“Brand is where trust is built. Brand is the reason people say yes.” In this episode of the Booked Solid Show, we welcome back our very first podcast guest—Steph Weber, CEO of The Weber Co. and co-owner of Cabins on the Cumberland, a 12-cabin micro resort in Kentucky. From building brands that emotionally connect with guests to navigating Airbnb’s 2025 fee changes, Steph shares raw insights from the trenches of hospitality marketing. Whether you’re managing one property or planning your first micro resort, this conversation covers the critical shifts every STR operator needs to embrace heading into 2026—including why your direct booking website matters only if a marketing strategy backs it. Summary and Highlights 👤 Meet Steph Weber Steph Weber is a branding and marketing powerhouse who has helped over 100 small businesses scale to six and seven-figure brands. As CEO of The Weber Co., she now focuses exclusively on the vacation rental niche, working with STR hosts, property management companies, boutique hotels, and micro resorts. Together with three other couples, Steph built Cabins on the Cumberland—a 12-cabin micro resort and event venue along the Cumberland River in Kentucky. She also runs Hosted by the Webers, a co-hosting company she and her husband scaled to six figures in just one year. With 10 years of experience in brand and marketing strategy, Steph brings fresh energy to the world of short-term rentals, helping investors and guests experience destination properties with rave-worthy experiences. She hosts the Branded & Booked Podcast and lives in Indianapolis with her husband, Collin, and their two boys. 🏔️ From Construction Site to Micro Resort: The Cabins on the Cumberland Journey When Steph and her partners started building Cabins on the Cumberland, they were just seven weeks into their short-term rental journey. The timing made no logical sense—she was eight months pregnant with her second child, they had just spent most of their savings on their first STR, and they were pivoting an entire business. But when opportunity knocked, Steph answered. The build taught her invaluable lessons about letting a vision grow organically. When their builder questioned whether all 12 cabins needed hot tubs, Steph ran an experiment. The cabin with a hot tub tripled the bookings of the other two. The builder quickly got on board. By the end of 2025, Cabins on the Cumberland was maintaining 30-50% direct bookings every single month—a testament to the power of intentional branding from day one. Even when the property had nothing but mud, dirt, and porta-potties, Steph was building the brand story that would later drive those conversions. For operators considering their own micro resort or boutique hotel project, Steph recommends finding a mentor who has made the mistakes and can share them transparently. The underwriting, financing, and sweat equity requirements differ fundamentally from those of standard STR investing. 📢 2025: The Year Hosts Woke Up to Brand Ownership The short-term rental industry experienced a collective awakening in 2025. Between Airbnb’s 15.5% host-side fee, changes to cancellation policies, AI-driven review automation, and new experience programs, operators began realizing they had placed too many eggs in one basket. Steph noticed a significant shift in what her clients were asking for. Instead of social media management, hosts wanted deeper brand strategy work. They wanted to understand who they were beyond their Airbnb listings. This tracks with what industry experts have been emphasizing at conferences throughout the year. Brand was the recurring theme—not as a nice-to-have, but as the foundation for everything else. When Steph talks about brand, she means much more than logos and color palettes. Her process includes in-depth target audience analysis, competitive research, and core messaging that gets woven into every guest touchpoint. The visual identity comes after that strategic foundation is solid. Brand is how trust gets built. Brand is why someone chooses to book with you over a competitor. It creates the emotional connection that makes guests feel confident handing over their credit card to a stranger’s property. 💡 Why Your Direct Booking Site Means Nothing Without Marketing Here’s the hard truth Steph wants every host to hear: having a beautiful direct booking website is only the beginning. Too many operators launch their sites and expect bookings to roll in the same way they do on Airbnb. But that’s not how direct bookings work. You can’t set it and forget it. If your guests only know you as “another Airbnb property,” your direct booking site won’t matter. You need a marketing strategy that actively drives traffic and converts visitors into paying guests. The good news? Direct bookings compound over time. The energy you invest today pays dividends for years. Your email list grows. Your social following expands. Your messaging gets sharper. But none of that happens passively. Steph recommends starting with email marketing as the lowest-hanging fruit. It’s the foundation that makes everything else work. From there, you can layer in social media content, SMS marketing, and even paid advertising. The key is to be responsible for marketing your brand, whether you do it yourself or hire someone to help. 🤖 Using AI Without Losing Your Voice AI tools like ChatGPT have transformed how hosts create content. But Steph has noticed a troubling pattern: too many operators are copying AI-generated text verbatim, resulting in generic messaging that sounds like everyone else. Phrases like “unforgettable memories” and “your dream vacation awaits” mean nothing when every competitor uses them. This is why Steph advises clients to answer branding questions from their own perspective first, before bringing AI into the process. She recommends going directly to real humans who fit your guest profile. Ask them about their vacation experiences, their priorities, their best travel memories. That authentic research creates messaging that resonates in ways AI cannot replicate. Once you have that foundation, AI becomes helpful in refining ideas, generating variations, and speeding up execution. Steph’s team uses ChatGPT to visualize brand experiences for clients—creating images of proposed amenities and guest touchpoints that help operators see possibilities before they invest.

