September 10, 2023 • 36 mins
Revenue Management, or more accurately, Revenue Strategy, of which Revenue Management is a part, covers all aspects of your vacation rental business. Of course, the opposite is true. Revenue is as much about where and why you say no. Brand Strategy is Revenue Strategy is Brand Strategy. One and the same. Everyone buys into that, or the business cannot deliver on its brand promise and the customer experience – Property Owners/Investors and Guests, the customer reality, will not match the brand promise. Then having done it once successfully, the business must consistently execute. Every time.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to How the Guest was Won, Tales from the Trails for Vacation Rental Pioneers, a
(00:23):
stay attention production, starring Andy Meddick and guest stars you.
To thrive as an operator in the wild west of today's vacation rental industry, you
must get focused and clear on your brand and revenue strategy.
In this podcast, through stories from our businesses and our experienced guests, we'll
explore the concepts, challenges, and common obstacles encountered while building vacation
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rental hospitality brands regardless of scale.
This is your host, Andy Meddick, CEO of Stay Attention, former CEO of my own vacation rental
management company, Sea Change Vacation Rentals, and most importantly, Guest.
Vacation Home Pioneers, bring your voices, your stories, and join me on the trails as
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together we tell the true story of how the guest was won.
A quick reminder before we get started, if you have not already listened to earlier episodes,
including our preview episode, I urge you to go back and listen since our season runs
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as a complete series and I would be very sad for you to miss out.
This episode, episode 9, is called Revenue by Design?
Oh, am I boring you?
Today I'm introducing a concept that I developed for my own vacation home management company
that I call Revenue by Design.
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It's based on my belief that revenue management is more than a reactive action to data and
that how everything you do and say in your business affects your revenue.
I position a somewhat controversial opinion that revenue management should be lifted out
of its home in finance or sales departments, given a brand overhaul and renamed to revenue
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strategy and relocated to the marketing department.
As I lead us out on the trail in today's episode, I'll say upfront that today's
topic is one of this first season's episodes that I was most looking forward to getting
into.
It's also the hardest one for me to present.
(02:40):
So why then is it so hard to present?
In order to grab everyone's attention towards branding at a company, from the CEO down to
the revenue managers and the frontline operations staff, I need to get everyone on board to
buy into a company's brand mission, purpose and strategy.
You see revenue management, or more accurately revenue strategy, of which revenue management
(03:02):
is a part, covers all aspects of your vacation rental business.
Of course, the opposite is true.
Revenue is as much about where and why you say no.
Brand strategy is revenue strategy is brand strategy, one and the same.
Everyone buys into that or the business cannot deliver on its brand promise and the customer
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experience, property owners, investors and guests, this customer reality will not match
the brand promise.
And having done this one successfully, businesses must consistently execute on brand promise
every single time.
So hard to present, even harder to understand and roll out to the entire organization.
(03:48):
But let's not overcomplicate this.
Brand strategy is revenue strategy is brand strategy, as I keep saying, it really is that
simpler concept.
It's a bringing together of everything I've discussed to date on this first season and
everything yet to come.
Let's recap on brand strategy then, shall we?
Per Artie Palmer, one of the former brand strategists, I have the following.
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Number one, a business sells a product or service.
Number two, brand is the identity for the business, which helps attract audiences to
the business.
Number three, branding is the representation of your brand through messaging, visuals,
all communications and interactions.
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Marketing then is the process to bring awareness to the brand and business, which means getting
clarity on the core brand identity, narrative positioning, value proposition, competitive
advantage, audience, ethos, and so on.
It's crucial to inform the game plan for everything else.
If the brand strategy piece is skipped, how can you effectively create on brand messaging,
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ads, content, imagery, a unique visual identity system, attract and sell to relevant audiences,
create a website, hire the right talent and feel like you are making intentional and informed
decisions.
So to Artie's message, I would add, if you skip the connection between brand strategy
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and revenue strategy, then how can you identify your brand promise to your customers and ensure
that your customer's experience of your products and services consistently matches your brand
promise?
After all, what is a brand if not a promise a business makes to its customers?
Okay then, enough dilly dallying.
(05:38):
Are you ready to get into it?
Ready to get your feathers ruffled, revenue people?
I'm a firm believer that revenue management is more than data.
It's about having a holistic approach to revenue whereby you develop a revenue strategy for
(06:00):
your business that's all about creating intentional brand standards that define your company.
This is equal part science and art.
I'm even going to make a case for revenue management to be lifted out of its usual place
in finance or sales departments, rebranded with a new name revenue strategy and placed
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down into the marketing department.
For all the revenue managers and finance people, even some of the sales people listening at
this moment, I know that statement is causing you to clutch your pearls in horror.
Stay with me here people.
Additionally, in this episode, I'm going to talk about hiring to balance personality
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types in revenue management.
I'm going to cover brand standards for such fascinated topics as what's in your kitchen,
how you run housekeeping, what owners and properties you accept into your management
program and those old standards, how your staff dress and talk to owners, guests and
vendor partners.
I want to give a reminder at this stage in the season, this first season about what this
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podcast is about.
My aim is not to tell you how to do this.
Revenue managers out there, I'm not going to tell you how to do your jobs.
You can take a breath and calm down.
No, the aim of this podcast is to introduce concepts for discussion and application in
your businesses as you take a new approach to build in the brand strategy for your unique
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hospitality brand.
Concepts not how to.
Got it.
Let's get into the video.
Brands have an identity.
You're building a hospitality brand.
What uniquely identifies your company separate to your competition?
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So I know what you're already thinking.
Gee, Andy, I have my spreadsheets and my calculator ready.
I thought we were going to talk about numbers today.
This is a revenue management episode, right?
Yes, you are correct.
This is about revenue management as part of an overall proactive intentional revenue strategy.
For those new to the game, firstly, you're welcome here.
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Secondly, what is revenue management?
Revenue management can be defined in this way.
The practice of applying data and analytics to predict demand and adjust pricing and in
some cases, other terms of sale to maximize revenue from the businesses underlying inventory
or supply.
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Revenue management has been called the art and science of selling the right product to
the right customer at the right price.
Now, doesn't that just sound frankly boring?
Snooze fast, right?
