Hello everyone and welcome to Hospitality Marketing the podcast, I am your host Loren Gray and this is episode #234 where each week we spend around 20 to 30 minutes sharing the most interesting tools, news, and techniques being used in marketing for the hospitality industry. We also do a quick recap of our weekly Live Video show “This Week in Hospitality Marketing” which also airs every Friday at 11:30 am Eastern US Time.. SO let’s get started

00:01 — Our tool for review this week is Airdna.com

00:05— Our Technique this week is How to counter dynamic inventory in your market

00:14 — News and Show Review

CoHosts

Stephanie Smith

Kat Mohammad

Robert Cole

Show Notes

00:01 — HSMAI Marketing Conference Revie

00:15 — AAHOA conference

01:15 — Marriott signed record 815 hotel deals in 2019 / Hilton Opened More Than a Hotel a Day, Achieved 6.6 Percent Net Unit Growth, and Reached 6,110 Properties

01:54 — How to delete what Facebook knows about your life outside of Facebook

U.S. AirDNA STR Index: 2019 Year-End Report

   https://www.airdna.co/blog/us-airdna-str-index-2019-report

“All in all, the United States vacation rental market saw a 14.3-point slide in 2019 compared to a 2.48-point rise over the same period in 2018”

Remember — you can find us on Google Play / Apple iTunes / iHeart Radio / Soundcloud / Stitcher / Spotify / Pandora / Tunein / Pocket cast /  Breaker / ACast and the list goes on, 36 and counting to be exact. We’re even on Amazon’s Alexa. No matter which one you may use, if you like the show please rate us and leave a comment. That will help others find our content. Also if this is your first time hearing us, you can subscribe to our show on any of those 36 platforms as well. For an archive of all previous podcasts, you can go to hospitalitydigitalmarketing.com/podcasts and don’t forget our live video talk show that you can join and participate in every Friday at 11:30 Eastern US time, called “this week in hospitality marketing The live show”.  simply go to https://hdmagency.wpengine.com/live/  Thank You for the privilege of your time. Talk to you next week!

Hospitality Marketing Podcast Show 234 Transcripts — US English

 

Welcome to this week in Hospitality Marketing. The podcast show number 234 with your host, Loren Gray. Hello, everyone, and welcome to hospitality marketing the podcast. I’m your host, Loren Gray, and this is episode number 234. So, each week we spent around 20 to 30 minutes sharing the most interesting tools, news and techniques being used in marketing for the hospitality industry. We’ll do a quick recap of our weekly live video show that we simulcast to over 10,000 people in 20 countries each Friday called This Week in Hospitality Marketing the Live Show, which also airs every Friday at 11:30 a.m. Eastern US time so that let’s get started.

 

<<And now today’s new resource tool>>, so our tool for this week is really more of a platform, and it goes in line with a little bit of what we’ve been talking about for these past few weeks. As we enter into the New Year of 2020 which is our ability to analyze and look at our competitive sets, what they’re doing right, what they’re doing wrong, how they’re positioning themselves and what we can do in compensation to their strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses.

 

This week is literally a whole discussion about Airbnb. Now, why I say that is because certain markets at this time of year are in high demand, obviously, because of the seasonality of the weather shift in the North American region. And you have, of course, down here where I’m at in Florida, the snowbirds and everybody coming down from the colder climes of the North to enjoy the beautiful balmy whether we have done here. So that dynamic inventory that appears when demand increases is in full swing. Now Florida has been a no stranger to short term rentals v r, B owes and everything else.

 

And because of that, there are a lot of municipalities that have rules and guidelines as to the frequency that units can be rented out for short term rentals on the kind of counters, the complaints that some people have of the dynamic inventory in some markets. I don’t have the simulations where you get a lot of transient transitional people staying in houses in mainly residential areas that creates ah disturbance to the neighborhood and or it displaces the potential for short of for low rent or affordable rent locations because it’s more for more reasonable for the owner of the boat of the home to rent them seasonally and leave the vacant during the slow times than it is to rent them annually.

