Maximise your profits for your accommodation w/ interior design FULL INTERVIEW with Marilynn Taylor

Now, what do you see is the biggest mistake that so many people make when it comes to the interior design of their property? And what sort of advice could you pass on?

The biggest mistake that I see people making is that they go to, I don't want to use the word cheap, but cheap, you know, they, they go to whatever. You know, I think out there you guys have T.K. maxx or T.K. maxx. We have T.J. maxx, you know, which, which is great. I use them all the time, don't get me wrong. But if you're, you know, sometimes people go too bland, they're afraid of color, they're afraid to get too exciting with the design. I feel like it's really important because people have figured out aesthetics matter.

So. Welcome to the Boost Hospitality podcast. We are in season seven now, episode one Y. There are six other seasons that you can go back and tune in on if you head to booster.co.uk podcast to do so. Today we are going to be talking to Marilyn Taylor, based all the way over in California in usa and we were talking about interior design and why is so important for your accommodation business. Before we begin, if you could do me a massive favorite go rate and review this podcast, it just means that we get more eyes on this podcast and this season. So let's get started. So yeah, just tell us a little bit more about you, your journey, how you first got into the rental accommodation business and just sort of try and shed a bit more light into the life of Marilyn. Please.

Instagram is my jam and so you can find me there. And it's just Arilyn Taylor and it's Marilyn with two to end. So. Or you can find me on our website, which is marilyntaylor.com Try to keep it straight there. I many, many years ago, I would say beginning of 2000, I got into mortgages actually, which then got me into real estate investing, which then got me into purchasing homes on Cape Cod. My husband is from Cape Cod, that's where he grew up in Massachusetts. And so I bought my first vacation rental there. I had owned some other just standard rentals before that, but I wanted to get into this vacation rental thing. And so some friends of ours were selling a house. I got a great deal and I had my first house in Eastham and then his parents were selling their house and they it was in Wellfleet, which is a great spot in Cape Cod. But we bought that house again to turn into a vacation rental. So in that process of doing that, I lived in la. Those were There, and I had to design them and plan everything and order everything. And so basically, the East Ham house was the first one. I put everything together in that house in four days.

Do you have a favorite failure? And this is something that I ask a lot of people when they come onto this show, because it's so easy to talk about the positives. But as we all know, in business, not everything is a success. There are a lot of failures along the way. But do you have a favorite failure, something that you learned?

This is something that I did kind of early on with my rental is as I improved it, I realized how important photos were. And so I don't think I did it intentionally, but the photos that I took made the house look really, really great. But then what ended up happening is people's expectations were set a little bit too high for what the home actually was. So while the decor was really beautiful, which, in actuality, now, all these years later, as a professional designer, I look back and I cringe. I'm like, oh, God, it's embarrassing. But, you know, for Cape Cod, back then, it was really beautiful. And when people saw the beauty of the aesthetics and their expectations sort of rose on the amenities as well. And I'm talking about things like appliances and, you know, and bedding or the quality of mattresses and pillows and all of that. And I was still using a lot of, you know, the original stuff that was there in the house. And so I started to get some negative reviews as a result. And that was, for me, a huge, huge learning lesson that you can't go over the top in making your house look like something it's not.

Now, what do you see is the biggest mistake that so many people make when it comes to the interior design of their property? And what sort of advice could you pass on?

The biggest mistake that I see people making is that they go to. I don't want to use the word cheap, but cheap. You know, they. They go to whatever. You know, I think out there, you guys have T.K. maxx or T.K. maxx. We have T.J. maxx, you know, which. Which is great. I use them all the time. Don't get me wrong. But if you're. You know, sometimes people go too bland. They're afraid of color. They're afraid to get too exciting with. With the design. I feel like it's really important because people have figured out aesthetics matter.

The title of this episode is about optimizing their space to maximize their profits. So this is something that I picked up from yourself, and I'D love it now if you could just spend a few minutes just explaining to everybody how they can optimize their space to maximize profits. And just sort of explain it in more detail, please.