Instead of reacting to data, let's add some fun to this.
Let's add a sprinkle of additional art and science in our business pipelines ahead of
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looking at the data.
Let's get proactive and not merely reactive.
You know what?
I hate the term revenue management since it implies, as I just said, a reactive action.
If that kind of makes sense.
Anyway, something that's done with data after the fact.
Your competition is already reacting, waiting until they're in a pinch, panicking last minute
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when an owner calls to ask why July 4th week is not yet booked.
You grasp a straws.
Baseline the price, get the property filled, but yet nobody is happy after all that work.
Why?
You didn't guide your client.
Either of them.
You did not steer the property owner with revenue generating advice.
The owner feels as if they gave something up.
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You feel slighted since you put more work into the analysis you did once you spotted
that the dates weren't booking.
You did not work with the guest to put them in the right property for their needs.
The owner has hired you for advice, not panic.
Guests do not book on price alone.
Just because the guest got a bargain, they're going to expect the same level of service
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as if they paid full price.
Yet you have a lower margin available to cover your operating costs of supporting the guest's
stay.
Panic is never a win-win.
It's fight or flight.
As in you fight with the owner and guest, they flight anyway.
They go to your competition whose only competitive positioning is how low they will go on price.
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Get out of that race to the bottom.
Put some proactive juice into your system.
Gee whiz.
Yes, I'm aware that there is a reactive element to revenue management.
I've been doing this for a long time.
It's only reactive in the sense that you react to unexpected variables in the market.
Looking backwards at your booking data and comparing to current booking patterns to assess
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how your current bookings are pacing against prior stays.
Well, isn't that a proactive action?
Spotting a trend early enough to do something about it with rate adjustments and stay requirements.
I'm going to suggest that we can do more in terms of proactively affecting revenue.
I covered it in the introduction.
(11:15):
Let me say it again, everything you do and say in your business and brand affects your
revenue.
And of course, yes, the opposite is true.
Revenue is as much about where and why you say no.
The concept really is this simple.
(11:40):
It's at this point in our episode story that I like to introduce our villain.
In this case, I think the villain is a lack of focus.
The villain will be you if you don't at least try some of my suggestions.
I already suggested that you're the villain when you react to the market and lower rates
in a last minute panic with no advanced guidance to your owner.
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If there's one message to take from this entire podcast, when building a hospitality brand,
any brand, then focus.
Quit trying to be all things to all people at all times.
That's a futile activity that leads you down the path of competing on price alone.
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I've openly shared in this podcast that all the things I advise you not to do, I was guilty
of doing in the first two years of running my own vacation home management company.
You're familiar with my story at this point, two years in exhausted or trying to be all
things to all people.
I picked my business apart, looked at every aspect of what we did and did not do and put
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the business back together again in a purposeful, intentional position brand.
I focused.
That's what all those words mean.
I got focused.
Even after getting focused in terms of figuring out my why, my what, my how and who, for the
next two years, I still ran revenue management the standard way, a reactive response to the
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market and a look back at the data.
Don't diss the data though, show some love for the data since ironically, looking at the
data gave me one of my best ideas in my business.
At this point, I had four years of historic booking data in my PMS database and PMS's
property management system.
I could see the difference in revenue for properties where I'd either onboarded a new
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owner who complied with our way of working or an existing property where the owner had
made changes.
In this case, you could also see it in the guest reviews for repeat guests who had stayed
before and after our brand identity refresh.
What I'm about to say may sound obvious, but if you're buried in your business, so busy
working in it that you're not getting a chance to work on it, you may miss this in your own
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data because it's not about pricing decisions per se.
You may get this point, but do not want to be proactive in your property spending decisions
since you're waiting on revenue to come in to reinvest in the property.
The same argument goes for your management company.
When we got focused, I began a real drive to curate properties for a managed portfolio.
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In line with the topic of our last episode, client personas, I had already figured out
the type of owners best suited for how my company worked.
Focusing on owners alone is not a fully rounded approach to adding properties to your managed
portfolio.
Why?
It says nothing to the guest side of the equation.
At this point, since our company rebrand, not only had I been working with owners who
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had been with us prior to the rebrand, but we were also using our new brand rules to
decide not only which owner personas were right for us, but also which properties relative
to the type of guests staying with us.
Sometimes I loved an owner, but the property was not right.
The property did not fit our portfolio curation plan or was not suitable to be used for public
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lodging.
Be careful not to skew towards too much of the same property type, unless you niche down
that is in two bedroom one and a half bath condos for example.
Other times the property was perfectly located with a private swimming pool, yet the owner
would not make the changes I required.
(15:43):
My point is that in addition to an owner acquisition plan for your business, your hospitality brand,
you also need a property portfolio curation plan.
Here's a few elements of my property portfolio curation plan that became identifiable with
my hospitality brand.
How do you think the following may affect revenue?
A well stocked kitchen according to our owner guide to stage in a vacation rental kitchen
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that we published annually.
Furnishing options match the size of the dining table and sofas to the sleep capacity of the
property.
Bedrooms, no bunk beds.
If the room is big enough, add two queen beds or at least two full beds.
We had a definition for what furniture item constituted a bed.
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A futon or a sleep sofa was not considered to be a bed at our managed properties.
Two sides to a bed requires two nightstands and two bedside lamps.
Headboards, there must be headboards on a bed.
No footboards however.
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Have you ever tried to make a bed with a footboard?
Two pillows per person per bed, one soft pillow, one medium pillow.
Linens, owners must buy into our linen program.
We purchased commercial grade wholesale white hotel linens and managed the bed making and
laundry process for the guest.
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Property entry, digital Wi-Fi enabled door locks, closets and cupboards must be empty
of all owner personal items.
Fragrances, air fresheners, candles not allowed.
Maintenance, no open routine maintenance issues such as moldy bathroom cork in.
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Furniture, there must be an overall design aesthetic for a property.
Yes it can be unique, but it cannot look like the end of the road for all your hand-me-down
family furniture from other properties.
And the more obvious, property layout and location.
I could go on about this for an entire episode, but you get the point.
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Part of me intuitively understood this because I'm a high level empathic personality type.
