Optimizing Your STR To Achieve Financial Freedom

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Transcript from the Episode

[00:00:00] Mark: All right everybody. Welcome back to another very special episode of the Boostly podcast. My name is Mark Simpson, Given host all over the world, the tools, the tactics, the training, and the confidence to increase your dire pocket. And we've got round two coming up of Pitch Your PMs. So if anybody watched the first edition, you know, it was a big success.

[00:00:21] We had a ton of fun. Um, we were able to have everybody, uh, from different property management software providers come in five minute pitch followed by questions. So today we're back for number two. Now, today we've got Zeevou, we've got Lodgify, we've got Owner Rez, Eviivo, and Hostaway. And what we're gonna do, we're gonna get straight into it.

[00:00:43] Na'im: Hi everyone, nice to meet you. For those of you that haven't met before, some familiar names and faces. Um, so yes, we do our PMs. Um, at Sibu we also have a channel manager. We have direct booking engine, which integrates the Boosty websites, as many of you might know. Um, and we also [00:01:00] have various other tools built in.

[00:01:01] Um, I don't really want this to be a pitch of exactly what we offer. If you guys want to go into that, then feel free to book a demo, um, with us, and we'd be having to talk you through everything in detail. I can't squeeze that into five minutes, but maybe I can tell you a bit about what we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it.

[00:01:19] So I started off myself, um, running service departments and holidays and managing a couple of guest houses across, um, uh, Cambridge to start with in the next Oxford and so on. And as we were expanding, I faced a number of challenges, uh, operationally, um, for various systems and processes that we had that were inside working out, such as, for example, cleaners forgot to show up or wouldn't do a good job, and then the guests would arrive and VO was a complete mess.

[00:01:47] Or, um, you know, we did meeting greets for checking guests in and the. The person who was meant to check people in was stuck with a previous guest at another property. And then you had someone waiting outside in the rain [00:02:00] for now trying to get in. And the reason we needed to do that is cuz we needed to do a chip and pin transaction to check that the card was true and we wouldn't get a charge back and get the secure deposit.

[00:02:09] Then we'd have a slip and we'd have to send that slip off our finance team and they'd have to check on checkout date, um, with the housekeepers, have they been in damage or not. And then manually release that deposit. And then as you can imagine, people would forget to do parts process and you'd end up having sorts of complaints.

[00:02:25] So that stage I decided to put business and start developing software. Um, so, uh, that evolved into a piece of software that we started using ourselves. And then I realized that there was so much potential behind trying to work with other operators in the industry to try and build a tool which would benefit us, or where we could combine all our resources together.

[00:02:49] Um, and solve, uh, develop solutions that would directly address the challenges that we face day to day in the running of our business. So we tried various different [00:03:00] softwares before we started developing zebo. Unfortunately, a lot of them didn't quite deliver on what it said on the box, or they developed some solution that sort of picked the box, but it didn't quite correspond to what we really needed.

[00:03:12] Um, and so ZE has really developed into community software is one of the things that we offer. We also offer very, very good support and training. Um, and those are the three pillars of the community at Sibu. Um, so we have developed various tools to help automate aspects of business, um, and we continue to develop it.

[00:03:32] One of the problems that we also previously had was that, um, we didn't find a lot of collaboration on behalf of the, uh, companies that we were working with. So we had, uh, problems that we would encounter or, uh, additions that we needed in the software that were available. And instead of them working with us and taking feedback on board and developing them, we kept being told that you have to change the way in which you do business.

[00:03:54] Which for me as a customer wasn't really that great. So, um, I think that's just a quick [00:04:00] overview. Are we doing question answers now, Mark at the end? Or having on to work?

[00:04:04] Mark: Well, um, we can do it at any point. We're gonna come up to the end of the five minutes very soon. Is there anything quickly you wanna show or just anything you you're working on at Zeevou or any sort of numbers or stats or anything?

[00:04:15] Um,

[00:04:16] Na'im: sure. I mean, I can quickly, Oops. Not a page. Another one maybe, Um, I can show you, um, what we have, uh, we currently working on developing, uh, um, we've just released a new process for check-ins and confirming bookings, which includes a built in digital signature platform. Um, much better integrations with strive and other payment gateways.

[00:04:38] Um, we have a whole host of, um, integrations. Um, with people like PiLab and Beyond pricing for pricing Key for Key Exchange, um, uh, Pero or, um, remote log for automated, uh, Log Solutions zero for accounting. Um, we have integration with, [00:05:00] um, uh, Google, even on our prepa. Um, so we, we send price rates and availability out for direct puttings to the booking engine, um, to anyone that's on.

[00:05:12] And, uh, as you'll see, our feature list is close to endless. Um, that's why I said I won't pour all the details off. We are

[00:05:21] Mark: here. We are here. We are back. We are back. So we have just lost name NA's Video has cut out, so we're gonna stop NA's video. While we're getting NA back, if anybody's got any questions at all regarding, um, Zeevou, regarding, uh, anything like that, please, please, please let us know.

[00:05:38] Put it in the, in the chat box. Uh, if we can't get Naim back, then we will send them through to him and then he'll record a little video and then power of the editing of the podcast. We'll get it in at the end. So, um, this is the Boostly podcast obviously. Thank you very much for tuning in. Uh, we've just had Zeevou, uh, come on board.

[00:05:57] So next we're gonna go on to Lodgify. [00:06:00] And, uh, we got the amazing Rebecca from Lodgify is going to come up. Uh, Rebecca, I've just given you, um, co-host ability, so can you just please unmute your microphone and just say hello for a quick second. Hello. Hello. Okay, so, uh, thank you very much for joining us. Yes, Michelle, I'm just gonna mute yourself, right?

[00:06:21] So name, uh, stick around if you want. Um, and then at the end you can always come back and answer any questions. So, Lod uh, Rebecca, thank you very much for doing this. First and foremost, do we have any Loy customers or clients in the chat? Please say hi. Uh, and then Rebecca, if you could do the same as this, what Na just did, could you just give a super quick breakdown of Lod Gify and yourself?

[00:06:43] And then what we'll do is we'll begin your, your five minutes, have one minute intro, and then we'll kick into, um, the rest.

[00:06:50] Rebecca: Sure, Of course. Hi everybody. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Um, so my name's Rebecca. I'm the Senior sales manager at [00:07:00] Lodgify. I've been here just over a year and a half. Um, I'm gonna share my screen and then I can talk about how Lod Defy is working and go from there.

[00:07:12] Um, can everyone see my screen ok? You are. Perfect. Okay, great. So, um, lod, so we are, uh, and you are all in one vacation rental software. Uh, we cater for really your single property owners, uh, people that are on, um, want to have all their channels combined into one place and, um, improve their, like start taking direct bookings, um, to build a website up to your property managers, um, up to 10, 20 30.

[00:07:46] And, and then some property man, uh, properties. So, as I mentioned, uh, One second. Sorry. Okay, so I'm the senior sales manager. Um, let's look at LOD Fire. A quick glance. So we were founded in [00:08:00] 2012. We're 10 years in, uh, celebrating 10 years this year, which is very exciting. We have rapidly grown over the last 10 years, uh, with 180, uh, employees.

[00:08:10] We support and speak over seven languages. So we are really catering, uh, for a lot of the European, uh, and outside. Um, obviously like huge, uh, US as well. And we have thousands of customers, over 98 countries and we are growing. Um, so our mission is to empower any host, um, for any lodging business worldwide, uh, to get started and to grow their business through technology.

[00:08:37] So how do they do that? We have an all in one platform. So we have a channel manager, we have property management system, and where you can, uh, connect an external website or build a website, uh, with us as well. The idea is, as I mentioned about your single property owners, uh, they wanna be able to have a website to increase revenue, not [00:09:00] pay any commissions to the, to the channels.

[00:09:03] Uh, we have a very, uh, easy website builder and then obviously they can connect all their channel man, uh, all their channels in one place as well. So we offer a step by step guide. Um, to get your website up and running. Um, it's really can be done in minutes. This is not what you, you actually can do that.

[00:09:22] Uh, we've got customized, uh, templates as well. We offer you a domain as well, or you can connect an external one. It's mobile friendly. Of course. Everyone these days, um, is always on their phone and wants to be able to, um, to book, um, hotels at, you know, at their fingertips. And it's specifically designed for, um, optimizing for search engine as well.

