Meet Ben Wolff: The Journey from Startup to $60M Luxury Hospitality Empire [STRCollab]

Ben Wolf is somebody don't know about you need to know more about. His company is absolutely smashing it in the direct booking movement and it is all about creating Instagramable places. I always talk about creating a niche for yourself or burying yourself so far down in a niche there's room for nobody else. Now what Ben and his company have done have not only done that, they've created a niche and called it Landscape hotels. You've got to watch this episode of the STR Collab to truly understand what I am talking about but make sure that you are not only following and all of his hotels and his brands that he is doing but really pay attention to some really key things in here as he discusses show social media and everything else. The SDR collab is made up of rent, mount, host, GPO, StayFi and a little company called Boostly. We like to bring to you some of the best experts in the game that will help property owners from one property all the way up to 2025 properties and everything else in between. So sit back, relax and enjoy this very special episode of the STI Collab.

Sounds good. Yeah, thanks for having me on guys. Appreciate it. So yeah, I'm Ben Wolf. My firm AWASI develops and manages one of a kind hotels made for the modern traveler. We design our properties to be highly shareable and experiential. You could also consider them STR communities. I call them landscape hotels. But you know we, we've certainly been called a variety of things before. I also co founded and created onea which is a treehouse hotel in the Texas Hill country which does over 80% direct now month over month at the highest rates and some of the highest occupancies in the market. So we're five to $600 plus in ADR on couples units depending on the units and we have a number of different unit types. One of them's on the screen. Monarch which is a a treehouse style unit in the the sort of take on a a Butterfly which is probably our most well known property and is is insta famous to some extent. And yeah all of our units have occupancies in the the 80s to 90s. Monarch is in around 92% occupied and we're now expanding Oneira by 50 keys. 35 million in development across two locations. One Onara Wimberley is opening in September which we're super excited about. Been dropping some of that construction content on the stay on ERA Instagram and I'm actually in pre development planning and capital raising for OWASSEE Hill country, which is the next resort that we plan to build, which I believe has the best views in Central Texas, maybe the best, best views in Texas. And we are creating what I think is a one of a kind earth lodge concept. That is, it's a landscape hotel that's terraced into the side of the hill with green roof features and one of a kind water features and a subterranean spa and gym tucked under a waterfall. So we're continuing to push the envelope and try to inspire our guests and build things that are extremely shareable and have the ability to go viral. So we now design with Instagram and social media in mind. When I was first building oneira, we wanted to build cool stuff and it just so happened to play really well on social media. Um, we, we launched actually just on Airbnb and, and we'll get more into this. But I didn't start promoting on social media and, and doing direct bookings until a few months into opening. But pretty early on we saw, you know, how amazing the, the impact was of that and, and really doubled down and tripled down in the past year, building out a full social media, content and digital marketing team in house. And we now actually we have third party clients in the unique stays space, in the landscape hotel space. And as of the past like month or two, we have just had an amazing influx of people that want us to handle their, their social and direct bookings. And I think one of the reasons for that is we look at it from an owner standpoint. So we've worked with agencies before and they're all about, you know, views, impressions, shares and those things matter. I mean they're in, they're indicators. But what most of our clients really care about is direct bookings and, and that's something that, you know, we've really been able to drive and that's the ultimate goal for us. So yeah, I think that's probably enough of an intro. But yeah, thanks. Thanks for hopping on everyone who joined.

Yes, thank you, Ben. That was great. It was good to learn more and you know, I'm always fascinated. I'm still trying to figure out on my calendar when I'm getting to your properties because they're very much list a few housekeeping items before we jump into the, the Q and A because really that's what this webinar is going to be all about is getting your guys questions answered. Just if you guys didn't get the link Mark posted in the chat, you can scan this QR code, you can join the community and this is our Facebook group. You'll also get access to the pre recorded webinars we've done last month and the previous month and other things as well in the news. We're going to do this quickly because I think Ben, what you have to say is a bit more interesting than what's in the news. But we just put on here Guest makes their fifth acquisition since 2022, acquiring Rentals United. This caused a lot of buzz in the industry, so I'm sure many people have heard about it. Also panelists, if you have things to add, please do, because we don't just have to hear from my voice. The other thing that I found fascinating this is just in our research as mount as a company is that Gen Z's and Millennials are prioritizing travel, even headed into kind of the downturn of not making as much money. And they're looking for seamless digital solutions. So the days of trying to hunt down your host to get a key, a physical key to then get and be able to check in are over. Partly because I would argue a lot of us don't even know how to use keys anymore. Everything is so digital these days. And then also they are prioritizing experiences over things. So this is one thing we can dive in with Ben as well, because I believe, you know, you build experiences, not just places to stay. Some of their top categories, foodie experiences. It's a reason a lot of people travel. They see it on TikTok, they see it on Instagram and they want to try it themselves. And then second is for that exploration and adventure element. So how can the property be the catalyst to that? Lastly, just so everyone's aware, we're getting ready for summer season. What that looks like is 118 million Americans who are planning on taking a summer vacation. So that's just within our market here. But think about that on a global scale. That's a lot of people traveling this summer. They're also going to be spending 424 billion. That's not on the extras, that's just on the flights and the properties themselves. So we'll compound that a little when it comes to the experiences themselves. But that's what we're looking at when we come to in the news. Anything else to add?

