Transcript: Episode 260: Kimchi Bathtub Party
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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor, episode 260. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/260.
[00:00:13] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast ride up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now, your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.
[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Annie Holcombe has spent her career refusing to pick a side in the hotel versus vacation rental debate, working her way through property management, Expedia during the HomeAway and Vrbo years, channel management, and business development for Marriott Homes and Villas. She is the founder of Annie & Co, where she coaches independent vacation rental operators on distribution and business development, and serves as a brand ambassador and US market consultant for Booking.com. She also sits on the Vacation Rental Management Association board and co-hosts Alex and Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals, a podcast that I have been on, and that is closing in on episode 300. Today, we are going to talk about the growing convergence between the hotel and vacation rental industries. But before we jump in, we need to answer the call button.
Call button rings…
The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at 850-404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Lena. Lena asks, "Would you stay in a short-term rental as a solo traveler? Do you think it's safe?" It may seem strange to you that this question is still coming up, but it comes up all the time on this show. So what do you think?
[00:02:14] Annie Holcombe: So I always answer questions like this with, "It depends." It depends where I'm going, it depends what I'm there for, and it depends where the location of the rental is. But I have stayed in a short-term rental on business by myself, so I can say yes, unequivocally, I would do it. But I think you have to do what's best for your own safety and your own comfort. So it's just a matter of individual preference, I think.
[00:02:40] Susan Barry: It's so funny. I am very much a vacation rental, short-term rental user on vacation. But when I'm traveling on business, there's something to me about the- I guess it's like the backup of being in a hotel where, if something goes wrong, or like I need to print something out, or make a photocopy, or my buttons fly off my outfit. Do you know? I just want there to be other people around for like a safety net of it all.
[00:03:06] Annie Holcombe: Yeah. I don't know. I have done both. And I do like the hotel restaurant, the hotel bar, like knowing that if you need something washed, you could get it done, like, certainly. If you're going for a conference, you wanna be at the hotel where everybody's at. But if you're just going into town and maybe you're there for a week to do sales calls, staying by yourself, you probably wanna, like, just have that space. So I don't know. Just, it depends.
[00:03:33] Susan Barry: You have worked practically every angle of the lodging world, from property management, you worked in a hotel, Expedia, channel management, now consulting. What is a job or maybe a project from earlier in your career that ended up shaping the way that you approach your work now?
[00:03:52] Annie Holcombe: I would have to say, I'd have to go back to my Expedia. And I would say that because when I got there, I went in with the notion of, okay, I was a property manager, you wanna grow in this space, you don't understand anything. And I always joke about the director that hired me. She'd do check-ins with me, and I said, "You know, there are hundreds of things that you just are doing wrong." And so she would check in with me. She goes, "Okay, we have that list. Are we like crossing off any of the items on it?" And so it gave me insight, one, I'd never worked for a large public company before. I'd never worked for somebody that had, like, just that many layers of operation and leadership. And so that taught me a lot about patience.
[00:04:36] Susan Barry: I feel like that's why I'm on earth, to learn patience.
[00:04:37] Annie Holcombe: Yeah. Learn patience. If I ever actually learn it and can own it, it might save me some frustration. But I learned a lot about patience, and I learned a lot about, like, how you navigate an ask or a need to get solved. Like, you have to get consensus from more people before you can go in and go, "Like, I have this idea, we have to do this," you know? You really have to get consensus. So it taught me a lot about that. I think what we're talking about today is that there are so many pieces of travel, and while they kind of run independently day to day, they do converge based on the guest traveler and preference and type and what they're doing. And so I think that it made me see the travel community as a larger community than just the vertical that I had been in for so long.
[00:05:26] Susan Barry: That's interesting. Well, I know a lot of people, including me, thought you should start your own company for a long time before you actually did it. What finally tipped the scales?
