Beyond Airbnb: Building Luxury Hospitality Ecosystems for Direct Bookings with Moriya Rockman

Bring yourself to your hospitality journey. There’s no one else like you.” — Moriya Rockman

Summary and Highlights

🌟 Meet Moriya Rockman: From Swiss Alps to Global Hospitality Innovation

Calling in from the Swiss Alps, Moriya Rockman brings a unique perspective to the short-term rental industry. As a mother of seven and founder of not one but two hospitality platforms, she embodies the entrepreneurial spirit that drives innovation in our space.

Professional Background:

• Founder of Smiling House Group: A luxury B2C channel active in 400 destinations across 55 countries, focusing on ultra-luxury vacation rentals
• Creator of Villa Tracker: The first B2B-to-C channel connecting travel professionals with short-term rental operators
• Portfolio Manager: Currently manages 140+ chalets in the Swiss Alps
• Industry Veteran: Over 12 years in short-term rentals, joining as one of Airbnb’s earliest international hosts

Moriya’s journey began with a serendipitous introduction to Airbnb through a friend from New York, leading to her becoming one of the platform’s first 7,000 hosts globally. Her early interactions with Airbnb’s founders, including strategic advisor Chip Conley, inspired her to explore luxury markets worldwide—a decision that would eventually lead to the creation of her own hospitality ecosystem.

🏗️ Building Beyond Traditional OTA Boundaries

The Smiling House Story: When Airbnb Abandoned Luxury

The origin of Smiling House illustrates a crucial lesson about diversifying your booking channels. When Airbnb initially encouraged Moriya to represent luxury properties globally, she began building a curated collection of high-end stays across Europe. However, when Airbnb pivoted away from luxury curation, Moriya found herself with a portfolio of premium properties and no platform to showcase them effectively.

“In one moment, Airbnb dropped this whole concept of putting something around luxury together, and this is the moment where Smiling House started to be a company. We just had like a lot of properties with a lot of beautiful homes, and we said, okay, I guess we have to do it ourselves.”

This pivot demonstrates the importance of owning your guest journey rather than depending entirely on external platforms. Today, Smiling House operates as a request-to-book platform, allowing for personalized guest matching and community-driven referrals—a model that prioritizes relationship-building over instant transactions.

Villa Tracker: Bridging the Gap Between Travel Professionals and Vacation Rentals

Recognizing another underserved market, Moriya launched Villa Tracker to connect vacation rental operators with travel professionals who had been effectively shut out of the vacation rental ecosystem. The platform emerged from a simple observation during COVID: travel agents, family offices, and corporate event planners were desperately seeking access to private homes but had no streamlined way to book them.

Key Features of Villa Tracker:

• Specialized Collections: Event-friendly properties, sustainable accommodations, pet-friendly stays, and family gatherings
• Professional Tools: White-label PDFs, commission structures, and dedicated support for travel professionals
• Request-Based System: Ensures proper matching between client needs and property capabilities

This approach addresses what many hosts struggle with: reaching new audiences beyond typical OTA traffic. By serving corporate retreats, high-end family gatherings, and luxury events, Villa Tracker opens revenue streams that traditional OTAs actively discourage.

🤝 The Power of Destination Ecosystems

One of Moriya’s most compelling insights centers on viewing fellow hosts as ecosystem partners rather than competitors. This philosophy aligns with the community-driven approach that many successful operators have adopted.

“Each one of us as hosts should represent a destination and should know the colleagues—you maybe refer to them as competitors, but you should start to look at yourself as a kind of an ecosystem working in the same destination.”

Practical Applications:

• Referral Networks: When your property doesn’t match a guest’s needs, refer them to trusted colleagues rather than losing the booking entirely
• Resource Sharing: Collaborate on cleaner recommendations, supplier relationships, and local insights
• Collective Marketing: Present your destination as a cohesive experience rather than individual properties

This ecosystem mindset becomes particularly powerful when combined with direct booking strategies, as it allows hosts to build comprehensive destination brands that serve diverse guest needs.

🎨 Authenticity as Your Competitive Advantage

While much of the industry focuses on optimizing pricing tools and ranking algorithms, Moriya advocates for a more fundamental approach: bringing your authentic self to the hospitality experience.

Ways to Inject Authenticity:

• Local Partnerships: Collaborate with regional artists, as Moriya does with local Swiss artists in her chalets
• Unique Storytelling: Share the history, culture, or personal significance of your property and location
• Surprise Elements: Add unexpected touches that guests can’t find elsewhere—like QR codes linking to local artist information
• Personal Curation: Recommend hidden gems and experiences that reflect your local knowledge

This authentic approach becomes increasingly important as AI and automated systems reshape guest discovery. Properties with genuine, unique stories and experiences will have significant advantages in AI-powered recommendation systems.

🚀 Preparing for the AI-Driven Future

Moriya’s perspective on the industry’s future is both pragmatic and urgent. She predicts that within five years, AI will fundamentally change how guests discover and book travel experiences, making many current channels obsolete.

“Very soon, OTAs and channels will be facing simple AI. Everybody will tell their whole story, record it from their phone, and within seconds get a bundle of flights and where to go and which villa… People will not search anymore. That’s the main thing. Forget about searching.”

