Why Airbnb Guests Are Booking Hotels Instead (And How to Win Them Back)

If you've got some calendar gaps with your short-term rental, well, you're not going to want to miss today's interview. We have Alex on. He's the co-founder of Whimstay. They are a new online travel agency like Airbnb or VBO, but they're different. They help you fill stays within the last month, and they are making a massive impact on the industry for a good reason. They only charge 6%. They've grown hundreds of thousands of listings. They have incredibly easy sign up process. and they also go a long

way with support making sure that you don't get guests that you don't want staying in your property. I know that's a concern for discounted last minute stays. So stay tuned. We're going to jump into Whimsay today with their co-founder Alex Aliota. Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. Happy you're here again today. My guest is Alex Alioto, co-founder of Whim. It's the lastminute vacation rental marketplace. Alex and his co-founder Ben built Whimsay to fill the nights that would otherwise sit empty. Today, Alex runs Supply

Side Growth, so he talks with property managers and hosts every single day. He spent 15 years in tech, including building sales teams at Yelp. And before that, he was a stage actor in New York for over a decade. San Francisco, born and bred. Alex, welcome to the show. Thank you, Tim. So happy to be here. Go Niners. Well, hey, I'm I'm excited to chat with you today and learn more about Wednesday for our team's of course familiar with it because we are in fact listed on

Wednesday, but for those of our audience that might not be, give us the the elevator pitch on Wednesday. Yeah, so we're we're an OTAA. Uh I know OTAA is sometimes a bad word uh around these parts with with hosts and property managers. I hope to dispel dispel that just a little bit, but we are an OTAA. We have a very specific focus. That focus is expiring inventory, right? So helping property managers and hosts fill unsold gap nights last minute. We're not reinventing the wheel, right? This

is a expiring inventory model is one that exists in almost every business vertical. Hotels, grocery stores, Nordstrom Rack, I mean you can kind of go on and on, right? Um and it was a gap within a growing industry which is the reason that that Ben and I decided to to start this. So we thought um we thought host should be able to have an option. He's actually, as a matter of fact, not that you asked, but the reason this whole thing started was Ben, my co-founder,

very successful in tech for a number of years, bought a couple of homes in uh Maui and in Truckucky, California, recognized pretty immediately that if he had any type of expiring inventory, his only option was to throw a discount and put it on Airbnb. If you throw a discount and put it on Airbnb, is your strategy kind of hope, right? You're sort of hoping somebody sees your last minute deal. You're just hoping because somebody is searching for Airbnb. Whereas if you have an expiring inventory uh

department, let's say of your distribution strategy, one that just focuses on that, you can allow you you to have a more premium price on Airbnb and Verbbo and then let us take care of anything that's last minute. And that was ultimately the idea because that did not exist within the the the short-term rental ecosystem. He decided to build it. So that's where we are. Yeah. Awesome. Well, you mentioned several things that I want to dig into. for example, premium prices on other OTAAS. But before we

do that, just give us a little bit on the scale of Whim State today. How many properties are you guys listing? And yeah, so we've got about 4 to 500,000 in the US right now and then about 150,000 in Europe. We have not decided to hit Europe very hard yet. Right now, we're very much focusing on US, Canada, and Mexico. When I say 500,000, what that ultimately means is or 400,000 I have to check, but that is 400,000 properties that fit our value proposition, right? So,

oftentimes you'll get somebody that will come in and they'll want to be on Wednesday and that's amazing, but uh it has to make sure that that you know you you have the last minute discount that's going to be applicable. And so that's how we sort of judge what what our inventory looks like. So, our growth has been really really great. Um awesome growth on the uh on the booking side as well. So, we're about uh 91% year-over-year growth, which we're really excited about on the booking

side. So, yeah, so we're we're scaling, you know, we're up to about 93 uh employees now, which is which is also really exciting. Um we have a fabulous team. So, that's kind of where we are. We're we're pretty And how long ago did you guys Yeah, I think a lot of things in this industry just go challenging. Starting a business is hard. What? Yeah. How long ago did you guys get started? How long is So we are we we really started right around uh COVID we

went to market about a year and a half a year into that. Um which actually in a weird way was was beneficial to us. We were too small to fail obviously during that time when I think a lot of people were getting hit hard. We were too small to fail and I think that it was at a time too when people were starving for bookings because Airbnb was pulling things left, right and center without even telling people and things were shut down. And so I think