[00:09:44] So, uh, for your vacation rental as well. For your bigger property managers that probably, or even owners that probably have their own website as well. Um, we often external booking widget, uh, which is compatible with a lot of different websites. Um, [00:10:00] And you can also, so turning your existing website, a lot of people we find have WordPress, Squarespace websites that are not able to take direct booking.

[00:10:08] So we integrate, Um, we've got two different calendar, two different booking widgets, sorry, that you can integrate, um, to be able to view dates easily to show the properties that are available or your simple book now button as well. The payments and everything will be just, um, the same way as if they're building a website with us.

[00:10:28] So we use various amounts of payment gateways, um, and it will connect through to your channel manager as well. So, um, we've got lots of options, as I mentioned with different payment gateways. You can also set up, uh, refunds as well. Um, your automatic receipts, you can do damage deposits, uh, which is a big one as well.

[00:10:48] And you've got like complete control over everything as well. Sorry. Um, Okay. And then that'll link into your channel manager. So we are obviously are working with the main [00:11:00] four. Um, we've, we've got both API and I connections, depending on the different channels that you're working with. You can have everything managed in one place.

[00:11:11] I keep doing that. Mm-hmm. , um, sorry, and then your go. Uh, so something that's very exciting coming up is the Google, Google Vacation Rentals. Um, so this is a really, really big one, and this is a really exciting launch for us, uh, which is coming later this month. Uh, it's gonna help, um, property owners, um, or, or single owners as well.

[00:11:33] Um, take more direct bookings. There's zero commissions, so you are really having your website advertised on the Google vacation rental. So this is really exciting as well. It will help you increase revenue. It's gonna outran, obviously all your typical Airbnb, vbo booking.com, and you'll have your customers automatically redirected to your website as well.

[00:11:56] So amazing exposure. [00:12:00] We offer the chance to have obviously all your guest messaging. So all in one place, we're across the different channels. You've also got WhatsApp and sms. You customized, uh, and saved replies, templates, and then you can move over to the property management side for your tasks and your team management, being able to add different team members, set different permissions, add them to different rentals.

[00:12:22] Um, you've got your automated tools there as well, um, that are connected to bookings and also manual, uh, tasks that you can create. You've got an owner's portal as well to be able to give your owners access to block their own calendar to really have free reign on their property as well. Um, catering for both sides, um, as well.

[00:12:41] And then we've got accounting, uh, needs taken care. Your mobile app, obviously. Uh, this is again, a new feature of lod file where you can lod where you can really manage everything from one place. Uh, talk to your guests, manage your reservations. Uh, everything that you can do on desktop is, uh, with the ability to do it on the [00:13:00] phone.

[00:13:00] Of course, Lod Gify has two other apps as well. So we've got, um, the guest portal where you can set up, um, a rental guide for each property settings, and you pre-check in information and have everything for your guests to be able to click through an app. And then you've got your property management side with the modules where you can have all your cleaners, um, maintenance gardeners, et cetera, and all the tasks as well.

[00:13:24] So really separated apps to make your life easier. Our marketplace has rapidly expanded as well, which is very exciting over the last few months. And, um, what is the marketplace? So it's an integrated tool to help you automate your business, okay? And this is something that we need to, we advise our customers to keep an eye on as well, because we're gonna have a lot more integrations.

[00:13:48] Uh, we're building up our marketplace, um, for insurance Smart Locks. Uh, you've got your check in to obviously approve your guests. Um, we have smart pricing tools as well. [00:14:00] Um, and yeah, lots of different ones as well. So how do you get started with codifying? So obviously we have your typical seven day free trial as well, but we also offer a personalized one to one demo.

[00:14:13] Why is this important? Because, as I said, as we're catering for such a wide spectrum, Of customers, we really wanna ensure that we understand your needs. We really wanna understand how you are managing your business, how you want to take your business to the next level, what features that are really important for you.

[00:14:30] So we encourage that you have a one-to-one demo with our sales team, and once you decide, they'll also advise you on the pricing that fits as well. We have different subscriptions that suit different needs. And then once you decide to use lod Gify, we offer you, um, personalized onboarding as well. Um, we really ensure that you have good training on our platform.

[00:14:51] This is all included in the price. We don't charge. Additionally for this, for our bigger property managers, our bigger customers, we offer also the account [00:15:00] management side where they can really have, um, somebody helping them take care of their, their account. For the, for the first initial few months, we have lots of, uh, resources to download.

[00:15:11] And then after that we've got 24 hours a day, um, five days a week support by phone and also on Saturday and Sunday your typical business hours as well. So we encourage you to, um, to contact us. As I said, you can start a free trial. You can also reach out to any of the sales team. They'd be happy to go through and show you the platform in a visual demo sharing screen.

[00:15:34] And feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or need any further information.

[00:15:38] Mark: Well done. Thank you very much. So we do have some questions. So the first question came in about the app. What makes the LOD app different is the, is the question why, What makes it different than, uh, any other sort of standard PMs app?

[00:15:56] What are you trying to achieve with it? Or is it just basically getting that desktop [00:16:00] experience onto a mobile phone?

[00:16:02] Rebecca: Yes, I mean our app, to be brutally honest, our app, um, was quite outdated. So this was a really important feature for us. As we grow our, uh, our customer base. We, uh, we grow our property managers, uh, clientele as well.

[00:16:16] We know everybody's out and about. Everybody has a smartphone. Um, people wanna be able to message their guests. They want that personalized experience from their guests. And this is something that we couldn't do before. So this is something that we can now do. Everyone can manage their lod defy account from their smartphone and they can change pricing, they can upload listings, they can really manage their calendar.

[00:16:38] They've brought a color coordinated calendar as well. So yeah, it's really, um, being able to be, let's say, in this, um, day and age and have everything at your

[00:16:47] Mark: fingertips. Nice. Thank you very much. Um, so a question came in. Can we, lod, can you verify guest ID so they can just sign a contract within the app?

[00:16:59] Rebecca: They can, they [00:17:00] have to use an external app, um, like integration with checkin. Um, is, this is more for, uh, European, um, but they can verify their guests as well through this. So they would, um, we are happy to, to explain in more detail. They can contact one of the sales and they'll go through and explain how, how checkin is working and checking is not just doing this as well.

[00:17:21] It has a lot of different, uh, features as well.

[00:17:24] Mark: Good. And the final question, uh, from Mr. Anthony is, do you offer plans that are not a percentage based? So do you offer like a set, say, I dunno, like a hundred, a hundred euro month, hundred dollar a month, or is it all percentage based? That depends on how many bookings.

[00:17:43] Rebecca: No. So we, we have two plans, which are percentage based. We offer, like, we offer a free subscription, which is percentage based. Obviously it's a higher percentage. Um, then we have our starter, um, again, it's percentage based, but you do pay us monthly or yearly subscription. Our [00:18:00] professional or that ultimate plan are zero booking fees.

[00:18:03] Um, but these are obviously higher subscription because you have more features. Again, depending on what your needs are, it's also depending on the amount of revenue that you're taking from the property. This is really important because often people will see, ah, it's, uh, it's commission based, uh, plan. But if you are taking like really more than 10,000, 20,000 a year from those properties, you're gonna end up paying more in fees.

[00:18:24] So this is. Why we encourage you to speak to one of our sales reps to understand your needs, what you're doing with your business, how you wanna take it to the next level, and then we can advise you also on the best pricing as well. If we don't think you need the higher end subscription, we won't sell you it.

[00:18:39] You know, it's about really mirroring and making sure that lod Defier is fitting your needs. Perfectly

[00:18:45] Mark: lovely. And final two questions. Customer service. So how is the easiest way to get into customer service? Is it a phone number or is it live chat? Um, what's your customer service like? Basically that's what we're.

[00:18:58] So we have,

[00:18:59] Rebecca: uh, if [00:19:00] you have the, like a higher end subscription, they have a chat feature as well inside the app. Um, and also we have a phone number, um, that they can reach as well. So if it's, if they are on a subscription base, like a free subscription, then um, we don't have that level of support. So that's also what we offer in the higher subscription base.

[00:19:19] But yes, we have a phone number that they

[00:19:20] can

[00:19:20] reach.

[00:19:21] Mark: Lovely. And the final one is, do you have Super Hog for your verification? We do partnership marketplace.

[00:19:28] Rebecca: Lovely. Yes, I do. We do. I forgot to mention it, but we do. Yeah.