I was gonna say, yeah, I find it. I was gonna say I find it amazing in 2024 how that still isn't more of a talk around digital locks. I can't believe that keys are still used as much just purely from the safety point of view. And I know for a lot of people who especially got managed or got management companies, it's a bit harder because you've got to convince your homeowners. But I think with, with today's day and age, like, like Maddie says, a lot of people, Gen Z millennials might not even know how to use a key. But in just in terms of safety, just having anybody can go and copy your keys at any point and can come back in at any point in the future, I feel like it should be one of the. Everybody's key focus is to get off the standard key, get to a digital lock solution as soon as possible just for the safety of your guests more than anything. And it'll, I think it will talk about bookings and getting bookings if you are one of the first to move in your area and you can promote it and say listen, we've got digital locks so safety is key to us. I feel like that's going to be a, a massive plus point and I think that's the one that I sort of take away from all of those.

I have a quick crowdsource request, but Jeff, you can go first.

No, no, go for it, Ben.

So we are actively looking for some WI fi enabled remote lock solutions that tick like three or four boxes that we haven't found a perfect solution yet for. So if anybody knows, please reach out, let me know, throw it in the chat and that is we want WI fi enabled, able to autogenerate codes. We want to be able to create key cards or use master key cards if we want. We also want the ability to use codes and ideally we can also have a, a master physical key because redundancy is key in a limited staff model. So you know, wanting all of those things has been a big challenge. We may have to give on, on one or more but if anybody knows a solution, please let me know. And then the, the other one is Onea Fredericksburg. We have a bunch of units that the main access is a sliding door which is a nightmare. Never do that. It was a massive mistake that we'll never do again. But if anyone knows a good locking solution that has even some of those capabilities that I mentioned for sliders, please let me know.

And it must be.

I will connect with you. I'll connect with you. I have, I have, I have ideas.

For all of those.

Although the key card part makes it makes it hard if you're willing to give up on the key card. I think the rest of those you can, you can solve including the sliding door which I just recently saw a solution for, in New Orleans which is pretty cool.

Amazing. Love that. Yeah, the, the key card is actually more for staff than anything else. Right. Just cleaners, ease of access, that sort of thing. But yeah, we may have to give on it. So.

And obviously as well, the, the, the issue for yourselves is that you're a rural location as well. What do you do for your WI Fi and for your Internet out in the middle of the sticks? Because I'm, I come from a farm in the middle of nowhere and I can speak to this from firsthand.

Yeah. So we, it's definitely been an issue and something that we've, we've been working on. It's actually one of the reasons that we're not, we've looked at Statefi and one of the reasons we're not using StateFi right now is because the type of Internet provider that we need to use will not support. So in Fredericksburg we have like a point to point system with a local, you know, supplier. And, and we have plenty of issues. We are working on getting Spectrum which will be great. And then, you know, I think we could use something like stefi. And at Onero Wimberley we actually have this local company called Spry Phi, but they work off of charter towers and they're actually exceptionally good. They're small boutique and I mean I know that's rare for a local WI fi provider, but they're, they're very good. Um, and we should be able to get blanket WiFi 300 up, 300 down with the, the spry fry. So yeah, they may actually put a tower on the top of our hillside because we're a high point at our narrow Wimberley and it'll help, you know, them service a whole bunch of neighbors and people in the community. So it's good from like a community outreach and goodwill standpoint too.

To your, to your question too, Mark. And, and Maggie threw this in the, in the chat. Maggie, you're, you're chatting just with, with host and panelists. But, but yeah, for folks that are remote, there are solutions for pretty much every use case for electronic locks. And even if you're remote and in the sticks and don't have great WI fi and can't rely on it, you know, there are options like Igloo, which is also a host GPO partner for locks. We partner with Yale and Schlage and Igloo. But Igloo is great because they have a algorithmic code so it doesn't actually have to link to WI Fi. To give each guest a separate code, but depending on when they're checking in, linked to their calendar. So that is a very cool feature of an igloo lock that does solve that problem. And then, Matty, the only other, only other updates, I would say other, other news to just talk about. I think there was, there was a pretty big round of layoffs today of a casa, which was kind of a big deal, you know, as one of the bigger property managers in the space. So just I think notable. And then the other one was just Airbnb's P1 financial reporting that just came out, or a ton of really fascinating things in there if you guys haven't been following or catching up on them, you know, you know, at least reading updates from, from those quarterly reports. There's, there's a lot of, a lot of good gems in there. You know, overall ADR increased year over year by 3%. You know, this was their, their biggest year to date. Overall 15% supply growth in terms of properties listed on Airbnb, which I thought was pretty fascinating. So I thought that the, the Airbnb Q1 reporting this year was, was pretty, pretty interesting talking about their future. So check that out too. Nice.

