Resort Driven Short-Term Rentals

I think a lot of times people look at success like it is a finish line or a destination. But I think that success is, is more of a process. I think that success is when you find the process that allows you the time and space for continuous improvement.

So welcome along to the new episode of the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives you the tools, the tactics and the trainings to go out there and get more direct bookings. If you've not listened to a podcast before, which hopefully you have, you may know the format these. But on this particular one we go behind a host who's successful and got an inspirational story. And today we've got Brian Hatcher who is sharing a lot of how to brand a business. We're going to dive into all aspects, including things like guest experience and just generally talk about his, his journey in hospitality, which is going to be cool. So Brian is from Elite Escapes and you can check out Elite Escapes by going to Elite Escapes Travel. And he's just had a Boostly web page or web design done with us, which is, is cool. So go and check that out and you can see some of his amazing places and really just get to know his business. So Brian, welcome along. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Happy to share.

So Brian, let's, let's start off by saying, hey, who is Brian Hatcher?

Yeah, so my name is Brian Hatcher, also known as the real estate hacker. And I am a consultant, real estate investor and the founder of Elite Escapes, which is a resort driven STR company. And I try to think about the way, I kind of want to describe it to people, but essentially what we're doing is a version of rental arbitrage, but exclusively with different resorts all over the world.

Nice. Which is very different, isn't it? This is very different. So I'm excited to dive into this. So can you give us a brief history. Well, really of the, of how you've got into this, you know, what did you do before this? And you know, how did you get the hospitality bug?

Yeah, so I started out as an accountant, an auditor, and knew relatively quickly that that was not where I wanted to be spending 40, 50, 60 hours a week, especially during busy season, just kind of, you know, pushing, pushing the paper. And I knew I kind of needed to craft a way to escape that life. And so I settled in on real estate investing. Early on I was listening to a lot of biggerpockets podcasts, reading some of their books, trying to just learn the tools of the Trade and settled in on, okay, I'm going to buy a house each year and try to house hack, you know, live in one, rent out the other, and then just kind of try to slowly build my way up and build up a nice portfolio over time. And as I started down that journey, I think I was on my second house and I got sent a podcast that was centered around short term rentals by one of my fellow or one of my coaches, actually, now his name is Mike Sjogren. And I remember being blown away by just what was going on in the short term rental space. And I was like, I have to get started in this. So that's what really kicked it off for me, being like, okay, I'm going to dive into this Airbnb journey.

One thing that I'd love to ask is, is there anything that may surprise people about yourself or a fact just so we can get to know you a little bit better?

Yeah, one thing that might surprise some people is I'm a big foodie, but I'm also, I love to cook, and I cook a lot almost every single day. That surprises a lot of people, especially when people who come to my house sometimes and I'm like, oh, yeah, we don't have to go anywhere. I'm going to dinner. They're like, oh, you know how to cook so nice.

Yeah, it's certainly a skill that I could do with. So, yeah, well done on that. And what does the business look like now? So can you introduce us to what your business looks like? What kind of model? You mentioned it was resort driven. How many units? And who do you host? You know, is. It sounds as though it's more leisure based.

Yeah. So essentially Elite Escapes, like I said, is we focus on developing contracts, relationships and obtaining deeds to resort networks. And these are resort networks that your average person is familiar with, whether it be Windham, Marriott, Hilton, Worldmark. You know, all of these are different companies that have different portfolios of resorts and they often offer access to them through timeshare contracts or deeds. And a lot of times you can only stay at these types of locations if you actually have a contract or an ownership within that network. But there are specific deeds that do allow you to get access to bonus inventory and inventory special. And if you're an owner, you then can kind of rent. You can choose to stay at that last minute inventory without using your contract points or your contract war weeks that are included in your timeshare. Or you can also send guests there at a discounted rate typically. And so what we have done is build systems and processes around that and we market that inventory to various guests on OTAs and our direct booking website to basically expand our reach and help those resorts stay full. So it's kind of like a win win for everybody.

That's cool. And with these resorts, and especially for we've got a mix of UK and US listeners, what do these resorts offer different to say, you know, a block of apartments?