Strategic Preparations:

1. Build Your Brand Outside OTAs: Ensure AI systems can find and recommend your property independent of platform listings
2. Create Rich, Discoverable Content: Develop comprehensive property stories, local guides, and unique selling propositions
3. Focus on Niche Positioning: Specialize in specific guest types or experiences to improve AI matching accuracy
4. Establish Direct Relationships: Build guest databases and email marketing systems for direct communication

📚 Moriya’s Rapid Fire Insights

Book Recommendation

Timbuktu by Paul Auster – A unique novel told from a dog’s perspective that offers valuable insights into seeing ourselves and our hospitality from our guests’ viewpoint. The book challenges readers to examine how they truly appear to others, making it particularly relevant for hosts focused on guest experience.

Mindset Advice

Smile Through Everything – Moriya’s philosophy centers on maintaining positivity through challenges, criticism, and success alike. As she puts it: “Smile when you have difficulties. Smile when you’re getting criticized… Smile when you’re not getting the best review and think, ‘I’m gonna get better’… I met a lot of great hosts that forget to go on vacation, that forget to smile and forget to enjoy what they’re doing.”

Tactical Direct Booking Advice

Bring Authentic Yourself – Rather than focusing solely on tools and technology, Moriya emphasizes the importance of personal authenticity: “Bring authenticity into your hospitality journey. Bring yourself. Try to make a difference just by your way of thinking, your way of designing your special touch, your way of connecting to your local community, your thinking outside of the box.”

🌍 Building Your Independent Hospitality Brand

Moriya’s journey from early Airbnb host to platform founder demonstrates the evolution possible when hosts think beyond traditional boundaries. Her success with Smiling House and Villa Tracker shows how building specialized channels and communities can create sustainable competitive advantages.

The key takeaway from Moriya’s approach is simple but profound: successful hosts don’t just manage properties—they curate destinations, build relationships, and create experiences that can’t be replicated by algorithms or automated systems. As the industry continues evolving toward AI-driven discovery and booking, the hosts who invest in authentic brand building and community development will be best positioned for long-term success.

Whether you’re managing a single property or a large portfolio, Moriya’s insights remind us that hospitality success ultimately comes from understanding your unique value proposition and building genuine connections with both guests and fellow operators in your market.

---

🤝 Connect with Moriya Rockman

Want to learn more from Moriya’s hospitality expertise and entrepreneurial journey? Connect with her on social media and explore her platforms:

Social Media:

• LinkedIn: Moriya Rockman – Her primary platform for industry insights and networking

Her Platforms:

• Smiling House: smilinghouse.com – Luxury vacation rental channel
• Villa Tracker: villatracker.com – B2B platform for travel professionals

---

Ready to build your independent booking brand? Like Moriya’s journey from platform-dependent host to ecosystem creator, your path to booking independence starts with the right foundation. Visit CraftedStays.co to discover how our purpose-built platform helps serious hosts create guest-first websites that convert—fast. Join thousands of operators who’ve taken control of their bookings and built stronger, more resilient hospitality businesses.

🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear more of Moriya’s insights on building luxury hospitality ecosystems, preparing for AI-driven booking futures, and why authentic hospitality will always win over automated systems.

Transcription

Moriya: Bring authenticity into your hospitality journey. Bring yourself, try to make a difference just by your way of thinking, your way of designing your special touch, uh, your way of connecting to your local community, your thinking outside of the box, your reaching out, your choice of your crowd, your choice of where your property gonna uh be.

Moriya: And not only the choice of which, uh, pricing tool I’m gonna use and which ranking tool I’m gonna look at. Bring yourself. Because there’s no one else, like

Gil: Before we bring on our guest, I want to talk just a little bit about something that I’ve been hearing a lot from Host. I keep on hearing the same thing. I know my website isn’t converting, but I can’t afford $8,000 on an agency to rebuild it. Here’s the thing, you’re letting all these marketing strategies, you’re driving traffic and you’re putting it all to work.

Gil: But if your site isn’t really built to convert, you’re basically lighting your energy and money on fire. And even if you could afford an agency build, every time you want to test something or make a change, you’re having to pay them again. You can iterate, you can’t test, and you really can improve on things.

Gil: You don’t need a custom $10,000 website to get the conversion rates that really matter. You just need the right platform. That’s why I build craft estates. It’s purpose built for short term rentals and designed from the ground up to help you drive more direct bookings. You can finally turn that traffic into booking.

Gil: And you can keep on testing and improving. As you learn, you can make changes all on the platform. You don’t need to learn something new. So if you need some help or you wanna get started, go ahead and go to craft stays.co and start your free trial. Now let’s bring on our guests and dive deep into hospitality and marketing.

Gil: Hey folks. Welcome back to the Books Solid Show, the podcast where we bring on top operators to discuss marketing, revenue management, and the guest experience to drive towards being books solid.

Gil: On today’s show, I am Moriya Rockman joining us from Smiling House and Village Tracker. She’s a longtime STR host herself with over 140 doors. She has created two different OTA platforms that tick things a bit differently than what we’re commonly used to with Airbnb VRBO booking. Um, and she’s really targeting specifically niche markets that has been underserved.

Gil: She talks a lot about how she has. Really focused our attention towards the luxury stays industry. And also how she’s arming travel agencies and others that are representing groups of people that are traveling and providing them with a way of being able to find the right homes for them. So I’m really delighted to have her on the show, really get to understand how she thinks about the industry, how she thinks about hospitality, and really, even though she’s.

Gil: Much of an OTA herself, how she’s pushing hosts towards really diversifying and getting a good mixture of revenues across multiple, um, channels there. So I’m really excited to have her on. So without further ado, let’s bring her in.

Gil: Hey Moriya, welcome to the show.

Moriya: Hey, Gil, great to be here tonight,

Gil: yeah. Thank you for staying up late. It’s a lot later in your time zone than it is in mine, so I appreciate that.

