You are listening to the Thanks for visiting podcast. We believe hosting with Heart is at the core of every short-term rental. With Annette's background in business operation

and Sarah's extensive hospitality management and interior design experience, we have welcomed thousands of guests from over 30 countries, earning us over a million dollars and garnering us thousands of five star reviews. We love

sharing creative ways for your listing to stand out. Serve your guests and be profitable. Each episode, we will have knowledgeable guests who bring value to the short-term rental industry,

or we will share our stories of our own experiences so you can implement actual improvements to your rentals. Whether you're experienced new or nervous to start your own short-term rental, we promise you'll feel right at home. Before we dive into the content, let's hear a word from our sponsor. Welcome

back to another great episode. My name is Sarah Kara Can.

I'm Annette Grant, and together we are. Thanks for visiting.

Let's start this episode like we do each and every week, and that is featuring one of you our incredible listeners who are heading on over to sdr share.com, sharing your short-term rental so we can celebrate you here on the podcast. Annette, who we sharing This week

we are sharing at Love Adventures. Doonga come I Dega. You're right. Okay. I think that's right. It's D-A-H-L-O-N-E-G-A. Again, love adventures Langa. And it's in Georgia. I apologize if any of you own properties there or live in Georgia. We need to go. Always mess it up. We do. We need to take a love adventure. No,

wait a minute,

this. I want everybody to, yes, check out their Instagram, but I really want you to go to their website. Alvin and Julie and their dog Jovi are just so cute. I wanna read to you, this really struck me and I think we could all use some lessons here. We talk a lot about, you know, becoming professional hosts, and when you do that, you need to have a mission behind your business, behind your property. They do and their mission is right on their website. And I'm just gonna do the brief, I'm gonna make it brief here, but they are stays for couples, okay? And they agree that all couples need these three things. A daily delay, which is a 15 to 20 minute check-in a weekly withdrawal, prioritizing date night, and an annual abandon, which is a retreat out of town to refresh and recalibrate. What we love right there is their mission has the call to action for the annual abandon. So the, their ethos of what relationships need are built in. And so not only are they telling you and sharing you, sharing with you what they believe all relationships need, they're giving you the answer or the opportunity in the third one, which is the annual abandon and. If that is not thought promo provoking as you're reading their website, it is now. Right. And, and now you're thinking, you're, you're thinking past the stay. You're thinking about your relationship. You're thinking about the last time you had an annual abandon. So that is just psychologically Wow. Well done. And then not only did they ask, you know, you, you're kind of reading through that. They're packing a one two punch with their offering. Please. You need to check it out. Everything there

so pretty is

catered to couples and they have really honed in on who their guest avatar is, who they want to serve. And you will see in the build out of their property, everything is about couples. And so that intentionality is woven in the actual design of, 'cause they built it from the ground up. Every amenity that they offer, every picture. If you go to their social media, you will see This is love adventures. It is all couples. Okay, I just think it's really well done. Um, and for if you're already hosting or you're getting ready to build a, a new property, please look to them for inspiration of who do you serve. And a lot of times we wanna serve everyone and then we serve, we end up serving no one. And so they've been really focused on who they serve, and I have not seen their financials, but I have a really good feeling that they're super successful because they have been so focused and niched down on who they serve.

