Luxury Direct Bookings Past 60% Built One Guest Connection at a Time with Rachel Alday

Podcast Summary and Highlights

👤 Meet Rachel Alday

Rachel Alday is the Co CEO of Abode Luxury Rentals. She cofounded the company in 2008 with her husband and business partner, Rob, right in the middle of the financial crisis. In hindsight, that was either bold or slightly unhinged. It turned out to be bold. Over nearly two decades, Rachel has grown Abode into a respected multi market luxury brand known for design forward homes and deeply human hospitality.

Today, Abode manages around 200 homes across Park City, Jackson Hole, and Sun Valley. Nightly rates range from about $1,000 to $20,000. With a background in corporate marketing, Rachel now writes and speaks about leadership through care, clarity, and boundaries. She believes luxury should feel elevated but never distant. She lives in Park City with Rob and their three children, and her book, Please Do Disturb, releases November 10.

🧬 Hiring for the Hospitality Gene

For roughly 12 years, Abode had no formal hiring process. Rachel admits interviews were mostly friendly conversations and gut instinct. Around 2019, with close to 30 people on staff, she and Rob realized they had an incredible team without knowing how they built it. So they brought in company culture consultants to figure out what was working.

The answer she keeps coming back to is the hospitality gene. You can’t train it. Rachel describes it through the end of a shift. One person clocks out and leaves. Another documents every open guest issue, briefs the next shift, and texts a teammate later to make sure everyone is okay.

Her early hiring shortcut still holds up. People with long restaurant experience, especially servers and hosts, often carry that gene. Gil shared a similar lesson from CraftedStays. His first customer success hire, Kin, told him he could teach website skills but could never teach someone to care. Listen to the episode for Rachel’s candid take on why a little codependency might be a hiring green flag. 😄

🧹 The $400K Lesson and the Fear Behind It

Rachel’s biggest regret is surprisingly operational. She wishes Abode had brought housekeeping in house years earlier. When they finally did, EBITDA improved by roughly $400,000. They already knew the standard they wanted, so there was no reason to leave it in someone else’s hands.

The deeper lesson is about fear. Rachel remembers panicking when Rob hired their first part time runner at around $12 to $15 an hour. She was wrong, and that hire helped unlock growth. Now she tells her team, and herself, not to make decisions from fear.

Gil offered another way to see it. The real challenge is delivering the same quality at the next stage of scale. Growing from 20 to 40 homes, or from 100 to 200, means deciding what your team should look like before you get there.

🏡 100 Homes Before a Single SOP

Here is the part that made Gil stop her mid sentence. Abode passed 100 properties before building real SOPs. New hires learned through ride alongs with the property management team for one to three months, because nothing was written down.

What held it together was an unusually close team. Family members work side by side. One company value is “deep roots grow.” Rachel wants teammates who genuinely like each other, because winter in a ski town is intense. Now Abode has strong processes, and those are what let the team keep its standards consistent across 200 homes. Tim Hubbard made a similar case about systems in his Booked Solid episode archive conversation on scaling across dozens of markets.

✨ Property Lore and the Power of Storytelling

Rachel is honest that she doesn’t think the vacation rental industry has truly strong brands yet. To her, a real brand is one people recognize even if they have never stayed with you. Still, Abode has built serious brand equity, and storytelling is the newest piece.

It began with the About Us page on the Abode website. That page tells the real story of how the company started, instead of listing facts. It worked so well that Rachel and her collaborator Neely now write “lore” for every property. Each story blends homeowner details with a sense of place and a touch of magic. The next step is bringing those stories into the homes themselves.

Why does this matter for direct bookings? A big share of the joy of travel happens while guests are still planning. A story gives guests something to feel before they book. It also gives them a reason to remember you. If you want to build that kind of identity, this guide on building a direct booking brand guests remember pairs well with this segment. Hear the full episode for her story about arriving at a Jackson Hole ranch compound and feeling her shoulders drop. 🌄

🔧 Conflict as the Path to Luxury Direct Bookings

This is the heart of the episode. Rachel loves the service recovery paradox. Guests who have a problem handled beautifully can end up more loyal than guests who never had a problem at all. In fly to markets, she assumes people will arrive tired and frustrated. A water heater will fail, even with perfect maintenance.