Moriya: and I appreciate being here. Thank you.

Gil: Yeah. So maybe ’cause starting off there, where, where are you calling in from? Where are you joining us from?

Moriya: So I’m joining you from the Swiss Alps, uh, Switzerland, uh, top of the mountain beautiful ski resort named right now. It’s all green and beautiful and, and still beautiful.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe just to kind of kick us off, Moriya, do you mind giving folks an introduction on who you are?

Moriya: Sure. So my name is Moriya Rockman. I’m the founder of Smiling House Group, uh, the channel that called Smiling House, which is a B2C luxury channel. Active in 400, uh, destination in 55 countries focusing on luxury and ultra luxury. And the mother of, uh, Villa Tracker, uh, the first B2B to see channel of vacation rental connecting travel professionals with you guys with, uh, short term rentals, uh, property managers, homeowners that.

Moriya: For years thought, how do I talk to this travel agency? How do I get to their guests? So this is Villa Tracker. I’m a mother of seven kids. I’ve been in STR. I’m not looking like a dinosaur, but I guess I’m kind of a dinosaur. ’cause I’ve been in, in our short term rentals, uh, space for many, many years, uh, above 12 years, really right from the start.

Moriya: And I’ve been through everything from being a single homeowner till, um, developing, uh, these two channels. Um, and still inspired by this great, uh, uh, great industry.

Gil: Wow. There you many accomplishments. The mother of seven while doing all this. That’s, that’s super impressive. I’m, I’m only a father of two and I always, I already feel like my hands are pretty full.

Moriya: My hands are full. But actually I think the fact that I have so many kids, uh, and the fact that I, uh, founded everything together with my husband, IRA Rockman, uh, our kids are traveling with them around the world. Um, just being inspiring, uh, to, to, to, to remind us that it’s all about experience. It’s all about, um, being together and that we are so lucky to live in part of time and the part of, of a moment in the world where so ma so much is, is, is possible.

Moriya: So many opportunities are there for us. Uh, and I think there’s seven kids. They’ve been part of our journey to big numbers scale and not to be afraid to go into new directions.

Gil: Yeah, that’s actually something that I’ve seen as a trend in our industry is that a lot of the folks that take SDRs very seriously, they go on this like growth curve over time there. And one of the amazing things I hear quite often is. Being able to include your family in that growth process where they get to see you grow your company and grow your, kind of, your portfolio there.

Gil: It’s kind of unlike a a, an entrepreneur where an entrepreneur, as your kids watch you, they don’t really empathize with the business that you might be creating. But when you’re building your short term rental portfolio, they can see the properties, they can visit the properties, they can see it come to life.

Gil: They know where all the properties are at some at some point, and they get to see that more. Physically than you would be in a normal business. I don’t know if you, if your kids experience the same.

Moriya: Yeah, of course. So with our kids, uh, I’m lucky to say that from the. Portfolio of 140 chalets that we’re still managing here in the Swiss Alps, Inad, they’ve been visiting, uh, many of them of course, and help sometimes, uh, et cetera. And it’s still like, uh, other, uh, family members, um, uh, are working for, for this, uh, property management.

Moriya: At the same time, they see mom and dad working from, uh, the office, uh, but sometimes also from the, uh, kitchen, uh, table developing. Walk, you know, going up, down, uh, zoom calls from, uh, different parts of the world and traveling with us around the world. The A has been with us from the s still Africa, uh, Costa Rica, uh, and, and other inspiring places.

Moriya: And they saw us working, enjoying, dedicating time, uh, and exploring and exploring and exploring with them without them so they know. I think that one of the greatest thing that, that we are lucky to have is this freedom to combine this lifestyle with the work. And yes, you are right. Kids getting inspired to see their parents working, hardworking and getting more involved.

Moriya: Hopefully they also falling in love a little bit with what we love so much, which is hospitality.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe kind of using that, that last phrase that you just talked about, about like focusing on hospitality. Um, talk to me a little bit about why you founded the Smiling House Group in the first place.

Moriya: Oh, that’s a, that’s a big question actually. Uh, smarting house been funded. Um. By coincidence, we’ve been very young, uh, host, like I told you from the start, that we’ve been there long, long time ago, and we happen to be one of the first Airbnb host outside of the USA. Just because a friend who came from New York to visit us here in the Swiss sub store, that, that there is such a thing called Airbnb.

Moriya: We happened to meet, uh, Chesky and, and other leaders in Airbnb at that time. Uh, they were still meeting their host face to face. They didn’t have more than 7,000, uh, hosted the time. And, and they, uh, inspired us to go and to, uh, look for other luxury, uh, properties outside of Switzerland. We thought that it’s madness because, you know, remote working or anything that was remote 12 years ago was not existing as a concept.

Moriya: Uh, but they, uh, kind of gave us a hint. Somebody that’s called Chip Conley, that was the strategic guy behind this reef, founders of Airbnb that were very young at that time. Um, and he said, go and wherever there is luxury in the world, you can represent it. Uh, we took his advice. We started to travel. In different parts, beautiful parts of Europe, Ibiza, Kono, Mabe, uh, Costa Del Soul, uh, Croatia, you name it.

Moriya: The most beautiful parts, uh, of, of Europe and wherever we said we are doing luxury and we are connected to this young, uh, vacation rental industry. Host gave us a home, homeowner, sorry, gave us a discount key at the time and say, yeah, I would like to join your collection. And in one moment, Airbnb dropped this whole concept of putting something around luxury together, and this is the moment where smiling house.