I love that. Such a good example of being really focused and intentional. And today we wanna focus and be intentional about the money that you're making in your rental because, or not. Or not making, because we see, and this is, this is an episode built on. Passion for hosts to stop under earning, to stop ignoring the data. When it comes to pricing your property, especially when there are local events in your city, in your town, in your jurisdiction, in your village, big or small, there is demand in your area to where you can capitalize on that demand. Serve your guests. Give them a really great stay. Whether it's a big football game, a convention, a festival, a surprise playoff match, demand surges, and the best hosts know how to capture those extra dollars. So today what we're gonna talk about is how we do that and give you a little system for it to, with the help of our favorite racing tool along the way. So, so what is event driven demand events? Well, they equal demand spikes, guests flood into a city or an area, if you will. Hotels fill and short term rentals, get premium pricing power. So when that happens, we have market compression. When traditional accommodations sell out, overflow demand shifts to short-term rentals, right? There's nowhere else for them to stay. If hotels for this. Situation are the preferred method of staying. Sometimes with conventions it might be closer or it is a more understood and traditional way of staying somewhere. So for example, we live in Columbus, Ohio, and right now it is football season. Ohio State football. Weekends always bring some sort of demand, right? It's strong demand. It's a higher season for us. But when Texas came to town. To play OSU. These are two really big powerhouse teams. Texas was rated number one. Yeah. When Texas came to town for us to beat them, we did beat them. I was gonna say that. It was really good,

but Matthew McConaughey was on the field and Sarah and I got to see him pace. It was pretty cool. But then we beat him and was fun watching Lee the field early. Any way the demand did explode. Yeah. Like way even our expectations for the game.

Well, but luckily not our revenue manager's expectations. She saw. That demand was higher than usual for an OSU game. And she knew, she knew, she did a little research, right. That Texas was a higher rated team's number one in our And they travel, yeah, in our conference. And not that those fans, they travel. So while price labs are dynamic pricing software, it detected the spike, but we layered on our local knowledge to raise rates even more because we knew last year. When we played schools that were performing well, where the game was supposed to be a really good match, we knew or if that school has a history of their fans traveling, all that data and information is out there. We took all that information and we took what Price Labs was telling us we could get added on our local knowledge and we had premium premium rates. And spoiler alert, we got them.

Our TFE Pro tip right here is yes, we want you using the tech. It is super powerful. It is going to be able to track things way better than you ever can, but your human insight really makes the difference between a good rate and a wow. We crushed it. Rate. So there is this art and science to your pricing. We'd never, ever want hosts to set it and forget it. We want you to link arms with your tech to make sure that your pricing strategy. Is the best it can be for your property. So here is something that has been a difference maker for us once a year, and this is true, like I am an old school, write down on a paper calendar person. So once a year, literally sit down, go through, understand what are our home football. We know historically the events that are coming gonna be here year after year after year. So we're gonna go to those first. We're gonna put those on the calendar. What are the dates? Why are they falling on weekends? Is it during the week? Looking at that. So we're gonna a comb through everything that we already know is gonna be annual that we've had success with because let's celebrate that. So, and then we're gonna, we're gonna go through, we're gonna look at the stadiums. Is there anything new that's coming this year? We're gonna go to our arenas. We're gonna go to our smaller theaters. We're gonna go to convention centers. We are going to take a look holistically at everything that's going on. If you have anything, any city website that keeps track of events, this is where you're gonna wanna go to that and understand what is happening in your area. If it, if there isn't one for your city, again, you might know those pockets. Those, um, like again, convention center theaters. Like what are those in your town? Maybe it's a college, maybe. Um. It's a university. Maybe there's, again, something that only you would know that's familiar with your area. Um, maybe it's parks, you know, something's going on with, with those, please, you have to know those. And the thing is, when you're mapping them out on your calendar, you're gonna see people are coming before, people are staying after. You wanna look at that holistically. A couple things you wanna get really excited about it, but also just that awareness. When we're doing that, we're not only sitting down with the event calendar, that's where we're sitting down with our personal calendar. So that's a larger planning session to do that. But we have to keep going back quarterly too because things pop up. So we do a lighter sweep during, um, each quarter for new announcements. Are there new concert tours? Um. Is there, are there playoff games? Is one of your sporting teams doing really well? Um, thing, things aren't always booked at the beginning of the year and you wanna make sure that you're not caught off guard in losing that revenue. So we're gonna do once a year and we're gonna do every quarter. Okay. So, and go ahead. And when you're doing your, once a year, when you sit down, go ahead and put on your calendar when you're going to do your quarterly sweep too. So just plan ahead. It's, it's always going to serve you. So, wow. When you're doing these planning sit downs, there's kind of, there's two buckets that things fall into, okay? There are these obviously like obvious giant citywide events. Again, the festivals, the concerts, the sporting events, the large conventions that maybe come year after year. But then we want you to also, after you have those obvious ones, there are those sleeper hits. Some of them that, you know, no matter what, they're gonna displace that Hodel hotel demand. So there are maybe annual, smaller conventions. You see some of those other, like, uh, concerts, but they, they might be smaller, but their fans are incredible dedicated. Yeah. You know, multiple day competitions, things of that. So you're gonna wanna make sure that you have those sleeper hits marked down too, and. You're gonna wanna notate them too, because the ones that are normally citywide, you know that you're gonna have that demand. But those sleeper ones you just really wanna be aware of as they get closer.

