Short-Term Rental Education and Branding: Building a Media Empire

By / January 29, 2026

“Hospitality is the North Star. If it doesn’t drive back to that, it’s probably not gonna work.”

James Varley went from managing communications for the FIFA World Cup to building one of the fastest-growing educational platforms in the short-term rental space. In this episode of Booked Solid, James opens up about his unconventional path into hosting, the painful lessons he learned rebranding his company, and why consistency beats complexity when building an audience.

Whether you’re a new host wondering where to start or an experienced operator looking to sharpen your direct booking game, this conversation delivers practical wisdom on brand clarity, local marketing tactics, and why the simplest strategies often produce the biggest results. James also shares the QR code tactic that keeps bringing guests back to his properties and why building your email list remains the single most important thing you can do for your business.

Podcast Summary and Highlights

🎙️ Meet James Varley

James Varley is the Founder and CEO of Host Planet, a multimedia educational platform dedicated to helping short-term rental hosts and property managers build successful, sustainable businesses. Before launching Host Planet, James spent over 20 years in media, including a decade leading corporate communications for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 organizing committee.

His journey into hosting began while living overseas in Qatar. Needing a place to stay during UK visits, James purchased his first holiday let—and quickly discovered how underserved the market was when it came to practical, accessible education for operators. That gap became the foundation for Host Planet.

Today, Host Planet produces multiple podcast series, free ebook downloads, blog posts, and social content reaching property managers across more than 90 countries. In 2026, James is taking the show on the road with the Host Planet Roadshow—seven events across the UK designed to bring collaborative, hands-on education directly to operators.

🧭 Why Hospitality Must Remain Your North Star

One theme ran throughout this conversation: the property managers who succeed long-term never lose sight of hospitality.

James put it simply—if your business decisions don’t drive back to delivering an exceptional guest experience, they probably won’t work. Revenue matters. Systems matter. But the operators who thrive are the ones who genuinely care about the people staying in their properties.

This perspective shapes everything from how you define your brand to the way you communicate with guests. As James noted, the property managers reaching 97% direct bookings—like Andy Easton at Beach Retreats—built their success on crystal-clear brand identity and unwavering commitment to guest experience.

🏗️ Building Host Planet: Lessons from the Trenches

James didn’t get everything right from the start. His original company name—Holiday Cottage Handbook—was too long, too niche, and confusing to international audiences. The rebrand to Host Planet came after he realized the industry was global and his platform needed to reflect that.

The lesson applies directly to property managers building their own brands. Getting clear on who you serve and how you want to be perceived matters more than perfecting every detail on day one. Sometimes you have to start accepting direct bookings before everything feels ready—and iterate as you learn.

James also shared his approach to content creation. Rather than chasing trends, he focuses on answering the questions hosts actually have. He uses YouTube search data, explores what people ask large language models, and tracks industry news to ensure every piece of content delivers genuine value.

📢 The Power of Billboarding Your Direct Booking Channel

One of the most practical takeaways from this episode: guests who stay at your property through OTAs need to know you have a direct booking channel.

James uses simple QR code posters inside his rentals. The message is straightforward—book direct and save. It’s not complicated technology or expensive marketing. It’s visibility.

The same principle extends beyond the property itself. James attends local business meetings, connects with chamber of commerce groups, and reaches out to companies in nearby enterprise zones whose workers need temporary accommodation. Word of mouth and local partnerships remain underutilized by most hosts.

If you want to explore this further, our guide on building trust on your direct booking site breaks down how to convert that visibility into actual reservations.

📧 Build Your Email List—Period

When asked for one tactical tip for hosts looking to amplify their direct bookings, James didn’t hesitate: build your email list.

Social platforms change algorithms. OTAs restrict guest contact information. But email remains something you own. Every guest who books through your property represents an opportunity to stay connected, nurture the relationship, and earn repeat business.

This aligns with what we consistently see from successful operators. The hosts who treat their email list as an asset—sending valuable content, seasonal updates, and personalized offers—build businesses that compound over time. Our vacation rental email marketing guide walks through exactly how to structure these campaigns.

🎯 Defining Your Audience (Whether You’re a Host or Building a Platform)

James made an interesting point about audience definition that applies whether you’re running a property management business or building a media platform like Host Planet.

Too many hosts try to appeal to everyone. The result is messaging that resonates with no one. The operators who succeed—and James pointed to Beach Retreats as an example—get incredibly specific about their guest avatar, their property standards, and their geographic focus.

This specificity actually makes marketing easier. When you know exactly who you’re serving, you can write content that speaks directly to their concerns. You can go niche and own a category rather than competing with everyone for generic search terms.

🔁 Consistency Beats Complexity

The conversation kept returning to one theme: success in short-term rentals (and in building any audience) comes from doing simple things consistently over time.

James compared it to investing. You won’t see dramatic results immediately. But week after week, month after month, the content compounds. The email list grows. The relationships deepen. Eventually you look back and realize you’ve built something substantial.

This patience is especially important for direct bookings. Growing your direct booking channel with consistent content isn’t glamorous work. But it’s the work that separates operators who own their business from those who remain dependent on algorithms.

⚡ Rapid Fire with James Varley

📚 Book Recommendation: The Price of Money by Rob Dix. James called it a fascinating look at how money actually works in the global economy—and why understanding these systems helps property investors make smarter decisions.

🧠 Mindset Advice for Starting Something New:

  1. Keep it simple
  2. Always know your target audience and create for them
  3. Stay level—don’t let highs get too high or lows get too low
  4. Prioritize your health and wellbeing (watch out for the “Founder’s 15”)

💡 One Tactical Tip for Direct Bookings: Use QR codes in your properties to let guests know you have a direct booking channel. And above all else—build your email list. It’s the foundation everything else builds upon.

🎧 Listen to the Full Episode

This recap only scratches the surface. James shares more about the Host Planet Roadshow, his journey from World Cup communications to short-term rental education, and why respecting your audience is the most important principle for any content creator.

Ready to build a direct booking website that actually converts? Visit CraftedStays.co to start your free trial and take control of your guest relationships.

Connect with James:

Transcription

James: You know, especially with that property management, uh, if you kind of stick specifically to that, I mean, obviously like we talk to a lot of people who have built industry, you know, software and tools and tech and all that kind of thing. But for the property managers, I think it always has to. Drive back to the North Star, which is hospitality.

James: If, if it doesn’t drive back to that and ensuring that people have a great guest experience. If it’s just about numbers, if, if it’s just about profit and the bottom line, it’s probably not gonna work. But if you genuinely care about the hospitality experience that you’re providing and going out of, you know, going out of your way to deliver an amazing guest experience, then those are the property management businesses that.

James: They’re gonna do the best.

Gil : Before we bring on our guest, I wanted 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 the 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’t 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. That’s why I build CraftedStays. 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 bookings and you can keep on testing and improving.

Gil : 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 crafted estates.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 hospitality, operations and direct bookings. On today’s show, we have James Varley. He’s based in the uk. He hosts several properties of his own. He comes from a deep, deep background in media, and he’s the founder of the host planet.

 Gil: Um, it’s a media company focused on short-term rentals and holiday let education. He has evolved so much throughout the years, and he’s really right now focused on really creating that one hub for short-term rental operators to really know how to really scale very, very effectively. Um, he constantly brings in different vendors onto his show, different sponsors, but really his focus and attention is really around education, and I have a lot of respect for the, the content and the things that he has done for the industry.

 Gil: So on today’s show we talk about how he has evolved the host planet, what it was in the very beginning days, and kind of where he’s focusing attention now. We also talk about his road show and what he’s doing out in the uk. Uh, we also talk about like his ideal customer profile, his ICP. And how he thinks about the entire journey of serving short-term rental operators and how he thinks about the journey and the content that he provides.

 Gil: I, which I think is super relevant around direct bookings. So you get to see a little bit of outside perspective on how entrepreneurs think about building that brand and reaching their audience. And then we also talk about, since he’s a host himself, some of the tactics that he has done in his short term rentals that has worked for him.

 Gil: So without further ado, I would love to bring James in.

Gil Hey James. Welcome to the show.

James: Hey, Gil. Yeah. Pleasure to be here. How are you?

Gil I’m doing good. I’m doing good. It’s a busy start of, of the year. Uh, we’re recording this still in, in in January, but yeah, it’s been, it’s been pretty hectic on, on our side. How, how have you been?

James: Yeah, pretty relentless. I mean, um, I’ve been in, well, I’m, I’m still in Marbella in Spain as we speak. I decided to escape the horrible, freezing cold British winter, so it’s been absolutely lovely to see some blue skies and spend a bit of time working on the beach. Um, my son’s got a favorite park where he can go on the swing, so yeah, lots of, uh, lots of parks and ice cream.

