The Easiest Way to Connect with Corporate Clients

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, and indeed the training and of course, the confidence so you can go out there to get more direct bookings. My name is Liam Carolan. I'm Mark Simpson's co host and today we are going behind the host, we've got Vivian Yip on and she is a interesting host who is trying out a really cool new feature for the websites, but also who's got a great backstory to share as well. So welcome along. Vivian. Thank you for being here.

Thanks, Liam. I'm very excited to be here with Boostly podcast.

If you wanted to give yourself an introduction where your business is in the world and what sort of business model that you run.

Sure. I live in Austin, Texas and I have been focused in the midterm rental space now since 2020, and we are starting something very new and exciting here along with Boostly as our tech support. And we're starting a corporate rentals website where we can offer, you know, connect people that offer midterm stays like super hosts on Airbnb, and connect them with insurance contracts, relocation specialists, and just offering this really cool membership program to come on board and, you know, do do the midterm stays.

How did you get into hospitality in the first place? How did all this come about?

Well, this goes back to when I was 17 years old and I'm 43 now, but I got a job at a hotel when I was living in Hong Kong and that was my first taste of hospitality. And ever Since I was 17, I've just loved hospitality. But over time, you know, the idea of trying to buy a hotel just baffled me. Like, how do you even come up with the money for that? So. So, you know, along comes Airbnb, and I think the model is great for someone that is interested in both real estate and hospitality. So I bought my first property in the northern suburbs of Austin back in 2019. It was a distressed property. Put my magic on it and flipped it into this gorgeous Airbnb and we did really great with it. Loved hospitality. Still, unfortunately, the pandemic hit and put my business to a halt. And that's when I changed into the midterm model and learned that it's actually a thing.

Was there anything or any aspects of your properties that that had to change to suit the more people who weren't coming for leisure? But I guess what I'm asking is, did the amenities. Were the amenities different? The needs for the mid stay instead of the Short term stay.

Luckily for me, because I was. I already considered myself a professional short term rental host. I put a lot of thoughtfulness in the property already and I didn't have a lot of gimmicks like pool tables or anything like that. So I didn't really have to change much. But if I had to redo it again, I think I would definitely have put better beds in it. I probably would not have spent money on a disco ball. I had a disco ball hanging from the ceiling just, you know, as a fun, cute amenity. And I think I would have allowed pets.

Why the pets have interest just to dive into that.

Well, you know, a lot of the people that come into midterm stays are usually impacted by insurance or they have. They're relocating as a family. And, you know, when you come to a place like Austin, almost everybody has an animal, right? Either a cat or a dog. And I think it's a super dog friendly place. So I would say, you know, a lot of my bookings or a lot of the families that come do come with their. Their fur friends, their fur family.

What has been the biggest success so far in the business?

Ooh, the biggest. There's probably a few. The first wow moment was selling my Round Rock short term rental. I quit my job because I lost all my hair from stress. So I needed to sell that property so that I had something to fall back on. And what surprised me was that I reinvested that money. Funny enough, I sold it, but then I ended up reinvesting it because I had a chance to. I reinvested all that money into a duplex. And it was in the city of Austin, which is, you know, obviously the values are higher, but it was again, a distressed property that I was able to renovate and make it nice and pretty again. And what really surprised me about that was I love small multifamily because even if one side's not rented, the other side is still paying for it. And in a midterm model, that can be very lucrative. So that was definitely a good surprise for me.

What was the biggest challenge along the way so far?

Oh, we think the biggest challenge really just try to navigate around the market saturation here in Austin. There's a lot of Airbnb listings here, so you've really have to find a way to differentiate yourself in this business, which now we have six midterm rentals, and I've developed a brand to help differentiate our properties from the rest of them out there. You know, with the midterm stay, our Amenities are a bit different than short term rentals. Some people in the short term rental space might not really care about the kind of beds they offer and they might buy a, a $300 one of those roll up beds that ship from Amazon. Whereas we really focus on nice beds. You know, we have 20 $400 mattresses in our, in our units. Right. So that, that sleep and luxury sleep experience is important to our guests. So I want to differentiate that with a brand. So that's, you know, the, you can see behind me, Hestia is the Greek goddess of hospitality. So you'll see those on our listings that, you know, when you see that, you can recognize that that is a midterm brand.