I can easily put myself in the position of another and understand something from their
perspective.
Sometimes though, something did not occur to me until I stayed at a vacation rental
property as a guest.
Let's stop here for a few moments and enjoy a little story.
(18:25):
It's May 2019.
We're in the United Kingdom for a lovely spring visit.
True to form at this time of the year, the weather is beautifully mild.
A weak warm sun stands proudly amongst open blue skies.
Daffodils, crocus, tulips and energetic birds are responding animatedly to the glorious
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spring weather.
We've chosen the dramatic landscape of southwest Britain, the county of Cornwall, as our holiday
adventure.
Join spouse and I as we arrive in Fowey, a small Cornish village clinging to the hills
overlooking the estuary of the river Fowey.
We're both in a great mood, relaxed, our hearts and minds open with nature.
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This however, is all about to change.
I pull up my cell phone and attempt to pull up an email from the property manager containing
the arrival instructions to enter the property.
There is not a digital lock on the property, but there is a lockbox containing the old
fashioned key to the beautiful antique hewn wood door on this vintage cottage that is
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about to be our home for the next three nights.
I have no cell service.
Oh oh.
No problem I say to spouse.
I'll just connect to the property Wi-Fi and then I can pull up my email.
I smile with triumphant glee.
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So proud of my initiative.
Um, how are you going to know the Wi-Fi code?
Spouse quietly and delicately asks.
It's in the printed welcome book that I can see on the living room coffee table through
the front window of the cottage.
I lean backwards on the front door and my breath seeps out of me in a sigh of defeat.
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Wow.
What?
The door opens as I lean on it.
Great.
Housekeeping.
They left the door open for us.
I yell.
Must be nice to live in such a safe small village where you can leave your door open.
Spouse goes to the car to get luggage as I enter the cottage to get the Wi-Fi code to
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retrieve the key from the lock box.
Wait what?
Whose shoes are they piled up along the narrow entrance hallway?
I find the kitchen.
There are remnants of a cooked breakfast.
Everywhere.
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Spouse comes in, sees the mess and says, well maybe we're early and house keeping has not
gotten here yet.
Let's go to the pub, get on their Wi-Fi, get some lunch and get in touch with the property
manager to see what's going on.
It's only later as I'm enjoying my fish and chips at the local pub down the hill that
I remember seeing all those shoes piled up in the hallway and I check my email again
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to look at the arrival instructions.
Something just doesn't feel right.
We're a day early.
I spit out between mouthfuls of fish and chips.
Those shoes must belong to the current guests.
We're not due until tomorrow.
Luckily the pub has attached accommodation and has availability.
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So we spend our first night.
Now the first of four nights instead of the plan three, we spend it at a local pub.
Not too shabby, right?
Except we don't realize that the pub has live music and the band is right below our
room and the walls are so thin that even when the band finishes at midnight, I can hear
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the guy in the next room snoring all night.
I don't get any sleep that night.
What in blue blazes is going on?
So what can we learn from my colossal Cornish confusion?
It was my experience as a guest on this trip that really made the penny drop regarding
a digital guest guide and guest texting.
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How do you pull up an email from a host or a property manager when you have no cell service?
And while you could see the property Wi-Fi network from the front yard, you cannot connect
to the network since the Wi-Fi code is in a paper printed guidebook tantalizingly visible
on the coffee table inside of a locked window.
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You may think that such a small guest facing issue has not been able to pull up an email
with property access instructions does not affect the revenue, but trust me it will.
What if that guest issue makes it into an online review?
How do you think potential future guests reading a bad review might affect future revenue?
Well, yeah, in our case, I did make it worse by messing up our schedule and arriving a
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day early, but that only raises the stakes.
What if the current guest had been there and I'd walked in on them?
My fault, yeah.
But it still could have made it into that current guests review too.
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I have another example for you.
Again, it's a guest facing one.
It's no coincidence I mentioned another guest facing example that affects your revenue.
Why do you think it is?
Hello, Nylon Richie.
It's the guest you're looking for.
You know the one who delivers the revenue to you and the property owner.
Hello, Adele.
Reach out to the other side.
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You're building a hospitality brand and not a real estate brand.
Back to my example, guest communications.
This was so important to our brand identity that I mentioned this to every owner on a
listing appointment.
I used to say, we work hard to keep the guest happy before, during, and after their stay.
It affects the revenue we can bring to you.
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If a guest gets frustrated with the design of our website or rudeness from one of our
staff during booking, shows nothing from us between booking and arrival, or the property
is not ready on time, then the guest will arrive in a bad mood.
If we can get a guest checked in happily, there's every chance that if something unexpected
does happen during the stay, the guest will trust us to handle it well.
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Happy guests give five star reviews.
And I would briefly run the owner through our requirements for them to enter our management
program.
All of this was available on our website, reinforced in videos I made on our YouTube
channel, in our owner newsletters, blog entries, appearances on podcasts, and so on.
I made this information so available, in fact, that other companies copied us.
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How flattering.
Also a sign that we were getting it right.
And I have covered this in earlier episodes.
Don't be afraid of disclosing your standards for your company for fear that somebody else
will copy you.
Because you know what?
As I said previously, a copy is just a facsimile.
It's a mere imitation of the original.
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If you don't have the original's brand position in, then a copy is just not going to cut it.
When I could point to patterns in our revenue data that were traceable back to a recommendation
that I'd made to an owner that the owner had acted on, I knew that I was onto something.
Ever the marketer, I branded our approach to guiding the owner towards items that affected
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revenue as revenue by design.
I did not stop at the owner's.
I implemented a policy that any staff member who interacted with a guest at the property
wore a uniform and a company name badge.
At our office, while we allowed beach casual attire such as shorts, there was still a dress
code, no sandals or bare arms, for example.
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We systemized everything.
I wanted the look, feel, and experience of our brand to pervade every aspect of the business.
Why?
Yep, it made us look good, but that's not the point.
Revenue by design was our company mantra.
You can intentionally or unintentionally affect revenue in many ways other than rate pricing.
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Better it be intentional.
Don't misunderstand me, I wanted my staff to show their personalities.
They still had to follow a standard system, however.
If a property was a second home for an owner, I wanted their property to show the owner
personalities.