[00:05:37] Annie Holcombe: Honestly, I think it was my husband who said, "You know, you should probably, like, take all this information that you have, that you're giving to one company and, like, share it with other people and get paid for it," you know? And he's not a risk-taker. He's very Type A, detailed. I don't know if you know anything about Enneagram. He's an Enneagram 1. I'm a 9, so we're in the same triad, but completely different ways of handling things. He's very detail-oriented. I'm very ADD, like, I just go in and splay everything out there. So having him say that, because he's not a risk-taker, was like, "Okay, maybe I am missing something." And so I think that was the final kiss I needed to be on my way.
[00:06:14] Susan Barry: Well, and you guys had your own company before, right?
[00:06:17] Annie Holcombe: We had a management company. And so we were in property management with some other people, and so that didn't end well, and we always joke about it. I was talking to somebody last night. I was actually at a rebrand for a local 30A company, and we were talking about had that stuff not gone awry, we'd probably still be in property management because we loved what we did. I mean, it was great, like, meeting the people, and I would say it was always an honor to be part of people's vacations and dealing with guests. Everybody has to deal with people all the time, and so it's challenging. But yeah, we did that, and then we decided we were gonna buy shirts when we left that said, "Friends don't let friends buy condos." Because the market we were in was condos. But I would say, like, "Friends don't let friends buy short-term rentals" would be appropriate for the general consensus of the message.
[00:07:02] Susan Barry: That's hilarious. Well, between consulting, board work, podcasting, everything else on your plate, your company, how do you decide what gets your time and attention? Is it just the highest bidder?
[00:07:18] Annie Holcombe: No, I mean, honestly, I think that's what's really cool about it is because I am a shiny penny. Squirrels run by my window all the time, and I get distracted. It's good because when I start feeling like I'm getting bored with something, I can, like, pivot and work on another project. It's not the same thing every day. I really enjoy that. So I have enough diversity in kind of what I'm doing right now. Now, are there days when I feel like I'm hopping from one subject to another, like you're hopping from podcasting to independent business to consulting. Like, it's just all the things. Oh, I've got a board meeting smack dab in the middle of the day. Did I read the packet? You know, that kind of thing. So it's challenging, and I don't know that I've bought every type of planner, every type of anything you could buy to be organized, and I probably have a stack of, like, ones that got through like a month. I tried everything Zig Ziglar shared with us years ago. None of it worked, 'cause it doesn't stick with me. It just doesn't stick. So I love what I'm doing because I have the diversity in my day, and so the attention just depends on what's the most exciting at the moment. And sometimes boring stuff is exciting, 'cause I just need a break, you know?
[00:08:28] Susan Barry: Yes. I totally understand that. I will tell you that the greatest thing I ever did for… Maybe mental health isn't quite the right thing, but like verging on mental health in terms of work was to designate meeting days in my calendar where I only have meetings on certain days so that then I have whole days to do whatever needs to be done. The context switching between a meeting and then trying to execute work is incredibly difficult for me. So I just do all my meetings on one day, and then all my work on the next day, and that way I don't feel guilty all day.
[00:09:07] Annie Holcombe: Yeah. I had to do the same. My calendar has days that are blocked for very specific things. Now, does that mean that my day doesn't go all over the place? 100% no. But, yeah. But at least I know, getting up was like, "Okay, do I have to put makeup on today?" Do I have to look like I didn't crawl out of a hole? Like, what are the things that I have to do that take extra work? Like, that's where I need to make sure that I'm on task.
[00:09:32] Susan Barry: Absolutely, same. Hotels and vacation rentals used to feel like two completely different businesses. I think to some people they still are. But that line is blurring quicker than I probably would have imagined. We are seeing hotel brands dip a toe into vacation rentals while some of our own industry groups are still fighting to keep short-term rentals out of cities, which I think is weird. What do you make of that sort of convergence, but then the tension that's inherent in that crossing over?