[00:19:31] Mark: Lovely. Well, well done, well done. I will. Thank you. Uh, let you go back down into the audience.

[00:19:36] That was really well done. Can everybody please say thank you, uh, to Rebecca in the, the chat and, um, if anybody just wanna reach out the details, I'm sure Rebecca will put into the, the, um, the zoom chat and we'll also get up all the links as well. All right. Thank you very much. Uh, nine. We'll give you another go at the end cuz your wifi managed to cut out for you, so don't you worry there.

[00:19:58] All right, next up. That was really good. [00:20:00] Well done Lodgify. Well done Rebecca. Um, I am being very lenient with the time. I'm not gonna be as strict as a proper dragon den, but here we go. So Glen, you are up next. Uh, I've made your co-host and I'm gonna get you on the camera. There we go. This is going smoothly now.

[00:20:15] So Glen, thank you very much. How are we?

[00:20:18] Glen: Doing wonderful. How are you guys?

[00:20:20] Mark: Where are you tuning in from? Uh,

[00:20:22] Glen: Atlanta, Georgia.

[00:20:23] Mark: Atlanta, Georgia. And what's that signed? Is that football behind you? Martial Arts.

[00:20:28] Glen: Oh, volleyball.

[00:20:29] Mark: Volleyball. Look at that. Well done. What, what's the story behind that?

[00:20:33] Glen: Uh, I coach volleyball, so coach volleyball award from last season.

[00:20:37] So wanted to put

[00:20:38] it up on the wall.

[00:20:39] Mark: Nice. Good work. Okay, so you've got full screen sharing ability. Uh, I've got a timer set for five minutes, but I'm, I'm a bit lenient this evening, so I'll let you go a little bit over. So, sir, when you are ready, um, away you go. Introduce yourself, introduce Owner Rez and the floor is yours.

[00:20:56] And if there's any Owner Rez clients in the chat, please make [00:21:00] yourself known, uh, and just say owner as if you've got any questions. Thank you.

[00:21:03] Glen: All right. Thank you very much and, uh, appreciate you having us out here today. Uh, Glenn Ruggiero, I'm the client Engagement manager at Owner Rez. So, um, we put a lot of stress on the importance of the, uh, engagement with our clients, and that's anywhere from answering questions about sales or support, doing webinars, coming out and doing these podcasts with folks like you.

[00:21:23] So, uh, anything that has to deal with interacting with our, our clients. Um, going into our presentation, uh, lemme go ahead and share the screen here. So one is, is a property management and a, a channel manager system, uh, in one. And, uh, for some reason my. Size are not working. Are you guys seeing my

[00:21:44] AJ: screen

[00:21:44] Mark: here?

[00:21:44] I can see your screen. You may have to go back into the ne today, sort of outer screen mode. Oh, see, There we go.

[00:21:51] Glen: There it is. All right. So, uh, so we're a channel management system, as I mentioned. So we make the direct connections to all the OTAs or the online travel [00:22:00] agencies. Uh, so we don't work through a third party for that, which gives a lot more control to not only, uh, you managing your properties, but also to our engineers, uh, on working on different things within those connections.

[00:22:11] Uh, our whole goal as a PMs system is to streamline your business as much as possible. A lot of folks think that when they use a PMs system that they're setting up a property just like if they go onto Airbnb or vrbo. But a PMs system is much more robust, robust than that. It's actually setting up your business practices and how you want, interact with your, uh, clients and setting up your properties and a lot of your rules and how you handle financial things.

[00:22:36] So it's a, they're very robust systems and, uh, very detailed to run your business. Um, one of the greatest assets of it, in addition to connecting with the OTAs is all the different channel integrations you can, or, uh, third party integrations you can do, uh, the pricing companies, um, any kind of company that does locks or housekeeping.

[00:22:55] We focus mainly on managing your properties and your [00:23:00] channels and your business. When it comes to any of the ancillary, um, integrations, we wanna partner with all the best of breed out there. So, What they do as their business is what we can connect with. Instead of trying to put that into our software itself.

[00:23:13] Uh, we do offer a property management, uh, module as an add-on, and that's for the property managers that are working on behalf of other owners. And this is great because it'll help run all of your owner statements each month. It has portal access, so you can give your cleaners, your owners, anybody you want access into different parts of the system.

[00:23:32] And it's all rule based, so you can give them as little or as much. And with the owners, one of the greatest features is they can go in there and actually block off their owner time. So they're not calling the PM saying when they wanna go and visit. Um, they can go there and make any kind of adjustments to that, that they want.

[00:23:47] We also have very robust reporting features. So, uh, just about any piece of data that's within our system, we give the ability to export into, uh, various formats and then you can slice and dice those numbers however you want within [00:24:00] your spreadsheets. Um, on the accounting side, we have all those numbers in the reporting, but in addition, we've got a QuickBooks add on where you can connect our system to your QuickBooks online account.

[00:24:10] And that gives you the ability to push all of your numbers into QuickBooks. So you run your owner statement, you know exactly what you owe the owner each month, and then it pushes into QuickBooks so you know what you have to pay. Uh, from a website standpoint, we have a bunch of different options that I'll go into a little bit later.

[00:24:26] Um, and then messaging and our crm, we collect all the data from all of your reservations and store that in the system. You can then download that and upload it to any of the third party marketing programs. And then you can also message your guests from within our system or create templates and triggers to go out for any kind of automated stuff that you wanna communicate with your guests about.

[00:24:48] Now when it comes to some of the, uh, great things that we have out there for, uh, third parties, uh, one is that we're an elite partner with vrbo, which is the highest level you can obtain. Uh, last year we got it for the first [00:25:00] time and we were the quickest PMs to reach that level, and we were only one of seven, uh, that had that designation.

[00:25:05] This year, we, uh, received it again and we're only one of nine. So, um, if you're looking for other software, go and check out and see what the relationship is with the different PMs systems and, uh, it can help you maybe make some of your decisions that are, are tough decisions with, uh, Airbnb. We're preferred software, which is the highest level with that, and you can see down below for our support, which is huge whenever you're using uh, uh, online software.

[00:25:27] Uh, we've got a lot of awards out there for our customer support. I know somebody was asking earlier about pricing. Uh, our pricing model is a per property pricing, and if you go to owner reservations.com/pricing, you just put in the number of properties you have. If you want any of the four add-on modules down below, you just click the include button and it'll tell you exactly what your subscription fee is gonna be each month.

[00:25:51] So we don't have any kind of per um, percentage that we charged on your properties. This is just an example of the booking, uh, [00:26:00] calendar view. And this is our ribbon view. If you notice in the top right we have, um, those four or five items, um, circled. You can have different views depending on what information you wanna see every time you go into the system.

[00:26:11] So this shows all of your properties on the left hand side, all of your bookings going across, left to right. And if you hover over any one of those bookings, you get a popup of additional information and then you can click on it to go into that specific reservation. The month view gives you just that single month, uh, overview of it.

[00:26:28] The year can give you a really good high level. Um, we've got the, uh, current, which is really cool cause it'll show you everybody that's checking in, uh, yesterday to checking out tomorrow. So it gives you a three day snapshot every day. And then finally the list view can give you a way to look at in list format, sorting by any one of the columns of data.

[00:26:46] It also show you all the financial stuff so you can see it at clients if there's any outstanding payments that need to be made. When it comes to the reporting that I mentioned earlier, this is a list of all the reports we have. Once you click on those, you can drill down to about another [00:27:00] half a dozen different options for each individual report.

[00:27:02] So there really isn't a piece of information in our system that we can't give to you within a report format. When it comes to websites, we have a couple of different options. We have a hosted website, which much like the integrations with the OTAs, any change you make within our system is automatically updated on your website.

[00:27:21] We like to say that people are using a PMs system to manage their business, not manage a website. So we wanna make it as easy as possible, let them stay within the system and not ever have to do an update once they have it up and running on day one. Now, if you do have a website, we've got two different options.

[00:27:35] Our widgets will give you the booking engine. You can actually download your reviews from Airbnb and vrbo, add a widget into your website so you can transfer your, uh, reviews over. You have the availability calendar, um, about half a dozen different options. You can take widgets and put them into your website.

[00:27:51] And then finally, if you've built your website on the WordPress platform, we do have a WordPress plugin that you can add in, and that'll bring over your pictures, your descriptions, and your amenities. [00:28:00] So a combination of the WordPress plugin with the widgets essentially duplicates what you would get with the host website.