James: It’s been, uh, yeah, it’s been a fun start to the year, but lots of work as well. It’s, it’s definitely been a, a workation as we build up to all the things that we’re doing at House Planet in 2026. It’s gonna be a busy one.

Gil I, I always admire folks that can travel with their kids, and maybe because we, we have our kids in the public school system, they’re pretty rigid on like, the time that we can take off. Like how, how are you managing this with, with the sch, like the school schedules and stuff?

James: Well, at the moment our two boys are three and nearly two. So we’re worried about what happens when they start school because we’re not gonna be able to take these really long trips. ’cause the last few years we’ve, we’ve taken some really long trips. So, like last winter, my, my wife’s from the Philippines, so we spent two and a half months actually in the far East.

James: So we were in Manila most of that time and we had a week in Japan as well. It was pretty cold in Japan, but the rest of the time it was gorgeous weather in Manila. So, um, so yeah. And, and I remember actually a, um, a friend of mine in the industry, uh, Humphrey Bowles, who runs Truvia. He said, escaping the British winter is one of life’s great hacks, and I couldn’t.

James: Agree more.

Gil So is that what you do on a, on an annual basis is that you, you’re not seeing on UK land, uh, for the months of December or January?

James: It is been that case for a long time. Yeah. So I mean, from 2013 to 2023, so for 10 years I lived in Qatar in the, uh, in the Gulf in the Middle East where it’s, it’s hot, it’s sunny every single day, I think out of 365 days, there’s about 325 days of sunshine or, or crazy like that. And whenever people ask me about, do I miss living in Doha, I always say I miss the sunshine.

James: That’s what I miss because, uh, in the UK especially when you get into wintertime, it’s dark by about 3 45 and it’s kind of depressing. So yeah, if I can, if I can get out and, um, and enjoy a bit of sunshine in the winter, then I’ll, I’m gonna take that chance while, uh, while the two boys are, uh, are not at school.

Gil Yeah, I, I, I admire all the folks in, uh, we’ve had a bunch of folks in the shortterm rental industry that have their kids homeschooled. I kind of leading up to, prior to like starting entrepreneurship and starting the company, homeschool is not as prevalent, but now I’m seeing it more and more and I, I follow some of the, the, the, the field people in our industry and they’re homeschooling.

Gil I’m like, how are you doing that? Like, I would not be able to juggle a business, have the kids at home. I, I, I commend those that are, are doing that.

James: Yeah, I, I really commend them as well. I mean, yeah. Goodness me, I, I couldn’t do it. I mean, if the kids were. Homeschooled that, that somebody else would have to be, be doing the schooling without a shadow of a doubt. Um, a a as nice as that sounds. Yeah. I mean, it does sound nice to be able to, to still have that freedom to travel if, if this kid’s schooling is taken care of.

James: But at the same time, I think there’s a lot to be gained by being in that social environment and being actually going to school and being around other kids and, and all that kind of thing. So yeah, as much as I kind of think, well, the homeschooling would kind of suit my lifestyle, I’m not sure it’s the best thing for the kids, but each to their own and, and I’m sure there are lots of advantages and disadvantages of, of, of anything that people choose.

Gil Yeah, kudos to you for, uh. While the kids are still not yet in the, in the school system, um, or school age, that you’re able to travel the world and bring them along with it. And so they’ll, they’ll create bunches of memories, uh, even before, before they step, step into a, a classroom or need to step into a classroom.

James: Yeah, we, we, we were talking about this actually, I, I said, I said to my, I said to my wife the other day, now our, our eldest son, um, so jj, he’s, he was born in Doha. He’s been to the Philippines, he’s been to Japan, he’s been to Spain. He is obviously lives in the uk. So yeah, he’s got a lot of traveling under his belt that he’ll never remember actually, but, so yeah, there we go.

Gil where did you, where did you go in Japan?

James: We, yeah, we, we had a week in Tokyo. Oh no, not a week. It was a, it was a few days. We had a week there overall, a week, about eight days, something like that. Half the time was in Tokyo, and half the time was in Osaka.

Gil Where did you stay when you were in Tokyo? I’m, we’re, we’re planning our trip like right now, and we booked everything. We booked our, our flights and we’re trying to figure out like, okay, what’s, what are the hot neighborhoods? And I’ve spent way too much time with chat GPT and, and, and perplexity, but we can talk about that separately.

Gil But like where from a, from a personal, like a human, what would you recommend?

James: Do you know what I, I will have to check because I can’t remember the exact name of the, of the regions, um, in Tokyo and even Osaka of where we stayed, but what I do know, what I do know, but I can, I can, I can send you a link to where we stayed. Um, but yeah, we, we, we were in some accommodation there and it was actually, it was pretty cheap because the, I think the, the dollar’s really strong against the Japanese yen, so the accommodation there, even eating out.

James: ’cause I’d been warned that Japan’s really, really expensive. But when we went, actually it was very, very reasonable and, and it was so easy to get around as well. So I think you can stay in a lot of places across Tokyo and, and it’s, you know, the public transport system does fantastic. So, yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun.

James: I highly recommend it and I, I keep saying to my wife, really wanna go back to Japan? So, yeah, hopefully soon.

Gil I, I’m, I’m looking forward to it. Um, alright, James, we, we went into like the personal side quite a bit, but, um, I wanna step back and kind of help introduce you properly and, and, uh, give a sense, uh, to our listeners here who, who James is. So, if you don’t mind, can you, uh, give a brief introduction on who you are?

James: Sure. So yeah, I’m James Varley. Um, I’m the founder and CEO of Host Planet. So Host Planet is a multimedia educational platform, all about short term rentals. So we share lots of free education across our channels. Uh, we have many podcast series, uh, free ebook downloads. Blog posts. Um, we’re very active on social media, uh, and also we’re organizing a series of events as well.

James: So, um, uh, probably by the time this comes out, we will have hosted the first leg of our host Planet Roadshow, which is gonna be seven events across the UK throughout 2026, starting in new in Cornwall on the 5th of February. So I’ll be flying back to the UK on the first of Feb, and then I’ll have a couple of days at home, and then I’ll be straight down to Cornwall for the first roadshow event.

James: So yeah, we’re, we’re all about helping short term rental house property managers, vacation rental house property managers to build, uh, successful and sustainable businesses. Buy sharing, like I said, lots of free education, tips, trends, and lots of stuff from, from experts like you, of course GI who, who we recorded with recently on our podcast.

James: Um, and yeah, it’s, it is all about helping host and property managers. That’s, that’s what the platform’s all about.

Gil Yeah, and you. You come from hospitality as well too. You were a property manager, host yourself even prior to Host planet is is that right?

James: Yeah, so my, my background is all media related mainly. So I started out. 20 or just over 20 years ago, um, working for newspapers. I was a reporter for several kind of like local regional newspapers in the north of England. Um, then I spent some time working in tv, radio. I worked for a football club for a while working for their club TV channel.

James: Um, and then like I said, I moved over to Qatar. So in Qatar. Uh, for most of my time there I was managing corporate communications for the, uh, FIFA World Cup, uh, local organizing committee based in Doha. Um, so yeah, I, I’ve got lots of, lots of experience across the media. Um, and yeah, I, I started investing in, in holiday lets, I, I bought my first holiday let, because I needed a place to stay in the UK when I was visiting from Qatar.

James: That, that’s, that was the main reason I wanted a pad of my own. Um, and of course, like with a long term rental, it’s not like I can kick tenants out when I want to come back, but I knew with a, with a holiday let, with a short term rental, I could block the times that I wanted to use it. So that’s why I got involved in it.

James: And then when I had one property, I then got another property and slowly but surely I realized there’s a lot more to the industry. Than just having a property and putting it on Airbnb. Um, and I could see the pain of a lot of people in a similar position where they’ve, they’ve ended up with a property for one reason or another.

James: Either they, they want to invest, um, it’s, you know, they’ve inherited a property or somehow they’ve ended up managing something. Often it’s quite strange and organic, how people get involved in short term rentals. O often it’s not by design. Um, and I could see people having problems over and over again.

James: You look in Facebook groups, people are asking the same question every single day. You know, where do I list, you know, what price do I charge? Um, how much should I pay a cleaner? Uh, should I allow pets, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I could see this over and over again. And I thought there needs to be a really helpful media platform that can help all these short term rental house and property managers out there.

James: And I thought if I, if I can build something with my media background, uh, which is helpful and engaging, then. I and also free, then that will build an audience. It will build an ecosystem, and then there’ll be other companies in the industry that want to get in front of that audience and they’ll want to sponsor what we do.