[00:10:08] Annie Holcombe: So I've been saying this a lot lately. I feel like some of the hotel brands are talking out of both sides of their mouth. And I say that because they have to take care of their constituents, which are the franchises, and they know that they have to, like, appease those owners, and those owners are seeing that they might be losing ground in markets. New York is a great example. And so they put a lot of money into lobbying behind the scenes, but then they come out and go, "Oh, well, we now have a site where you can book vacation rentals," or, "Oh, we now have a whole vacation rental division." I mean, it's just like, why did it ever have to be that way? You just need to go to your constituents and say, "Look, this is going to complement what you're doing because these guests are going to stay with you when they're on business, and they're going to come back, and they're gonna stay in these properties when they're on vacation." There's gonna be some blur out. I mean, VRMA has our annual conference in Nashville this year, and there are people that are bringing large groups, some of the suppliers, large groups, and it's expensive to put 10, 15 people in a hotel that costs $300-400 a night. That's an expensive budget item. So what makes sense? Get them in a vacation rental. So would you rather they come to your community, go to your restaurants, go to your attractions, spend money that drives tax dollars into your destination, or just forego coming at all? And that's where I don't understand, but it goes to a larger conversation that's being had with a friend, Jen Barbi, about destinations and how destinations have, in some cases, just wholly ignored. And part of it is because you look at the makeup of their board, and the makeup of their board is all hoteliers, and it's not people who want to have vacation rentals, short-term rentals, at the table. Instead of saying, like, "Hey, we can all get along," they've blocked them out. And so I don't know why it has to be this way. I mean, I think it's the fear of the unknown. But I think at this point the consumer has clearly stated that they want this choice. So they're not going back. And so, the people can fight it all they want, but I don't know, short of people being able to get short-term rentals shut down everywhere. It's not going away. Vacation rentals have been around longer than hotels, I mean, if you really look at it. So I don't know. We'll see.
[00:12:26] Susan Barry: It's sort of like, look at this so that we can distract you from the myriad other problematic policies and unfair agreements and all that stuff. I know you have a vacation rental host friend who is turning, or maybe has already turned, a vintage roadside motel into a boutique property. This is my dream. I'm obsessed with this concept. What do you think traditional hotels can learn from sort of that scrappier side of the business?
[00:13:01] Annie Holcombe: I think, because vacation rental people, like hosts and these smaller operators, are used to doing all the things. Whereas if you buy a hotel, you build it, you buy a brand, someone comes in with brand standards and tells you, "Here's where you buy your FF&E, here's where you get this, here's where you get that." Everybody's doing everything for you. Now, you have to implement, and you have to execute, yeah, but somebody's setting all that up for you. Whereas a property manager is doing all of that customization every time they take on a property. They're going in, and they're sourcing their linens, they're sourcing furniture sometimes when they're setting it up. But, like, with this hotel thing, they're looking at it from a what does a vacation rental person want when they come to a property? They want a unique experience. They want everything to be somewhat custom, so it feels a little homey, but it's a little different. And the thing about hotels is they're all the same, same. And same, same is fine if that's all you want, but I think people are looking for something a little different. And so a vacation rental or short-term rental manager is thinking about everything from soup to nuts, whereas I think a hotelier doesn't have to think about a lot of those things because it's already been done for them.
[00:14:16] Susan Barry: I think you are uniquely qualified to answer this question, probably more so than anyone I know. And it is, are distribution and online travel agency relationships more alike or more different depending on which side of the lodging industry you are? I think this is something that hoteliers are not getting that Airbnb is an OTA, it's an online travel agency, and short-term rentals are distributed through hotel online travel agencies. I just think that that is a missing piece of information for a lot of hoteliers. I don't know, what do you think?
[00:15:00] Annie Holcombe: I mean, yes. I think that Airbnb's absolutely- And it's funny to me because I've been joking with people, saying, "Oh my gosh, they're taking on hotels." I mean, if you know any hotelier that's in a city that has suites in their properties, they've been listing on Airbnb under the radar for a really long time. Yes, they have. Like, this is not new.
[00:15:21] Susan Barry: There are whole companies that specialize in it.