So this is going to be probably more relevant to larger units. Like with my mod pods, it's 400 square feet. You can only fit so many people in there.

Right.

So I'm not gonna try to stack eight people in there with bunk beds. So. But I'm gonna use my Cape Cod home as an example. So in that home, originally I think I slept six to eight. And as time went by, I realized that I probably could compete the size of the home could compete with the homes that sleep more people. I want to premise all of this by saying that you have to find the right balance for your home. Because if you're just thinking profit, profit, profit and not balancing that with the experience that people will have, if you're trying to cram too many people in, that's it's. They're just not going to have a good experience. They're going to be on top of each other. They're going to be trying to, you know, 12 people trying to share three bathrooms. So you have to really, really, you know, keep the reins in check. And so examples of what I did at my Cape Cod house was one thing that I did is there was a huge attic over my garage. And I realized that if I finish off this space, I now have a large bonus room that people can. And I put all the gaming things in there. You know, the tables for cards and ping pong table and. Right. You know, I don't have a ping pong table, but I want to put.

A ping pong table.

But that's where you would put all that stuff so that it's this gaming room. Right. So if you have a basement or a second structure on your property or a garage that isn't filled up with stuff, try to think of how you can expand into those spaces to make them additional living areas again.

So great, so many takeaways. Now, something that I've noticed from yourself is you now help other accommodation owners with their listings. Out of all the ones that you have done. I do some at seminar, I do a thing called a marketing review, where again, I see what people do and put it into. I give them advice. So all the reviews that you've done and all the hosts that you have helped, what is the most common advice that you see that you are giving at present to these people and what they can do to improve just in case there's somebody else here who is literally making the same mistake.

I approach everything from an aesthetic point of view, so that is my forte. So while you are a tech and marketing guru, right, and you know how to get like, the structure and SEO and all that fun stuff, that's not my brain I'm going to look at. My clients are coming to me because they want the presentation not only at their home, but their, their marketing to, to match their home. Right. It's branding. And I would say the. The most common thing that I have to help people correct is their photos. It's. It's not just the quality of the photography, but it's also the order that they put them in. It's the captions. It's the way that, that they, they present it. It. It doesn't tell a story. It doesn't walk people through the home. When I order my photos on my listings, I always think about what room are they going to see first and then where are they going to go from there. And in my captions, I try to give some idea. Okay, you're upstairs. This is a hallway bathroom. So they can look at the main photo go, oh, that's where the hallway is. That door must be that bathroom. And they can get an idea of the layout and how it's going to feel in there.

What order do you sort of recommend going? And when we're talking about order, let's just say we're on Airbnb now or on booking.com or VRBO or whatever, or you're on a listing site that you're paid to be there. We're not talking about your website here. We're talking about a place that you list your property on. When you're talking about an order, obviously the first one has to be, well, the best one. And then. So how do you sort of go from there?

For me and my properties, I always use a photo of the interior. I have toggled back and forth and done what they call split testing or ab testing. On one listing, I'll have a photograph of the master bedroom, which is probably the most spectacular design wise. And in others, I have a photograph of the living room as the first photo, and I've been testing to see which one works the best. But let's say that you have a gorgeous little cottage in the Cotswolds or something. Your first photo may want to be of your actual property if it has extreme charm. But then the order that it goes in from there, again, I would. If you have an exterior Photo I would then take it to the primary living space first and then walk them through the house. And in addition to the order of your photos and how you present them on a website video, you know, walkthrough videos. And now they have, there are, there are companies that will. I actually have my Cape Cod house listed right now where they will do and I see this on more and more of the higher end listings where they will take a 3D video of the inside of your house. It's not an actual video but people can walk through your house on their computer and that is huge. So if you can do something like that, that's even better because then they really feel like they can actually walk through your house.

