Boosting Revenue with Concierge Amenities: In Conversation with TheHost.Co's Annie Sloan

Want to take control of your bookings and find some independence from Airbnb? Meet Stayfi, the game changer in guest data collection and marketing. Now, Stayfi been around for a while, I've talked about a lot, but let me just delve into a little bit more about what Stayfi is and it does. So remember the last time you went into a coffee shop and you wanted to use the WI fi? What did you have to do to get the WI fi? You had to give him your email. Stayfi works exactly like that, but for your short term rental or your medium term rental business. And the beauty of it is that you don't just get the lead booker's details, you get the whole party. And this is fantastic because of a stay of maybe four people coming at your property, you've not just got one email, one piece of data, you've got four. And this is so important to boosting your direct bookings is to build a solid database. Now, after the Stay stay fight, encourage you to keep in contact with your guests and they give you the tools to do so as well. They've got email, they've got sms, you name it, they've got it and it's all automated. Now I reached out to Stay Fi and I asked them, what can you do for the Boostly peeps? What can you do for the Boostly crowd? And they have given us 50% off your first three months. Now that's an exclusive. Now to do that you need to go to stayfi.com forward/boostly b o o S T L Y. Stay Fi is S T A Y F I dot com. When you're signing up, you've got to put the discount code in Boostly B O O S T L Y. Then you get 50% off your first three months of every vendor, every supplier, everybody that that we have recommended over the years. The ones that everybody comes back to me with and saying that was the one, it was Stay Fi. I'm a massive fan of them and I'm so happy that they've agreed to sponsor and partner with this podcast and this show. And now it's time for you to reap the benefits. Go to stay fire.comforward/boostly. Use the discount code boostly and you get 50% off to your first three months. Right, let's get back on with the show.

Hi and welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get yourselves direct Bookings. Today we are interviewing somebody on the Boostly Spotlight series. This is a series where we talk to industry leaders, where we talk to people, interesting people who basically can bring more value to you as our valued listener Today, I'm super excited. We've got a really special guest and we're going to be diving into concierge amenities. How it can really have an impact on your business but also on your bookings and direct bookings, of course, we're always going to be talking about. So let me introduce, we've got Annie Sloan. She's the co founder and CEO of a company called the Host Company. It is an amazing company and you're going to really want to sit and listen for this. It'd be about 20, 30 minutes. We're really going to deep dive into what they do and how you can utilize them within your business. So welcome along. Annie. Thank you for joining me today.

Thank you, Liam. I am very excited to be here.

So Annie, what can the listeners expect from for the next sort of 20, 30 minutes? What would you like them to take away from this podcast?

So the thing that I would love for everyone to take away is how surprisingly beneficial amenities are beyond revenue amenities, people think, you know, oh, late checkout. But one, there are so many more creative amenities that as a host you probably already have in your mind but haven't connected to. Oh, those things I can actually offer and all of the different benefits of marketing that amenities bring, interesting amenities and also all the pain and the bleep that amenities actually improve from your stay for your guest stay and all the things that they can make more efficient and you can operationalize through amenities. You know, people, people think amenities and upsells, they think, oh, you want to sell someone coffee, that's so tacky. And you know what? That is tacky. I wouldn't do that in my own rentals and I don't do that in my own rentals. But having a value add service where you right when someone books can say if you'd like to add any upgrades, if you'd like to add any services, really positioning things as a value add for your users, it makes a world of difference in so many ways. And I hopefully can even cover all of those different ways in this 20 minutes. I'm quite obviously excited about it.

I mean this is a great thing. And this is why I was excited to do this podcast, Annie, because you've got loads of energy and you get me excited about talking about amenities. And when you mentioned that people struggle with perhaps selling or, or thinking it's tacky. We're definitely going to dive into that. But before we do, why is this business or why is this service important to you? Let talk us through what, what made this important for you?