Moriya: Started to be a company. We just had like a lot of discount keys with a lot of beautiful, uh, properties. And we said, okay, I guess we have to do it ourselves. And that’s how, uh, smiling House started long time ago. Uh, we’ve evolved from being a property manager, uh, and before that, a homeowner. And then, uh, kind of having a collection.

Moriya: And the collection was, you know, not really, uh, just like not more than a live portfolio. No icons. No calendars. Slowly but slowly we got, uh, into the, um, big portfolio that we have today. Today we have like 12,000 properties. We are completely an official channel, um, that you can connect to from any big channel managers like Rentals United Booking.

Moriya: Pal and Guesty, but we stay faithful. We’re still touching hospitality. We are talking to every one of our guests and every one of our hosts. We are trying to create this journey together. Uh, we are calling it hosting together. And, um, yeah, and we are doing Request to book only means that we are here to talk to your guest and to talk to you and to assure that all angles are tackled. Okay. And it’s not only about the instant and not only about the immediate, uh, it’s a little bit more like an old school hospitality.

Gil: So maybe just take a step back there. This is a request to book platform, meaning that someone isn’t just able to go on to the platform and book instantly. You’re having a conversation with the guest and potentially the host together to make sure that this is a good match before a booking occurs. Did I, did I get that right?

Moriya: You got it right. Uh, yeah. So we are allowing, um, guests to put a hold on a property. They have 48 hours that they can put a hold on the property, but we, the, the final yes. Will be hours. Why the final Yes. Will be our, because we are communicating in the backend, uh, with the host, uh, we. Giving alternative offers, uh, to the guest.

Moriya: And we want to make sure that whatever the guest had in mind, meeting the right, um, uh, offer that our host are there to offer. Uh, we not letting or trying not to let anybody down with, oh, this property is not available, sorry, but to try with the community of the host to offer something else within the same, uh, destination.

Moriya: Uh, I truly believe by the way that uh, each one of us, uh, as hosts should represent a destination and should know. The colleagues, you maybe refer to them as competitors, but you should start to look yourself as a kind of an ecosystem. Uh, working in the same destination. Referrals can move from one to another, especially if you understood that in today’s world, you cannot be relying on one main OTA and you should share some direct bookings.

Moriya: Sharing your direct bookings. You need to be part of an ecosystem and you should be part of the destination that you are hosting in. You need to be a destination in a way. So think about it. Um, uh, you know, as if you, if you are hearing this show, this is one of the, of the advices. I’m happy to give you.

Gil: Yeah, so, so what you’re saying, and I see this quite a bit, even in my own markets there, I’m not in the luxury rental market there, but we are in a area that’s highly vacation, rental heavy, um, in Tennessee, and I know probably a hundred hosts in that area. And what I found interesting was that a lot of hosts that I have met don’t see each other as neighbors and competitors, but we see each other as peers to one another.

Gil: A lot of times we’ll share resources, we’ll share cleaner advice, we’ll share, uh, recommendations, what tools we’re using and maybe even what we’re seeing in the market. Um, and maybe because just there’s just so much demand in the market themselves that like. The market gets better as we help each other and we uplevel each other.

Gil: And that’s what I’ve seen as a lot different than even other asset groups. Uh, when I look at short, short-term rental, it’s very unique where in money, in contrast, in the long-term rental space, you see a lot of, I’m not sharing who my contractor is, I’m not sharing what deals I am. Short-term rentals is, is a bit unique where there is a lot more comradery.

Gil: And it seems like even on the luxury end, you’re seeing that as well too.

Moriya: That’s right. That’s, uh, that’s very, very true. And we need to, to, uh, you know, to know each other’s product. We need to know where we have something that completing, uh, the offer of somebody else. You know, if I’m a little bit high up, you know, in the offer, but then somebody said, I cannot state yours. My budget is actually not allowing it.

Moriya: Why to throw this, um, you know, request. On the ground, why not to refer it to another colleague, uh, that you can trust. Um, so this is the way we helping host. To, uh, uh, to be part of such community worldwide. Um, and that’s about Smiling House in Villa Reker. We are doing the same just with travel professionals, uh, that very, very eager, uh, to, to be in touch with us, uh, and to, um, uh, to create their client’s journey, uh, with, uh, private homes. After decades that they, uh, could only offer hotels and flights and cars and, you know, they, they’ve been really cut out of the game of vacation rental. And now I think it’s about time after more than a decade to let them in.

Gil: Yeah, maybe, maybe that’s a good transition to talk about kind of the origin story behind VRE as well too. It’s like what you, it seems like you, you saw the need there, but what, what triggered you to say, okay, this is something that I wanna commit my, my time and energy towards to starting this?

Moriya: So it all started at the time of COVID, more or less. Where we started to get some requests also in the OTAs where we are active in the OTAs and within a smiling house, of course, of I’m a travel agent and my client needs this. I’m a travel designer, I’m a family office looking for one of my clients, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Moriya: And then I said to myself, Hey, what’s that now in COVID? It was very profound because, uh, if you remember, it seems like we all forgot, um. Everyone wanted their private pool and everybody wanted a private jacuzzi and everybody wanted a private villa and nobody wanted to see nobody. Everybody wanted to be on vacation only with this family.

Moriya: So suddenly these villas and chalets and castles and whatever being in very high demand and these travel designers and travel agents and concierge companies to start to knock on our doors, and I, I felt like, hey. These guys, they dunno what to do. They want to have a white label, PDF, they want to have their own logo on top of it.