[00:15:22] Annie Holcombe: Right. Right. And I would guarantee that there is definitely revenue people at some of the larger brands have had to slap some of their franchises for doing it when they get caught. You know, like, "You're not supposed to be doing this," but they've been doing it. So they understand there's a guest there that they could reach. And I don't really know, like, how to answer your question directly. I think that the OTA relationship is different because there's just so much nuance that has to happen with short-term rentals, from how you check in, because a lot of these have remote check-ins and key locks. And sometimes when you're renting some of these properties- My husband's working for Abode Luxury Rentals out in Park City. They've got Park City, Jackson Hole, and Sun Valley, so some are very luxurious. I mean, they're talking, like, 10, 20, 30 million-dollar homes. I mean, the way somebody rents that and how you service that guest is a lot different than somebody who's renting a $ 150-a-night condo. I mean, it's just a completely different market. So I think that the distribution relationship has to be deeper. And that's where I don't know that Airbnb is winning now because I think that they make so many choices consumer-facing, not business-facing, that tends to give them a black eye. But it is a different relationship than a hotel would have with an OTA by all means.
[00:16:47] Susan Barry: I think one of the things that stands out to me, I'd love for you to correct, check me on this, but branded hotels, at least, I think independents can do a little bit more finagling, are required in their agreements with online travel agencies to have rate parity. So they cannot offer a better rate on their website than they offer through Expedia or whatever. I don't think that's true for short-term rentals. I think you could have Susan's short-term rental website, and I can offer any price I want because I'm one unit. Like, how would you check me?
[00:17:22] Annie Holcombe: Yeah. So the parity clauses, I have not seen them where they've gone away, but I think the problem is the enforcement of it is really difficult because you're thinking about a lot of the way they check parity is sourcing reports and data. And data has to be mapped, and if your data's not mapped correctly, you're getting erroneous information. And so it's easy to map XYZ Hotel on Main Street than it is. Susan's Luxury Rental on Main Street on this channel, and Susan's really adorable bungalow. And so, like, being able to have different names on different channels, I mean, that sort of has always caused a problem, I think, for the OTAs to shop. And I also think they've finally come around to the fact that when you're talking short-term rentals, and this is where I think a lot of hoteliers don't understand, the margin for a short-term rental at the end of the day, what they get versus a hotel, is very different. Now, granted, they have to pay franchise fees if they're not independent and, like, a lot of that. But I mean, there are some markets where managers are getting 12% of net. And that's a really low percentage to be able to get. And so I think that when you start thinking about OTAs, they understand that people have to mark up because cleaning fees can't be baked in, because cleaning fees can vary by seasonality. They can be varied by, oh, this company decided all of a sudden that it costs X to clean a room. So you can't budget for that as well as you can when all the rooms are exactly the same. So I think that there are fees that come on with short-term rentals that are a hard cost, and so they have to mark those up, and then that elevates the price. So I think that all of those things come into play, where just for the OTAs, it becomes where it is worth trying to fight a battle to track one. Susan's bungalow being down for $10 is super incorrect. And you're not generating enough revenue for them to really put a lot of attention on it. Does that change maybe with AI and things that they could do? Who knows? But given the structure of finance within the short-term rental, that's a winning solution to try to do that. So we'll see.
[00:19:47] Susan Barry: That makes sense. Okay, what about this as a winning solution? There's an ongoing conversation about standards and consistency in the vacation rental world. I think especially compared to how hotel brands have built out tiers like luxury, upper upscale, upper mid-scale, economy, whatever. Where do you land on this debate? Should there be consistent standards?
[00:20:13] Annie Holcombe: Yeah, and it's funny because another gentleman that has a podcast, Adam Norco, I'm not sure if you know him, he's got a podcast on the short-term rental side. But he and I have been talking about it lately, and he's been in the business a long time. And when I was in property management, we had standards at our company. And it has to be done at the company level because there are no large-scale brands in the industry to be able to do it. Now, are there people trying to do it, and should there be a conversation? Absolutely. But I say this all the challenge that we have is that 75+% of our business in short-term rentals sits at less than, like, 25 units. Groups of 25 units, and a good chunk of them sit at less than five. So to go to somebody, to go to you, who's been marketing your adorable bungalow, who's very clean, and you've done all the right things, and you have a luxury bungalow. And for somebody to come in and tell you. That's not luxury because you don't have these linens or this kitchen type or you're never gonna agree to that. So can you do it with 25% and have those people buy into certain types of linens for their tiers or certain types of kitchens, you know? It is such a large conversation because you have to go to owners and make sure that the owners wanna do it. And I agree that a manager has to set those standards at their company level. But to be able to do it with a broad brush over the industry as a whole, I don't see it happening because we just don't have large brands leading the way that would find consensus with each other.