So Abode trains for conflict, not just friction reduction. The goal is not only fixing the toilet. The goal is ending the conversation with a real sense of connection and belonging. Rachel says that one shift leads straight to great reviews, a brand people like, and direct bookings.

She calls it “the issue behind the issue.” A guest calls about the TV remote and mentions her grandson couldn’t make the trip. A thoughtful team member asks about him and later sends a small gift for her to take home. Now that guest feels like she has a friend in Sun Valley. Dave Goodfellow makes a similar case for mid stay calls that turn bookings into repeat guests, and Jeff Iloulian shows how direct booking channels hide inside your guest messages.

Rachel is not against OTAs. Roughly 10 to 12% of Abode’s bookings come from Vrbo and a similar share from Airbnb. Many of those guests later book direct, because an unforgettable stay makes them search for Abode. In her view, that works far better than the “book direct next time” card on the counter.

🎁 Rewarding Every Return Visit

Gil brought up a restaurant tradition he has heard about, where staff quietly flag first time diners so the whole team works to win them back. Rachel’s team does something similar. Their property management software flags second and third stays. Each milestone triggers a bigger gift with a handwritten note.

Because most Abode guests are families, every stay becomes a shared family memory. Reinforcing that memory at each visit is how repeat business compounds. To support the relationship between stays, look at this repeat bookings email strategy, the reasons to build an email list from your direct booking website, and Lindsey Rodriguez on simplifying repeat bookings with email campaigns.

📚 Key Takeaways

Hire for care first, because skills can be taught and empathy can’t. Watch for decisions made out of fear, especially around hiring and bringing work in house. Plan for guest conflict and train your team to end every issue with connection. Give each property a story guests can feel before they book. Recognize repeat guests with rewards that grow with each stay. Put your brand name where guests will see it, starting with a clear naming convention.

⚡ Rapid Fire Highlights

📖 Book recommendation: Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. It inspired Rachel’s company library, where team members earn $100 for each book report. In a twist of fate, Tony later became an Abode client, and Rachel still manages those homes for his estate.

🧠 Mindset advice: Assume good intentions. Rachel says this to her team whenever tension rises, and to herself as well.

🛠️ One thing to do this afternoon: Order quality branded staging items, like mugs, cozy throws, or wood cutting boards with your logo embroidered or etched tone on tone. They show up subtly in listing photos, so guests can search your company name and find you. Pair that with a naming convention like “Abode at…” across every listing. Then make sure the name matches your website so search works in your favor. For the SEO side, see SEO for short term rentals, optimizing your STR for Google, ChatGPT, and AI search, and per property SEO meta overrides.

🤝 Connect with Rachel Alday

💼 LinkedIn: Rachel Alday
📸 Instagram: @aldayrachel
📧 Email: rachel@abodeluxuryrentals.com
🏔️ Website: Abode Luxury Rentals
📘 Book: Please Do Disturb, releasing November 10

🎙️ Listen, Build, and Join the Community

This recap only scratches the surface. The full conversation has the stories that make these lessons stick: the “not a cult” hiring pitch, the grandmother and the remote, and the ranch that gives Rachel chills. Listen to the full episode of the Booked Solid Show, then explore more guest conversations like Damian Sheridan’s take on local content that drives direct bookings and Na’ím Anís Paymán on host to host direct bookings.

If you want to keep learning alongside hosts who treat hospitality as a business, join our community of direct booking operators [add community link]. 🤝

And when you’re ready to give your guests a place to find you, visit CraftedStays.co. CraftedStays helps serious hosts create guest first websites that convert. It also syncs your reviews and keeps your site ready for AI search. Build your brand. Start booking direct. 🚀

Transcription

Rachel: You really can, again and again, end all the issues that come up with a deeper connection to the people you’re dealing with. That is exactly how you get good reviews. That is exactly how you have a brand that people like, and that is exactly how you get direct bookings. You could start the whole thing with: when there’s conflict, we want to use the conflict to build a deeper connection with these people. That’s what my book is about.