James: So that’s, that was the, the idea behind the business originally.

Gil Wow. The one thing I always appreciate and admire about our industry is. How organically it’s, it’s grown or has grown there. If you look at all the different services that pop up, the ones that are doing really well are rooted with them bringing in their background into the business. And least here in the United States, I see people from the medical industry, from um, being in, being a police officer, being many different backgrounds, very, very diverse backgrounds.

Gil It’s not like people buying short term rentals always come from this sort of sector. Um, but they all, for one way or another, they decide to start in short term rentals. And the nice thing about that is that our community has been very sharing. Which I’m not used to seeing in other industries. I don’t see the same thing quite in, in, in e-commerce.

Gil I don’t, where I’m part of in the tech space is not as, as, as sherry as this one, but like, I feel like there’s a lot of comradery. Um, a lot of people are trying to help them, even if they’re in the same market. Um, these Facebook groups, there’s like these small little micro Facebook groups, or actually they’re not that micro, but they’re very like market specific.

Gil And people will share the revenue numbers, how they’re doing when the slow months are. Um, they’ll share their cleaner contacts, like it’s a very open industry. Um, but what’s also nice is that some people get really, really into it and they may end up growing their portfolio and they become property managers and some find some some other path and then they end up taking their prior experience. Um, they take their hosting and they end up creating something. Very fresh. Like we have VA agencies, um, that were created specifically for our market. There are software companies that they were trying to solve their own problems and they end up using AI for messaging. And that ended up becoming a product of its own.

Gil Like that’s one thing that I find very inspiring about our industry is like, yes, the properties ends up becoming an investment, but I, I see that ends up becoming a gateway to other services. I don’t know if you observe the same on your side when, when you talk to other, other leaders in the industry.

James: Very much so. Yeah, I think there is a real camaraderie and yeah, I mean, I was nodding along with everything you were saying really. I think quite often what I found is that the vast majority of people, especially founders in the industry, either they’ve been owning and managing their own rentals or they’ve gone along as a guest, they found a problem and their business is trying to deliver a solution for that problem.

James: And, and host planet is very much in, in the same wheelhouse as that. And, and there is a massive it, it is a wonderful industry to be a part of because people do share. They are helpful because I think. Because every, because it’s so new and pretty much every, if you’ve been in business here in short term rentals for more than about five years, you’re basically a veteran.

James: ’cause everybody’s like a startup. Everybody’s been going for a couple of years and I think everybody really understands and they get the hustle. They know how tough it is. And everybody was there very, very recently. So that’s why there’s such a willingness, I think, to help other people. Um, and, and I think we all know deep down that it’s helping to drive the industry forward as well.

James: ’cause all, all these companies that fly up every single week, every single month, they might not all last, but they’re all helping to kind of drive things forward and to get people thinking in a different mindset. And they’re all kind of pushing the needle a little bit for, for short term rentals. And that’s gonna help us kind of wherever we are in the world.

James: So yeah, I think it’s, it’s a great industry. It’s, it’s a fun industry. People are fantastic. And you know, for me, coming from a very corporate place, when I was employed on the World Cup for, for nearly 10 years. Very corporate, very straight laced to come to this industry, which frankly is a lot more fun and a lot more collaborative.

James: Um, and yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s much more of a pleasure to be part of this than, uh, than, uh, some things that I did before.

Gil Yeah, I mean for, for me, uh, it was almost a nice transition. ’cause I come from the startup world where we take pretty big risk. We invest pretty heavily, we build out teams. Like it felt very natural to become a host. I was like, okay. Like it’s, it’s very much as like being part of a, a small team and, and kind of building it up there.

Gil So, and I think, you mentioned something very interesting, sorry for folks listening to, in the car, I had to hear me cough. But, um, you mentioned something interesting about like, why it might be, and I think, I think I’ve always tried to figure out like why our industry is so collaborative. And I think it come, comes down to what you said.

Gil It’s, it’s the folks that get into this and are good and invested into it are the entrepreneurs. And not everybody lasts. Like a lot of people I’ve seen, uh, even in the groups that started with with me in the early days of the pandemic and they bought properties. A lot of them at this point, they’re like, this is not for me.

Gil And, and, and, and, and they’re, and they’re getting out. They, they, they have no interest of buying anymore rentals. They’re trying to offboard it to property managers to take them on. I’m seeing that a lot now. Or they’re selling off their assets altogether. Um, but the folks that are still in it, still enjoy it, still buying properties.

Gil Those are like the entrepreneurs in the industry and they might grow their portfolio, but it’s that entrepreneurial spirit. And I think that entrepreneurs, they tend to be folks that support each other. Um, because entrepreneurship is a very, very challenging place. You’re learning a bunch of new things, you’re starting things on your own, and you come up with a lot of challenges.

Gil Uh, and I think that that is probably why the industry is so collaborative there. It’s, it’s, it’s almost like, um, this mini bred community of entrepreneurs that all wanna try to help each other and succeed on their own as well too.

James: Definitely, I think we’re all trying to succeed as an industry and I saw, uh, Steve Schwab on stage recently and one of his biggest pieces of advice was to go and talk to your competitors. Um, and I thought that was great, brilliant advice because by talking to your competitors. You’re gonna help each other and you’re gonna drive the industry forward, and, um, you’re probably gonna build a better business by, you know, making those, making those relationships.

James: So, yeah, I think, I think that’s, that’s, that’s vital and it’s helpful. And yeah, like I said, you know, I think everybody’s kind of been in, in the same boat and, and you know, especially with that property management, you kind of stick specifically to that. I mean, obviously like we talk to a lot of people who have built industry, you know, software and tools and tech and all that kind of thing.

James: But for, for the property managers, I think it always has to drive back to the North Star, which is hospitality. It, if, if it doesn’t drive back to that and ensuring that people have a great guest experience, if it’s just about numbers, if, if it’s just about profit and the bottom line, it’s probably not gonna work.

James: But if you genuinely care about the hospitality experience that you’re providing and going out of, you know, going out of your way to deliver an amazing guest experience, then those are the property management businesses that. They’re gonna do the best.

Gil Yeah. And I, I feel like that that’s almost like that reset that happens pr pretty often for a lot of folks. They may get into it, they scale and then they realize like they lost a bit of the hospitality. They end up, the good ones actually end up rewinding back and, and, and doing it. And, and it’s almost like this balance where you, you have to focus on like how do you build a sustainable business, but also really make sure that you’re delivering on that hospitality experience there.

Gil And I, I think you’re right, like the folks that do really well, especially on the, on the direct booking side. The folks that I’ve seen that do really well in direct bookings are usually the host, almost always the host that has that five star. Like they, they think about the five star experience. They are really trying to make sure that the guests that are staying with them are having a good experience.

Gil That we tailored and we anticipate what they’re looking for when they’re staying with us, because we want them to come back. We want them to refer. We want, and I think like, and even on like the copy on the website, like the things that we talk about, the, the pages that people create, the answers that people try to get ahead of, the people that really think about the whole entire journey of a stay are typically, again, like the ones that do phenomenally well.

James: Yeah. And, and there are so many great property management businesses out there that purposely stick at a number that they’re happy with and they, they know that their business is set up to, is optimized to have a hundred rentals, 120 rentals, 200, whatever it is. Um, and they stay there because they know that works for them.

James: They know that they can deliver outstanding for that number of properties with the staff they have, with the systems they have. And, and I think being deliberate about it is, is a, is a good way to be because Yeah, the, the ones that, the ones that you see scaling all costs tend to be the ones that burn out pretty quickly.

James: Um, or they have to row back.

Gil Yeah, I, I, I see it probably more often now that people are saying like, I’m trying to shave off a portion of my portfolio that isn’t serving me. Whether or not it’s the right type of property, it’s the right type of owner, whatever it is, but it’s not delivering on the experience that they want because.

Gil One, it impacts the guest experience, but two, it also impacts their team. Like a team doesn’t want to be working with properties that are ill maintained, um, that is not delivering on like the, the, the guest experience that they wanna offer there. So like I, I tend to find like one, the hospitality bar has been raising over the last few years, um, and that the strong property managers are trying to uphold themselves to that high bar.

Gil And in the beginning you kind of pick and choose, like you, or you kind of take what you can get. Like there’s a new property manager that’s trying to grow your management portfolio. Oftentimes you’ll take whatever leads in and then over time you start to like figure out, oh, I actually wanna go down this path.

Gil I wanna be in this particular market. I wanna be known for these types of things. And yeah, I, that ends up working on many, many angles.