[00:21:41] Susan Barry: And isn't it sort of the opposite of what the purpose of short-term rentals is? Like, just be a hotel if you want everything to be the same.
[00:21:50] Annie Holcombe: Well, and the argument I think is that so people would know that when they rent a short-term rental, that they're getting quality, that if you're staying at, I think, Ashley Ching from Inhaven is doing a lot of work behind it, and I love it, and she's thinking, and she sources textiles and those types of things. So she can say, like, "This is this is where we could tier it out." But I think the challenge comes in as a property manager. I mean, I know for a fact, I mean, we had owners that had million-dollar properties, multimillion-dollar properties, but they still put their linens from Walmart in there. It's like they don't see it. They had their owner's closet where they had their Ballard stuff in there. All their luxury things in the closet that they would break out when they came into town. But I think it's just such a larger conversation than just going to a property manager and saying, and trying to mandate what is right because luxury in Panama City Beach, you know the market, and luxury on 30A is too different. And then you take 30A to Park City, Utah, like that's completely different, and the expectation of that customer is completely different.
[00:23:01] Susan Barry: The way that the hotel industry has dealt with that on the independent hotel side is to do rate tiers by market. So, like, in Panama City, you have five tiers of rates. The top 20% equals luxury. The next 20% equals upper upscale. You know what I mean?
[00:23:21] Annie Holcombe: And that's probably the easiest way to be able to do it because people see that. I think when you start to try to get into the nitty-gritty of it, if people can continue to get luxury rates on the luxury tier, and then they realize, "Oh, I gotta have luxury linens," and I think most large operators truly get that. It's just, how do you get this out to the masses? Because the industry is so fragmented. We don't have something like American Hotel Lodging, or you don't have the Asian Hotel Lodging Association. We don't have these large lodging groups within vacation rentals that can help do that. We basically have two associations for our segment, and neither one of them has reached 50% of the industry. I mean, there are just so many people out there that don't even know that this conversation is being had. And they're doing their own thing, and that's what makes vacation rentals and short-term rentals so charming is that they are all different. Now, do you wanna have clean? Do you wanna have safety? I think that those types of things should be absolutely standard. Safety to me has to be mandated at the municipal level. That should be something that I feel like you've got to have structure that says, like, "You have to have these certain things to be considered safe." Now, can you go back and make houses retrofit with sprinkler systems? No. I mean, you can't do that. But there are things like, again, having your fire extinguishers, having smoke alarms, having CO2 detectors. Like, those are things that you can tell people-
[00:24:46] Susan Barry: Not nailing the window shut.
[00:24:47] Annie Holcombe: Yeah, not nailing the window shut, not having bars on the windows, those types of things. But I think there's some that can be done. So I sit kind of in the middle of it. I see the benefit of it. I see that it's a conversation that needs to be had, but it's such a large one that, as Adam and I had talked about, like, we tried it 20 years ago, and it wasn't that it didn't work. It just didn't catch on, and it just became operationally so challenging that at the end of the day, it was like, "Is this a battle I really wanna fight?" Here's my linens. Here's my thing. I don't wanna spend a lot of time marketing on this aspect of it because nobody knows. The consumer doesn't know. And unless you have an Airbnb that's going to help enforce that, it's always gonna be rogue. I don't know. It's to be determined, I think.
[00:25:33] Susan Barry: Yeah. I mean, I feel like we could talk for another five hours about this. But I almost feel like the people from the consumer side, the traveler, who really cares about the fret of it all or the thread count, that kind of thing. They will find those properties. Nobody is, like, missing out on luxury properties because they aren't called luxury. If you know, you know, sort of.