It sounds complex, and it sounds like soft skills, but honestly, you can just give yourself a few steps. There are a bunch of ways to do it. You can start with this: we all know we’re going to have issues and conflict with our guests, and probably our homeowners. So what if the goal is not just to solve it? The goal is actually deeper connection.

Sponsor Message

Gil: Before we bring on our guest, I want to talk a little bit about something I’ve been hearing a lot from hosts. I keep hearing the same thing: “I know my website isn’t converting, but I can’t afford $8,000 on an agency to rebuild it.” Here’s the thing. You’re learning all these marketing strategies, you’re driving traffic, and you’re putting it all to work. But if your site isn’t 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 have to pay them again. You can’t iterate, you can’t test, and you really can’t improve. You don’t need a custom $10,000 website to get the conversion rates that matter. You just need the right platform.

That’s why I built 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, keep testing and improving as you learn, and make changes all on the platform. You don’t need to learn something new.

So if you need some help or want to get started, go to craftedstays.co and start your free trial. Now, let’s bring on our guest and get into hospitality and marketing.

Episode Introduction

Gil: Hey, folks. Welcome back to the Booked Solid Show, the show where we bring in top operators to discuss hospitality, operations, and direct bookings.

On today’s show, I have Rachel Alday from Abode Luxury Rentals. She has a portfolio of around 200 properties and has been in the vacation rental space for over 18 years. Today we talk about how she’s built her portfolio, why brand building is so important to her, and how she’s creating individual stories for each one of her properties.

So without further ado, let’s bring her in.

Interview

Gil: Hey, Rachel, welcome to the show.

Rachel: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Gil: It’s super exciting to have you here. I see you all over the place. Not just you, but your story, your company, all of it. And as we’re prepping for VRMA, I’m probably seeing you more and more. You’re blowing up everywhere, so I definitely want you to share what’s going on in your world. To kick us off, Rachel, who are you, and why am I seeing you all over the place?

Rachel: Okay, that’s so hard, because I have many facets. But in terms of my vacation rental business, and I won’t get into the other stuff, I don’t want to weird you out: my husband and I started a vacation rental company together over 18 years ago. It’s called Abode Luxury Rentals.

We manage right around 200 homes across three markets. We started in Park City, Utah, 18 years ago. Thirteen years ago, we added Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And three years ago, we added Sun Valley, Idaho. So, three ski markets out west. We started our portfolio knowing we only wanted to manage luxury properties, and we’ve stayed true to that all these years.

On the low end, our homes average around $1,000 a night, and it goes up to $10,000 or even sometimes $20,000 per night. These are very expensive properties to rent, and also to own and take care of. So we have a niche thing going. We have over 50 people on our team year round, and it goes up into the 70s in the winter.

It’s been a crazy, wild ride, because when we started, our first software was a disc that someone mailed us. So it’s been a long journey from there to dealing with AI now. As our team has grown and we’ve added a director level and a manager level, I’ve been able to focus more on concepts around hospitality and leadership. It’s been really awesome to have a little more time to learn about all of that and then share what I’ve learned. It’s been an amazing, long, twisty road, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Gil: That’s probably one of the first questions I want to ask you. As you reflect on building Abode, what’s been one of the most rewarding parts of building this empire of yours?

Rachel: It’s only 200. Come on.

Gil: That’s quite a bit. Don’t be modest.

Rachel: Look, it only took 18 years. With all the consolidation, there are some really big organizations now. But for me, what we’re doing is awesome.

I would say just working in hospitality has given me some of the most rewarding moments. You have these guests, and you’re creating these amazing experiences. One of our company values is time over money, and this is huge, because our clients, on both the homeowner and guest side, are basically all high net worth individuals. For them, time is what truly matters. Even if they’re spending $150,000 to rent a house for a week, they could often make that back in a day or a week.

