[Matt Landau]

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 comfort, convenience, and privacy of home – all for the price of a traditional hotel room." Here's what's included:

• Apartment-style Living: Our studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom suites include separate spaces designed to let you live, work, and relax.
  
• Full Kitchen: Each in-suite kitchen is fully equipped with full-size refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, and stove top. And with our free grocery shopping service, we’ll even deliver ingredients right to your door.
• Free Hot Breakfast: Our free hot breakfast features hot and cold buffet items served just the way you like them.
  
• Evening Social: Our complimentary evening social* is available Monday through Thursday, and includes free wine, beer, and snacks.
  
• Amenities: Whether you’re lounging by the pool, connecting to free WiFi, or working out in the 24-hour fitness center—you’ll love our host of complimentary amenities.

ACTION: It's time to get serious about our plan for differentiation.

1. Write down on paper exactly what your vacation rental business will do differently or better than Homewood Suites in a dream world with unlimited financial or logistical restraints (bear with me). Some examples:

• We will answer every reservation question within one hour (ideally 30 minutes)
  
• Each piece of art in our property will have local charm
  
• Every guest will receive an in-person check-in
• Each guest will receive fresh homemade something during check-in
• We will source only locally-made soaps and shampoos
  
• A 'parting thought' will be delivered upon departure or after the guest has returned home (could be a physical gift or note)

2. Then beneath each of these items, write out exactly what this looks like from an operational perspective. In some cases, you have the resources/team to activate the task today (or are already activating it effectively). In other cases, you can begin working towards the dream scenario with training, price increases (you'd be surprised how often this works), new revenue streams like non-refundable damage deposits, new hires...etc.

You may not be able to activate all of these items over night or even in the next 6 months. But having a map is a huge first step.

I would like to challenge all IC members to add their differentiation items below. Currently realistic or not. Let's get those creative juices flowing...

 

[Sallie]

• This is a stand-alone house with no shared walls, providing complete privacy
• Enjoy over 1500 sq ft of your own ocean-view terraces
• Heated saline ocean-view pool is exclusively yours
• Kitchen is equipped for serious cooks, including gas stove, tri-ply stainless cookware, sharp knives, quality tools, selection of herbs and spices—and a cocktail shaker
• Just in case, you'll find a first-aid kit
• When you book direct with us, your data is never shared, sold, rented or leaked

 

[JPrugh]

As it happens, a Homewood Suites is opening in Salina "soon," part of the city's reboot of their downtown area. Salina is located about 20 miles north. Our vacation rentals already compete with local B&Bs, a couple of other properties on Airbnb and local motels. We often receive requests from potential guests who won't pay over $100 no matter what, but that's not our target market.

Our properties are superior because:

• Guests book direct with us - they talk to our property manager who actually knows everything! Unless they book through Airbnb, but then they end up talking to our property manager anyway. And every guest receives a personal greeting/orientation - and we have a welcome video as a backup if guests arrive late in the evening.
• Like Sallie, our properties don't share walls with other guests "warehoused" in the Homewood Suites building. Our guests are embedded in Lindsborg within a two-minute walk of Blacksmith Coffee, local restaurants, unique shops and more. Lindsborg is chain-free (except for Subway and Pizza Hut.)
• We offer Stenhuset, one of only eight Atlas Obscura x Airbnb properties in the world! (Now I need to educate guests about Atlas Obscura.)
• Dirty clothes or towels (hint-hint)? Use our modern onsite laundry. Don't have to walk through the halls and elevator with your dirty undies. And no cooties from previous sketchy guests!
• We can provide a nice bottle of Kansas wine (yes, you read that correctly!)
• Our kitchen has full-size appliances, not the rinky-dink "apartment sized" ones at Hometown Suites.
• Homewood Suites rates first seen online do not include TGT and sales taxes of 15% - we don't charge these taxes because we don't have to. If Kansas changes the rules, we would pass along those taxes, but we would still be less expensive.
• We don't offer Hilton Honors points, but we do provide 10% discount for returning guests.
• Swedish folk dancing lessons upon request?
• Free "Gorby" at the Ol Stuga? (Mikael Gorbachev stopped in town to open the Anatoly Karpov Chess School about ten years ago.) I'll have to talk with Mark Lysell while making his famous Brent Nelson sandwich.
• Finally, we aren't paying "the Property Brothers" gobs of dough to shill for us!

Possible offshoot: do ICers provide recipes for guests? If so, should we share?

 

[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 getting guests who are not our target market. Note to self .... We will not join in the race to the bottom with pricing because we are a limited edition vacation rental. There is only one Mais Oui. Repeat x 3.

Ok now I need to go work on my list.