028: $200M Raised, 50x Growth: Johannes Siebers of Holidu on Local Trust, Agentic Workflows and the Supply Nobody Else Was Counting

European vacation rental is not short on platforms. It is short on platforms that have survived every cycle and kept building anyway.

Johannes Siebers is the Co-Founder and CEO of Holidu, a vacation rental technology company he co-founded with his brother Michael in 2014. Over the past decade, Holidu has raised approximately $200 million in equity funding, grown its host-side business 50 times between 2020 and 2025, and built a portfolio of 60k properties across seven European countries.

What distinguishes Holidu from classical OTAs is its software-plus-service model: a property management system paired with on-the-ground onboarding, professional photography, dynamic pricing, and 28 local teams that build trust with homeowners face to face. 

This is a real approach to what it takes to build a resilient marketplace business when the market punishes everyone who optimized for speed over substance.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Johannes believes every company must become an AI company, and what the real differentiators are today.
• How Holidu's pivot from marketplace to software-plus-service model unlocked a segment of the European RBO market that larger software players consistently ignored.
• What COVID forced Holidu to do differently, and why the extra eighteen months of product discipline before scaling was, in Johannes' words, a gift.
• Why 20 to 25% of Holidu's current properties had never been rented before, and what removing friction, rather than adding distribution, actually unlocks in the supply equation.
• How Johannes and his brother Michael divided responsibility, built complementary roles, and sustained a co-founder relationship across more than a decade of hypergrowth and volatility.
• What investors looked for in 2016 versus 2026, and why robust unit economics and capital discipline were always part of Holidu's DNA, not a response to market pressure.
• Why brand will matter more, not less, as AI reshapes search and discovery, and why delivering on the promise is the only way to earn it.

Explore more:

Connect with Johannes Siebers on LinkedIn and learn more about Holidu.

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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

• AJL Atelier – Global STR Consulting [https://www.ajlatelier.com]. Led by our host Simon Lehmann, AJL Atelier is a boutique advisory firm helping professional hosts, property managers, and investors succeed in the short-term rental industry.
• Connect with Simon Lehmann on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-lehmann-8375753b/] 

Stay connected:

• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/str-global-unlocked-with-simon-lehmann-unfiltered/id1842946960 
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3kke4wOx0tNv0duq9MMWtO 
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWVkmUOkmhSHcFjzi28AhaQNR98vaG65O 
• Website: https://www.ajlatelier.com/podcasts 
• Newsletter: https://str-global-unlocked.beehiiv.com/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We scaled a lot, 50 times from 2020 to 2025. How did you actually make that work? Building a business together as brothers.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

We had to put all the expansion to a stall. While outside of Holy Doo, everything was growing through the roof in terms of software and valuations and and and other companies hiring like crazy and we couldn't do so.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

But that's in a way not sexy at all. One thing that you want to see is that you bring supply that has never been rented before. And if we trade that, then we have a huge market in front of us. Seeing all these closed windows just hurts my STMR heart all the time. You can use technology in all the aspects of this journey.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

But I think still this initial moment is crucial.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

You are listening to STMR Global Unlock, brought to you by AGL Italy, the show where I speak with the leaders shaping short-term rentals worldwide. I am Simon Lehman, and after two decades playing, selling, advising, and investing, I've built a network that spans continents and categories. This podcast brings that network to you. OTS shares drop nearly 20%.$300 billion in SaaS market cap evaporates. AI is beginning to reshape how guests discover, compare, book travel. In the middle of this volatility, European marketplace companies like Holydew continue to scale. So the question is not whether the market is changing. The question is who will control distribution in the next decade? Today I'm joined by Johannes Siebers, co-founder and CEO of Holydew. Holydo has grown into one of Europe's most significant vacation rental marketplaces, raising substantial capital, expanding internationally, and navigating multiple market cycles from hypergrowth to capital discipline. Johannes, it's a great pleasure to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Hi, Simon. Thanks a lot for having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Absolutely great. We get so many occasions to speak together. But one thing we can say you're the first as an individual is that you're a torchbearer from the Olympic Games, and that's the first one that has ever attended STR Global unlocked. When I saw your post on LinkedIn, I was like, oh my God, uh Johannes Siebers is carrying the Olympic torch for Milan Cortina, and we've just figured out that Germany won two medals more than Switzerland. So we'll leave that aside of the conversation. But I would love to learn more. How do you get to carrying the Olympic torch? That's pretty significant.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Thanks a lot for bringing it up. It was a beautiful experience, I have to say. It was a great honor. Um, I got lucky. I got introduced to the opportunity by Ibn B, who's one of our long-standing partners and also sponsor of the Olympics. And look, I I love the spirit of the Olympic competition, aiming for excellence, aiming to win, but also the respect and friendship uh between athletes there. And I think that there's a lot we can take from this. So it was a real honor for me to carry that flame. And I also have very deep respect for the athletes competing there. Um, they are the best of the best in the world and what they do, and that's very tough to reach. You only get there if you train for many, many years, if you really discipline, if you take sacrifice, take the needed investment. You work with amazing teams. So also there, there's a lot to learn from them. And I think there's also parallels between that and anyone building something. Uh so overall, it was for me a great, a great moment and a beautiful experience. And I was very thankful for it.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Yeah, great analogy, especially to startups and many to our listeners as well, to think about that. It needs an enormous amount of discipline and control. And obviously, an experience that will be lifelasting also for you to make that happen. And uh that's very significant, and and we know how hard it is because you only have a chance once in four years. It's a little bit different to what we're experiencing on a daily basis. We can get at it on a daily basis and and and hopefully win. So we do a rapid fire together from your side, as short as you possibly can. Are you ready for it? Let's go. All right. AI, bigger opportunity or bigger threat? Opportunity direct booking, strategic reality or industry myth?

