Free Content
FiltersLooking for new ideas? Tap into VRMB's massive database of free content, including our multimedia archive. Our weekly discussions on guest experience and growth are designed to inspire and delight.
- Founder, VRMB
This update episode of the Unlocked Podcast features Matt giving a heads up on the upcoming season, which will feature industry luminaries who have managed crises before. What to do, how to stay positive.
After speaking with owners and managers daily, Matt also shares some of the patterns he's noticing beneath the surface of what was "the fastest growing sector in travel" now stopped dead in its tracks.
- Founder, VRMB
If repeat guests are the holy grail of vacation rental marketing: and if repeat bookings are directly proportional to the size of your email marketing list: then increasing the size of your email marketing list will increase your repeat bookings and lead you to the holy grail.
When it comes to repeat bookings, one of the biggest untapped goldmines are the guests who stay in your vacation rental with a group, but...
-
Latest reply by - HeatherP
We also had the same experience with JoinbyText. Total bust. Not a great setup. Wondering if there is another (better) service out there to communicate with guests via text (and not just by signing up for email...
- Founder, VRMB
IDEA: New Years resolutions or goals are great for business. But the fact that they are plural means that they're likely to blur together and the fact that they're wordy sentences or phrases gives us all kinds of room to wiggle out and escape accountability.
ACTION: Take some time over the next few days and decide on ONE WORD that sits at the core of your vacation rental marketing goals for 2020.
The best way...
-
Latest reply by
- Matt Landau
Negative people are viral in a bad way...
I want this on a T-Shirt!
- Founder, VRMB
Brooke Pfautz is the Founder of Vintory, one of the only companies that I am aware of that helps property managers grow their inventory. I traveled to meet Brooke in Maryland, where he lives with his family and where he built a property management business from 0-500 properties in 5 years.
Since he sold that business and now focuses full time on helping other managers grow, we focused the majority of our...
- Founder, VRMB
Carole Lynn Sharoff of Atlantic Vacation Homes in Massachusetts is one of the wisest vacation rental professionals I have met in my 10+ years of interviewing. You can tell a lot about someone from how others describe them. And when some colleagues like Jodi Refosco and Jennifer Frankenstein Harris heard I was launching a new season of the podcast, they were all unanimous: you have to interview Carole. No ifs ands...
- Founder, VRMB
This is probably the most unexpected podcast we've ever published. It features a couple, Emily and Jesse Cole, who epitomize a lot of vacation rental hosts using Airbnb to build a real estate portfolio. But that's the end of where the Cole's are normal. They also own a baseball team. Where the *MALE* cheerleaders dance on dugouts, kids find signed baseballs hidden like easter eggs, and tickets ($18) include food...
- Founder, VRMB
IDEA
Small incremental changes in pricing and price structure can yield significant cumulative returns over the course of the year. The better your track record, the more bold you can get with these kinds of changes. You don't need software to do this: you need conviction.
ACTION
As 2019 closes, do an audit of your vacation rental business and look for areas in which you can make small incremental pricing...
-
Latest reply by - PatrickP
YESSS! What was the profit increase over the course of 1 year?
In fact 50% as i am in a town with no many hotels
I am full booked
- Founder, VRMB
Tammi Sims is the VP of Customer at Properly, an industry-leading cleaning app with a host of deeper applications. Perhaps more importantly, Tammi (along with her partner Alex Nigg) are visionary vacation rental leaders: they identified a need for this solution way back before anyone could even name the problem.
Tammi is a regular at industry conferences -- and it was at VRMA in New Orleans where Tammi was ‘in...
- Founder, VRMB
IDEA
Approximately 100% of VRMB subscribers want more repeat/referral bookings
Around 75% offer a world-class on-site experience
Maybe 50% send guests thank-you notes or parting thoughts upon departure
About 25% have a newsletter campaign to stay front of mind
But less than 1% are all up in da Club ♫
Da Club is a private and tightly-knit group of former guests who have stayed, enjoyed themselves, and...
-
Latest reply by - Catherine
@Matt Landau Wonderful! I put lavender scent on them and also use them in my laundry. My clothes smell soooooo good!
You gotta get a "manly manly scent", Matt! Lol!
- Founder, VRMB
IDEA: Make people feel special. The best hospitality organizations in the world do this intentionally. One way is through process: having procedural steps to ensure that every guest (not just the VIPs) feels special. Another way is through one-off decisions: individualized choices that a team member exercises to achieve the same goal.
