042: Why Your Rental Business Is Easy to Replace | Rachel Alday

Most short-term rental operators are trying to stand out with better photos, smarter pricing, stronger listings, and more automation. But what if the real problem is not visibility - but replaceability?

In this episode of STR Global Unlocked, I speak with Rachel Alday, founder of Abode Luxury Rentals, a boutique property management company with more than 200 luxury vacation homes across Park City, Jackson Hole, and Sun Valley.

Rachel explains why many vacation rental businesses do not actually have a memorable brand, why competing on price keeps operators dependent on platforms, and how service standards, company culture, consistency, and direct guest relationships create real differentiation.

Which questions are answered in this episode?

1. Why do many short-term rental operators struggle to build a brand guests actually remember?
2. How can property managers differentiate themselves without competing only on price?
3. Why are direct guest relationships so important for reducing OTA dependency?
4. How did Abode Luxury Rentals achieve more than 60% direct bookings?
5. What role do service standards, company culture, and consistency play in building a strong vacation rental brand?
6. How can operators scale their portfolio without losing service quality?
7. Why should profitability matter more than simply adding more properties?
8. When does bringing housekeeping in-house make sense?

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:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Everyone in short term rentals is trying to stand out. Better photos, better listings, better pricing, more automation. But what if the real problem is not visibility, but replaceability? Because if a guest remembers the house, but not the company they booked with, you don't have a brand. You have inventory. In this episode, I'm joined by Rachel Alday, co-founder of About Luxury Rentals, a boutique operator with more than 200 luxury homes across Park City, Jackson Hall, and the Sun Valley. We talked about why so many operators get trapped competing on price, why luxury is not just a price point, how service standards, culture, and direct relationships create real differentiation and why profitability matters more than pure growth. And if this conversation makes you think about how to become less dependent on platforms and build a business, guests actually remember, you can book a consultation with me through the link in the description. This episode is brought to you by Evivo. I have always believed that strong operations and the right technology foundations are critical if we want to professionalize and elevate the short-term rental industry globally. Eviva supports independent hosts and professional property managers with an all-in-one platform that simplifies complexity and drives growth through automation and AI. Welcome back to STR Global Unlocked. I'm Simon Lehman. Today I'm talking to Rachel Alday, co-founder of About Luxury Rentals. And I'll say it blankly. Most operators are stuck competing on price because nothing about them is hard to replace. A guest booked the house, not the company, and never remembers who they booked with. And I know what I'm talking about. That's not a luxury problem. That's a brand problem. And it's why so many operators stay trapped under the ODAs. Rachel built the opposite. Guests come back to her by name. So this one's about the pain of being interchangeable, what it's quietly consisting you and the first move to owning your demand instead of renting it. If that's you running a thin brand, leaning on the platforms, stay to the end of this conversation. A bit on Rachel's. So they built the company they wished they hired to manage their castle. Today, Abode is a boutique, highly curated portfolio of more than 200 luxury homes across three mountain markets Park City, Jackson Hall, and Sun Valley. She runs it on one principle. See everything from the owner side and the guests. You might run 20, doesn't matter. The principle she built on works at any size, and that's what we are here to pull out. Rachel, it's a great pleasure to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Rachel, before we kick this off, uh we want to do uh a rapid fire with you.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Are you ready for this? I mean I think so. Absolutely. What is the one number you wish you had watched earlier?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Ooh, profitability. What should an operator at 50 units stop doing immediately?

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Uh outsourced housekeeping. The last tool you killed and why? Oh, um what's the last tool we killed?

SPEAKER_02 4:42

Uh we we were using um uh someone to do like calling for homeowner acquisition. So it's not a tool, I guess, but we had someone doing service, yeah. Yeah, calling. Um, but wait, a software that we killed. Oh, um well, this is maybe a service too. We had uh a certain kind of phone service that was doing like answering. It was with overseas people, but would that count? That's the other one I just killed. I'm trying to think. Yeah. I'm kind of like um well, I'm kind of like sticky on on software. Like I don't I you know, we don't add a ton of software quickly, so maybe that's I have less times that I kill software quickly because I I'm stingy with right answer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

One decision that felt small and turned out to be everything. Uh oh.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

It felt small when I decided I wanted to hire a personal assistant, like an executive assistant. I thought that this was like a like, oh, I just want this, I'm being frivolous. But it absolutely changed how much I can get done. How about that?

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Finish this. Most operators think they have a growth problem, but they actually have a profitability problem. I love it. Thank you. Um, so we're through that, so we can get uh we can continue on to talk about uh the operator context. Um you know one thing I want to talk to you about is take me back to that first management company that let you down, and what was so bad on the owner's side that you decided to build the alternative yourself. I mean, you could have built a normal high-volume PM company. Why curated? Why high-end from day one? And what is your conviction? Or did the market force you to do that?