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

” Make it till you make it—not fake it.” That mindset carried Terri-Leigh Huleis from designing her first multimillion-dollar mountain property to building Found Home Co. into a powerhouse STR design studio, completing 64 projects annually. Her journey proves that scrappiness, customer obsession, and understanding your ideal guest can transform not just properties—but entire businesses. In this episode of the Booked Solid Show, Terri-Leigh Huleis from Found Home Co. reveals how ROI-driven, guest-targeted design transforms ordinary vacation rentals into unforgettable branded stays. From building a custom GPT for guest avatar research to creating boutique-hotel-level branding on Airbnb budgets, Terri-Leigh shares the systems she developed as she scaled from solo designer to leading a team of 15. You’ll discover why knowing your ideal guest is the foundation of every design decision, how branded stays create the recognition that fuels direct bookings, and the mindset shift that turned burnout into sustainable growth. Summary and Highlights 👤 Meet Terri-Leigh Huleis Terri-Leigh Huleis is the founder and creative director of Found Home Co., a boutique short-term rental design studio known for creating elevated, ROI-driven spaces that guests remember and owners profit from. Based in Colorado with a nationwide reach, she blends her background in design, real estate investing, and hospitality to help property owners transform ordinary homes into high-performing destinations. What started from necessity—wanting more investment properties while her husband maxed out his W2 lending capacity—has grown into a thriving operation with three full-time employees and 12 contract designers. Found Home Co. now serves clients from first-time hosts with modest budgets to enterprise operators investing $250,000 in ski property furnishings. Beyond designing for clients, Terri-Leigh is an investor herself, operating her own portfolio of short-term rentals, long-term rentals, and flips across multiple states. Connect with Terri-Leigh: 🎯 Why Guest Avatar Is Everything in STR Design The conversation quickly zeroed in on what Terri-Leigh considers the most critical element of any successful property: knowing exactly who you’re designing for. Her approach goes far beyond basic demographics. Found Home Co. has developed a custom GPT that produces detailed guest avatars—down to what activities they’ll do on days one through five of their stay, their occupation, even their dog’s name. This granular understanding shapes every design decision from furniture selection to branded touchpoints. But here’s the crucial insight: the market research must align with the owner’s comfort level. Even if data shows bachelorette parties are the highest-paying guests in a market, Terri-Leigh won’t recommend targeting them if the owner is risk-averse or has neighbors who might complain about late-night noise. This philosophy directly translates to building a direct booking brand that guests remember. When you know your guest avatar intimately, every touchpoint—from property design to website copy to email sequences—speaks directly to that person. 🏠 The Branded Stay Revolution One of the most compelling segments focused on how branding separates forgettable Airbnb listings from properties that generate direct bookings and repeat guests. Terri-Leigh’s team doesn’t just design interiors—they create complete brand identities including logos, taglines, mood descriptions, and even signature scents using Aroma 360 devices. These elements get woven throughout properties in thoughtful ways: custom doormats with property logos, branded outdoor cushions, and neon signs that transform utility spaces into memorable moments. Take “The Marquee,” a recent Denver project. The property features mountain peak-inspired “M” branding on everything from the welcome mat to outdoor cushions to a custom neon sign in a secret bookcase-turned-silent-disco that reads “Welcome to Club Marquee.” The strategic brilliance? When guests remember “The Marquee Denver” instead of “Airbnb listing #31754,” they’ll search that name when planning their next trip—and your direct booking website should be waiting to capture them. ⚙️ Systems That Saved the Business Terri-Leigh’s candid admission about fighting systemization resonated with every entrepreneur who’s ever burned out trying to do everything themselves. The breaking point came while simultaneously adopting a baby, managing multiple property installs, handling client calls, and trying to maintain some semblance of family life. Working until midnight became normal. Home-cooked meals became peanut butter toast. The fun disappeared. Her husband, working in business development, had been encouraging systems thinking for months. She finally listened when ChatGPT emerged and gave her the ability to rapidly learn new processes—from setting up QuickBooks properly to creating SOPs to formalizing contracts. The lesson for hosts building their direct booking strategy: systems aren’t constraints. They’re what allow you to scale without sacrificing quality or burning out. 