Hotels have spent decades perfecting the art of hospitality, systems, and guest experience. Short-term rentals? We’re still figuring it out—and that’s actually our biggest advantage.
In this episode of the Booked Solid Show, Susan Barry joins Gil to bridge two worlds that are rapidly converging. With over a decade opening hotels for Starwood, nearly 17 years running Hive Marketing, and hosting the award-winning Top Floor podcast, Susan brings rare perspective on what STR operators can learn from hotels—and where we’re actually ahead.
From why hotels struggle to differentiate themselves (and what that means for you) to the single most important thing you can do to attract direct bookings, this conversation will change how you think about your rental business.
Whether you manage two properties or twenty, Susan’s insights on brand identity, messaging consistency, and standing for something will help you stop competing on price and start building a hospitality brand guests actively seek out.
Summary and Highlights
🎤 Meet Susan Barry
Susan Barry is a longtime hotelier turned hospitality marketing strategist with a career spanning decades. She began her journey in food and beverage before becoming a Director of Catering and eventually Director of Sales and Marketing for Starwood Hotels, where she spent 10 years opening new properties—including a Westin in DC and a W Hotel in Atlanta.
In 2009, she founded Hive Marketing, a B2B marketing and communications firm serving hotel brands, management companies, ownership groups, and hospitality startups. Susan is also the host of Top Floor, named a Top 10 Hospitality Podcast by the International Hospitality Institute and ranked #2 on Million Podcasts’ global list of hotel podcasts.
She serves on the steering committee of Female Founders in Hospitality and is a partner at Cayuga Hospitality Consultants. Susan lives in Atlanta with her artist husband, Sean.
🏨 What Hotels Do Well—And Where STRs Have the Edge
Susan opened the conversation with a truth that surprised even Gil: many hotel professionals think short-term rentals are ahead of hotels, not behind them.
The reason? STR technology isn’t built on decades of legacy systems. Platforms like CraftedStays emerge without the constraints of outdated infrastructure. Hotels often struggle with on-premise systems and slow adoption cycles because leadership came up in an era before social media and digital booking.
Meanwhile, the STR industry attracts entrepreneurs from construction, nursing, digital marketing, and tech. This diversity fuels rapid innovation and a willingness to iterate quickly—something hotels historically resist.
But Susan also noted where hotels excel: systematized hospitality. With 300 rooms under one roof, hotels develop operational playbooks that ensure consistency. For STR operators managing properties across multiple markets with different cleaning teams and local managers, building similar systems requires more intentional effort.
🎯 The Biggest Lesson Hotels Can Teach STR Operators
Hotels have a massive problem: brand differentiation. Susan explained that consumers rarely know the difference between hotel brands—they recognize loyalty programs, not experiences.
This commoditization hands billions of dollars to OTAs because travelers treat hotels as interchangeable. Location and points matter more than brand identity.
Here’s where STR operators have an opportunity hotels missed. Susan’s core advice: stand for something.
Whether it’s an aesthetic, specific amenities, charitable giving, or a niche audience, having something that differentiates you is the only way to build guest relationships strong enough that travelers seek you out and book direct.
Gil shared his own example. His properties cater specifically to families with young children. Every property has baby gates, high chairs, pack-and-plays, and kids’ bowls. His photographers know to include the high chair in dining room shots. This focus attracts the right guests and subtly signals that party-seekers should look elsewhere.
🔁 Repeat Your Message More Than You Think
One of Susan’s most practical tips challenged a common fear among hosts: you’re probably not repeating your message enough.
What feels repetitive to you as the property owner doesn’t register as repetitive to guests. They’re not living inside your brand every day. In a world where countless messages compete for attention, consistent repetition is how you break through.
This applies to everything—your website copy, social media, guest messaging, and even the physical items in your property. If you want to be known for family-friendly stays, that message should appear in your listing photos, your email sequences, and the amenities guests find when they arrive.
The same principle applies to visual identity. Using consistent colors, fonts, and design elements creates recognition when guests scroll through their feed. Susan shared the example of a restaurant whose marketing looks completely different every week—great for whoever’s having fun in Canva, but terrible for brand recognition.
🎨 Building Your Brand Identity Without a Design Degree
Susan acknowledged that not everyone has design expertise, and that’s okay. The key is making decisions and sticking with them.
She recommends investing in a simple style guide: a couple of primary colors, some neutrals, secondary colors, and a few fonts. Canva makes this easy with brand kits that auto-apply your identity to templates.
But Susan emphasized the value of working with actual designers rather than assuming Canva skills equal professional expertise. For those starting out, even a Fiverr gig to establish basic brand guidelines can elevate your marketing significantly.
Another helpful exercise: figure out what you don’t like. Showing a branding consultant examples of designs you hate can be just as instructive as examples you love.
🤝 Why the STR Industry’s Collaborative Culture Is a Competitive Advantage
Gil highlighted something Susan found fascinating: STR operators share openly with competitors in ways hotels rarely do.
Large Facebook groups bring together hosts from the same markets to discuss occupancy, pricing strategies, and operational challenges. Even property managers with 50+ doors in a single market participate. This collaborative culture accelerates learning and helps the entire industry improve.
Hotels face legal barriers (price-fixing laws) and financing structures that discourage such openness. STR operators buying individual investment properties don’t face the same competitive projections against specific properties.
This cultural difference means STR operators can learn faster, even if they sometimes learn things the hard way that hoteliers consider obvious.
📚 Book Recommendations from Susan Barry
Susan shared three book recommendations:
- Anything You Want by Derek Sivers — Perfect for entrepreneurs who want permission to build businesses in unconventional, sometimes inefficient ways simply because it’s fulfilling.
- Hotel Kid by Stephen Wolf — A charming look at growing up as the son of a hotel general manager in 1940s Times Square. It traces hospitality traditions to their origins in fascinating ways.
- Ritz and Escoffier — The story of César Ritz and Chef Auguste Escoffier building the Ritz brand. Susan shared that the famous phrase “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen” originally meant there’s dignity in service work—not just that staff should emulate fancy guests.
⚡ Rapid Fire Highlights
One piece of mindset advice for someone starting something new: “Do whatever you want. You can do it any way you want.” Susan shared how she wasted years worrying about competing with senior vice presidents who lost jobs during the 2008 financial crisis. None of that concern mattered. The freedom of entrepreneurship means you get to build on your own terms.
One tactical piece of advice for direct booking success: “Pick something and stand for it. Be different from every other option out there, and have confidence and faith that the right folks will find you.”