[00:28:09] When it comes to communicating with your guests, the easiest thing to do is any kind of, uh, email that you sent to your guest. Every time a booking comes in, take that, put it into our system and use something called field codes. So you have one email, you could have a hundred properties, and the system's gonna automatically fill in the guest information, the property information, all that data.

[00:28:27] Using those field codes, you don't have to have a separate communication, uh, template or even a rental agreement for each and every, uh, property that you have. We've got the add on SMS messaging where you can set up a template with a trigger to send those out at designated times. And finally, we've got the messaging where you can message your guests from within our platform.

[00:28:49] And then when it comes to support, we, uh, try to offer as many avenues as possible depending on how people like to learn and, and get help. So, first is sending in [00:29:00] tickets@helpownerreservations.com where you'll get a very quick response. We like to add in links to the support docs or videos that we have on our system so you can go and get more detailed information.

[00:29:08] Um, those docs and videos are very, very robust. So the, the videos are done in three to seven minute spurts. So you can literally start the video, open up your account and just follow along as they walk you through each process. And then we've got forums where the community can, uh, ask questions, help each other.

[00:29:25] We come in there and help as well, answering questions. And then finally, we have a blog. Uh, we do a lot of updates to our software. Um, weekly, biweekly, you'll see 10 to 70, 80 different updates that are being pushed out. We have that in our change log that you'll see on our website. And then you can go into our blog where we go into more deeper, um, explanations as to what's all involved with those releases.

[00:29:49] And that's about the my five benefits.

[00:29:51] Mark: Ah, you did very well there, buddy. Right? Can everybody, first and foremost say thank you to Glen in the chat? We do have a couple of questions. [00:30:00] Um, we had, uh, one from Anthony, so Anthony, Good on the chat is good on the questions. So, Can you give your bookkeeper, as in Anthony's bookkeeper, access to his reporting on his Owner Rez platform?

[00:30:12] Is that allowed?

[00:30:13] Glen: Yes. Um, one of two ways. You can either give them access if you don't have the property management module, we don't mind you giving access to anybody that you want into the account. Or if you do have the property management, you can set them up as a portal user just like you would an owner or a housekeeper.

[00:30:28] And then you could give them what financials you wanna have them, uh, be accessible

[00:30:32] Mark: to. Lovely. Uh, same question. Well, different question. Same person. Uh, Anthony says, Will all the templates and the triggers pass through the VRBO V I B O messaging? So stay within the platform. So I e if we would send a message automatically through owner re will that get through vrbo, Airbnb, booking dot com's, messaging systems.

[00:30:53] Glen: So from the Airbnb standpoint, we do integrate directly with their messaging platform. So yes, you'd still [00:31:00] have some of the issues with the attachments or uh, URLs just because they like to, you know, strip those out. But with the templates that you can send out, we collect their actual contact information at the time of booking.

[00:31:12] So you get a rental agreement that goes out. It's a point of contact form that's included with that. So you can get their real contact for their email. You can also ask other questions. You can require them to upload their driver's license and then we store all that in our system so then you can set up the template and trigger to send out to their actual email.

[00:31:30] So you don't even have to go over the platforms themselves. So you can put any kind of attachment link, uh, phone numbers, all of that and it'll get to them cuz it's going just through normal

[00:31:38] AJ: email

[00:31:38] Mark: system. Lovely stuff. All right, can everybody please say thank you to Glen? In the chat. Thank you very much, sir.

[00:31:45] That was fantastic. Um, and I can see we've got Amanda, who is part of, uh, Owner Rez in the chat as well, who's helping answer the questions, which, which makes my life a whole lot easier, which is, which is fantastic. Right. Uh, let me just very quickly then, [00:32:00] uh, move you back. There we go. And next up we've got Matthew from Eviivo

[00:32:07] Matt: Evening.

[00:32:07] Hi everybody. Hi Mark. How you doing?

[00:32:09] Mark: Very good. All right. So let me bring you up here. So we've gone from Atlanta all the way to where are you currently based?

[00:32:18] Matt: Uh, I'm in, um, the beautiful county of Devon down in, uh, in the southwest of England.

[00:32:24] Mark: nice. Love Devon online. Love Devon. All right. Uh, let's begin, shall we?

[00:32:33] Okay. So we know the rules. You've got five minutes. To share your screen, to serve everything about Avivo. And at the end of the five minutes, we will do, um, some question and answers. So if we've got anybody who is part of Avivo, please, please, please just say hello in the chat. And with that being said, timer begins, buddy.

[00:32:55] Matt: Absolutely brilliant. Thanks Mark. Thanks so much for, uh, inviting us to this this evening. And, uh, hello everybody. [00:33:00] Um, so a little bit about Avivo, um, a little about about us. So start off, um, we've been around about 15 years. Um, I've actually been here for 14 of those, so almost since the beginning. Um, and we are very much a preferred OTA partner, All the major OTAs, um, across, uh, all the, the major channels that we, that we know of, um, I'm very proud of, of all the kind of reviews and scores that we've, we've, we've collected over, over, over the years.

[00:33:29] Um, and. You know, we've grown up to around about a hundred thousand listings at the moment across, across the world. Um, mostly our focus is very much within the UK and Europe, um, in terms of where our properties are and, and, and the US as well. Um, but we do have a number of properties outside of those main markets.

[00:33:46] And as you can see there from, um, we do work in lots of different currencies. We have people that are based in the UK with properties overseas that are trading in multiple currencies as well. So, um, we can work across all of all of that. [00:34:00] In terms of Avivo and Avivo Suite, So we're all in one property management platform.

[00:34:05] Um, we have a number of elements, um, that are core, uh, to the Avivo Suite platform. Um, we have the property manager, which in effect is the, the diary system, the backend system that manages all, all the day to day operations of your businesses. We provide a number of solutions around the website manager, whether you have your own website, um, or you have a, a website through, through the likes of Mark, we can integrate, um, with Boosty websites, uh, as well.

[00:34:30] Um, the channel management, I'll come onto that a little bit more in a second, but we have fully automated connections with all the major. Online travel agents that we all know and love. Um, within the Promo manager, we enable you to control not only promotions direct through your own website or anyone that's coming direct you or anything through any social media, through promotions, but also you can control online travel agent promotions direct within avivo too.

[00:34:56] So there's certain promotions that, that those guys run, um, that you can [00:35:00] actually control centrally within the Vivo platform. As we, as we bring everything into that, all in one system, you can communicate with your guests by creating very simple, um, html drag and drop designed emails. And sets multiple schedules out to those guests.

[00:35:16] So you can have emails pre, uh, post your arrivals and pre and posted departures. We have lots and lots of data that obviously you can export out of the Avivo platform, Um, as well as exporting it into, um, uh, spreadsheets to do your own analysis. We have our own sort of charts and graph and instant, what we call key figures.

[00:35:34] So if you wanna know straight away how many nights have I got left to sell next week, bang, you can get that in a quick second. So you can very easily, um, monitor the performance. And for any, anybody that's on the call today that, that, that, um, there's a property management company. You might be managing properties on a number of, uh, on behalf of the number of owners you can give them access to that, that data as.

[00:35:55] Payments I'll talk about a little bit more in a second. But, um, we, we, as a company run at [00:36:00] the highest level of PCI compliance. We are one of, um, literally two or three in the UK in this market as a company that, um, uh, run at that level. And also finally, uh, owner manager. So again, if we do have any sort of property management companies on, on, on the call here, that's a system that's now allowing you to be able to, um, report, um, charges, um, booking fees and produce statements for, um, for your owners.

[00:36:28] So, a little bit about what makes us a little bit different. So distribution is a key one. Um, so obviously we all kind of know and love the OTAs, um, but they are here to stay and it's, it's all about control. So it's all about avio, using avivo to control those OTAs. So we, we give you a deep, uh, API connection into all the major online travel agents we work with.

[00:36:50] You can see those lists on the right hand side there. So Airbnb, booking.com. Uh, Google Vacation Rentals, uh, Google Ads. We've had those for many, many months. Um, [00:37:00] vrbo, um, and many others. So the key thing is that as well as those major channels, we actually integrate with a lot of the sort of niche distributors as well, and local, um, destination management organizations in, in, in, um, in the UK and other countries as well.

