The Check-In
The real scoop on the deals, the data and the drama in short-term rentals.
The Check-In
Direct Bookings: The Radical Shift That Will Transform Your Business
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Sarah and Leo are joined by Jessica Singer of BookingsCloud to discuss the secret to owning your demand in the STR industry with a strategy so powerful, it can cut your reliance on unpredictable OTAs and boost your margins. If you're feeling the squeeze from algorithm tweaks, rising fees, or a flood of competition, this episode reveals how to future-proof your bookings and turn guests into loyal direct bookers. Time to stop renting demand and start owning it.
Imagine this. You scale to 50 listings. Revenue grows. Occupancy looks fine. But if Airbnb tweaks the algorithm tomorrow, or booking changes visibility rules, your pipeline shifts overnight. That's not a distribution issue. That's a demand ownership issue. Today on the check-in, we're unpacking what's really holding operators back from building stronger direct channels and what it actually takes to move the needle. Welcome to the check-in.
SPEAKER_02Hello. And it's so nice to see you, Sarah Nandipre. And Jess, Jess Singer, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_00Doing great. How are you all doing today? Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for being with us. We know that you would probably be rather out snowboarding because you've just got some snow. So we appreciate you being locked inside with us.
SPEAKER_00Anytime. I'm happy, happy to be here. It may or may not be going afterwards, so we'll see.
SPEAKER_02And Sarah, it I see it's dark in Barcelona, so you should surely have a glass of wine in your hand right now. What's going on? That feels wrong.
SPEAKER_01I wish. Also, it's it's absolutely raining, cats and dogs, and it has been since yesterday, and it will be until Sunday. I don't know where I live anymore. I swear to God, I live in Sweden. Like I don't know what has happened this year, but this is not Barcelona, and I want my money back.
SPEAKER_02So it really shows you why British people talk about the weather the whole time, right? Because it is interesting. There's a lot to say, right? You know, there's a lot to say in England. You're getting basically you're just becoming more English, Sarah, as your weather's unpredictable. So enjoy it.
SPEAKER_01I'm becoming more crotchety, I'll tell you that much.
SPEAKER_02British crotchety. What's the difference? Jess, so nice to see you, my friend. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks. For anyone who doesn't know you, tell us what you're up to in the space and uh a bit about what we're going to talk about today.
SPEAKER_00Sure, sure, sure. Um, you know, what is what is the big topic of the day? Everybody wants to talk about direct bookings, right? Everybody everybody wants to talk about driving more direct bookings. It's kind of a, it's almost those uh the buzzwords that we don't like to use, but we kind of have to use. So I'm Jess Singer. I've been in the industry about a decade or so. A lot of people probably know me from my days at rented and then even past rented time at Livra's, and then I bounced over into the hospitality sector in hotels and airlines focused on uh performance marketing. So now I'm back. I could not stay away for very long. I love this industry. I'm super passionate about it. Being in this space and focusing on performance marketing for the vacation rental industry for the first time ever is just, it is like nothing that I can even describe. I'm so, so excited about it. Um, so we're gonna talk today, you know, predominantly about you know direct booking strategy. It's like the topic of the day, the topic of the year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh we've got to talk about it, right?
SPEAKER_02I agree. I I think we live in such an interesting time, right? Is it to do business? I think where I would say we are right now is that the even the short-term future is very unknown. And that's new, right? Normally people could plan a few years out and and then it would be like a longer-term strategy that would be slightly less known. Right now, I think if you work in one of the major OTAs, you've got to be you in battle mode the whole time because it's gonna be it's really unsure where the the next uh brick out the wall is gonna come. So you're right, we should be talking about it. And as operators, now's uh now's the chance to make sure you're not asleep at the wheel, right? And that you're you're creating that strategy so you're ready to capitalize. So I'm really excited because, and just last time we hung out and spoke, I was like, I think this is an idea that has finally come of age, right? Because we have been talking about direct bookings for years, but everyone has been reliant on OTAs the whole time. So I guess what we'll unpack today is is this the end of the OTA era or is this just a you know a fork in the road? Let's see. Sarah, get us started. How are we gonna kick off today?