🔗 Connect with Susan Barry
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/susandbarry
- Instagram: @topfloorpod
- Top Floor Podcast: topfloorpodcast.com
- Hive Marketing: hive-marketing.com
- Digital Guide: LinkedIn Content Made Easy
🎧 Listen to the Full Episode
Susan’s insights on hotel-STR convergence, brand differentiation, and standing out in crowded markets offer a fresh perspective that both new hosts and seasoned operators will appreciate.
Tune into the full Booked Solid Show episode to hear more about why hotels will eventually merge with STRs into one lodging industry—and how to position yourself ahead of that curve.
🚀 Ready to Build Your Direct Booking Brand?
If Susan’s conversation inspired you to create a website that reflects your unique positioning, CraftedStays helps short-term rental operators build mobile-optimized, SEO-friendly direct booking sites in minutes.
Stop competing on price. Start building a brand guests actively seek out.
👉 Start your free trial at CraftedStays.co
Transcription
Gil: Hey folks. Welcome back to the Booked Solid Show, the podcast. We’re bringing top operators to discuss hospitality, marketing and operations. I have the huge pleasure of having Susan Barry onto the show. She has spent decades in the hospitality space. She was previously the director of Caterer and then sales and marketing at the Starwood Brands.
Gil: She has launched countless hotels and she is the podcast host of Top four, a Top 10 hospitality podcasts and is the founder of Hive Marketing, a B2B marketing firm in hospitality. On today’s show, she sheds light on what it’s like on the other side of lodging in the hotel side. We talk a bit about how it contrasts with short-term rentals, what hotels are doing well versus what short-term rentals has a really an edge and an advantage towards.
Gil: We also talk about how brands can really solidify themselves. She gives some really actionable tips here, so I am just excited to bring her on the show. So without further ado, let’s bring her in.
Gil: Susan, welcome to the show.
Susan: Oh my gosh. Gil, thank you so much for having me. It’s an absolute delight to be here. And what the listeners don’t know is we’ve been talking for many, many moons already, so we have, we know that we’ve got a lot to talk about today, so it should be a fun
Gil: Yeah, it’s, and it’s also really fun to have a fellow podcast host onto the show. It’s, I don’t know, I’ll ask you this. Is it weird to be on the other side of the mic where you’re the one that. Getting asked all the questions.
Susan: No, I love it. I love it because it’s so much easier than all of the work of creating the entire podcast episode. You know, we on top floor, so I host a show called Top Floor. It’s about all things hospitality, and we have a pretty structured. Process and you know, we have a lot of steps and all that stuff.
Susan: So here where I just show up and talk, hell yeah. That’s great.
Gil: Yeah, I, I always find that the shows that I like recording on are the ones that I’m the guest and I can just be. Just my authentic self. Whereas like if I’m the host, like right now I’m the host, there’s a notepad next to your face. So I’m, you’re on a prompt. You’re on a prompt, or I can see you, I can, I’m looking right at you, but right next to you is this notepad where I’m jotting down notes about all the different points that you’re talking about and the things that I wanna have ask you, follow up questions.
Gil: Because I have a very, like, short term mind where if I don’t ask it or if I don’t take a note on it, I’m gonna forget about it. So I don’t, I don’t know you
Susan: Do you want me to tell you a good trick for that?
Gil: Yeah. What’s that?
Susan: from a TikTok video. Um, now you have to know how to do finger spelling in sign language. So maybe, maybe you’re. In trouble. But if you do, if you have a thought and you’re like, I gotta remember this, I gotta remember this. Like say I wanted to tell you about a doghouse, I would hold my hand in the letter D.
Susan: Is that a D? I think it’s a D.
Gil: I think it’s a d.
Susan: remind me that my thought starts with D for doghouse. And then I’m like, okay, D for dog house, D for dog house. And then I remember, so when you finish talking, I remember to say dog house.
Gil: NNI haven’t brushed up on my finger sign language, my, my letter sign language since I was in grade school. So I have a good reason to, to, I think it’s time to pick that back up.
Susan: My sister and I learned how to finger spell because we wanted to talk in church without getting in trouble. So we learned just, I don’t know any other sign language except for the alphabet, but we would sit there and talk to each other, and we still do it to this day all the time.
Gil: Oh my God, my, my wife is gonna hate me for, for saying this, but she has her own language that she has created with her high school friends where. They would basically, they, it sounds like they’re talking gibberish, but it makes total sense to them. Um, and when she told me about it and she helped me understand the decoding behind it, I was like, oh my God, that makes a whole ton of sense.
Gil: But she’ll be in a restaurant and she’ll just blurb out the most random stuff, and her friends totally understand her even without the context of it. Um. It has to do with spellings and letters and stuff. Um, but I’m, and I’m not gonna give away the key to it, but like, it’s amazing, like,
Susan: disappointed. Uh, confidential to Gill’s Wife, please get in touch and teach me your special language. Thank
Gil: yeah,
Susan: carry on with the show.
Gil: yeah. Maybe Susan, I would love for you to give an, an introduction on who you are. You talked a little bit about the podcast that you run, but there’s a lot more to who you are.
Susan: Yes. Well, I am a long-term hotelier. I started my career in food and beverage, working in restaurants like so many of us, and. Ran an off-premise catering company for a few years after I graduated from college because I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. My mother was like, why don’t you look for jobs related to catering and just do that while you figure things out?
Susan: So I got a job as a director of catering in a hotel, and the rest many years later, several decades later, is history. I was a. Hotel director of sales and marketing for 10 years for Starwood in its first iteration before being acquired by Marriott. And uh, most of what I did was open Newbold hotels for them, which is a very crazy.
Susan: Awesome, insane adrenaline rush type job. Um, so I opened a Westin in the DC market and a w here in Atlanta. And once those two hotels were open, that happened like in rapid succession, I had to keep chasing that adrenaline rush. So I left to start my company Hive Marketing in the spring of 2009. We have been in business for almost 17 years, and while the company has sort of iterated and pivoted over that time, what we do now is.
Susan: Business to business marketing and communications for the hospitality industry, which sounds like a mouthful, but what that really means is that we work with brands, management companies, ownership groups and vendors, particularly startups to market to and communicate. Each other in the hospitality industry versus to attract guests to particular hotels.
Susan: And then of course, I host Top Floor, which is our show about all things hospitality. We’ve been on the air for four and a half years. It’s the absolute love of my life and something that I would spend every minute of every day doing if I could.