 

So then there’s other markets that are up north that, of course, this has shifted and is different where there is not that demand cycle, so there is not that much inventory to market. So is not such a strong competitors, but it is still a competitors because they’re still always inventory. There are people that literally have inventory that is purposely meant to be short to rental inventory. They’re called super hosts. And what have you that really just rent out their space better than doing it as an annual rental on they do affect our ability to revenue yield was Robert Cole is famous for saying that the dynamic inventory that Airbnb in V. R. B O and so forth represent is the bane of revenue managers, and it truly is.

 

Well, there’s a tool out there called Air d n A. Now this tool, if you haven’t heard of it or yeah, it, it takes all the data from Airbnb and uses. It presents it in a format for the community of Airbnb hosts to understand what they’re doing in the market. It’s kind of like there platform of revenue management, so to speak. They get to see what other Airbnb people are doing. Based on inventory types. It shows what the elasticity of the demand is. Elasticity of inventory. It talks about rate cycles, trends, cycles, lead times, restriction policies, a CE toe.

 

How many are doing what it demonstrates geographically, the locations in general. And we’ll give you an exact address, but in general of the locations and based on ZIP codes or regions or areas zones, depending on how it’s broken down for the city you’re looking at to give them a sense of what you could if you were a Airbnb host, rent your space for based on the inventory type of the location with the destination itself. This platform is really invaluable on revenue managers and strategists to look at what they are competing with both historically and trend wise.

 

So the tool again, the platform is called Air D N A. Literally spelled as it sounds, a. I R d n a dot com You have to buy. It will give you some general information for free. It’ll just give you an overview page that you could look at. But if you try to get into any depth, it’s gonna ask you to subscribe. Now you can subscribe to your entire city, which is usually around $99 a month. Oh, you can pick a neighborhood or zip code or how they segmented according again, to which city that you’re looking at and you can buy from anywhere from 1995 per zip code or $40 per zip code or region or two area Anyone.

 

How much did you want T. O to aggregate in your decision making process? So that is our tool for review. Air D N A. Now for this week’s hospitality technique, Okay, keeping with the theme of taking the tool and seeing what we would do with it. Our technique this week is based on how to counter dynamic inventory in your market. Obviously air BNB v r b o home away. These are all contributors to this dynamic inventory. This elastic the inventory to your market just as you begin to think you could begin thio rate yield your rate.

 

All of a sudden inventory gets infused into the market that keeps re of the rate down because they you can’t raise against what they’re already bringing to market lower. So it creates this frustration that just as you’re getting your Octopussy baseline and you’re beginning to get the smaller minds inventory available, you can’t really push you rate to maximum If there’s a tremendous amount of inventory in the market that you competing directly gives at that time, the techniques I like to talk to you about our what really you can learn from using the tool of their DNA.

 

And then what would you do in your marketing and revenue strategies to almost nullify Airbnb v. R B o home aways? Impact on your dynamic inventory to market? One of the first things that I look at when I look at their DNA is that it will tell you pretty much what you’re lead time is in market historically. Now it’s not a exact date number, but it does give you a number of days, and that shows you over a trend by month. It also shows you back what’s happening now by bookings, so you can see that what usually happens with Airbnb is because of its very nature of booking and because of the elongated communication process.

 

This is not the same night, same day purchase. For the most part, keeping in mind that hotel tonight has been acquired by Airbnb. So you know, that’s not always gonna be the case to say that. But most of the time likes with anything there is a lead time. Now that lead window Is that a window that you’re competing with him the most in? So don’t look at your seven or 14 or 21 day windows and saying, Oh my gosh, words, this inventory coming from so forth and so on.