SPEAKER_01Would love to start by finding out from Jess why direct bookings. So everybody knows great, okay, I pay a lower commission, but what is the real why and why the urgency now? So what's really changing in the landscape that makes this more relevant than ever?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it really comes back to this notion of, I mean, really direct, you don't just turn direct bookings on. Like let's just kind of start with that. And then I also want to preface we're not looking to replace the OTAs either. It's part of a, it's like your whole distribution strategy. We are, there's never a world where you should say, like, turn Airbnb off completely, turn booking off, turn Virgo off. That is not what the direct booking sort of movement is about. It's about diversifying. And I, you know, what I always, the kind of analogy I like to use is it's no different than when you're investing. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. You know, every time those OTAs make some kind of a change or their algorithm changes, this algorithm that nobody understands, it impacts your portfolio in such a deep way. So why not diversify your strategy and make sure that you don't put all of your eggs in Airbnb's basket or in booking or verbo or literally hundreds of other OTAs out there? So when I when I first started, and I mentioned direct bookings are not something that you just turn on. It's a strategy, right? These are this is an investment of time, effort, and energy for your team. This is an intentional focus and shift for a lot of property managers. I talked to ones who have 5% direct bookings. I talked to one yesterday who is at 95% direct bookings. But there's a lot of questions you have to ask yourself. When you have 95% direct bookings, what does that actually mean? How many of those are repeat? And when I ask that client yesterday, how many of that 95% of direct bookings, how many of them are repeat guests? And their answer was, oh, probably 75%. Well, herein you have an issue. I mean, what, 100% direct bookings, but most of them are repeat. You don't really have a funnel of new guests that are coming to you because a lot of these managers, they haven't really unlocked how do you drive demand? What does that look like? Right. This concept came up. I was at VR Nation and Phoenix a couple of weeks ago, really great little round table, super cool, hyperlocal event. You know, a lot of questions were asked. This round table was the fullest round table at the event. It was really, really cool space. Lots of operators really curious to talk about this concept, to talk about direct bookings, but also I think that they don't know where to start often. They think this is like the cool thing to talk about, not unlike several years ago when revenue management was the thing to talk about or data tools, air DNA, right? Like we talked about these things years ago. We got over those hurdles of educating the industry of why it's important to have a tool like air DNA in place, why it's important to have a revenue manager in-house. Now we're talking about direct bookings. How do you do it? What questions do you ask yourself? Right. So it's it's the architecture of your business, um, it's strategy, it is a consistent investment. You're thinking about things like ownership, budget, measurement, your leadership, your focus, right? We're looking at the companies that succeed the most with direct bookings are the ones who are essentially focusing on demand generation as a like a core function of the business, not just an occasional campaign we're running. This is an intentional day-to-day focus every single day. This has to be top of mind.
SPEAKER_01Let's talk a little bit about when this whole concept became super important. Because from my perspective, like I've been in the industry, we were talking about this before we started recording, but for you know, 10 years, the concept of direct bookings, I feel like was like a nice to have, but nobody was really properly talking about it until COVID. And, you know, Airbnb basically sweeping cancellations, standing beside uh the guest rather than the host, created a bunch of stuff. And now making sweeping changes again, right? So we've talked about tons of changes, not just Airbnb, but all of the OTAs. You know, booking can put a genius discount and you have no say in the matter. Airbnb, all of a sudden, now you have a flat 15.5% fee and it nobody cares if you like it or not. So all of these sort of sweeping changes. And then on top of that, you have the algorithm and visibility. So I was speaking with uh an operator the other day. They had, I think they were just getting started, but on this one property, they had 95 plus uh five-star reviews. They got one three-star review, and all of a sudden they went from page one of the search results to page 12. On Airbnb, like in with one review. And it was, and they even told me the story and they said, Look, we we took, we have evidence. And it was somebody who arrived a day early before the day before check-in, then somehow let themselves in, which the it was a new operator. So they said, Look, that was on me. I sent them the code. I was trying to be nice because they were coming on a flight and I thought maybe they wouldn't have connection, whatever. Anyway, I sent them the code. The people let themselves in and then messaged and said, Hey, by the way, there's no TV, I'm not staying here. And it was everywhere in the announcement. This is a cottage property, it's a retreat. Like there's Wi-Fi in the house, and you can connect on your tablet, but there is no TV. It was just anyway, from page one to page 12. And that's one review from somebody who, yeah, you've not even done anything wrong. So reading is hard sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01It is really difficult. They even have Wi-Fi. That's what she said. She's like, look, people, I tell people bring your tablet, bring your laptop if you want to stream something. But the goal is to like look at the lake, not come here and sit and watch TV. TV on TV. Move on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Brutal, brutal. You know, I think managers sometimes they don't they don't understand their exposure when they're using the OTAs, is is kind of what it comes down to. You know, I I mean, I this happens all the time. This happens on the insurance side. You know, you get somebody who decides not to book on your direct booking site because the insurance on the OTAs is totally different. There's so many different categories of impact when you rely too heavily on those OTAs and you haven't brought some of those features in-house so that you can support the need in-house too. So, I mean, this is such a common happening. Like you've got great reviews and you get that one single and it absolutely tanks things for you. I can't imagine how gut-wrenching that is when you don't have a direct booking strategy in place to offset that loss now. And imagine if I had been asking them the question, how many of your bookings are coming direct? How reliant are you on these OTAs? Imagine if their answer was 95% direct or sorry, 95% OTA reliant. It was and then you couple that. Yes, now you couple that with these reviews and just the control that the OTAs have. I cannot imagine a world where if I stepped back into running my own portfolio, because I am a former property manager myself, if I stepped back into that world, it it was it was so critically important to me, even with just two properties, to not be 100% reliant on those OTAs, even if it meant building my own website. Whatever that meant for me at the time, that's what I had to do because I just didn't want to put all my eggs in that OTA basket. So it is, it's really, really interesting. I think if the OTAs change tomorrow, which to your point, Sarah, they change all the time. They change their rates all the time, they change their algorithms all the time. How exposed would a property manager be if that happens? And in this case, extremely exposed, that deeply impacted their full ranking. And that's wasn't just the one property. It's like their entire portfolio gets impacted by that. So all these other managers or owners they're representing are now impacted because of this one single review.