uh to grow the supply side it was the timing of it was it could have been worse I guess I could say it that way right where it was like hey we're a new channel we're doing this come aboard and let's see what happens and so but I would say we've been to market about 5 years now really truly to market about 5 years that's amazing I mean hundreds of thousands of listings that's uh that's no small feat and I know there's a lot of business

challenges behind that but obviously you guys have found a good place in the market right to to be able to grow that quickly tell us a little bit about like the structure someone joins Whimsay. Why are people joining Whimsay so quickly? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I I think it's it's a matter of choice, right? It it's a matter of how do you uh what strategy do you want to use with your distribution, right? And so for us, we we feel very confident that

it's like, hey, look, if you want to use a really nice way to think about kind of a a distribution matrix, if if it I were to call it that would be like utilize Airbnb utilize Verbbo for 100 or booking for 180 to 90 days out, utilize Airbnb for 90 to 30 days out, utilize Whimstee for 29 days and under, right? And if you can kind of have if you believe in that sort of revenue is revenue ultimately at the end of the day. And if

you believe that, hey, putting a discount on to make something to to I think to get inventory off of the shelves, right? Some money is better than no money. If you believe in that, if you believe that it's not about $1,000 versus $800, it's about $800 versus 0, right? So, if you believe that that's an intricral part of your distribution strategy and of your revenue strategy, then come aboard because we'd love to have you, you know? And I think that's sort of has to be the

attitude. It's I cozied into this idea of OTAAS being a little bit of a bad word within the industry right now. And I understand that because I think that some of the bigger OTAAS are doing things that are they're handcuffing folks to a certain extent, right? Like I don't think I'm controversial if I'm saying uh you know what, we're going to get we're going to make commission 15.5% because we can and there's not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it. And so

when you do have that from from one of the biggest players in the industry, then I think that it can tend to uh I think put a bad taste in people's mouth for ultimately what our job is. What's our job? What's an OTAA's job? An OTAA's job is one one thing. Traveler acquisition full stop. That's it. Right? If we can acquire you guys a traveler, then we can allow you to then work your magic and make that traveler come back direct next time. That should ultimately

be what an OTAA is about. Our commission is 6%. So, when we talk about a 6% commission, what we're saying is that's a that's a 6% traveler acquisition fee. Now, take that traveler and go make it your own. I think that's an important way to sort of think about how an OTAA functions. So, and I think we function in a way too where we think that we're highly beneficial because we're able to do something that nobody else is doing and we're able to put money in

your pocket where maybe money was was not going to be in your pocket, right? Heads and beds ultimately at the end of the day. So, yeah. Uh, okay. Couple couple thoughts here, questions for you. So, you know, we've been in the industry for a long time, my team and I as well, and and one of the industry trends has been a shrinking booking window, right? You know, people are booking more and more last minute. And of course, it it depends on the type of property. If

you have a nice big luxury mansion, people are going to book that thing, you know, months or years ahead of time. But if you have a a little urban city apartment, maybe the booking window used to be a couple weeks and now it's it's shrunk to like five days. What would you say to to those out there that are in that shorter booking window already? I I mean, are we now just like adding additional discounts on top? Uh yeah, I mean I I think so. If

you look at the average booking window across the industry right now, it is shrinking, right? But the average booking window is about 47 days. Our average booking day is about 12 days. I understand like if the booking window is shrinking, why would I want to add an additional discount or have an additional then I would say that's not a terrible question. I think what is the reason why these booking windows are shrinking. We're starting to see a lot of that. A lot of the reason why

a lot of it is this next generation of traveler, what we call the nextG traveler, Gen Z, Gen Y, millennial traveler, kind of a postcoid traveler. What they tend to do really simply is a couple of things. They take about 8 to nine micro vacations a year. So that's sort of like one week long vacation a year that it's like, hey, let's take our family to Hawaii for 10 days once a year and then we kind of go back to work. That's not kind of how

they roll. Mhm. I think with the advent of of hybrid work and a lot of these things, they can work from home, just not their home. And I think they're choosing to do that a lot. So that 8 to n micro trips a year, lead times tend to be shorter, which has done a lot of that. And they tend to look for value, right? So they will tend to make their buying decision based on the value itself. So they're not like, "Hey, I'm in San Francisco