[00:37:14] So these are the likes of, um, visit this and visit that, the, the, the, um, the tourist boards are out there, so it's not just about those major online travel agents that we connect you. There are a number of other, other sites locally that we can get you to, to as well. And from a scalable point of view, Avivo makes it extremely easy to be able to add new properties and then get those listings set up, um, on these online travel agents.

[00:37:38] So literally within a click, um, our system has the ability to automatically create listings, um, on all of the major online travel agents. So there's no need to go off setting up and managing, um, all these listings and all these, um, OTA extranets. Um, it's very, very simple to get, um, um, and listed across those different sites.

[00:37:58] And once you're all up and running, you [00:38:00] then have the ability to manage those day to day. So if, for example, you want to make a change to a, a cleaning fee, or you got a nice new set of photos done for your properties, load it once into the Avivo platform and through those fully automated connections, it synchronizes across, uh, across the board.

[00:38:18] Uh, payments. So as I mentioned a little bit earlier, so as a business, we, we at the highest level of, um, PCI compliance, so we're very, very proud of that. We put a lot of effort into that each year where we get assessed for that. Um, and, and, and we have, um, all of the ability to automatically collect payments for all elements of, of the booking, uh, whether it's the cleaning, the fees, the damage deposits, et cetera.

[00:38:39] And the key thing is that we're integrating with your own merchant, uh, at the lowest market transaction rates. So we're able to offer, um, payment processing at sort Ofir about 40% cheaper than what the market leading payment solutions in, out there due to our, our kind of position in the market and, and the kind of, to be honest, the kind of deals that we can do, um, with some of the merchants.

[00:38:59] So [00:39:00] this is about, in effect, our customers are getting paid faster, um, and getting paid and paying a lot, a lot cheaper for those, those payments as well. Driving direct business. Um, I know Mark particularly, and, and rightly so, um, goes on and on about the importance of this and it absolutely is, is extremely important.

[00:39:20] Um, we, I've talked about the online travel agents, and I think everyone here would admit, and we would honestly say that they are equally an important part of this mix, But getting your direct business and getting your direct setup, um, right is, is equal as important. Um, we did some research, um, just in, in literally in August this year, um, where 51% of travelers prefer to book directly with the accommodation.

[00:39:43] They didn't all book directly with accommodation, but they prefer to. And there's loads of factors of why that isn't necessarily easy to do. And there is a lot of people I speak to that don't have websites, don't think value in websites. And, and, and you know why we talk about the online travel agents, the [00:40:00] website business, getting yourself set up correctly and all the stuff that Mark rightly talks about is, you know, we are, we are a massive supporter of, um, alter of supporter of as.

[00:40:10] Okay. Oh, just two seconds. Sorry, I clicked the wrong, My slides just went there. Okay. Um, partners, so we've got a growing number of partners. We've been working on this probably for the last sort of year or so, and we've got a partnership team, um, at Avivo where we've been building, um, more and more connections with a number of different areas.

[00:40:27] Guest management, um, uh, I heard some mention about accountancy earlier. So the likes of QuickBooks are zero. Um, people like that dynamic pricing. Um, and we too kind of go into the marketplace and look at, okay, what, what is the best fit for Aviva's customers? Um, what do we believe is, is, is the best products in the market as opposed to potentially connecting to everyone?

[00:40:47] So we're kind of going to our customers and saying, Look, you wanted dynamic pricing. We've been in the market. These are the two companies that we've assessed and we believe are the right, the best, best for you. So we try and, um, find those partners that, [00:41:00] that, that we believe will, will suit right with, with our customer base.

[00:41:04] And I've seen there's been quite a lot of questions about, uh, mobile. So I'm gonna sort of just finish off with, if, if I may, showing this quick, um, this quick kind of video here, if I may. Um, there is a little bit of sound. I'm just checking if we could hear the sound there. Did the sound come through or not doubt

[00:41:19] Mark: The sound will come through, but let's just

[00:41:20] Matt: go with it.

[00:41:21] Okay, excellent. I will try and see if I can, um, see if I can share the sound. Here we go. If, let's see where we go. Okay.

[00:41:32] Mark: Yeah.[00:42:00]

[00:42:16] AJ: A

[00:42:16] Mark: vivo mobile, you're on top of the mountain with a laptop. .

[00:42:21] Matt: I love that. Look, we didn't use you as the voiceover, their mark at the end , but thank you for adding that in. Um, so thank you . So thank you very much everyone for, um, for your time. Um, uh, please do, yeah. Uh, questions far, far away. Thank you very much for your time.

[00:42:35] Well, thank you.

[00:42:36] Mark: Well, well, well done. Okay, so we do have a, we do have a question and it's, uh, a funky one, especially when it comes to payments. A question came in from Jed. Uh, can Avio is or is there plans on the roadmap for Avivo to, uh, enable crypto payments gateways?

[00:42:52] Matt: Okay. Very, very good question. And, and, and if you know what crypto payments is, whoever this, uh, Jed is, and let's teach us all that.

[00:42:59] But, um, [00:43:00] I'm just being a bit cheeky there. I, I think, um, so at the moment, no. Um, but what I'd like to do, Jed, if I may, is take that question away, um, and have a conversation, um, with, um, our finance team that, that work with all the different merchants and the gateways that we deliver. And maybe I can get back to Mark with a sort of, bit of a formal response to that, and if Mark wouldn't mind sharing it with you.

[00:43:22] Um, but the moment initially I would, I would, my understanding is that we, we don't, Um, but I will get a more formal answer for you, Jed. Brilliant. Uh,

[00:43:30] Mark: and the next one from Mr. Anthony, who's been perfect on the questions tonight. Uh, are you an elite VRBO API integrated partner?

[00:43:39] Matt: So I don't, I'm gonna say I don't believe that we are.

[00:43:42] Again, I'm gonna come back to you on, on that one. Um, not dodging away that question. I don't believe that. Um, we are, um, we, the way we integrate with VRBO though is through a, uh, we have our own VRBO account, so we have a, a large of, in effect and Aveo, um, account. We can connect to [00:44:00] VRBO in a number of different ways.

[00:44:01] Um, we can connect through, through, um, it's all, um, instant booking obviously, and instant updating. We don't, we don't mess about with ial. Um, but we can integrate on api. You can either have your own account or as I said earlier, you could actually set it up and manage it directly through, um, the Avivo. Um, system.

[00:44:19] Mark: And the final question, sorry, is how could somebody potentially book a demo with Avio?

[00:44:25] Matt: Yep. So the best thing to do is, um, I will just pop my email address into the chat in a minute. Um, so you feel free to email me directly. Um, or alternative if you go to our website, avivo.com, um, and which is E V I V O and you can have a chat with our team there, or, or Booker Booker demo.

[00:44:42] Um, that. Perfect.

[00:44:44] Mark: And brownie points for mentioning Boostly in the presentation. I do like to do, like to see that. All right. Uh, well, well done, well done Matt. Appreciate it. Thank you very much everyone. Thank you, Mark. And now what we're going to do is we're gonna bring on, uh, aj. So AJ, if you could just unmute your microphone for me, please.[00:45:00]

[00:45:00] Yes. Uh, Matt, I'm gonna move you back down there. Uh, what I've said to, to na cuz at the start he had some dodgy wifi. We're gonna let him have two minutes at the very, very end. But AJ I can see you joining us from San Francisco by the looks of it. It's beautiful. That view from your office looks. It is amazing.

[00:45:16] I just gotta be

[00:45:16] AJ: careful I don't lean back cause I might fall

[00:45:18] Mark: in . All right. Where, where are you joining us from in the world?

[00:45:24] AJ: I'm, I'm actually calling you from Toronto Canada's, where one of our offices are of our larger offices in Toronto, Canada.

[00:45:30] Mark: Where's your accent? I'm from Wales originally. I was gonna say, that's not a Canadian accent.

[00:45:36] That's right.

[00:45:37] AJ: I'm from Wales and I went to school in Bristol and then I moved to Cardiff and now I'm in Toronto.

[00:45:42] Mark: So worldwide, worldwide chat. I'm trying to find out where Rebecca's tuning in from as well. Cause I can see a palm or something behind, so it looks very glorious. So we've got a worldwide zoom tonight, which is awesome.