How do you find the locations that work for, for short term rentals or for midterm rentals?

So I think that midterm rentals work really well in urban markets, just like in real estate. If you're a real estate investor, the, for me, the, the, the golden rule of location, location, location still stands. I know it's extremely cliche, but when you're close to those major highways, you're close to major employers, you're close to good schools and you're close to, you know, hospitals, those four key factors can really help you in becoming a successful midterm rental. Because that's why people stay in midterm rentals. They, they work at hospitals or they work at big companies and they're relocating. You know, it's just that, that rules just really worked out for us.

How has having that good brand and niching down helped your business? And what advice would you want to give them?

Hmm, I think just, you know, if you have more than one property, try to deliver a consistent stay, A consistent stay that resonates with what your values are and that will help you in developing what your brand is about. So for me, I really like modern, sort of mid century modern looks. I love live plants, really big beautiful couches, luxury beds, you know, things like that. So that's what, that's what my brand is about. So if you have a brand that's really into maybe the big maximalism kind of properties with lots of art and lots of throw blankets, you know, then develop a brand around that. And that way when they see your name and your brand and that listing, they know that's exactly what they're going to get. So definitely pick something that's, you know, close to you, that you're passionate about.

What would you say is the sort of key pieces of tech you use? Whether you name One or two. And then we'll deep dive into, into the, the website as well, which I'm.

Eager to do well with six of my own properties and managing several others. The saving grace for me is having a PMS system. And you know, I looked at four major PMS players when I was 20 trying to move off, you know, the Airbnb platform, and I was frustrated that I was managing communications from Airbnb and VRBO and having to log into different accounts and whatnot. A PMS system was definitely something that really, you know, kept my sanity. So I ended up choosing ownerres. And ownerres has been great for me because in the midterm rental space, you want to make sure that you are covered from a legal standpoint. And one of the great things about owner res is that when they, when the guest books either on Verbo or on Airbnb or even direct, they are led down a valley of legal agreements, right? There's one legal agreement that they have to sign and that's a legal agreement between the guest and my property and me. In addition, they upload their ID as part of the access as part of the the agreement. That way, you know, even though the booking came from Airbnb, they're still having to do those things. And I own a rental agreement and I can now verify the ID myself to make sure that that matches the rental agreement. So that's been a really important part. When you go into midterm stays, you want to make sure you're very careful with who you're booking to. You want to, you know, ensure that the person that's staying in your property is actually representing the ID representative of the ID that you get because you don't want to get into squatting issues or tenant tenant eviction problems.

Thank you so much, Vivian, for, for joining us today. And thank you too. If you're listening in on the Boostly podcast or watching on the YouTube channel, I know there's a lot of places you can put your attention and I really appreciate you spending that attention with Boostly. I hope you've picked up some great tips today. I certainly have the thoughts around Flexi stays and middle midterm stays is so important. Finding a right PMS which will allow you to take contract from a guest, you know, when you need it done. And also this new tool, this new scraper tool on the Boostly websites, which is amazing. I'm excited to see where this goes. The fact that you can then charge subscriptions all adds splits these revenue streams as a host and hospitality business owner where you can get extra revenue coming in and become the key person of influence in your market, which is cool. So, Vivian, that's, that's it for me. Is there any closing comments, anything I missed or any last year's?

Not really. But, you know, just bring me support and follow us on, on Instagram and hopefully if you come and visit Austin, you can come and be my guest.

Awesome. I'm going to give you a follow as soon as we finish this episode. And yeah, I'll look forward to seeing some of the properties on there. Thanks again for today, Vivian and Liam.

All right. Bye. Bye.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.