Insight from an Italian Living in Spain🚀

Boosie podcast we're in season eight episode seven coming thick and fasties we've got a very special guest tonight gianpao varro is an italian who is living in spain he is in the thick of the coronavirus crisis he has got many many many years of experience in the ren and right now he's helping hosts in italy bounce back we recorded this on monday the twenty third of march we recorded this at a time when spain and italy peak of the corona crisis so gianpaolo was so kind of his time he shared a little bit about what he's doing to help he explained a little bit of the situation how airbnb massively affected host that he knows and what we can all do to improve it's a really insightful interview i really encourage everybody to tune in and go and find gianpaolo on linkedin.

Or on facebook to thank him for.

Doing this and as well whenever you may be watching this in the future hopefully by now his business and his host businesses has improved massively please please please make sure you do me one massive favor and go and check out hostfully dot com hostfully are the boostly podcast sponsors you can get one free digital guidebook right now by going to hostfully dot com impress your guests when they come back with digital guide and as well these are fantastic tools for letting people know about things that are coming up in the local area shops restaurants bars you know if you're taking guests right now during the corona crisis you can explain about which ones are doing takeaway which ones are going to the extra steps and measures before you do bounce into this episode can you just do me one massive favor and just go tell one person today about the boostly podcast just share this with a friend you can share it on your social media take a picture do it you know record your screen for a second and just go and upload it to instagram stories stories linkedin you name it just go tell someone about.

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Doing and if this is the first time that you are tuning in we've got the coronavirus series season eight episode one up until now has had a ton of fantastic guests please go back and revisit them and then tune in to what we've got coming up right let's get on with it and let's.

Speak to jam thank you very much for i'm very honored to be your host tonight thank you very much for the opportunity to be your guest i'm i can see myself an expert i've been dealing with the vacation rental industry at three hundred and sixty degrees since nineteen two thousand seven i would say about twenty nine fifteen years now i've been working mainly in barcelona is where i grew my experience i started working as a property manager start in a very special moment i think when the vacation rental were rising and i got the fortune to be one of the first property managers turning residential properties into vacation rental back in two thousand seven and since then i start you know getting knowledge about how the vacation rental works and getting passion to it i worked in the last my my last experience as a property manager was back in twenty ten i think it was i say i think yes but nearly twenty ten eleven maybe i was managing around one hundred units here in barcelona and since then i quit it because it was turning me crazy later i work in different other companies like you know kego guesty and many other big companies in the vacation so i have and this is i think i'm lucky because i have one hundred sixty degrees view as i said over the industry from different point of views from distribution from management and from even the software side of vacation rentals so makes me like you know a complete professional in the vacation rental field and i'm really really really like i said i'm really happy to do what i did and you know helping people now in growing their business especially in spain in italy this is where i am staying now i'm i'm sitting in my studio here in barcelona but mainly i am working with italian market and spanish market i helping spanish companies growing their business in italy and the other side italian businesses growing to the spanish market this is where i'm helping people going from one side to the other basically this is.

Part of my business right now you're in barcelona we're obviously recording this on monday the twenty third of august march so just give us a bit of an update what your life has been like personally and sort of business wise for the last two weeks because well for the last week you've been on lockdown last two weeks you've been on lockdown how has it been for you you know obviously you're a father you run a business businesses like personally not been like give us like a little sort of indication what life has been like living in barcelona at a time.

Like this we are now entering the second week of lockdown and yesterday the government said we are going to have two more so we're going to have four weeks in total maybe more i think they're going to be more because four weeks they are not enough to you know to be out of this crisis i think and you know business wise i think on my side i didn't see much too much changes because you know i'm working remotely for the italian market i see that a lot this crisis is affecting a lot of people working in vacation rental i see their business drop is dropping down literally they lost nearly the eighty eighty five ninety bookings for the season so i'm seeing literally business closing down people firing you know people in the firing entire teams and you know companies taking advantage of this situation buying you know contracts or companies buying you know trying to you know taking advantage of this crisis and this is from one side is good because i see that you know they found opportunities in this out of this crisis and the other side i'm seeing you know people that try to succeed in the vacation rental going down so it's sad to see this going on yeah my family my family my fathers are living in italy in the alps so they are safe at home i think they don't have problems maybe they are sad to stay at home they are looking down since first week of march so three three weeks and a half already so yeah they having you know crazy times also also them.

In italy where you are now you.

Obviously you're in an apartment are you in like a villa like how's your like so obviously you cannot leave the house and only go to go and get groceries like what's like the sort of day to day for yourself and for your family where you are i.