Moriya: I need to create this for them and I need to create that for them and a lot of work and why they cannot, uh, do it themselves. And then I realized that they do not have no hub. To offer what we offering and then I learn even more so that they cannot get a commission and then they have to compete with their client and actually sell it.

Moriya: Even, even, even uh, more expensive, you know? So they kind of, Hey, the hotel is giving us commission. The current are giving us a commission. The flight is giving us a commission. Why would we sell this villa? And maybe been through a fraud on top of it. And risk our good, uh, name in order to fulfill this one client who wants to go to a villa.

Moriya: But when it became many of them, they couldn’t ignore it anymore. And that was the moment that I realized, hey, there’s a gap in the industry. There’s a blue ocean that we are not money, that never reaching us, uh, request that we never, uh, uh, get into client that we never hosting. This is the moment where I took, uh, the mission, uh, on myself, uh, to build Villa Tracker.

Gil: And how long, so it’s been, how long since you started Villa Reker and what’s, what’s been the

Moriya: Villa Tracker started as, as an idea back then in about three years ago. It took time to build it and to be, to be honest, I felt three years ago that our industry is not really ready for that. And today with ai, with everything that is happening with the fact that Villa Tracker been developed for one and a half years and officially launched as a channel with Guestie in August, 2024, uh, we are now happy to say that we are receiving many, many, many homes. Thousands of them welcoming homeowners and property managers from all around the world. We have no limitation of geographic, uh, markets. And from the other hand, the travel agencies are enrolling. They’re showing a lot of interest. They, they, they want to learn a lot. We need to give them a hand. They’re working a bit different than us, but they are bringing completely different budgets as well, so. Be ready for higher demand and higher, uh, budgets coming from these, uh, travel professionals, uh, altogether on top of everything that you can do as up sales experience, et cetera.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. You, so, so right now you’re, you’re almost creating this, this dual-sided marketplace where you have the. Travel agencies on one side, and then you have property managers and homeowners on the other side there, and you’re almost having to, to build up that demand on both sides so that you have enough supply, you have enough demand to create this, this ecosystem there.

Gil: And it sounds like with Guestie now you’re. The supply side has been growing quite a bit. Or sorry, the demand side has been growing quite a bit. And now you’re not now, but like you’re also working on marketing to more travel agency as well too. Have you been going to more the one-off travel agencies or are you looking for more nationwide groups, um, to kind of grow

Moriya: So, so to be, to be honest, the way that we designed Villa Tracker, um, we, we, we said we have to serve. Different kind of travel professionals. We are not only talking to luxury buyers, uh, that we knew they are the first one we knew, of course, because of, uh, smiling house, uh, offer. Uh, but today we are working with single travel designers.

Moriya: We are working with retreats facilitator, which I believe is going to be a huge, huge trend, and I hope to come back. Maybe, uh, next time we’ll, uh, gonna talk here and talk to you specifically about the retreat trend of off season and the option that it can, um, bring to many hosts to extend their, um, uh, uh, booking period all over the year.

Moriya: Uh, but then also. Family office, hr in, um, high tech companies, you know, so many people are traveling, uh, or arranging travel for others. Some of them doing it because it’s their work and some of them is doing it because it’s their, uh, uh, obligation. Uh, and, and some of them doing it with 100 travel agencies under them. Some, uh, are travel designers that only representing three families, but each one of these families are spending half a million a year on travel. These are numbers that we are not getting to know in vacation rental, in, in OTAs like rental, like Airbnb, booking.com. These numbers are not existing. Uh, you can meet these numbers in Villa Reka.

Gil: And so, so it sounds like you’re also creating a whole new market altogether. Uh, you’re, you’re, you’re not necessarily just taking away from. Either hotels or from the ota, the, the common OTAs. But you’re now giving life to, like, for instance, you talk, you talk about HR and retreats there. You’re giving it a way where you’re now allowing folks that wanna put those events together.

Gil: To now make it much more possible and maybe even make it more scalable as well too. So you have a wider variety of properties to choose from. Where previously these were just vacation, secondhand vacation, second home, vacation homes, they, they weren’t really TA tailored for these experiences.

Moriya: But for this, we had to develop within Villa Tracker, a very special search. And four, we have four different, um, collections that we’re very proud to have. While all the big OTAs say No parties, no events, no weddings, no nothing. We say, Hey, there’s so many parts of the world where there are houses who hosting events, beautiful places that hosting weddings or, or, uh, hosting, uh, an incentive of, uh, of a big company, uh uh, together.

Moriya: In Villa Reer, we can mark it up for these professionals so they will know in this house you can do a wedding in this house, you can do a ceremony. In this house you have a dock where you can come with your own boat and continue the trip with a lot of other experiences. And we inspiring people, both homeowners and property managers, to highlight what they can do in their houses that the other OTAs are not allowing, but at the same time.

Moriya: To do it and make it easy for the travel professionals to choose us, um, versus, uh, another boring, uh, convention room in a four star hotel. Right? Uh, the same with the UGA retreats, um, and the retreats, uh, in general, uh, facilitators. Then we have the sustainability collection that we welcome any batch. From any kind of, uh, authorization, um, you know, batch, that giving your, uh, property the ability to shine and the pet friendly.

Moriya: Here in Europe at least, it’s very, very popular to travel with your pets. And of course, the family, which is the, the big, the house is, uh, family gathering is more and more popular. So Villa Tracker is welcoming. All kind of, um, of, of properties, different sizes. We are welcoming properties normally from two and three bedrooms and more. Um, but we open in all, uh, destination. And, uh, not only through Guesty, we also helping some homeowners and property managers by manually uploading their property. Uh. And to get into this crowd, this is another service that we are doing, takes some times, but we’re doing it on the behalf of the hosts.