James: And I, and I think that’s that kind of like, oh, we’ll take anything. I just think that’s a huge mistake. I think, you know, for the, for the business and all. Definitely for direct bookings as well. I mean, I’ve, I’ve interviewed a few times and actually worked, we’re partnering with a company called Beach Retreats, um, based in Cornwall, um, run by great guy Andy Easton, and he’s got, I think there’s about 240 odd rentals.

James: Um, and they were very, very specific from day one about the type of properties that they want to, to work with. It had to be within walking distance of a beach. It had to be, it had to photograph really well, it had to be close to a amenities. Um, it had to tick all these boxes. So, and it got a point where Beach retreats became this really exclusive club that owners want to be a part of because they’re rejecting more than 50% of the people that want to actually work with them.

James: Um, and also like their brand very, very clear from day one. You know, you are here, you are gonna, um, book our rentals because you want to come to Cornwall, you want to have an experience. You’re going surfing, you’re coming with a group, you want to walk to the beach, et cetera. And he, he built it to the stage where they’re 97% direct bookings.

James: And,

Gil Wow.

James: yeah, you, you should, you should definitely talk to Andy on your show.

Gil Yeah. I may ask you for an, for an intro and, and, and have, have him share kind of his learnings along the way. Um, yeah, that, that, that’s, that’s a phenomenal rate. Um, that’s, that’s a really killer rate. I think a lot of folks are, are, are even like trying to figure. After, kind of like building out the website, how did they get to that 65, 70% direct bookings and it, it takes some time to get there.

Gil I would love to kind of hear from him like that journey and what he invested in early on, because I find that like a lot of folks have different tactics on how they really amplify their direct bookings. And it’s the one that are consistent at one or two different tactics are usually the ones that do really, really well.

Gil Um, when you become a big property manager and you have different team members, you maybe can, can diversify into many different tactics there. But when you’re, when you’re a smaller property manager, oftentimes just the consistency alone goes a phenomenal way.

James: Yeah, I mean, I think in, in his case from memory, and obviously you’re better speaking to him, but I’m, I’m pretty sure he started out in marketing. Um, he was a specialist in SEO very early on when SEO kind of became a thing in people’s lives. Um, and I think, you know, as he’s told us on our podcast a few times, it’s, it’s hard work and it’s a lot of different moving parts and a lot of different tactics.

James: It’s not, you know, there’s not one or two tactics that suddenly are gonna get you to 97%. It’s a lot of different things doing them very, very consistently over a long period of time and doing them very well. And, um, but I think, you know, having that really clear guest avatar. Owner Avatar and Property Avatar.

James: They were abso, they absolutely nailed that from the start. And, and I think, um, they’re, they’re a brilliant example to anybody I think, starting a property management business. And they were recently, uh, recently acquired by, uh, travel Chapter, which is one of the biggest property management companies in the uk.

James: So, uh, so Andy, yeah, he’s, uh, I think he’ll be staying with them for a, for another few months or so, but, uh, but yeah, just a, just a, just a brilliant business and, and like highly respected, uh, in the uk.

Gil Yeah, and I think that, that, that’s just slight tangent there on the acquisition side of it. Um, I hear over and over again from folks that have sold or prepare preparing to sold. Like Isaac French talks about this quite a bit. It was like, it’s because he invested very early on in direct bookings and he has, I forgot what the rate is, but it’s, it’s.

Gil North of 60, 70% direct bookings, if not more. Because of that, he had a very sustainable business so that when he was looking to sell his portfolio, it wasn’t just the physical assets of the buildings and the lands and the lake that he built, but it’s also the book of Business and Repeatable business and the, all the SOPs that kind of go along the way.

Gil He basically built that engine that continues to bring revenue in there. If you look at that type of business versus like someone that may have the same assets, the same land, the same buildings, and then they’re relying on the OTAs from just a valuation standpoint. There’s a very, very big difference on, on that.

Gil Um, um, so I think he ended up saying that like, because of his direct booking business, he ended up adding another, at least 2 million to the valuation of, of the sale there. So it makes a huge difference on, on it. Like, and like as, as, as an owner operator. You just also sleep better knowing that like you won’t get displaced if the algorithm changes in any way.

James: Very much so. And, um, you know, he’s not building his business on someone else’s land. It’s as simple as that. You know, you’re building your own foundations. Um, yeah, and like, you know, if you can be like Andy or Isaac and have a very high percentage of direct bookings, but also as you mentioned there, get your, you know, your standard operating procedures.

James: If you get them right from the start, you’re just like, you’re just laying fantastic foundations, which are gonna put you in a brilliant position because if you don’t do this stuff and you kind of wing it and you just take on any property and your marketing’s all over the place, and you do a bit of SEO and a bit of this, but there’s no real kind of plan, it, it’ll catch up with you later on.

James: Especially if you eventually get to that stage where you want to, you want to sell the business, you want to get acquired because all this will come out in, in due diligence. And, and if you don’t have your systems in place, due diligence is probably not gonna be much fun.

Gil Yeah, and I think that’s a, like a, from an entrepreneurial side of things, like you only have X amount of resources. There’s only x amount of dollars that you can spend or invest into. There’s only x amount of time and hours that you have in your day. And the kind of the, the advice I would give to hosts that are just kind of getting started or property manager getting started, there’s not to try to do everything all at once and don’t try to do ads on social media and, and all of those things all at once.

Gil Invest pretty heavily in, I would say the foundations first and then start to layer on, on top of that. So there’s almost like a phasing that folks should think about. And I think the first phase that often gets skipped. Way too often is like the, the branding, the knowing what your values are, knowing how you show up to your, to your guests, knowing what you want to be known for, what your portfolio should look like.

Gil That whole side of like branding, often people like completely hop over that and ironically, they spend a lot of time thinking about those things. If they’re furnishing their property, when they’re designing their place, they’re very like diligent at saying, okay, we are trying to attract this type of guest and we’re trying to monetize it this way.

Gil But when it comes down to building out their direct booking engine, they often like take the easiest path there. And that’s, I, I think like the first failure that I see probably more often than, than, than I would like to, to see it. So like I would encourage folks like to really get really clear at who you’re trying to attract in there.

Gil How do you build your portfolio around it? And it might. Cause you to sell off or get rid of management properties and over time maybe, but you want to be really niched down so that when a guest comes in and they have a very particular need, you are very, very tailored for them. Like it could be that family friendly stays is a very broad term and we hear it all the time, but the needs of a parent, you and James, you, you know this, the needs of your stays maybe a year back are different than now.

Gil You needed the pack and play. You need the high chair before. At this point, you probably don’t need those things and you wanna make sure that there’s a baby gate, there’s something fun for the kids to do. So like the needs actually do change even within, kinda like the family friendly stays things. And like, if you can get really clear and you’re in the right avenues, right channels, and you’re, you are loud about how you deliver on your service.

Gil That can go a long way. You don’t need to spend on ads. You don’t need to like hire influencers if you’re, if that’s not like the right strategy for you. You don’t have to do it all. You just need to do one or two different things very, very consistently.

James: Absolutely, and be absolutely laser focused on who your target audience is. And this is the same whether you’re running a property management business or whether you’re running a media platform like House Planet. For us, you know, we have to be absolutely laser focused on short term rentals. Everything we talk about, everything we write about, it has to be relevant to short term rental hosts, property managers, industry professionals, because if it isn’t.

James: It’s not going on our platforms, it’s, it’s not gonna fly. And I think as well, you know, what you’re saying there about, you know, you, you can’t do everything at the start. And again, this applies to different businesses. And you know, for us, again, like host Planet, we, you know, we knew that there’s a period where we just have to.

James: Build up month by month, you know, week by week, month by month. Because every single week there’s gonna be new podcast episodes, new newsletters, new blog posts. Every now and again there’s gonna be new eBooks. So the more time passes, the more content that we produce, the more helpful we become to the audience of STR hosts and, and property managers.

James: And it can be exactly the same for your property management business. You know, the more blog posts you share about who you’re targeting, about target, about you, your target, things that you know, things in your region that target guests are gonna want. Do the more blog posts, the more social media posts.

James: Keep doing a few simple things and do them really well and do them consistently and you’ll get to where you want to be. I mean, nothing, nothing in life really is get rich quick. And it’s especially true in business, you know, entrepreneurship and, and definitely I think the same in short term rental property manage.

Gil Yeah, and it like, for, for our listeners here that are craft estate users, you may have like search for us. We. We rank pretty high for the, the terms that like we really care about. Um, and took a while. Uh, we’ve been at it for consistently two years. Um, and there are search terms that we wanted to be part of, but that just, we just, we won’t be able to, to rank for.

Gil Um, and it’s because like we have to say like, okay, this is our focus. This is who we wanna cater towards. This is, these are the types of problems that we wanna solve for. And these are the, the things that when people are searching for, these are the things that are looking for. And so we’re super laser focused.