[00:26:05] Annie Holcombe: Well, and that's just it. Like, the market sort of dictates that. I mean, you're not coming to Panama City Beach looking for luxury. Are you looking for upscale? Maybe, yeah. Your beachfront homes, absolutely, but you're not looking for high-end luxury butler service in Panama City Beach. You're just not. Now, to say that somebody can't offer that, no, absolutely, you can offer whatever you want. Somebody will take you up on it, but that's not why people come here, you know?
[00:26:26] Susan Barry: I mean, maybe somebody will take you up on it.
[00:26:28] Annie Holcombe: Yeah, I mean, I think there's probably one or two people.
[00:26:30] Susan Barry: If there were demand, it would probably exist.
[00:26:31] Annie Holcombe: Exactly. So yeah, to be determined.
[00:26:36] Susan Barry: This episode of Top Floor with Susan Barry is brought to you by Lodgify. If you run any kind of hospitality property and you're relying entirely on third-party platforms to fill it, you're giving away a cut of every single booking, and you don't own the guest relationship. Lodgify gives you your own direct booking website so guests can find and book your property. It's not complicated to set up. It looks professional, and every booking that comes through it is yours, with no commission going out the door to somebody else. They also have tools to manage your calendar, your guest messages, and your listings all in one place, which saves a ton of time. Top Floor listeners get 20% off on all one or two-year plans with the code TOPFLOOR20. Go to lodgify.com or the link in the show notes and use code TOPFLOOR20. We like to make sure that our listeners come away from every single episode of Top Floor with some specific things they can try, either in their businesses or in their travels. If you were coaching someone brand new to running rental properties, short-term rental, vacation rental, what is one piece of conventional wisdom you would tell them to ignore?
[00:28:01] Annie Holcombe: Oh, ignore. Gosh. I think that you have to be a certain. I think the word have to, I mean, separate from, like, the conversation about standards. The thing about short-term rentals and vacation rentals that is so great is that you can take the ideas and your creativity and you can bring them to life. So you don't have to do everything that everybody else is doing. You can be your own. It's just like being an artist. You can be your authentic self and put that into your business, and I think that too many people get lost in the, like, "I have to have this piece of software. I have to go to this show. I have to be on this OTA. I have to, I have to, I have to." And it's like, you don't. You only do what feels right to you, and I think that that's the nice thing about it. Nobody's handing you a manual that says, "This is the brand standard, and this is all the things you have to do." So yeah, just ignore people who tell you you have to do something.
[00:29:03] Susan Barry: Oh, I love that. Okay, what about a piece of good advice that you think every new rental manager should follow?
[00:29:10] Annie Holcombe: Get a mentor.
[00:29:12] Susan Barry: Ooh. How do you do that? Just like start dialing?
[00:29:17] Annie Holcombe: I think people that get into it, they've probably been watching, either on LinkedIn or Facebook or, maybe in their own market, they've been watching somebody that they admire. And they may have stayed someplace before that gave them that spark of like, "Oh, I need to do that." Call them and ask them. Say like, "Hey, I'm thinking..." And I will tell you that I would say 99.9% of the people in this business, if you called them and reached out and said, "This is what I'm trying to do," they would absolutely give you 10 minutes of their time to talk to you. And it could turn into a long-term friendship because it's a very giving industry. It's not "This is my piece of pie. Don't come over here and look at it." Like, people don't wanna do that. They wanna help everybody, and I think that's what I love about this business.
[00:29:57] Susan Barry: Well, we have reached the fortune telling portion of the show, so you're gonna predict the future, and I will let you know if you got it right. What is a prediction that you have about the future of the hotel and vacation rental convergence?
[00:30:15] Annie Holcombe: That there will be none of this us against them, and that we will be singing Kumbaya at every Municipal meeting in the future
[00:30:28] Susan Barry: Moving forward. Excellent. I hope that that's true. Maybe you need a magic wand for that one, but if you had a magic wand, what would you change about the way the lodging industry approaches standards?