🤖 Using AI Without Losing Your Edge The discussion around AI tools provided practical wisdom for anyone using technology to streamline their business. Terri-Leigh’s custom GPT for market research and guest avatars has become indispensable, but she offered a critical warning: AI tends to agree with you. She’s learned to explicitly ask the system to “rerun this from a more critical point of view” to get balanced perspectives. She also noted that getting useful AI output requires substantial input. Garbage in, garbage out applies especially to large language models. The hosts who get generic, useless content are often the ones providing minimal context about their goals, market, and ideal guests. This insight connects directly to becoming a better AI writer in short-term rentals—the framework matters as much as the tool. 🔄 From Installs to Small Boutique Hotels When asked about future aspirations, Terri-Leigh’s eyes lit up discussing small boutique hotels and multi-unit retreats. Found Home Co. recently completed a 14-unit project in St. Pete Beach, Florida, and a 9-unit lake retreat in Michigan—complete with a common space transformed from an old garage into a branded game hall with custom signage, vending machines, and resort maps. These projects showcase economies of scale: using consistent furniture pieces across units while giving each room its own color scheme and identity keeps costs manageable while maintaining the boutique feel that commands premium rates. For operators considering similar moves, this represents the future of hospitality—branded experiences that stand apart from the OTA commodity game and drive sustainable direct booking businesses. ⚡ Rapid Fire Highlights 📚 Book Recommendation: Unreasonable Hospitality by Will

When 55% of your bookings come from a market you never intentionally targeted, you’d be crazy not to pay attention. That’s exactly what happened to Siddhi Mittal, Co-Founder and CEO of Yhangry, when she discovered over half of her private chef bookings were happening at vacation rentals—not private homes. In this episode of the Booked Solid Show, Siddhi shares her unconventional journey from the Wall Street trading floor to building the UK’s largest private chef marketplace. She explains why guest experiences are now the deciding factor for travelers—especially Gen Z—and reveals how property managers are earning $150- $200 per booking through a simple affiliate link. Whether you’re managing 5 properties or 500, Siddhi’s insights on positioning upsells at the top of your funnel (not after the booking) could completely reshape how you think about guest experience and revenue. Summary and Highlights 🎙️ From Wall Street to Private Chefs: How Siddhi Mittal Built the #1 Chef Marketplace and What It Means for Your STR “The universe has your back. No matter what you’re doing, it’ll just work out for the better.” That’s the philosophy that guided Siddhi Mittal through the rollercoaster of building Yhangry from scratch—and it’s serving her well as she expands into the U.S. market with explosive growth numbers that make even Airbnb’s recent services launch look modest. 👩‍💼 Meet Siddhi Mittal Siddhi Mittal is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Yhangry, a marketplace connecting customers with local private chefs at surprisingly accessible price points. Her journey is anything but conventional. After studying Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at Columbia University, Siddhi spent six years on Wall Street’s trading floor before taking the entrepreneurial leap. Her startup, Yhangry (pronounced “why hangry”), emerged from a simple observation: hospitality workers are among the lowest paid, yet people assume private chefs are only for the ultra-wealthy. Her credentials speak for themselves. Yhangry was accepted into Y Combinator—the prestigious accelerator behind Airbnb, DoorDash, and Instacart—where getting in is reportedly harder than getting into Harvard. The company has appeared on the UK’s Dragon’s Den (their version of Shark Tank) and has served a quarter of a million guests in under 4 years. The numbers are staggering. In just eight months, Yhangry partnered with 130,000+ property units across the UK, including industry giants like Sykes, Travel Chapter, and Awaze. They launched in the U.S. in September 2025 and already boast the most extensive inventory of chefs in their category—surpassing Airbnb’s offerings on its platform by over 200%. 🔍 The Discovery That Changed Everything Yhangry’s pivot to the vacation rental space wasn’t part of some grand strategy. It came from paying attention to data. Siddhi was analyzing booking patterns when something unexpected emerged: 55% of all bookings were happening at vacation rentals, not private residences. This was particularly surprising because their customer flow already included a checkbox alerting chefs when a booking was at a holiday home (chefs need to bring extra equipment for those locations). Rather than ignoring this insight, Siddhi did what any curious founder would do—she started Googling. Within days, she discovered the STR conference circuit and simply showed up at Short Term Rental Scale in London. There, she heard industry leaders talking about the exact problem she could solve: guest experiences as a major differentiator in 2025 and beyond. The timing couldn’t have been better. The vacation rental industry was actively searching for ways to stand out, and Yhangry had already proven the model with real customers. 