Gil: Yeah. What was, uh, what led you to go from, in the very beginning where you’re opening up these hotels to then pivoting to starting your own marketing firm? Like what was, where’s the bridge there?
Susan: The bridge is that my. Strongest value or sort of most important value is autonomy, is having the opportunity to be left alone.
Gil: Yeah.
Susan: And when I was opening hotels, you know that position, the director of sales and marketing was usually the first hire. And you would be alone or just with a team, a tiny team of salespeople for many, many months.
Susan: So I got used to the idea of being my own boss and. Really, uh, sort of fell in love with the notion that there is a way that you can build a career, build a life, you know, make enough money to keep the lights on and ha have complete autonomy.
Gil: Do you remember your, uh, your first client and what, what was that like?
Susan: I do remember some of my first clients. I don’t know if I should say this, but one of my very first clients, okay, so when I first, first started the company, it was in the Wild, wild West days of social media. So this was before business pages even existed on Facebook. Twitter was brand spanking new, and I thought that.
Susan: I would offer social media management services for hotels in 2009. That was a little bit early and most hotel general managers were like social media who. Come again, Facebook. What? And thought like their intern would be a perfect person for that, or their bell staff or you know, whatever the case, they did not, that was not a serious thing to offer people.
Susan: So I finally broke through and got the Wyndham Rewards account. I worked with them for a very tiny amount of time before they had a big personnel change and you know, things turned over, but. Um, I started, I think I started their, one of their very early Facebook pages and very early Twitter accounts.
Susan: They prob that has probably been lost to the sands of time. So I have to say that whoever is doing it now is doing a tremendously better job than I’m certain I did in 2009.
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Was that back then it was, it sounds like it’s probably more B2C at that point, right? You’re actually going in and, yeah, and so the.
Susan: lot of B2C work.
Gil: So the, the company has kind of transitioned from what it was originally from a B2C company to a B2B. What led you down that path of pivoting that the company, or maybe happened organically, but what was kinda that moment where you’re saying, now we’re a B2B company and we’re focusing on these types of accounts?
Susan: Yeah. Um, it, it’s definitely a combination of following the market and following my preference and sort of learning what I like to do and who I like to work with. Um. As any social media manager in the whole wide world will say, once that role and that type of marketing became more respected and more serious, it also came with layers of approvals and input.
Susan: And perceived expertise that was untenable for the type of business that I was trying to run. You know, there’s this big joke about how the new Pope got chosen in two days. We really don’t need to review every Instagram reel for 14 days in advance. It’s sort of like that idea of like, it really became just unsustainable in terms of the labor and amount of time it would take.
Susan: I just couldn’t do it. The way that I wanted to. So that was part one. But also I followed the market and you know, it, it, it, it, there beca, I’m having a hard time articulating this because part of it had to do with the fact that clients would ask me to do something. I would like do it and figure it out and be like, oh wow, that’s really fun.
Susan: Let me try that for a while. And then the next thing would happen and the next thing would happen. The next thing would happen. And the final thing I guess I would say about that is that. I really like working with the C-Suite. Again, because of that fast decision making, I feel like I can offer a more cost effective solution for the folks that we work with.
Susan: When we don’t have these like million hour review sessions and like, you know, everything takes a committee of 25 people to figure out.
Gil: Yeah. I, as, as an entrepreneur, I empathize, but probably more. I admire kind of the pivot that you’ve done, because that’s oftentimes really hard to know. These are the things I’m really good at. These are the things where I can add value. These are the things that is adding noise into my life that I wanna do less of.
Gil: And hearing you kind of p like naturally pivot towards that direction and figure out like, okay, actually this is where I wanted to be doubling down and actually finding that niche. That’s, that’s a huge win in in entrepreneurship.
Susan: Listen, I have to tell you though, don’t give me too much credit because there is also a whole other side of it that I wasn’t gonna say out loud, but now you made me feel guilty and I have to, which is that I am incredibly restless and peripatetic. And so there is also a part of me that wants to have a brand new business every 18 months because.
Susan: Once I learn something, I am like, all right, let’s move on to the next thing. Move on to the next thing. So there is certainly a degree of the like jazz hands and a DHD of it all sprinkled on top of what sounds like a reasonable path, maybe not so much.
Gil: I, I can also empathize with that one. I think like almost all entrepreneurs, we started this business because we were kind of bullish and, and can take a risk and are a bit restless. Uh,
Susan: Yes.
Gil: just like maybe. I’ll tell a short story for our listeners here. About three, four weeks back, I was looking for a tool that allowed our customers to give feedback.
Gil: So we have basically, we’re helping short term rental operators build direct booking websites. Um, and every so often I’ll get someone that says, oh, I want to be able to do this, or Can you integrate it into this? And so we get all these feature requests and we log it internally in, in our systems. But I wanted
Susan: But are your systems like a piece of paper or
Gil: Uh, there, there’re like tags in our, like our, our internal like issue tracking system
Susan: Gotcha. Gotcha. Got so something real.
Gil: Something real. Uh, yeah. And it’s, it’s less on the customer side of things. It’s more on like the product side of things. Like if we’re trying to look through review, like what we should do. But I always felt like that was not transparent for our users.
Gil: And I saw some folks in the industry using feedback tools. Where people can submit, submit feedback, and then upvote them. I was like, oh, that’s kind of cool. Wait a minute, it’s gonna cost me that much. Um, and I was like, wait a minute. I can code this probably in, in a little bit. And I spent the entire weekend basically building a micro startup.
Susan: This is the perfect exam example story of what I’m talking about.
Gil: Yeah. And so now if you go to get Product Workshop, I built a full blown system where if someone’s looking for a feedback platform for their own tech startup, like I can spin up an instance. Full branding sends emails out in your own domains. Like I just
Susan: Are you selling it or you just have it on the side for like
Gil: I am sell.
Susan: purchase?
Gil: More like friends and family, like, like other, other tech startups in our space that, that could use it.
Gil: I’m more than happy to kinda, uh, allow them to use it. Um, but I’m
Susan: telling you. I did the exact same thing this time last year. I listened to a podcast episode about digital products and I was like, oh, digital product. Okay, let me just make one real quick. So I did, um, on a Saturday morning, I sent it out, got like a little bit of feedback, improved it, and then made it, and then I just have it sitting there on my website if anyone wants to buy.
Susan: But am I trying to sell it? No, I’m not. What? What am I doing? It was fun to make though.
Gil: it is, and I think like a lot of folks are like saying that you’re wasting your time or you can be focusing your efforts in certain ways, but as an entrepreneur it’s kind of hard to slow down. And when you have ideas that you have an itch, it’s really hard to not scratch that itch.