So I'm a short term rental host. I've been a host since 2009, since the early days of Airbnb. Prior to Airbnb, I listed my apartment in San Francisco on Craigslist, which is super sketchy. Don't recommend for anyone. I would say, oh yeah, just send me a copy of your license, you know, and then I'd go to Guatemala for a month. So not great. But I've been a short term rental host for a very long time and my co founder Michael founded and built a large property management company called Times a Real Estate. And for years, Michael and I talked about the inefficiencies with guests. Questions that you could not answer. So, you know, it's, it's midnight and you're at a bar with your partner and your guest, one of 10, maybe that evening says, hey, we're interested in a late checkout. Oh, okay, let me leave the table, let me go to the corner, let me text the cleaner. Right? Or hey, a guest just asked for a midstate clean and it's 11pm and you're at your kid's recital or something like that. Right. Not only is it really inefficient that you're probably taking a lot of time to do that, it's also that you have to then contact other people. Right? So not only that, we would have questions for our rentals. Mine are in Joshua Tree, my co founders are in Southern California, also in Death Valley. You get the questions like, hey, it's midnight again, it's Friday, we're out of firewood. We, we already use the free firewood you gave us. We're 30 miles from a store because we're in Death Valley or the middle of Nevada. Right? What do we do? And our whole thing is, man, we should just figure out how to answer these questions, even if the answer is no. We should take care of a lot of these problems. And also there's a lot of revenue to be made in this space with things that you can't anticipate your guests already needing and asking for that we're not doing. Right. Also because our rentals are in Southern California, there's this joke. People throw open the doors and then crank up the ac. It's probably the opposite of the uk, right? They just open the doors and turn on the Heat, maybe, but it's just a sunk cost. Often after they check in. And we would often talk about the analog of hotels. Hotels, a full service hotel makes about 30% of their revenue from upsells, but they're not positioning. When you walk into a hotel, you don't think, oh, they're starting to sell me stuff. You think, oh yeah, I do want a massage. Oh, you have a chef. Right. All of those types of things that they're actually making money on. Right. So I was in big tech, my co founder was still property manager and I said, let's build something for our own units, for our own properties first and just see what if it works. And we put it in seven of our own homes first and it went gangbusters. Right. It's very interesting because I was just in tech, I was at Facebook prior to this, did not think I would make a left turn into what I'm doing now. But in 2021 I left Facebook and here we are.

Well, I'm pleased to say the hospitality bug got you because then, you know, everybody listening to this is benefiting from your knowledge and from your. And I love the fact that you're a host first and foremost. And this is why, you know, this is important. And there's so many people who are listening to this. I am one of them who is like, yeah, I've been there where I'm right in the place where I don't want to get that message about the late checkout the next day, you know, whatever it is which they're asking for, you know, can I have that extra wood for the wood burner here in the uk because it's just to stay warm most of the time. But yeah, ultimately just having a system like that so I get the need for it and the value that it can bring. Just before we move on, you mentioned the hotels and how they make extra revenue all the time. And there's a certain mindset I think around, say when you see a mini bar in a hotel, you assume that if you're going to take something out of it, you're going to get charged. Right. But why does guests assume that if there's something in there, that it's just free because you've left it in there? You know, there's definitely that assumption, in my opinion. But maybe a location thing, is that the same as what you've found, that there's a kind of mindset difference?

Yeah, I think there is a mindset difference because it is a short term rental and your guests are expecting Everything to be included. I mean, I think that's also the marketing positioning of the short term rental industry has been we're not hotels and we host because we're your best friends. Where behind the curtain you're also, you're running a business. Right. So I think that's, that's an interesting part of it. The other part of that is I always say to our users, don't sell anything under $20 because you also look, I mean, if you're head, if you have a hostel or if you have lots of products that you people require. Yes, but you should be including everything that you have in your budget to provide good hospitality. Right. Obviously, if it's an $8,000 a night cabin, cabin, I don't know, mansion in Tahoe, you should be providing a lot of those amenities because that's good hospitality. Right. Hotels there is, it's a little bit of, it's not a person, it's a hotel. So we're kind of sitting somewhere between, between that as well as we can kind of make it feel a little bit like amenities are from a different company rather than you, which is helpful. But minibars in general, it should be included. We've certainly seen people say, oh, I wanted to sell granola bars. Well, if you leave granola bars out on the table, your guests of course are going to think, oh, what a nice host. Thanks for the granola bars. Right.