[00:45:52] All right, so same as everybody else. Uh, five minutes, uh, to talk all about things, host away. Uh, and then we'll have [00:46:00] some q and a at the end. So if we've got any host away, uh, clients, members, uh, people who are interested in host away in the chat, please do jump in and say hi. And we've more being said. Over to you, buddy.

[00:46:11] Yeah. Brilliant.

[00:46:11] AJ: Well, thank you for the opportunity and I will, uh, start by saying Bruce Lee is one of our preferred partners, so everyone go to bruce lee.com. Now, that being said, what I wanted to do is, um, first of all, I just want to, uh, celebrate everyone's wins year because I think that everyone has a brilliant, brilliant, uh, platform.

[00:46:30] Uh, they all have their skill sets. Uh, rather than, you know, kind of going through all the, um, product feature functionality that we have, I'd like to kind of highlight the fact some of the differentiations, uh, some things that make us stand out in the marketplace. Uh, some things that we have kind of got a lot of accolades around.

[00:46:49] So have you made me presenter?

[00:46:50] Mark: Um, you have got the option to share your screen whenever you wish. Brilliant, brilliant.

[00:46:56] AJ: I'm gonna quickly share my screen and I'm going to do [00:47:00] that so I can just, uh, speak to it a little bit, a bit of a narrative here. And you can see my entire screen. So I'm just gonna put it into.

[00:47:09] Move this, uh, gimme one second. Just and present a mode, right? Okay. We're all set. You can see my screen,

[00:47:17] Mark: sorry. Yes, we can. Brilliant. We are good to go. Oh, brilliant. Thanks Mark.

[00:47:21] AJ: So, um, the fact is a host, we has been around for a bit as well. We've been around for about seven and a half plus years. Uh, myself, I've been here for about six and a bit as well.

[00:47:31] And, you know, as we started the organization, you know, one thing that was really important to us that we felt was, was probably the most important part is building out the APIs, building out the connections with the likes of Airbnb, booking.com, Expedia, HomeAway, vrbo, Marriotts, and Tune to come Google. And we thought these were important because they established these relationships will give us a disproportionate advantage in market, but more importantly, it will help our.

[00:47:57] Property managers, I will, it'll help our property [00:48:00] owners. It will help our stakeholders who are part of this equation to run their businesses better. Um, you know, we don't want to be at the mercy of any third party conduit to build that connection out for us. We want to have that real time information coming back and forth.

[00:48:17] We want to make sure that it's 100% accurate. And, and, you know, you've all heard this before, we wanna make sure there's no double bookings because we know how expensive and headache a double booking can can mean, right? So when we, when we set out, we decided to build this out first. Once we built it, then we started building feature functionality.

[00:48:38] And yes, we looked at the needs of all users and what was important for them. And as a nimble company, as a flexible company, we started adding more and more features that we felt was important to the marketplace. Things that we heard back from, uh, from the, uh, property owners, property managers. And as well as stakeholders, right?

[00:48:58] What it's important to [00:49:00] actually, um, be part of this whole equation. Uh, another thing that everyone's seen is that in the last 24 months, 36 months, because of Covid, we've seen this massive explosion of property owners or property managers, people converting their basements, converting their properties from to short term into the vacation rental management system or, uh, in the arena.

[00:49:20] And so we found that the average user who was using the platform, uh, wasn't that savvy, wasn't that, uh, software savvy, and we wanted to move away from. Being very complex. Now, it's great that if you do have that technical knowledge and a lot of platforms do it, which is brilliant, then you can do a lot of customizations through code.

[00:49:40] But we want to move away from that. We want to be clo, you know, more like click not code technology, drag and drop. Turn on and off features as you need them. Give certain privileges to certain individuals within your organization, be it owners, be it guests, be it, um, cleaners, or even just accounting staff.

[00:49:59] Letting them [00:50:00] see certain information that is pertaining to their. And their skill sets on a daily basis and, and keeping away the rest of the noise. It's a given, right? The fact that our platform has the unified inbox, right, with all messages coming into one area. We have the task management for cleaners.

[00:50:17] So tasks are triggered of events and that, that you can put certain, um, uh, um, task list associated to that. Uh, we have a mobile app for Android and iOS, right? So it's not device agnostic, actually an app for Android and iOS. So when you download it, you can do everything you can do on the desktop, you can do in the platform.

[00:50:36] So if you think about everything you've seen today from all the, all of our partners here, or all the solutions out there, the host away does that and more, right? We add a few more layer of granularity to it to the average user. But again, you use what you need. So that being. Moving through the slides and, and again, I wanted to stay away from kind of giving you a bunch of slides too much, but I also want to give you some information about where we're [00:51:00] at.

[00:51:00] So you saw my background, which is San Francisco because every day I'll put a different background in, in, in, in my, uh, uh, in my, uh, meetings. Uh, so to represent all the places that, that, uh, that we kind of work out of. Um, but our offices in San Antonio, Toronto, Barcelona, Finland, Helsinki, Ri Lanka, as well as Australia.

[00:51:19] So I'm gonna chime into how our support. 24 7 support, cuz we feel like it's really important that everyone gets serviced. One thing that we found again coming into this industry is people needed a lot of handholding, right? Uh, there's new features, there's new rules, there's new regulations pertaining to their area.

[00:51:39] If you're in North Carolina, if you're in Hawaii, or if you are in Newport, Wales, every area has different regulations, different tax codes, different compliances. So we wanna make sure that uh, not only are we catering to that, but we're also catering to the support time that they need. So we have 24 sevens support.

[00:51:59] You pick up the phone, you [00:52:00] call someone and you speak to someone under a minute. Yes, we have FAQs. Yes, we have videos. Yes, we have, um, implementation specialists that will take you through the full onboarding, uh, stages. But the fact is we know how important it is that you speak to someone if you need that support.

[00:52:16] Now going back to what our product, why our product kind of stands out. Is that what we've done is we've added layers to technology, right? We have the PMs, channel management system, but every month we're adding more and more layers to make this platform, uh, have more utility because we know that your needs have become more important, and I wouldn't say important, but I would say more complex.

[00:52:39] Uh, you need to be able to respond back to a request. You need to be able to change pricing on the fly. You need to be also able to change reservations or change suites because sometimes things can happen. Ultimately, uh, this utility and added technology to our platform enables, uh, us to service more people and add more stickiness.

[00:52:59] Uh, [00:53:00] we do have customers that have one listing, hundreds of them, but we also have, last year we did an onboarding for a company that did 8,000 listings, right? So anywhere you sit in between today, I can say honestly, if you sit between one listing and 8,000 listings, we cater to you. We have the same level of, um, support for everyone.

[00:53:18] You don't pay more for it. There's no line items, there's no modules, there's no add-ons. Everything that we have is included in this one solution. Full end to end, uh, platform. We have robust functionality, as I already mentioned with all the channels. Uh, we have the largest marketplace in the industry.

[00:53:39] This is a third party marketplace where you have the likes of Brucely, right? These are top tiered. Top tier partners that we work with, um, Stripe Beyond Pricing Wheelhouse, uh, Remote Lock or Per, these are all third party tools, Best brief tools that do what they do really well. And we are, uh, we've built one click integration with them, so you can [00:54:00] obviously take, um, benefit from that.

[00:54:02] Uh, last but not least, I will talk about, uh, ACC. Cera, G2 Crowd, Software Advice, Trust Pilot, Google. Um, if you want to really hear the voice of people who are using a platform, uh, their interaction with the platform, their user experience and the support, check out these reviews. They'll tell you a bit about the organizations.

[00:54:21] Everyone has some good reviews. We always strive to be, uh, at the top for all these reviews, to give them maximum support back to our customers. And I'll stop there. I think I've got about five minutes there. Mark. You did well. Yeah. Brilliant. So I'll give you my information, uh, host away.com or info@hostaway.com.

[00:54:38] You just fill out a quick little lead form. It'll route you based on your time zone. So if it's, if you'd like doing demos at midnight because you're, you're working your day job. Absolutely will cater to you. So no worries there. Just put in your information and we'll contact you. Any questions?

[00:54:52] Mark: Brilliant.

[00:54:52] Well done. Um, very well done. So we've got a question that came in. Uh, it was regarding, um, somebody went on the trial but for [00:55:00] Host Away and they were unable to provide a full number roundup for a weekly fee. So for example, uh, they wanted $1,000, but the host away could only do 999 99. Now, um, is that something that could be just a little bug or is that something that's being solved or worked on?