💰 The Economics: Why This Works for Property Managers Here’s where it gets interesting for hosts. Yhangry’s affiliate model is refreshingly straightforward. What You Do: What You Earn: Real Case Study: Kate & Toms, a UK property manager with 200-300 properties, implemented Yhangry integration across four emails and their guidebooks. In just 10 months, they earned $14,000-$15,000 in profit—simply by sharing a link. But here’s what Siddhi emphasizes: the money is secondary to the conversion impact. Kate & Tom saw increased booking conversions because they were offering experiences upfront. Guests weren’t just choosing where to stay—they were choosing an entire experience package. This aligns perfectly with what successful operators are discovering about guest lifetime value: when you create memorable moments, guests don’t just come back —they become ambassadors. 🎯 Upsells at the Top of the Funnel (Not an Afterthought) Siddhi dropped a counterintuitive insight that deserves attention: upsells shouldn’t come after the booking journey. They belong at the marketing stage—top of the funnel. Here’s the data backing this up. A whopping 55% of vacation rental requests on Yhangry come from guests who haven’t yet booked their accommodation. They’re still shopping around, but they already know they want a chef experience. When your website prominently features this option, you become the property they trust because you introduced them to something memorable. This reframes how we think about conversion optimization on direct booking sites. You’re not just selling a place to sleep—you’re selling the whole trip experience. VRMA 2025 statistics support this shift. Around 50% of travelers now factor experiences into booking decisions. For Gen Z, that number jumps to 65-70%. They’re choosing destinations based on what they can do there, not just where they’ll sleep. 💡 What Airbnb’s Services Launch Means for You Siddhi had some fun with a LinkedIn post about Brian Chesky’s Halloween costume—he dressed as a chef right before Airbnb launched their private chef services. The timing was perfect for a friendly jab, since Yhangry already had 200% more chef inventory than Airbnb’s offering in the U.S. But beyond the competitive angle, there’s a strategic lesson here. When Airbnb enters a category, it validates demand. Yet their instant-book model doesn’t translate well to personalized culinary experiences. A private dinner party isn’t like ordering delivery—guests want to message chefs, customize menus for allergies, and adjust for group dynamics. Yhangry’s conversational booking flow addresses this. Rather than forcing instant decisions, guests submit requests and receive personalized menu proposals from multiple chefs. They can see chef profiles, past clients (sometimes celebrities), and negotiate directly. This builds

Airbnb just changed everything with their new fee structure—and most hosts are sleepwalking into smaller profits. In this episode of Booked Solid, Sam Mistretta returns to share what he’s learned after 18 months in the trenches helping hosts drive repeat bookings through text and email marketing. Sam built a system that grew his own direct booking revenue by 400%, and his company, Go STR Marketing, now helps hosts achieve an average 650% ROI on their guest retargeting campaigns. We break down why authentic, personal communication outperforms corporate branding, why coupon codes aren’t the magic bullet you think they are, and the one rental agreement strategy that’s still flying under Airbnb’s radar. Whether you’re a new host or managing dozens of properties, this conversation will shift how you think about guest relationships and building a direct booking business that compounds over time. Summary and Highlights 🎙️ Meet Sam Mistretta Sam Mistretta is the founder of Go STR Marketing, a company that helps short-term rental hosts bring past guests back through strategic text and email campaigns. His journey began in 2022 when he left his corporate IT career to focus full-time on the short-term rental business he and his wife had built. With 18 properties and roughly 1,000 past guest contacts sitting in his PMS, Sam knew the easiest revenue was waiting in his existing database. When he couldn’t find an affordable solution to market to those guests, he built one himself. The result? A 400% increase in direct booking revenue within the first year. Word spread through his mastermind group, STR Secrets, and Go STR Marketing was born. Today, his team helps hosts achieve an average ROI of 650% while consistently beating hospitality industry benchmarks by over 700%. 🌊 The Airbnb Shift Every Host Needs to Understand The short-term rental landscape has changed dramatically. Lead times are shrinking. Competition is fiercer. And Airbnb has made sweeping policy changes that directly impact your bottom line. Sam and Gil walked through the major shifts: The new fee structure moves hosts from paying roughly 3% to now covering 15-15.5% in commissions. For a $200 nightly booking, that translates to a 12.9% reduction in earnings overnight if you don’t adjust your pricing. Airbnb’s communication changes now mask phone numbers, limiting your ability to contact guests to just two days after checkout. Chargeback policies now push disputed payments back onto hosts. And the platform continues tightening control over how you interact with guests. Sam put it bluntly: if you’re sleeping on these changes and not adjusting your strategy, you’re going to make less money this year than last—even if your booking volume stays the same. 