All Forum Posts by: Garrett Kroll

If anyone’s curious, you can replicate EmailCollect’s entire service for free. Just need the ability to edit your direct site.

1. Create a page with a guest info form

2. Link the form to a new page that displays the WiFi info

3. Create a QR for page 1 

It’s a really good question @Gabe Capoferri. 

We want to give owners some flexibility and a good experience working with us, but also, contracts are the assets in this business model i.e. if you don’t have some teeth in the language, if/when you try and sell your company later it won’t be worth much.

The 60-90 notice period seems to be a good balance.

@Matthew Masoud can you share how you’ve been able to build up your direct bookings so successfully? 

I recommend letting data guide the decision here. 
E.g. It’s clear when we look at our Pricelabs market report that the average booking window is 6+ months out, so we have a 12 month booking window.

I wouldn’t over think it.

I think this industry is ripe for disruption. For decades the primary services (operations, marketing, customer service, etc) have been primarily focused on, or positioned towards, owners. Which makes sense because it's their asset and they're signing the contract. 

However, as the industry becomes more competitive and more tech-savvy and experience-focused travelers begin to make up the bulk of guest reservations, I'm betting we see some transition from "property managers" to "hospitality brands". The services might be the same, but the positioning and primary audience would be entirely different. Owners might pay to work with these boutique companies not just for their basic PM services, but for the audience and revenue they can consistently bring in a competitive environment due to the brand they've created.

This is the road my company is headed down. Some of it's still unknown and aspirational, but I do think there will be opportunity ahead.

@Kristi Miller getting started wasn’t difficult because our cleaners had existing clients for private residential cleans. That’s the best part about finding those folks.

@Kristi Miller we were in a similar position as you- small mountain town, not great cleaning options, lack of tech etc.

When we started our PM company we made the commitment to pay the highest 1099 cleaning wages in our area. We made a bet: be okay with no (or negative) margins on cleaning and let high quality reviews pay dividends years later.

It's paying off. We now have an excellent crew, top notch reviews, and frequent inquiries to join our team. Our strategy was finding independent residential cleaners and training them on STR processes.

From what I’ve observed the economics of small town cleaning businesses aren’t great. In fact, most of our cleaning headaches in the early days came from hiring b2b cleaning businesses who paid their subs really low wages to make their own margins. That’s not a recipe for quality.

I’d love to better understand what your process looks like for this. I’m just starting to standardize this same process with all the same tools. 

While not arbitrage, the fractional STR ownership model isn't penciling out either:
https://www.here.co/

@William Salas props for sharing your story. We learn the most after making mistakes, and this community is all about learning. We often just hear the success stories…

Glad it was cathartic for you. Onward!