Susan: Plus, what is life for? I mean, what is it for? Like, does every minute of every day need to be optimized and monetized? No. Like do something for the fun of it. You know?
Gil: Yeah. So,
Susan: Have you ever, do you know who Derek Sives is?
Gil: I don’t think I know Derek.
Susan: Okay, so he’s probably like a little bit more old school tech founder, coder guy. Um, he had a company called CD Baby.
Susan: I’m not gonna tell you his
Gil: I’ve heard I, I CD baby sounds very, very familiar.
Susan: he’s just like a super interesting guy and he has a good book. He, but he has this thing where he is like, I made our website for CD baby because. I just wanted to learn how to make a website. It wasn’t the smartest thing in the world. It wasn’t the best use of my time, but I thought it was interesting. I may be getting the story wrong, Gil, but you know what I’m saying?
Susan: It’s the same idea. Like yes. Is it, are there people who are better at doing X, Y, Z things? Sure. But is it fun to sometimes just like stretch yourself also? Sure.
Gil: Did he write a book? I feel like I read his book. Which book was
Susan: so good. I can’t remember the name. I’ll look it up.
Gil: Okay. Okay. But yeah, we, we, I definitely have that itch. I, I probably start three micro companies every single, every single year.
Susan: Totally same,
Gil: good thing I don’t incorporate them because then
Susan: right?
Gil: my bill would be really, really high.
Susan: Yes. I don’t operate these extra businesses, but I do just fiddle fat all around with them for a while.
Gil: Yeah. Um. I wanted to transition a little bit, um, on kind of why I wanted to bring you onto the show. Um, given kind of your nature in marketing and hospitality, I wanted you to share kind of what you’ve seen work really well, specifically around hospitality and folks that are trying to become independent and rely less on the OTAs.
Gil: Um, you recently spoke at the direct booking summit that Jen Boyles put together. That one was a fantastic, fantastic summit. I, I. Absolutely love it. Um, and maybe so I, I don’t know if this is the specific topic that you talked about, but I want you to share with our listeners here some of the things that you’ve learned throughout the years in hospitality and how folks can really start to create a brand for themselves and really become independent.
Susan: Yeah, so it’s interesting. My topic at that summit was, it was, the speech was called Meet Me on the Dance Floor. And it was something like, what can STR learn from the hotel industry and vice versa? Something like that. And I think that the, the sort of advice or, or thing I would share here in this conversation is something that hotels.
Susan: Do did and are doing not as well. So most of the things in that conversation were like, here’s some great things hotels do steal them. This one things, something that hotels do not always do well, and that is stand for something or differentiate themselves in such a way that a consumer knows the difference between X and Y hotel.
Susan: So. I, it’s probably like old hat for people to hear. Maybe not, I don’t know. Um, but to hear hotel folks complain about there’s too many brands, like, they’re like a hundred million brands. Does a consumer know the difference between any of them? No. They know the difference between their two loyalty programs, and that is it.
Susan: Right? There is no differentiation between hotel brands. And so the hotel industry continues to give away bazillions and quadrillions of dollars to OTAs because it’s a commodity. It makes literally no difference what you’re booking as long as the location’s right, and you’re getting your loyalty program.
Susan: So I say all that in an aggressive and frowny way to say to STR operators that. Standing for something, drawing a line in the sand, whether it’s aesthetically or in terms of the amenities that you offer or in terms of your branding. Or the 10% you give back to local environmental charities or whatever.
Susan: The thing is, having something that differentiates you from the rest is the only, I think the only way, or one of the only ways that you’re gonna create enough of a relationship with your guest and traveler, that they are going to seek you out and want to book direct with you because they wanna help you.
Gil: Yeah. How do you, as you’re helping, like if you’re. Consulting with a property manager that has a couple dozen doors, like how do you help them through that process of identifying like, what is that thing I wanna stand behind? Is it something that they look externally on? Is it something that they looked internally on?
Gil: Or maybe a combination of the two.
Susan: I think it’s probably a combination of the two. You know, I think you can take a very math, science way of approaching it and a very language arts way of approaching it. So we’ll start with the math, science, and then we’ll move to language arts. So you know, you could absolutely do a competitive survey of your marketplace or your submarket and figure out all of the things that work well and all of the things that are missing and sort of select from that list using that data.
Susan: But I also think particularly for hosts. Who this is maybe a side hustle or you know they’re starting with fewer properties and then working their way up to more and more. Find something that’s personally appealing to you, that’s gonna make it worth you. ’cause this is a hard work hosting an STR when you have a full-time job and a family, or, gosh, even when you just need to do your own laundry.
Susan: It’s hard work, and so there needs to be something in it for you that makes you feel sparkly when you encounter it. Whether it’s, oh my God, it’s so much fun to leave my grandmother’s homemade corn muffin recipes, something or the other out on the counter for these folks, or, I love frogs and I love that my branding is all about frogs.
Susan: It makes me laugh every time I see it.
Gil: Yeah, as you think as, as you mentioned that I think through like our own portfolio, we don’t have a big portfolio, but we have a couple properties out in Tennessee and in Missouri and I, I think about like what is that consistent theme that we try to deliver across all of our properties, and I think back to.
Gil: What we want when we’re staying at our property and how we wanna be treated there and the things that we’re looking for. And that’s kind of like how I interpret what you’re saying in terms of from, I don’t know, maybe it’s the language arts side of like knowing what we want out of it. Um, but we try to make our properties very, very family friendly, especially on the.
Gil: Younger side boots because when we got into hosting, we had very young kids. We were still traveling with car seats and high chairs and all of those things.
Susan: That is such a perfect example of what I’m talking about. If you have 20 doors and you decide we are going to be the place where. Families with very young children are the very most comfortable. Does that mean that grandma and Grandpa Susan Barry aren’t allowed to stay? No. It doesn’t mean that, but what it does mean is that you stand for something, you’re differentiated from all of the other choices, and your people will find you.
Gil: Like I, I think about our properties. We have baby gates at all of our properties. We even have like the little, like suction, not suction cups, but the things that we put on the edges of it to, to make it very easy to mount there. We have all the high chairs there. We have pack and plays, and I think a lot of these things, a lot of folks either have or don’t have in there.
Gil: But it’s something like when we onboard a property, we need to make sure that we do have those things. And when we’re taking pictures of our properties, we make sure that our photographer knows that. Like, okay, this is actually the ideal guest that’s coming to our properties. So you need to make sure that when we’re, you know, when you’re taking a picture of the bedroom, that you have the pack and play next to it.
