Inside Pink Walls Designs: Mastering STR Interiors

Right now in 2024, it's such an amazing way to differentiate yourself with direct bookings because you're either forced and pushed over to like a booking.com but with your direct bookings, if you have all of your photos there designed properly and everything, then people will just be that much more invited in to book your property.

Having a blast, gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard on the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you're better but direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

Hi, welcome back to the Boostly Podcast. The podcast that gives you the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence so you can go there and get more direct bookings. We do a mini series on the Boostly podcast where we shine the Boostly spotlight on businesses, people and services that you need to know about as a hospitality host. And these services can help you or inspire you in some way. So today we're going to dive deep. We're going to dive into a business and understand their kind of model and what kind of services they do. We've got some amazing co founders, we've got Heaven and Aaron. Their business is called Pink Wall Designs and we're going to be diving into a lot of the interior design and what that means for direct bookings today. So welcome along. Heather and Erin, thank you for joining me today.

Hello, thanks for having us.

So first question I'd put to you is what can the person listening to this podcast expect from the next 15, 20 minutes? What will they get by the end of this that they don't necessarily, necessarily know?

Now they are going to realize and learn that their guests can do their marketing for them.

Nice. I like that. I like that. So give me the elevator pitch for your business. Who, who is Pink Wall Designs?

So we are a hospitality interior design company. We focus on vacation rentals and boutique hotels and we are design interior design and marketing. And the reason why we are both is because it's kind of all in the same when it comes to vacation rentals and boutique hotels. Those things are products. They're not like investment properties like yes, they are. But ultimately those things are products just the same way a Starbucks coffee, a McDonald's cheeseburger are. Those are products people are buying, you know, time spent in those products from you. So they need to be designed properly, they need to be packaged well, they need to be marketed correctly. And you need to be treating these properties like a business, not like a side hustle or, you know, I have this one Airbnb, I have this one rental property. You are in the hospitality industry as a business owner.

That's cool.

And that's. Sorry. Yeah. And that's, that's our main like mantra sort of thing for our business. And then we facilitate and help people operate and do that.

How did you guys get into particularly this area of design and particularly within, in hospitality? Take me back through the history.

So go ahead.

Both investors first and then we developed through our own investment and our own experience, you know, the need in the market for interior designers, specifically focusing on vacation rentals, short term rentals. So Heather and I, we met completely random and from there kind of developed both her and my experience together. Like I have, you know, the real estate background and she has the marketing background and we were both doing short term rentals at the exact same time and then developed, you know, this natural interior design aspect as well and developed paintball designs.

Nice. Have you got short term rentals yourself then if you both are, you're both involved in short term rentals in some way?

Yes, yes. And we are all always actively looking to joint venture with other people too. So we're not only, you know, have our business going, but we also are looking to build our own portfolio as well.

Can you give me an idea of, of where you tend to have your clients mainly? Is it, is it localized, is it statewide, is it national, is it international?

We are both currently just outside of Toronto actually, and we work anywhere in Canada and the U.S. so we have like digital packages where it's more remote. And then we also have packages where we will go out to the properties as well. So we can go anywhere. Canada, US and yeah, that's what we're currently located in Toronto.

What can people expect from your own short term rentals then? Is it, what kind of design do you tend to, to lean towards or does it depend on the property?

It definitely depends on the property. Go ahead.

Yeah, I was just going to agree. So we really hone in on understanding the market and who are your guest avatars and why are they visiting your properties? So that is number one as to why we are going to be designing the way we are going to be designing. And that's very dependent on location, you know, amenities that are around you, demographics. So it can be a number of different things. And from there we really, you know, focus on bringing that experience to a property as well. You know, people nowadays, they're not just wanting to go and have a place to sleep, right? They want to actually spend some time in this property, especially if they're choosing between going to a hotel or. Or versus an Airbnb. So from that, we're bringing all of those elements together, bringing in that wow factor and allowing people to just have a great time and appreciate the design.