[00:55:18] Is that the first time that, that you've heard of something like that? To be

[00:55:21] AJ: honest with you, Mark, that's the first time I've heard of it. So I, I beg your pardon, whoever's asking that, my direct email is aj host way.com just to letter aj. Feel free to reach out to me directly and I'll be more than happy to action that if it's uh, if it was the first time I'm hearing now, but it could be a bug, could be something else, but we can address it

[00:55:40] Mark: if you gimme a shout.

[00:55:40] Um, good question that's coming. If you didn't want to use your direct site, For example, can it be a reduced cost or is it literally a flat rate? Flat rate for everybody? And if you use the service, great. If not, it doesn't matter. Here's the thing, it's all in one

[00:55:56] AJ: solution, right? So if you choose not to use it, that's up to you.

[00:55:59] But we [00:56:00] don't add cost to your overall listing number or, uh, so, so if you don't want to use it, you don't have to. I'll say this, I'll leave this with you. We've never lost an opportunity over pricing because at the end of the day, uh, we ensure that you are in the right price point for the number of listings you have.

[00:56:16] And we also see the growth. Uh, people that I signed up about, you know, three years ago with one listing, now have 40 listings. At the end of the day, we have tiered pricing and we make sure that it's palatable for everyone and we'll put it in a price point that that makes

[00:56:28] Mark: you comfortable. Brilliant. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring all of our guests from today's call back onto the screen cause I've got, uh, a question that I wanna ask everybody.

[00:56:39] And while I'm doing that, um, I'm gonna bring. Now back up as well. Uh, so let me do this. Let me add to the pin. All right. Now if you wanna mute yourself. So I'm gonna give you two to three more minutes just to, just a super quick overview of, uh, of vu. Just, uh, from anything that you, you missed out before, you don't have to share screen, [00:57:00] maybe talk about some of the things that are coming up.

[00:57:02] Uh, cause what I wanna do is I want to get everybody back onto the screen, all of our guests, including aj, Rebecca, cause I've got a question about Google that I'd like to ask everybody please. So make sure you come back on. So, uh, uh, na, the floor is yours, just for a few minutes while I'm bringing everybody back up

[00:57:16] Na'im: on screen.

[00:57:17] Sounds good. Um, I will share my screen and just show a couple of things, um, just to give your feeling through what we've been doing. So we developed all the functionality that you've been hearing about from the various presentations over the last, um, three years, four years or so. Um, we're fairly new, um, but we hadn't worked on our user experience, user interface.

[00:57:35] So we've just recently gone from this, um, to this. So hope we can notice as good a difference there. And we are redesigning the whole system. You'll see we've got very informative, um, charts right here. You can see the percentages. You can filter by week, month, quarter area, details of staying, gas arrivals, departures, and allocated bookings.

[00:57:57] Special feature that we have scheduled cancellation, You don't know [00:58:00] what you can do with that. Let me know. We import our views from Airbnb booking.com. You can publish or dismiss them, can publish them. They end up on your website. So we generate a full website, which you can integrate to boost three, or you can use the standard if you like.

[00:58:12] Um, it works, uh, multi-city, multi country multicurrency, which is one of the problems we have, um, as we're expanding our business. So really what we've done in Z was we've tried to cater for a business that can go and there will be no impediments on the technology side. So you've got a built in blog on there.

[00:58:29] You can have FAQs, you can showcase your social media, you can add custom pages, you'll. Page for each, um, city, for each country, for each property. You can see that properties within the city. This is a single unit property, for example. Um, but we also handle multiple rate plans or multiunit properties. Um, you can, uh, also have all the different countries, different cities in the countries.

[00:58:51] Um, you'll have your contact and so, so forth. Um, it's not customizable in the way the booster is. So if you want something, we can tag things in [00:59:00] place exactly the way you like, then that's why we recommend it. Uh, what we offer is a nice looking, very d uh, website that will help help you showcase a business.

[00:59:10] Um, we also have the, um, new unified inbox in this design. We also have all of this on mobile, by the way, Unified inbox. In the bookings, we've got the calendar. Um, you can have an overview of the booking, where you can go in, be full details, uh, in unified inbox. You also have, uh, both the overview of the whole timeline.

[00:59:28] We have email communications, SMS, or API by the channel. You can use your own email address or a group email address. Um, so you can choose who you want to send it on behalf of. You've got, um, various actions they can take, like extending or splitting, booking all the finances and splits for different owners, but you do a split booking or taking account off and, um, automate it for you.

[00:59:50] The same, you extend the booking, secret security deposit will get extended. We've got a full task management system built in with housekeeping, um, and maintenance. And we'll, we'll be [01:00:00] working on custom task management. Um, in terms of listings, you can either import your Airbnb listings just by providing a url.

[01:00:07] Um, you can see some overview on the reporting on that. And, uh, all of this is pushed through to the website. It's pushed through to other connected apps like Boosty, for example. Or if you're using um, Super Hog or PI stops, you can pull all the information to open api. You could also build your custom tools if you wanted.

[01:00:25] This is our new, uh, performance dashboard. So we've got all your KPIs and various reports you can compare and you can filter, um, by pretty much anything you like. And also export this. Um, Margaret asking what's coming up. Uh, there's quite a lot that we are working on and a lot going on on the roadmap going forward.

[01:00:45] Um, we're working on migrating the whole system to this new platform and a functionality is there. One of the big things we'll be working on in the next couple months is also building out a guest portal. And, uh, so we might be excited to hear that we are also working on technology to [01:01:00] be able to allow you to run your own channel.

[01:01:02] So if you want to group a couple posts together, um, you'll be able to do so and have your own niche website, um, showcasing all the properties, um, that you're running and being able to also make a commission on bookings that you pass onto other channels that.

[01:01:16] Mark: Good. Thank you very much. Well done. And the wifi stuck out, which is the main thing.

[01:01:21] So what I wanna do is I brought you all back on camera, so I wanted to ask one by one. We'll go with Rebecca first, and then we'll just go around the room, round the table. Aj, if you are, you are still with us. Uh, put that camera back on when, when you can. So Rebecca, if you could just unmute that microphone for me please.

[01:01:35] So the questions about Google, and it's come up quite a lot in all of your slides, is Google Vacation Rent or Google vr. For a lot of people in the room, this is very. And it's something that is going to be frosted upon 'em very quickly in 2023. So could you just please sort of give, um, a little tip to what everybody can be doing?

[01:01:56] How can they take advantage of, uh, Google Vacation Rental, Google VR [01:02:00] with with Lofi? What can they start to be doing to becoming ready? Because this is common. Google has been threatening it and it is going to, um, help a lot of people when it comes to getting booking straight from that Google first page.

[01:02:12] So we'll go around the table, we'll start with Rebecca, uh, and then we'll go to name next and we'll go around the table. So yeah, anything that you've got to share with the people that have joined us, that'd be amazing. Sure. Um,

[01:02:22] Rebecca: for from LOD i's side, um, we do not, um, show our logo basically on Google. So we are showing your customers, uh, like your website.

[01:02:35] Um, so the idea is that you would build a website with us. Um, it's gonna be released in different phases. Uh, phase one is building a website with us and that will give you like automatic, um, flexibility and, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, I've lost my word. It will, it will basically put your website on Google, so it's ex uh, excellent exposure as well.

[01:02:59] The next phase [01:03:00] will be, um, that depending on the amount of properties that you have, um, we'll, we will direct them to that as well. And then it will be external websites. So if you wanna get,

[01:03:12] Mark: Oh, I think we've lost wifi in Spain. All. Rebecca, when you come back, hopefully you're still there. What we'll do is we'll move straight back to na uh, okay. So you know a little bit about Google Vacation Rental. Um, yeah, so just your views on it, Tell me about it and how a host can start to get prepared for it.

[01:03:34] Cause out of everybody that I know, the what you did with your property management company, with Google, Google Business listing was, was one of the best in terms of brand and expect. How is Google Vacation Rental going to disrupt and influence this industry? Um,

[01:03:49] Na'im: to be honest, I don't think it's a huge change.

[01:03:51] Um, there's, we already have an integration with Google Hotel ads We run. BMS is out there to develop one. Um, the vacation rentals is [01:04:00] an extension on that. The reason they did it this way is God knows what, Um, I've spoken to them various times about it. It's basically just another fee for vacation rentals.