and I want to go to Tahoe for a week next week. What can I find?" A lot of times they're saying what is in my area that I can go to that I think is going to be cost effective. And also the other one that's really really interesting that's happening and this is our data is showing it also is 65% of our bookings are assigned a Wednesday check-in. So what does that mean? It means that kind of that sort of off peak I would call it

sort of off- peak days. That's another one that they tend to want to go to. So yeah that the landscape is shifting. The question that we have for this industry is are we able to capture that traveler? Because if we can capture that traveler, there's no reason to say we as an industry can't surpass hotels is sort of the ubiquitous form of lodging in all of travel itself. So how we do that? We do it by giving options. We do it by value. And are we

getting in front of them as they're searching? you know, we look at a lot of the data and one of the things is, you know, they don't necessarily say, "I'm just going to go to Airbnb." They know that we that they can look around a little bit. So, I think it's about staying competitive within that, staying competitive within a window and staying competitive in front of these very, very specific travelers to make sure that you're getting as much volume as you possibly can because I think

if we can get that, it's a big tailwind for the industry. Really big. Well, hey, I I agree with you. like I I would much rather have reservations than no reservations, you know, and so our strategyy's always been to to be on the places where it makes sense for us to be. And um those OTAAS uh have changed a lot of policies over, you know, over the past. I just saw BRBO now sort of following suit with Airbnb, right? You know, start starting low and and

moving up afterwards. What is your guys's position at Wimstay? I mean, after you have hundreds of thousands of listings and they're getting bookings, which is what what everyone wants. Like, what's what's to keep you guys from following suit, you know, and just raising your rates afterwards? The fact is we don't really need to. We've got a moat, right? And a lot of our moat is going to be a couple of things. Number one, customer service. So, that's a big moat for us. That means on the

host and on the traveler side being able to have individual sort of attention from an account manager having and then having individual attention and a human being to talk to for travelers. We can maintain this. We ask for a discount. We know that our ABVs are going to be lower anyway. We're fine because it's going to be about volume for us. So we are at 6% commission. We have absolutely no plans of changing it. we'd have no desire to change it and we feel like we're

we're right where we need to be and it gives us a competitive edge and it allows us to do this kind of thing. So, and we're not selling anytime soon. We love what we're doing. We think we've got a really good team and uh and and the math the math is mathing, right? There's no reason for us to do anything other than what you're doing. Yeah. No, it's it's amazing amazing growth. Um part of that is coming from getting results, right? So yeah, you guys are

are putting the right properties in front of the right guests and and they're they're getting booked. Can you tell us a little bit about how how you guys do that? I mean, today in a world where like people can create websites really easily, like what is Whimday doing to actually get in front of the guests that, you know, there's got to be a lot behind that. It's such a different time, right? I mean, I think that you look at traditional even traditional social media advertising, right?

which kind of used to be like you have to be on social media and you have even that is now so diluted. It's really hard I think to to make ground, right? We've got Instagram presence, we've got Tik Tok presence, but really ultimately for us it's we've just got to really really stand up an awesome marketing team that's able to to get in front of people in the right place. There's really ways that you can target it. SEO and GEO. Um we're finding now GEO specifically,

right? having really solid SEO so that when people are searching in AI and whether it's a chatbot or chat GPT or or quad or whatever, what's our presence there? Google Gemini, what's our presence there? And then having allies, you can call them influencers, you can call them whatever, but people that really use and enjoy our product and having them talk about it, that's a really kind of a one-on-one experience that we're starting to find is such a needle mover. You know, ultimately this is about pounding

the table on the importance of giving people options now. Allowing hosts options and allowing allowing traveler options, getting that word out there, that is very stimulating for people, I think, right now. And so big social media presence, you have to have it, but it's still it's not what it used to be. And so you've got to start to find different ways in order to do it. And and AI's I it's like, you know, it's got this general term called AI. It's almost like in 1993 using

the general term internet, right? It's that kind of a it's going to be that big of a deal and it's also sort of that general of a term. But I think being able to utilize that, we've got an incredible team that focuses just on that stuff and we see, you know, where did you find us? A lot of Google search and there's a lot of chat GPT. It's like that SEO thing which kind of died down a little bit is now starting to rise back up

again because of AI. So pretty interesting. Yeah. Well, you guys can do an incredible job online getting properties out there, but there's still a big difference between what a good listing looks like and what a bad one is. So, maybe, you know, you guys created the platform, but you have some properties that outperform the others. What What would you say those better listings are doing that the the not so good ones aren't? This is such a great question and the reason why is because listing optimization