Absolutely. Well, that wraps up the news for this month. Upcoming events. I'm just going to flash this quickly. We can come back to this later, but we want to meet you all in person. So this is kind of where some of us are going to be over May slash June. It is lighter event season because it's busy season everywhere else. But hopefully we'll get to run into some of you there and please come say hi. Fantastic. Well, now, Ben, it's all about you and your amazing use of social media and kind of how we can replicate this and people's questions. So I know you gave an intro, so maybe we start with kind of a deeper intro on just what you've been able to accomplish with social media. Maybe some specific use cases.

Sure. Yeah. I think, I mean, I can talk about kind of our story with social from the humble beginnings and where we've gotten to now and how I think about it today a little bit differently and I think hopefully in a better way. So when I sort of alluded to this when we were building on air at Fredericksburg, it was we wanted to build something inspiring for guests, exciting, unique, one of a kind. But we weren't designing and building for social media and for content. And now we, we, we ask our videographers, you know, and our content creation people on our team and contractors that we Use. We're really using their input and feedback in terms of how we're designing units. And there's, there's some simple things that we've learned like, you know, Monarch and Spyglass are our two most Instagrammable units that are narrow Fredericksburg and they. Monarch is amazing to shoot from the exterior, but it's challenging to shoot from the interior because just the layout, it's offset. You can't get this amazing shoot through moment which you can get with Spyglass, but Spyglass is challenging to shoot from the exterior. So we, we've made a modification and iteration on Monarch for our expansion to oneira Fredericksburg, which is called the diamond, which is effectively two diamonds that are offset, but they're minimally offset. So you still get that sort of cool architectural feature, but you can also get the shoot through moment of the entire unit. And we took things that worked right. One of the things that worked with Monarch is that it looks like it's floating because of the way the, the, you know, the bottom comes to a point. So we took that, we're using that, but we're trying to get the great interior shot as well. So just some, some things that have evolved over time in terms of how we design and how we think about this stuff in terms of our use of social media. It all started with an influencer that reached out to us on Airbnb who turned out to be incredibly valuable. And she's her, she's worked with, you know, Isaac Live Oak Lake, you know, Missing Hotel. I mean, she's worked with like all the, the coolest properties in Central Texas and her handles Texas Explorer and I highly recommend her, even though the, her rates have gone up 2 to 3x from when we started working with her. Actually. She showed Onara, showcased us for free and really wanted to be one of the first to showcase the property because it was so new and exciting and, you know, helps her to get this new content and be the first one to share the property. So she reached out to us, you know, I said, okay, we'll spin up a direct booking website and see how it goes. She came out, posted about Oneira and we did like 10 or $15,000 in direct bookings on that first post. She, she came back a month later. She was getting a new account up and running and we had the same results and that was like, okay, there's something here. Started working with more and more influencers. I was managing it and you know, I was definitely not even a robust Instagram user personally before this. So you know, I was doing like 20, 30 minutes a week just responding to inbound, getting referrals of other influencers in the area and just doing that. I mean, mostly posting photos, not even posting video. Um, we, we did like 30% direct, and that was our only really direct booking channel. Um, so with that kind of light lift, we did 30% direct in year, our full year 2, 20, 23, we tried to hire an agency. At the beginning of the year, we wanted to double down on social. Um, and again, we're, we're getting a lot of these reports of metrics that didn't matter as much to us as actually driving direct bookings. Um, and the growth just wasn't what we were expecting. I was actually growing the account faster on my own with the limited knowledge I had of Instagram at the time. Um, so we actually decided this is such an important part of our business that we're going to build out this team in house. Um, and now today, I'm, I'm proud to say that of our 12 people at the corporate level, half are on the social media and marketing side. And we're continuing to expand our digital marketing capabilities. Um, we have people that are 100, 100% focused on meta ads now. Some people that, you know, are focused on emailer and SEO and, and things beyond, you know, the, the social media content creation and, and influencer marketing. That kind of was our starting point. And we're growing that team. Like, pretty soon that team's going to be bigger than my ops team that helps, you know, oversee running the hotels and, you know, every new hire, it's like, okay, we need a, another copywriter. It's, it's, it's all around content and marketing. Um, that's what, what drives this whole thing and, and allows us to achieve these insane adrs and occupancies and, you know, cut out the, the OTAs. Right? I don't want to be reliant on Airbnb. Airbnb's goal, from what I can tell, is to be the, the, the best experience for the customer possible. And in some cases, that is in conflict with my goals as a host or an owner. Um, and, you know, when I'm reaching somebody on Instagram, we talk about this a lot. Like, they are, they're high, right? They're emotional, they're aspirational. They don't, their, their price sensitivity is way different than if they're on Airbnb or booking.com where they're literally, you know, comparing listings by price. If they See Onara on Instagram and they come to our site if they can afford it. It doesn't matter if it's 400 a night or 700 a night. If, you know, if they can afford it, they. They want to stay there and they're going to book. So it's. And it's kind of crazy. We see in the numbers, we price basically the same across OTAs and direct. We don't discount direct. And last month or March, our last month we had the reporting for our ADR for direct bookings was 50% higher than our OTA bookings. And that just means that we're not pricing higher. So they're just booking higher demand days. They're booking longer stays. Right. They're just less price sensitive. They're booking farther out maybe when our prices are higher. So that was pretty shocking. And we did 88% direct in March. So yeah, it's just continuing to, to accelerate. And yeah, it's great to be able to control the customer journey from the beginning. Right. Like we get to control their experience from the moment they see Onera versus, you know, relying on an OTA to control a lot of that experience.