Gil: Nice. Nice. Um, so what, what I took, one part I took away from it was like that what other OTAs may see as a risk there, having parties, having weddings, having events, those as being risks. You’re actually seeing it as actually an opportunity to provide a better experience for. That, that host that’s, that’s wanting to put that experience together, is that right?

Moriya: I, I, I can understand why the, like Airbnb and VRBO and, and so all these huge platforms, uh, are, are saying not events allowed because the idea is that people are hosting in their own homes. They may be in a neighborhood. Uh, this is a place that people can get ideas of using the house in the wrong way.

Moriya: I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about houses that meant and have the license. To host events, but this kind of properties has no place to market in these OTAs. They don’t have an ability to say it out loud, and they definitely don’t have the ability to reach out to the one who organize this kind of traveling.

Moriya: So I just mentioned, uh, that we are inspiring not to people to come and to, and to make a bachelor party in IBI and trash the house. No, I’m talking about proper events, organized events, uh, with license and everything that, that need to be out there, uh, for proper event to take place versus to an event, um, um, you know, venue.

Moriya: Um, but yes, I’m just thinking, look, there’s all kind of hospitality journeys, why we have to follow one voice to tell us and today. Something even more crazy tell us, this is not your guest. You are not allowed to contact with this guest. It’s not your guest, it’s our guest. I have hard time with this kind of declaration and I’m saying it out loud.

Moriya: Uh, and I believe that every host is first of all a host, and it’s thanks to this great host. That people are booking, uh, his property and not only because of the platform. Uh, so in Trekker and in Mining house, we are happy to work with busy hosts and the ones that love what they’re doing and to add them this kind of extra value.

Moriya: We don’t want anybody to be depending on us because as hosts, I believe we have to stay independent and we have to make our own brand. we have to bring our own special spark into our, the hospitality journey of our guests. And this is something that I’m set to say that I think with a lot of new hosts that I’m meeting is a little bit been forgotten.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. It was actually, that reminds me of the STR Hospitality summit that we had a couple weeks back where Jodi put on this summit because she saw that in the industry we have over optimized for certain things, and it was almost like. We had forgotten that the root of what we’re doing is hospitality.

Gil: It’s about bringing these experiences together. So it was actually very inspiring to, to go to this event and see all these talks about just how to deliver great experiences, how to understand what the guest is going through, how to make sure that they have a great stay. And I, I think that aligns very well with just how you think about the hosting experience and really opening up a whole new market altogether.

Moriya: So I love to host, I love to meet new people. Uh, I love to, to give them, you know, part of my knowledge. Inspire them, uh, you know, with places they can visit and to tell them about this kind of, uh, hidden gems, uh, around, uh, I truly believe that we should stay, uh, in this kind of space. And that’s why, by the way, you mentioned, uh, Jodi, we are putting together with Jody, uh, uh, a special book.

Moriya: Exactly from this angle. It’s called Doors to the World Host and Homes that inspires, that gives the house itself, the property itself, and possibility to tell the story of the host of today. Something that is very unique about the house. Maybe somebody who lived there, maybe, uh, some famous song that’d been written over there, or it’s, it just been here forever and ever and got a piece of beautiful history, uh, and.

Moriya: I truly believe, and I’m also investigating this, uh, today, people want to get inspired. They want to stay or to have a bucket list of where to go, what to experience with something that they will have their own kind of experience of discovering. And I want to, uh, to, to, to remind you this, uh, you know, even if you are in a city and there’s like thousands and thousands of. Buildings and, and, and, and property that potentially can be like yours. They’re not like yours because you are one and you have your own way. You can put it in your design, you can put it in your basket of what you’re giving around. It can be in a funky, uh, message that you’re writing to your guest or anything that will make them remember that within.

Moriya: Everything that looks the same, there is you. Um, and, uh, yeah, maybe it was a long answer, but, uh, I love hospitality and I truly believe that we should stay focused on that.

Gil: Yeah, I, I mean there’s, there’s a lot of conversations, um, more recently are really about. Yes, you could have unique properties, you can have the yurts and the domes and all that stuff, and those could be one way to kind of stand out there. But actually you being a host that cares about the experience can actually have small little details that you kind sprinkle throughout your property that makes it very unique, and that’s where that empathy happens between the.

Gil: Guest that’s staying there and the homeowner there, and so that’s, that’s been very inspiring recently to hear a host that cares about those small little touches, they’ll put out certain things, certain signs, certain little notes around the house that just reminds them that we’ve actually tailored this experience because we know who you are, what experience you’re trying to have for the rest of your family, and how we want you to have an enjoyable stay with us.

Moriya: Yeah. Lately, for example, uh, we took a few chalets, few of our, uh. Chalets in our collection. Chale is a, is, is a, is a cabin, I think in America, uh, this wooden house here in the Alps. And we, um, we, we, uh, connected to a local artist that’s taking beautiful, uh, views of the nature around here. And we put it around the house and we gave the people kind of a QR code where they can learn about these inspiring spaces, uh, and they can take it home.

Moriya: So. got a lot of great comment about it. Also because the artist is great and they love his work, and, but also they say, look, you know, we came to the house. It was not in the pictures that you, uh, that you shared of the property, but not in a disappointing way. We got an upgrade, we suddenly have some rooms that been really, really inspiring.