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Reality.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

The most overrated metric in travel tech.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Revenue, you just can't compare it if you don't know what's behind the revenue.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

IPO window 26, 27, or later.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Later.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

The one strategic mistake founders must avoid right now.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

You have to create real value for your customers. Lasting and durable real value, otherwise it's a short-term hack. But the real business will be created around real value. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Describing Holy Doo in one word. You heard me in introduction, Johannes. Let's start with the macro in environment in general. So we're seeing volatility in public travel stocks, clearly, pressure across SaaS valuations, AI disrupting search and discovery, and investors becoming significantly more cautious. I'm having a number of conversations with Ps who are looking at the SaaS space and tech space a little bit different than probably a few months ago. So, from your perspective, is this a short-term volatility or are we witnessing a structural shift in the platform model, talking about STR right now?

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Probably both, right? So I think right now, of course, there's a lot of volatility, but without a question, there's a huge shift in everything that we do and that AI now is is bringing to the world and to the to businesses and and to every company. I think every company has to become an AI company if you want to be there. Otherwise you'll you will be out. And that means rebuilding many things from scratch that you now can do, which maybe you couldn't do before, or um, which you just have to do to do things better. And I think this, of course, creates a lot of questions and uncertainty. But I also believe in moments like this, sometimes it's good to start with the basics again and and and ground oneself in the really basic beliefs, also of the things that will not change. Maybe there's also some volatility now, or just things that will not change. So if you look at the travel market, I think that the two things that will not change. First, people will always want to travel, and and and now even more so. In real life, experience matter is still what makes life beautiful. It will probably even matter more so. And if I look back 150 years, the amount of days per capita spent on travel in the world has always gone up. Sometimes it's gone up, then it has plateaued, then it has gone up again, then it has plateaued. So maybe now there's some turmoil and there will be volatility for some years, but I'm also confident in the long run it will rather go up again. So that will not change. The second thing that will not change as a company, you have to give your customers what they want. And for us, it's the host on the primary side as a customer, but of course also guests, demos and partners. And but the fundamental need of hosts and guests are also not changing so much. Those needs stay very much the same. So hosts and property managers want uh bookings, good guests, guests that will behave, good support, automation, as little friction as possible. They want to stay in control. Guests on the other side, also the need is not changing so much. You want the best offers, predictability, authentic stays, uh, good support of some reliable tech. But what probably decreases is your patience with any kind of friction that will go away. Your expectation towards your providers will increase, but the base need is the same. So, what does change fundamentally? And I'm going to the OTA and distribution in a second, what I think changes fundamentally is how AI helps you to deliver those to cater to those needs. We observe, of course, two things, and they're a lot discussed about in the market, too, is that the cost of software development goes down a lot, and that has many implications. And also the possibility to automate workflows through a Gentec experience is now much, much bigger than it was ever before. And in a way, there are many implications to this. And one of that is it levels the playing fields because all of the players in the space, software or OTA, they have access to the same models. The big companies have access to the models, the model companies have access to the models, the software companies have access to the models, we have access to the models, much smaller companies have access to the models. So it levels the playing field. So I think what matters most is who makes the best use of them. Um how agile are you, how fast are you, how do you put them into practice, how do you connect everything, all the workflows in sometimes complex operations with payments involved, with physical operations involved. And I think that's that's of course a huge new situation where every company needs to resort itself and think how to address it and do best about it. But the needs of the customers, I think, will stay the same. The market will stay similar. How you serve those needs and then who has maybe advantages, that that's now open again. And it's an opportunity, it's a threat, it's both.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Yeah, I love that aspect of having the right, like the same playing field. I think that's an interesting approach. And, you know, in in a recent episode, which is recorded with a with executive coach uh in the United States, he says you just need to ask the right questions to get the better answer. And and I thought that was an interesting summary in where we're sitting right now in relation to the equal playing field that you've just mentioned, Johannes. And I think uh that relates massively. 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 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. Visit pickle.com slash str Global Unlocked to learn more. Let's continue with the show. So, in hindsight, listening to what you said, that doesn't mean that the narrative around marketplaces has really changed, right? It hasn't.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