So do you think.

Yeah, go ahead.

Oh, I was just going to jump in with that point you just mentioned there with, you know, making more money from the direct bookings and just that type of customer as opposed to the one that comes from the ota. I mean, do you think that if someone finds you on social media, it's because they are truly searching for that aspirational, like, really unique stay? Because that is what Instagram kind of highlights. And so it's not like they're seeing price comparisons because they've only found you. It's not compared to like 10 other properties on Airbnb. So they're just not as price aware, maybe 100.

They have nothing to compare it to. Right. They see you and your property and your content. There's no price tag and there's no competition. Right. When they go to the website, like they're not. They don't have oneira and, you know, Live Oak Lake or whatever next to each other. So there's just asymmetric information. Right. Which we're benefiting from. Um, so, yeah, a hundred percent. I think a lot of times too, like, it may not be. I think there's a lot of people on there looking for where they want to stay. But we also are reaching people and we've looked. One thing we've really learned when it comes to social media, there's These, like, obvious things that you may not think of, or if you're trying to be too focused on esthetics and sort of, you know, branding, if you will, you may miss some of these obvious things. One of them is up front and center in the caption in your reel. You need to speak to your customer, you know, and. And that for us, that's Couples getaway, you know, or couples Treehouse Getaway, Fredericksburg, Texas, or Texas Hill country or Wimberley, Texas, or something like that. So right up front and center, somebody sees this, and they live in the Texas triangle. They know that it's for them. If you lead with something else, then they may not. They may, they may. Even if they think it looks cool, like they don't know how to engage with it, and they're not necessarily going to watch the whole video. And when it comes to getting them to watch the whole reel, I mean, there's a lot of things we've learned there, too. One that we picked up from one of our content creators is that when you're looking at something that's more mundane, the less cool aspects of the property, you almost want it to look frenetic, right? And it'll sort of hook you from, you know, kind of bouncing around, moving quickly, and it kind of keeps. Keeps you engaged that way. And then when you come to the. The. The highlight, right, The. The Monarch, you know, amazing shot or whatever it is, you'll slow down and pan and kind of give. Give that its. Its moment in. In more slow mo. So things like that, using captions throughout a reel to keep people hooked the whole time. So there's. There's a caption and then there's the video because, you know, trending audio is great, but a lot of people are looking at this stuff at work and, you know, they have the volume off. So the more that we can engage them in another way beyond, beyond audio, the better. But those are just some tidbits that we've been learning. We're constantly testing and trying to.

To optimize, I think some unbelievable tips and tips and tricks in there, Ben. And I think worth noting, just what Ben threw out at the beginning here, very casually, that they're thinking about the new build that they're doing. They're actually building based on photography and learnings from photography and learnings from what they've gotten from social and what's going to work and designing the actual physical structure to optimize for that, which I think is fascinating. The other kind of crazy thing that you dropped is half of your team is focused on this? And I'm curious, Ben, if, if, you know, I'd love to dive into, you know, the, the nuances and the, the tech stack and all that stuff, but I think the bigger question that I have is, you know, how are you approaching budgeting and spend and how are you looking at that? You know, if you have six people, right. If you're just thinking about Airbnb, right. I think their, their average take rate is like 10%. Right. On a, on a booking overall. Right. How are you looking at, at underwriting how much you want to invest in your direct, your direct bookings? Where are you seeing the return and how are you kind of approaching the math, the math behind it?

Yeah, so I think there's, there's two things here. So we're building for scale and we're also building my personal brand. Like there's other goals that we have at oasi, building our authority in this space. We're capital raising. So, you know, we're, we're building our team to be able to take on other properties, both ones that we build and ones that we third party manager that we're doing more of. So that's the, the Awasi team side of it and why we're comfortable with, you know, hiring more and more people on that side of the business at the property level. And typically when we're talking to clients, typically a good rule of thumb is roughly in the 8% of total revenue. And you know, that could be projected revenue, but often we're seeing significant revenue bumps through, you know, using the social media and book direct strategy. And you're also, you know, you're, you're capturing margin that you wouldn't otherwise be getting. Right. So we're, we're pricing the same on the OTA. OTA between guest and host is charging 17% nowadays, your payment processing either way. So there's, there's 3%, you know, you're going to have to pay either way, but that 14% is basically on right to bottom line. So, you know, if you can get upwards of 70, 80% direct like we are, I mean it makes all the sense in the world, right? You own the customer, you own the experience, they're less price sensitive. Oh, and by the way, your full social and marketing budget is covered by the savings from OTAs. So that, that's how, how we look at it, 8% is just a, a good sort of benchmark for any client that comes to us. And um, we're, we're putting out like five or six proposals, like this week, actually, because we've had so much interest. It's definitely case by case, but. But it does usually shake out around that number.