So with that in mind, I know you're going to be sharing some of the hidden benefits of, of amenities in general. So if you, if you're just tuning in or if you listen to this, make sure you stick around for, for those hidden benefits. But before we do, the challenge of offering amenities is, is vast. And you mentioned as a short term rental host, you realized it was difficult. Why is it so difficult for, for people to offer these? I mean, for me, as, you know, some of the challenges, I guess what are some of the challenges when it comes down to amenities in general for hosts?

The first one is communication. One. I think a lot of us have tried this over the years. I'm going to leave something on the counter and a note that says Venmo me. Right. What happens then is, oh, I tried to Venmo you. It didn't work. You're like, oh, okay, here's my phone number. Oh wait, how much is it again? Oh, can I leave this? It just generates more operational inefficiency and more conversations. So automating communication is the first piece of that. You should. And through the host coaches, basically Set it and forget it. Right. The second part of that is if you are not communicating the upsell amenities that you have right when they book, it is a big missed opportunity because when they're there, they only have so much bandwidth and they generally don't want to be looking at their computer or reading a brochure or. Right. So what we do is we enable any host to have this little digital storefront that right when they book, they see that they can get a late checkout, they can get an early check in, they get a midstate clean, they can get fresh flowers. They're staying for two months. Hey, are you interested in a dog walker? Right all the way through. Do you need a parking space? Because we're in an urban area and we've got two parking spots. By letting people know what is available right when they book, it eliminates a lot of those communication problems. And also they can then digitally pay for it as well. But it also creates what I would call that first really huge kind of hidden benefit is people know what's available. So either they're willing to pay for it or they don't ask. So if you have 10, 10 doors, you're going to get eight people asking you for a late checkout. Two of those people are probably going to be willing to pay $30 or $50 for the late checkout.

Right.

When you let them know right when they book, we have these opportunity upsells for you and they have a cost. You're going to get two people asking, who are the two people that are actually willing to do it? So if you just cut down on a ton of questions, same thing for something like firewood or if you have things on site to rent. Right. It just takes care of all of that communication path with you. It will even text your cleaner if someone wants a midstay clean and say Annie Sloan wants a midstay clean one month from now at this location, at this time, can you do this right? And we'll pay you out. So that is the number one thing, is the communication. And honestly, for my own rentals, and I would say maybe for my co founder, I mean, the revenue is great, but the efficiency it creates is pretty, pretty great.

I like that hidden benefit. Less communication, less touch points, makes it easier for hosts everywhere. And certainly there can be times when you get more doors where there's just so much communication that it's hard to keep track of everything. So any reduction in that is definitely welcome. So this feels like a great time. We haven't covered really what the Good host. What you guys do, or the host code, sorry, what you guys do. So if. What is the elevator pitch for anybody who's never heard of you guys? What, what is. What is the business?

So the host co enables hosts and property managers to offer amenities and upgrades right at the time of booking and then automate them all the way through fulfillment. So you don't have to do really do much of anything besides setting up your store, which takes about 10 seconds, and then everything through messaging, your vendor, giving your vendor all the information, paying out that vendor, that's all taken care of through the platform. It also enables hosts to offer things that they often really need to be offering. If it's a parking spot, if it's a pool pass, if you're in Destin, Florida and everyone loses your beach key, I hope there's someone out there nodding right now, but of course they're going to the beach, they're going to lose your beach key. Instead of having to run out of beach key, you can have a drawer of beach keys and you can upsell that to them, you know, a lost key, $50. And we can give them the unlock information for that cupboard. So it's essentially connecting all of the amenities that, that right now are very difficult to operationalize and gather the revenue for.

That's brilliant. And I know there's a lot of hosts out there, first of all, who've got the need, but also the opportunity. So what are the. Some of the benefits of the things which you could be offering that many hosts perhaps don't offer or don't think about offering?