Virtual reality tours are becoming popular and popular and popular. And right now if you go to the Boostly website, I am actually getting involved in virtual reality tours because like you say it is so key for hospitality businesses. Now we know people don't read, we know that people want to find out more. And like you're saying you were booking a family vacation for 26 people and if you're going to be booking something for that big, doesn't matter how many people are in there, when you're going to go and stay somewhere, you like to know where things are. And again, thinking back to your demographic, if you have got a property that is catered for the disabled market, say that you've got disabled facilities. It's so crucial to them for them to know a will my wheelchair fit through this gap? Where is the, where is the layout from the entrance to the bedroom to the bathroom and what sort of, what are the variables? And by having a virtual reality tour you can do all of that. And I've seen now Expedia you can upload a virtual reality tour to booking.com, they are starting to allow 360 virtual reality tours in Google business listing. They have that automatically in as part of the Google Maps program. And of course on social media you can add virtuality turn on as well. And the more that these headsets are becoming more popular, people can literally be on their living room, they can put on one of these virtuality headsets and they can be transported to your property without going anywhere.

That's a whole other level right there.

That is a whole other level. But you've got to think about again, how do you stop the scroll? How do you stand out from a very, very, very popular industry now with hospitality? And this is it. And this is why like I say, you can go to boostly.co.uk and you can go check out the VR tours if you're in the UK only. I am getting involved and I'm working with a company that can help do that. So things like that. Amazing. And we could literally talk for ages about this. This is a topic that I find so fascinating and I thank you so much for your time. But let's leave people with a way that they can find out more about you because I value your time, I know you're busy and I really do appreciate you doing this. So if someone wants to find out more about you, if someone wants to go and get a maybe a little download, where's the best place for them to go?

Right now Mary is. And I'm going to hold this up for the people on Facebook so you can see how to spell my name. It's Maryland taylor.com and Maryland has two ends on it. So M A R I L Y N N T A y l o r.com and hit the start here button right at the top of that website and there is a free download that is called Top five Decor Must haves for Short Term Rentals. And that's just going to give you some quick tips of ways that you can judge your existing listing or if you are creating a new one, it's going to give you some good guidance there. And then of course, if you want one on one consulting, I offer that I can help you design your space from where I am. I do just listing reviews and website reviews and again my reviews are focusing on the aesthetics and the presentation and I can usually come up with a quick 10 easily 10 things with just about every single client right off the top that are quick and easy, actionable things they can do to just instantly see improvement in engagement and bookings.

Thank you so much.

Instagram, social media, you can find me there. It's just arylandtaylor so I try to keep that really easy. And on Facebook I'm found hetaylordhome and Taylor is spelled like my last name. T A Y L O R. I like that.

Yeah, I really, really appreciate. I know that so many people are watching this, whether they're watching this on the YouTube, the Facebook or if they're listening to this on their podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time out to do this and I really do hope that so many people get in touch with you and get that guide because that guide would be phenomenal. And again, if anybody gets it and more importantly puts it into practice, please share your results with Marilyn and please Share your results with me because it's phenomenal. When we can do this sort of thing, we can get guests on like Marilyn, but when people actually take action and get results from it, this is what we want to hear.

Yeah. And you can find me inside of the hospitality community as well. I'm. I'll be in there jumping in, answering questions and helping out where I can.

So fantastic. Phenomenal. Really appreciate it. Okay, so, Amalia, thank you so much. And thank you to everybody that has tuned in to this episode. If you want to go and find out more about the Boostly podcast, head to boostly.co.uk podcast. We have got six of the seasons that you can go and download right now from picking or finding your the guest process, the guest booking process, to five ways that you can boost your direct bookings to even how to run a Facebook competition is literally all that. And we've even got interviews from people from the hospitality community on the podcast series as well. So for me, for now, thank you for tuning in and I'll be back for another episode very shortly of season seven of the Boost Hospitality Podcast. And before you leave, if you could just go and rate and review and tell a friend about this, it would mean the world. It doesn't matter if it's on itunes or Spotify. Wherever you get your podcasts, Boost Lee is there. So thanks very much for tuning in and I'll see you very, very soon.