I don't think it hasn't. So I have no clue how people will search in the future, and probably no one really has it. We will figure it out, and now we're all figuring it out together. However, what I again, I think coming from the basic need of people, if you book your summer holiday, you will you want to have some say in that decision. So you for your family will want to have the ultimate say. You will not delegate that to an AI. And for that, you want to have some option, some selection, some some way to compare offers. And then you will decide what you're going to pick. And I think if I look back for a longer time, 40, 40 years ago, you would go to a travel agency physically, would explain to the agent in detail what you want and what you were looking for. And that's actually a beautiful experience, right? You explain what you want. There are some questions. Then the agent would come up with some offers. That the constraint was it was a very limited catalog out of which the offers could be picked. And then you would go home and decide based on those options whether you book something or not. And then came the internet, and that changed many things. So you didn't have to go there anymore. All of a sudden, you now have a huge catalog of options available. It's you have very dumb filters and date pickers and very static UI interfaces, which also is a constraint in a way. So I could imagine maybe in the future you merge those both worlds, you pick the best of the two. And that's that's how maybe I could, paired with the internet and the huge catalog, help to create a much better search and booking experience. But now, who is best suited to give that experience? Maybe the LLM companies are, but maybe also the existing OTAs are because they have all the data and they have they have access and they have already the customer relationship and they have the catalog and they have access to the same models. So I think it's not sad that that has to go away. And maybe they reinvent themselves and the experience, and we all invent ourselves how we provide that that search and booking experience. So that's why I don't think that the narrative has to change there. It's a given that the narrative has to change, but everyone has to reinvent themselves a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

That's a great summary. And you know, maybe who knows? Travel agents in the future, you have uh 80 or 90-year-old agents here at the desk because they've traveled the world and they can give you better recommendations than the catalog, and that's probably what was missing in the past as well. So, you know, we've we've looked at travel search for the last several decades and see how it's come about. And I think the narrative on this in general is nobody knows how this is going to bowl out, but everybody wants to play a prime position. And that positioning, I want to talk about Holydew and your strategic positioning as well. I think you're you're sitting pretty at a unique position right now, and you're you're a marketplace, but you're not identical to the classical OTAs like the SP, Airbnb, or a booking. So let's clarify a few things for our audience as well. How would you define Holydew today? Like you came with you had RBO platforms with Bookieply, you had Holy Do, where you aggregated more professional managed inventory.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

And I think we started on the marketplace side originally in 2014, but then we've made a big transition, almost pivot, and we have now a second business pillar, which is 70% of our revenue, which is a PMS, a property management system, plus services to the rent-by-owner segment of vacation rentals. So to the one homeowners or property managers with one to 30, sometimes more properties. And that side, previously we called it Book Reply. Now, since a few years, we've we're calling it also Holy Doo and Holido Host. That Holy Dohost solution has become the big driver of our growth and a big driver of our business, and now 70% of the revenue. And what we do there is, I think, again, also a unique model. On the one side, it's a software approach, it's uh it's a property management system with all of the functionality. It includes a channel manager, it includes a booking website, it includes price recommendations, but we couple it with additional services like photo shoots, very good onboarding, support on the ground, go to market to homeowners, we build local communities of owners to really build deep supply in the regions in which we want to build it. And that's where it's very synergistic with the marketplace, because of course, then we have the marketplace to also have our own distribution for our properties. We are able to bring a lot of traffic to our properties and also to some to part to marketplace partners. So, in that way, the the positioning has developed and it's now definitely different than it was five or ten years ago. But it has a very clear path there, how we how we're gonna scale this even much further.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

So, where is the the actual structural difference today?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

I think an OTA or classical marketplaces, there are hands-off tech platforms, and whoever wants can list their property there or or their hotel or or the number of properties, versus we, when we worked with the Holy Doo host solution with the pro with a homeowner or with uh with a property manager, we do multi-channel distribution, we give them their own website for the repeat bookers, we make price recommendations, we make the photos for their properties. So it's much more service and software heavy in a way. And we are almost agnostic where the booking in the end comes from, is it from and from which channel it comes. And of course, we we have the main goal of bringing booking is done to our homeowners.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