 

What you’re really looking at is looking at our DNA and say, OK, what is my lead time to market for this time of year? For Airbnb, for home away for B R, B O, and usually runs within the 48 61 80 days, whatever, it’ll have be identified in the DNA information. So in that window for the dates that that applies to look, then also to historically the elasticity of the policies, the restrictiveness of the policies. Remember Airbnb will get its money regardless of whether you stay with that host or not.

 

If you’ve booked the penalty for cancellation is always there in extreme rare circumstances, usually tragedy driven. Will they waive those kind of things simply to go over and accommodate? So Airbnb will always get its pound of flesh, so to speak. And because of that, we as hoteliers have as a leverage point because we have a cancellation capability. Now, we ofcourse have our non cancellation policies for early bookings and so forth. Those still are an arbitrary decision for us to make us. We want to force them for whatever reason, we would want to not enforce them.

 

So knowing that you have this lead tongue is when you’re competing with the rate strategy of what Airbnb is doing in your market for those dates. If you are in the direct competitor first, have you got to call out all the McCoy that isn’t applicable in comparison to you? All of the one rooms here and attachment to a house or something. Try to go for the whole homes or the isolated ones where you get the whole event, the whole, the whole space, because that’s really equitable to what?

 

Your hotels. Now, if you have sweets or kitchenettes or your long term stay, you’re gonna increase your inventory types to consider that as well. So don’t take this as written in stone that there’s only one inventory you should compare yourself to. It’s compatible to the types of inventory that you have in your hotel. So when you do these comparisons and you do this lead time, you do this rate comparison of what you’re offering versus what they’re offering. You have to consider also what they’re coming in for for those dates.

 

Are you competing with an event driven activity, a business cycle based on demand of market? These air modifiers as to what your messaging will be compared to what Airbnb is trying to do, then also use. And this goes beyond the air D n a tool usage go into and actually selling up as an Airbnb user and go into the communities for Airbnb and see what’s being said about your market to those that are looking at Airbnb for things to do and things to discover and enjoy the destination information.

 

You will be surprised based on the fact that Airbnb has this large community of hosts who are constantly contributing as to why they you want to stay with them. In their market is a lot of one day stuff, a lot of off the beaten path, family adventures, romantic getaways, places to eat, cultural things, culinary things. All this information is just amazing. What a content you can literally take to use in your own marketing messaging. Obviously, it has to be applicable to your hotel as well. You’re not gonna like something on the far into the city just because you know it’s popular.

 

But I’m not even saying no to that, because in some ways that could be the desk, the discovery of the destination. And then they can be drawn to what other things you have to offer about your hotel in your market outside of that thing. That may have caught their eye, so I wouldn’t even technically discount that, but it would be a farther reach to do that. Then it would be for the things more eminent around your hotel. But looking at the community of Airbnb ing, see what it is that they say about themselves, then going back to the air DNA tool looking at the demand cycle compared to yours to see when you need to market from your feet or markets associated with those dates, you have your historical data feed of markets.

 

You know that people come from certain regions or certain countries at certain times of year. See what messaging is there. There’s other tools. We’ve talked on the podcast that you can actually go and look and see what ads are being served by people in those markets, what they’re paying for them, what the messaging is and what their offers are. And we’ve talked about this before. A spy flu. I spin on those platforms that can tell you what the the paid campaigns are. Some of your competitors then as all good hotel years to look at your concert and see how they compare to you, compared Airbnb for what you’re looking at from the air D n a tool and see if you are in that tier level that you’re wanting to be.

 

As with any good strategy with revenue management, you have your representation of your comp set. Are you on top of your constant in the middle of your come set on the bottom of your compass that when it comes to price strategy, are you looking for form or oven occupancy? A. TR? Are you looking at more of an occupancy for occupancy sake? And these are all variables to compare yourself to what Air Deena’s do remember Air Dean is talking about our Airbnb hotel homeless away v R B O. You have one person has one place they want to rent.