Yeah, so here is an example. In North Carolina, lots of people go to the shore and they want family photos for their holiday photos in their matching outfits, which I approve of that. I think that's fun, right? You can connect, let's say, oh, my sister's a portrait photographer who's licensed and, you know, insured, et cetera. You can add them to your store. So that is going to help you because you're going to then get some of the money for that system. But it's also then going to message your sister and say, this person wants this thing at this time, at this location. Can you do it? Right. If you say yes, we process their credit card info and then we also send a calendar invite to, to your vendor. Right. So that's taking care of people constantly asking you that. It's bringing more business to that third party. And then you're also getting 5, you know, 5 to 20% of that revenue yourselves. Very Common big sellers. Wellness. Wellness is it is taken in many hotels. It is taken over from food and Bev, which is bonkers, right? Bonkers. That people want massage, they want Reiki healing, they want yoga, right. They're going not even just in wellness areas. They also want spiritual wellness, mental wellness. So wellness is a big one. We vet vendors all over the US and now starting into the UK and mainland Europe as well. We're doing very light touch there. But those connected vendors that we vet, you can add on or if someone's constantly asking for a specific vendor that you're already recommending, you can contact them and say, hey, I'd like to put you in my digital store to see if you can do this. So wellness is big food services also, particularly if you're not in the middle of an urban area, like, you know, you can go out and get something delicious if you're in, I don't know, central Berlin, right. But when you're on holiday two hours outside of a city, you may want to chef because you've got your family reunion there or you're celebrating your 40th birthday, right? Something special for that evening. So food services are huge, Wellness services are huge. We see a lot of things like golf cart rental, which you were probably already recommending before, but guess what, nobody is reading your guest book, sorry to say. I mean, and they're asking you anyway, right? And they also are just looking for a way to make it happen faster. Right? Is so much of it is the sale is missing because they couldn't do it while they were thinking about it between everything else they were doing that day. So bike rental, kayak rental, golf cart rental, things that just essentially enhance their stay that they're probably going to get anyway. But now they don't have to ask you.

This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Hostfully, the leading property management software in the short term rental industry. Now according to Hostfully's research is property managers who upgrade from a basic PMS to top tools like Hostly see at least an 11% boost in revenue. That's because Hostly saves you time, letting you focus on growing your business with features like channel management, free listing on Google revenue management tools and discounts on integrations. But don't just take my word for it. Hostfully has plenty of success stories. A property manager I know in Manchester saves about a day's work each month thanks to their advanced owner report generator. Another in Liverpool has cut guest communication issues by a third. And somebody that I know in Miami went from six properties to 50 in just a year. Now you listening to this podcast and you being part of my world, you get a special deal. When you sign up. All you need to do is go to www.hostfully, which is spelled H-O-S-T-F-U-L-L-Y.com forward/boostly. There'll be a chat box, Start a chat, mention that you're part of the boostly world and you'll get a unique discount. Now, I recommend hostfully to many, many, many people. And we've built over a hundred integrations with our websites into them. And I know firsthand how much people love working with them. I love working with them. I'm so proud that they are sponsoring this podcast. So I would encourage everybody go and check it out. Www.hosefully.com Right, let's get back on with the show, shall we?

Wow, there's a lot there to, to digest. And ultimately if there's anybody listening to this and thinks, you know, I, I've got some ideas from that and I 100% agree with you about the wellness sort of thing because so many people want them, you know, people to come in at masseuse and, and stuff like that. I've noticed an increase in the amount of requests for these kind of alternative kind of experience type services. You mentioned a few locations there that you cover. So where do you cover? Do you cover worldwide or do you cover certain areas? Would be one question. And then do you see that demand is increasing in certain areas more than others, or is this just happening everywhere?

So right now, we launched 18 months ago, so, you know, we're kind of new to the industry. We operate in US dollars right now, but we can be used anywhere in the world. So if you have your own vendors, you know, in some places we're not going to have any vendors that we've vetted yet, but we have sellers in France, Spain, Italy, Iceland, UK and very soon. This is a very common request, multicurrency. So right now it's US dollars, but that will be updating soon.

Awesome.

Yeah.