🏠 Why Authenticity Wins in Guest Marketing One of the most valuable insights from Sam’s data involves branding. Some hosts want to project a large, corporate image. Others sign off with their first name and a headshot. The data shows which approach actually converts. Personal, authentic campaigns consistently outperform corporate-style messaging. Signing off with your name, including a photo, and sharing why you became a host creates connection. Guests who had a great stay want to feel like they have someone on the inside—not a faceless booking entity. Gil confirmed seeing the same pattern on the website side. Properties with genuine host bios and photos show longer dwell times and lower bounce rates. Even larger property managers with 50+ doors see better results when they introduce their team and tell their story. It’s not about size. It’s about making guests feel like they’re booking with real people who care. 💡 The Coupon Code Reality Check Many hosts obsess over crafting the perfect discount offer. Sam’s data reveals something surprising: the majority of re-bookers don’t use coupon codes at all. When guests had a great experience, they don’t need a discount to come back. They book because they trust you. They feel like they’ve got a connection. The coupon becomes secondary to the relationship. This doesn’t mean coupons are useless—they still work well for acquisition through influencers or local partnerships. But for repeat guest marketing, the emphasis should be on maintaining that authentic connection rather than leading with discounts. 📈 Direct Bookings Compound Over Time Both Sam and Gil emphasized a fundamental truth: direct booking success doesn’t happen overnight. It builds momentum over time. Sam compared it to investing in the S&P 500. It’s not sexy at first. You won’t see instant results. But three or four years later, you’ll look back and realize you built something substantial. This stands in contrast to the Airbnb dopamine cycle—chasing the next booking notification, constantly adjusting rates to fill gaps. Direct booking strategy requires patience, consistency, and a long-term view. You’re building an email list. You’re refining your messaging. You’re learning what resonates with your audience. The hosts who invest in this approach now will be far better positioned than those scrambling to react when the next policy change hits. For those just getting started, building your email collection strategy should be a priority from day one. 🔧 Tactical Advice: The Rental Agreement Strategy Sam shared a specific tactic that remains compliant with Airbnb’s current policies: automated rental agreements. After a guest books through Airbnb, you can send an automated rental agreement through your PMS that collects their phone number and email. Sam was initially skeptical—another thing for guests to click seemed like friction. But out of roughly 2,000 bookings, only two guests pushed back. The key is disclosure. Make sure your listing mentions that a rental agreement will be required. And if you plan to reach out to guests off-platform, Sam recommends waiting at least 15 days after their departure. Why? The post-stay review survey expires at the 14-day mark, reducing the risk of any policy enforcement. 📱 Why Your Website Matters for Co-Hosting Growth The conversation took an interesting turn when Sam shared a story about a client named Mike Munson. Mike had three verbal commitments from property owners ready to switch management companies. But when it came time to sign, they

From aerospace engineer to acquiring four boutique hotels in just 12 months—Harshad Lalan’s journey proves that systems thinking and strategic boldness can transform your short-term rental business. In this episode of the Booked Solid podcast, Harshad shares how he and his wife Ishita scaled from zero properties to a thriving portfolio by combining her design brilliance with his analytical systems approach. He reveals how they jumped from less than 1% direct bookings last year to over 30% this year, his framework for using AI to streamline everything from listing creation to hotel underwriting, and why surrounding yourself with the right people accelerates growth faster than any spreadsheet analysis ever could. Whether you’re just getting started or ready to scale aggressively, Harshad’s honest take on overcoming “analysis paralysis” and building delegatable systems will give you a new perspective on what’s possible. Summary and Highlights 👤 Meet Harshad Lalan Harshad Lalan is a hospitality entrepreneur, boutique hotel investor, and co-founder of 5 Seasons Homestays and Ishita Interiors alongside his wife, Ishita. With a professional background in aerospace engineering and systems design—plus experience as a licensed pilot—Harshad brings a unique analytical perspective to the short-term rental space. Together, the couple has built a portfolio of high-performing, amenity-rich properties across the U.S., transforming ordinary homes into what Harshad calls “Super Properties.” His engineering mindset drives everything from operational systems to guest experience optimization, while Ishita brings the creative soul that makes their