SPEAKER_02Talk about the um, let's talk about the fight back. So, you know, you talk you said something there, which really in your earlier answer, it's got to be an intentional year-round strategy, right? And it can't be reactive. Tell us, let's talk about getting on the front foot. So, you know, I was recently, I was telling you guys I was showing off a bit off off air before we started about my trip to Lake Tahoe. And it really surprised me when I was trying to book direct how challenging it was. Um generally, you know, a lot of the website, a lot of the companies didn't have good websites. There was there wasn't much social media footprint. But you know, I I wasn't using AI, I was, I was kind of just on Google and Instagram, you know, I was kind of just using social media, really. That's where I happened to be that time. And it really did surprise me how how little footprint the the there was still. So yeah, like let's talk about that. How does someone start? How does someone increase that, you know, that direct distribution?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think there's a there's a lot of different pieces to it, but it really comes down to you have to think about asking yourself the right questions before you even jump in. You know, some of the questions that I asked at that round table were shocking. And I'll just share kind of a little story with you about it. It's kind of how we broached it. These managers, they just didn't know how to start. They didn't know where to begin. Like, is it the website to your point, Leo? Is it what is it? Is it a data tool? Like, how do I get started with, you know, just even thinking about it? And I always kind of like to pull the layers of the onion back a little bit and ask them to just start asking themselves questions. And one of the very first questions that I ask is, What are you spending on the OTAs today? What percentage of your revenue goes to the OTAs? You want to know what the answer is that most managers answer? I don't know. Is their answer almost every time? Their response to me is, well, I don't know. I've never thought about that. Okay, so maybe we start at your PL. Let's start start at the real foundation, right? Make sure you have a line item on your PL that actually is specifically for the OTA fees. So when I went around the table and I asked everybody the same exact question, you know, what percentage of your bookings is direct? What percent of that percent is actual return? So you get them to start thinking. And this is all managers have to do is just start thinking about these things. When you actually start thinking about it, you start to uncover things like, well, I didn't know I had a marketing budget. I didn't know that I could actually drive my own demand. Like, how do I do that? How do I compete with the OTAs? Well, the first thing really, I think, is just completely understanding what it is you're actually spending on them. So when I went around that table and everybody said, I don't know. And then I got to a manager that has a pretty substantially sized portfolio. And his answer was, Jess, I track that. Last month I paid$60,000 in OTA fees just last month, just in a month. And it was just, it was like a mic drop moment. Everybody at the table, first of all, they were like, Whoa, gosh, how big is your portfolio? I did, you know, 60,000 in six months. You're spending 60,000 in just OTA fees. Yeah. And he what he told us is that was just Airbnb. He doesn't do a lot of, he doesn't do any booking and maybe a little bit of verbo. But when he starts tracking that as a separate line item on his PL and he can actually now track year over year, that eye-opening number that literally gets these managers up off their seats. I've got to make a change here. I've got to do something, something has to change, something has to be different. Now it's okay if you're spending 20,000 on them, you know, but like imagine just a 5% shift, just a mo, just a minute amount of that. Imagine how much of a difference that could make. And the other thing that these managers sometimes don't necessarily recognize, especially the ones that are, I would say, like, you know, 50 to 80 properties, they're growing, they're burgeoning, they're hitting a size where they've got to either add headcount or they've got to figure out how to drive more direct. They've got to figure out how to drive revenue. It's not always about adding supply. If you don't and you haven't solved the demand issue, what good is the supply anyway? You've got to have a demand engine built in the form of direct bookings. You've got to have that in place. It's got to be part of your strategy. But just thinking about a small, minute percentage of that when you're thinking, I don't have enough money to build a website, I don't have enough money to do, you know, to buy a fancy tool. I don't have enough money to sign up for Air DNA or to get True V. I don't have enough money for these things. Oh, yes, you do. It's your marketing budget. And it's literally a haircut off the top that Airbnb takes before you ever even see it. So start tracking it and then ask yourself three months down the road, can I really afford it? Yes, you can. You do have a budget. You do have a marketing budget. It's right there. You bought it.