SPEAKER_02 6:43

No, that was definitely our idea from the beginning. Okay, so we had tried a couple companies back in the day, but I would say I did not find any of them to be extremely horrible. It wasn't like, oh, they're they're just like the worst thing ever. I would say they were all okay, and that was the problem. So this condo that we had, this was um just a two-bedroom, but like skiing, ski out, practically ski and ski out on the mountain, right? So mid-mountain. And I was thinking that that should have higher level service. It's still a high nightly rate for two bedrooms, and to me, it needed luxury service. I'm from Chicago, so I have like more of an urban upbringing. I had worked in different luxury services. So I was thinking that luxury service, that there would definitely be a component of urgency, of attention to detail. That's what I was not seeing with these companies. So that's what we set out to achieve, right? Like I basically, when my husband Rob, he wanted to start this company, it was his idea. And I was like, that's a terrible idea. But then once he kind of pushed on it, and by the way, I was wrong, right? I always say this, it's true. I was, I was wrong, and Rob was right. And then that repeated itself throughout the rest. It's only been, you know, whatever, 20 years. Um so uh once we got going, my stipulation was, okay, let's make this uh something where we only focus on luxury properties and then we give luxury service across the board, right? So we understand how we build our service out from the beginning, and that would be to serve a luxury clientele and to provide a level of service I did not see happening from these other companies, and that we would only take on houses that would kind of fit within that so that we would just stay consistent always on this one type of service. So that that was the gap we saw. I continue to see that in um a lot of markets. And I think, you know, there's more options, there's more vacation rental companies than there were back in 08. Um, but there's still um always like a much smaller group that's trying to um provide luxury service. A lot of people say luxury, but for the ones that are actually trying to go, you know, a few steps above with the kind of service that they provide, that remains fairly rare. Um, and so it leaves like it's a good spot to try and go into. I think maybe not everywhere. Maybe there's some saturation, saturation in some markets, but I think there's still a lot of places where you can go in if you're willing to go above and beyond, and you'll you'll stand out, you know, because it's not everyone's willing to do that.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Well, one thing Rachel, you and I will not do today is define the terminology of luxury because we're Oh, please. Yeah, no. No, we won't. We've tried to do that many times uh while you and I have met in conferences, and it's very hard. So, you know, at the end of the day, but you defined you you decided to go for the upper side of the market. Yes. Was that just because what you expected from you from your existing operator was not met, or did you see a massive opportunity here? Because if you look at the market data today and now the market is shifting, the mid-market is is very challenged right now in terms of supply. Uh, budget is always available and and has a demand, but people have now higher expectations. So, so you were reading the time 20 years ago or 18 years ago, and now you know you're in a high demand market from a product standpoint.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Yeah, I mean, definitely we saw the gap, right? It was like the fact that we had tried a couple of the companies that seemed like they were the most luxury focused at the time, and we were seeing that they were, it's not that they weren't providing any service or they weren't doing a good job. They just weren't going that extra step, right? It was a difference between the perception of what this is the old age-old thing, like what is luxury and what they were doing at, you know, we I didn't think it was there. So then we started the company. And honestly, part of the reason that I wanted to push that we manage luxury properties only, but for us, that means like around $1,000 a night as a base, like lowest rate for the kind of stuff that we manage, and on up to 10 or higher, 10 or 10,000 or more per night. But I part of it was that I saw the gap. The other part of it was I realized we would be um, we would be required to manage less properties, but still to get more revenue into the business, right? So like with our revenue split, which we started at a 75, 25 and over the years, now we're at like a 35, 65 split. But when we started, it was like just the math of, okay, we're gonna take this split. Let's take it off of higher nightly rates only. So we're not trying to have like a massive inventory. We'll have a smaller, tighter inventory, but that will help us provide a higher level of service so we can concentrate, you know, attention to less amount of people, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:23

So let's move on that a little bit. Three markets, two on the plus homes. But you've said the goal is to stay small in feel. When did the big and good start pulling against each other?

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Oh, yeah. I mean, uh it's profitability, you know. I would say so there's there's like those weird thresholds where, you know, when we started and we were just pulling in maybe a couple hundred thousand in revenue total in the first couple of years, and then it was like half a million and then a million or two. And it was like we were seeing this revenue grow, but we were also seeing that exponential need for more and more people on our team. Because if you're providing high level of service, even though AI is amazing, people, I always say our customers want their handheld and their butt wiped. And so they look, you know, they want us high touch, like they want a lot of attention. And so we needed more and more people on our team. So then that means, you know, you kind of have this focus on growth. To be honest as well, we maybe didn't have a huge focus on growth, and we were lucky with our timing. There, there's so much honesty that I have to give about Rob and I were not strategic. We were not like, okay, we're gonna start this business and we want to manage 200 homes. Like we never thought that. We were like, oh, we have three houses. Like, oh, now we have 10. You know, oh, whoop, we have 20 houses we're managing. We were always really excited as our business grew and it grew fairly organically. I remember when we got to 50 houses, I remember it was like, we're not gonna ever take more than 80. What when 80, and that's it, we're done. And then we added Jackson Hole about 13, 14 years ago. So that, you know, then that grew. So in Park City, there's like 140-something houses. In Jackson Hole, it's or under 50, right? 40 something in Jackson Hole, I think, right now. And um, and so it's like, you know, in Park City, it's over 100. And I remember that was like, I was like, we will never have more than 100 in one market. But, you know, as things happen, and it's like our in Park City, we ended up purchasing an office building. And then so now then we started to build out our shared services of our company, like marketing and revenue management and reservation sales, like based out of Park City. And so then there was more people in Park City on our team. So we were able to grow our portfolio a little bit larger. Um, so I do think it's a very fine balance. And this is something that I think about and I talk about a lot because there's studies that have been done, right? Where people are looking at with hotel uh management companies and ownership companies and luxury and like where does that work? Where does it at what number of scale does that stop working? Same with vacation rentals. That's yet to be determined. Like, like how at what number of uh houses under management or at what level of scale do you lose the ability to provide excellent service consistently? I do think that there is um this has to be carefully managed and watched. The idea that you could scale something and create um excellent consistency, but it's like, where does that not work? What's too big? So for us, um, you know, like I said, we're around 200. We are focused on growth right now. So we've never um acquired another company. We grew into Jackson Hole and Sun Valley organically, like just, you know, opening another office. We are thinking right now, what if we were to expand maybe three more markets, whether that would be organically or through acquisition. And there's a lot of talk about that um with us right now. But I'm always thinking of like, okay, if we were to do that, would it be 20 properties? Like, what kind of a property would we want to acquire? Because we wouldn't want it to be too big because we still want to carefully manage the scaling so that we don't lose our ability to provide consistent service. So um, I don't think that's figured out yet. I have a few ideas about it. Like to me, it feels like maybe um around 200 to 300 properties per market, if you're trying to do very luxury service, I think that that's attainable. Um, and I think probably beyond that would be pretty difficult, knowing that I have 50 people in Park City. And so I have 140 houses and 50. Now, some of those people are executive level, right? But everyone on my team helps out in the busy season, you know, in terms of like servicing all of our customers. And so, yeah, my my feeling is 200 to 300 in a market when you're talking like luxury, would probably be a max number that you could have that really good consistency of execution and branding. And now the question is so if let's say you were like two, two fifty is your max, how many markets would would work, right? Would it be six? Could it be 10? Like I don't, you know, it I think that's yet to be proven.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Yeah, we can take that conversation offline, Rachel, and more than happy to dwell on that together with you and your team as well. But it's a great segue to let to go deeper because a lot of operators are living this right now, uh, and we don't want to name uh them right now. But I can relate so much to what you're saying here. I mean, it's all about scale, it's all about how can you maintain the services and and everything else that that you want to do within the markets that you are that you're present, you know, continue to to deliver uh according to your brand uh values and everything that you have defined. And scaling that is is very challenging, no matter in in which markets or in which type of product you are, low end, mid-end, or or upper market or luxury market, it's it's equally challenging. Obviously, in the upper market, delivering consistent services as you scale is even more um uh challenging. But at the same time, I'm I'm a strong believer that you still need the unit density to run uh a market for uh profitably as well, right? So, but when you were a small, I want to go back for a second. When you were a smaller operator, what were you getting wrong about standing out and and you know, getting there where you're at today? What did you think differentiation was for you at the time?

