01

No, I and I think if you can just add on that, Simon, I think this is actually something I also have some some opinion on, because I don't think you can build a startup, uh at least not a startup that also has a physical and operational part of it attached to it, without being physical together. I don't think that's possible. I I think you can build B2B SaaS remotely. And I also believe that remote is is a huge part of a modern culture, of course. So we also allow that. Uh I don't control where people work from. But we strive to build an office environment that people want to join and they want to spend time in the office because they like each other and they like collaborating with each other. And I think that also serves a purpose in terms of building quality. We have to spend time together physically, do great things together. That's but that's my opinion. Do you employ Gen Z people? Absolutely. Our I think our average age is uh 32. Uh so we have uh we have both people in uh in the end of the 50s and uh in the beginning of the 20s. So we have a broad spectrum of of uh of people. Uh 32 is the is the middle age, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

That's a provocative in uh question that stems from uh just a recent big debate in Switzerland where uh a company advertised for job openings and said no Gen Z applying uh are allowed to apply.

SPEAKER_01

Really.

SPEAKER_03

And that has you know struck a huge conversation which is going on right now in Switzerland. How can you discriminate uh a generation? I'm 55. If I find a job, I'm lucky, but the Gen Z, they talk about life work-life balance, which you mentioned yourself as well. So it's still a balancing act in terms of what people expect, because I'm of a tradition or generation that has learned to deliver first and then celebrate. And that's uh that's a balancing act also for you as a CEO, I can assume.

SPEAKER_01

I I think there are generational differences, of course. But but again, we we we try not to to look into that. We look more to the attitude and the mindset of of those that we employ. And I think someone uh like yourself, uh 55, I'm 46, can can just as easily have an a mindset like a 20 year old in many ways. I think I I think them I think. The main trait that we are looking for is is uh kind and curious. That's basically what we're looking for, right? Because curiosity is is such a superpower, in my opinion, because that that that makes you keep learning things and you're you're you're you're curious about people, you're curious about technology and uh innovation and so on. So curiosity is is a superpower, and I I want everyone to have that as part of landfolk.

SPEAKER_03

What is non-negotiable in at land folk?

SPEAKER_01

I think people that are too selfish, people that mind their own business and who has uh two sharp elbows, they wouldn't thrive at land folk. That's for sure. And and that's that's non-negotiable and uh and we don't have any of those.

SPEAKER_03

Uh very clear answer. Like in summary, or rounding this conversation of culture and leadership up. Can in your belief you're you're onto something. You said you're a small startup, you're at 8,000 units, you're probably in the top 10 already in Europe, by the way. When we talk your unit count, which is not your key KPI, as we learned. Can cultures scale ultimately without dilution on terms of what you build already?

SPEAKER_01

What's important about culture is is first of all understanding that culture is super dynamic. It's more like a movement. It's not a static thing. You cannot just say, so now this is our culture, stick to it. So whenever you, I mean, coming from Switzerland, right, and Denmark, you know, we are forced to uh to welcome foreigners all the time. I think that is a big constituency of our countries. And I think that is really how culture is driven forward is by welcoming new opinions and new values as well to inflict with your own. And I think again, it comes back to curiosity. You have to have a curious mind to be able to do that at scale. Um, and and I think that is really what we're trying to do. But again, I mean, we are just short of a hundred people, so I don't know if this is possible with a thousand people. So I'm also humble in terms of of the model. I really hope that we can do this. I really hope that we can keep scaling and doubling our team as well. I don't think we will ever be a thousand people. I think AI certainly will permit that. But but uh but I do think that culture um can scale as long as you're open to the dynamic process of the development of culture.

SPEAKER_03

Wow, amazing. One could think we rehearsed this, but that's uh that's an incredible uh feedback. And yeah, once again, I I totally agree. So, last one, quick, it's also important capital. Capital efficiency, because without capital, we're not yet on the golf course all day because our AI agent does the rest of the day. How do you think about capital efficiency uh today? And and has the funding environment changed your strategy overall.