[00:30:42] Annie Holcombe: Ooh, that's a tough one. Gosh, I don't even know that I could answer that. I don't know how to answer that one. That's almost impossible. That's a hard question. It's impossible.
[00:30:59] Susan Barry: It's impossible. I mean, to me, I don't know how to articulate this exactly, but I am very weary of 80% of the attention going to 20% or less. It's really like 13% of properties, by which I mean everyone talks about luxury constantly. Luxury should be this. Luxury should be that. This is true luxury. Hotels are getting it wrong by doing this or whatever. Brother, there are like around 13% of hotels in the United States that are luxury hotels. Where is the advice for everybody else? And probably the same is true on the vacation rental side, right?
[00:31:43] Annie Holcombe: Yeah. And I think that's true. They're actually looking at- somebody did a breakdown of that recently, and I can't remember what the specific subject was, but it was like how much revenue is derived within each segment, and like it actually kind of sits in those mid-tiers. And it might have been part of Ashley Ching's report. I think we're, we're living in a world where luxury is the dream. Luxury, everybody wants to go travel and stay at Ritz-Carltons and stay on their yachts and all of that all the time. I mean, I would love to do that as well. I mean, yes, I have had some really great sleeps at a Ritz-Carlton. Absolutely. But I've had some really great sleeps at a Courtyard too. So I think it's just a matter of really listening to what the consumer overall wants and not what the brand thinks that the consumer wants.
[00:32:33] Susan Barry: Okay, folks, before we tell Annie goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.
Elevator voice announces, “Going down.
[00:32:46] Susan Barry: Annie, what is a story you would only tell me on the loading dock?
[00:32:50] Annie Holcombe: So, in my hotel days, I worked at a beachfront resort, and you being from Florida, you know how dreadfully hot it gets in August. So it's hard to sell groups in August to come to the beach. So what we found was a lot of people would do their family reunions and come to the beach 'cause you get cheap rates and everybody could be together. And I was in a hotel group that had four hotels all together, 625 rooms, right on a boardwalk. And so we, we all had lots of, like military reunions, family reunions, and the like. And so a lot of chaos happening on weekends in August. And this one year we had a family reunion, and they were lovely. They were having all kinds of events, doing really cool stuff. They did artwork, and like they were just doing fun stuff that I think that the team got to notice. So we were always down checking their rooms out and stuff and just like seeing what they had, 'cause the rooms opened up onto the boardwalk. And one of the housekeepers had come to a meeting and was like, "This room, like, something smells really bad." And in the summer sometimes we have the seaweed that washes up on the beach. They're like, "Oh, it's probably the seaweed," 'cause it started to smell like, people say, like a dead body. Not a smell you forget. And then the people on either side started complaining about it too. They were part of the family reunion. So we thought, "Okay, this is really, really weird." No one had seen anybody come out of this room for a couple of days, so it was very concerning. So they finally got security, and they went into the room. Come to find out it was a room that nobody was actually staying in, and one of the gentlemen from the group had been making kimchi in the bathtub.
[00:34:19] Susan Barry: Oh, wow. Yeah. That is really something.
[00:34:26] Annie Holcombe: Disgusting on so many levels because somebody was gonna eat kimchi that had been in a bathtub and had a wretched smell.
[00:34:31] Susan Barry: Oh my goodness. So did the kimchi survive the discovery, or did it head for the dumpster?
[00:34:42] Annie Holcombe: No, I mean, it had to go to the dumpster, I mean, for multiple reasons. Obviously, the sanitary, and you can't knowingly allow people to eat stuff out of a bathtub. So yeah. That group was put on the do-not-book-again list for sure.
[00:34:58] Susan Barry: Interesting. Yeah. Well, good to know. Annie Holcombe, thank you so much for being here. I know that our listeners learned a lot about how the short-term rental business works, and I appreciate you riding with us to the top floor.
[00:35:11] Annie Holcombe: Thank you.
[00:35:13] Susan Barry: Thanks so much for listening. Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/260. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all-around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.
[00:35:48] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.