SPEAKER_02 17:24

So I always thought differentiation would be, you know, that sense of urgency and that ability to like kind of go above and beyond, give the customer like our rule within our with our team was always like we will do everything that these customers want except prostitutes and drugs. And this was like our literally, this was like our coaching with the team was like, okay, here's how we handle, you know, um, like they want a chef, they want food delivery, they want in-home massage, they want a Pilates instructor, they want a hot air balloon, like any, we will make everything happen, right? Like you want a belly dancer, you want a singing telegram, you want like a naked lady with sushi, like all of it. We can do all of it, except for those other two things. And so to me, that was part of our differentiation. The beginning, no one else was offering concierge like that in vacation rentals. So, like in our markets, there are really high-end hotels that do five-star typical concierge. Like, if you've stayed at very nice hotels, you know how that concierge service feels. No vacation rental property management company was doing that. And so that's what I was like, that's what I want to be able to offer, right? So that's what we were doing from the beginning. And that was really different. It remains somewhat different, although I do see concierge services becoming more and more common in the vacation rental industry. And I'm grateful for that. I think that's good. But that was a main point of differentiation was that level of concierge service. So not only were we, oh, and I would say we also were always really big on heavily staged, um, really good photography of the properties. Because, you know, especially in the old days, nobody was really investing in that. And Rob's background, my husband's background in real estate with like really high-end real estate, we had some good photographers to work with. We were very hands-on with like staging the photos. And we started from the beginning, excuse me, we would use like um logoed items and put them in the photos staged, you know, like a logoed blanket or mugs or whatever. And so we were putting our logo in the photos. And we also um, we always had a naming convention. So my background is marketing, and so that was one thing in the beginning. I was like, all right, we're gonna name every house on the listing and we're gonna name them all like abode at deep roots or abode at what, you know what I mean? Like we would name every house so that the I the guests would have this name recognition of our company. So those were some of the things we did in the beginning to try and have some brand recognition. And I do think even all these years later, brand recognition and vacation rentals is like, is it is it even there at all? Like maybe my my customers might know the name of my company because they've stayed with us, especially if they stayed more than once. But like, would you even consider that brand recognition? Because to me, brand recognition would mean someone knows your brand that isn't already your customer. Like if someone has used your product and they know the brand, I mean, of course they do, right? So, like, that's not brand. I don't know. So, yeah, I don't know that there's any brand recognition in our industry yet, but I do think it will be coming. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Yeah, huge topic. Well, one thing I can tell you, my my 10-year-old knows your brand because she loves your blanket.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Oh, I gotta send another one.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Our chimney blanket uh is always a big fight for, especially in winter. And uh the abode chimney blanket, uh, my 10-year-old loves it to bits.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

I bet no one's looking at that blanket today. It's so hot. I bet they're like, get that thing away.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Right now, right? We're at 97 and plus degrees in my office right now. So Europe is just being uh uh uh confronted with a massive heat wave.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

It's a podcast live from Masana.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

That's right. But you gave me a great segue, as you wouldn't know, because most operators believe that they actually have a brand, right? And but what do they actually have?