So you could redefine the service as a software, software as a service, right? It's not software as a service, it's called software plus service.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Uh and of course, now AI helps us a lot to support and facilitate these plus services, right? So the tricky part that we've always had, um some other software companies have done after bigger agencies and bigger property managers. And we've we've said in Europe 70% of the market is the long tail, is that is is the RBO segment. So we said we we have to help the host and the RBO segment to professionalize and manage their properties better. And if we crack that, then we have a huge market in front of us. But cracking that also means you have small units with which you work. So you have to do house by house, and that's tedious, and you have to build up region by region. And it took time to build that to scale to now 60,000 properties and more. But we figured out this model. We have great unit economics there, a ton of economical sense, but it also drives a lot of customer value to our host. And now we have a model which we can really scale across the world, across a huge audience in a segment where we have not so much competition actually, because the software players rather go after the bigger accounts. So that's that's a position and the path we've chosen for us. I think at the beginning it was maybe a tougher one, but now it creates a very huge uh addressable market.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

So being devil's advocated in simple terms, you go after the classical Airbnb host who has figured out that multi-channel creates more value for him.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Yeah, but I think the two hosts are not alike. So there are some hosts who really enjoy doing everything on their own and are also tech-savvy, and they have the time to do it. And I think for them it's also perfectly fine to list on the different OTA platforms and to use some kind of synchronization to avoid double bookings. But then there's a huge segment of hosts who either don't have the time or not the know-how or not the motivation to do it. It's maybe a side hustle, and they just help very grateful for someone to help them. They're very hospitality-oriented, they're great hosts, they're welcome into the guests, they love show the region, their property. But everything on online, on data, and price optimization, that is not the field of expertise. And I think they do need support, and no one really provides that support. That's why we've started this business, because we've seen it from the demand side that there's too many listings which were just not optimized, calendars not up to date, photos are not good, price quality not good, availability not open, and also creating a bad guest experience in the end. And that's a huge segment of the private homeowners. I would say the majority. And then there's a minority who has the time and knowledge and no and motivation to do it on their own. And for them, it's perfect to divert the list 100%.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Yeah, and that's also quite substantially for our audience internationally to differentiate between investment properties and inherited or owned properties in Europe. There is a lot less investment properties. There's a lot of inherited properties that have been with the family forever. They want to rent them out, they don't want to go there like me, who had to go to the same place for skiing for 20 years of my life. I'm happy that somebody else rents our house and uh and we can rent it elsewhere. And I think that's a good point, that it's very focused on a particular persona of owners that fits these services. Because the classical investment owner who makes an STR investment, he wants to maximize revenue and occupancy and return of invest capital. That's a different owner than just needs help. But at the end of the day, they have somebody because one thing you don't offer is obviously the cleaning and the operation services in the destination, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:23

100%. So I think that the customers are fragmented and they have different needs, but even the investment owner, for them, it's also very important to maximize occupancy. So they want good price recommendation or dynamic pricing, which we offer. They want multi-channel, they want their own direct booking strategy with their own website and repeat guests. They want their CRM system to stay in touch with their repeat guests. So for them, it's also very important. And that's how we have some customers for whom more the optimization of the business is more important. We have other customers for whom we take away the hassle part is more important. They really are don't want to have the word. And we it's like Of course, accordingly. But that's why there's a fragmented host landscape, and it's too easy to all put them in the same bucket and say they can just list on their own and do everything on their own.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

But your current core core market is Europe. I mean, you've you've had some exposure to the United States, where it's as long as I, as far as I may remember, very challenging to sell multi-channel distribution strategies to people in the United States. And now you currently focus only on the European market.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

100% focused right now on Europe. Actually, even there, we're very focused on seven countries. And uh, and of course, we are we're looking to expand. Um, but but that's where we're trying to focus.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