Weirdly, the money just isn’t the thing. It’s that they only have one week with their family, and they’re never getting that back. There’s nothing more rewarding than someone trusting you with something as valuable as the limited time they have with their family, and then making it happen in a way where they’re so grateful for this amazing, memorable experience that will last them their whole lifetime.

And you never know. Grandma might have just been diagnosed with something sad and scary, and maybe this is time the family has together without knowing how many more times they’ll get. When you can be part of creating an amazing experience like that, I don’t know how much more rewarding it gets.

I’d also say it’s been very rewarding building a company when my husband and I had no idea we were ever going to hire anyone. We’ve made a billion, trillion mistakes along the way as we grew the business and built a team. But now we have an amazing team and a pretty awesome culture most days, and that feels really rewarding too. We’ve built something lucrative that has supported our family in ways I never would have dreamed of, and it’s also supported all these other people’s families. That feels pretty awesome.

Gil: I get the sense that team culture is a really big part of your organization, with a lot of heart going into it. Well oiled teams have good SOPs and good operations, but the people in them are a really heavy component. When you hire, what have you found is the litmus test for knowing someone will fit in right away? What helps you decide you have the right members on your team?

Rachel: For the first 12 years or so, we did not have a hiring process. About six years ago, we hired a company culture consulting team to help us. It was 2019, before COVID, and we had almost 30 people. My husband and I were sitting in our office one day, the business was doing really well, and we were like, “Wow, we have an amazing team. These people are awesome, and we have no idea how we got them here.”

We would just do interviews, and a lot of times it was me just chatting with people. I had no background in HR, and I still don’t. I would feel people out on a gut level. If they were a personality fit, we’d find a way to train them up and bring them in. We brought in consultants because we realized, “This is amazing, but if we’re going to keep it like this and keep these people, we need to understand what’s working and why.”

We got a lot of help with that. But I always talk about the hospitality gene. You can’t train the hospitality gene. You either have it or you don’t.

Here’s how I’d explain it. Pretty much everybody on my team has the hospitality gene. Someone in finance or revenue management may not need it; they may have other strengths. But picture the end of a shift. Someone’s done with their day, and there are a couple of guests, maybe a homeowner, where problems were brewing and aren’t fully finalized. The issues might be solved, but closing the loop and smoothing things over hasn’t happened yet.

Some people get to the end of their shift, clock out, and go. They don’t have the hospitality gene. Someone with the hospitality gene has an inner drive to make sure those people are happy. Even if they’re going home, they would never just leave. They’d make sure everything was properly documented, talk with the people coming onto the next shift, and make sure those guests would be taken care of. They’d probably text the teammate who came in after them: “Hey, they’re good, right? Everybody’s good?” They’re truly driven to make other people happy, and they can’t go to sleep at night unless everybody is.

One way to spot that when you’re hiring, especially early on when it’s just you and no consultants, is to look at people who have worked in restaurants long term. It doesn’t have to be fine dining. Someone who’s been a server or a host for a while often has the hospitality gene. I’ve always loved people with a food service background.

I can also learn a lot about someone just by having a conversation, asking about their family and their life. You can get a feel for their level of empathy. When someone talks with you, it’s not all about them, and you can sense their feeling for other people. That’s one way to suss out the hospitality gene. We now have much more standardized interview processes and specific questions we’ve been coached to ask, but you can usually just feel the hospitality gene in a conversation.

Gil: I can totally relate. When I’m hiring someone on our CSM team, it matters less whether they know short term rentals or the technologies we use. The first thing is whether they care about the customer they’re serving. If they don’t care, they shouldn’t be in customer service. We want people who obsess over it, who are trying to get closure, not just close a ticket and move on.

For the longest time at CraftedStays, I did all the onboardings and all of that work. I probably should have hired earlier, but my bar was so high that I felt hiring would mean compromising. I held back for so long, and it’s stressful as an entrepreneur.

Ironically, the first CSM I hired, Kin, is phenomenal. He actually answered questions better than I did, and he cared about our customers. When we were hiring our second and third, he knew exactly what to look for. He said, “Gil, we don’t need them to have a website background. I can teach that. What I can’t teach is whether they give a darn about that person.”