Yeah, good to know. And I think a lot of people here benefit from just having a rule of thumb like that to benchmark themselves against. So I appreciate you sharing.

Yeah.

It also looks like we're getting some really good Q and A in the chat here. So I think, Ben, we might just open the floor up to those to start. And then the ones on the screen are also from people in the Facebook groups. I think we'll just bounce back and forth and answer as. As we can before we dive into that.

I don't want to miss this because I, I actually prepared it for a, Another, you know, podcast that was talking about this topic. And it's, it's how we think about our holistic marketing strategy now and what we're doing and kind of the steps. So I want to throw this out there because I haven't, you know, said it a zillion times like some of these other things. So the first thing is web optimization, right. Which, which we all know we're not talking about it with social, but the idea is you're driving people, you're trying to get link taps and people to go to your direct booking website. So you need, you need your web website to be optimized for conversions. We had a very low conversion rate for a while at oneara and some of our other sites. We did full website revamps in trying to improve that. So that's one piece. The next piece is growing your audience with influencers that have both targeted and engaged audiences. We're looking for like 5% plus engagement, which is hard to find. I mean, depending on what we're paying the influencer or what day we're comping them. We may bend on that a little bit, but we want high engagement and we want a relevant influencer. We've had like, you know, TV celebrities that have driven nothing, and we've had micro influencers with 10,000 followers that have driven, you know, you know, way more than whatever the value was of the room night. We comped them. Um, and then, then you need really good content. So you need to produce highly engaging, shareable content. And that allows you to grow your audience and also to drive conversions. Right. It's almost like you're, you're kind of farming that audience that you have, right? You're, you're popping up in their feed, you're reminding them about your property, you Know, hopefully driving them to book and think of you first. Now one of the newest things we're doing is we're putting money behind the content that works. So now we're, we're, we're boosting posts and we're spending money on ads with content that has gone viral or semi viral, right. Like content that we know works. We then put ad dollars behind it and that, that helps us grow and increase conversions. And then the final part, we get everybody's email. So we're running email campaigns and we're, you know, trying to convert really community members, right. Like people who want, are enrolled in the community of what we're building and then obviously trying to get repeat guests. So I just wanted to give that breakdown of, you know, web optimization influencers, content, ads and emailers. Kind of like the meat and potatoes of how we look at this stuff and also how we treat it when we're, we're bringing on a new client. So.

Ben, of all of those, what do you think? Is that the, the, where do you start? What's the first thing? I mean, can you do any of this without content? Is that, where, is that where you begin or you start with, you know, social? Like that's a lot to take on for somebody. But where would you recommend people start?

I, I, I tried to sort of do it in order, right. So web optimization is the first thing. You need a good clean direct booking website. And it doesn't, you don't have to spend an arm and a leg on it. It just needs to convert, right. It needs to be simple. The, you know, and you can hire a firm to do that, whatever, you can find somebody on upwork, but you need to have a direct booking website that converts first and foremost. The, the second thing, I mean, you can do a lot just with influencers, right? In my first year of really doing this, we did 30% direct, almost solely relying on influencers and the content that they were generating. The only reels we had were from influencers and the rest was photos. So that's pretty low budget, low time commitment. You have to build something cool so that influencers want to stay and promote you. But that's probably number two. And then number three is getting into producing your own really amazing viral content. And the final one would be ads, right? Then you're getting into, okay, we're going to put money behind this. We're going to take the content that works and see if we can push it even farther. Emailer is something you can do kind of all along the way. I mean, email lists are super valuable, you know. You certain you know that, Jeff? So I would start building that right away and, and, you know, start a newsletter early on that's also, you know, not super expensive to do and high value.

Yeah, I mean, that's a really great starting point and I think kind of building on top of that. How long should one expect when you're starting from zero to see results? Because I think, you know, we've done this at Mount Obviously we're not a short term rental, but we did start building our social strategy. It took us a year to really get to a place where we're now seeing Results. We're at 170,000 followers and we're like growing and growing every day now. But it took a lot of time and effort to get there. Like, are you, do you see the same thing? Should people expect a viral video when they first post? Like, what is that looking like?