We were not managing standard hotel rooms.
It's okay for each property to have its own identity, but up to a point.
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An owner's personalization of a property through decor and furnishing choice cannot
interfere with the intended use of the property as public lodging.
Neither can an owner's personal property be left out in the open of properties.
Staff personality, property personality, yes, but up to a point, and that point is the guest.
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If I could not get a staff member or a property owner to unite under the needs of the guest,
then they were not a good fit for our brand.
I never wanted to have to explain to a guest when given feedback on a sofa, for example,
that the property owner likes it and will not swap it out.
Remember my story from Florence, Italy in September of 2022?
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That sofa example is a true story that happened to me then as a guest.
Similarly, I never wanted to have to take the following telephone call from a property
owner.
Hello?
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Your maintenance man was smoking at my house today.
Unbelievably disrespectful.
And by the way, we're talking cigarettes here, not the level of attractiveness of our maintenance
department.
Or how about this call that we got from a guest?
Hello?
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Yes, I want to speak to the manager.
I just tried to take a nap and the sheets are dirty.
They stink of perfume.
Didn't you people change the beds?
Both of these telephone calls are real life examples that we got in our company.
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And the last call, the guest call, was traceable to a member of housekeeping wearing cologne
while making a bed with clean linens.
Here's another true story.
Join me as I walk into a signature Premier property to do a spot inspection in the middle
of a turnover window on a busy Saturday during high season in early August.
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The turnover shift is going great despite back to back stays with full occupancy.
However, things are about to go south.
Fast.
What is that smell?
I said out loud to no one in particular.
I hadn't seen any cars parked outside so I thought I was in the property alone.
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As I entered the combination kitchen, dining room and living room space, I happened on
a large group of people gathered around the dining table enjoying a meal of fried chicken.
No, not the guests arriving early.
This group of people are the staff from the housekeeping subcontractor that we'd retain
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to make beds for us.
Their entire bedmaking team is seated in the already clean property at the dining table
eating a communal team lunch of stinky greasy fried chicken.
That's awful.
Unfortunately for this happy team, lunch ends abruptly that day.
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I set the team to work stripping and making the beds once they've washed their hands,
that is.
I open all the doors and windows, put the ceiling fans on and wipe down all the surfaces.
I step outside to call the owner of the housekeeping company to report this infraction and reinforce
that housekeepers were at properties to do housekeeping, not eat.
(31:01):
This is what the company owner replies, well, my team is entitled to a lunch break.
What do you expect us to do?
It's hot and humid.
Our turnover shift that had been quite easy up to this point was rapidly going south.
You know the drill.
One incident has a habit of finding another and giving birth to many other child incidents
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and suddenly your stress-free day is veering fast into the weeds and it's heading towards
check-in deadline and oops, guests are already pulling up outside the property.
So later on that day, once all guests are safely checked in, I have a breather to reflect
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on what had gone on that shift.
Not only was the housekeeping company's brand affected by this colossal mistake of needs
prioritization but my own company brand was also tarnished.
This was unacceptable to our brand's standards and I make a few calls, I arrange a backup
plan and then I part ways with this chaotic housekeeping subcontractor.
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Enough is enough.
My entire team heaves a sigh of relief.
This particular housekeeping subcontractor had been causing chaos for weeks and my team
had been bravely pulling together and making it work.
Come out with your hands up.
This story still makes me laugh.
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It's the outrageous surprise of it all, not to mention the vendor partner's unexpected
unprofessional response.
You wouldn't necessarily think that a housekeeping subcontractor eating a fried chicken meal
at a property would be tied into revenue management but these examples show that everything affects
your hospitality brand, thus affecting the revenue that you bring in.
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Because of this, as I mentioned in episode 7, I recommend an early hire in your growing
business to be a revenue strategist.
You need to consider proactively what standards you will have in place for your brand since
it will determine your revenue.
This is what I mean by revenue strategy.
Your revenue strategist needs to have high empathy.
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They need to build a balanced strategy with execution.
Be equally skilled in arts and science.
It helps if they have a flair with numbers but they don't need to be a data scientist,
economist or mathematician.
You can hire those team members.
Just balance your revenue team with arts and science in equal measure skill sets.
(33:32):
Move your revenue management team from your finance or sales departments to your marketing
department.
This sends a clear message that revenue is as proactive as it is reactive, central to
all that you do.
Revenue by design.
Everything you do or do not do in your business affects your revenue.
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Set yourself up for maximum revenue by having a focus on a clear set of operating principles
that define your brand and the guest will repay you for it.
For all our number geeks here, shout out thank you.
If you're dealing with a recalcitrant owner who will not implement the suggestions you
make, then point to the data.
(34:17):
You can see the patterns.
They're undeniable.
(34:48):
And that's our cue to wrap up another episode of How the Guest was Won, Tales from the Vacation
Rental Trails, a state attention production.
What ground have we covered today and what questions have we raised for further discussion?
We revisited a definition of brand and the importance of a brand's strategy and marketing.
(35:09):
We discussed how important revenue management is to brand identity.
We defined revenue management.
We discussed how revenue is more than data analysis.
We introduced examples of things that affect revenue and how a proactive approach to design
a company's products and services affects how much revenue you get to manage.
(35:30):
We made a case to rename revenue management to revenue strategy, move it from finance
or sales into marketing.
Now that's a gutsy rebrand that's sure to have ruffled a few feathers.
No?
(35:52):
That's the sound of another day on the trails coming to an end.
I always like to close with a pun in case we've gotten a little too serious with our
conversation.
So, sun's out, pun's out, here we go.
Question, why don't guests like stairs?
Answer, they're always up to something.
(36:12):
Until next time, happy trails.
If your brand resonates with this podcast and you would like to sponsor this podcast,
please get in touch with me through our website, stayattention.com forward slash podcast.
(36:33):
If you have an episode topic or a story just burst in to be told, also get in touch with
me through our website, stayattention.com forward slash podcast.
Welcome to How the Guest was Won, Tales from the Trails for Vacation Rental Pioneers, a
(00:23):
stay attention production, starring Andy Meddick and guest stars you.
To thrive as an operator in the wild west of today's vacation rental industry, you
must get focused and clear on your brand and revenue strategy.