ACTION: Ask yourself before your next interaction with a guest, "how can I...
-
Latest reply by - JamesO
Just look at all the calories you burned doing all the shoveling? I guess Vacasa may get a kickback from the local restaurants to get the guests very hungry.....
We are all in the vacation business. Our job is to not mess...
- Founder, VRMB
David Krathamer never thought he’d be running a world-class hospitality business. Along with his wife Edna, David is the owner of D&E Landing in Guntersville, Alabama. I stop over for the evening and hang out and go fishing with David as often as I get the chance. And on this particular visit, I decided to record a podcast.
What’s most intriguing about David and his business is the precision and discipline with...
- Founder, VRMB
If there is one person that has been a steady constant throughout the last decade of vacation rental mayhem, it’s Koryn Okey. She started out with a company called FlipKey and now works as the VP of Sales at Breezeway (an awesome cleaning app you should demo immediately). If you have ever attended a vacation rental conference, chances are you have seen or met or at least heard Koryn laugh.
Her experience gives...
- Founder, VRMB
Scott Shatford is the founder of Airdna, which is (by my estimates) the most cited resource in the short term rental industry. I have been virtual friends with Scott since about 5 years back when he and I were sort of dueling vacation rental experts.
But soon thereafter, Scott took the relatively simple idea of compiling all the data on Airbnb properties, and built it atop a fascinating business model. Lately...
- Founder, VRMB
Zombie Vacation Rentals™
IDEA
A Zombie Vacation Rental™ is an uncompetitive vacation rental business that lacks personality, quirks, and zest for the business. ZVRs (hey! that's a good new listing site!) are unable to stand on their own two feet. They may look normal from afar. But up close, they have no soul: they deliver generic and unremarkable experiences. ZVRs can be dangerous because they hollow out the...
- Founder, VRMB
Elizabeth Maora Sickels is one of those people with infectious energy: she’s one of those people who you can’t help but want to listen to and hang out with. I first discovered Elizabeth on LinkedIn where she was posting a regular stream of videos titled “Dirty Laundry” in which she’d address one less-than-savory aspect of the short term rental business. The videos are as hilarious as they are true to the bone. So...
- Founder, VRMB
IDEA
Just because all vacation rental properties and owners are different (this is what makes us great) does not mean we cannot unite them under one umbrella. Collections or clusters of properties with a common theme and/or location have been used by big hotel brands for decades. So long as they have a core identity, Collections can tighten, distinguish, and drive the marketing of any growing vacation rental...
-
Latest reply by
- Matt Landau
I'll need to search into past posts on "BackLinks" for past discussions on the topic.
re "invent a Collection name that unites your properties together (the more unique, the better), then create a page on your respective websites announcing your now-borderless...
- Founder, VRMB
Corey Jones is the creator of Lucky Savannah, which in my humble opinion is one of the most impressive boutique vacation rental companies in the world. Corey got started in short term rentals, like many people, by complete accident. A visiting French student was secretly renting out historic Savannah property, and when she disappeared, she left him a note: you should continue renting this property on VRBO...
- Founder, VRMB
IDEA
What makes our vacation rental movement strong is the combined powers of many different stakeholders. We are strongest when each owner/manager is aware of his or her role in the industry: confident in their place, harnessing their unique strengths, and focused on their plan. After pouring over 9+ years of vacation rental research, we have found there are 5 primary "archetypes" or kinds of vacation rental...
- Founder, VRMB
Jodi Refosco has built her Taylor-Made Deep Creek Vacations into a veritable empire in Deep Creek Maryland, but it wasn’t an easy start. She grew up with vacation rentals as the family business, but restarted in the depths of the financial crisis with a single property.
From paying cleaning staff by taking on late night snow-plow work to dealing with competitors, owners, and guests - Jodi has invaluable...
- Founder, VRMB
Homewood Suites Is Coming to Town!
IDEA: Imagine Homewood Suites by Hilton has just announced they are opening down the street from your property(s). For a long time we compared our vacation rentals to traditional hotels. But now traditional hotels are starting to look a lot like our vacation rentals.
"Homewood Suites by Hilton combines spacious suites, complimentary amenities, and friendly staff to offer the...
-
Latest reply by - Sherry
Thank you so much for this. This has been on my mind lately but in a different form. We need to showcase our value AND raise our rates because we keep...