Have the opportunity i had the chance to buy apartment with a really nice terrace so my lockdown i'm spending a really nice lockdown because in barcelona the weather is pleasant i can go out i can have lunch and dinner out not today because it's raining but still i'm doing fine and doing well because i'm really happy here because sun is shine i stay even my wife is working directly in the terrace and not me i'm working in my office but yeah we are going to have you know we are doing shopping once per week maybe yes couple of times per week maximum but it's okay because we have the supermarket here at the corner and it's like five minutes going there but yes you cannot go out because the police stop you and say hey you need to go and they find you without now from today they are requiring kind of allowance or permissions to go from one side to the other and you need to justify that you're going for some reason if they find you without this permission you're going to be fined or even you can go to jail because i'm reading every day on newspaper people that went to jail because they weren't you know bringing this.

Paper so obviously these measures have been put in place and obviously we hope.

And we pray that it will be.

Sooner rather than later that life can become back to what we ever thought was whatever is going to be the new normal moving forward forward but thank you for sharing that because we've got people that are going to be listening and watching this from all over the world this podcast goes out to people in australia in america canada we've got people over in the south america north america australasia obviously uk and europe so you know it's really interesting hearing stories from people all over the world and in this series we're going to be hearing from people living all over the world during this now let's bring it back to hospitality just for a second now we have seen over the course of the last ten days we're obviously you and i we obviously have worked with partners such as airbnb booking dot com comma expedia etcetera over the past and as these otas we have seen airbnb treat its host ridiculous over the course of the last ten days they have without warning gone down the route of just refunding and letting guests cancel stay without any respect for the ho how have you personally observed this from the people that you help now from the people that you help over in italy and sort of spain what has been the general opinion on the otas in particular you know airbnb from the discussions that you've been having with hosts that are there in italy and spain are literally in the firing line of.

All crazy crazy move from airbnb a lot of people found themselves you know literally peace out from airbnb and i want to repeat one of the maybe you know luca de gilio is one of my mentors is one of the most important experts in vacation rental at least in italy and i would say in europe and was saying that you know airbnb has been considered like a service you know we figured out that it is not like this airbnb is an infrastructure and you need to pay something to be there they can decide to you know kick you out in every moment and they can decide to you know as they did they decide to you know change the rules from one day to the another and find yourself with you know a calendar full of bookings and the day after nothing and no compensation but the thing i see in this that they are keeping their part of the cake this is crazy i mean i can i understand that you know this is a really tough moment and you know even guests they are saying hey i'm not traveling to italy because it's you know it's the ground zero of the coronavirus so even the you know the wisest host would say hey i going to refund you because you're not coming and it's clear that you're not going to italy you're not coming to italy because of the virus the thing is that the point is airbnb is decided unilaterally to refund guests without you know any cancellation fee but keeping that part of the of the cake this is the part for me the craziest part of the point i think most of my the people that i've been talking these days saying guys we are not going to allow this from now on because otas in general starting from airbnb in this case but all them they have been squeezing hosts like lemon for even fifteen years now and now this is a new feature from this point we are not going to tolerate this kind of thing so i've been hearing people starting new otas or wise otas or better otas i mean just a lot of bullshit because it it's impossible to now start a new otas from scratch today but the thing is what i'm really convinced that this is a new starting point and from now onward the vacation rental world needs to change and otas need to be aware of that because now things need to be different because in some cases they were abusing their condition of being a we are big and you need to do this if you want to have need to be visible if you want to be visible you need to pay this or you need to do that i think many property manager many hosts wouldn't accept this.

Anymore i think the problem is and i've been saying this for years you cannot build your house on somebody else's land and unfortunately with the rise of the otas booking dot com comma airbnb particularly airbnb and i see this i see this really strongly in the usa in the usa i speak with hosts in the airbnb groups that they say that i have no website i don't have no channel manager i use airbnb to bring in one hundred percent of my bookings i get maybe a smattering of direct bookings if they book with me repeat but even then i see hosts when they get a guest come back to them they say i'll just go book on airbnb because it's simple super simple those are now the ones that are going to be out of business those are the ones that are coming to me for a website those are the ones that are coming to me asking me which channel manager or pms i recommend because they build their house on someone else's land and i think if anything comes good of this i just hope people learn and they take your advice they take my advice they take all of the people that are given really good advice out there on why you should put your time and effort into getting a website that works and a pms property management software that you can get on with a channel manager and you just sort of make sure that you are present everywhere now what i really want to talk to you about and the reason why i asked you on and this is something that i've spoken to you about when we met in barcelona in november at the short stay show is that everybody's attention and i think now is really a good time to talk about everybody whether we like it or not is going to be on lockdown at somewhere part of the world like i'm recording this on the twenty third of march at seven o' clock the uk has not yet gone into lockdown we've got a big announcement coming in an hour's time which you assume means that there's going to be a lockdown coming but everybody's going to be in their house you are right where the big companies want facebook google amazon microsoft netflix disney they've got you exactly where you want you which is in your house with your listening devices with your phones with your computers and they've got your attention and again the same thing applies if you build your whole foundation if you build your whole network on one of these big channels then they can like that totally give you a mike tyson knockout punch to your head so what i love what you've done is you've created something called hubster now it's good because taking people away from these big guys and you can build communities on a platform that is not one of the big guys so could you please just in simplistic terms just explain what hubster is and how it could benefit the vacation rental world hubster means.