SPEAKER_01That was exactly where my mind went when you started saying those numbers of, okay, how much will it actually save if you can cut off even a portion of that? Because that's always, I'm sure, the biggest objection is like, well, I don't have the money. You know, I don't have the money to invest in these things. That's one thing. And another thing that I hear I work with operators all day long, they're hurting and their owners are hurting and their margins are hurting because owners expect a lot more. And there's a lot more competition, especially in traditional markets. I'm, you know, was speaking with somebody in the Smoky Mountains earlier today. That's a super competitive market. Their margins are getting lower and lower, which means that because of that competition, the percentage that they can take in order to win over clients is going down. So it used to be smoking so many today, it used to be 30, then it went down to 25. Now they're at 18 within a matter of five years. And this is all just due to sort of pressure in demand in the market. What that really means for an operator is that if you can get down some of those OTA fees and get higher direct bookings, then your margins change. Your owners become happier, they're going to be less likely to switch because they're ultimately making more money. And the cool thing about direct bookings to me is you already know that somebody's willing to pay 15.5% more than what you're charging. So a lot of times, you know, most property managers will think, oh, great, okay, I'm saving the OTA fees. I'll just drop the price by that. Not necessarily. As long as you have a slight discount, people will take a 5% discount.
SPEAKER_00Totally. It really will. Totally. I, you know, I'm going to Europe at the end of July this year. And I, you know, of course, I booked everything Airbnb Airbnb. Like everything was a vacation rental. It was either through Airbnb, um, finding the direct booking website. That's what I meant to say. Not I didn't book them off through Airbnb. I meant to say I looked on Airbnb, I found them there, and then I went and I looked at their direct booking website. And the wild thing was looking at the pricing difference, there was one vacation rental I booked or I saved$788 for like a five-night booking. Literally, what? That's like absurd that the that the OTAs were gonna charge me. Is that like what in the world? Why would anybody do that? Why would anybody spend more money when you can go get it direct? I'm not the only consumer out there. You're not the only.
SPEAKER_01It's 100% ease. I found it because I have totally different extensions, which are like booked, one's called like book direct, and something's called something else. Basically, they're extensions. So I go onto the OTAs and then it clicks and it'll show you any if there is a direct booking site. Uh, but we have the exactly the same thing. I booked a house for Easter with some friends, and the on the OTA, it was 2,500 euros. We booked it for 1700 dealing directly with the owner. Now, to be fair, this is part of the problem though. Their website was sketchy.
SPEAKER_00It was a really sketchy website. I definitely booked a few sketch. I'm a little nervous. I'm gonna report back after July. Which property did I go to check into? And the property just doesn't exist. Or is there somebody else there?
SPEAKER_01Here it was fine. It just turned out that it's a really small operator. So it really it is a husband and wife team, and they only have this one property and it's their second home. And so they're just really blasé about it, I guess. And they had it on one of the OTAs. But I when I contact, I ended up emailing and said, Hi, I made a reservation five days ago. I haven't received any email confirmation, but here's the screenshot of the confirmation. Like, is everything okay? And then Bruda got a message on WhatsApp being like, Oh yeah, so sorry, here you can pay the deposit here. Like, I didn't even pay a deposit because they didn't even have payments on their website. Like I had paid them nothing. And here I am nervous thinking, like, okay, over Easter, and we're eight people, and what if we lose this house and this is gonna be a disaster?
SPEAKER_00So there's all- Do you feel like that's more common in Europe? It's way more than that. And maybe the US?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Way more common.
SPEAKER_00What do you think about that, Leah?
SPEAKER_01People are real, really, really unprofessional, and sometimes I think certainly the the the lack of investment in tech is the first thing.