Gil: When you’re taking a picture of the dining room table, I want you to set it up. For family, but put a high chair next to it with the kids bowls that we left
Susan: That’s awesome.
Gil: Those are like the types of things that I want folks to remember because I remember back in the day, and although our kids a little bit older now, they don’t need high chairs.
Gil: Those are still our ideal guest profile that we’re looking after. Um, and we want them to feel like if there’s a niche that we want to really cater towards, that’s the niche.
Susan: Plus, don’t you think that it’s sort of like a subtle warning sign to people who wanna come and party and tear up your place? Like, look, this is a place for babies, not bong hits. Get out.
Gil: That’s true. That’s true. What one of our properties, um. They have like a, a rock climbing wall and a like a tube slide in there,
Susan: Oh, cool.
Gil: for some of the, the older kids there, because when you have younger kids, you might also have older kids as well too, kind of in the adolescent age. Um, but that’s one of our hero photos there.
Gil: And so when you’re thinking about having a party, even though our property. Sleeps 14 people. Like you’re probably not, that’s probably not your ideal choice of having a party. Well, that would, that actually would be a fun place to be drunk. But
Susan: Don’t say it out loud and you’re gonna attract the wrong people.
Gil: luckily we haven’t had that. Luckily, almost actually, everybody that has stayed at that property had kids. I don’t think I’ve ever had a stay that did not have kids.
Susan: Because you’re attracting the people that you want with by the fact that you’ve drawn a line in the sand.
Gil: Yeah, I would love to kind of hear more from you, kind of like what are, so I think you mentioned like one of your first tips is like really understanding, like what do you stand for? How do you then materialize that into making sure that you’re creating that experience from everything from the beginning of like furnishing your place all the way to kind of your messaging there.
Gil: Like how do you think about that entire journey?
Susan: I think one important tip or piece of information to keep in mind is that what feels repetitive to you as the owner or host of a property does not read as repetitive to an audience member because they’re in no way, uh, as all up in the big middle of your property as you are. So I think. There’s a lot sometimes.
Susan: I mean, I am certainly guilty of this, of being afraid. Oh gosh, I already said that. Or I, you know, I don’t wanna say it too many times. I don’t want them to think I’m insulting their intelligence. No, no, no, no, no. Do not be afraid to repeat the same message over and over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over again, because that is the only way you can penetrate in a world where a million different messages are coming at us at all times.
Gil: That’s, I, that, that goes true not just in hospitality, but like marketing in general. Like even at crafted stays, if you’re a crafted stays user or if you sign up for our mailing list somehow, um, you’ve re, if you receive our weekly newsletters. There are a lot of the core principles that we try to ingrain into folks when we write about blogs, we talk a lot about SEO, we might talk about it in very different ways, and we might give different tactics, but we want to really make sure that folks that are investing into this are continually thinking about this topic there.
Gil: So we may have different angles, we may have different ways to talk about it. We may have small little tips and tricks that might be different from different blogs. Um, but that’s a, that’s a topic that we revisit over and over again.
Susan: You have to.
Gil: I think it, it helps because I think, like you mentioned, we are, it’s a very noisy world and oftentimes we, we need that, that reminder there, but it also reinforces what your brand is all about too.
Gil: If you have that consistent messaging from your social media to your website, your guest messaging to the things that you have in your property, you’re further reinforcing. That’s what your brand is all about. That’s.
Susan: Yeah, even just using something sim, simple cues like the same signature color, the same font, like the same things over and over and over again, makes a big difference. I know of, I’m thinking about a successful restaurant that. You know, they’re very successful, but every single piece of marketing that they put out looks a hundred percent different from the one before.
Susan: And so there’s no visual cue when you’re scrolling through the feed to be like, there are new menus out. Because every week it looks completely different. Now there’s clearly somebody who’s having a lot of fun playing around on Canva, right? But they’re missing, I think, an opportunity to get more eyeballs on their stuff.
Gil: Yeah, and I think there’s like really brands that do it really subtly well, where even a logo mark with the color really helps someone understand like, oh, actually this is that brand there. Yeah. I, I totally get that. Um, as I’m, I’m thinking about how. You mentioned like how to create those, those brand moments, those colors there, how do you kind of guide someone through that, that, that process there?
Susan: Say more about what you mean.
Gil: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of folks, they may start off with many different brands, many different fonts. Um, what is that, that process that you might kind of help someone kind of like narrowed down to? Like they, they may get overwhelmed on it. I, I see a lot of folks. They’ll use a different font on their Instagram.
Gil: They’ll use a different font on their website. Um, is it for, for me, maybe I’m, what I’m trying to get to is really like spending the time and energy into their brand guide and talking a little bit about that.
Susan: Yeah, I think that that’s the answer, right, is creating. Rules for yourself around what your style is. Now, once you create them, that doesn’t mean you can’t change them again, but having some sort of semblance of a style guide where you’ve got a couple of primary colors, a couple neutrals, and a couple of secondary colors, a couple of fonts, and you know, these are the things that are my identity.
Susan: I am by no stretch of the imagination, a design expert. And I am a big believer in paying people who are, have those talents. So find a designer to work with. Um, don’t think that your ability to manipulate elements in Canva equals a design degree. ’cause they’re not the same.
Gil: Yeah, I think that that even in the early days, there’s very simple things that you can do where you start to understand how you want your brand to be represented. Um, and I’ve, I’ve seen this a bunch of times that work really well. Folks will go on Fiverr and they’ll kind of find someone to help build their brand guide, and it’s less so like, yes, there’s a bit of like hiring a designer to do it, but really.
Gil: Spending that attention on figuring out how, what is that primary color? What is that primary font in there? And putting that stake in the ground where you’re now using these elements across all your marketing there. I think that is probably, that is more important than saying, oh, do I have that perfect font there?
Susan: Mm-hmm. A hundred percent true. Like just making a choice. It’s the same thing with having a differentiation in your property, standing for something, what that thing is, is less important than that. You stand behind it and you’ve got something.
Gil: Yeah, and, and like for folks that do use Canva, Canva allows you to have your primary fonts, your primary colors, all kind of built in there so that the next time if you’re building an asset using a Canva template there, it’s using your colors, using your fonts by default there. So those are,
Susan: amazing tool. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of Canva, but um, I’m also a huge fan of people who have spent the time to learn principles of design that, you know, we can only guess at as random people off the street.