sounds kind of boring and it's unbelievable how big of a difference it makes to have a good title, right? To not have a toilet as your first photograph. Ensuring the descriptions are wellplaced and well read. Like optimization is so so so important. So that's a really big part of it on whimsday. And so very much take, you know, pay attention to that. If you have a title, don't have like a random amperand or or pound sign in there, which we see all the time, right? Clean

all of that stuff up. It makes a massive difference. Obviously, reviews make a big difference. There's a part of you that can control that. There's a part of you that can't. If you got a crazy person, there's not a lot one can do about that. The good tends to outweigh the bad if generally your hospitality is up. I would say that right now hospitality has never been more important. As things get quicker, more technological, all of these things, the human piece to this industry is becoming

more and more important, we're finding. And that's by the way how you get more direct bookings because I think people have so many different options now, right? That if you are standing standing out above and beyond that right there, it's just an incredible way to create a sticky a sticky client and and you want a sticky client. So, I think that's really important. The last thing is is that we tend to show not tell. So, if you go to Whimstead, you'll notice we've got a little

portal. We call it POW. It's a price optimization window. It shows an Airbnb, whatever your price is on Airbnb, whatever it is on Verbbo, and whatever it is on on Whimst. Um, and it shows that with the link. So, we're telling you, hey, look, like you can go to that place if if you want to go. But what it does do is it's a high conversion driver. So, it's about an 86% increase in conversion if you are 8 to 10% lower than Airbnb within that last

minute window on that portal. It's a huge, huge conversion driver. So, have an optimized listing. Do everything that you possibly can on the review side. If you've got somebody who's who's not nice, respond to them and respond to them in a professional manner because people tend to read that stuff more than you think. I years at Yelp told me that, right? Like, you've got a bad review, respond to it because it actually makes a difference. Don't be afraid to have the correct kind of pricing because

it's, again, I said this before, it's not $1,000 versus $800, it's $800 versus zero. So I think those things are what really are going to start to drive and start to fill gaps, start to fill last minute weekends, start to fill last minute cancellations. You do that three, four, five times a month, it starts to add up big time. Big time. Yeah, for sure. All important things. Uh I think so. You know, listing descriptions, reviews, um photos, you know, huge. It's huge. I think there's a

story too about what was the turning point for Airbnb around 2010 I think and the initially I think the way that Airbnb did it was that and I could be wrong but I do know that they they hacked into Craigslist God bless them and the way that they got their first 100,000 listings and this is probably 2008 or so they went into they they sort of I don't know if they hacked Craigslist or what it was but they went in and they found all these all

the Craigslist listings and then they shot him an email and said, "Hey, you want to do something a little bit better, try this. And that was kind of how they started to create their inventory. But I but they were pulling stuff that went straight off of Craigslist. So the photos were were not high-res and a little bit blurry. And so Mr. Chesky, Brian Chesy, took it upon himself. He flew to New York, I think, with a really beautiful photograph and a professional photographer and he went

from apartment to apartment in New York and took professional photographs and that is when everything lifted, right? So that could be considered the turning point at Airbnb. The whole point being photos are important, right? So do the best that you can to make sure that your photos look slick, high-res. Don't have a toilet. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I can't tell you how often toilet is number one. And that is a a big- time balance. Cool. See you later. So really important. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

You know, it's it's interesting. You get you have access to a lot of data on the back end. So, you know, and your team does. I I'm always interested to hear a little bit more about it, you know, like how important good photos are, like you know, if you're, you know, the the data behind the numbers, too. If if you have very good properties in a market, but the average occupancy is 20%, like, you know, only 20% are getting booked, you know, what what leads those

remaining ones to get booked. Does it really just come down to price? It's so many factors, right? It's price, it's market. But I think one of the things that we've been leaning into heavily is is shoulder season. And I think this comes back to this idea of like work from home, not yours, just not yours. Lake Tahoe, I'm going to use Lake Tahoe as an example. They look at April as their shoulder season. Well, if you've ever been to Lake Tahoe in April, it's gorgeous. It's

a little bit crisp. It's kind of coming out of winter, coming into that springtime. It's uh it's starting to bloom. It's starting to look really beautiful, but no one goes there. It's a ghost town. So, if we can find ways to drive people to enjoy places that would be considered a shoulder season, I think that would be a really big boon for all of us. So, how does somebody raise occupancy? I think market's so big. I think price is is somewhat big, but you know, what

is your presence look like? And market's big. I mean, I I don't know what else to say about it. Park City in in in certain parts of the month is is is mud season, right? Do people want to go there for that? I don't know. It's still pretty, still gorgeous. So, it's a it's a really great question. I think there's just multiple multiple factors to it. So, yeah. Yeah. Lots of variables. There's so many variables. Yeah. It's an interesting industry, man. And it's and it's one