SPEAKER_01

Seriously, two, three years ago, uh one of the bragging points of any startup was how many employees they had, right? It's just so funny to think about. Just two years ago, people would still brag about how many employees they had. And now it's 100% opposite, right? You will have you'll brag about how few people you have and and and then your AIR or or revenue or whatever, right? I think we have always, I mean, coming from building a consultancy, right, uh 20 years ago, I mean, we never spent one single cent on anything before we had earned it, right? Uh so building a venture case is different uh like this uh because we are still, of course, burning uh burning capital, but we still have that mindset. We're still very, very, you know, focused on not just employing people uh and and not having you know vanity metrics to to run for. So just one example, very specifically on this, is that the whole grail of our industry is cleaning. And it's it's the hardest not to crack, for sure. No doubt, no hands down. Uh and we we we regard ourselves as acid light, right? I think acid light is is an enormously uh cool business model, basically. And and uh we we never wanted to employ hundreds of cleaning personnel across Europe. So what we did instead was letting technology allow us to scale this because we still wanted to offer cleaning as part of our proposition because a lot of homeowners, they need this, right? They need someone to clean because they have uh two or three hours of uh commuting to their second home. So what we did instead was that we built a marketplace within the marketplace called our service partnership model. So what we do is that we identify and and then we verify cleaning agencies, service partners, B2B, all across our markets. Then we verify them and we admit them to the platform, and then they have a designated area to handle cleaning. And all of those jobs that come with cleaning actually goes automatically to that cleaning partner. So last year we had 4,000 jobs of cleaning. We had only one FTE to handle all of those internally, and we still make almost a 20% markup on those jobs. That is also the efficiency of technology, and that is how we anticipate the future of this, is that we can actually build tech that delivers great experiences and also profit margins without employing a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03

Wow, that's impressive. So discipline and efficiency is more important than hypergrowth, that's for clear. When we talk about capital efficiencies, that's a perfect example. I actually wanted to ask you in relation to the business model, but uh you already answered that. So the future. So let's zoom out uh for a sec: AI, search, fragmentation, sustainability pressure, regulation tightening, capital markets, volatility. What does the short-term rental look like in five years and who wins?

SPEAKER_01

I think first of all, what's really interesting about the industry is that you and I will also stay in a cabin in 50 years' time, right? Uh I'm I'm very sure about that. Uh, but I'm also sure about a lot of uh SaaS-driven companies are going to disappear within the next uh 18 to 24 months. So I think the core product that that we deliver is is actually super resilient. It's timeless. Uh and maybe with AI, we will even have more spare time to spend in cabins. So I think in that regard, I think our business is actually going to thrive out of AI. However, I'm also very mindful that you have to have direct relationships with the owners. If you only aggregate, I think you have a big problem. I think that is where disruption is going to happen. I think that the chat-based Gen AI solutions and so on are going to find a way around those different platforms and aggregators and metasurce engines and find the source directly, which is why you have to have that direct relationship. And that's going to happen also, I think, within a matter of a few years. So those are two truths that I'm seeing out there, that the market is going to persist and it's only going to get stronger over the next 50 years. But the way that you find and discover those listings will definitely change if you don't have direct relationships.

SPEAKER_03

If you don't have direct relationships, that's a great and strong closing word. Christian, this was thoughtful and very deliberate. Landfolk feels like a conscious correction to the chaos of the short-term rental industry. And perhaps that is exactly what the market needs. Thank you very much for joining STR Global Unlocked. I'm Simon Lehman. Thank you, Christian, and good luck with Landfolk. Thanks so much for having me, Simon.

SPEAKER_01

It was a true pleasure.

SPEAKER_03

That was STR Global Unlocked, where we say what others want. If you got value from today's episode, send it to someone who is still playing it safe. Follow the show and get more global insight at ajlier.com. The globally recognized STR consultancy. I founded and that proudly brings to you this show. More bold conversations are on the way, so stay tuned.