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Yeah, no, if they don't have a brand.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

They don't have a brand.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Um yeah, no, they have a company like I do. And I and I have, you know, in my head, I have a brand, but I'm well aware that um brands in our industry, they really they have no meaning as of yet. And there's a lot of reasons. And I don't even know if you want to open. Why is it that everything I say is just like a new can of worms? But um, I feel like this topic about standards, tiers, chain scale, this is like my favorite thing to talk about right now. And yeah, well, obviously, we don't have that in vacation rentals. And I think a lot of people's opinion is that we could never have it. We're too fragmented. It's it's different than hotels. Houses are all individual. It's impossible that we could have the standardization and that we could set tiers that would have meaning across multiple markets. I completely disagree with that. Like I think this is absolutely possible. It will absolutely be happening. It's part of what will be required in order for this industry to mature. And it is part of what will allow for anyone to have a brand with meaning. Um so yeah, I think all of that is important, required, and will happen. Um, but I I understand the mentality behind how hard it might be. Um, because I'm sure in hotels that was exactly how everyone felt before it was all established. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

This episode is brought to you by Evivo. I've always believed that strong operations and the right technology foundations are critical if we want to professionalize and elevate the short-term rental industry globally. Evivo supports independent hosts and professional property managers with an all-in-one platform that simplifies complexity and drives growth through automation and AI. So, where were you growing more units, more bookings, but quietly losing pricing power? That's another thing. Oh, yeah. Or control to the platforms as well, right? I mean, as we did the previous two topics, you and I could talk for hours, and we're advocates for this industry in all our capacities, you being on the board of RMA, I'm on the board of SDAA, and we're super engaged, and obviously we need to focus on a few other topics, but losing pricing and and more workings and power or control to the platforms is something that intrigues me as well to get to know.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

Yeah. So I mean, I I would say I was afraid always, especially in the beginning. I had a lot of fear around the OTA's control over things. Also, because we started in 08. I mean, it like Airbnb started in 08, but not in a way that like we had any knowledge that even Airbnb existed. So when we started, it was just VRBO that existed. VRBO was like Craigslist. It did not feel as oppressive. Um, not that, not that these OTAs are oppressive, in my opinion, actually. Um, I totally respect the OTAs and I don't I don't feel like negative toward it. But okay, we started getting going before there was a lot of OTAs. Um, we were able, and I think part of this is because our price point is high and because we are in these ski markets that are fairly insular, we were always able to garner a decent amount of direct bookings because of those factors that I just said. But we did always, we still have always booked also through the OTA. So we're over 60% direct today. Part of that is because we've been around for so long. Um, I will say though, like Airbnb and their increase and the percentage, you know, I think we saw that coming, you know, from when we started and these percentages were smaller. We knew that hotels were paying more and we knew there was going to be pressure on vacation rentals to increase those percentages that we paid to the OTAs. So we always were like um on the precipice of being worried about how that would hurt us. And I would say, again, because our clientele is less price sensitive, we've been able to raise our like, you know, my Airbnb listings are inflated to basically cover that cost. So people book on Airbnb, they're sort of paying for their own, like they're paying that themselves. Okay. So to me, that's something that um people should do when they can. I also know in the middle of the market, that's a lot harder because there's a lot more price sensitivity. Um, so I it's it's a catch 22, like we're talking about. It's like you want to have a brand so that you aren't dependent on the OTAs. But then how do you have a brand when there's no real brands that, you know, so it's it's like a whole cycle of um difficulty. I think, I think providing excellent service no matter what level you're at. So even if you were a Hampton-in, a level, not you're not a Hampton in because you're vacation right, but if you even if you were at the level where you were at like a lower mid price point and you're selling something that's like a little more commoditized, I think there's still the ability to offer very consistent, clean, you know, really nicely kept properties with the kind of service that might not be as hands-on but feels very um attentive and caring, even if it is automated, that I think you can create that loyalty that will help you bring people through repeat bookings or through referrals through friends, that they're coming direct to you. And I also think there's plenty of ways to handle your listings on the OTAs, kind of like what I said with naming convention or you know, carefully plus place staging items where people can find you. Like the customer is educated, they know how to search and find you that way. So um, I do think that there is always fear about OTAs. My one of my biggest fears with OTAs right now is all this focus on booking services. And number one, it's because I do a ton of concierge, I do a one to two million a year in concierge, and I don't want Airbnb honing in on that. But honestly, even more, I don't like the idea that Airbnb is making these kind of weird, unmanaged opportunity for some random people to go become a chef in a $10 million property that I manage. Right. So I definitely have fear about OTAs. It might be a little different than some people, but I think like the the broad-reaching concepts to think about with OTAs as ways to bring that control back to yourself would be through the naming convention, through the staging and the photography, and through the consistency of service at whatever level, I think those are like tried and true ways to sort of pull some of that back to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

So let's go a little bit deeper uh in relation to that. What's the, in your view, what's the uncomfortable truth about just being another listing that the operators avoid? And and what does it feel like from from the inside before you can get on top of that?

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Um like sort of disappearing into the the mass. Yeah. Um, I mean, what does that feel like? I of course that's that's an uncomfortable feeling, and that is um I think I think I see some operators that sort of tell themselves a story about how they can differentiate um through maybe uh more like one-off uh like I'm trying to think of an example that I've seen recently. I guess like one thing is like people that do uh unique stays or whatever, and they're trying to like create this, right? And I think while uh say like a unique stay, like people that are like all about A-frames or tree houses or you know, this kind of stuff, I do think that's interesting. To me, there's lot less longevity and less um like legacy with that. And so as a one-off short-term approach, those are the kind of things that could get you like a couple seasons of attention and maybe you know, directing it away from being just one of a million things, like you know, one of a whole bunch of widgets on the website and like that would make you stand out. But I don't think that that's as long term of a play. I mean, honestly, this is why I'm so currently focused on the concept of standards, of tiers, chain scale. Because to me, if we are able to create these tiers and standards within them that are agreed upon, then you're creating smaller subsets with which all of us will operate. So right there, you're changing it from one big picture, right? To even within a two-bedroom, to a like a three-bedroom, a five-bedroom, you would have the tiers. So now it to me, that's segmenting what's out there. It's allowing everyone to fit into a tier. So you're, you know, creating a little bit of a smaller stage, and then you're um allowing the guests to understand, like, okay, there's a set standard, and and you know, we adhere to that. So to me, this is one of those ways that even if the OTAs were to go in and play along with the concept of tiers and standards, if that ever materialized, um that still as a as a um company, you would be able to finally have a chance to build a brand that mattered, right? Because there would be something around it if you had a framework of tiers and standards and you had a brand, right? It could have actual meaning within that. I mean, that's what happened with hotels. But I think that um to me, that's why I'm so hot to try on that right now, is because it's almost impossible to think about how you would do it otherwise.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

