Insight from an Italian Living in Spain during the Coronavirus Crisis - with Gian Paolo Vairo

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 23rd 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 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.com Hostfully are the boostly podcast sponsors. You can get one free digital guidebook right now by going to hostfully.com impress your gu when they come back with digital guidebooks. And as well, these are fantastic tools for letting people know about things that are coming up in the 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, Facebook stories, LinkedIn, you name it. Just go tell someone about it. Spread the word about what we're doing. And if this is the first time that you are tuning in, we've got the Coronavirus series. Season 8, Episode 1 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 Considering myself an expert, I'm dealing with the vacation rental industry at 360 degrees since 192007 I would say about 20, no 29, 15 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 2007. And since then I start 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 2010 I think it was. I say, I think yes, nearly 2010, 11 maybe I was managing around 100 units here in Barcelona and since then I quit it because we. It was turning me crazy. Later I work in, 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 am lucky because I have a 360 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, complete professional in the vacation rental field and I'm really, really, really lucky. I'm really happy to do what I did and you know, helping people now in growing their business especially in Spain and Italy. This is where I am staying now. I'm sitting in my studio here in Barcelona but mainly I'm working with Italian markets and Spanish market. I'm helping Spanish companies growing their business in Italy and the other side Italian businesses growing. Today the Spanish market 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 23rd 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 being 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 are going to have four weeks in total, maybe more. I think they are 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 80, 85, 90% of the 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 they're saying that, you know, they found opportunities in this, out of this crisis and the other side I'm seeing, you know, people that tried 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 weeks and a half already. So yeah, they having, you know, crazy times also. Also them in Italy where you are.

Now, you're 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 a real large apartment with a really nice terrace. So my lockdown, I'm. 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 well because I'm really happy here because sun is shine and staying 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. They 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 out for some reason. If you're, 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 the newspaper people that went to jail because they weren't, you know, bringing these papers.

So obviously these measures have been put in place and obviously, you know, 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, you know, 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, Australia, 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, just for a second. Now, we have seen over the course of the last 10 days, we're obviously, you and I, we obviously have worked with partners such as Airbnb, booking.com, expedia, etc. Over the past. And as these OTAs, we have seen Airbnb treat its host ridiculous over the course of the last 10 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, you know, Airbnb. And I want to, you know, to repeat one of the maybe, you know, Luca de Gilio is one of, 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 figure out that 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 change the rules from one day to the another and find yourself with a calendar full of bookings and the day after, nothing and no compensation. But the best thing I see in this, that they are keeping their part of the cake. This is crazy. I mean, 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 refound you because you're not coming. And it's clear that you're not going to Italy. You're not coming to Italy because. Because of the virus. The thing is that the point is Airbnb is decided unilaterally to refund guests without any cancellation fee. But keeping that part of the cake, this is the part, for me, the craziest part of the point, I think most of the people that I've been talking these days saying, guys, is 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 15 years now. And now this is a new feature. From this point, we are not going to tolerate this kind of things. So I've been hearing people starting new OTAs or wise OTAs or better OTAs. I mean, just a lot of bullshit because 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 we. You need to do this if you want to have. You 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.com, 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 100% 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 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 it. 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 23rd of March, it's 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, yeah. 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 work.

Upstair means up for short term rentals. So 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, she 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 400 people, 400 property managers in the industry that you know, meet up regularly. They want to discuss about regulation, about things and 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, something 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 rental, even opportunities, job opportunities and things like this in one, in one community. And we started it in back in December. I have to say that we, because of the virus will sort of abandon it because now I'm focusing on helping people in Italy because they need my help. This, 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 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 put in a five step guide for free for any host 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 Hubstat. We'll have all of the links in the show, notes on how to get there how to create an account. We'll get what, we'll get all of that in there.

So we'll make sure we were trying to offer this community to local association or to group of companies or even people that organize events in like for instance in Italy or in Spain or UK or somewhere to share part of their content live or even share videos of recordings of their video of the events on Napster in order to share this knowledge with other people from you know, Asia or US or other people 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. The new world is where I think all of us are adding the future. I'm trying to entering in Southeast Asia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, they are now 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 park 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 nines everywhere. It's pinging, pinging, pinging, pinging, pinging. And it's not just, I mean you can get super focus, you can get super focused, you can open up Hubster and you know, but it's going to be for the str world, short stay, 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? So just for people that are watching that want to go and jump on. Amazing. Alright, so we're gonna 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 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 you're very active and online on LinkedIn and obviously you're 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 24 hours available anywhere on LinkedIn.

If you just go into the search, type in Gianpao Vera which is G I A N P A O L 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.