Moriya: Uh, and we felt like, wow, wow. We got another experience that we didn’t, uh, expect. Uh, so, um, so these kind of little things, this is also your opportunity and each one of you have a home. You have a lot of walls. You can choose something that will inspire, even if you’re not announcing it or using it as a marketing catcher.

Moriya: Sometimes it’s the words and the selfie and whatever people sharing while at your property because you surprise them. That counts more and will bring more people after.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I think that that’s where the stickiness comes in between the homeowner and brand. Now, and I don’t know if you’re seeing this on your side, but more and more. These property owners and even the houses themselves are starting to be represented more like brands and less like commodities there.

Gil: I think we saw this big wave over the last five, 10 years where with the rise of Airbnb, it almost feels like homes or vacation homes has been a commodity. And that’s the box that we’ve been put within. Um, but more recently, maybe because Airbnb has been pushing so hard on like suppressing. Really the A host’s ability to, to communicate and have that connection.

Gil: There actually hosts are trying to fight back and say, no, actually this is my property, this is my brand, this is what I’m trying to get ahead of. I don’t know if you’re seeing the same thing on your side.

Moriya: I think we see it less, uh, because maybe some of the property managers that working with us are less, uh, depending, they’re putting their eggs in a diversity of, uh, of, uh, of channels. And that’s why we are lucky, uh, to have them, uh, ’cause they may be thinking a little bit out of the box. Also, if you think about it, at least in Smiling House and the luxury hospitality.

Moriya: Luxury hospitality was much before Airbnb and booking.com. We’re talking about something that, that going back hundreds of years, people, you know, been traveling to this kind of outside of the city, leisure destination, four hundreds of. Uh, and, and this kind of how some of them are still running it kind of from the black book, and they’re not depending on, on these big OTAs.

Moriya: We are helping them to get a little bit with the technology, uh, you know, in our way, kind of more, um, you know, up to date, uh, experience with the guest. But the journey of what they’re giving stays the same, so. I don’t see this kind of property managers and homeowners, um, changing their way or giving up on the guest, but maybe it’s a wake up call guys. Share it with Airbnb, share it with VRBO, share it with us, with Man House, with Villa Tracker. But if you don’t have a solid of 50, 60%. Of your own kind of business that depending on you and what you build, your marketing, your spark, your hospitality journey, you are in some kind of a very fragile position,

Moriya: and I know it’s very hard to get there. It’s very hard to get there. To become independent and to build your own brand and to, uh, stand out there and to think about creative ideas. And you need to understand in so many different subjects, you need to understand marketing. You need to understand ai. You need to understand emergent and you need to understand pricing.

Moriya: And you know, it’s overwhelming for somebody who just want to do hospitality. Use the diversity of, um, of channels that you can connect to if you have. There is one piece of advice that I want to give you is use a PMS, but don’t forget that before and uh, and after you have a business in hospitality and you have to stand alone in your choices of who to work with based on the fact that, first of all, that you have a business. So hard to get there, but this should be your aim.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. It, it’s, it’s, I think it’s fine for the first year for a lot of more common properties to be reliant on the OTAs, but I think the goal is there to, to diversify even amongst the OTAs, like you could be reliant on the OTAs for. Even 90% of your business there. But if it’s 90% on one ot, that’s, that’s the part that’s a really dangerous part.

Moriya: Right, so that’s why I’m saying don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Discover through your channel manager if you are having a pm. S. Every PMS connected to a channel manager. Doesn’t matter if it’s Rentals United or Booking Pal or, or, or Guesty or another. Each one of these, um, uh, of channel managers is giving you a diversity of, uh, of channels.

Moriya: One is only for, uh, you know, pet lovers and one is, uh, LGTP, whatever, you know, choose. The one that resonating with you, open your mind. Villa Tracker will help you, uh, to get, uh, in contact with people you never had the chance to speak with before. Uh, if you are in, um, in city center, maybe there’s other crowds that you want to talk to, but don’t rely on one branch or one OTA only.

Moriya: It’s been proven many times in the last few years that it’s not a good idea.

Gil: Yeah. Where do you, maybe the kind of the last question here is, where do you see the industry going over the next five years?

Moriya: Oh, I think it’s going to go through a tremendous change, uh, alongside with the, with the travel industry. All in all, I believe that very, very soon, uh, uh, OTAs and, and channels and so on will be facing the simple ai. Everybody will tell the whole story, recording it from, from their phone or, you know, on this button of the microphone in Google, and within seconds. Within seconds, you will get a bundle of the flights and where to go to and which villa, and if you want to see the sunset and if it’s 10 minutes from the, uh, from a Chinese restaurant and not more than half an hour from the airport, uh, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So shortcut, I believe a lot of the people, a lot of the channels will disappear in the next five years. AI. And all in all solution that will combine everything that based on your personality persona, as we call it, together with your means. And your needs will be the way that people will travel and people will not search anymore. That’s the main thing. Forget about searching. People will be expected that within seconds the best solution will be served to them.

Moriya: Keep it in mind. When you are looking at how you’re building your business, I hope it’s not a dark, um, uh, you know, uh, forecast. I just believe that we need to get ready for that. I’m a little bit relaxed because I know that at least in luxury or with these kind of, uh, travel professionals, the one that will use it will still need the human touch and the human smile. And the thing that we can never, never, ever, uh, lose to AI or to any kind of intelligence that is not human, which is hospitality.

Gil: Yeah, and what, what I take from that is, is also like really understanding what your niche is. If you know your property is well suited for this category of travelers there, you can then amenitize your place. You can place your your stay accordingly, and you can deliver that best experience for that particular stay.