It depends how, how cool your product is, right? How Instagram it is. I think that has a big impact and then how good, you know, how good your content is or how good the influencers are that you're working with. So I think that you can accelerate growth and impact if you have something very novel and unique and cool to show off on social media. And then if you have, you know, the best influencers in your area come, you can, you know, see results very quickly. Right. I mean, for us with Texas Explorer, I mean, we saw, you know, 25,000 in direct bookings in that first month just by working with the best influencer around. And we had a good product to show off. So I do think that it, it definitely depends on, on the product. And if I get asked a lot, like, what if your product isn't as, you know, unique or one of one, you know, as, as ONEA and oasi. And I think there are, there are things you can do even if you don't have the most unique product. And it really comes down to some of the things I talk about a lot, which is building in public. So if you're doing an STR that, you know, it's cool design, maybe it's got a nice view, but it's not, you know, it's not a treehouse suspended 20ft in the air. If you document the process and kind of show it off along the way and show your journey, your struggles, you know, your successes and wins, you can build a fan base right before you open and that may convert to bookings. It may just convert to, you know, business development opportunities, future funding, Whatever. But I think there's a ton of value in that. And then another one that, that we've seen work well and we're trying more and more is giving your property or your portfolio a personality. So that could be a person, it could be a character. Right. More animated. If you guys haven't checked out the Ryanair Instagram profile, I think that this is a great example of a group that uses humor and a character to drive engagement. So it doesn't have to just be the most amazing, you know, unique stay possible. There's other ways to drive engagement.

Another good example you guys can look at too on TikTok and Instagram is Duolingo, because I obviously they're an app, they're a software, but they branded their entire company around an Owl. And now that owl is very famous on social media and like does collabs with other brands and, and all that. So definitely possible.

And in the space, in the space, you can look at, at Romy down in, in Miami, right. They have the, the Romy Fox, I believe it is, which, you know, it was very, very much designed and geared towards attracting the travelers that they're looking for. There's a lot of thought that went in developing that. And so to Ben's point, there are other ways to do this.

Absolutely. Let's go a little deeper now because I think one of the fears here, Ben, when you go with direct booking, especially from this person, there's no air cover for damages. You know, like Airbnb is a big platform. I think same actually goes for the traveler. They're like, Airbnb is backing this, it must be good. How do you deal with all of that? Like, if you're high price tag, does that mean you're not getting party crashes and the people that might cause damage or what do you do there?

Yeah, look, I mean we're a romantic couples getaway, so we don't, we don't deal with a whole lot of that. We get a lot of broken beds, I'll tell you that. We've continued to upgrade those and we have now, the beds we're doing now are custom and you know, five year warranty, which is about the best you can get. But yeah, I mean, property insurance, business insurance. Right. I mean there's, there's insurance you can get that will provide, you know, similar coverage as, as an Airbnb. So I mean, you just have to, if you really want to lean into and invest in booking direct, then you want to cover yourself and you just have to get the appropriate Insurance.

Perfect. That was a great one. Let me just get rid of that. Okay. Can you speak a little more to your meta paid social strategy versus just going viral? Like what is the balance there? Obviously you can't predict going viral, but.

You'Re saying paid ads versus organic. Yeah. So we are really just now delving into doing more paid ads for onea. We haven't done as much to date. My team has done meta ads for other, other properties and other products. So we have some expertise in house. But we're now, we're just now kind of trying to figure out that balance with onea. So I don't want to act like I know the exact mix at this point, but we are taking content that works, that has gone semi viral or viral, you know, has reached a bunch of non followers. The algorithm likes it and is pumping it out and putting money behind that and testing it as an ad largely because it's, it's cheaper to put ad dollars behind good content because your, your, you know, your cost per, per clicks go down if it's viral content. It's just kind of the way, you know that we've seen the meta ads work. If your content's better, your cost of advertising is lower.

One other, one other question that, that came up also in the, in the chat that I found quite interesting, Maddie, is are you categorizing yourself, Ben, as, as hotel and lodging or vacation home rentals on, on Instagram or anywhere else? And is, is that, do you know if that's affecting your discoverability and, and you know, traffic by. Depending on how you're categorizing it? Because one arrow does kind of fall in between.

Yeah. So our official category is hotel and lodging. We don't say that in our content. Right. It's, it's couples getaway, it's tree house, it's, I mean we're not trying to box ourselves in nor do we think that like whether we're a hotel or a vacation rental that like, that's what we want to put up front and center in, in our content and in a reel. So yeah, I can't say that we've tested that like category they have in Instagram, like vacation rental versus hotel and lodging. But I will say that we're not focusing on that at all in our content. We don't think that that's what people care about. They care about, you know, the experience, they care about the shareability, connecting to it. They don't care if it's classified as a hotel or a short term rental.

Also, I think too one of the good things to chat about here, Ben, you keep bringing up Instagram, but do you also use TikTok? And how do you look at both platforms either similarly or differently?

So my co founder and head of marketing content, I bring up TikTok probably once a month and he tells me to leave him alone because we got a lot of stuff on our plate right now and TikTok would be a big endeavor for us to delve into. So it's on the roadmap. We do want to do more with TikTok, but we have seen a ton of success with Instagram and one of the great things about Instagram is it's very tied in with our meta ads strategy that we're rolling out now. So, you know, there's, there's synergies there and we want to nail, nail ads and, and you know, sort of have that, build that expertise. It's more important to us than, than building out TikTok. But I've heard people doing extremely well on TikTok. We haven't used it for driving bookings. I have also heard that, you know, relative to views and number of followers that Instagram converts more. But you know, I've definitely seen people do really well with TikTok as well.