Gil: I have a, I have a love hate with Canva. Um, there’s certain
Susan: I have a love. I love Canva. Love, love, love it. I will say I have one more piece of advice about sort of creating your brand identity and that is that figuring out what you don’t like can sometimes be as instructive as figuring out what you do like. So going through the process of saying like, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, can really help a branding.
Susan: Um. Consultant or expert help you narrow down what it is that you do like.
Gil: Yeah. I, I like that. Yeah. For, for me, like I had. Been bred in the Adobe world, and now I’m using Figma more. And I find that sometimes in Canva I’m a little bit too restricted. Like they’re, they’re trying to be very opinionated on how things should be represented and how it can manipulate things. But I know many members of my team, they do fantastic work in Canva that they, they, they don’t, they weren’t bred in some of these other kind of prosumer tools.
Susan: And the thing is, for 99.9% of people out in the world, you don’t need the flexibility that you can get. You know what I mean? Like you’re trying to make a little graphic to put with your LinkedIn post. You’re not like saving the world with a piece of design here. You know what I mean?
Gil: yeah, yeah. You’re right on that one. Um, before the show, before we started recording, we started talking a little bit about the differences between. Hotels and STRs, and I wish we were recording them, but we did cut ourselves off in the topic once we got a little too far. Uh, but I want to pick up the conversation there.
Gil: The, what we were talking about was really how the hotel industry has matured over the decades and has a lot of tools in place, but at the same and in contrast, short term rentals is still in its infancy days. But from a technology perspective, there comes like pros and cons where because of tools that have been built for hos, like on the hotel side of the world, it’s a lot slower to adopt, adopt new things.
Gil: Whereas short term rentals, it’s quite the opposite. I wanna, yeah, I wanna replay that conversation a little bit and, and.
Susan: There’s a couple things there because it’s funny when you talk to um, STR people, at least when I do, a lot of times they’re like, oh, hotels are so far ahead of us, or, you know, they have this and that and whatever. And I’m like, uh. It feels the opposite to me. It feels like STR are ahead of hotels, but what it is is that STR technology is not built on the backs of a bunch of dinosaurs.
Susan: And so while it may have taken a minute for something like crafted stays to come into the market. When you come, you’re coming clean without having to be built on a bunch of rickety architecture that doesn’t work and is utter nonsense. There are still so many hotel systems that are on premise, for example, that you’re spending a million, trillion, zillion dollars.
Susan: I mean, I don’t think anyone’s making new ones, but there’s plenty that are still out there, so. You know, from that perspective, the short term rental industry is significantly far ahead. There’s something else too. I wanna get your opinion about this because I find this subject fascinating and I’m interested in what you think about it on the STR side.
Susan: So one of the things that I, one a truth that I hold to be self-evident about the hotel business is that it is an apprenticeship business, meaning. You can get all the degrees in the whole wide world, but hotel people will not trust you until you’ve worked in a hotel. So you can have a master’s degree in hotel management, but if you haven’t ever worked on property, no one will hire you because they don’t trust you. Uh, there are some great prose to that and there are some big cons to that. So the pros are like, there’s such a thing of tradition and all these interesting stories that get passed down and, you know, certain ways of doing things and like this kind of old world, mannerly, hospitality, you know, all that prose.
Susan: The cons are a, the technology thing that we just talked about. Like what do you mean Facebook? Because the person didn’t have Facebook when they were coming up. So they’re like, what are you talking about? Why would we need to have this new now? Can you imagine? Now if I was like, hi, I am selling Facebook, people would be like, Facebook, who?
Susan: That’s for my grandparent. I mean, you know. Um, but also there is I think a desire for. On the hotel side, a desire to put your head in the sand about new threats or new things. I mean, four years. I wrote, the first article I ever wrote about Airbnb and STR was in 2011, and it was when I was hearing all of these hotels say like, oh, that’s a different customer.
Susan: That’s not a threat to our occupancy. That’s a completely different customer. Are you kidding me? Gimme a break. So all of this babble gets to a point I promise, which is how much do you think apprenticeship plays a role on the short-term rental side? And is there, are there pros and cons to that?
Gil: I almost think it doesn’t play much of a role at all. Yeah, I, so I, I. Uh, I’ve had the luxury of working with hosts that have started with just a few doors and maybe their, their own, their own properties there, and then they ma migrated into property management and they’re growing their portfolio. We’ve have, I, if, if I look back at my numbers, we actually have a large base of customers that have started.
Gil: With our subscription with just a few properties, and I’ve seen their accounts grow over time there, so I know that they’re, they’re, they’re growing, um, by and large. And the nice thing that I see is that when I talk to talk to some of these, these homeowners over time is that they all come from many, many different industries. Everybody, well, not everybody, but a lot of folks get into the game because they’re trying to get financial freedom. They’re trying to invest into short-term rentals, and they may get into investing, but they still have a W2 job. They come from different industries. Maybe they work from home. Um, and because of that, they come from many different backgrounds.
Gil: You have folks that come from construction, you have folks that come from nursing. You have folks that come from. Digital marketing and each one of them comes, comes from very different skill sets that I think that, that has caused this industry to evolve so quickly. Like I look at some of the tech founders that we work like that alongside of me and like myself.
Gil: I come from the tech world. I, I, I saw this problem here. I come from e-commerce previously, and that’s kind of like the origin of creating crafted days. I. Probably wouldn’t have been successful at creating crafted stays had I not had the diverse background that I have, that I had behind me. And I think that’s, that goes with a lot of other service providers in the industry, whether or not that’s in the tech space, but also in the insurance space.
Gil: In the amenity space, the upsells, like there’s a lot of different services that have grown really, really fast, and it’s because hosts have gotten into this with their own backgrounds. And they are trying to service themselves and eventually find out that there’s a bigger need in the market there.
Susan: I think you’re absolutely right and that, you know, that’s abs, that’s a hundred percent an issue in the hotel side where we’re very suspicious of people from outside. What I wonder though, is if there is a detriment that. STR folks sometimes have to learn things the hard way, like things that seem obvious to hoteliers.
Susan: You’re like, oh, I shouldn’t le leave a list of 25 pages worth of rules about how they’re gonna get in trouble, or, do you know what I
Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think there’s pros and cons about that. Like, I, I, I think that like, because you have so much of these, like entrepreneurs, these solo starters out there. They learn really fast. Like you wouldn’t go into this and have a successful business if you are not constantly iterating. So even though they’re learning possibly bad habits or things that could be done better, they learn pretty quickly on how to adjust things. And I think that, I don’t know how this is in the hotel industry, but specifically in short term rentals, it’s a very collaborative community. You have people that are sharing space in the same market. And there’s these big Facebook groups that talk about how the occupancy is and what, what things are going well and what we’re seeing there.