So let's talk about that shift because, you know, for me, clearly the power moves to whoever owns the guest relationship, not whoever owns the listing, right? And agreed. And yeah, and and that's absolutely, you know, proving your concept and being at 60 to 70% direct, and and what you just talked about, more about uh also the product. So what had to change in how you operate to stop depending on OTAs as you as you front door? Or your guests come back to you how much of that is luxury and and how much of that is just absolute relationship?

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Okay, relationship obviously is massive, and that has to do with your team and your company culture, right? Because if you're gonna have a team and you're gonna have if you're gonna have a business that's relying on relationships, you're gonna have to have a team that is stable and that you have people on your team that are with you for a long time. Because if they're building relationships, if your frontline people are building relationships with your customer, they better be there year after year because that's why your customer is coming back year after year. So to me, a few things. One is company culture, and I was always like, um, I don't want to swear. So sorry. I'm almost like I'm always like about to swear and I'm trying not to. Okay. So um to me, it's not BS. Okay. I used to think that company culture was BS because I had worked a long time ago before we started this. I worked for Coca-Cola in marketing, I worked with McDonald's. Not that those are bad companies, but I was completing the obesity circle of marketing, and I know I will be punished for that in the afterlife, I'm sure. But um, so I had experience with company culture that was massive, but I didn't like that version of it. So then as our company grew, I was averse to the concept of company culture. And I sort of finally changed my mind. We ended up hiring some consultants to help us. And when I made a shift, my husband and I did some work to really start to build our own company culture. And like you said, the very beginning, mission and, you know, values and all these kind of vision, all these things that I thought were BS, they honestly became um monumentally like foundational to what we were doing. And so that did help us to then have this really stable team that was here year after year that we could help train on the concepts of connection, right? Like how they're gonna connect with the customer, with the homeowner, how our team is gonna handle the recovery paradox, right? The whole concept of like in travel, we always are trying to make everything frictionless. But you know what? That's BS too. There's always gonna be friction. So, how about if we can train our team to handle the friction so that when something comes up, which it will, okay, like a toilet will overflow, like the door lock thing will not work, stuff will happen. And how do we handle so that when those things happen, they end up building a better relationship with that guest? That's your chance in, right? Like with no problems, you might never end up talking and having a deep conversation with that guest. But if there's a problem, all of a sudden, if you look at it the right way, that's your way in. Like that is your way to go in and build a relationship with that guest. So they might have had a problem, but by the end of the time of you dealing with it, not only will you have solved it in whatever way, you may now have a friendship with them, right? And now they feel like they've got a guy in Jackson Hall or whatever. And so to me, um, all of that type of training and understanding, which for us it did take years and it takes a lot of work that we do. Um, but that being able to have company culture and train your team to build those relationships and those connections and that sense of belonging, that of course helps you again to pull out of that OTA dependence because you're creating individual connection with your customers. They're gonna tell other people about, and now they're bringing people directly to you. They're coming, they're repeat, plus they're bringing people to you. So I think company culture is huge. Then the other piece is standards, right? Like I was not huge on process. You can tell I'm like a yammer, I like to talk, I like touchy-feely things. I like to like, you know, kumbaya. And I'm when someone wants to like talk about process and SOPs, I'm kind of like that. And so, um, but I was wrong. I was wrong. Yeah. Like when we had grown our team enough that we had some really good people that could actually start to build out these massive processes and SOPs for our operations department, for our sales department, all of a sudden there's this amazing consistency. And now we have total consistency across all three of our markets where we know exactly like how the execution is going to go, not just, of course, from the customer and from how we set up the houses, but how things are marketed, how things are sold, what the revenue management is. So I think those are the two things company culture and then standards within your own company, having to do with like process and SOPs. You know, obviously, like this is not new concepts, but for me, um, and I think for a lot of small operators, it's hard to get to the point where you can actually do all that stuff. Unless you have help from someone like that.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Absolutely. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

And and we've we I mean, you've just opened so many other kind of worms right now, and we've been talking about this for so long, Rachel. And you know, we managed not having talked about AI on for a single second. I mean, that's right, it's not my favorite. That's that's pretty cool. And and but one thing you you you mentioned was the SOPs. Because now it's interesting that people the company's failing to tr um you know transform to more AI uh back office tools because they have no SOPs in place. It's wonderful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Well, we use AI to create SOPs.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

How about that? AI has no clue um how to execute them. So it's it's a balance. It helps. Yeah. It helps massively. But there's a lot of companies now who say, hey, I want to transition into a more automated process with AI, but as you don't have any SOPs uh in place, you can't do that. So you do.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

We had to start with put like human-created SOPs that were then fed in, right? And then you created a tool that could then make more SOPs based on you know what you first start. You're right. You have to start like a human in the loot, right? Isn't this like fundamental to AI? There has to be the human component, especially when you're talking about hospitality. It's hospitality. It's not, it's not like machine work, it's not like um a factory, you know, it's we're talking about dealing like being hospitable to other people. So you could you would have to have a a human teaching the AI how to be hospitable, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:00