And it feels like a good question to say what are there hidden benefits? Is there any that you've not mentioned? I know we've covered a lot already, but what are those hidden benefits for the listeners?

This one, I think really pertains to the boostly audience and it really pertains to direct booking. Even if you're getting someone off of the Airbnb or, you know, booking.com cycle into your direct booking amenities, create an incredible resource for your marketing content. So let's say you've got an email list, right? And you're growing your email list right now. You might email them and say, you know, early birds get 20% off for the holiday season, right? Or you're thinking of something to email them about that's not a discount. So hotels already know this, right? They email you and they say, oh, we've got this pop up chef happening this summer. Or look at this cool thing we're doing with amenities, particularly ones that you can just kind of with our stores, you can also turn them on and off. You can say, you know, this season we have this specific thing happening. So a really good example of this is we had a property manager attach a mobile tattoo artist for the week of Coachella, which, yes, it is legal in California. We had to make sure that that is a legal service, but it is. So three and a half months before Coachella, this property manager sent out to their email list on demand mobile tattoo artist. We could Coachella at our villa, right?

Genius.

The, the open rate on that is insane, right? Versus if three and a half months before Coachella, you send out an email that says, early birds, 15% off week of Coachella. People don't even open that email and they also don't remember who you are. So the second part of that is if someone stays in that villa, they're taking photos of that. Great for marketing. They're posting them online. Great for marketing. And their friends then remember, oh, where was it that you stayed? Or, you know, we had someone who added beer burrows, which are donkeys that walk around the property with saddlebags of beer. I know these are pretty extreme examples, but people remember that from an email like, oh, what was that place again? And then they also tell their friends and their friends go, I want to have my bachelorette party there so we can have the same experience, right? And what we are doing at the host co is again, it's sort of sitting between the hotel and the short term rental. We are enabling things that previously only hotels could do because they had the infrastructure for spa or for, I don't know, a stable full of donkeys. I guess it's not the best example, but we're saying, you know, you can now enable a lot of these amenities for your smaller spaces and you don't have to deal with all the infrastructure in the middle.

It makes sense, right? It just makes sense to do this. And especially in a world where. I absolutely agree with your point. In a world where what most people do is they look at what other people are offering and they go in a slight lower price. And in a world where we're just competing on price, there's so many hosts out there I see who just compete on price. Well, actually, instead of competing on price, add value to the stay. And that doesn't mean give stuff away for free. It just means have more offerings. And by adding on these amenities and these choices and being able to market them, then you're getting your unfair share of advantage over your competition, which isn't going to the trouble of offering some of these things. And there's a quote from, from Grant Cardone, which is money follows attention. If you can market these amenities well to your email list or on social media, you know, to just word of mouth, just tell people about what you're doing, then you're instantly going to get more attention. That attention is going to convert to more lookers, which will convert to more bookers and direct bookings, as you say. So I absolutely love that, that thought on there. So the last few questions I've got for you, Annie, would be how easy is it for people to get started? So there'll be people listening to this, thinking, well, how, how do I get started? Is it easy? You know, does it take long to get set up on the platform and where do I go to do so?

So you can go to www.thehost.co, the host co, and say create my store. And you can create a store pretty much almost instantly by saying, here's an image of my property, here's my zip code. And that works internationally. Or you can say connect through Airbnb. And we will just look at every listing and we'll generate a store for every single one of your listings with a picture of your listing. The store will be named after your listing and it will already have any amenities that are available in your area that we have created pre vetted. So takes about 30 seconds to do, which is great. And then what that means is that you have a website now for every single one of your properties, you have a link. And that link is essentially your storefront. And you can add that link to your outgoing messaging on your. If you have a PMS that you use, you can text it to people, you can WhatsApp it to people. It's essentially a store that is a tiny storefront for your listing right away. And then you can also add things to your store. Obviously you can look and go, oh, I don't want that. You know, I don't want that. I'M going to turn that off. What I always recommend to people is start with a couple of items in your store and just see how your guests interact with it rather than, oh, I have to have 30 things or like, we really want to do a tie dye kit because everybody wants this experience, right? Start with a couple of things and go live with it. The really cool element of that is that every product can be requested and approve. So for example, your guest can't buy a midstay clean. They send in a request to you and we hold their credit card info. So it's a very low risk as well because if you say, you know what I'm going to that's not available. We as the host co email and say, hey, bummer. But that's not that that experience is not available. Are you interested in other experiences? So it's a very fun way to low risk, kind of dip your toe in and get started.