Gil: And these are all, like, if you look at it, they’re all competitors to each
Susan: Mm-hmm.
Gil: but culturally, we don’t think of each other as
Susan: That’s really interesting.
Gil: Yeah. I I, I don’t know if that exists in the hotel space, but my
Susan: doesn’t, and I, I mean it to, it does to a certain degree, but, um, there are some barriers to having it be that way. One of which is, um, there are laws about price fixing, so you can’t really talk about that kind of stuff with your competitors. But number two, hotels are financed based on projected performance against competitors, whereas people are buying.
Susan: Investment properties based on the perceived value of that individual property. So there’s a whole different ecosphere of how you can work with your competitors for sure.
Gil: Yeah. And I, I, I think even some of the larger property managers that may have even 50 doors in a single market, um, they’re on those same Facebook groups and I’ve seen them collaborate, even, even, even that space. So it’s not just smaller operators, but I think just collectively it’s, I don’t know. I, I see the same thing in also e-commerce.
Gil: Um, in e-commerce there’s a lot of tools. There’s, from the technology side, there’s a lot of tools that have advanced over the years, uh, similar to how, what we’re seeing in the SDR space probably. Order magnitude even deeper because it’s such a big, big market on that side. But there’s all these influencers that talk about how to improve your e-commerce business, how to build a brand, the tools to use, and it’s very similar to what I’m seeing in the short term rental space there. Yeah, and I don’t know if there’s like a hotel synonymous version on, on the e-commerce or commerce side of things. Maybe, maybe large, maybe large enterprise brands. That might be the space there. But from like an individual brand perspective, it’s very similar to short term rentals, like the Shopify type of users there, they’re all individual brands that have been created from self-starters and they have a very sharing mentality in that industry as well too.
Susan: Interesting.
Gil: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a very interesting topic and I. did not expect the hotel industry to be that different from the short term rental industry to be quite honest. And I, I’m, I’m glad you’re actually shedding light into it and opening up my eyes on it. Like when you were
Susan: there’s some, some differences and some similarities, but you know, I think, um, I think hotels are better at systems. I think hotels are better at systematized hospitality. So like. This is what we do when this happens. This is what we do when this happens, because a hotels have been around many, many, many more moons.
Susan: But B, you’re doing things on such a bigger scale that the learning is quicker, the iteration is quicker because you’ve got 300 rooms versus one guest or one family.
Gil: Yeah, I think that that’s probably the, the biggest difference there is even like on the short term rental side, unless you have enough scale in a particular market, it’s hard for you to build a systems. Whereas in the hotel space. You have many, many keys in a very centralized area where you have one staffing that you can really start to figure out like, okay, if we change the operations this way, if we fix this type of this problem here, it has massive impact there.
Gil: Whereas on the short term rental side, it’s a lot more. Fragmented in terms of how to put those systems in place, because if you’re in two or three different markets, you have, you have local managers for each one of those different markets. You might have different processes that might work. You have different cleaning teams that you have to manage there.
Gil: So it’s, it makes it a lot harder when you do it well. It, it really helps streamline things, but I think it’s a lot harder for the short term rental side than say, a hotel when you’re working with one set of keys, with one set of staff and can build that system kind of in that really focused
Susan: I mean, there’s, there’s two sides to that same coin though, because think about the idea that if your entire housekeeping team gets the flu. What do you do in a hotel? Whereas you’ve got multiple teams in different cities across your portfolio of properties. One isn’t that big of a, it’s hurts one room night.
Susan: You know what I mean? It’s a little bit of both, I would
Gil: Yeah. I’m not saying that one is, that one is better than than the other, but I think that they’re, they all comes with its own challenges.
Susan: Yeah, exactly. They’re both the same. This is one that I think is starting to get better, but a big, another big difference between hotels and STR is just decor and design. And I don’t mean quality, although sometimes I would say that’s probably true, but the mindset of how you approach decor and design. So in hotels, there are entire.
Susan: Factories that make textiles that are intended for, you know, durability, high traffic, et cetera. Whereas many sts that I’ve stayed in, this is like furniture that is discarded from the owner’s house.
Gil: Yep. Yeah, and I think that that’s where short-term rentals is starting to. Mature a bit more. There are, yeah, it’s getting better. There’s service providers now like in haven that that focuses really on just like replenishment of textiles there, where many years back, folks were just going on Amazon and buying consumer products and putting into into homes, which can work.
Gil: But you’re having to replace those linens much more often. They’re probably not as high quality as something that you would get from a hotel. Um, so I, I think that the short term rental industry. Is evolving, it’s evolving really quickly, and it’s adapting to some of those inefficiencies from short-term rentals.
Gil: I, I would say like short-term rentals by and large, is a very inefficient industry right now. It’s very, very inefficient. I think the, the, probably the biggest concern that I have is more on the standards and regulations side, where in the hotel in industry, my guess is that there’s. Really strong structures and in place when you launch a hotel, those things don’t
Susan: lots and less and less of laws.
Gil: lot.
Gil: Yes. And that stuff does not exist for, for the most part in the short term rental side of things. And I’m one actually that’s pro regulation to be quite honest. Mainly because what I don’t want to do is invest into. Markets that don’t have regulations in place, and then find out that the county switches the way that they, they perceive or look into things.
Gil: And I’d much rather invest into an area for a long term and know that the county has put structures in place to make sure that we’re
Susan: all the boxes.
Gil: like just yesterday we had the fire department visit our short term rental. Yes, it’s a burden that I have to do every single year, but. He’s telling me things that I should be making sure that we, we have replenishments of and having our evacuation, uh, like in, in clearer places.
Gil: Like those are things that we should be having in our properties because we are having folks in our homes that aren’t familiar with the layout of how to get around, not just our complex, but around our area as well too. Um, and I think that that’s, that’s where the short term rental side has probably the biggest gap is on the regulations and standardization of side of things.
Susan: Makes sense.
Gil: Yeah. Um, Susan, we usually end the show with three questions.
Susan: Okay.
Gil: First question is, I’m a big reader. I wish I had more time to read, but I’m constantly looking for that next book. Um, and I’ll consume it in many different ways so you can tell me to listen to it or read it on Kindle or whatever, but what is a, what is a good book recommendation for me?