I think that is we're still very much growing. Very much growing. There's a lot I think to dig our our teeth into and to figure out, you know, and there's so many great data points. I don't know if you use AirDNA, but there's just, you know, a lot of really really sort of awesome options to to be able to kind of dig your teeth into and see where can you adjust here and where can you adjust there because data tells a story. There's no question. All

comes down to the numbers. It really does. Yeah, data tells us what to do. And I'm and I'm a sales guy and I' and I'm a right brain. I think right brain's the creative side. I look at numbers and they tend to make me panic just a little bit. But uh but when you get them laid out, right, we have an incredible operations team who who really who really dumbs it down for old Alex and uh and it's beautiful, right? It's like it but once you

start to kind of dig into it and you see the story it tells, it really does tell a story and we've been able to make different adjustments. It's a high quality way to run your business. I will say that. Well, let's let's switch gears a little bit, Alex. I think a lot of people when they think about discounting prices, they get worried about not great guests, you know, sort of attracting like, you know, last minute parties. Someone, you know, calculates out a nice five- bedroomedroom home

and they're like, "Hey, we've got eight people staying here that only costs us, you know, x amount of dollars a night. Let's let's go there and have a good time." You talk with a lot of property managers, a lot of owners, investors, I imagine. Um, can you tell us a little bit more about like what that guest profile looks like with Wimay and and how you guys might help to Well, I don't I don't know if you have any concerns or this is a great Yeah,

it is a great question and it's really valid. I think that there was a stigma around the last minute traveler for a long time. A lot of it was around parties and things like that. As I mentioned earlier and you brought it up, Tim, that that the booking window has gone from 90 days on average, right? That was pre-COVID to about 47 days now. And so I think that the last minute traveler is a little bit more of the standard than it is sort of the

anomaly, but massively important that you that you understand your traveler base and then you understand how to do it. Here's what we do, right? We've got a really stringent traveler verification process. We have to we're a lastminute channel. We have to we are merchant of record which is a big part of it, right? because fraud so so is it's just there's nothing you know a lot of people that were on booking.com for a long time when booking was was not the the merchant of record I

would talk to property managers our team would talk to property managers that says 70% of all booking.com bookings were were fraud because they were they were merchant of record so let us handle that we've got a really solid thing in place you're not even going to get touched for fraud so there's that and then for those of our audience too that might not have know that term for merchant record. So you guys handle all the payments. We handle all the payments. Correct. Yeah. So uh we

handle all the payments and we wire directly a into your bank 0 to 24 hours after check-in and we use Stripe. And so Stripe is the biggest payment processor in the world. Their credit card data is is unrivaled. Um if somebody has ever had a uh if someone's ever had a chargeback with another property manager, that gets flagged and we see that, right? And so we use a risk rating system, right? 0 to 100. 100 being high risk, zero being no risk. We really only go

0 to 25. And to give you context, Airbnb goes 0 to 50, right? Something like that. So, so we're very very protective and we ensure, right, that this is an actual traveler. We're willing to give up a booking um if we think that it's it could possibly in any way be a be a bad person. We track front and back license. We've like I told you before, one of our modes as traveler is customer service, right? It's something that we focus on. our our head of

customer service, Daniel Thorp, is is absolutely incredible. He's got an incredible team that they work so hard. So, a lot of it is about checking absolutely every booking. And when you're looking at hundreds of bookings a day, it's a lot, but you got to do it. Those are all really, really important things to us. And so, yeah, uh we've got we're it works. It works. You know, there's going to be bad travelers. That's just how travelers are, unfortunately, right? But we've got a very very low

