Secrets to Successful Hospitality Management of Luxury Properties

Hi, welcome to the new episode of the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that helps give you the tools, the tactics and the training and most importantly the confidence so you can go out there and get some more direct bookends. Today we are doing the behind the host series. This is the mini series on the Boostly podcast with myself, Liam Carolan and we dive into a successful and interesting short term rental host journey. Find out all about their business and see if there's stuff that you can take from, from their experience that you can go and implement into your business to help you with, with hospitality and getting those excellent reviews. And today I'm really excited. We're joined by Julian Foster, he's from the. Hey Julian. He's joined from the Richmond Property Group and his specialty is managing luxury properties. And it's something which I'm interested in because I know there's a huge demand for high end properties at the moment and also in general just we're going to find out how you've, how you actually go about managing properties which are both international but also very high end and what's involved in that. So Julian, welcome along.

Hey Liam, how are you doing? Very good, very happy to be on the podcast.

I'm excited to have you here. Thank you for joining, buddy. So let's start off if you can introduce yourself, tell us a bit about yourself, where the business is based, how many units and that. Cool stuff.

Yeah, cool. Also like you were saying, my company's Richmond Property Group and we've got a portfolio of properties that are the mainly luxury properties and they're located, located globally really. So we've got properties down in, in Cornwall, in central London, in Bournemouth, Amsterdam, a couple of properties in France and a couple of properties in Chicago in the USA as well. And, and yeah, the thing that binds them all together is that is their luxury properties. So I think that's the main thing that I want to kind of talk to you about today, really about how I manage them, how I found them and to give you guys some kind of tips and tricks if you want to approach luxury property yourself.

That's amazing. I know there's going to be a lot of people listening in with, with ears very much open to this. So let's start off with more about your, your journey. Julian, how did this come about? What did you do before this at the moment, before hospitality and how did this opportunity of managing luxury properties come about?

Yeah, so, okay, so my background was originally was actually working in events when I was kind of know, fresh out of college, I was working in the events industry and that pivoted. So eventually I was working in selling commercial office space. That's what my background was, was selling commercial office space in central London. And that was an incredibly boring thing to be doing. I, I look after some commercial space now. It's part of the portfolio that I look after. But there's no doubt that that is the most kind of boring part of what I do. And it was about 2019 when Covid when that crept in as well. I was already looking for kind of a way out and something new and something exciting to do. And first opportunity came up where it was just this one person who had quite a large portfolio of properties that he needed looking after and he brought me on board with just to kind of look after those. And that went from strength to strength. And eventually we decided that it would be better to structure it as a kind of personal company, my own company. And that's where it started from. So I really had this kind of base portfolio of luxury properties and that's where the kind of fun and games started really. It was really about kind of being kind of thrown in at the deep end. So having to manage luxury properties was a challenge and something that was very new to me at the start. And having to manage properties in more than one location likewise was just something that I had to kind of get used to and work out solutions for all of these complicated problems, you know, like not just the kind of classic ones that you might think of, like working with different time zones and all that kind of stuff, but even looking after properties that are in, in foreign countries was something that was new and exciting. You know, I could speak a moderate level of French, but I don't really know how to. What the French is changing the internal ring of a pool cover or you know, changing hot tub filters in, in Dutch. It's, you know, it's all new kind of stuff that I had to kind of work out. So that was part of the, of the fun and games.

And one of the things which definitely, you know, I'm thinking about because just setting up any property, even locally can, can be some mindset challenges to get over. But what were you feeling at the time? And you know, how did you, how did you manage the opportunity, you know, sort of mindset wise, how did you go about attacking it? So you, like you say, to manage in different time zones, but also to do all these challenges at once and how many properties first came on when you first set up the company?

It really was very Intense. It was, it was all at once that we took on 21 properties all in one go, including a mix of commercial and commercial properties and properties that are rented out on long term AST agreements and those that we look after as vacation rentals. So they all came on as one. There was a, you know, a good transition period where it wasn't just myself. There was the, the owner was very helpful and other people that he had within his company were helpful. There were, there was a dedicated accounts team at the time that, that helped with that process as well. But the goal was right from the start to, to, to kind of give everything so that I was looking after it, to take these properties, you know, off their hands and to give them less headaches and to look after everything. So it was just the case you mentioned about mindset. It was really just about staying calm and organized and putting the plan together for everything. Part of the thing with luxury properties is that I feel like a lot of people, they, they don't think about approaching luxury properties because they see it as being out of their grasp, as, as being too difficult to afford and there being too many barriers of entry. But I would actually preach the opposite of that really. I think there's a huge untapped market for people managing luxury properties. You know, I think that so often people think like how am I going to get these properties and how can I afford to. To run them? But people that own these properties, they need our help more than most people. You know, you think of the normal, you know, rental preneur who has these kind of, they find proper and they rent them themselves and then rent them out again. Sometimes with luxury property owners you can, you can take out those steps because you've got people who own these luxury properties but they're just sitting empty. There's so much potential there. It was really kind of revealing to me that there's this whole world of opportunity with, with some of the best properties in the world.