properties stand out in competitive markets. Connect with Harshad: 🚀 The Journey: From One Property to Four Hotels in 12 Months Harshad’s path into short-term rentals wasn’t overnight success—it was methodical growth built on deliberate systems. Starting in 2017-2018, he and Ishita acquired just one property per year for the first two years. The process was cautious: Harshad spent nine months searching for their Destin, Florida property, meticulously checking ROI goals, distance from the beach, and amenities before pulling the trigger. By 2022, everything changed. With systems in place, confidence built through experience, and a team supporting operations, they accelerated dramatically. This year alone, they’re acquiring four boutique hotels—large investments that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago. What made the difference? According to Harshad, three critical shifts: Risk tolerance evolved. Early on, limited resources meant every decision carried enormous weight. Now, a diversified portfolio provides cushion for bolder moves. Experience compounds. Multiple iterations taught them what success looks like—and more importantly, what warning signs to catch early. Community accelerates growth. Joining a boutique hotel mastermind connected them with lending options, partners, and expertise that shortened their learning curve dramatically. As Harshad noted, the mastermind fee felt steep initially but proved to be the best investment they ever made. If you’re considering joining a mastermind or coaching community, Harshad’s experience validates that surrounding yourself with people who’ve already achieved what you’re pursuing can collapse years of trial and error into months. 📈 From Less Than 1% to 30% Direct Bookings Perhaps the most striking transformation in Harshad’s business this year has been his direct booking strategy. Last year, direct bookings accounted for less than 1% of revenue—essentially just the occasional repeat guest who happened to remember their website. This year? They’re sitting at 25-30% direct bookings. The shift required a complete mindset change. Rather than treating direct bookings as a passive bonus, Harshad built a cohesive strategy around two distinct approaches: Capturing OTA Traffic Through Brand Recognition Every listing title now follows a specific format: property name + “by 5 Seasons Homestays.” Instead of cramming amenities into the title like most hosts, Harshad prioritizes brand visibility. Here’s why this works: Airbnb titles become H1 headers on property pages, which means they get indexed by search engines. Over time, guests searching for unique property names or “5 Seasons Homestays” find the direct booking site instead of returning to Airbnb. The descriptions reinforce this branding—mentioning the management company name throughout. It’s subtle, but these small nudges add up. When guests do land on the direct booking website, they immediately see how much they’re saving. Right beneath the booking total, a direct comparison shows savings versus Airbnb pricing—often $700 or more. That visual confirmation removes hesitation. Acquiring New Guests Through Influencer Marketing The second strategy targets people who haven’t discovered them through OTAs at all. Harshad works with regional influencers near their properties, inviting them to stay and create content. But here’s the key: the goal isn’t immediate bookings. Instead, influencer content drives traffic to landing pages designed for email capture. From there, they nurture leads through targeted campaigns. When local events approach—like Oktoberfest in Asheville—they email their list with available properties for those specific dates. Since many guests book last-minute (especially post-flood in Asheville), these timely triggers fill occupancy gaps without requiring price drops. This approach mirrors what successful hosts like Lindsey Rodriguez recommend: building email lists as assets that generate bookings on demand, rather than relying entirely on OTA algorithms. 🤖 Using AI to Systemize Everything If there’s one theme running through Harshad’s operations, it’s systematization—and AI has become his most powerful tool for achieving it. Listing Creation in Minutes Creating property listings used to consume hours of careful writing and formatting. Now, Harshad uses a custom GPT trained on his preferred format, word counts, and platform requirements (Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, and Hostfully). His process? Open the custom GPT, dictate a voice note describing the property—bedroom count, location, design inspiration, key highlights—and receive a complete, formatted listing within seconds. As he explained during our conversation: rather than thinking about structure and content simultaneously, he separates the creative stream of consciousness from the formatting process. The outcome? Better listings, faster. Hotel Underwriting With AI Assistance Boutique hotel underwriting involves complex spreadsheets projecting multiple years across multiple units. Traditional tools are often buggy, with macros that fail unpredictably. Harshad’s solution: upload the underwriting format to AI, provide prompts, and let it perform initial checks and balances. This doesn’t replace due diligence—it accelerates the screening phase so he can quickly identify which deals