That's a great question. So these resorts, I would say are a mix in between a apartment complex and a full service hotel. Right. So I think your unit is going to have everything that your typical STR is going to have. You have, you're going to have your bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, but then you're also going to have your appliances and all of the utensils and everything in your kitchen. You're going to have a full kitchen. All those things. You are unlike an apartment though, you are going to have a full staff on site as well that can assist you with different things. And then you're also going to have typically local amenities within the building. Some amenities range from know, a tennis court to Jacuzzis and hot tubs to, you know, sometimes they'll have their own events going on at the building. So you get a little bit more than you would if you were just to stay at a traditional apartment that was an Airbnb and then the location as well, you're typically going to be, if it's at a, in a city, you might be right downtown and get all of those benefits, whereas you might not get that from just a normal Airbnb in a suburb or a residential area.

So let me get this right. So this, the Leica hotel and that makes it more attractive to guests because you've got all these cool amenities which many places don't have. And at the same time that place is happy for you to, to get them full because obviously it's utilizing their services and you know, at the end of the day the owners are then happy. Or is it kind of a management model? Is that how it works or is this more leased kind of places?

Yeah, it's more of a management model. We do have ownership, so we have ownership through a contract. Well, depending on which resort network you, you kind of want to do this with, it might be either a direct contract with an individual or a deed that can be owned by an LLC or an individual. And that's what really breaks down the terms. Whether it is you might have a structure where you have certain management fees or maintenance fees that you're paying every single month, every single quarter or every single year year. And then typically there is a large upfront cost to get that initial contract or deed. But that, that upfront cost does not have to be. It's typically very large. If you are going to directly to the resort network to purchase it, you can use the secondary market and find some really good deals on those as well.

When it comes down to success, obviously you know, looking back of when you started that you couldn't know, you know, how successful it's going to be. But what does success mean to you.

And why so success? I think, I think a lot of times people look at success like it is a finish line or a destination. But I think that success is, is more of a process. I think that success is when you find the process that allows you the time and space for continuous improvement.

What would you say has been your biggest kind of success so far or your biggest wow moment?

My biggest success I think has been aliascapes. I think the, the biggest wow moment has just been as, as I continue to, to do this business, as I continue to try to grow both personally and from a business standpoint, that everything really comes down to you and your mindset. I think that once, once you really understand that, I think you start to have a lot of wow moments, A lot of fear goes away, a lot of limits start getting taken off of things and you decide to become more a matter of fact take a lot more action on things when you realize that most of the things that were holding you back is yourself. So that's probably been my biggest wow moment. Coming to that realization and being able to look back and recognize that just.

Looking at the things that have happened. If you had to track, you mentioned, you know, that Elite Escapes has been the, the big success. How did you track what property locations work? Is there any kind of softwares that you use or how did you know that these resorts would be popular as you know, on this model.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And I think part of this is due to my background as a data and analytics consultant. After being an auditor, that's what I moved into.

So that's a big advantage. If you analyze data and you're getting the right data, then yeah, amazing. Yeah.

So of course leveraging things like airdna just to get a good overview, a high level overview of what markets look like. And then for our specific model it goes into understanding what's hot during what time of the year. And so since we have so many locations it's easy to just be like, oh, well, we should be covered throughout the majority of the year because whether it's ski season or whether it's the middle, the hottest time of the summer, we have locations that should appeal to all people. But you really can hone in your marketing efforts on where, you know, people are traveling the most during a time of the year. And so, so leveraging air DNA as well as just kind of normal research to try to understand travel trends, where people are going during what time of the year. For example, during the back end of last year, we had a lot of people traveling to our Hawaii locations, our Florida locations, our Southern California locations, some of those warmer areas because they're wanting to get out of the cold maybe. And now as we really move into what I like to call like ski season, we're getting a lot of people staying at our Steamboat Springs and Pagosa Springs and Colorado type of resorts. So we'll focus on not only marketing those more, but trying to acquire and attain more rooms, more units in those specific areas so that we can capitalize on those travel trends.

Thank you so much for, for coming on the the Boosty podcast. I've certainly learned a lot and I know the people listening will have done as well. Is there anything I missed? Any questions or last moment closing comments before we close?

No. You know, thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it and look forward to continuing to work with Boostly over the coming year.

Thank you very much, Brian, and ultimately everybody else who's watching this on the live or if you're listening on the podcast. I know there's a lot of places you can put your attention and we thank you for putting it with Boostly. Hopefully this is going to help you get some more direct bookings by putting into action some of the stuff you know about brand that we've learned tonight and also some of these awesome strategies which you may not have known about. So thank you so much. That's it for us. See you on the next one. Bye for now. Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the T is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.