In this podcast, through stories from our businesses and our experienced guests, we'll
explore the concepts, challenges, and common obstacles encountered while building vacation
(00:49):
rental hospitality brands regardless of scale.
This is your host, Andy Meddick, CEO of Stay Attention, former CEO of my own vacation rental
management company, Sea Change Vacation Rentals, and most importantly, Guest.
Vacation Home Pioneers, bring your voices, your stories, and join me on the trails as
(01:12):
together we tell the true story of how the guest was won.
A quick reminder before we get started, if you have not already listened to earlier episodes,
including our preview episode, I urge you to go back and listen since our season runs
(01:36):
as a complete series and I would be very sad for you to miss out.
This episode, episode 9, is called Revenue by Design?
Oh, am I boring you?
Today I'm introducing a concept that I developed for my own vacation home management company
that I call Revenue by Design.
(01:59):
It's based on my belief that revenue management is more than a reactive action to data and
that how everything you do and say in your business affects your revenue.
I position a somewhat controversial opinion that revenue management should be lifted out
of its home in finance or sales departments, given a brand overhaul and renamed to revenue
(02:20):
strategy and relocated to the marketing department.
As I lead us out on the trail in today's episode, I'll say upfront that today's
topic is one of this first season's episodes that I was most looking forward to getting
into.
It's also the hardest one for me to present.
(02:40):
So why then is it so hard to present?
In order to grab everyone's attention towards branding at a company, from the CEO down to
the revenue managers and the frontline operations staff, I need to get everyone on board to
buy into a company's brand mission, purpose and strategy.
You see revenue management, or more accurately revenue strategy, of which revenue management
(03:02):
is a part, covers all aspects of your vacation rental business.
Of course, the opposite is true.
Revenue is as much about where and why you say no.
Brand strategy is revenue strategy is brand strategy, one and the same.
Everyone buys into that or the business cannot deliver on its brand promise and the customer
(03:22):
experience, property owners, investors and guests, this customer reality will not match
the brand promise.
And having done this one successfully, businesses must consistently execute on brand promise
every single time.
So hard to present, even harder to understand and roll out to the entire organization.
(03:48):
But let's not overcomplicate this.
Brand strategy is revenue strategy is brand strategy, as I keep saying, it really is that
simpler concept.
It's a bringing together of everything I've discussed to date on this first season and
everything yet to come.
Let's recap on brand strategy then, shall we?
Per Artie Palmer, one of the former brand strategists, I have the following.
(04:12):
Number one, a business sells a product or service.
Number two, brand is the identity for the business, which helps attract audiences to
the business.
Number three, branding is the representation of your brand through messaging, visuals,
all communications and interactions.
(04:33):
Marketing then is the process to bring awareness to the brand and business, which means getting
clarity on the core brand identity, narrative positioning, value proposition, competitive
advantage, audience, ethos, and so on.
It's crucial to inform the game plan for everything else.
If the brand strategy piece is skipped, how can you effectively create on brand messaging,
(04:57):
ads, content, imagery, a unique visual identity system, attract and sell to relevant audiences,
create a website, hire the right talent and feel like you are making intentional and informed
decisions.
So to Artie's message, I would add, if you skip the connection between brand strategy
(05:17):
and revenue strategy, then how can you identify your brand promise to your customers and ensure
that your customer's experience of your products and services consistently matches your brand
promise?
After all, what is a brand if not a promise a business makes to its customers?
Okay then, enough dilly dallying.
(05:38):
Are you ready to get into it?
Ready to get your feathers ruffled, revenue people?
I'm a firm believer that revenue management is more than data.
It's about having a holistic approach to revenue whereby you develop a revenue strategy for
(06:00):
your business that's all about creating intentional brand standards that define your company.
This is equal part science and art.
I'm even going to make a case for revenue management to be lifted out of its usual place
in finance or sales departments, rebranded with a new name revenue strategy and placed
(06:21):
down into the marketing department.
For all the revenue managers and finance people, even some of the sales people listening at
this moment, I know that statement is causing you to clutch your pearls in horror.
Stay with me here people.
Additionally, in this episode, I'm going to talk about hiring to balance personality
(06:42):
types in revenue management.
I'm going to cover brand standards for such fascinated topics as what's in your kitchen,
how you run housekeeping, what owners and properties you accept into your management
program and those old standards, how your staff dress and talk to owners, guests and
vendor partners.
I want to give a reminder at this stage in the season, this first season about what this
(07:06):
podcast is about.
My aim is not to tell you how to do this.
Revenue managers out there, I'm not going to tell you how to do your jobs.
You can take a breath and calm down.
No, the aim of this podcast is to introduce concepts for discussion and application in
your businesses as you take a new approach to build in the brand strategy for your unique
(07:29):
hospitality brand.
Concepts not how to.
Got it.
Let's get into the video.
Brands have an identity.
You're building a hospitality brand.
What uniquely identifies your company separate to your competition?
(07:50):
So I know what you're already thinking.
Gee, Andy, I have my spreadsheets and my calculator ready.
I thought we were going to talk about numbers today.
This is a revenue management episode, right?
Yes, you are correct.
This is about revenue management as part of an overall proactive intentional revenue strategy.
For those new to the game, firstly, you're welcome here.
(08:13):
Secondly, what is revenue management?
Revenue management can be defined in this way.
The practice of applying data and analytics to predict demand and adjust pricing and in
some cases, other terms of sale to maximize revenue from the businesses underlying inventory
or supply.
(08:34):
Revenue management has been called the art and science of selling the right product to
the right customer at the right price.
Now, doesn't that just sound frankly boring?
Snooze fast, right?
Instead of reacting to data, let's add some fun to this.
Let's add a sprinkle of additional art and science in our business pipelines ahead of
(08:58):
looking at the data.
Let's get proactive and not merely reactive.
You know what?
I hate the term revenue management since it implies, as I just said, a reactive action.
If that kind of makes sense.
Anyway, something that's done with data after the fact.
Your competition is already reacting, waiting until they're in a pinch, panicking last minute
(09:23):
when an owner calls to ask why July 4th week is not yet booked.
You grasp a straws.