Yeah, and I can, I can speak to that a little as well because we do both. What we've done to maximize our time is we will produce one piece of content and then use it both on Instagram and TikTok, because Instagram right now is really pushing reels over just static photos. And a reel is the exact same format and pretty much piece of content that you would put on TikTok. Although TikTok is prioritizing longer than one minute videos right now. Yeah, I mean you can use both videos and what we've seen too. If one goes viral on TikTok, it's most likely going to go viral on Instagram as well. So you can really test good pieces of content that way too.

Yeah, yeah, we've, we've heard the same in terms of if it does well on TikTok, it's likely to do very well on Instagram. But yeah, ran into the same thing of TikTok, you know, wanting to do longer form videos and Instagram wanting to focus on shorter form. So basically that's, that's one of the only other reasons that we aren't just posting on both.

Yeah, it's basically a, if Instagram sees something well on TikTok, they're going to start doing it and then TikTok wants to start doing the exact opposite. So, I mean, this stuff changes basically daily at this point. Awesome. Arthur, Jeff, you guys have any other questions?

I mean there's so many, there's so many great questions popping into the, into the chat, you guys. Some of you are writing it just into to host and panelists and some, some of you are putting them in.

The Q and A.

But I thought one really interesting one. Let me see if I can scroll back and find it. Somebody was asking about. I can't find it right now, but just the travel influencers that you're working with. You sounded earlier. Like you said, sometimes they can be large folks who have mega followings that are getting no traction. And you also mentioned sometimes they're micro influencer influencers. With 10,000 folks that get a lot of traction. How are you identifying those people? Is that a good place to start with influencers in general? And you know, what kind of vetting processes are you, are you putting people through when you're making that determination of who you want to use?

Yeah, so I think the first thing to look at and one of the things we look at is, is the audience targeted. So you know, for us, travel obviously is a big one. People that show off cool Airbnb, hotels, you know, place destinations, foodies have also done well for us. I think there's a pretty decent crossover between restaurants and sort of hospitality more broadly and travel more broadly. But you know, things like celebrities hasn't, hasn't necessarily converted unless they have authority in the space and they show off a lot of that kind of content and people like look to them for cool things to do. So if that's the case then then they might work. But if they're, you know, just kind of lifestyle bloggers and you know, it's more about them and less about the, the property, then, then it may not convert in terms of micro influence influencers versus bigger ones. I think micro influencers influencers are great. They often have higher engagement. It's easier to have higher engagement when you have fewer followers. I mean you could take that all the way down to just like user generated content. Guests that are staying, that are posting, you know, posting on Instagram, like they have some of the most authority with their audience because it's all their friends. Right. So I mean, I think all the way to the limit, you know, very micro. Even just users on the platform can be extremely valuable. But I will say like the best of the best. And usually they're, they're pretty known and clear cut, like, who are the best travel influencers in the space? And like, you know, I know of two that are just like leagues above the rest in, in our local market in Central Texas. And that's another thing to consider too. Like, are you a driving destination? Are you a fly to destination? So where do you, you know, what type of influencers and where do you want their audience to be? For us, you know, well over 90% of our guests are driving destination travelers. So we want Central Texas influencers.

And for the influencers that you bring in, depending on their size and reach, is it. I'll give you a free stay. Come make content. I'll give you a free stay. I also have to pay you. What does that look like?

It depends. So the two best that I mentioned, one text explorer and another group called TX Vacation, they charge anywhere from like 2500 to 4500. But you know, they've, they've generate anywhere from, you know, 15, 20 to 40K. I mean we've, we've done $40,000 in direct bookings on a 3, 500 collab. So I'll, I'll take that all day. So happy to pay the ones that are good, but the vast majority are comp stay or you know, hundreds of dollars. Right. Relatively low, low price point, but most of them are just a comp stay.

That's fantastic.

Yeah, I will say for whatever reason, for whatever reason anecdotally and like, you know, I'm not kind of negotiating with the influencers at this point and, and we have, you know, a team that, that does that and, and finds them and negotiates with them and coordinates with them and all that. For, for some reason it's like the, the best in the market are in that like, you know, 2500 3K to 4K range usually. And the ones that are like a thousand fifteen hundred, I haven't heard amazing results about them. And we've done well with like free stay people and like $500 people. But like in the middle sometimes you can get some, some folks that like, you know, they think they're worth more than they are and it doesn't convert. But that's kind of anecdotal. I don't have firm data on that.

There's probably some truth to it though. I mean you've been doing it for long enough. That's a, it's an interesting, it's an interesting taken. And one thing I'll throw out to the, to the, so the group here and our community is, I don't know, maybe it would be interesting for us to bring on. I saw Mattie, you mentioned Journey More. I met Hayden and Nikki recently. They're lovely. But maybe we bring on some influencers as guests in the future. We can ask them, pepper them with questions about how they're approaching this and what's working and what they've seen work for folks as well. Potential idea to throw out into the group for a vote.