Gil And like if you look at the blog, there’s like two purposes for our blogs. Um, one is like, are we creating something of value that people want to work for? And two, which is like, okay, if we’re creating something of value, can we make sure that we’re leveraging in a way that people can find that value in there?

Gil And so that’s kinda like how we think about SEO is like, how do you provide value first? And then how do you use it in a way that people can find that value? Um, so like all of all, we still do every week we’d spend time, we have dedicated team members that all they think about is like, how do we answer the questions that people are asking for?

Gil So we’re constantly thinking, we’re constantly doing research and we’re like, these conversations here, we’re trying to figure out like, okay, what are the types of problems that people are having challenges with and how do we meet those? It’s a lot of work. It’s a god awful amount, a lot, a lot of work. But at this point, and at, and when you’re in it, you don’t, you don’t know it, you don’t see it.

Gil But if you start to like step back many years later and you look at that graph and you kinda see where that growth is, it’s like, oh wow, we’ve actually accomplished quite a bit. But when you’re in it, it doesn’t feel like that.

James: Yeah, I mean I think, you know, when, when you’re running a business it sometimes it can feel, you know, progress can feel painfully slow, but it is only when you step back after a year or a couple of years and you look back and think. Gosh, you know, look at how far we’ve come in terms of the numbers. I think especially as well, you know, and I’ve been guilty of this in, you know, running a media platform, is that you can never have enough newsletter followers or YouTube subscribers or social media followers or comments or podcast downloads, whatever it is.

James: And, and I’ve definitely been guilty of looking at the numbers too often and, you know, being delighted when we get a bump in newsletter subscribers or when we get a load more views on a YouTube episode or something like that. Um, but, you know, the reality is, it, it, it can be just. Painstakingly simple.

James: Keep turning up, keep providing value. And little by little, you know, those, those building blocks go in place and you know, suddenly you’ve got something that’s really valuable to people that, um, that they want to be a part of, that they want to keep referencing. And, um, yeah, I, I, and I think in, in the modern era, kind of where we are now, I mean, things are changing so quickly, but you know, the, the most important thing is to build a network.

James: To build an ecosystem. Um, because if, you know, if you are sharing high quality content, if you are helping people and you’re building an audience, I think it’s the, it’s the best way to, to build an audience. It’s the best way to build trust. Um, and then like in our case, you know, it’s, it’s uh, you know, there’s a lot of companies in the space that want to be part of that.

James: They want to be part of that network. They want to be referenced. They want to benefit from mentions on our website. So, you know, that might. Get them a bit of AI coverage later down the line. So, um, yeah, I, I think, yeah, I think it’s, it’s exactly the same. It doesn’t really matter what industry you’re in at the moment.

James: It’s doing the simple, sometimes boring things. Doing them repetitively, repetitively doing them well. Um, and eventually looking back like you’re saying, thinking, do you know what actually all that hard work has paid off.

Gil Yeah. So you’ve gone through many evolutions of content types and media types and like offerings to, to your clients. Like how has that evolved in the very early days of host planet and like how has your thinking kind of changed now? Are, are there tactics that you mentioned, newsletter, podcast, YouTube, now you’re doing your roadshow.

Gil How has your thinking evolved over time? Were there things that you invested on early on? You’re like, oh, that was a mistake. Like that was a big suck in time. Like, we shouldn’t do that anymore. Uh, or things that just took a little bit longer and you knew that if you kept on going at it, that it was, it’d be worth it at the very end, but it, it would take a lot of time for you to get that feedback there.

James: Yeah, I mean I think the, probably the biggest couple of mistakes I made at the start. Number one, I called the Business Holiday Cottage Handbook. Um, and that was partly because at the start, and this was another mistake, I was thinking primarily about the UK Market Holiday Cottage Handbook as a name was too long.

James: It was too niche, it was too confusing. It definitely didn’t make sense to people in America. Uh, and even confused plenty of people, um, in the uk. Um, so very soon I thought, ah, I’ve, I’ve. Dropped a bit of a bollock with the name here. It’s, it doesn’t work. The, the branding was, was good. It looked good. Um, but yeah, name was too long.

James: And, and also like I’d realized pretty, you know, very quickly the conversations that I was having and people that were approaching us and other people that we were approaching, um, that the industry really was, was just, obviously it’s global and, you know, the vast majority of potential sponsors and partners for us, you know, were in the US and, you know, most of the companies that we work for, that we work with now are based in the us.

James: So, um, yeah, those were the two things that I got wrong. But I think what, what I got right was that first of all, you know, I, I decided quickly we needed to rebrand, which we did, you know, fairly soon after. Um, and I think I, I knew that by continually producing content, like I said before. Day by day, week by week, we become more valuable.

James: We become more helpful to people like you go on our website now, there’s 200 odd podcast episodes. Uh, there’s various kind of small podcast series on YouTube. Um, you know, we’ve had a newsletter every single week. There’s lots of social media content, there’s lots of blog posts. There’s a stack of free downloads on there, and, and there’ll be plenty more coming out this year.

James: So, um, yeah, I knew that we’d get, you know, bigger and better over time in terms of the content. Um, and it was a, it was a case of kind of sticking with it. I, I believed in the, I believed in the idea, obviously early on at the start, I, I felt, yeah, you know, if, if I can build a platform with free education, then, you know, there are so many companies out there that want to reach short term rental hosts and property managers, and it, and they’re a difficult audience to reach.

James: It’s not like you can advertise on Airbnb or, or booking.com if you are a PMS or a dynamic pricing tool or even a property management business. If you wanna reach them, you’re spending a lot, I would imagine, on Google Ads. You’re spending a lot on SEO if I go along and say, Hey, work with me. All our content is aimed at short term rental host and property managers.

James: That makes sense. And I’m not going to, you know, you’re probably not gonna spend anywhere near as much with me that you would on Google ads or, and SEO and hopefully we’ll deliver you, you know, serious value for it as well, because we’re reaching exactly the audience that you want to reach. Um, so yeah, I think, I think I got a lot of things right.

James: I definitely got a few things wrong. Um, but yeah, as, as time has gone on, we’ve, um, yeah, I think, I think you’ve, you know, you know, in business you’re just, it’s like driving, isn’t it? You’re constantly, you know, a little bit to the right, a little bit to the left. You’re always doing these little pivots here and there.

James: Um, and, and that’s, that’s, that’s just what it’s like. And I think another thing as well that I will mention is that. Um, I knew that for us to get bigger and bigger, we had to have a big focus on events and, you know, hence why we’re doing the roadshow this year. And I could see in the event space, ’cause I, you know, I went to lots of them and I, I still go to lots of short-term rental events.

James: I knew that kind of, it felt like I’d go to a lot of events and nobody was really that happy. Sponsors weren’t that happy. They’re always saying, oh, I came along and oh, it’s been good for networking, but I’ve not got any leads. And then the attendees were like, well, yeah, that bit was okay, but you know, I don’t think I’ll come back next time.

James: So I thought, right, there needs to be something that can, I don’t think anybody’s cracked, you know, the perfect short-term rentals event yet and probably never will. Um, but you know, I felt like, especially in the uk there’s a lot of of events going on in London, I thought, well, you know, we need to kind of go where the operators are.

James: And, and that’s really the premise behind the road show. It’s trying to get out into these key regions in the country and not just have an event where you’re talking at people where there’s a stage and you’ve got a company comes up and does a 30 minute PowerPoint presentation, and frankly, it’s a bit boring.

James: It’s actually, it’s round tables, it’s collaborative, it’s engaging, it’s, it’s talking about how we can all help drive the industry forward. So that’s what we’re trying to do with our events. And, um. Yeah. So I think, yeah, events, branding, changing stuff. Lots of changes. Lots of development. But I think if you’d have, um, if you’d have told me back in early 2023, um, which is when I started working on this just after the World Cup finished, this is where you’ll be in early 2026.

James: I’d have snapped your hand off. So, yeah, happy with where we are.

Gil That’s awesome. What would you say is like the ideal, like what, who’s your ICP in, in, in your stage? Are they typically the hosts that are just getting started? Do they, like where do you center around all the, your materials around or the, yeah.

James: Do you know, one of the things I saw in the industry when I, when I first kind of got involved in short term rentals was that I felt that certain platforms and certain events were trying to be really, really selective over the people that they wanted to work with. So you’d have, you’d have some events where they’d be like, you can only come to this event if you’ve managed 20 properties minimum.

James: Um, and like years ago you had PMSs who say, we only work with 50 plus. That’s it. We don’t work with anybody less. And from my experience, I’m somebody with two properties. And you look at the stats and you look at, you know, Airbnb statistics and all this kind of thing. About 80% of house and property managers have one or two.