That's amazing. And like you say, many people are scared off. You know, it seems perhaps too big or certainly the thought of managing international will will put a lot of people off.

Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two boostly books that we brought out, the book Direct Playbook and the book Direct Blueprint are two of the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon for just two pounds. You can grab both of those books right now. The foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the blueprint. And then for 101 marketing tactics that is in the playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon now, just type in book Direct Playbook or the book Direct Blueprint and we'll see you on the other side.

Let's dive into a couple of the things that to my mind would come up as some of the challenges. Let's go for the international aspect. First of all, what tips would you have around managing an international portfolio? I guess instead of just a local portfolio, what are some of the things that, the challenges that you've met, but also the things that you've done to overcome that?

Yeah, well, so I think the key thing here is the systems that you have in place because every business is going to have its own systems that it has and the portfolio that I manage, we, we have our own set of set way of doing things and it's not that complicated. WhatsApp is the absolute king for, for what we do. And every team that we have in every different location, the communication is still in, in its kind of purest sense is through WhatsApp. So every cleaner, every, you know, like client, guest liaison, every handyman that we have, regular maintenance men that they're all in on these WhatsApp groups. It's really key to what we do link to that. I'm pretty sure most people they'll be listening to the podcast will have a property management system, a PMS that they choose. We use the guesty PMS system and it's really, really great and essential for kind of providing super reliable calendar functions and guest communication that everyone that needs to can kind of jump in and out of. So that's really key to us. It's just about having systems in place as a project management tool. We use Trello. And again, that's super invaluable for us. Like really. Again, what I'm trying to say at the core is that it seems super difficult, but it's actually not that difficult. It's just about getting people on board. You know, we find that a lot of people in the US they don't actually use WhatsApp app. I find that really strange. But you just kind of coax them into it and say, look, make sure you get this on your phone. And then everyone kind of everything kind of all falls into place.

I'm so glad you've said that because we frequently here at Boosley are talking about sort of websites and that sort of thing and we invite Everybody to a WhatsApp chat for that. And it's amazing. Apparently WhatsApp's got 2 billion users worldwide, but the US market doesn't tend to use it. So, yeah, it sounds like we're doing our jobs by trying to get more of our US listeners onto, onto WhatsApp. And definitely anybody listening if you are based in the U.S. download WhatsApp. It is the, the best communication app in the world, in my opinion, which is cool. So let's talk about these big luxury properties. My thoughts are a lot of the time you must get people who want to, you know, have an event or, or basically have parties, you know, sort of. So is there anything that you've got in place where you'd prevent that happening in some of these amazing properties? Because I imagine the last thing you'd want is to, to have breakages. And I can imagine some of the interior is quite expensive.

Yeah. Oh my God. I mean, I swear this would be my TED Talk. If I had to do a TED Talk. It would probably be on, on party prevention. Because this was one of the biggest challenges that, that I had coming into this kind of luxury property market because like you said, they're very desirable places and a large proportion use vacation rental platforms. They're not always the people that are your ideal guests, that people that they want to use them to host parties or even just to have like a kind of once in a lifetime stay at a luxury property where they do crazy things. They just kind of, you know, they ride inside the properties on bikes or, you know, invite other people over to like brag about how good the property is. You know, there's just. People want to do extreme things. And we had massive problems right from the start with trying to prevent parties. We started in the middle of COVID and at that point in time, bars and nightclubs were shut down. Some people were actually just using platforms like Airbnb maliciously to get spaces where they could host illegal parties. And then also more recently, I don't know about you, I've had a huge backlog of weddings and, you know, I, I've been to nine weddings in 2022. That's 18 different stag and Hendus that have to be accommodated for around the.

World and party central happening after covert, isn't it?