 

They want optimize their rent for that so they don’t have a strategy of the maximization of rate. You have lots of inventory, and you have lots of variations to what you can do. So you have lots of offers that can wrap around those efforts being made by those Airbnb, veer, BeOS and homeaway hosts in a way that gives you a spectrum. It also allows you because of your flexibility of cancellations. You’re glad your flexibility of membership allows you the flexibility of messaging that you can incentivize and offer value propositions that are basically limitation to the host.

 

Because unless you truly need the inventory type from an Airbnb, you have a large family coming in and we have hotel. You’re still haven’t figured out how to go over and sell connected rooms via the Web. From what platforms? As of yet, um, and they want the kitchen and they want everybody be in the same place. You’re not going to get those people. So don’t compare yourself to that inventory. Compare yourself to the inventory that is similar to the Victoria, the type they have, where it’s a single home, where it’s what we’re or 11 place that they could be compared against one room kind of thing.

 

So that was there, some of the strangest also no to that on. I found this out just recently, when there was a change in whether there was a new unexpected in one of our markets but massive social backlash to er, the hosts in Airbnb and V, R, B O and Home away. Because they were very much not can’t allowing people to cancel because it was a bad weather event. People couldn’t even get to the city, and if they went to the same, that would want to be in the city because it was snowed in, and so they want to cancel.

 

And if you looked at the strictness of policy in that market at the time, it was very strict, which is a benefit to us as hoteliers, and they wouldn’t go over and refund the people’s money, and they get very upset about them. That’s a great opportunity on your social platforms and with your guests that if they had the same experience a next time the thing hits, Don’t worry, you can cancel with us. We understand we wouldn’t want to be in the snow either. That kind of mentality, and that gives you a great tool in the future to really gain some ground with people that, like Tell me to your market have gone into the Airbnb side of things.

 

But now they realize it’s not all it’s cut out to be, and that may be staying at a hotel in your hotel is a better benefit than it is for them to go over and standing Airbnb. So there you have it. That is our technique this week. How to counter dynamic inventory in your market, have a short version now, this week’s hospitality news that you should know. Okay, so our last segment to their podcast. Today is news and show review, where we take a article, whether we discussed it in the live show or not.

 

Usually, I try to avoid ones we’ve discussed in the show, so we have a chance to dialogue with it a little more here on the podcast, in depth and also what we covered briefly in our live show today. Co host on the Live Show Today with Stephanie Smith recalled, will marketing Cat Mohammed with, uh, Ho. She’s director of education for them and Mr Robert Cole with Rock Cheetah. We had a roof on discussion. Stephanie, who was with us at the conference last week, wasn’t on our show last week.

 

So we got to catch up a little bit from her perception on what a lot of the HSM II’s marketing strategy conference that occurred in New York City Mayor Marquis along the Adrian’s, their award ceremony. She was also one of the presenters, and she covers a CZ her business handles. She has her own business doing this of brand what brand can do for you and filling the gaps between what brand office as a support system for hoteliers and hoteliers. exercising those options. She’s phenomenally excellent at it and highly recommend.

 

We also talked with Miss Cap Mohammed. She is right now in the depths of coordinating the whole Akane 2020 which is going to be in Orlando this year in April. It’s a massive now Ahhh or for those who don’t know is the Asian Association of Hotel Owners, um, of America and, uh, our association. And because of that, the ownership group and its several 1000 of them. And so she’s talking about all the different content that she’s dropping together. She was nice enough to ask me to moderate a panel for her as well.

 

And Lily Mockery. One of our other co hosts, will be on the panel with me, as a matter of fact. So it should be a very interesting dialogue about gathering revenue during downtimes, which, given times of current circumstances and concern, is a growing topic of interest, and we will be tackling it head on. We did talk briefly about a couple of items that Mr Robert Cole, who gives us a curating news list, um, if you want to sign up for his news list, which was originally exclusively to the board members and council members of HS Emmy I you can go to Bit Lee four slash hospitality update with Capital H Capital you and there you can sign up and get his curated list that he sends out very late on a Thursday night.