[01:04:08] Specifically. For some reason they needed to have two separate systems. Um, so some people are still able to run on Google Hotel ads. Um, and shop on the map and link it to Google my business. Um, one of the problems I think they were having was being able to map things correctly for vacation rentals when they're not manned and so on and so forth.

[01:04:27] Um, it opens the opportunity to advertise, uh, your rates and availability, uh, when you want to undercut OTs like booking.com. What we've actually done is we have set up our own channels direct, which is completely pre, and you can join on the free plan as well, and it up to your, and send yours to. And what that helps you achieve is, um, bypass the rate party clause that are applicable in certain parts of the world where you cannot undercut [01:05:00] booking.com on your own website, but you can undercut booking.com on the third party channel.

[01:05:05] So that's the whole reason why we set it up this way so that you can set up promotions through Ze Direct, um, which will then show when people are searching on Google Maps. Uh, and you can compare, you know, the zebo direct price with booking.com or Airbnb price. I can do when you book a flight and you'll see there's a cheaper one and they can book it directly with

[01:05:24] Mark: Awesome.

[01:05:25] So, uh, basically nothing new is changing as such is just a new branding. Um, but the only way to get on there at present is via your property management software. Vu being one, Lofi being one. Is that pretty much. Um,

[01:05:40] Na'im: we don't have an integration with Google Vacation Rentals yet. We're still serving Google Hotels For those who want to use it, I don't know at what point we'll be making the change.

[01:05:50] I think when we feel there's enough of a reason to do it, we'll develop the second integration with them.

[01:05:56] Mark: Cool. Thank you for that. Right. Uh, owner is, uh, Glen will move down to yourself. [01:06:00] Um, are you, or have you partnered with Google Vacation Rental? Do you have a different viewpoint? What's your, what is your viewpoint, if any?

[01:06:07] If you don't, that's fine. We'll move on, uh, to Avivo, but yeah, anything that you can sort of share on that would be great. Yeah,

[01:06:14] Glen: I, I think following up with what IEM said, there's so much uncertainty on what Google's doing with the hotels and the vacation platform. Um, we kind of. Sat back and waited for the dust to settle, and now we're in conversations with their developers and working on development for, uh, the new platform.

[01:06:31] So that'll probably be coming out sometime next quarter. Um, so yeah, we just didn't wanna spend too much engineering time on all the uncertainties that were happening over last couple of years.

[01:06:42] Mark: That's, uh, a very good answer. And, uh, for anybody who knows Google, that's very common . All right, so let's move on.

[01:06:49] Uh, back to the uk, Back to lovely Devon Avivo. So obviously a vivo, uh, has been around for many, many, many years. Uh, probably was more known for the, [01:07:00] uh, small hotel and guesthouse world before the short term rental world. So obviously you've had a lot of experience with Google through to many different variations from maps to hotels to whatnot.

[01:07:09] So what's your current standpoint at Aviva? What light can you share on it, Matt, and sort of give everybody a sort of

[01:07:16] Matt: a spotlight please? Yeah, So, so we are connected and we've been, we are the, we the first in the UK to connect. We've been connected to Google vacation rentals since December last year. Um, You're absolutely right what Mark says.

[01:07:29] As a business, we've, we also work with the hotel space and we have done for, for many, many years. Um, and the Google Hotel ads, um, which is really was in in name, um, was aimed at hotels, uh, and BMBs. And, and we have seen that channel, um, really perform for our customers. So naturally the natural next step when they were starting to release, uh, vacation, Which, um, obviously being more American name, which is, which is fine, but in the [01:08:00] UK it's sometimes a little bit is what is vr.

[01:08:01] So it's got an interesting one to, but when you look at it on the, I dunno if anyone's actually gonna add a play around with it, it, they actually use the word holiday lettings. Um, so they actually say holiday lettings and hotels. When you search on Google Maps, if you say accommodation in Exeter, you can choose whether which ones you want.

[01:08:15] So because it works so well and continues to work well, um, in the hotel space, um, we continue to, we, we, we obviously wrote to it and, um, we're starting to see it, it, it work. Um, interestingly, you know, if anyone is, is connected to it, A little tip if I may. Um, it's all about making sure you maximize your facilities and amenities, so ensuring that within your system, uh, if your system is connected to, um, Google Vacation rentals, which is what obviously Mark's showing here.

[01:08:48] Um, it's the bit on the left there. Mark, just on the left, go to the left is like another button. Keep going down. Keep going down. There it is. So, um, is the, to make sure that the ranking is [01:09:00] very much driven by your facilities. So obviously don't just take it if you don't offer it, but the idea is that making sure that you are checking, that you have got every facility checked, checked in your channel manager that is relevant to your business.

[01:09:12] Um, but ex back to what some of the other guys said that absolutely there is this kind of still this mixture between, well, where, where do I fall? Well, since, um, beginning of this year or end of last year, any new properties that we've brought on in the STR service, accommodation, VR space, they have gone automatically gone into the VR searches.

[01:09:36] Um, anyone. Already had Google Business, you need a Google business listing anywhere. And that's common sense anyway. Should have that full stop, that's just part and parcel. And then if your VR then we push you into the VR one. If you are, if you were a hotel, then obviously we push you in the hotel one. Um, so in terms of its performance at the moment, we're starting to see it do something.

[01:09:57] Um, but the hotel one took a while [01:10:00] because Google don't advertise it. It's just naturally there as, as everybody knows. Um, so we, you know, yes, we, we connect to it and, and we push it as one of our, our main channels. And I, and I think from some of the conversations here today, it seems that others are, are going that route.

[01:10:14] So, You know exactly what happened in the hotel space. We kind of got there first and then everyone sort of started to do it and it, and it, and it does drive bookings and it's a slightly lower commission, um, which is obviously a good thing, right? So. Mm.

[01:10:26] Mark: Yeah. Perfect. Brilliant. Right. Well thank you everybody for that this evening.

[01:10:31] It was, uh, really good. We've heard from name from Zebo, Rebecca at Lofi, who has just sent me a message to say that her whole building had a power cut. So she apologizes. Uh, but just wanna say thank you. Uh, we've got Glen from ez, uh, we've got Matthew from Avivo, and we've got AJ all the way over in Canada, uh, at host away he had to jump out for, for something.

[01:10:53] So I just wanna thank everybody that's been part of this with us. It has been a worldwide event from all the way from Australia, [01:11:00] all the way over to Canada. Uh, I hope you've learned a little bit more from our property management software providers. This is gonna get obviously turned into a full length podcast.

[01:11:07] We'll break it up and we'll, we'll showcase everybody as, as we always do. Um, but yeah, thank you very much. It's been good. It's been great. And if you want us to do it again, I feel like we're good on property management softwares, but if there's anything else that you want us to do in the tech stack, um, let us know.

[01:11:22] Send me your message, mark booth.co uk. Send me your message on Instagram. I do like these dragons. Then style, uh, pitch your tech stack sort of services. It is good. We get some quick fire, um, slides and it's awesome to say everybody perform under pressure, which is lovely to do. All right everybody, I'm gonna love you and leaves.

[01:11:38] Thank you very much for tuning in. Uh, as always, my name is Mark Simpson, Given host all over the world, the tools, the tactics to training and the confidence to increase the diet bookings and for all of you, but around via Zoom called you get a sneak peek of what is coming up in December. December the 12th is the launch of the second book of this year, which is called the Book Direct Blueprint.

[01:11:58] Um, the book Direct Playbook, [01:12:00] as you know, was all about the marketing strategies, 101 tactics, tools, and tips. In here. This is all about the foundations to put in place to grow. And scale and potentially sell a d booking business. Uh, we've got Ira Mount Price Labs Touch Day Up list in Dak Tech Tape, Super Ho Mano and d Travel, the co-host suspect, and obviously I'm showcasing the CTO of Bruce Lee, Mr.

[01:12:24] Tom O'Brien. He's gonna get a chapter in this as well. So I'm very much looking forward to showcasing Evolve. It's gonna be released on December the 12th, Audible Kindle print, you name it. All the money, all the profits that come from the book sales is gonna go to charity. We're gonna do food banks, which I'm super excited for.

[01:12:40] So let's try and get this to, uh, number one and sell thousands of copies, um, in December. All right, All speak to all very soon, Tata. Thank you. Bye bye. Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee led Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard on the tees loose leaf, making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.

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