Gil: And over time as AI gets smarter and is able to acknowledge or understand. What the type of stay is, what type of people do are enjoying your stay. It’s almost gonna be like an SEO where you’ll start to get up there more, but if you try to be a little bit of everything for everybody, it’s gonna be hard for you to really stand out and for you to be recognized.

Moriya: And it’s true. And even if today you are hosting. Don’t know where in men of the city when you will ask check GPT, where is the best or who is uh, where can I stay in this city centered with the two bedrooms and with the budget, this like that, you’ll be surprised that some names will jump out and maybe yours is not.

Moriya: You have to start to train and to build your brand outside of the OTA. The OTA is not mentioning your name. If you want to be recognized, if you want this machine to. you in the bundle in the next few years. You have to work on it now.

Gil: Yeah. Awesome. Moriya, I, I wanna kind of wrap up with the, the three questions that we normally ask all, all of our guests there. So kind of the first one there. What’s a, what’s a good book recommendation that you would, you would recommend to me and the listeners?

Moriya: Book. Oh wow. Is it coming with time to read it? Uh, yeah. So, uh, a great book, uh, uh, that I, uh, read, uh, uh, lately is called Timbuktu of, um, Paul OI love all Paul, uh, books because they’re all talking about the unexpected. And this is very good for somebody who want to stay connected to think out outside of the books.

Gil: Nice. Nice. So, so what’s the, what’s the premise of the, of the book?

Moriya: The promise of the book is that, um, first of all, the book is all, uh, um, given to us from a, from a, a very surprising angle of a dog. That through the dog eyes, we are learning about his master and about his master’s life and, uh, whatever we thinking sometimes about, even like on our guest, on our children, whatever, it’s giving us the retro perspective.

Moriya: How we are looking as we are feeling sorry for, or whatever, you know, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a bit of a criticizing about the way that we seeing ourselves and, uh, I think that is inspire and, and, and keeping the reader in a position of how do I really, um, play my role in whatever I’m doing.

Gil: I like that. I like that. I, I haven’t heard that book. I’m gonna to go check it out.

Moriya: Yeah. Uh, it’s very, very nice. Um, yeah, I wish I had more time to read books. Uh, I’m more busy with writing books.

Gil: You’re, you’re, you’re ju you’re juggling quite a bit right now.

Moriya: Yeah.

Gil: so my second question, what’s, uh, one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?

Moriya: Okay, I’m gonna warn you. It’s, uh, it’s giving a lot of wrinkles as you can see, but smile, smile. Smile when you have difficulties. Smile when you’re getting criticized and people tell you you are going into a journey that, uh, only if you are succeeding with smile when you are not getting the best re um, um, you know, uh, comment from, from your guest or the best review and think, Hmm, I’m gonna get better and smart when you on, on all your success.

Moriya: I met a lot of great hosts. That forget to go to a vacation, that forget to smile and forget to enjoy what they’re doing. So this is my big piece of advice for what you’re doing for work, but also for life. Smile.

Gil: I love that last, uh, last question. What’s one piece of tactical advice that you would give to someone that’s either trying to get started in building their direct bookings and their brand, or trying to amplify it?

Moriya: One advice. It’s hard to to to give, but I will try to summarize it into. Bring authenticity into your hospitality journey. Bring yourself. Bring yourself. Try to make a difference just by your way of thinking, your way of designing your special touch, uh, your way of connecting, uh, to your local community, your thinking outside of the box, your reaching out, your choice of your crowd, your choice of where your property gonna uh, be.

Moriya: And not only the choice of which, um, you know, uh, a pricing tool I’m gonna use and which ranking tool I’m gonna, uh, look at. Um, bring yourself because there’s no one else like you.

Gil: I love that. I love that. Moriya, this has been an enjoyable conversation. I like just kind of how you’ve. Taken a step back from the industry and thought about how it could be and where things might be headed as well too. Um, and kind of the things that you’ve been investing your time and energy into creating some of these things.

Gil: So I appreciate you sharing your story, you sharing kind of your vision for all this and give us, uh, some perspectives to think about as we’re building out our brands.

Moriya: Thank you so much. It was the same, uh, you know, pleasure for me and I’m going to sleep with a big smile. So thank you for this great, great conversation.

Gil: Awesome. If folks wanna find out more about you, if they want to keep in touch with you, how should they, how? How, how should they keep in touch?

Moriya: So first of all, Moriya Rockman, uh, via, uh, LinkedIn. Facebook, LinkedIn is totally my, my space. Feel free to reach out. I’m also doing one-on-one, uh, kind of advice if somebody really want to get, and especially if somebody want to get into, uh, the part of, uh, luxury, um, experiencing, uh, luxury, uh, hospitality.

Moriya: But not only, uh. Very much, and I, I don’t believe that I didn’t mention it, but I’m very, very much inspiring and happy to see more ladies out there. Uh, ladies, this is SDR. It’s supposed to be natural for us. I want to see more of you as entrepreneur in SDR and happy, uh, to be in touch with any of you.

Moriya: Beside that manning house dot uh, com, uh, villa tracker dot uh, com. Uh, welcome you. Um, and, uh, that’s it. I, I really hope that you find, uh, some kind of, uh, wisdom, uh, in this conversation, and I’m happy to chat with each and every one of you.

Gil: I love that. Awesome. I’ll be sure to conclude your notes into our show notes so that our listeners can, can tap along, uh, and be able to connect with you.

Moriya: Thank you so, so much.

Gil: Thank you, Moriya. Talk to you there. Bye.

Moriya: Bye.