And there's a story that we can share to emphasize what Annette's talking about. So recently in our area, a comedy show. Was happening at a really big arena. Now, I don't know who this comedian is, and I wouldn't have known that they would've brought such incredible fans to our area, right? It didn't look major to us, but we could see the data was telling us that the hotels were filling and they were filling fast, and so short-term rentals got spillover. But because we had price labs running. Our rates climbed, and we were able to then take our human data, our human knowledge, understand who this person was, what was happening there, and we were able to be booked at a premium. So again, it's not just that Price Labs is running, it's not just that, you know, your short-term rental event better than anyone else. It is that combination of the two where you could really make incredible revenue for your short term rental. We wanna take a moment and thank Price Labs for sponsoring so that we can share this incredible information with you and help you make more money with your short-term rental Price. Labs scans your market 24 7 automatically adjusting rates when it sees demand spikes in May of 2025 listings using price Labs earned on average $222 More on event

dates. Again, listen to that. That was the average of all Price Labs users. And we wanna share with you, you are a host, you are busy, like we are working all the time and sitting in front of our computer, paying attention to special events is not what we can do. For instance, we have a professional soccer team in town and again, they have like a playoff style where you know, it's if you lose, you're done. If you win, you go on to the next round. And. Luckily for us, they won one of their matches. The next game was scheduled immediately and scheduled in our city. And I'm telling you, we were asleep. Okay? Because these, they're literally asleep, is literally asleep. They won Demand went through the, we could not a, we could not predict the future. We didn't know if they were gonna win or not. Uh, but Price Labs and we not only, maybe we could have planned a little if, if they were to win, but we don't know what that demand is going to be. But Price Labs flagged it for us. When the demand spiked, they raised our rates for us and we booked out a higher price before we even had time to wake up, drink our coffee, log in and look at our pricing. So that one, in instance, alone helps us pay for the tech for the year. Okay. Yeah. Oh yeah. More. More than pay for that, but I just wanna share that. Please. You cannot be. On 24 7 with your pricing, you need assistance with this. So we want you to think that Price Labs is a a business partner for you. It's a team member, like an important team member. It's gonna help you bring local awareness and be that constant monitoring. Here's

the thing, hosts, most hosts only think about the big obvious events, and I get it. I honestly. Tell you how I feel. I'd rather be on the couch with my hobby and my dogs at nighttime. You know, I'm not a big like track in the events in my town, but, or attending them or attend. Right, right. Especially attending that, I need to get out more. But if you stop at citywide obvious events, you are missing hidden opportunities, right? Market compression can happen even with smaller events that bring in thousands of people and these events, they don't make the news. So we need you to have that mindset shift. Don't assume that only festivals matter or only those events that you heard of on the news, on the radio. See little signs for as you're driving around your town that those are the only ones that matter because smart hosts are catching every pocket of demand, big and small. Annette, which, what are the events that get us off guard?