So that is a good segue to talk about fundraising and capital disciplines. So over years, you've raised a significant amount of capital. Fundraising 2016 is very different from fundraising 2026, or 10 years ahead. So help us a little bit more to understand how has the investor conversation changed and what do investors care about today, what they didn't care about maybe five or even 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah, those are multiple questions. They're good questions. Um, over the course of the our of the timeline of the company, we've raised about 200 million in equity funding. And there have been different inflection points and of course different focus points, different different times, partially driven by the market sentiment, partially driven by also the the stage of the company. In the very early phase, 15, 16, it was all about laying the foundation and building a model that we could scale for the very, very long run. And at that moment, as we spoke before, we started our business on the demand side with the marketplace. And then we realized if we really want to solve problems in this market, we have to fix it for the homeowners too. And we have to start there, and that's a big transition and pivot of the business. And gladly we met investors like, for example, uh Case Colin with EQT Ventures at the time, and uh who was before with Booking Comp for many, many years, who encouraged us on this transition and backed this transition and had this vision. And they really, I think that gave us the time to build the supply strategy, to build the business there, and to not maximize for short-term revenues, but really rather to find out what is it that RBO homeowners need and what's the model that we need to provide to them and what then resulted in the software plus a little bit of service model. Then we felt we were ready to scale, and that was 2019. And in that moment of time, where also the mindset was very much okay, now scale fast and grow very fast. And uh that completely changed, of course, when COVID hit. That was the second turning point, and we had to put all the expansion to a stall, and and we we of course had to be much more, much more cautious. While outside of all you do, everything was going through the roof in terms of software and valuations, and another company's hiring like crazy and we couldn't do so. But in hindsight, I'm very grateful for this period because it did two things to us. It gave us probably one and a half more years of time before we really started to scale up. And that's a very healthy thing because it helps us to keep honing the product, the processes, the engine, the model before you scale up. And after that, we were able to now scale the host side 50 times in five years. Uh, so it we were able to scale really, really fast after that. But based on a foundation where we had one and a half years extra, which we which we didn't expect to have, uh, which in any way was was a gift. And I think the second thing that this gave us is um it was was a crazy period of volatility for a travel company, and it it stealed the team, it stealed our operations, it stealed how we operate, how how fast we can can react to certain different circumstances. And that reminds me a little bit to know what's happening nowadays again, where there's a huge shift again. Then we scaled a lot, 50 times from 2020 to 2025. Um of course, that also required some investments, and we we've also acquired companies and integrated them. However, I think already then, and and and for us at all the times, there was a strong focus on scaling with very robust financials and good unit economics. I think that's now the sentiment, anyways, in the last couple of years. But for us, it always has been the sentiment because people look different at travel than maybe at other spaces. So we we had to make sure we really scale with very good financials metrics and we know when we get back the money that we invest somewhere. And of course, now the sentiment is a lot on AI, but also rightfully so, because it changes so much again. Then we have to see how we how we make use of it in the best possible way. Use it to sort of build a better product, have better service, have a lower cost, ship faster, grow faster. Um that's that's very honor.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

So it's interesting the balance between growth and capital efficiency. And that's something you've done right from the beginning already. And that's sort of part of the DNA, in a way, of all you do to say, hey, we balance growth very closely with our capital efficiency and have done so with the learnings that you had, and obviously COVID like everybody else. So that makes a ton of sense. Now, when you look at the investors today, and to the point that we've raised earlier, that you know, we all we also see different shifts now with AI, also from a consumer behavior, everything changes, but we people always also come back to maybe back to ourselves, to the human capital of its own, which can be a massive benefit that you're actually offering, we call it the software as a service, a service as a software. You offer that as a service to offer your technology, that could be an advantage in in future capital deployment as well, that this shift is actually happening, where potentially it's not the SaaS product that stays at the center, but it's the value that you can ultimately create to your consumer.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Yeah, if the cost of software development goes down and you can build new things much faster, and maybe entry barriers for certain things go down, you still have to reach your customers with it, right? You still have to build a customer base. And I think the go-to-market becomes an even more important question, how you do that and also differentiator. And we see in vacation rentals that homeowners, at least, many of them don't just want the software, they want actually a solution. They want their problem to be solved, and they want someone to explain to them and build the trust with them how this is going to work. And we've seen over time that yes, a smaller portion of our new homeowners comes from online marketing channels, but a much bigger source of new homeowners comes from word of mouth, from referral, from meeting our teams and from local communities, from local introductions, and then from of course delivering a good service for them and being recommended again. And we see that this is indeed a mode where hopefully I will help us to ship faster, build better products, even quicker, adjust the product to more different needs of those different customer segments that we discussed before, the more professional, the less professional, they have different needs. So, so so adjust the product respectively. But then use our 28 local teams in local offices to bring that to the customer. And we absolutely see that as an it has always been a unique aspect for us that we want to be close to our customers and want to have teams on the ground who have relationships and who build trust. And now, even more so. Um, I think it becomes a very fundamental differentiator part of the strategy. And then we want to use AI to facilitate and help them and give them the best possible product that then can ever sell and deliver and give to our customers.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

So, how does this balancing act actually work? That's a great segue you just gave me here before we move on, is talk about trust. And trust is probably the one of the most used words on Str Global unlocked, because that's the asset of our industry across the globe. And building that trust, and that's why we we still see a lot of opportunities because you know, building trust uh includes in most cases also or predominantly human capital, and then that balance with your local approach, which is, as you already alluded to, very unique to say, hey, actually you can get rid of all these overheads and whatever. But so no, because we understand that this balance between what I can automate with future technology and the human capital behind it. How do you work with that within Holiday? What's your balancing act?