Gil Mm-hmm.

James: So I’m thinking to myself, the vast majority of the industry is people with a small number of properties and they’re getting ignored by tech providers. They’re getting ignored by events. And also I could see, you know, with the event space as well, there’d be some that are charging a thousand dollars a ticket, $1,500 a ticket.

James: And I’d be thinking to myself, gosh, like if I’m starting out in short term rentals and somebody says, oh, come to this event, it’ll be great. It’s $1,500. I’d be like. 15. I’m not gonna pay that to get, I, I don’t know if I’m gonna get the value that that’s, that’s crazy. So for what I’ve always tried to do with House Planet is to make it as accessible as possible.

James: And that, you know, that’s why everything’s free. Basically. We’ve even done lots of free events. The roadshow this year, it’s only 40 pounds of tickets come along. And we’ve only done that because we had so many people signing up for free that we wanted to get a commitment from people to come along. Um, but it, it’s all about trying to make the content broad.

James: And I’ve always said to people, like, when we do podcasts or, or anything, it’s like we try to make it relevant whether you’re starting out or whether you’ve got hundreds of properties. And I like to think that in a lot of our content, a lot of our episodes are eBooks. There really is something. Whatever the stage of your journey.

James: So we try to be as accessible as possible. Obviously there are some bits of content, some eBooks that we do or some podcast episodes, which are gonna get a little bit technical and are probably better if you, if you’re already scaled or you’re at 300 properties and you want to exit, and then there’s gonna be other things that we do, which are basic and is gonna be relevant for people starting out.

James: So I think in terms of our audience, you know, I, it’s, it’s interesting because we get the data, when we get the ebook downloads, especially ’cause we ask people, how many properties do you have? Which PMS do you use? Which dynamic pricing tool do you use? All this kind of thing. And it’s the, if the average, if we, if we average it out, is like, it’s like 30 odd properties is the average, but this is massively.

James: Outweighed by the, the whales at the top because we’ve people, we’ve got people downloading stuff who are managing thousands. Um, and I think the, the median number is about four to five. So the vast majority of people who engage with our platforms, they have multiple properties. We’ve got plenty of whales.

James: But, you know, we’re proud that there’s a lot of people who are starting out, who have no properties, who engage with our, our content as well. So we, we try to make it as broad and accessible as possible.

Gil Yeah, it sounds like what you don’t wanna do is like, you create a lot of good content that will help people get to one stage and then you start to lose them off. They turn off of your platform or your educational series because they’ve kind of capped out there and they don’t, they’re gonna go elsewhere if the content is not, not applicable to them anymore.

Gil So it’s, it’s kind of nice to hear that, like you do tailor towards this cohort there. But there are many moments in your educational series that you start to go a bit more advanced where people can, maybe you’re starting off, you get to get a glimpse of what’s ahead, but also if you’re already there, you get to dive really deep into some of that content there.

James: I think so as well. I, I think that’s, it’s quite, it can be quite aspirational, can’t it? If you are, you know, starting, say you’ve got a couple of properties and you know, the next episode is talking to somebody who’s exed in a business or a scale to a hundred or, or whatever that, you know, I would hope that there’s some people listening in thinking, wow, what a brilliant story.

James: I’d love to emulate. You know, like Andy Easton at Beach Retreats, for example. I’d love to emulate that, you know, what they’ve done with a brand 97% direct bookings. That’s where I want to get one day. So, yeah, you know, I, I would like to think that there is something for, for just about everyone, of course.

James: Like you can’t please everyone all of the time. And I think one of the, one of the aspects of. Definitely been a lot more globally focused these days is that sometimes our audience in the UK are like, oh, why am I listening to this American person who’s, who’s running, running rentals in, in the Virgin Islands or something like that.

James: So you, you do sometimes get stuff like that. But I, I think for the vast majority of people, it’s, it’s really interesting to hear the stories from what’s going on around the world. ’cause I mean, do you know what I mean? One thing I found hosting is hosting guest experience is guest experience. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it is pretty much the same and it’s, and it’s relevant to, uh, to all of us.

James: So, um, so yeah, it’s, it’s nice to be, it’s nice to be globally focused and I think, um, you know, we have podcast listeners in more than 90 countries and newsletter subscribers in more than a hundred. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s fun when we see the web traffic and you see all the different countries that are ticked off.

James: It’s, uh, yeah, it’s good.

Gil When I was, uh, uh, in, in tech prior to getting into hospitality, the world seemed much more sparse. It, it seemed like each one was a little island, island of its own, with its own separate cultures and and so on. But now that I’m deep in hospitality and I bring on guests and I get to meet people, I go to events, the world somehow feels a lot smaller.

Gil It seems a lot more similar than how I perceived it in, in my, my previous life.

James: I, I think that might be partly to do with the STR world. I mean, I do sometimes say, you know, we, we, we go to lots of different events and we see the same people over and over again, and, and we, we kind of have to remind ourselves sometimes that we’re in a bit of an STR bubble and we are not kind of the average person in the industry.

James: Um, but yeah, it is, it is. Uh, I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly. Yeah.

Gil When, when you think about the, the content that you provide are, are there pillars that you try to focus and provide consistent value added educational series on? Um, or you think of it more as like a hospitality as a whole and like, we’re trying to, like our missions up here and we try to create content that’s, that’s kind of more general?

Gil Or do you think of it as like, okay, these are the types of things that we think hosts should have resources against and we wanna make sure we invest into each one of these pillars?

James: It, it, it’s several things. I mean, I liked what you said earlier about, you know, when you are creating content, uh, for your website and you’re trying to answer all the questions that people might have, and we take quite a similar approach. So I look at what people are searching for on YouTube. I look at what people are searching for on large language models.

James: You know, what are the, you know, I quite often I go into. Chat, GPT or Gemini. And I’ll say, what do short term rental, what do vacation rental, what do Airbnb hosts and property managers, what are they searching for right now? What do they want to know about? I mean, obviously we keep up with what’s happening in the news, especially from a UK point of view.

James: You know, we are, you know, like I said, we’re global, but the UK’s our home. So like when we’re talking about regulation or tax changes, and I know that that content always goes down really well with the audience. ’cause, you know. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, people do tend to flock towards bad news.

James: Um, but I think, yeah, it, it, it’s about trying to deliver the value, trying to deliver those different pillars. I mean, we’ve done lots of different kind of pottered podcast series and I’m proud that we’ve ticked off lots of different aspects of hosting. So we’ve done one on cleaning, um, we’re doing one with turnout at the moment, which is on cleaning and operations.

James: We’ve done one on revenue management. We’ve done one on property management generally. Um, we’re working on another one for later this year, which hopefully we’ll be able to announce soon, which will be. Talking about the different stages of, of property management. You know, what you have to get right? If you’ve got one, what you have to get right when you’ve scaled to five and, and going through the journey, which I think will be an amazing, uh, resource.

James: So yeah, we, we, we try to, it, it’s all about being useful to the audience. It’s always about creating content for, for your target audience. It ha it always has to come back to that. You’ve always got to, I think, really respect the audience. Um, what do they want to know? What do they want to hear about? And let that be your, your North Star.

James: You know the amount of people I’ve spoken to about, you know, content or podcast, and they say, oh, I want to do a podcast about this and I want to do a podcast about that. I’m like, the one thing you have to nail from the start is who is my audience? Why am I doing this? And then that has to guide every single thing that you do because if you start moving away from that, um, you’re wasting your time.

Gil Yeah, and I, I, I’ve learned that even running this, this podcast here, we’re 80, 90 episodes deep now. Not quite as, as many episodes as, as, as you, you do. But when we bring on different guests, we’re pretty selective on who we wanna bring on and make sure that not only do we bring on the right folks, but we’re talking about the right topics, uh, on each episode.

Gil Because there’s a level of expectation that our listeners come to these episodes, and if they come on and we bring on the wrong person, we start to lose that trust. We rode that trust with them. Like for instance, this show here, like it’s a little bit of direct bookings. We talked a little bit about, uh, Andy and kind of what he’s done, but more so like a, a larger conversation about entrepreneurship, a larger conversation about, uh, really building out your brand, the consistency there.

Gil And like even though like we’re very direct booking focused here, there’s oftentimes like we will bring in the guests and we, we know that like there’s certain topics that we want to cover on the show to make sure that. When we air it, we’re meeting that expectation there because like you don’t want to create content that is misaligned.

Gil You’ll end up eroding your trust really, really fast.