Yeah, it's, it's chaos. And so we get so many different inquiries for people that want to stay at the properties for Stag and Hindus. Now that's the latest kind of problem that we have. And some of them are honest and say that they want to do that in the inquiry form. And then other people, they're more kind of Malicious and sneaky about it. You need to do what we, what we've done is really gone in depth into preventing parties happening. The main ways that you do that? Well, I would say there's two main things. The, the first and like I said I could go on for ages about this, but the first is to set up your property in a way that makes it really hard for parties to actually continue. I don't know if you've talked to, if you had the guys for a minute on the podcast the minute sound recorders, but they are absolutely essential, absolutely essential. And combining those with Google Nest cameras that we have in the properties in the correct locations to monitor who's coming in and guest activity generally without being intrusive is absolutely key.

Just to dive in on minute there, which is the amazing speakers and I know there'll be people listening to this who don't necessarily know what they do. So can you let us know what that allows you to do with those, those speakers just for those who haven't heard it.

Yeah, it's a brilliant system. It's all about monitoring what's going on without being invasive on the guests because you don't want to break the guests privacy. And what minute does is it. It takes sound recordings without recording the actual things that are being spoken. It monitors the levels of noise and it does way more than that. So it monitors the humidity and the amount of movement within a space and basically gives you as a host good overall idea of, of, of how many people are in the property and how loud and how much activity is going on in that property. It has loads of really good integrations with like our PMS system. So it can fire off alerts both to us as the host and also to the guests where it says look, we've noticed that things are unusual and above a certain threshold, so gives them warning signs and it alerts us to the problems as well and is really, really essential to us keeping control of the, the way that the properties are ran.

That's amazing, isn't it? And there's such a lifesaver because like you say, if it automatically sends these, these updates, well, you know, you might be able to, to not have to get involved at all. It might just be automated and, and that side of things, which is cool if it is just somebody just, you know, slightly overdoing it on the, on the loudness and that.

Yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely. There are really two types of people that stay at the properties that cause problems. You got the ones who do it indirectly like you Said they're really just trying to have fun and like need to have fun when they're staying at your, at your properties. And then you get the ones who are doing it maliciously. Really they are, you know, they don't care about the alerts that you're sending them. They might have 20, 30, 100 people that come over to the place. And really that's why it's essential to communicate something to the guest to say, hey, look, we've noticed that it's wrong. Could you change. And also to communicate something to the host as well, so that you're saying, look, there could be a problem here. Keep it on your radar.

That's cool. And then you mentioned Google Nest cameras. So are these like, I know some people use like ring doorbell or blink cameras. Is Google Nest very similar where you've got sort of just visuals on the outside?

Yeah, exactly the same. And it's really just to kind of give you a picture of, of what's happened, whether people have come into your property and that shouldn't have been there. And it's also very helpful to actually kind of give evidence for things as well. If you need to prove that something has happened where people, lots of people have come into the property that shouldn't have, then you really need to have your cameras set up in the right places as well. But anyway, Liam, I said that like monitoring on site is really key. The other part is actually how you filter through people before they arrive at the property. Because just by taking loads of steps from that inquiry process from when they've booked until the point that they actually access the property, that's what's really, that's what really helps deter the people that, that you don't want state from staying. You know, like we have a kind of basic flag system in place. So if a guest doesn't have. Is unable to provide full verifications of who they are, you know, we request a driving license and that kind of thing after they've booked, just to kind of support the verification of the booking. If they can't or won't disclose the kind of reason for their stay, if they have an unusual number of guests, which can be both an unusually high or an unusually low amount of guests as well, then again, this kind of raises flags. And if the location of where they've booked is maybe suspiciously close to where they actually live, you know, there's all these different kind of factors that you can have that really help to kind of identify guests that could be a problem. And we've got A really good communication system which is thankful to guesty again because they have some really great automations that you can have within a communication system which help request further information from guests and get. Give us everything that we need to make sure that whoever is staying is safe.

That's cool. That's cool. And like they say, they say prevention is the best form of, you know, sort of anything, really, isn't it? So it's a case of if you can prevent, like you say, somebody who's living two miles down the road booking the luxury house where they've probably got a big network of friends. I mean, that's an alarm bell's ringing sort of situation, isn't it? So that's really cool. I like, I like how your tech is all stacked together, you know, and all works seamlessly and is perfect, especially for these, these luxury properties because, you know, you definitely don't want, you know, the chances of parties are just so much higher than your standard, you know, sort of contractor let and that side of things. So, yeah, that's really interesting. So let's talk about the marketing at the moment. So where do you, how do you attract your guests? Where do you list? And is there any tips that you've got to share on how you get more. More guests in general, either either direct or otherwise?