 

He waits till the last minute before he started printing the ink. Um, and it’s a really excellent breaks into categories, the categories he usually tries to hit. Our C has a top story brands and products into mediators and distribution, marketing, strategy, tech and finance that we do two things which is a book which is uplifting, happy thing that the industry is doing And a row, which is the I couldn’t imagine what you’re thinking of when you did that kind of thing, and he breaks it up quite nicely in his newsletter so highly recommend signing up a bit.

 

Lee forward slash hospitality update Capital H capture you on that, Um, the article for news that I wanted to hit was actually keeping with the theme of their DNA. Was the blogger from air DNA this month, which was the air d n A S T e R star index 2090 year end report. And the links, of course, will always be in our show notes. You’ll be able to go over and go to this report directly to see it as well. Very interesting did as to what they’re pointing out it can and can’t do some of things that they did highlight to the to the end of it was there was a profound drop in what it was contributing to this year from from asthma attack to quote that started this whole thing.

 

Market volatility, the new normal. And in it, they said, all in all, the United States vacation rental market saw a 14. 3 point slide in 2019 compared to a 2. 48 point rise over the same period in 2018. So there’s his ups and downs than they went in to start breaking some interesting things down. Some of the things that was pointing out is, as all statistics work is, there are cities that continued to grow and cities that continued to decline, and the cities that one month we’re hot the next month cold. We obviously know that those things happen because of seasonality, Sze destinations was based on driven events.

 

We know those air volatilities to it, but the interesting point that they pointed this year out was urban versus destination markets. For the first time in two years, city destinations by demand outpaced destination places by demand in the past since the past two years from two years now. And whether that trend continues or not is a question mark, obviously. But you have to consider with more hotels in the pipeline, MME. Or interests of certain markets cause of growth and a point directly to something like Nashville. If anybody has been to Nashville and has not been to national in a few years, you wouldn’t recognize the city it had.

 

If there’s if there’s 18 creams in the air, there’s 20 creams in the air they’re building persistently were used to be able to see the Batman building, so this people used to call it You have to look for it now. There’s so many other high rises neighborhoods that used to be places like Oh yeah, that’s on the edge of whatever is now in the middle of whatever they’ve done phenomenally well with their conference area. They’ve done phenomenal at the downtown development, the walkabout, the capability of everything that you can do in Nashville.

 

And it’s such a burgeoning state used to be a very tertiary conference market at best. Now, if I would put it up there in the caliber of what you would consider, the Las Vegas is the Chicago’s, the Orlando’s, the New York’s the Miamis. And things like that you would consider in comparison to is a great destination conference. That being said Airbnb smack in the middle of that. This is that less 60 of the inventory we talked about earlier in the show where as, of course, things drive that big conferences, events, no venues, business cycle, more activities for people to go to and enjoy and cost of flight tickets and so forth as the airport expands.

 

More people are saying, You know, honey, let’s go over and put that back room on Airbnb and let’s move money off it or you don’t want that that Brenda, let’s not rent it for the annual and let’s just rent it for the high times and there’s no real big rules and so forth, and that’s where you get this inventory coming in. That you’re competing against so urban versus destination compared to going to someplace. Ah, that is driven like the veils and the aspens and so forth, which is also harder of markets for Airbnb.

 

I shouldn’t use those examples because they have a relatively limited capability in their inventories. But Hawaii always remain strong. Go figure. And I know from having visited why, which is amazing, that there’s a real push back to Airbnb because it has taken away so much inventory for affordable rentals because people could make so much more money off of people using the Airbnb inventory for home. You know, temporary rental that they’re not willing to rent it annually. Which of course, would be less per month granted over a period year but recommended so much more per month and have 1/2 a bit empty for half a year.