Rachel: A thousand percent. It’s just an inherent thing. I sometimes say you need a little codependency, and I definitely go to too much therapy. But your trauma response should be the kind where you’re really thinking about what other people are feeling and thinking, because that radiates from you. If your trauma response is to be closed off and avoidant, people can feel that. Hospitality is all about trust, and people want to feel cared for.

I just wrote a book, and it’s all about this: people want connection. Being almost 50 and looking back on all these years in hospitality, what I’ve realized is that good hospitality and good leadership both come down to whether you can connect. Some of us are inherently the kind of person who locks in all the time, which makes connecting easy. Some people need a little coaching. But you either have an innate desire to connect or you don’t. That’s probably a good way to describe the hospitality gene.

Gil: I like that. What was one of the biggest lessons from building this company that you wish you’d known earlier? Eighteen years is a long time. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Rachel: I always say this one, which isn’t really related to what we’ve been talking about: I wish we had brought housekeeping in house earlier, meaning hired housekeepers as part of our team instead of outsourcing. We only did that within the last couple of years, and it changed our EBITDA by about $400,000.

We do a lot of revenue, and our housekeeping is really expensive, so that’s part of why. But it’s crazy. I think a lot of people hold off because we get scared that other people can do it better than we can. The truth is we knew what we wanted, and we were demanding it from outsourced housekeepers. We could have brought that in house. So that’s a good one for most people to think about earlier.

Then I’d say hiring. I don’t think we did a bad job hiring; we hired amazing people. But we were very, very slow. The first person we hired was a part time runner to help check houses. I think we paid them $12 or $15 an hour. It was not a high paid role, and it was only part time. And I remember telling my husband, “We can’t afford this. What are you doing?”

I was so afraid, and I was wrong. Once we got used to hiring people, that’s what allowed us to grow, offer a high level of service, and sustain it. I just had so much fear.

So that’s the ultimate lesson: don’t act from fear. I talk about that almost every day with my team now, and in my own self talk. If you’re making a business decision, and probably a life decision too, and you can easily feel that you’re making it out of fear, it might not be the best decision. Maybe you reach the same result, but you have to make sure you get there for a reason other than fear.

Gil: As you talk through your experiences, I get a different take, and I’m curious about yours. You mentioned hiring your first runner and bringing your team in house. The lens I’m seeing is that your biggest lessons are about how to deliver quality at the scale you want.

In the early days, you don’t want to pay because you’re doing things yourself to hold your quality bar. As you grow, it gets harder to maintain that quality and hit the bottom line. It’s about figuring out how to scale operations the right way and anticipating what the next phase of your service needs to look like. If you’re at 20 properties and want to get to 40, what does the team need to look like? What decisions do you need to make? You can’t keep running around doing everything yourself.

In the same way, if you’re running 100 properties and want to get to 200, leaning on an outside team is really difficult because you’re relying on other people’s standards. You can’t coach them the way you’d coach an internal team, and you don’t know which cleaner is going to show up. You have to think about what you need to hire into and how to scale operations for the next phase. That’s my takeaway.

Rachel: True. We didn’t do any of that. We didn’t think we’d manage more than 20 houses when we started. I remember hitting $500,000 a year in revenue, maybe in the first or second year, and thinking, “That’s crazy.” Now it’s around $25 million a year.

When we got to 50 houses, it was, “Okay, that’s it. No more.” Then there was growth, and it was, “Okay, 80. That’s it, 80 across Park City and Jackson.” Then we got to 100, and it was, “After 100, it’s one in, one out.” This happened over and over. We definitely were not planning.

In the old days, before good software, before so many people were involved in the industry, before all the activity at conferences where you can talk to each other, we were literally out there on Mars. Sure, there were other people doing it in Park City and Jackson, but there wasn’t much collaboration like there is now. We were making it up every single day, and we were just there as the industry grew. There was a lot of luck involved. We had zero idea it could get bigger or that there would be more demand. And then COVID happened, which was insane. So there was no strategy for growth, because it was happening almost against our will.