Baseline the price, get the property filled, but yet nobody is happy after all that work.
Why?
You didn't guide your client.
Either of them.
You did not steer the property owner with revenue generating advice.
The owner feels as if they gave something up.
(09:46):
You feel slighted since you put more work into the analysis you did once you spotted
that the dates weren't booking.
You did not work with the guest to put them in the right property for their needs.
The owner has hired you for advice, not panic.
Guests do not book on price alone.
Just because the guest got a bargain, they're going to expect the same level of service
(10:08):
as if they paid full price.
Yet you have a lower margin available to cover your operating costs of supporting the guest's
stay.
Panic is never a win-win.
It's fight or flight.
As in you fight with the owner and guest, they flight anyway.
They go to your competition whose only competitive positioning is how low they will go on price.
(10:30):
Get out of that race to the bottom.
Put some proactive juice into your system.
Gee whiz.
Yes, I'm aware that there is a reactive element to revenue management.
I've been doing this for a long time.
It's only reactive in the sense that you react to unexpected variables in the market.
Looking backwards at your booking data and comparing to current booking patterns to assess
(10:54):
how your current bookings are pacing against prior stays.
Well, isn't that a proactive action?
Spotting a trend early enough to do something about it with rate adjustments and stay requirements.
I'm going to suggest that we can do more in terms of proactively affecting revenue.
I covered it in the introduction.
(11:15):
Let me say it again, everything you do and say in your business and brand affects your
revenue.
And of course, yes, the opposite is true.
Revenue is as much about where and why you say no.
The concept really is this simple.
(11:40):
It's at this point in our episode story that I like to introduce our villain.
In this case, I think the villain is a lack of focus.
The villain will be you if you don't at least try some of my suggestions.
I already suggested that you're the villain when you react to the market and lower rates
in a last minute panic with no advanced guidance to your owner.
(12:03):
If there's one message to take from this entire podcast, when building a hospitality brand,
any brand, then focus.
Quit trying to be all things to all people at all times.
That's a futile activity that leads you down the path of competing on price alone.
(12:35):
I've openly shared in this podcast that all the things I advise you not to do, I was guilty
of doing in the first two years of running my own vacation home management company.
You're familiar with my story at this point, two years in exhausted or trying to be all
things to all people.
I picked my business apart, looked at every aspect of what we did and did not do and put
(12:57):
the business back together again in a purposeful, intentional position brand.
I focused.
That's what all those words mean.
I got focused.
Even after getting focused in terms of figuring out my why, my what, my how and who, for the
next two years, I still ran revenue management the standard way, a reactive response to the
(13:20):
market and a look back at the data.
Don't diss the data though, show some love for the data since ironically, looking at the
data gave me one of my best ideas in my business.
At this point, I had four years of historic booking data in my PMS database and PMS's
property management system.
I could see the difference in revenue for properties where I'd either onboarded a new
(13:44):
owner who complied with our way of working or an existing property where the owner had
made changes.
In this case, you could also see it in the guest reviews for repeat guests who had stayed
before and after our brand identity refresh.
What I'm about to say may sound obvious, but if you're buried in your business, so busy
working in it that you're not getting a chance to work on it, you may miss this in your own
(14:08):
data because it's not about pricing decisions per se.
You may get this point, but do not want to be proactive in your property spending decisions
since you're waiting on revenue to come in to reinvest in the property.
The same argument goes for your management company.
When we got focused, I began a real drive to curate properties for a managed portfolio.
(14:29):
In line with the topic of our last episode, client personas, I had already figured out
the type of owners best suited for how my company worked.
Focusing on owners alone is not a fully rounded approach to adding properties to your managed
portfolio.
Why?
It says nothing to the guest side of the equation.
At this point, since our company rebrand, not only had I been working with owners who
(14:53):
had been with us prior to the rebrand, but we were also using our new brand rules to
decide not only which owner personas were right for us, but also which properties relative
to the type of guests staying with us.
Sometimes I loved an owner, but the property was not right.
The property did not fit our portfolio curation plan or was not suitable to be used for public
(15:14):
lodging.
Be careful not to skew towards too much of the same property type, unless you niche down
that is in two bedroom one and a half bath condos for example.
Other times the property was perfectly located with a private swimming pool, yet the owner
would not make the changes I required.
(15:43):
My point is that in addition to an owner acquisition plan for your business, your hospitality brand,
you also need a property portfolio curation plan.
Here's a few elements of my property portfolio curation plan that became identifiable with
my hospitality brand.
How do you think the following may affect revenue?
A well stocked kitchen according to our owner guide to stage in a vacation rental kitchen
(16:08):
that we published annually.
Furnishing options match the size of the dining table and sofas to the sleep capacity of the
property.
Bedrooms, no bunk beds.
If the room is big enough, add two queen beds or at least two full beds.
We had a definition for what furniture item constituted a bed.
(16:30):
A futon or a sleep sofa was not considered to be a bed at our managed properties.
Two sides to a bed requires two nightstands and two bedside lamps.
Headboards, there must be headboards on a bed.
No footboards however.
(16:51):
Have you ever tried to make a bed with a footboard?
Two pillows per person per bed, one soft pillow, one medium pillow.
Linens, owners must buy into our linen program.
We purchased commercial grade wholesale white hotel linens and managed the bed making and
laundry process for the guest.
(17:14):
Property entry, digital Wi-Fi enabled door locks, closets and cupboards must be empty
of all owner personal items.
Fragrances, air fresheners, candles not allowed.
Maintenance, no open routine maintenance issues such as moldy bathroom cork in.
(17:35):
Furniture, there must be an overall design aesthetic for a property.
Yes it can be unique, but it cannot look like the end of the road for all your hand-me-down
family furniture from other properties.
And the more obvious, property layout and location.
I could go on about this for an entire episode, but you get the point.
(17:58):
Part of me intuitively understood this because I'm a high level empathic personality type.
I can easily put myself in the position of another and understand something from their
perspective.
Sometimes though, something did not occur to me until I stayed at a vacation rental
property as a guest.
Let's stop here for a few moments and enjoy a little story.
(18:25):
It's May 2019.
We're in the United Kingdom for a lovely spring visit.