Wait, I love that idea. I also know them really well. So we're working with Journeymore and then another creator, John, who are throwing a content retreat two weeks from now at an Airbnb property. So they, I let them throw it. I was like, you guys know more than I do. But they're bringing 14 creators in this travel Airbnb short term rental space and they're just going to out for two days. So we can also do more of that. But yeah, we could absolutely get them on here. I was going to say too, we're running up on time and there are so many questions that we did not get to answer. Ben, if you're up for it, we'd love for you to join the Facebook group and we're going to post this recording in there. So if you guys didn't get your questions answered, if you have more, put them in that thread and you know, Ben, if you have some time, would love for you to answer them. And I mean, we can do our best to answer them. We can get Journey More in the Facebook group to answer them. Like, let's just keep this going because I think this is, we struck a note here. It's, it's positive.

Yeah, happy to get in there and answer some of the questions. I'll just note too, like I'm very active on LinkedIn, very active on Twitter, Unique stays guy on Twitter. And if you guys want to connect with me, follow me that way. I have a newsletter as well. I talk a lot about this stuff, so I know a bunch of people in here already do follow me and are on the newsletter. I recognize the names but if you're not like, I talk about this stuff daily, so check it out.

Oh, and actually Ben, someone asked too. Are you taking on new clients and managing socials for their properties?

We are, yeah. We definitely work with a select number of clients. We don't have a massive team yet, but we are growing rapidly. And yeah, if you're interested, reach out. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter or, you know, I'll hear, I'll just put my email in the in the chat.

That would be fantastic. One other thing I just did want to let everyone know because this is something we're building at Mount if you follow me on LinkedIn, you might be aware, but we are in the process of building our content army. So there's about 3,000 traveler UGC content creators in there right now. And if you happen to be signed up and using MOUNT you get access to our content army for free. So you can get your properties featured in the newsletter that goes out to them every month. You can bring them in to do content for you. They do content for us. It's fantastic. So if anyone has questions about that. My email was in the chat a while ago, but you can reach out and happy to always check social media.

I want to throw that out too because this came up a couple times, I think three or four people ask questions. Then obviously you're at a, you're at a, a point with, with Oneira and Owasi that you are very much doing sophisticated, high volume, you know, influencers, high paid, you know, targeted and creative content. A lot of folks that are just starting out, they're creating content. They, they've had, you know, trouble getting traction, trouble getting conversions, but they've done, you know, the first step, the second step. Now a lot of questions about how to organically increase followers or you know, whether things like hashtags actually work. One thing I'll throw out, you know, to, to echo what Matt said and Ben, maybe we'll throw it to you for any kind of, you know, just getting started tips. But one thing I'll throw out is companies like, like MOUNT and, and Host gpo. Very much we focus on featuring our members properties on our Instagram, on our social media. I mean for us it's content that we're not generating but that we're able to showcase these beautiful homes. And I seen host GPO members gain, you know, followers and gain traction on new properties. Especially if you're creating content early. Ben was talking about, you know, letting people into the building process. I mean the best posts and the best member content that we get that drive the most engagement are you know, before and after, during constructions, that type of stuff. You want to be thinking about, you know, the content creation early. But you know, Ben, any last, you know, tips that you might want to share with people that are just getting started out on, on how to really, you know, go from, from 0 to 1.

Yeah, look, I think that there's actually a lot of content out there that's like very low production value. And that does really well. Like, I don't think you need super high production value in a lot of cases, especially if you're doing the whole building in public and putting yourself kind of out front and center. People love to connect with people. So authenticity, sharing your story, you know, it's way better than trying to, like, just build a brand. It's just easier, right, to share your own personal story and people want to connect with that. So I would super lean into that one. One thing that I actually did as of late, someone else on our team did it as well. We did this cut 30 boot camp. I don't know if you guys have heard of this, but it's a content creator boot camp, and it is more geared towards, like, you know, your own personal brand and whatnot. But a lot of the learnings from that you can also translate over to building up your following on social media more broadly. So I got a lot out of it. Might be something to. To check out. It's. It's run by a few pretty sizable creators.

Fantastic. Oh, yeah. Let me put the QR code back up real quick so people can join the group. Sorry, guys. I normally do that. I forgot. We're up on time, though, so I think for those that need to run to their next agenda item, feel free. I'll leave this up for a few minutes. For those that want to scan that, if you don't get into the Facebook group because you don't get the QR code in time or whatever, it may be just like, message any of us on LinkedIn and we can help you out. So we want to make sure the community keeps growing, spread the word. We're going to put a poll out in the Facebook group for next month's meeting on what you guys want to see, and we'll go from there. But this was a fantastic one. Ben, thank you for being such an amazing guest.

Of course. Yeah, it was. It was fun. I'm glad we got to do it. Thanks.

Absolutely. All right, see everyone later.

Thanks, Ben.

No worries.