SPEAKER_00 30:55

It is, and the trust actually goes both towards the guest and towards the host. Um and so if we start on the host side, people need to be introduced to the system and onboarded to the system at least once properly. And I think that's a crucial phase in the lifetime. We really made sure we explain it well, we take you on the journey, we explain our approach. And then, of course, over time, the system can do a lot of things on its own and with AI and can give recommendations and can make automatic outreach. But how to build this initial trust that this is now a new way of working for homeowners, I think that's much easier explained. If it's plain by someone of our team and they meet us and they see this is real people and a real company and they really care about me. And I think that makes a big, a big difference. And also, of course, we see it all the time if we onboard a new homeowner in a good way and build build this relationship, but then also the quality and the listing and everything, the lifetime value is hugely bigger than if we don't do so. And of course, you can use technology to facilitate that, to make it faster, to pre-configure things, to explain things. You can use technology in all the aspects of this journey, but I think still this this initial moment is crucial. And then we shoot photos. Also, our photographers visit properties, they have a catalogue of questions that they go through. That allows us to build also trust on the guest side because we we have a what you see is what you get promise. So we want to put the listing in the best possible shape there, but we don't want to overpromise. And despite of us having now 60,000 properties, we have maintained very high average user review scores, very high guest NPS. And that's the predictability and the trust that we that we want to deliver to the guests. We know our hosts, we know our we know our properties, we can guarantee that that things go well. And in the end, we also want to make ourselves in the middle obsolete. I think the biggest trust and the best relationship is when it's between host and guest, and there's no one in the middle. That's that's when really magical experiences happen. However, there can be a thousand reasons why that communication breaks or is not fast enough, or someone host is not available. So now we have AI to support on that communication piece as well, to jump in, to automatically answer, to allow hosts to build a knowledge base about their property, and that knowledge base is going to be used for all of the answers to the guest for the same repeat question. So, how can we build this right system, triangle system between host, guests, and our tech and to facilitate wherever and make it frictionless wherever the friction could could emerge, but also put ourselves out of the equation when we don't need to be there and that's that's the system we are we're creating and want to build.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Let's talk about guests now and AI and how search is distribution power is shifting. And going a little bit deeper on this topic. How do you think? Does the brand matter more? Does supply matter more? Or does the interface matter most?

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Let's start with where people search, and then maybe let's the second where what matters more or continues to matter. Surprisingly, I still search a lot on Google and Bing. So of course we already have meaningful traffic from AIA engines and LLMs. Surprisingly, larger still actually on Google Ads and Goodle. But still, that's still the largest piece. It's still there, but that's the status quo. And of course, it could very much change. From our point of view, however, where people start the search, whether that's Claude or Gemini or Google or ChatGPT, for us, I don't think it makes a giant difference. You have to make sure you show up. You have to make sure you show up very well. And to show up, you have to have the best properties, the best offers in order to be to be ranked well. And over time they will figure out what are the good offers. So I think when you asked what matters more, the supply does matter a lot. I think the good supply people will find it, the good agents will find it and then redirect there. So that's that's I'm 100% convinced. And if there's more diversification where people start to search, I also think it can be an opportunity, it can be a change, it can be a threat. I think there will always still be somewhere where you have to make the booking. Some you need to be able to call someone if things go wrong and or if you want to modify the booking or the merge in a record. The merchant of record. And right now, I don't see that this would be inside of the LLMs. And I think in general, if I search right now for finding a good vacation rental in Mallorca on an LLM, the results are still very poor. That of course doesn't mean that in three years it could not be, or maybe much faster. In one year, it could not be amazing. But right now, people will want to compare, they will want to have some options. Holly do others give options and will improve their user experience to this new era. So that that's how I think on the on the search side, yes, where people start the journey might change. I'm not I'm not yet sure it will completely change where they book it. Will brand matter more or less? I think with entry hurdles in general becoming lower, there might be even more noise. So brand might actually matter more. On the other side, the consumer expectations are also increasing. You will not accept any any friction. So you have to deliver on the brand. You have to deliver on the promise. Otherwise, just having a name and do a lot of advertising, it will not do the do it. You have you have to earn it by the experience that you that you provide.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

I would definitely totally agree to that. But in relation to this, the next question above that topic is at the end, who owns the customer? And and owning is a is a very strong word. And then again comes that back. Is it the marketplace? Is it the property manager? Is it the brand? Or is it potentially the AI layer that owns the customer in the future?