SPEAKER_02So where my mind goes is that holodoo and home to go, what one of their strategies is they'll kind of um they'll buy the local OTA that you've never heard of, like in from Spain, from France, from Portugal, and they will then take all those owners and get them properly into the tech stack, get them a PMS, syndicate the listing, it almost like build them an ecosystem, right? And for a lot of these owners, they're like, great, plug and play, off we go. And that almost is what we're talking about, right? Because it gives them they've suddenly syndicated their listing. Sarah and I have spoken about this on and off over the years, right? The listing suddenly appears on all the different channels, but it's owned, the relationship's owned by these German companies, but they're they're not managing them, right? So that the owner's happy because they're good at what they're doing, which is the owning part of it and the housekeeping. But then suddenly they've they've got like a sort of semi, they're suddenly appearing on all the meta searches, they've got a bit of a website, and and they're also appearing on all the OTAs. And that's why I think that business model is really strong, because then the consumer trusts that they've found it on MetaSearch, even if they then go through to that booking website rather than them just doing it on their own. That is that that that's where I wonder where I think those two businesses, and I'm sure there'll be others in America that you can name, but that's where I think those two businesses have done really well because they've understood that before other people have, right? They've they're bringing new new supply on that would have had like really sort of crummy old websites and they and they've really kind of given them a facelift, basically.
SPEAKER_00So true. It is so true. And there are a couple of companies I could think of in the US. I won't name them, but there are a couple that are you know similar, similar in model, I think, um, to that structure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's it it's um, you know, we're all talking about so what so why that why do I think that works? Well, one, because in in in that example, I think the owners just want good bookings, right? So so they're happy enough with it and it is just a play thing for them or it's a holiday home that they they never visit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What we're all talking about here, what all three of us are thinking, I I thought it myself when I booked my Lake Tahoe trip. I was like, oh god, I hope the listing exists, right? I hope it's not. And so I picked the the company I booked with, the company I booked with had the best website. That I think that's probably why I booked it. It looked and they were the most professional in the experience.
SPEAKER_01Professional, yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, the whole thing, and there was someone to email and all that sort of good stuff. And you're thinking about it, so really we've got a trust problem here, which is that how do we get the consumer to what are the what are the touch points we need to to to like to work on to make sure that we build trust with the consumer, right? And it's not just oh, sketchy website, I'm just gonna go to the OTA, I'm just gonna go back to to the platform, you know. And I think that's where what we're talking about here gets gets juicy, right, Jess? It's like, how do you do How do you build trust to execute on that direct booking?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I it it actually it comes comes a hundred percent down to trust. And it it really is related to I I would say like company bottlenecks efficiencies, right? Behind the scenes. Is it the mom and pop you're buying from who are just like, eh, we're just kind of a little blasé about it. We don't really care. Who's owning this strategy internally? Who is making sure that you actually have a reputable website? Not only that, but even at Bookings Cloud, what we see is well, you know, we're like, okay, great. We're sending you demand, we're sending you all the supply. It's really amazing. But guess what we see? We see in the checkout, sometimes they'll drop off and they'll go over to the OTAs and book. Why is that happening? Ah, it's happening because one of many things, right? They don't have a strong enough cancellation policy, you know, or it's too strong on their website, or it's a clunky experience. It doesn't feel reputable, it's kind of ugly, or it's a dated website that feels like it's from the 80s or the 90s. Like maybe not the 80s, because who had well, maybe nobody had websites on you know what I mean. Like forever ago, I'm dating myself, mini cricket. But you know what I mean? Like there's there these websites that look dated, they're more expensive than the OTAs. Why on this earth would you price your direct booking website higher than the OTAs? I don't get it. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes managers do that. And so then we're we even at Bookings Cloud find ourselves reshifting that. Hey, by the way, you don't have insurance that you're offering on your checkout. You should maybe think about that. If you start doing that, now you can compete with the OTAs. By the way, your checkout process is really messy. It's you can't even find the the checkout button. It's like a custom-built website from circa whenever decades ago, and people can't find this checkout button. Your website looks not reputable. And you know, and the other thing that happens is when people go to a website and literally the location where they're serving is not even listed anywhere on their homepage. Like, why do you not show above the fold in your header exactly what markets you're serving? It's like people don't have time. We live in a in a world where everybody's in a hurry, everybody's in a rush. They want a quick, easy, clean, reputable checkout experience. And if they're not gonna get that on your direct booking website, they're gonna go over to the OTAs and they're gonna go book probably one of your competitors down the road. So who is owning the strategy internally, right? Is it your marketing team? Is it your revenue management team? Is it your operations or your leadership team? Right. If who's owning the direct booking strategy isn't clear to you as a manager, you have to make it clear. That way, that that person or that team or that group within your company can own that strategy and further like break down the silos between