So I won't come back full circle. Your guests come back to you. How much how much of that in your view? I mean, you talked about culture, you talked about the SPs, the standards, everything that you built to to actually, you know, have what you have in terms of repeat trades and everything else, but your guests come back to you. How much of that is is luxury and how much is is just relationship that the platforms will never be able to handle, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:29

I mean that's a thousand percent. I agree with you, a thousand. Yeah. Like a platform, to me, a platform. I've never been as negative as a lot of people are about like Airbnb and BRBO, personally, because to me, those are distribution platforms, which are required in an industry like ours. We need more distribution. It it can't just be like our website. And so to me, those platforms I consider as marketing. They're put they're in a way, they're sort of putting out branding for me. They're showing more people what I have. And then I even if I get bookings through those channels, my goal, and this is old news, I think, but is to then convert people to be our guests directly in the future, right? But some people feel more comfortable booking on an OTA, and then I to that I say, sure, have at it, like you do you. But you know, then the way that we're it's what you do with that guest or that lead once you have them, right? And so you could take the mindset of like you just wait for everything to come to you, whether it comes through OTA or whatever. And then, but I'm I mean, whatever, obviously, I'm not a person who waits for anything to come to me. And so to me, that's just OTAs are a tool. To me, they have always been just a tool. And it's what we do with the customer once they see us or once they're staying with us at a property, and we better do everything that we can. So I don't think uh, okay, I think with luxury, there's a perception that like we have it easier because we have a higher price point, so we have more money to work with to make the guests happy. But I also have 50 to 70 employees all the time, 200 houses. Okay, so it's like, I mean, profitability, that's why that was so important in the beginning. Everybody says, oh, well, if people are spending 50 grand for a week, that's so different. Of course, you can do all these things. It's like, yeah, but my overhead is would blow your mind. And so, yeah. And so, you know, I would say um a lot of it is mindset. And I think like my favorite way of talking about this like when you go to a Hampton Inn, and I know that's a hotel and not a vacation rental, but I think this is a Hampton Inn most people have, especially in the United States, they've stayed in a Hampton Inn, right? So you know what I'm talking about when I say that. But the thing about a Hampton Inn that's interesting is like when my kids have baseball tournaments and we go wherever we go and we stay in a Hampton Inn, like we know what we're getting and we're not mad when we get there. We're not angry when we go to the Hampton Inn because it's what we thought it was. And I think that just shows you that at any level in vacation rentals, if you do a good job and you, you know, provide good service. This is like a clean, um, well-kept property, and you're providing good service. And maybe at the lower level, that just means you left two water bottles at the house for when they check in regular water bottles, and you left a note that's is like handwritten note. I mean, maybe it's as simple as just that, right? It's a welcoming note and a couple of water bottles, and you made sure that the linens are pulled tight, the towels are nicely folded. Like this could make a guest feel really happy. And it doesn't have to be huge concierge service. Like the this does work across all different levels or tiers, I think.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Well, I mean, you get me going, Rachel. I mean, I don't need to think about that. I mean, seriously, how many rentals I have when I'm arriving off for a busy day of work and I just want to stay in an apartment, arrive uh to get change, there's not even a water bottle in the fridge. It just sucks, right? It's just it, and I'm not by all means uh have expectations and luxury and everything else, and and and just you know, even staying at a at a it's just sucks. It's just it's just it's just bad, and not even having a water bottle, and it still happens today, and we're talking price points, three, four, five thousand bucks, you know, yeah for whatever length of stay, not even a water bottle and a and a welcome note. And and it doesn't matter who stays, uh, that needs to happen, right? So, I mean you and I could dwell on that forever. One thing I want to get back to very quickly for for an operator who never built that direct relationship, right? And and looking a little bit in the future and the crystal ball, what what in your opinion actually will get harder to defend over the next five years or three years in having that that direct shift while you've been around for a long time being able to build it and everything else?

SPEAKER_02 41:47

I think, I mean, I have concerns about like the AI and sort of the shift from search to like, you know, how with AI it's more of like itinerary creation. It's not the old version of search. So I do feel that we build some connection with our leads, like even before they're a guest, we're building some connection through how people find us online and how we're able to speak to them in our messaging, whether it's on our website or emails or whatever. And I we're doing a lot of work to prepare for this, like with this whole storytelling concept and whatever. Um, but I still have concern over how AI and people shifting from searching on Google and whatever onto searching through LLMs, how that will affect the way that we're able to message. I feel right now that there's positive, I see positive outcomes, but I'm not sure how that will change. So I think um just knowing that, you know, the world finds their travel generally through online tools. And when those tools are changing, to me, that feels like unstable ground. And I I could say, like, oh, I'm doing research and trying to stay on top of it, but I don't know that that's fully possible. I don't know how this will all shake out really. And so um, to me, there's that, there's the concept of um, yeah, I don't know exactly like how the shifting sands of moving from search to LLMs will affect how people find our products. And like I said, I'm doing work on this, but I still don't know if what we're doing will work. Um, and I also think that the way that LLM, LLMs work and the way that more and more people are going to be utilizing these kind of AI tools more and more in their life, will that change the way that people are more accustomed to talking to each other in a different way? And like, of course, I'm 48, I'm not like young. And so I feel like um, will I be able to stay on top of, you know, being able to message in the right like mannerisms of language that so that people will still hear us? Like right now, you know, the way that we talk to our guests and the way that we create our website and any of our um how we show ourselves online, like it works, right? It makes sense to people. But sometimes I wonder if everyone And we'll get used to like hearing it a different way, and how will we be able to keep up with that? Um, and maybe that's like a little metaphysical or whatever, but I don't know. I so those are some of my issues is like I feel like we have a voice within our company that we have consistently. Will it still work when people are so used to interacting with AI tools? Will the voice have to shift and will we be able to keep up with that is one of my big concerns.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