Even still, I'm laughing at that. We have a board game convention, a fertilizer conference. Our marathon. They, they all create demand. And here's what I want to share with you. And, and again, we, I, I just, we talk to hosts every single day that once we get to coach them on their pricing strategy, they are like mind blown most of us. If you own your property in the town that you live in, it's very hard for you to see your city as a tourist. It's for you to see your city. As this high demand that you will do whatever it takes, pay whatever needs to be invested to get that overnight accommodation. So we're, we are our own worst enemy when it comes to the value that we're giving that guest for our property. So I just want you sometimes when, when it feels, feels like, holy smokes, that that's a lot and it, that's a lot of money. Will the value be there? You are not the customer. The customer gets to decide that. Don't like, don't hold yourself back from your own mindset there. Let again, let the dynamic pricing tool show you what the demand is. Let them show you your competition. Let them show you what your booking window is. Let them lead you into making smart. Like data-driven decisions for your business. And, and I just wanna share that is it is something that event over event, reservation over reservation, you'll start to get more comfortable. I, I still to this day, remember when I started hosting who in the world comes to Columbus, Ohio and why and when my, the. The app would not stop dinging like all hours of every day. And I was then knew a lot of people come here for a lot of different reasons. And the one last thing I wanna say about the this also with the value, when we're talking about conferences and conventions, and especially when people have a corporate budget behind their stays, that also changes the game too. It's not only just a person. You know, with their own hard or earned money, sometimes there are people making that reservation with the corporation behind, uh, the card that they're swiping.

Let's bring this all together and help you create a system because systems not as free. Right? Add event check-ins to your business calendar. All right. Know when these events are happening. Know when people are coming to town. Each year, I want you to do a deep dive into the events that are coming to your town, and then every quarter do a quick scan. Have there been any sporting events that have popped off? Is there some comedian that announced their dates, or a singer that announced their dates that come? I mean, all the things, and again, like Annette said, there's usually some county or city website that helps you track events big and small. So they'll do this work for you. Mm-hmm. Because it is their job. To bring commerce right to the city, to bring this ecosystem and make sure that people know about it. So they're doing that work for you. All you have to do is go to their website, put it on your calendar, and be more aware.

Yes. And so here's the deal. We are gonna load again. When you have those dates, you wanna load those in to Price Labs as custom adjust. Adjustments. So you have to do some customization here so you know you've captured those events. Okay. Then you're, then you'll let price labs handle the unexpected surges, so you're not chasing the news or reacting too late. But again, when you know those dates, we want you to go in and do custom adjustments based, especially on your historicals if you have them, but also just your knowledge. Okay? That is gonna be very, very important too. Your success. So again, this is, this is a behavior that you have to do. You're the CEOs. They CEOs, they just don't hope for bookings. We're gonna forecast, we're gonna plan, and you're gonna set yourself up to win. Please do this. Because again, this is the most painful thing is when we hear hosts, they knew there was an event coming and they many did, didn't have the time on their calendar to put in the custom adjustment. They're not using price labs. They literally gave, essentially gave their property away. Do not let it happen to you. You have been warned. You have been. Don't do it. Seriously. Go do the work. It's going to pay extreme dividends

to cap things up. Local events are one of the fastest ways to increase your revenue, but you need both human strategy and the right technology.

Listen, if you are not using dynamic pricing software, we consider Price Labs as one of our team members. Someone that's always helping us scan the market. It's on duty 24 7 when we like to be sleeping or spending time with our friends and family. So please check them out if you haven't already. Make sure to look at our show notes. Check. We'll have a link data there. Data. Most

importantly, check the data that they're giving you. It's not enough, and I know you know this, but I say this because this is what happened. This is what happened. We have hosts who sign up for the, for the software, whatever it is, and then we don't give ourselves enough time to learn how to use it or we get frustrated. 'cause it takes time to learn how to use it. And I understand. But I'm just telling you, you're not gonna bridge that gap of really understanding how to price your property successfully unless you know how to drive the software. With that, I am Sarah Kara Kayan. I'm Annette Grant, and together we are. Thanks for visiting. Talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to the Thanks for visiting podcast. Head on over to the show notes for additional information about today's episode. And please hit that subscribe button and leave us a review. Awesome. Reviews help us bring you awesome content. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to hanging out with you next week.