James: Yeah, a hundred percent. And you know, we, we get approached a lot now, um, for people that wanna come on the podcast. And I would say 90% of people we reject ’cause they’re just, they’re just not relevant. You know, they might be kind of involved in real estate investing, but there’s hardly anything to do with short-term rentals or, you know, I, I’ve had all sorts of weird pictures and yeah, most of the time it’s just not relevant to our audience and, and what they want to hear about.

James: So it, it, it just has to be a no. Um, and, um, yeah, you’ve always got to be guided by, like I said, you know, what your goal is, what are you trying to do, who are you trying to reach? Um, and you’ve gotta respect your audience. I think that’s the most important thing. You know, like we’ve, we’ve put a lot of effort into YouTube over the last.

James: Year or so, you know, when YouTube, for a while was just kind of a dumping ground for all our video content for for many months. You know, at one stage, you know, before we started putting effort into it, we had more videos on there than subscribers that that kind of tells you where we were. Um, but then we started respecting the YouTube audience, and that means creating content that they want to watch.

James: It means getting your thumbnails right, your titles right. Working on the SEO side of things. It means getting straight into the interview rather than three minutes of talking about ads or what someone had for breakfast or, you know, it, it’s, it’s, yeah, respecting your audiences is so, so important across, you know, whatever channel, whatever medium it is.

James: Uh, yeah, I’ve stressed it a lot. I couldn’t stress it enough.

Gil Yeah. And, and our listeners here, if you have any, any tips on things that you would like this, this channel to evolve and learnings. Like, I, I love talking to my, our customers. I said, Gil, I listened to you and like I’ve been binging a lot of your content. I’m like, okay. The first thing I ask is like, do you have any feedback for me?

Gil So like, I can make sure that I’m bringing in the right folks. We’re talking about the right topics and that it’s of value there. Because I, I don’t wanna, I, I don’t want the show to be. And just something that we perpetually invest into that people don’t get value out of.

James: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. It’s, it’s all about that value and, um, yeah, you know, it pays off when you get those nice comments when somebody’s like, I’ve, you know, I mean, you can see it in the stats as well, oh, I’ve been binging through this. I’ve been watching this, and, or, uh, you know, I found you on YouTube, or I found you on Apple, or you were recommended by this.

James: And, uh, now I’ve listened to 30 episodes back to back. You know, it’s, you know, when you get those comments, it’s, it’s really fulfilling because you, you realize that, that what you’re doing is, is, is making a difference.

Gil Yeah. And I, I like last kind of topic before we kind of get into like the, the closing of the show. Before the show, uh, I was talking to you about even just your own properties and your own hosting business. And I know a lot of your efforts right now are more so serving the industry than, than, than maybe like growing your portfolio there.

Gil Um, but there are things that you’ve invested into and kind of perpetually invested into that I want you to kinda share with our listeners here. So like in terms of your own hosting, like what are like one or two different things that you’ve invested that you found to be quite successful for you?

James: Yeah, you know, very simply, I think when it comes to direct bookings, um, especially if you’re getting plenty of guests from OTAs and other sources, those people that come along to your properties need to know that you have a direct booking channel. Um, and that was something for a while. You know, we used to communicate that when Airbnb would let you communicate it, now you can’t.

James: Um, so now, you know, very simply, we’ve got some cool posters in, in our, in our rentals, and they’ve got a QR code on book direct you’re gonna save. Um, and they’ve just been really effective at, uh, promoting the fact that we’ve got a direct booking channels, um, and, and getting those bookings. So I think, you know.

James: Letting people know that you’ve got a direct booking channel is, is important. And that leads into the second tip as well, is that especially locally, like where you are, make sure that, you know, try and go to business meetings if you can try and go to like the local chamber of Commerce, you know, where I live, you know, recently, the last couple of years they’ve, they’ve set up a, it’s kind of a, it’s a small town which is nearby and they’ve set up like a business collective.

James: And I think about 200, 300 businesses are there and quite near to my rentals. There’s a, there’s an enterprise zone. And so many of those businesses have workers that come in for a few days a week. Um, they don’t live nearby, but they’re traveling in because they’re doing some kind of trade. And, and that has helped us massively in getting those direct bookings very simply.

James: ’cause we go to, along to those meetings and say, hi, we’re here, we’re we exist? Um, and sometimes it’s just as simple as that. I think, uh, um, you know, you, you hear about a lot of people in the industry and one word I’ve heard with direct bookings, you know, billboarding, you just tell people that you’re doing it.

James: You, you’d be surprised. You know, you think yourself when you’re, um, when you’re engrossed in something, you think that everybody knows what’s going on. You think that everybody knows it as much as you do. They don’t. Um, and especially with like short term rentals, holiday, lets, whatever you wanna call them, vacation rentals.

James: Um, when you’re in the community, when you’re meeting people, tell people, because that, you know, word of mouth. Billboarding QR codes, meeting local businesses, talking to local businesses and saying, Hey, I know you’ve got people coming in every week. Here are my rentals. Happy to give you a special rate.

James: It’s always gonna be cheaper than booking two hotel rooms if you’ve got two guys working or, or whatever. So yeah, just letting people know. I think that’s the most important thing.

Gil Yeah. And I think that that local side is often underutilized in our industry. Um, because we, we’ve been bred, like I’m in my forties now and like I, I, like, I grew up most of my life being in from of the web and being able to search for things and find things, but. There are still a lot of ways that people fi find you refer to you from others as well too.

Gil Like in one of our properties in Gatlinburg, we’re in the Smoky Mountains. We would think that the best way to attract is maybe through people that are visiting for the vacation. But we found that our, one of our properties is about a three minute drive from the biggest stadium in in GA in Tennessee.

Gil Basically biggest sports stadium where a lot of high schools will have their competition, people fly in from it and when they’re flying in, they need a place to stay. And we found out that there’s actually a company that helps coaches source places to stay. And so we are listed on their website and the amount of leads that we get into that is, is quite healthy.

Gil And it’s also because there’s not a lot of folks that. Do that, that really kind of reach out and, and, and it almost feels like it’s underutilized and hopefully no one like cracks it. And, and, uh, but we’re, we’re probably like one of the closest cabins to, to that arena, uh, while still being like far away not to hear the commotions, but like, I completely agree with you that like oftentimes just getting to know the area, getting to know the businesses, why people are traveling there, what needs that you can meet can go a long way.

Gil Um, oftentimes like I find that like just slowing down and like stop thinking about like the little tactical things, but think about like the overall, like just step back and think about the user journey. That goes a long way.

James: Yeah. And you know, don’t be afraid of word of mouth. Don’t be afraid of picking up the phone. Don’t be afraid of, like, even, even if you just say, right, you know, I, I want to get some more corporate stays. Visit five or six businesses if, you know, like, like me, you know, there’s the enterprise zone, literally a mile away from, from where I live.

James: Go and knock on a few doors or just give them a leaflet, give them a, give them a discount. Or even, you know, show them a QR code so they can scan it. Um, I think word of mouth, and it goes so far because I think, you know, word of mouth and actually going to see people and meet them, it’s so unexpected these days.

James: You know, people are like, oh wow, somebody picked up the phone. Or Oh wow, somebody actually came to see me. ’cause now it’s just, it’s um, it’s, it’s an e it’s a, an email try, you know, trying to get a lead or usually the email’s from some kind of AI system. Saying, saying, saying, there’s so, you know, I think going a little bit old school, especially in hospitality, uh, can, can go a long way.

James: It’s like, you know, business is people, isn’t it? People to people. Um, people buy from people. True in hospitality. True in short term rentals.

Gil absolutely. James. It’s been a, it’s been a fabulous show. I wanna, uh, kind of have chance to give you kind of the, the three questions that we usually end the show with. So I’ll start with the first one. What’s a good book book recommendation for me? Um, I’m always seeking the best nugget and we are in industry with a lot of smart people.

Gil So, which, what, what book would you recommend me pick up?

James: So I’m gonna recommend the Price of Money by Rob Dix. So Rob is a fellow entrepreneur. He was actually a guest on one of our podcasts ages ago. Um, I’ve not been shy in, uh, telling the world that Host Planner is based a little bit on what he’s done with the Property Hub. So Property Hub is a educational media platform, uh, mainly aimed at people who are buying and managing long-term rentals, buy to lets, as we call them in the uk.

James: And um, yeah, Rob’s done a lot of books about helping people get into property, but recently he started focusing a little bit more on personal finance and money. The business of money and all this kind of thing and, and the price of money. Why it’s so good is that it kind of explains the world we live in at the moment.

James: It explains how we’ve got here in terms of the dollar and gold and the big massive seismic, uh, economic events that we’ve all, that some of us have experienced and some of us have before. We, you know, some happened before we were born. Um, and it’s fascinating and ex it explains to you how money works in the world, and I would wager that.