Yeah, well, okay, so the portfolio that I manage, most of the properties follow a very similar kind of life cycle, which is that before they've been taken on, they've really, either they've just been used by the owner and their family, close friends, whatever, and then they've been empty for long periods of time, and then the owner will probably think, oh, well, maybe we should get some other people into the property. So they might have dipped their kind of toes into Airbnb. And this normally causes kind of two problems. The first is that it normally causes a huge headache for the owner in the administration and the running of the property on Airbnb. The potential for having people that stay and break things and host parties and ruin their properties. But the third one that a lot of people don't realize is the dependence that that property might quickly have on Airbnb. You know, a lot of the places that we had that I took on that were on Airbnb, they were receiving upwards of 80, 90% of their bookings through that one channel. And the problem they had is that Airbnb has this, you know, 4.8 threshold for being, you know, suitable for the beyond the platform. And if they were falling below those standards, then that's it. Their only kind of stream of bookings is gone. So straight away, a big kind of thing that we had was in diversifying the channels that all of the properties are on. And so this obviously meant getting on board with the big three, Airbnb, booking.com and VRBO for all of the platforms that we're on. And now the focus is moving to driving traffic direct to our websites that we have. From a marketing standpoint, luxury properties are better placed than any property, any other type of property, just because the visuals are so easy to communicate to people. You know, the all of the properties that we have have normally got something absolutely amazing and eye catching about them that is so easy to push out to people. The amount of photos that we have on our listing that are not done by professional photographers, but instead are just a kind of quick little snap that our housekeeper or a guest has shared with us or that I've taken when I've visited the property is unbelievable. Most luxury properties speak for themselves in terms of how good they look and how easily they can be marketed. So the challenge now is to move from that sole Airbnb traffic to multi channel traffic, which is kind of where a lot of them are at at the moment. And the next stage is really establishing their own kind of direct traffic, which is where our nice booster Li website comes in as well, because it's, it's really great for that.

Thank you for the mention. Yeah, definitely. And I've gone out and checked obviously the website and seen these amazing properties and like you say, those snaps from guests especially, they'll probably be sharing them on their socials, will their network, judging by, you know, the fact they've booked the place is probably a similar avatar who may book your place as well. So like you say, it's just such a good way of marketing is just with the property visuals for, for those places.

If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you. And booking a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to boostly.co.uk call and booking an appointment with one of our sales team.

If you could either give somebody who Advice. Who wants to get into the luxury market? What would you say to them? What advice would you have around getting started? Or what advice would you have if you could go back and say to yourself, you know, when you're getting started?

Okay, well, I think the first thing would be really kind of just to not be scared of approaching the luxury property market. It's very easy for people to think that property owners who own luxury property portfolios are going to be super scary to deal with or they're going to have really high demand that you might not be unable, you might be unable to fulfill for looking after these places. But these people that own luxury property portfolios, they need our help almost more than other people because their, their portfolios are so huge, they can be so time consuming for them and they can have so many direct running costs that are costing them a lot of money that they really need someone to take the helm with and run things and get the properties paying for themselves. So really, the number one tip would to be not scared in, in talking to property managers. They are very, very normal people. In fact, from my experience, they're always very successful people. And that means that they're very organized, very practical, full of really good, quick tips on things that you might be struggling to kind of get around. They're always very good sources of advice. So don't be scared and throw yourself in there and you'll be amazed at some of the places that become available.

Amazing. Amazing. And what does the future for the Richmond property group look like?

It's a good question. I mean, there are two main things that we deliver on for the properties that we look after. The first one is that the owners need to have continued improvement and great experiences when they are staying at the properties. And this is something that a lot of property managers can forget. And it's not just for luxury properties. It's for any property that you own. You need to be thinking of your owner first and foremost so that when they look at their property or when they stay at their property, they can always see, wow, this place is better than ever. There's loads of cool new stuff and it's delivering financially for them in terms of, you know, giving them a great return on their own investments and their own properties. So we are always striving to refine the guest experience for the property owners. And I know that's not the answer that you probably get most on the show. You probably get people who are saying, you know, we're going to get loads more properties and loads more places and Build and grow. But really at the core of what we do, we have to make sure that there is 100% success in delivering incredible experiences for the owner along with incredible financial results for the owner. So it's all the little things really we are going to be refining in 2023, the guest experience, whether that is putting in some new experiences in the properties like Stargazer domes where we've got great outside areas, or new hot tubs and saunas so that they in different locations. It's all about kind of adding new experiences to the properties that we've got.