percentage of chargebacks, really really low percentage of of cancellations. And I'll say this, the other thing too, and this is something that needs to be said is that a lot of times you'll get hosts that will cancel last minute and a host that will cancel on day of. We get that a lot. And I think that's a really important thing for us as an industry to to watch out because if we lose trust of the traveler, we're done, right? Like you can be on an airplane

and you've booked a hotel and you know, hey, when I land, I know I'm going to have a room. I know it because it's a hotel and I booked a a thing there. Yeah. We have so many instances where where there are hosts that will cancel a night the day of check-in. We can't as an industry afford to have that because if we do, people will lose trust in us and go. So, I think that's an I I it's a little bit of a PSA, a

little bit of a public service announcement, but it's something I think it's really really important for us as an industry to understand like we can't we we've got to be very very cognizant of the fact that we're still young. We're still earning trust on the traveler side. There's still plenty of people that that are going to use us and always use us because they love us. And by us, I mean the industry, but we're also there's new folks every day that are looking to say, "Hey,

do I want to go a hotel or a short-term rental?" And sometimes they do it by market. If I'm in Paris, maybe I want a short-term rental. If I'm in the Maldes, I want a hotel. So, it it's, you know, and so if we if we do then have people that are like that and we do have a short-term rental and that thing gets canceled last minute, it's really really important that we don't do those types of things and that we that we have really solid

communication. I think it's something we can ill afford as a as an industry right now. We we've got to make sure that we are ensuring trust within the traveler and if we do, we're a better option because it's better value. There's more space. I think people want to live more as people do in this sort of in this Instagram age, right? where everyone wants to show how amazing their life is, right? And how tapped in they are to to, you know, I'm in Medí, uh, Colombia

for a week and I'm not staying in a hotel. I'm staying in a neighborhood instead and I want to show the world how how tapped in I am to to Medí. I don't know why I use Medí, but you get the idea. So, it's very very important for us to be able to maintain that, I think. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And that's one of the reasons people choose hotels I mentioned because they they can trust that it's, you know, they also a lot of times

have lots and lots of units in the in the same place. I think last minute minute bookings in general just sort of are sometimes they're last minute. You know, people like they're kind of booking travel on on a whim, you know. I guess that's whim. That that would be a good name. That would be a good name, right? stay on a whim, right? Yeah. No, it's true. It's true. And and um I think people want to travel last minute and I think hosts want to get

paid out on nights that are expiring. Um and I think that's the impetus to to it. And not all hosts want to. I mean, I think I've said this a hundred times and I tell my sales team all the time, it it's it's not going to be a right fit for everybody. Make sure it's a right fit for you, right? If this is something that you're comfortable and happy and excited about doing, you should do it because it's it does raise your revenue. But if you're

not fired up about it, don't. Right. Don't. It's okay. Yeah. What would you say, Alex, outside of the cancellation side of things? Uh, like where are hosts losing potential guests to a hotel instead of them staying at their vacation rental? What What other areas do you think might be attributing to that? I think the number one thing is is trust. That's the number one thing. I mean, it's amazing how many same day cancellations that we see almost every day. So, I think that's that's one of

them, right? And sometimes it's PMS related. It's it could be a thousand different things. I'm not saying it's always a bad host. Sometimes there's a weird double booking because the PMS isn't great. But so we have to always be careful about trust. Trust. Trust is going to be so very important because people are vulnerable when they travel. If I'm going into a city that I'm not familiar with, I'm there's a vulnerability to that. There's an excitement about that. That's why it's exciting, right? Travel can be

exciting because you're leaving yourself a little bit vulnerable to a place that you're not familiar with. And so you want to be able to know you come you can come to a place and you're not going to be stuck in the middle of a place that you're not you're not familiar with. So that I think is really really really important. We have an opportunity right 80% of this industry an independent host with like one to five properties tops right most of it is one to two.