marketing, revenue, ops, and leadership and have it be a strategy that everybody owns and there's a piece of it, a forcing function from every single group that is working together to have a strong direct booking strategy. And they all understand the importance. The marketing team understands how it impacts marketing. Revenue team understands how it impacts them when there's no strategy in place for direct bookings or growing even nominally, even a 5% increase. Make that an intentional goal so that you're no longer renting your demand, right? You want to own the outcome. So, in order to own the outcome, you have to own the guest, you have to own the demand in order to actually own that outcome, how that guest experience is going to be perceived by the guest. And then you mentioned it, Sarah, earlier. Even when we talk about guest homeowner acquisition and homeowner retention, very, very strong conversations can be had when you actually have a strong and growing direct booking strategy in place. If you don't have that as a strategy, your owners are gonna bounce to the competitor down the road who does have a better strategy or who has deployed tactics that lend to a strong direct booking strategy. Cause that owner's gonna make more on a direct booking than they will through the OTAs. That's just by nature how it works. So you're able to keep those owners, you're able to retain owners you might feel like you're you're losing when you can actually show them, hey, we've got whether it's bookings cloud or what whoever it is, you've got in place driving demand to you, when you have that strategy in place, that helps support the fact that you are growing, you're innovating. You are not reliant on the OTAs. You are you are using them a little bit, but you're not heavily reliant on them. That's part of your strategy, but not the whole strategy.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01We can't get out of this episode without mentioning the buzzword AI, because there's been a lot coming out of the news this year about AI. In particular, you know, this concept of AI being able to recommend travel. There's some crazy stats around, obviously, it varies by by age and usage, but around people who are trying to book travel through AI. So it'll pop into Chat GPT and say, hey, I want to go to somewhere with my partner and this is our budget and this is what we're looking at. Give me five locations and then help me choose five hotels within this range that have good reviews that have above X that don't have any reviews that mention these things and like off to the races you go. How is that gonna impact the direct bookings? Is that gonna impact the OTAs negatively? And I guess more loaded question is how can somebody actually prepare their direct booking site for this new age of AI?
SPEAKER_00Well, it is a it is a loaded question. And I think we're really just scratching the surface, right? Um, without I I don't wanna like, I don't wanna promote Bookings Cloud to, you know, like we're AI, predictive analytics, data science, all the all the buzzwords that I use but hate to use. But when it comes to Chat GPT and it comes to AI and integrating, there's a lot of companies out there that are building AI agents, and even I haven't scratched the surface of that. Our team is looking at doing that. There it this is happening so fast. This this time that we're living in is incredible. I have never seen so much innovation happen so fast as I have seen in what is it? It's not even the last two years. I feel like it's kind of even been in the last year, where now this is such a huge conversation. I would say, yes, you can look at Chat GPT. Yes, you can teach Chat GPT and bot or you know, all these other tools all about your product, your tool, your direct booking website, you know, your entire business model. You can train it, just like you can train it on, you know, some other projects that you're working on. You can have it build itineraries for trips. I I've used it like exponentially when I'm planning a trip to Europe. The problem that I'm running into, and I don't maybe, Leo, you, because you're going to Tahoe and you know, you're planning trips and Sarah, you're traveling too. I'm curious if you're having the same experience I'm having. It does, it hasn't quite caught up. It's almost like consumers are asking it questions that are uh not being answered, I think, in the way that I would expect. Like, give me five listings that are incredible that I should go and stay at. And I'm looking for a place that does X, Y, and Z and is somewhat in this location of X, Y, and Z. And I'm always getting links that are out of date or they're broken or they're not accurate. I don't even know. I don't know that I trust Chat GPT to tell me of a vacation rental that I should go stay in. That's my personal preference. And I've been using it heavily to plan this trip to Europe. So I'm kind of curious from the two of you, if you've run into or encountered any of those types of experience where it's giving you links that are just not accurate or not working, right? Like I think we can use it high level, but I don't know, like booking a whole trip. I don't know yet.
SPEAKER_01I've I've already I've already grieved this to Leo when I was trying to plan my my summer holidays last year. I was like, I wish that I could just put all this into ChatGPT, and I did, and it was an absolute disaster. Yeah. Uh it didn't even get the location right. Like, even the location, it was like, oh yeah, this is this will fall in within your budget. And then you start looking and you're like, no, it doesn't. You're an idiot. It could be something else.
SPEAKER_02It it'll come.
SPEAKER_00It'll come around, right? Like this, the more we inform the engine of ChatGPT, the smarter it gets. I mean, just by nature, that's what ChatGPT is. Did you run into the same thing, Leo?
SPEAKER_02So I'm still uh I I agree. I still I I think you end up getting links sometimes to maybe just like a weird, sometimes like a weird booking platform that you've never heard of. Really weird, never heard of. Like this. And I assume that like the advertisers will get it right, won't they, as well? And you'll you'll you'll get served, you know, so that's going to come in and play a part in it. But still, what I'm doing is I think I probably probably primarily using Gemini and Google Maps. And that's always how I've liked to search. And in fact, I was very disappointed because in Europe they put some legislation, right, Sarah, about about Google Maps.