I'm sure you can. I think you're you're wide open to that and you're never too old to even look at that. I just, you know, I've learned to become an engineer and program and and built my own landing pages and and hooked them up with my CRM and things I'm doing that I've never even thought that.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Okay, well, you're ahead of me. Like I can I forget how to print to a PDF sometimes. So I uh I'm not joking. Like it's like my brain is disintegrating in terms of technology while everyone else is like shooting to the moon. I feel like I'm having to rely on a lot of other people because I'm starting to feel like I don't know what you're talking about, but like please someone say it in English to me. Um, so yeah, I think maybe that's just like a me thing, but it it feels like something that we're gonna have to really watch closely. Yeah, without a doubt.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Without a doubt. And so, so let's go a little bit deeper here and talk about differentiation for people who are listening out there. You know, differentiation isn't a price point. Uh it's being the operator uh a guest can't substitute, right? Yeah and I think that would be absolutely your your language to think about.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

It's connection. This is connection, right? Yeah. It is. Like I just wrote a book, it's coming out in November. I'm not trying to plug it, okay, but it's called Please Do Disturb. But it is a book um about connection. And to me, this is like the book came up because um someone had asked me uh, hey, this is a few years ago. They were like, hey, could you ever teach, would you ever do like a workshop with my team about hospitality? Because you guys, Abode does such great hospitality. And could you help me with my team? And I was like, oh my gosh, that's so nice. Like, thank you. And then I went back to my husband and I was like, How do we teach? What are we? Someone asked me to teach their team hospitality. I'm not sure if I know how we teach it. Like, I know we have our process and our SOPs and we have a lot of training in company culture, but we didn't have like some company hospitality training. And um, are you looking for unreasonable hospitality? The best book of okay, now what is that? It's show me what is that?

SPEAKER_00 46:25

It's it's excellent wins, which you know okay. I'm gonna look this up. This is Horace Schultz, eh? He's the ex of Ritz Carlton. And you know, I don't I have the other one as well, obviously. This one out. Okay this is so important to our industry, it is, Rachel, because when we relate to this, I I love this book. Uh okay, I'm gonna read it immediately. Explaining how Ritz Carlton dealt with that, and there's some incredible takeaways into that. But then we struggle as a short-term rental industry and say, hey, we're not the Ritz Carlton, we don't have that money, we don't deal with these types of guests if this is culture either. Which and and it's fantastic. It's it's all about culture. No matter if you do uh, you know, uh low end of the market, mid-market, or or or upper market type of products, you know, you can have, you know, I don't know, 500 properties in in uh standard properties in in Kissimmee, Florida, you probably make more money than than Rachel does in her three months uh dealing in the luxury market. So we need to be very careful. But but one thing um that we also need to be thinking about is that how we deal with guests and how we provide hospitality in short-term rental is significantly different than having you know 200 beds in one building to to provide that service. So I think it needs new books. We've read all the ones about incredible hospitality and excellent wins and everything else, but this is all about restaurants and hotels and things like that. We need to talk about it in short time.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

Well, okay, like because my disruption on this is like so when I did this thing where I was like, all right, what are we what are we doing for hospitality? We have these company culture consultants. Like I had them come in, I met with them, and we were like trying to figure out what is our hospitality framework. And what we realized is its connection with the guests, right? Like it's like, okay, like you breathe every day. You don't need someone to tell you how to breathe, right? But you know what breath work is, right? Like you can have a breath work coach, you can work with someone that helps you understand, you think about your breathing, you become more cognizant. Maybe you can use breath work to calm yourself or even to like maybe to find more creativity. You can use your breath, the thing you do all the time without thinking, and you can use it differently. And I think the same is with connection. Like we connect with humans all day long, and it depends. Like I'm connecting probably too much all day because I yammer a lot. And some people might be more introverted and maybe they're not connecting, but everyone's connecting on some level all day. So, but why do you need a book about connection or why do you need to talk about it? And to me, it's like if you can understand the mechanics of how human connection works, you can think through like these techniques to connect with other people on a little bit deeper level. If you understand that, just like if you understood breath work, you would start to utilize those techniques without even thinking, and you'd be able to help your team build connections, whether it's because of an issue that a guest has or it's just on the first interaction that they're having. Like, how do they, how is it not just having an interaction, but how do you take that to really connecting, right? Like to really show up, to really create space in that moment with you and that person, and then to create some sense of belonging. This is not really that hard, but it's not something that we talk about that much. And so if you were to take just a little bit of time to talk with your team about it, all of a sudden they're taking crazy, maybe potentially scary situations with a guest who's unhappy and maybe gonna leave a bad review. And they're able to turn that where the person leaves a review that says, we stayed at the house, we had this really bad night where the smoke alarm was going off and we were so annoyed. But we actually love the abode team because they snapped into action, they came right over and fixed it. And the next day they brought me a picnic basket that we took on a hike and blah, blah, blah. And so they're literally gonna tell a bad story about something that happened and leave you a five-star review and tell everyone about how shit happens. Sorry, but this was so great. And so to me, like this is what's possible for anyone at any level, and I think that is um, you know, that can be so, so important.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

Well, you and I, we could fill a lot more hours in touch. A lot of different points, Rachel. It's always great to have a conversation with you this time on the STR Global Unlock. Before we wrap the wrap this up, and as I said, you know, there's still so many other things. I'm definitely looking out for your book, and we can definitely promote that at a later stage as well, once it's out there. But we need a book coming out of our industry. We have seen uh books about technology and and other bits and pieces, but I think you know, now taking this industry to the next level, while a lot of our customers have been educated, they know what to expect in terms of short-term rentals as well. They come from uh hotel experiences and everything else. We need to lift our game on a constant basis. But you as a founder, together with Rob, you know, looking back a little bit and talking to our audience who are looking at growing and scaling businesses, what were like, tell me one of your biggest learning um that you've had within that period and maybe one uh of potentially one of your biggest mistakes that you made.