 

Heaven empty and still have made more money renting it for the short time that they had. And in Hawaii, there’s not really half a year. It’s pretty much all year, so there he creates his own backlash to some things, anyway, so air. But this this whole conversation of how this up and down each market is different, really, adds the validity of using and being aware of your Airbnb v R B. Oh, um, homeaway inventory that you’re competing with in your market and using platforms like air DNA that can at least let you know what the trend and historic ALS when it comes to rates and demands and whether they’re being very strict on their rules and guidelines.

 

For instance, I have clients in San Antonio, and it’s so funny to see you with them in comparison to save New York City, where New York City there’s a in the air day near. You’ll see it with you if you look at the platform, they have this color bar as to how much is strict versus not strict. And in New York, there’s this really small piece of the very end this as not strict, and the rest of it’s just stripped like you know you want you and you buy a room or by an Airbnb in New York City, you’re paying for it.

 

You won’t get penalized if you try to cancel, and there’s a big old window that you have that you have. You can’t cancel very restrictive. Meanwhile, in San Antonio at this time of year, your basic book it and then cancel it the day before we leave, every day you’re gonna get there and the problem. Let’s ship, because there’s such a little demand points right now in San Antonio for some things that they can’t really enforce stricter rules because it just turns people away from doing them. So that kind of insight helps you determine your revenue strategy Plans when it comes to compare yourself to air DNA are two to Airbnb when it comes to, uh, the inventory.

 

So that article again, U. S Air Deanna Sorry index 2019 year import Great great highlight report. It doesn’t break it down too far chose you Some cities good and bad, up and down trends and so forth, but a great insight to just show you the overall perspective that Airbnb has on its 2019 compared its 2018. So there we have it. Remember you can find us on Google play apple iTunes I heart radio soundcloud Citrus Spotify to need. Heck, you can even ask Alexa and Google Assistant and Syria to play the latest edition of hospitality, marketing podcast and it will.

 

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Share with your friends if you’d like, and you can always go back and play all the podcast we’ve done by going to hospitality. Digital marketing dot com forward slash podcast Again you could describe, but we’re on 36 different platforms, so I don’t think there’s many that I’m not on the most, the ones. I’m not on the ones that pay a lot of money to be on, and it’s just not what necessary to be on that many of them after I’m already on 36 of them. And don’t forget our live video talk show, which is a lot of talking heads.

 

We do that. It’s a much longer show, and that is every Friday at 11 30. Eastern US time called This Week in Hospitality Marketing The Live show. And if you want to listen to this past week, show you can go to hospitality. Digital marketing dot com forward slash live Look for show number 234. There are, of course, links to all the current shows that have run this year so far, and then archive legs that go all the way back to 2014. We’ve been doing this for 60 years every week, not missing one, no matter where in the world I was on what time zone, which was always the fun part to it all on Deacon, listen to those great insights.

 

Then, of course, on the both the pages, you will see not only the replay of this podcast, that ability to play this podcast, but also all my show notes and transcriptions of exactly word for word what I’ve said in both English, Spanish and German, I will be adding more languages as I get more efficient and making the translations happen but you can if you want to read through or look for any of those they’re there as well. And for the hospitality marketing live Show at you, go to Again Hospital.

 

Did your marking dot com forward slash live When you open up the tab for Show to 34 which is this week’s you can then go over and see all the links to all the news articles that Robert curated The list with that I told you subscribe to as well is also the minute log as to when we talked about what topics we did for the two hour show that we talk back and forth on so all of that’s there for you. If you’d like to join our live video show next week, you simply go to Bentley Ford slash h d m show to 35.

 

That’s B I t dot L y ford slash h d m live show to 35 of course the podcast. We will be pumping that back out to all the 36 counting platforms that were on, so thank you, as always for the privilege of your time. And I sincerely look forward to talking to you next week. You have been listening to this week in Hospitality Marketing, The Podcast show 234 brought to you by Hospitality Digital Marketing in support of the HSM II, the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association. International rights reserved copyright 2020.