So we think of these bigger property managers right but a large large majority of our industry are independent hosts that don't even have a PMS right. So what does that mean? It means that they can really really focus on hospitality. And some of the bigger ones that we that we work with, we have incredible, you know, we have incredible property managers that we work with with 150 properties that are able to really focus and maintain on hospitality. That to me is so impressive because it's not

a hotel where your employees outnumber the the number of guests, right? maintaining and being very very diligent about hospitality is going to be is so so so important for us. Again, it's about maintaining trust and about creating stickiness. I mentioned before how direct bookings are so important. I think direct bookings actually help OTAAS and so people think how is that possible or how is that marry? The reason it marries is because there's a cascading effect. If I'm a host and let's say I I I booked

a a a guest on Wednesday and they come to to my property and I'm a host. If my intention is I am going to do everything in my power to witness this guest as a direct booking for the future, right? So, I work my magic. I I have a clean home. I'm I am attentive to their needs. Perhaps I am able to give them things on arrival that are specific to that market. If I'm in San Louis Abyspo and I come in and I've got um

you know a fourack of a really good IPA or something like that. If I'm in Seattle, I've got nice coffee. I don't know there's great coffee everywhere, but but you get the idea, right? Doing things like that that are very very specific to the market and to what you're doing and and and really and really focus on the hospitality with the intent of I'm going to bring this person back direct next time. What's going to happen is that person will come back to a short-term rental

again. And if they go to that market, they're going to use you. And if they don't go to that market, they're going to go back to an OTAA. And so everybody wins. And so I think if the mentality and the intention is every single guest that comes in, I am going to work my magic to make sure this person goes direct next time to the best of their ability. That is it. That if that simple intention lives within every single host and property manager, that will

get us over the hump. And when I say get us over the hump, that means eventually that'll make us sort of that'll that'll raise raise the the the level of people that are coming to short-term rentals over hotels because I don't think it's that absurd to say that we can surpass hotels in terms of of how people are lodging in Europe, it's damn close already. So, if every property manager host can have that intention, I think it's an absolute game changer, not only for them personally,

but for the industry as a whole. Yeah, I agree. raising the bar, you know, raising RA and raise the bar and then and and that raises visibility for PK wouldn't wouldn't have chosen a vacation rental. Great points. And it's like and and and it's the little things, right? I mean, the little details that ultimately at the end of the day, you know, it's like one bite at a time to to eat the elephant. Not to mix my metaphors, but that's the idea. And and and just

focusing on the on one guest at one time, that's the single bite. And that's incredibly powerful as you as you continue to scale that. Well, great points, Alex. Uh, as we wrap up here, just just another question. I know sometimes, uh, people when they're getting started with short-term rentals, they're like, "Ah, I'll go on Airbnb, you'll go on VBO and all the different platforms, but then they have to manage them, right? Uh, and they want to make sure they don't have double bookings and not all

PMS systems are created equally as you pointed out. So, if I if if I understand correctly, you guys work with a lot of different property management softwares already. Can can you just tell us a little bit about how someone gets started with Wednesday? Yeah. Yeah. So, there's two ways to get to get live on Wednesday. One of them is if you use a PMS that we're integrated with and we integrated with the top 30 or so PMS and channel managers. Then there's another way to do

it and that is if you don't have a PMS and if you don't have a PMS that's okay. You can connect using your Airbnb link and an NAL. So, it's really really quick. I is very very important. You talked about double bookings, right? Got to make sure that there's um IAL, but I's fabulous, right? It's it's real time. So, so there are two ways to do it. If you just go to whimsday.com on the upper right hand corner says list your list your properties. Click on

that on one of them says to use a PMS or a channel manager. You go through that takes about 2 minutes something like that. Um you just sign up, you fill out a little form uh connect through your your PMS and then uh meet about 5 minutes with your dedicated account manager and then you're done. And then if you wanted to do it if you're an independent host and you do not use a PMS, uh just go to the other side of the forker which says

I'm an independent host. I don't use a PMS and you go through there and you just provide your Airbnb link. Uh and if your Airbnb link, if you've got five properties on Airbnb, it'll it'll pull all of them and you can take however many of those you want live and you do and then you sync your your Ical for each of those. And that's it. It's pretty simple. I think we've got we opened up that independent host portal about a year and a half ago and

I think we've got something like 3,000 hosts already on it. So, less than a year ago. We think that that's that's good. It's about 10 a day, I think, if my math is correct. Yeah. Amazing. So, it's a good way to do it. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, it was a pleasure having you on. Lots of great insight. I didn't ask you any questions, Tim. I'm sorry. I feel bad. That's not how these things work, Alex. Isn't it, though? It wasn't a conversation. It was It was

an Alex monologue going back to my days, I guess. I'm sorry about that. We'll we'll have to have you back on in the future. It' be great. And I look forward to seeing you in Nashville. Yeah. Yeah. I'll see you there in a few days. Excellent. See you there in a few days. Thanks for coming on and look forward to staying in touch. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.