And honestly, it’s only within the last few years that we developed SOPs and processes. Just let that sink in. That is real.

Gil: Wait, wait, wait. You got to 100 properties without strong SOPs? You and your team must have been incredibly tight.

Rachel: We are just tight. We’ve always been so tight, and that’s how it worked. My sister works with us, and my husband and I run the company together. We have a lot of people on the team who are related to each other because we’re in these small towns. That helped.

When we hire people, I always say, “Listen, this is not a cult, okay?” But I’m not into “work is work and friends are friends.” During the winter season, things get really crazy, and we all have to have each other’s back. I’m not saying everyone has to socialize together all the time. But I want people who like each other and want to hang out with each other. There has to be a friendship vibe, a family feel, if we’re going to make it through. That’s part of what made it work without all the structure.

We definitely got to a point where it was clear we needed all of that. Now we have amazing SOPs and processes, and we spend a lot of time working on them. That’s what allows us to consistently offer a certain level of service across 200 properties, and it’s why we feel more confident we could grow a bit more.

But what got us here is something anyone should think about, even with SOPs: that family feeling. In our company, one of our values is “deep roots grow.” Work can’t just be work and social can’t just be social. There has to be a deeper connection for everyone on the team.

Another crazy thing: for many years, new team members onboarded by riding along with our property management team for one, two, or three months, because nothing was written down. Everybody learned by being in it, so they could understand what we were trying to do. Not recommended, at least not for that long. But I do think riding along and getting frontline experience really helps, and a lot of big, successful hospitality companies, especially restaurants, follow practices like that.

Gil: It’s almost like learning through osmosis in the very beginning.

Rachel: That’s exactly what it was.

Gil: It reminds me of the startup world. I’m in hospitality, but I have 15 years of startup experience, and that’s what it’s like. You don’t have SOPs. You have a small team, everybody’s in the office together, sometimes without an office at all. You’re very close and you know what each other is doing. We have daily standups to keep each other aligned. We don’t spend time on documentation. We spend time on what drives value for customers and how to fix things fast.

Then you raise a round of funding or land a big client, and things start to break. You’re hiring more people and asking how to scale. You have to wake up, and it’s a hard process to go through.

Rachel: Yeah.

Gil: But almost every company goes through the same thing.

Rachel: It’s so much the same. I haven’t worked in software, but that startup phase has so much kinetic energy. It’s like fighting a war. In hospitality, especially in seasonal markets, there’s so much pressure all at once, and it brings up those same feelings. There’s real value in that, and it’s probably part of what brings teams together. Lodging is concentrated in seasonal areas, and that seasonality creates that firefighting environment for sure.

Gil: Switching gears, talk to me about your marketing. I got a chance to meet Neely, who talked about what you’re building right now. The sense I get is that you’re not heavily OTA dependent. You’re brand first more than anything else. Tell me about that.

Rachel: We’re over 60% direct, and I’ll admit some of that is because we’ve been around a long time, so we have a lot of repeat bookings. But we also really cared about our brand. I struggle with the concept of brand in the vacation rental industry because I don’t believe there are really strong brands yet in our industry.

To me, a strong brand isn’t signified by only your past customers knowing about you. A known brand is one where a wide group of people know what your brand is, not just people who have already been your customer. But I’ll take what I can get, and right now, in our industry, this counts.

The way we got here is that we cared about the company name. One of the things we do is use a naming convention for every property that includes our company name. Abode is our company, so all of my listings are “Abode at” something, or “Abode on Open Meadows,” and so on. That’s helped since the old days, and we’ve stayed true to it.

Another interesting thing you brought up, which is newer for us, is storytelling. I think part of branding can be as simple as the story you tell on the About Us page of your website. Neely actually wrote ours. It’s not flat information. It tells the story of how we decided to start this business, how we got to where we are, and who we are.

I learned a lot from what worked so well about our About Us story, and it got me thinking about storytelling within hospitality and vacation rentals. So I’ve been working with Neely on a storytelling concept that I think is really impactful and differentiating for our brand. We’re creating a unique story lore, as it were, for each property.