I love it. It does it, it just makes sense, doesn't it? And I love that. Get started now, get perfect later. There's no need to an entire storefront, you know, sort of available to your guests, which is really cool. So, Annie, one of the questions we love to sort of bring these Spotlight series to, to a close is. And I'm going to. You can go for an option of either of these two questions. Is there a piece of advice you'd go back and tell yourself you, you mentioned the company's been going 18 months now. Is there a piece of advice you'd either go back and tell yourself then at the start of your hospitality journey, or is there like a mantra or a saying that you love to live by? I'll throw the mic open to you to, to, to choose.

So let's see if I could go back. I think that's a, that's a, maybe a better one. So if I could go back to the beginning, I would say follow what your users are doing, which at first you know, you don't. You're. You're building something without your users using it. But we see and I'm going to say this is kind of, I'm going to cheat and I'm going to use it as a mantra too. But creativity, the creativity of humans is so surprising, right? And I think you see that now with social media where you're like these what creative humans. And before we couldn't see them because it was only on tv, right? The creativity of people that we see on the host co every day. I'm like, oh, wow, they have aprons. With, you know, their. Their property on it. Because everyone wants a family reunion and everyone's wearing the apron or they're doing a picnic or. It's just fascinating to me how creative people are and that I get to see so much of that creativity every day in our sales and what people are selling. And, you know, at first, if I could go back 18 months, I'd say, let's just see how this cooks for six months and see what people really want to sell, rather than starting with, oh, you want to sell these things before actually knowing what it is they wanted to do with the platform.

Yeah. And you've got my creative juices flowing. I mean, the fact that you mentioned, you know, like, the. The aprons, which are cool for Instagram photos that you can have in the place that you can promote on social media, but also just. You're absolutely right. We wouldn't know about half this stuff it was if it wasn't for seeing it. And it's fun.

Right.

Part of what we should do is have fun, you know, especially in hospitality. People are coming here creating memories which last a lifetime most of the time, unless you're hosting midterms workers. But a lot of the time they're. They're creating memories and experiences, and that's fun. So stuff, we make it more fun, everyone wins and better reviews and all that stuff. So, Annie, this has been really, really fun. I've really enjoyed this. Talking about amenities, is there anything else that we haven't covered that you want to squeeze in?

You know, the one thing that we haven't talked about which is so funny is revenue. Yes. So you actually do. Amenities can bring you a whole lot of revenue. How it works with the host co is first of all, the host goes free to use, and we take a small commission on your sales. We also have subscriptions, so you keep 100 of your revenue. We have property managers that we are paying out $11,000 a month, and they are selling late checkout firewood and an occasional massage. They just have a bunch of properties on a lake. So the revenue piece, you know, I kind of try to not avoid it, but I say there's all these other things it does, but it's really great for the actual revenue as well of increasing your revenue. That is not a way that is around your adr, definitely.

And I think that brings it nicely. Background as a bridge because we talked about how hotels are making it. Ultimately, you listening to this can be making extra revenue now, even if it's a small amount, everything starts to to add up, doesn't it? So it's a super way like you say to make extra revenue as a host. So thank you so much Annie for for coming onto the boostly Spotlight series of the podcast. If you'd like. If you're listening to this and you want to go and check out the links are going to be in the comments or around somewhere. However you're listening to this piece of media on YouTube or podcast you can check out the links below. And if you want to carry on this discussion we have a free open community called the Hospitality Community on Facebook. You can come and say I've just listened to the podcast with Annie Sloan and we can talk about amenities, we can dive in talking about the host co whatever you like to talk about we can carry on the conversation there. So thank you so much for listening to this Annie. Thank you for your time on the podcast. We'll see you on the next one.

Thank you so much.