True to form at this time of the year, the weather is beautifully mild.
A weak warm sun stands proudly amongst open blue skies.
Daffodils, crocus, tulips and energetic birds are responding animatedly to the glorious
(18:47):
spring weather.
We've chosen the dramatic landscape of southwest Britain, the county of Cornwall, as our holiday
adventure.
Join spouse and I as we arrive in Fowey, a small Cornish village clinging to the hills
overlooking the estuary of the river Fowey.
We're both in a great mood, relaxed, our hearts and minds open with nature.
(19:13):
This however, is all about to change.
I pull up my cell phone and attempt to pull up an email from the property manager containing
the arrival instructions to enter the property.
There is not a digital lock on the property, but there is a lockbox containing the old
fashioned key to the beautiful antique hewn wood door on this vintage cottage that is
(19:37):
about to be our home for the next three nights.
I have no cell service.
Oh oh.
No problem I say to spouse.
I'll just connect to the property Wi-Fi and then I can pull up my email.
I smile with triumphant glee.
(19:59):
So proud of my initiative.
Um, how are you going to know the Wi-Fi code?
Spouse quietly and delicately asks.
It's in the printed welcome book that I can see on the living room coffee table through
the front window of the cottage.
I lean backwards on the front door and my breath seeps out of me in a sigh of defeat.
(20:22):
Wow.
What?
The door opens as I lean on it.
Great.
Housekeeping.
They left the door open for us.
I yell.
Must be nice to live in such a safe small village where you can leave your door open.
Spouse goes to the car to get luggage as I enter the cottage to get the Wi-Fi code to
(20:44):
retrieve the key from the lock box.
Wait what?
Whose shoes are they piled up along the narrow entrance hallway?
I find the kitchen.
There are remnants of a cooked breakfast.
Everywhere.
(21:16):
Spouse comes in, sees the mess and says, well maybe we're early and house keeping has not
gotten here yet.
Let's go to the pub, get on their Wi-Fi, get some lunch and get in touch with the property
manager to see what's going on.
It's only later as I'm enjoying my fish and chips at the local pub down the hill that
I remember seeing all those shoes piled up in the hallway and I check my email again
(21:39):
to look at the arrival instructions.
Something just doesn't feel right.
We're a day early.
I spit out between mouthfuls of fish and chips.
Those shoes must belong to the current guests.
We're not due until tomorrow.
Luckily the pub has attached accommodation and has availability.
(21:59):
So we spend our first night.
Now the first of four nights instead of the plan three, we spend it at a local pub.
Not too shabby, right?
Except we don't realize that the pub has live music and the band is right below our
room and the walls are so thin that even when the band finishes at midnight, I can hear
(22:24):
the guy in the next room snoring all night.
I don't get any sleep that night.
What in blue blazes is going on?
So what can we learn from my colossal Cornish confusion?
It was my experience as a guest on this trip that really made the penny drop regarding
a digital guest guide and guest texting.
(22:47):
How do you pull up an email from a host or a property manager when you have no cell service?
And while you could see the property Wi-Fi network from the front yard, you cannot connect
to the network since the Wi-Fi code is in a paper printed guidebook tantalizingly visible
on the coffee table inside of a locked window.
(23:11):
You may think that such a small guest facing issue has not been able to pull up an email
with property access instructions does not affect the revenue, but trust me it will.
What if that guest issue makes it into an online review?
How do you think potential future guests reading a bad review might affect future revenue?
Well, yeah, in our case, I did make it worse by messing up our schedule and arriving a
(23:36):
day early, but that only raises the stakes.
What if the current guest had been there and I'd walked in on them?
My fault, yeah.
But it still could have made it into that current guests review too.
(23:58):
I have another example for you.
Again, it's a guest facing one.
It's no coincidence I mentioned another guest facing example that affects your revenue.
Why do you think it is?
Hello, Nylon Richie.
It's the guest you're looking for.
You know the one who delivers the revenue to you and the property owner.
Hello, Adele.
Reach out to the other side.
(24:18):
You're building a hospitality brand and not a real estate brand.
Back to my example, guest communications.
This was so important to our brand identity that I mentioned this to every owner on a
listing appointment.
I used to say, we work hard to keep the guest happy before, during, and after their stay.
It affects the revenue we can bring to you.
(24:40):
If a guest gets frustrated with the design of our website or rudeness from one of our
staff during booking, shows nothing from us between booking and arrival, or the property
is not ready on time, then the guest will arrive in a bad mood.
If we can get a guest checked in happily, there's every chance that if something unexpected
does happen during the stay, the guest will trust us to handle it well.
(25:04):
Happy guests give five star reviews.
And I would briefly run the owner through our requirements for them to enter our management
program.
All of this was available on our website, reinforced in videos I made on our YouTube
channel, in our owner newsletters, blog entries, appearances on podcasts, and so on.
I made this information so available, in fact, that other companies copied us.
(25:28):
How flattering.
Also a sign that we were getting it right.
And I have covered this in earlier episodes.
Don't be afraid of disclosing your standards for your company for fear that somebody else
will copy you.
Because you know what?
As I said previously, a copy is just a facsimile.
It's a mere imitation of the original.
(25:50):
If you don't have the original's brand position in, then a copy is just not going to cut it.
When I could point to patterns in our revenue data that were traceable back to a recommendation
that I'd made to an owner that the owner had acted on, I knew that I was onto something.
Ever the marketer, I branded our approach to guiding the owner towards items that affected
(26:13):
revenue as revenue by design.
I did not stop at the owner's.
I implemented a policy that any staff member who interacted with a guest at the property
wore a uniform and a company name badge.
At our office, while we allowed beach casual attire such as shorts, there was still a dress
code, no sandals or bare arms, for example.
(26:35):
We systemized everything.
I wanted the look, feel, and experience of our brand to pervade every aspect of the business.
Why?
Yep, it made us look good, but that's not the point.
Revenue by design was our company mantra.
You can intentionally or unintentionally affect revenue in many ways other than rate pricing.
(26:58):
Better it be intentional.
Don't misunderstand me, I wanted my staff to show their personalities.
They still had to follow a standard system, however.
If a property was a second home for an owner, I wanted their property to show the owner
personalities.