Hub for short term rentals so ab for str and the idea comes out together with deborah lobby maybe you know.

Her we know deborah well yeah exactly.

So we were having a dinner together here in barcelona maybe six months ago we were figuring out that no you were saying that in sydney there are a lot of property managers there are a lot of people doing vacation rental but there's no associations there's nothing that put together the people in the vacation rental industry it's impossible because even in barcelona which is way smaller than sydney there are a couple of associations we are like four hundred people four hundred property managers in the industry that meet up regularly they want to discuss about regulation about things going on and you know in sydney the thing is they are far far away from everything and deborah was saying hey the problem here is that you know people from sydney wouldn't come to italy or to spain or to london to meet you know people that matter in vacation rental income because they are far away from everything a good idea would be to bring events or meetings to these people so we thought what about designing a product a platform that can bring together people from all over the world people that matter in vacation rental industry and put them together in a sort of community where they can you know share information share content even share you know courses webinars events on a unique platform and we call it hubster basically that's it it's like you know a way to put together a lot of you know knowledge info from the industry best practices and anything related to vacation ren living opportunities job opportunities and things like this in one in one community and we started it back in december i have to say that we because of the virus will sort of abandon it because now i'm focusing in helping people in italy because they need my help this is something that we need to grew we need to grow with you guys even you mark and all the people that matter in the vacation rental so i take advantage of being here with you to invite a lot of people everyone that want to join this community absolutely for free we want to create a worldwide community of people that really want to share anything related with vocational rental in the community please is i'm.

Going to make sure that this recording is going to get put up into hubster and i'm also going to put in a five step guide for free for any hubs around the world to get bookings now so i think this is more prominent and more timely than ever it's going to be at hubstack we'll have all of the links in the show notes on how to get there how to create an account will get what will get all of that in there so we'll make sure we.

Were trying to offer this community to local associations or to group of companies or even people that organize events for instance in italy or in spain or uk or somewhere to share part of their content live or even share videos or recordings of their events on napster in order to share this knowledge with other people from asia or us or other side of the world to start learning something from the thing is us and europe maybe they are producing a lot of content for vacation rentals and maybe i'm seeing a lot of opportunities in asia right now there is the new world is where i think all of us are heading in the future i'm trying to entering in southeast asia thailand malaysia vietnam they are not booming there are a lot of opportunities there so we start growing you know even producing contents for this region of the world so upstairs is a sort of container for this information and we want to find them and put all this information available for this guy now more.

Than ever i think this is a fantastic platform because there's no noise so when you go onto a facebook group you've got noise everywhere pinging pinging pinging pinging pinging and it's not just i mean you can get super focused you can get super focused you can open up hubster and you know that it's going to be for the day rental accommodation it's in there and again you can jump between different groups you can jump between different conversations but it's still all around the same topic and i think at any moment in time from the last hundred years if there's one time that the hospitality industry has needed to come together as one where you can share advice share tactics share tips on how you can bounce back it is now so like i say hubster how do you spell it again just for people that are watching that want to go and jump on amazing alright so we're going to end there because we really wanted to just combat this in thank you so much for giving an insight to your world right now thank you for giving an insight into the current situation and again with what people can look forward to and i think hubstad is the perfect way please go check it out it's totally free to join come and find me on there come and find the boards find the groups i will get this this interview is in there and also as well there'll be some tactics and advice so thank you so much gianpaolo gianpolo if anybody wants to chat to you afterwards i know you're very active and online on linkedin and you're obviously on facebook as well but if someone wants to reach out and have a chat with you ask you some questions where's the best place to reach you right.

Now i would say even either on linkedin and facebook is the same you can find me on linkedin i'm twenty.

Four hours available anyway on linkedin if you just go into the search type in giampalo vera which is g i a n p a o l o o v a i r helping short term rental businesses to grow in the southern european market he is a fantastic guy i looking forward to working more of you in the future thank you so much for being with us and thank you to everybody who tuned in to this episode please do me a massive favor every night we're going videos podcasts are going live every day to help the industry bounce back after the coronavirus all i ask for you is that you share this on your social media wall whether it's linkedin facebook instagram twitter tickety tock you name it please share it please tell somebody about it share it into groups just share it with people that you know or just send it across thank you so much for tuning in and i'll be back again very soon for another episode and before you do leave make sure you go and rate review and subscribe this on apple's itunes.