- Founder, VRMB
CJ Stam is a vacation rental legend to many who know him. He has built Southern Comfort Cabin Rentals into one of the best cabins getaway fleets in the American South, and now he is focusing on new purpose-built cabins for his vacation rental fleet.
I was road tripping recently and decided to stop and do an in-depth podcast with CJ. In-depth podcasting with CJ may or may not involve real estate site visits...
- Founder, VRMB
Sarah Bradford of Winter Park Lodging & Steamboat Lodging Company not only grew to 160 highly-respected properties from just a handful, she also has her own vacation rental-themed podcast and strong opinions about Norwegian-inspired design.
I had a chance to sit down with Sarah at the Streamline Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. Sarah is a regular on the conference circuit and has developed a 360-degree...
- Founder, VRMB
Jennifer Frankenstein-Harris built her Great Ocean Condos business in New Smyrna Beach Florida into a 300+ property empire after being unable to find a technology-forward management company for a single property. Now the largest manager in her area, Jennifer has played an important role in raising the standards and holding colleagues accountable in her region.
I had a chance to sit down with Jennifer during the...
- Founder, VRMB
Amy Hinote is an industry legend and I finally managed to get her on a podcast prior to VRMA international in New Orleans, the first city she got drunk in as a teenager.
Amy rolled in with an entourage of vacation rental luminaries including Steve Milo, Simon Lehmann, and Heather Bayer, so the peanut gallery was intimidating...but that would not stop us.
In this interview, we learn the history of VRMIntel...
- Founder, VRMB
After an action packed VRMA week, I got the chance to sit down with Terry Whyte and talk about the conference as well as software and I wanted to share our conversation while VRMA is fresh in everyone’s minds.
Please note that the 4th Season of Point Central sponsored Unlocked launches next Wednesday the 23rd of October!
Links mentioned in this episode:
www.vrma.org
www.vrmb.com/keystone-awards/
- Founder, VRMB
Heather Bayer of the Vacation Rental Formula Podcast is like my BFF in the industry. We were both in Las Vegas for the VRMA International event and she would be presenting on the 5 Love Languages, a famous book that classifies the various interpretations of love.
Heather applies this thinking to the vacation rental industry — where you may be making extraordinary efforts in one department, but lacking a...
- Founder, VRMB
This episode takes a look back on Matt Landau's favorite lessons from the season.
Links:
https://www.pointcentral.com/vrmb/
https://www.vrmb.com/podcast/ep40-short-term-rent-long-term-win-with-matt-hoffman/
https://www.vrmb.com/podcast/ep36-a-theater-of-growth-with-cliff-johnson/
https://www.vrmb.com/podcast/ep-34-no-time-to-waste-with-megan-mccrea/...
- Founder, VRMB
IDEA
All owners and managers want more bookings. Most try to achieve this by generating new inquiries. But few focus on increasing their conversion rate (the percentage of existing inquiries that convert to actual bookings). In reality, the same unit of energy spent on increasing a conversion rate can yield many more bookings than that same unit spent on generating new inquiries.
ACTION
1. Calculate your...
-
Latest reply by - HWeb
@HWeb brilliant as I have only come to expect from you. Now I need to think up a way to explain this very true adjustment.
One thing I do that makes me feel better, is I track the denied conversions. So, if you inquire or submit a prepaid request, and I end up...
- Founder, VRMB
Sean Miller is the President of PointCentral, the sponsor of this podcast. And I just want to say up front that including him in the series was not required or part of the sponsorship contract or anything: Sean's just a really interesting and smart guy...someone I was really curious to learn more about.
I had the chance to sit down with Sean in Barcelona Spain at the Kigoworld conference. And he possesses this...
- Founder, VRMB
Last week I had the pleasure of stopping through Savannah, Georgia to meet Corey Jones of Lucky Savannah, a boutique vacation rental fleet of 200+ restored properties in the historic downtown and nearby Little Tybee Island.
Upon checking in to The Metropolitan -- easily one of the most limited edition vacation rentals I have ever seen -- Corey told me about Mrs. Wilkes, which is maybe the most iconic restaurant...
Welcome to VRMB!
I’m Matt Landau, the founder of this forum. It was created in 2016 when a group of us wanted a safe space to discuss our growing STR businesses.
Today, you can join our community of 1,000+ creative, thoughtful, and generous members who believe in a better future.
Spotlight
Discover "Unlocked: The Intermission" - a captivating 6-part podcast series featuring the individuals who have shaped Matt Landau's horseradish in the past 6 months.