It sounds really exciting and certainly now I'm thinking I want to go, you know, this, these stargazing saunas that is, that's speaking to many people who are listening in on this, which is really cool. Gotta ask, do you ever get to test out any of these properties or stay there yourself when you're having to manage them?

Yeah, definitely. It's what it. So that is one of the big bonuses of, of what I do. Me and my wife, we love to go on little getaways to the properties. It is the most invaluable time that you will spend at the property is being there yourself and actually kind of, you know, going through the drawers and working out what's missing and whether or not you need to replace a plate here and there and stuff. Like it's the fine detail and it's really hard to actually relax when you go to these places because your mind is always thinking of what can be improved. But definitely staying at these properties is, is an amazing benefit of, of what we do and it's one of the funnest things that we do.

That's cool. And yeah, definitely it's one of those things where it is kind of you're there thinking about the job, but hopefully, you know, especially, you know, your partner can, can relax and enjoy the actual, you know, and live like the guest for a little while, which is cool. So yeah. Yeah. So as we reach towards the end of these podcasts, we love to just ask a couple of just fun sort of quick fire questions. Can be, you know, business related. It doesn't have to be, but if you could have a dinner with anybody dead or alive, famous dead or alive, who would you pick and why?

Oh, that's a tough question. Liam. Oh, anybody?

Anybody at all?

Okay, well to keep it on topic, it would have to be somebody who has like a, like an incredible portfolio like that you could do something with. So I'm gonna go for the OG property owner, her Majesty the Queen. I reckon, you know, I reckon if you could sit down with her and really deep dive into her property portfolio, it would be pretty interesting. One of the most interesting ones that I ever went out to see was this 25 million pound estate that bordered with the Balmoral estate up in Aberdeenshire and it consisted of like 35 individual cottages and both these. And it was absolutely incredible. It was out this world if the perch we bid for that one and didn't win it. But if we had done then I probably would have ended up chatting to the Queen at some point. But unfortunately it'll just have to be a dream answer now.

Well, still that's cool. And that's an exciting place to look around in itself, which is cool. So for yourself, where would you love to or where is on the list to jet off to? Where are your top travel destinations? Both where you've been but also where you'd also like to go next? Good question.

Well, so I'm a little bit inhibited at the moment of where I can travel. I've actually got a first kid on the way due in April.

Congratulations.

So if my travel plans are kind of a little bit here and there, but yeah, exactly. I have to see where we can go. I would love to do a really big trip around Australia. I've never done that part of the world before and I find it really weird that you can go all the way around the world to Australia and then it's very, very similar to the uk. Like I don't really understand that. So I have to go there firsthand and see what it's like myself.

That's cool. That's cool. So if there's any hosts from Australia listening with child friendly places, you know, drop Julian a line. So yeah, as we reach the end, we love asking this question and this question always we finish with because we love to find out your thoughts on it, which is, is there a mantra or a motto that you live by or one that you really believe in?

Okay, well, I guess it would be that if you want an easy recipe for success, then why not try working in the industry that makes the most money with the people that have the most money. So, you know, taking the industries that have the most money, it's probably finance, but property is definitely in there as well. And if you can work with the people that have the most resources, then I think that's a really good recipe to success.

That's really cool. I like that. I like that a lot. So Julian, thank you so much for sharing your story and telling us about your business. I feel like I've learned a lot about the luxury property. I'm also excited by it as well. So if there's people listening to this and they want to get in touch with yourself or go and check out your properties, what's the best way to do so?

Yeah, cool. Well, that is we've got a nice new website with Boostly. It is our group dot properties. So that's just the letter R and then group dot properties. You'll see all of the properties that we have on there and you can book direct on there and go through the contacts section and you can get in touch with me directly as well.

Awesome. Thank you so much. So that kind of brings us to the end. Is there any last closing comments or anything I missed question wise along the way?

I don't think so, Liam. I just think that I want to tell people not to be scared of approaching luxury property. So throw yourself in there and you'll be amazed at what can come out of it.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Julian. And thank you too. If you're listening to this episode on the Booster podcast, we know there's a lot of places you could put your attention and we really thank you for spending it with Boostly. If you haven't done so already, go and check us out on Facebook at the hospitality community. And that's a group, a free group where you can come and join in the conversation about hospitality. Definitely go and check out Julian's website. We will add that to the show notes as well. And yeah, any, any questions or anything like that, feel free to get in touch with Bruce Lee as well. So thank you very much everybody. That's buy from me and let's buy from Julian. See you on the next.

Bye Bye.