What aspects really attract guests? And is there any kind of top tips for. For the people listening on the, on the call?

Yeah, there is a lot of things that you can do. Like, you just have to kind of get creative, right? And you can still get creative in small properties. They don't have to be these, like, large, huge mansions. Just think about what people would like. What would you like to sort of see if you're going to a property, right? Like, you can start there, and instead of just having a bed and like a bathroom, those are kind of bare minimum things. You know, even just a basic feature wall is like, really like, wow. Like, it makes you, like, take notice, right? Like, that's what you want to do, is evoke emotion in the guests. Evoke like some sort of like, oh, wow, this is cool. Or like, you know, that type of thing. So basic feature walls are very easy to implement, very easy to, like, incorporate into a design. Also, things like, you know, people say amenities, right? And that doesn't just necessarily mean, like, pools, hot tubs, that type of thing. Even if you don't have the budget for those types of things or the property doesn't allow for it, there's a lot of ways that you can utilize even games inside of know living rooms. We've had clients before where they've been more of like, long kind of narrow living rooms that you look at and you're like, can't really do much here. But then, you know, shuffleboard is a great example of a very thin, long game, very narrow, doesn't take up a lot of space. But now that's an entertainment zone that you just created for your guests, right? So anything that kind of like brings people together. Our thing that we really kind of focus on is making the property the destination and then having the location being secondary. And so if you get a good property in a great location and then you design it properly, it's a home run. If your location isn't amazing, but the property is still like the destination, you can still make great money and still host a lot of very happy guests if your property's done well. So there's just more opportunity as an investor as well to you know, utilize different types of real estate in different areas when designing things properly.

And to add to that too, like the design is your curb appeal. Like people who are doing direct bookings, they are going online and they're looking directly at how your property looks. So incorporating anything that can kind of be that hero photo, you know, like fun features in the house, those feature walls, like Heather was saying, neon signs. Anything that's going to bring attention to your listings will be popular in the market and be a reason why people choose your properties.

I was gonna, I was just gonna snowball slightly and say that like with another thing that's really great about direct bookings right now is that the only other competition is like OTAs, which are so bad. Like you go online and it shows like the outside of like, you know, the structure of like there's never really any interior photos and stuff. So right now in 2024, it's such an amazing way to differentiate yourself with direct bookings because you're either forced and pushed over to like a booking dot com, but with your direct bookings, if you have all of your photos, they are designed properly and everything, then people will just be that much more invited in to book your property.

So what would you say to somebody who is listening to this going, I'd like to do interior design, but one, I'm not too sure if I've got the budget for it. And two, I'm not sure if it makes a big enough difference. What would you say to those people?

I would say, we would say if you're going to be in the hospitality business, you have to have design in order to be profitable. Like you can't skip out on paying your property taxes. If you're going to buy like a house, you have to pay the property tax, right? So you, you cannot skip design. Like, you just have to have it. So you either got to like raise more money if it's that kind of deal, you got to find more budget, you got to get a bigger loan, you got to figure out something because it is just necessary. There's too much competition now. It's too saturated to just throw up your own furniture from Facebook Marketplace or like, you know, the stuff that you have in your house that's not working anymore, so it needs to be properly packaged and that's, that's proper design. So design is like a non negotiable in our opinion.

Thank you so much. And the thing I'm going to take away from this podcast is, is hire good people and get out of their way. You know, like it does work when you hire good people and then you get out of their way and leave them to to do what they need to do or to advise in the way that they need to advise. Because that's why you hire them in the good in the first place, which is why good investors do so all the time and why people get great results from it. So thank you so much, Aaron. Thank you so much. Heather, was there anything we missed along the way or any last shares before we say say goodnight?

No, just thank you so much for having us on. And a thing to add is we do offer free consultations for anybody who, you know, does have questions for us. If we have suggestions to give you or if you have an upcoming property, we are happy to hop on and chat with you there.

Awesome. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the next one.

Thanks for having us.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it just do it loosely.