SPEAKER_00 36:46

I don't know. I see the AI layer right now as what Poodle was in the past. And they didn't own the customer. They were the starting point of the search, but they didn't own the customer. And they had a also a Google search for hotels and rotation rents for a long time. And still they didn't own the customer. Exactly at all. But could it change? Could the way we interact with with agents also change? It could, but I think it's speculation. It's still quite quite a bit out.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah. So let's talk about supply, which is obviously one of the key metrics within your own business market structure and supply, which in recent years has somewhat significantly changed. Supply growth has has moderated in parts of Europe, and some markets have even declined. Spain has decreased by 6% in total supply. So regulation uh is increasing and has definitely had an effect. And so far, the data companies have been unable to neutralize their data, what is regulatory related and what is just more classical market shift. But I'm sure we're gonna see that in the future as well. Mid-market performance has softened in certain regions. So market movement has quite a bit of impact in terms of supply growth for Holy Doo as well. And the question here is to you, is the SER market overall in your captive markets, is it overbuilt? Do you think? Or are we entering more consolidation?

SPEAKER_00 38:15

It has always gone a little bit up and down, and then there were some years where more homeowners listed, and then some years where they're rather pulled out and eventually will come back. But the properties are there. I don't think it's an overbuilt market. We see very high occupancy rates, particularly of course in the main seasons. And the occupancy rates are rather increasing now with regulatory developments in Spain. Yes, some properties don't list anymore. In Italy, also there was regulatory introductions. There was a little bit less supply, but then the ones with still list, they they capture more demand and prices actually increase, adrise have increased. And right now, yes, there's some uncertainty in some countries on regulation, and that affects homeowner behavior. And once that I think that there's clarity is reached again, some supply will come back, new supply will be added again, and I think it will all balance each other out with with the demand that is there. We have not seen the demand changing, we have rather seen the demand stable or increasing. In some countries, rather seen increased occupancy due to maybe flat flat supply. And that will make it a trip more attractive again to add new supply to the system, right? And and that's that's how it goes. And then the crupancy might be a little bit softer, and then again, some people might move to long-term rent. And so I think it's been a few percentage points up or down, but not massive swings.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

So, in in relation to that, where do you see the structural opportunity for Holy Doo going forward, looking at the marketplace in in Europe right now?

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Look, I think we have still, we're now at 60,000 properties. It's 3% of the properties in the markets in which we operate. In regions in which we operate much longer, we have 10, 20, sometimes 30% of the properties. And that would that could be in the north of Italy, in Spain, some regions, in Germany in some regions. So it shows if we if we stay in some regions for a longer time, there's huge potential. And this 20% in those momentum markets we reach currently with one model, one approach. And we could build more models to cater slightly different customer needs, as we spoke before. The homeowner base is very fragmented. That would help us to grow even further there. So deepen the penetration even further. And of course, in the other ones, there's also a long way now to grow from where we are to where where we might reach a ceiling before we add new customer types. And that's just the six countries. Then we add more countries. So there's three layers. There's in in the existing countries more customer types and just also organic growth. Then we have also been successful in unorganically growing. We've been built quite a muscle of very fast integration of companies that we've bought. We now partnered in quite about 10 companies. And then the third one is also new geographies.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

I have a question for you in relation to supply and the type of supply. You know, I used to be on the board of a fast-growing property management company in Australia. And one thing that was pretty unique is that we added new supply to the SDR market. And, you know, we always talk about addressable market, which is basically what we know on data, what is rented. So we go after the same supply, call it 10 million, call it 15 million, depends who you talk to. But that's in a way not sexy at all. I mean, one thing that you want to see is that you bring supply that has never been rented before. And being a Swiss national and going skiing very often and going to these ski destinations, seeing at all these closed windows just hurts my STR heart all the time. And that's the structural challenge we have in Switzerland where individual income is very high, people don't need to rent out, they don't want to have anybody spending uh a night in their beds, and they'd rather leave it empty for 50 weeks. But in terms of growth and and supply opportunity, probably your your your biggest opportunity is actually the market that is not rented. How do you address that?