SPEAKER_01It drives me absolutely insane. I want to murder somebody. You used to could type something on Google and you would type it and it would bring up Google Maps from the original Google search. Apparently, that's anti-competition. So you have to now go into Google Maps and then search within Google Maps. You can't search from Google. It drives me absolutely insane. I've already Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, I know. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's a really silly, it's a really silly um rule. And it so because when I I love that about looking for something in the for when I'm in the US or looking for something in the US, and you can just like search, then find it on the map, then you might bring up a Gemini window, ask it a question. But you're like, I basically totally get why OTAs have big map views, because because that's what everybody wants. And so I'm basically I'm doing that myself. Like I'm very much uh I'm going into what I like to do on the whole day. I'm very much like to be near the town so I can walk and have a drink and like I don't want to be like in my car, like I want to be in the buzz, but then because I've got kids, I need to also be slightly out of the buzz so we get some sleep. So I'm so I'd rather be like on Google Maps looking street by street. That that that for me is like a starter point. But again, I think that clearly, clearly there's lots of opportunities to bring AI into that, isn't there, and bring the listing out and and all that sort of stuff. I usually so much opportunity.
SPEAKER_01Always satellite, because I'm looking outside cities usually when I travel. I'm like looking for like green space and where do I get out and doesn't have a pool and is there? How do I hike nearby? Oh, exactly.
SPEAKER_00That's what I'm looking for too. Like pool, hiking, biking. Yeah, that's what that's what I look for too. So I think it's good for certain things, right? Like it's good to maybe help you plan your itinerary. It's good for like, you know, yeah, you're gonna use it to help you reduce whatever travel time from point A to point B. Sure, leverage Chat GPT for that. But I think, you know, booking the travel directly feels a little premature yet, right? And so, you know, you think about going back to like direct, direct booking and kind of what that strategy looks like and really thinking through how do you make sure that your guests who are coming to your website and visiting your website are having a really clean, like nice, beautiful experience where they don't have a bunch of questions in the air. They feel like it's reputable, they can place a booking, they can get through the checkout really easily, they can get trip insurance coverage, whatever they need to get. Whatever Airbnb is offering, let's make sure our direct booking websites are doing the same thing, right? We we don't want to come up short on that. Otherwise, our strategy comes up short consistently. So, you know, I mean, I I think this this is like a topic that we literally like we could spend absolutely like hours and hours and hours talking about. But I like the sort of segment, Sarah, into AI and the AI world and what is AI doing for us. Now, there's so much in our space. Our industry's like 10 years behind, maybe more. Like we're at least a decade behind. When I worked in the hotel and airline space, like DMOs, right? Like Country of Peru or Marriott and Delta were our clients at Sojourn when I worked there, hotel Sojourn, not SOJ, URN for the vacation industry, two totally separate ones, but learned a ton about performance marketing and what that can do for portfolios. And I think this is a it's a space that is gonna grow rapidly in our industry. It's a way to leverage AI, predictive analytics and machine learning, which is those buzzwords that I kind of hate to use, but I have to use them. When you leverage that, you're able to get the right property in front of the right person at the right time. And that's where direct bookings are an unlock. That this is how you do it. It isn't necessarily about going into Chat GPT and feeding it a bunch of information and training it. It's about understanding where does the data that we need to drive direct bookings, where does it come from? Where's Airbnb getting it? How does Airbnb drive so many bookings? How are they driving demand? Well, that's what we figured out at Bookings Cloud. Literally, like driving that demand is what we are so good at, driving it to the direct booking websites. We have some clients who are they're only Airbnb operators. They literally don't have a direct booking website. They have only Airbnb listings, they're Air DNA users, they're, you know, they're they're doing a lot of things. They own all their properties. There's just, I mean, literally 30,000, 20 to 30,000 property managers in the industry. And then you have these whole other segments of owner operators that own their properties and they only list on OTAs. And they do that because they feel like if they do a direct booking website, they're gonna lose money. They feel like, oh, well, then I have to do insurance. I've got to, you know, absorb some of these other fees that I don't have to absorb. It's safer to go Airbnb. It's safer, right? It's not it's a total two-way street. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's not just the guests that feels it. It's us as guests, also hosts, going, Oh, that's good with there's a chargeback or if it's a fraudulent totally, totally 100%.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02And exactly it's about getting on the diving board and jumping off, isn't it? And going, right, I'm gonna take it. It is 100%.