James: 99.9% of people reading the book will learn something by how money actually works and how governments treat money. Uh, and how you as an individual or a property investor can kind of get, get ahead, might be a little bit, um, mis-selling it a bit, but how you can at least have that knowledge to learn how money works and hopefully make it work for you.

James: So yeah, I’d, I’d recommend that he’s written a few books, Rob and, um, that that was really good. I think I read it on, I read it on a flight actually I think I was flying back from Doha to the UK and I’d read it and I was sat next to, there was a girl sat next to me and we got chatting and she saw the book and she said, I’ve seen that, I’ve heard about that.

James: I really wanna read it. So I gave her the book. There you

Gil Nice. Very nice. Yeah, I gotta check that one out. It reminds me a little bit about, um, I haven’t read this myself personally, but Robert, Robert Kiyosaki, the, the author of Rich Poor Dad, he wrote the book Fake and it talks about how much around us is, is, is manufactured in, in a way. Um, I would love to kind of read both different books and, and kind of like contrast, like how they think about the world.

James: Yeah, I, I mean the, I think the, the fascinating part is about the dollar and gold, that kind of, basically that gives you a little intro into what you’ll learn about with that book. But that’s kind of where we are at the moment. And Rob kind of makes a prediction that we’re due a big seismic change to the global economy, uh, because things probably can’t go on as they are with governments just racking up more and more debt and printing more and

Gil Yeah, I was gonna say print, print, printing more. Printing more paper. Yeah. Um, awesome. James, second question. Uh, what’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?

James: From an entrepreneurial point of view, there are a few things I would say. Um, number one, keep it simple. Um, number two, always know who your target audience is and create according to that target audience. Number three would be try to stay on an even keel, because especially at the start in building a business, uh, one thing I found there are so many highs and so many lows and it’s a roller coaster.

James: And you have to do, you have to work very hard, I think, to try and stay level. Don’t let the highs. Don’t get too high when something good happens. And don’t get too low when something bad happens. ’cause usually when the bad, something bad happens, it’s nowhere near as bad as what you think it is. Um, and then the other thing I would say is prioritize your own health and wellbeing, because it’s very easy when you start a business or when you start anything new to spend. 24 hours a day or every waking moment in front of your laptop and you neglect yourself and your own health and you don’t make time for the gym and you eat rubbish. And I read another book that I read that I would recommend as well is the one, Mark Randolph, who’s the Netflix founder, I think his book is called, that’ll Never Work.

James: ’cause that’s what his wife said to him when he said, I’ve got this idea about shipping people DVDs. And um, he talked about the founders 15 and it’s the founders 15 pounds. I’m sure you’ve heard about this in, in San Francisco. Basically you start a new business and you don’t go to the gym anymore. You don’t exercise anymore.

James: I mean, there are some days when I, you know, especially when I started, my step count would be. Be about 400 and that’s just me going up and down the stairs to get coffee and food and stuff. Um, and you, you can’t function if you carry on like that for too long. So you have to do, you know what block your diary out to go to the gym, block your diary out to go for a walk, block your diary out to have a round of golf now and again ’cause it is so important.

James: And you know what, eat and drink the right stuff. ’cause if you don’t, you’ll easily find that Founder’s 15 as I definitely did. It’s taken me a while to get most of it off.

Gil Yeah, that’s a, that’s a good reminder to me. I, I, I started the last year, 2025 pretty strong, where I had a goal of basically 150 gym visits throughout the year. And I got pretty far, I didn’t hit the goal. Um, but then getting into the beginning of this year, it’s just been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to, like, commit to that.

Gil And I, I appreciate you telling our listeners, but I’m also like taking that advice for myself, uh, right now. And maybe it’s, it’s time to get back into that good habit.

James: Did. You know what, that’s funny because I, I did my New Year’s resolution and my New Year’s resolution, 2026 is to go a hundred times, so not 150. Um, but I, I thought a hundred, I thought Right. That that’s twice a week. I can do that. And I know, and usually if I spend some time away from the uk I go to the gym more.

James: Right. Because here in, I’m in Mar Bay at the moment, it’s literally a hundred meters away. I’ve, I’ve really got no excuse. And then we’re gonna spend a bit of time in, um, Manila, in, uh, may. And I know that because of jet lag, that every day for a week or two weeks, I’ll be in the gym at 5:00 AM because I can’t sleep.

James: So, um, yeah, hopefully I can, I can get to that a hundred. Yeah.

Gil What, what I found is last year I didn’t wanna like create the excuse if I was traveling not to be able to go to the gym. And so I told myself if I was not around my gym and I still wanted to commit to it, then I would have to do 300 pushups in in rather than going to the gym. And it worked like it was a good way for me.

Gil Like, oh, I, I was busy in the morning. I had meetings. I couldn’t escape to the gym. Okay, it’s nine o’clock at night. I better hit the ground and, and start doing some pushups.

James: Yeah, I, I think that’s great. I mean, I remember like when, um, I actually got really fit during the pandemic because I was working from home and I was in Doho at the time and I had quite a big, uh, bedroom where I was working. And often during meetings I would just like jog up and down this room. And I’d like, I’d have my phone on me just to like count the steps and, and also I’d have the dumbbells there and sometimes like I’d be in meetings with like 30 other people.

James: ’cause it’s a big meeting about, I don’t know, some stadium opening or like, there’s loads of people, so I don’t have to say much during the meeting. I just have to listen and to know what’s happening. I thought, well actually I can, I can do a bit of a workout. I can, I can use the dumbbells, I can do some, I can do some press ups.

James: So, yeah, I mean, look that, that actually helped. But yeah, you’re right. You know, having that, do you know what, I might not get to the gym today, but if I’m gonna do 300 press-ups or if I’m gonna use the dumbbells for 20 minutes, then yeah. Stop. Try, try to just stop, try to put something in your calendar where it’s like, even if it’s just 10 minutes, 10 minutes, I’m gonna do some dumbbells or do some press-ups or something.

James: Yeah, it’ll, it’ll help you in the long run. That’s my advice to entrepreneurs. Do a bit of exercise.

Gil Awesome. James, last question. We talked about a lot of different strategies, how you’ve grown host planet, how you think about really building out your brand and how your offering is, and which is very applicable to even how short term rental property managers and hosts think about how they position themselves.

Gil We also talked about some of the things that. You’ve learned along the way, really emphasizing, really hitting the ground and going local and really putting yourself out there. And you mentioned the whole billboard effect. Um, what’s one tactical thing that our listeners could either put into practice today to either started in direct bookings or amplify the direct bookings?

James: Definitely use the QR code, like I said, create that QR QR code poster. But, um, build your email newsletter. I mean, I think any, any business in the world needs to develop an ecosystem. Um, and people still look and still read their emails. I know, like we’re in this chat, GPT TikTok phase, but email is so incredibly important.

James: You know, everybody, vast majority of people are getting the alert as soon as it comes through on their phone. Um, build your email list, build your contact list, build your community. I think that’s the best tip I can give for, for anybody really building a business.

Gil Absolutely, and I would, I would add on top of that, like build your email list and make sure that you are providing value on a very consistent basis with that email list. The last thing you wanna do is like put someone on there and you don’t email them so that when you do email them, it comes outta the blue and they’re like, oh, what is this spam there?

Gil But like if you’re committing to it, you’re constantly putting out content that they find valuable. Then when time comes that they’re looking for an offering, they’ll look at you because if you’ve built that trust, you’ve invested into that relationship. I have folks that have been on our email list for a year and a half, and all of a sudden they’re like, oh, I get your email every single week.

Gil I click on the blog post and I get value out of it. I might not read every single one, but every so often they’ll, they’ll click through and a year and a half later, they, they’ve gotten so much value out of that, that they want to, they want us to build their website. So I completely agree that like, this is one of the things that, with all the things that do change, this is something that’s unlikely to go away anywhere, anytime soon.

James: Yeah, I think, you know, it would boil down to two words be helpful.

Gil Yep. Yep. Awesome. James, it’s been a huge pleasure having you on the show, talking about your journey of building host plan, and why you did it in the first place and how you’re serving the industry. Hopefully we can get a chance to collaborate in the near future as well too. Um, but I am a big fan of kind of what you’re doing and, uh, how you’re serving, uh, our industry, so I appreciate that.

James: Thank you, Gil. It’s been a real pleasure. All the best to you for the rest of 2026 and uh, let’s hope we can get those 250 gym visits in between us.

Gil I may, I may have you, uh, take on some more so that I can, I can take a bet too. Awesome. See you later, James.

James: Thanks a lot.

Gil Bye.

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