We were not managing standard hotel rooms.
It's okay for each property to have its own identity, but up to a point.
(27:22):
An owner's personalization of a property through decor and furnishing choice cannot
interfere with the intended use of the property as public lodging.
Neither can an owner's personal property be left out in the open of properties.
Staff personality, property personality, yes, but up to a point, and that point is the guest.
(27:45):
If I could not get a staff member or a property owner to unite under the needs of the guest,
then they were not a good fit for our brand.
I never wanted to have to explain to a guest when given feedback on a sofa, for example,
that the property owner likes it and will not swap it out.
Remember my story from Florence, Italy in September of 2022?
(28:06):
That sofa example is a true story that happened to me then as a guest.
Similarly, I never wanted to have to take the following telephone call from a property
owner.
Hello?
(28:28):
Your maintenance man was smoking at my house today.
Unbelievably disrespectful.
And by the way, we're talking cigarettes here, not the level of attractiveness of our maintenance
department.
Or how about this call that we got from a guest?
Hello?
(28:49):
Yes, I want to speak to the manager.
I just tried to take a nap and the sheets are dirty.
They stink of perfume.
Didn't you people change the beds?
Both of these telephone calls are real life examples that we got in our company.
(29:09):
And the last call, the guest call, was traceable to a member of housekeeping wearing cologne
while making a bed with clean linens.
Here's another true story.
Join me as I walk into a signature Premier property to do a spot inspection in the middle
of a turnover window on a busy Saturday during high season in early August.
(29:31):
The turnover shift is going great despite back to back stays with full occupancy.
However, things are about to go south.
Fast.
What is that smell?
I said out loud to no one in particular.
I hadn't seen any cars parked outside so I thought I was in the property alone.
(29:56):
As I entered the combination kitchen, dining room and living room space, I happened on
a large group of people gathered around the dining table enjoying a meal of fried chicken.
No, not the guests arriving early.
This group of people are the staff from the housekeeping subcontractor that we'd retain
(30:17):
to make beds for us.
Their entire bedmaking team is seated in the already clean property at the dining table
eating a communal team lunch of stinky greasy fried chicken.
That's awful.
Unfortunately for this happy team, lunch ends abruptly that day.
(30:39):
I set the team to work stripping and making the beds once they've washed their hands,
that is.
I open all the doors and windows, put the ceiling fans on and wipe down all the surfaces.
I step outside to call the owner of the housekeeping company to report this infraction and reinforce
that housekeepers were at properties to do housekeeping, not eat.
(31:01):
This is what the company owner replies, well, my team is entitled to a lunch break.
What do you expect us to do?
It's hot and humid.
Our turnover shift that had been quite easy up to this point was rapidly going south.
You know the drill.
One incident has a habit of finding another and giving birth to many other child incidents
(31:24):
and suddenly your stress-free day is veering fast into the weeds and it's heading towards
check-in deadline and oops, guests are already pulling up outside the property.
So later on that day, once all guests are safely checked in, I have a breather to reflect
(31:45):
on what had gone on that shift.
Not only was the housekeeping company's brand affected by this colossal mistake of needs
prioritization but my own company brand was also tarnished.
This was unacceptable to our brand's standards and I make a few calls, I arrange a backup
plan and then I part ways with this chaotic housekeeping subcontractor.
(32:07):
Enough is enough.
My entire team heaves a sigh of relief.
This particular housekeeping subcontractor had been causing chaos for weeks and my team
had been bravely pulling together and making it work.
Come out with your hands up.
This story still makes me laugh.
(32:28):
It's the outrageous surprise of it all, not to mention the vendor partner's unexpected
unprofessional response.
You wouldn't necessarily think that a housekeeping subcontractor eating a fried chicken meal
at a property would be tied into revenue management but these examples show that everything affects
your hospitality brand, thus affecting the revenue that you bring in.
(32:49):
Because of this, as I mentioned in episode 7, I recommend an early hire in your growing
business to be a revenue strategist.
You need to consider proactively what standards you will have in place for your brand since
it will determine your revenue.
This is what I mean by revenue strategy.
Your revenue strategist needs to have high empathy.
(33:11):
They need to build a balanced strategy with execution.
Be equally skilled in arts and science.
It helps if they have a flair with numbers but they don't need to be a data scientist,
economist or mathematician.
You can hire those team members.
Just balance your revenue team with arts and science in equal measure skill sets.
(33:32):
Move your revenue management team from your finance or sales departments to your marketing
department.
This sends a clear message that revenue is as proactive as it is reactive, central to
all that you do.
Revenue by design.
Everything you do or do not do in your business affects your revenue.
(33:56):
Set yourself up for maximum revenue by having a focus on a clear set of operating principles
that define your brand and the guest will repay you for it.
For all our number geeks here, shout out thank you.
If you're dealing with a recalcitrant owner who will not implement the suggestions you
make, then point to the data.
(34:17):
You can see the patterns.
They're undeniable.
(34:48):
And that's our cue to wrap up another episode of How the Guest was Won, Tales from the Vacation
Rental Trails, a state attention production.
What ground have we covered today and what questions have we raised for further discussion?
We revisited a definition of brand and the importance of a brand's strategy and marketing.
(35:09):
We discussed how important revenue management is to brand identity.
We defined revenue management.
We discussed how revenue is more than data analysis.
We introduced examples of things that affect revenue and how a proactive approach to design
a company's products and services affects how much revenue you get to manage.
(35:30):
We made a case to rename revenue management to revenue strategy, move it from finance
or sales into marketing.
Now that's a gutsy rebrand that's sure to have ruffled a few feathers.
No?
(35:52):
That's the sound of another day on the trails coming to an end.
I always like to close with a pun in case we've gotten a little too serious with our
conversation.
So, sun's out, pun's out, here we go.
Question, why don't guests like stairs?
Answer, they're always up to something.
(36:12):
Until next time, happy trails.
If your brand resonates with this podcast and you would like to sponsor this podcast,
please get in touch with me through our website, stayattention.com forward slash podcast.
(36:33):
If you have an episode topic or a story just burst in to be told, also get in touch with
me through our website, stayattention.com forward slash podcast.
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com