SPEAKER_02 51:26

One of our biggest mistakes is that we outsourced housekeeping as long as we did. Um, I know that might sound like so off topic after talking about.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

But absolutely. I mean, cleanliness is still the single biggest challenge of our industry.

SPEAKER_02 51:42

Well, we had amazing housekeeping and we had amazing results for years and years, and so but we were losing money on it for 15 years. And we just thought that's just what it was. We just had to because it's very expensive in our market. And we, I think we're also afraid to bring it in-house and try to deal with the complexities of that, which is funny that we have this pretty complex business where like we can't handle housekeeping. But this was a mindset that we had over many years, and we just we didn't break out of that box until just the last couple of years. And man, our housekeeping is even better than it used to be. We're not losing money on it. There's more control. It's it's a much better experience. The way that housekeeping fits into our processes now that it's internal. Um, that was a huge mistake that we made. And you know, I'm not, I would never say that the people we worked with on that, you know, that were outsourced, those people were great, and there was nothing bad about that. But it was more our own fault for not, uh, we were afraid. Actually, my thing is, you know what I've learned? All the decisions, almost all the decisions that you make out of fear as a business owner, are gonna be your mistakes. Like if you make a decision because of fear, it is generally gonna end up biting you in the ass. So I try to think about that a lot now. Like, while we make a decision, I try to kind of stop everything and be like, all right, are we doing this out of fear or is this like a conscious choice that we're making? Because sometimes it's hard to know, especially in the beginning when you have a younger business and you're just getting going. I'm pretty sure like 95% of what you're doing is because you're afraid, because of course you are. Like a small business could tumble at any moment. And so you're always trying to keep it alive. Um, so it's hard to know when you're acting out of fear uh when you know things are a little more tumultuous. But I think it's a great concept to try and pause and recognize when you are acting out of fear and then try to understand your decision and make sure that there's not maybe another option that maybe wouldn't be something that you're doing because of fear. Um that's a huge lesson I've learned. If it's out of fear, it's usually going to be one of those things that bites me in the ass like five to ten years down the road.

unknown 53:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Well, I couldn't see you, Rachel, having any fears at all, but yeah, right. A misperception. But anyway, um, just one last one. What are the biggest challenges that any operators um going forward in the next 24 months um need to consider or uh think about?

SPEAKER_02 54:08

I think things are expensive right now. And so, and um travel demand is slightly down. So I think across the board, um, you know, that's a scary feeling. Like after many years of lots of growth and high demand and just like almost like I would say, like a money gun to the face, right? Like it was just so much, you know, um upward motion growth and um increase in demand. And so that has changed, right? And I think that we have to watch for how long is it going to be like that, right? Like how long will we have um more of a like a little bit of a flattening of things? And, you know, how can we build our businesses to have really strong foundations so that we can get through times that are not going straight up and we can have that good stability to have longevity of a company through the down, you know, things are like this, they're gonna eventually come down. It's like we have to, you know, be able to build a business that can withstand that. And I think we don't know what the future holds like economically. And so I think that is a scary time for anyone in a business where you're talking about something that people spend their extra money on, right? So if people are gonna tighten their belt, that they're gonna, you know, maybe not do the extra things like travel. Now, we also know that like people are gonna rebound if they can't travel, and then they're gonna have a rebound and that could be helpful. But in the moment, it's like being able to, that's what we're focused on. We have been in the last few years of like really how can we stabilize the foundation of our business, whether it's through profitability or standards or processes and all of that, so that no matter what happens in an economy up or down, we're able to withstand that because it's not always gonna be the growth period. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:47

Well, Rachel, what I can say is that whenever you look for a day job, you can always join our advisory at my company. I have a day job because my language, uh, I love your perspective, and I want to thank you for spending time on the SCR Global Unblock podcast today and and and providing all the insights that you have gained while uh uh growing and in or building an incredible business. You are a uh a massive resource to our industry. I have we have massive respect for you and Rob, and it's always a great pleasure to see you and and I want to thank you for your contribution today.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

Thank you. Same to you, Ditto. I agree, I feel the same about you, and thank you so much for kind words and for inviting me. Um, I feel super honored that I got to do this with you. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

Ladies and gentlemen, this was STR Global Unlocked. I'm Simon Lehman. Uh today we had Rachel Olday, co-founder and co-owner of About Vacation Luxury Vacation Rentals. It was incredible to have her on the podcast today, and I'm looking forward to seeing you all at our next episode. This conversation with Rachel makes one thing clear. If guests remember the house, but not your company, you do not have a brand. Real differentiation comes from relationships, standards, service, and of course, trust. But the next question is how will the guest itself change in the years ahead? That is exactly what I discussed with Jamie Lane, chief economist at AirDNA. In the episode Hospitality Isn't Ready for the Future. We talked about AI, productivity, income, job shifts, and how these forces could reshape travel demand. So if you want to understand how AI could change not just hospitality, but the customer behind the booking, watch that episode.