SPEAKER_00Like dive in head head first, honestly. Like, don't just dip your toe in, like, go head first and jump in and do it. I mean, the smartest business owners that I've ever encountered, and I'm a former entrepreneur myself. I love working with CEOs. The smartest ones that I've ever encountered are the ones who innovate super fast. They grow super fast. And if they break things along the way, that's okay. Fix it along the way. Like you innovate fast, right? Our technology landscape in this industry is growing fast. And it's giving our operators or managers this incredible opportunity to grab that bull by the horns and grow as fast as this industry is growing from a technology landscape standpoint. Just grow with it. Don't resist the ability to take control of your demand, to have a direct booking strategy, to think about your demand engine and where it comes from. Start thinking about supply versus demand. Why are we so focused on supply all the time? Because that was like the common cool thing to think about and talk about for five or six years now. It's all about owner acquisition. It's not all about owner acquisition. If you're only focused on that, you're missing this. You're missing a whole other opportunity to actually retain those owners. Because what are you going to do when you bring them on board? Like you don't fill their calendars, you just bring them on and now they leave three months later because they're you're not filling their calendars the way they expect. You're not leveraging the data at your fingertips. You're not leveraging the ability to automate some of those things too. I mean, you're when you leverage predictive analytics, you're leveraging machine learning and data science. You're automating what the other industries have been automating for 10 years. Our industry is still manually building ad sets, still manually building property-specific ad sets. You don't have to do that. You shouldn't do that. You should let your team spend that tedious time they've spent on those things doing other things that are more important to the business. Take the automations and the things that are arduous tasks and try to automate some of those things, whether that's building an agent to help you automate it, or whether that's bringing in a tool that can help create an automated demand generation engine for you, you know, insurance or data, whatever it is you need, there is likely a way to automate a lot of it now without, you know, over I don't want to overstep the human touch that's so important, especially in our industry. And I think it's something that managers also are a little worried about. We're thinking about AI and we're thinking about all these innovations, but where does the human go? You know, we're it's the hospitality space after all. So we don't want to lose the human touch in the process of thinking about a direct booking strategy, thinking about the innovating, right?
SPEAKER_02So it's about having where I like what you're saying here is, and that's really good advice, right? Is like try and automate that process so that you can create that direct distribution and just grow that brand awareness around what you're trying to do and keep your team lean and automate it as much as you can. Because what that hopefully then gives you is a chance to hire people who can go into the field and delight, or you know, can make sure that they're making those partnerships locally with restaurants and bars so that you're on the scene, you know how to elevate that experience. Because then it all goes back to one of the first things you started with, which is repeat guests. So if the hollow if the hospitality is in there and you think, oh my god, it was amazing. I went to stay at a Lake Tahoe and John and Jim were just fantastic. And you know what? Next time you're going, I've got I've hit here's their business card. You should definitely go and stay with them. All of that's possible, right? If you if you use automate what you can, but then put the human in the place that they can actually make the difference in terms of guest satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and thinking about it on a portfolio level, right? Like I think most managers kind of think at a real listing level when they're when you're looking at a portfolio, you kind of have to look at it a very holistic approach, the whole, whole, whole portfolio. You know, I I think that's how you're gonna kind of keep this strategy really, really locked in with your whole team. You're gonna be able to prioritize the actual portfolio itself, whether it's from ad spend or from you know a data aggregation or whatever it is you're focused on, you got to look at it as a whole portfolio. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Jess, absolutely wonderful. We could talk all day. You're gonna come back on, I'm sure. I'm sure you're gonna come back. Yeah, like a verbal contract is binding. So you're welcome back whenever you want. Um, thanks.
SPEAKER_00Am I do I need to give you, do I need to like give you like blood or something? I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. Not not necessary, but preferable. All right. Okay, my my my third leg or or one of my children. My 15-year-old's a little tough lately. So maybe I'll keep him. We don't want him.
SPEAKER_02You're trying to give him away. That's what this is all about.
SPEAKER_00He's really good at dishes, though. He's like really good at dishes, so I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I should probably keep him. He's a keeper. He's a keeper.
SPEAKER_02I can't get my four-year-old near the dishes yet. She just can't reach the sink, but she'll get there. Jess, thank you so much. Sarah, great.
SPEAKER_00It's so great chatting. Yeah, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02And and we will be seeing you again um very, very soon because now you've agreed in blood to come back.
SPEAKER_00In blood, and my child, yes. Put them out there.
SPEAKER_02And to all you at home, if you've enjoyed today's show, please hit like, share, subscribe, and all the usual social places. And we'll see you again next week. Many thanks.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me.