SPEAKER_00 42:12

It's a very, very good point. There are much more properties out there than the ones who are currently actively and professionally rented. And this goes with economic swing. So if if there's also an economic more downturn period, actually more people start to rent out, right? They start to monetize the assets that they that they have. And also the opposite might be the case. So that's that's one side. About 20 to 25% of the properties Holy Doo rents have never been rented before or listed before. So those might be new homeowners who are trying the property or start renting out. And I think one driver, which of course one has to make the entry hurdle low and one has to make remove the friction. And if they hear from the neighbors that this is extremely easy to operate, really I think people are afraid of the hassle, right? Of the hassle of cleaning, the check-in, the questions, the communication, the work that it takes. And it's it's much more work than one thinks to rent out a property. Well, and so if it can take away this hassle, I think it will unlock supply that is currently not rented because people just think it's a hassle. And that goes beyond distribution. That goes also local, physical, how to make that as easy as possible.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

So your dollar dress will market just quadrupled uh because that's where you know the true market lies at the end and just fighting for what's already rented out there.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Uh then ADRs might come down a little bit, might more and more people might swable again. Some more people go to vacation rentals. So exactly 100%.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

So before we let you go, we want to talk about leadership and longevity. One thing that I would have loved to have today is have your brother on the episode together with you, because I think that's something very unique and that I enjoy with all the conversations and engagements that I had with Holy Ru in my past conversation. Career to think of a startup that is founded by brothers over a decade that requires resilience and many other things. And yes, this is pretty unique. Building a marketplace is a long-distance sport. What can you share from that experience? How does that combination work? And how did you actually make that work? Building a business together as brothers.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

I think on the business side, he's a true genius. And what he does, what we we co-founded the company together, and he runs all of product and technology. And what he and his teams, the medium-sized teams, are building is, I think, truly outstanding. It's really outstanding and it's absolutely amazing. Any founder or also senior manager can attest that founding or running a company can be can be intense. And so having a true partner on your side who you can a thousand percent trust all the time is incredibly valuable. And for us, it has proven to be very helpful that we are complementary in our areas of responsibility in the company. Also, then sometimes complementary as a result, of course, in our viewpoints. But that we're 100% aligned in where we want to bring the company and also how we want to bring it there and in the values and how we want it to be run. So with all of this combined, it would be honestly almost very difficult for me to imagine how it is to run a company without such a companion. I know it's difficult for others maybe to imagine how it's to do it with your sibling, but how to run it without is for me difficult to imagine. Things that have helped us, of course, we have our areas of responsibility. We come and discuss things, but then we also have our areas of responsibility. I think also for maintaining the sibling relationship, it's also important to do sometimes stuff together that have nothing to do with work. Can you do that? We we got better at it. So it could be snowboarding a day, it could be we have a monthly dinner where we aim to speak very little about work. Now, more recently, with all of the eye, that's almost impossible to then not speak about work. But but we aim to also have other topics there. And these things have have dust. And then we've we've we've of course learned how to use each other's strength in the best possible way and in the best possible moments.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

It's definitely highly respected, and you probably find your own ways and how to navigate that as you alluded to, good times, bad times, and whatever. But I think where does maybe as a final question in terms of longevity and leadership, you're both very enthusiastic sports people as well, right? How does that play into the culture, the DNA, and everything else between you and your brother, and and Holy Doo specifically?

SPEAKER_00 46:49

I think we just we we love what we do. We we we we enjoy doing it and and we we we do it to build something big, to build a big business, to create value for our customers. We've never started this company just to start a company. So we've always started this company to build something up and we we enjoy it. I think it's an amazing opportunity with modern tech, with an unbelievable great team, uh, with great customers in a great market, in a market we love, uh, and customers we relate to to build something for them. That's what we that's what we love and what we enjoy. Yes, we also we've we do a lot of sport. I've done a lot of sport. And and and and there you learn. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. You have to keep learning, you have to keep growing, right? And sometimes you you learn more from the defeats than from the victories, then you don't try to bring it to the next level. Yeah, one of our mentors also said in terms of endurance, if you if you keep doing the right thing for a long time, something good will come out. And it's actually not many other people will do that for a very long time because one moment they they they might be sidetracked in in a certain way. And uh that's what we what we aim to do.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Okay, so we're up with time, uh Johannes, and we could have a lot more questions talking about that because it's super interesting, especially for founders to build businesses, but love the feedback, and there's always an analogy to anything we do. I think we need to remain focused and deliver upon what we put ourselves as a as a mission as well. Olido represents one of the strongest European platform stories in short-term rentals. We're clearly entering a new phase, one shaped by capital discipline, AI disruption, and shifting distribution power significantly. The next decade will not simply reward scale. Johannes, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on STR Global Unlocked. Thank you so much, and my best regards to your brother Michael as well.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

Thank you so much, Simon.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

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 ajlovelay.com. The globally recognized STR consultancy I founded and proudly brings to you this show. More bold conversations are on the way, so stay tuned.