Susan: Well, I feel like I have to say the Derek Sives book because we talked about it earlier. So he has several sort of short. Pieces. I think they are all derived from his blog, but the book that I recommend is called Anything You Want by Derek s Siver. So highly recommend for me, it was very reassuring to know that I am not alone in wanting to do inefficient or un monetized activities just for the glory of doing them.
Gil: I love that. I, I don’t know, when I read that book, it’s probably going to probably about six years ago because I don’t, that story is not fresh in my mind, but CD baby, when you mentioned that, like it brought me back to like before starting the company, so I might have
Susan: I am gonna tell you two more then since you’ve already read that one. The first is a book called Hotel Kid. I cannot remember the name of the author off the top of my head. I think it’s Steven Wolf, but don’t be mad if I got that wrong. Um. This book is about growing up as the son of a hotel general manager at a huge hotel in Times Square, New York City in the forties.
Susan: It is the most charming and fascinating book and it when, you know, when I talk about the hotel business being an apprenticeship business, it’s very interesting to read that and trace. Things that still happen in hotels today to things that he talks about as happening at this hotel in the 1940s. So highly recommend that.
Susan: And then the other one, since we’re talking about hospitality, is a book called Ritz and Esca. And this is about Caesar Ritz and Chef Esca, whose first name escapes me now, and how they started the Ritz brand in London, Paris. Maybe one other city in Europe. Um, it is very surprising. And the one little tidbit I’ll give you about this book is that.
Susan: The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company has a state a saying that is very famous across the industry, ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen. And I think a most people hear that and perceive that to mean that we are on our best behavior. And we are trying to emulate these fancy people that we’re taking care of when in fact Caesar Ritz meant by that, that there is dignity in the work of service just as much as there is dignity in the work of being a guest or the role of being a guest.
Susan: So highly recommend that book. So many cool things to again, sort of trace back over time and it’s fascinating story.
Gil: I, I think one of the things that I’m picking up, and I, maybe I had my blinders on for the last few years in the short term rental side, is How much more I wanna learn from other adjacent industries. Um, because when I think about hospitality, I, I, I specifically narrowed that search down to short term rentals.
Gil: And I think that there’s other, other adjacent sub-industries that. For me, I have a lot to learn from, and it’s not just like the hotels, but the cruise lines, the restaurants and, and all of that. It’s all in service of others there too, because I, I just think that each industry, yes, it has its quirks, but also has also a lot of story about why it is the way it is, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah. So.
Susan: Totally. I also believe that hotels and STRs will merge into one lodging industry ultimately. So might as well learn about hotels while you can, so you can, uh, know everything that we know.
Gil: I think so, I think so e especially as standards starts to increase, um, o over the industry
Susan: Hmm.
Gil: and consolidation starts to happen, I, I definitely think that over the years that we’ll start to see then, even now on from a, from an infrastructure platform level, we’ve seen. OTAs that were primarily hotel focused now entering and allowing short-term rentals to be listed and vice versa, Airbnb doing the same and allowing hotels to be listed on what was previously just a short-term rental platform.
Gil: So,
Susan: Well, their purchase of hotel tonight was the first shot across the bow, as it were.
Gil: so I, I definitely see that there is gonna be a consolidation. So I, I agree with you. You better learn about it sooner rather than later.
Susan: yeah.
Gil: Um, second question I have for you, Susan. What’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?
Susan: Do whatever you want. You can do it any way you want.
Gil: I love that. I love that.
Susan: I made an awkward pause on purpose, but what I’m getting to here, you know, when I first started my company, it was right as the financial crisis was blossoming. Okay? And tons and tons and tons of very big titled people in the hotel industry. Were being laid off and losing their jobs and starting companies and starting consultancies just as I was.
Susan: And I had such a chip on my shoulder about the idea that all of these people had been like senior vice presidents and had these big careers and big titles, and I’m like, how can I compete with them? I’m just a lowly director of sales and marketing. Who cares? Who cares. I wasted so much time worrying that I wasn’t qualified or wouldn’t be taken seriously, or whatever it was.
Susan: Do whatever you want. Do it the way you want to.
Gil: Yeah, I, I think that entrepreneurship is one of those things that I. Will change you more than anything. Like if I remember back the first year when we started craft as days, I probably grew more as a person in those 12 months than I did probably 10 years prior. In product management, I learned so much about how to start a product from the, from the beginning, how to create the first version of the product that’s sellable, how to market that, how to build a brand, how to start a podcast.
Gil: How to put yourself out there. Like I’ve learned so much and I had to get myself in a very, very uncomfortable spot. It was extremely uncomfortable and I’m still growing. And it’s, it’s, it’s one of the things that kind of pushes you. Um, but the nice thing is that when you start something on your own, you also have the autonomy, like you said earlier, to mold it to how you want to be.
Gil: You’re not, you don’t have someone else to tell you that this is kind of your career path and these are the things that you should be following. Everybody’s different. Everybody has their own skill sets and the things that they really love to do. And when you become an entrepreneur or you take that leave of faith and start something of your own, not just about money, and I think a lot of times it’s best when it’s not about money.
Gil: I think financially crafted stays, at least right now. I would have made much more money and been much more successful had I just stayed at my Silicon Valley job. It wasn’t about the money. It was about seeing that need in the market, feeling like that’s something that I could uniquely address, and creating something from scratch that is way more fulfilling than anything else.
Susan: Mm-hmm.
Gil: Susan, last question for you. We talked a lot about different tactics in direct bookings. What’s one tactical advice that you would give to our listeners today that you want them to put into practice or to start to consider thinking about?
Susan: This is a really hard question because I feel like I’ve ha beaten this horse to death. But pick something and stand for it. Be different from every other option that’s out there, and have confidence and faith that the right folks will find you.
Gil: I love that. I love that. There’s a, there’s a huge sense of like, authenticity and, and, and the way you’re saying it and the message that you’re trying to get across to
Susan: Totally.
Gil: Awesome. Susan, it was a huge pleasure, one getting to know you because I don’t think we’ve had a chance prior to even the prerecording to, to get to know each other.
Gil: Um, but also for you to kind share and shed light on a whole other side of the hospitality industry that I for so long have ignored. Um. And really like you open up my eyes on like really looking at that side of the industry much more intently and the things that I could personally learn from it. So I
Susan: Awesome. I’m glad. Fantastic.
Gil: Well, Susan, I hope you have a good rest of your week and I hope to maybe have you back one day.
Susan: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on.
Gil: Bye.