The stories aren’t strictly fact based, although we do get snippets from each homeowner if they want us to include something interesting about them, why they picked that piece of land, or why they designed the house in a certain style. Neely works that into the lore she creates. What we wanted was a story about a sense of place for each property, so we could offer some magic, insight, and something interesting for every home. We’re also going to have activations inside each house around those stories.

When you create something unique and creative, and I think a little magic helps a lot, it can help build a brand and give it meaning, because it’s differentiation and it creates interest. Why would anyone care about your brand? I have to remind myself all the time: just because we care about the brand we’ve built doesn’t mean anyone else will. Storytelling can be a really important way to give people a reason to care.

Gil: We have a lot of property managers with really unique stays, where the property itself draws you in. When that’s not the case, you have to create something that connects the guest to the property. It’s interesting that you have this concept of lore and activation. I imagine it spreads across every touchpoint: the listing, the property description, the messages leading up to the stay, the things they see when they arrive. It almost feels like a magical, intimate relationship with the property that’s hard to replicate any other way.

Rachel: Yeah. I wanted to be careful, because I don’t want it to become too kitschy or childish. But I did want, first, storytelling that fits every house, and second, a little magic and differentiation. The most important part for me was making it memorable, not in a weird or tacky way, but with authenticity and a bit of differentiation.

I like the idea of lore because it’s not just a historical story of a place. It allows a little magic, because that’s what these experiences are. When you remember an amazing trip, you remember what actually happened, but you also romanticize it a bit, especially if you were with family, someone you love, or friends. Those special parts stick out, like they have a little magic dust on them.

Storytelling gives people that feeling while they’re planning their trip. We also know that people get a huge percentage of their enjoyment from a trip during the planning phase. So storytelling with some magic in it can help people start building deeper feelings about the trip before they even book. If we can carry that all the way through the stay, that’s taking it far above and beyond. That’s what we’re shooting for.

Gil: It’s like opening the door to not thinking of this as another stay within four walls. Yes, it’s nice. Yes, it’s luxurious. But how do you welcome a more intimate feeling? As you piece it together, it sounds like creating a subtle spark. You don’t want to be flashy, but you want guests to wonder a little and almost hunt for things. “I got these messages and heard about this house.” When they arrive, they’re more attentive to their surroundings, looking for the small things someone planted intentionally. I’ve never been to one of your places, so forgive me if I’m making things up, but that’s the sense I get.

Rachel: You figured it out. It’s connection again. Why is everything connection? But I swear it is. It’s about bringing you in and building a connection to that sense of place, so it’s more than a place with a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. And truthfully, there is something more when you stay somewhere wonderful.

We were in Jackson Hole last week for a team retreat with our directors, and we stayed at one of the properties we manage. It’s an awesome ranch compound with a main house and multiple guest houses. Every time I go there, the minute you drive up, there’s some kind of magic. I swear you get a shiver. It’s so gorgeous. I can’t explain it, but your shoulders drop and you think, “I’m so lucky to be here right now.”

With storytelling, hopefully we can impart some of that before the guest even arrives. I hope that when they get to these houses and step out of the car, they think, “Whoa, this is going to be awesome.” And I think storytelling can help people start to feel that before they even book.

Gil: I’m excited. You’re rolling this out now, and you’re about to start the activations inside the properties. I can’t wait to bring you back on the show a year from now. I bet there will be plenty of ideas, lessons, stories, and case studies about how to make it even more intimate.

Rachel: Same, no doubt. For me, it’s always about the journey, and we’re about to go on a whole new one with all this storytelling. I’m very excited. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night because I’m thinking, “I want to do this. This is going to be so good.” I’m sure there will be a ton of mistakes, like with everything else we do, and we’ll have a lot to learn. But that’s part of the fun.

Gil: You’re now at 60 to 65% direct, you’ve been around a long time, and brand is part of it. What other long term investments got you to that independent state, where you’re meeting your revenue targets through your own channels? What made the biggest difference in that number?

Rachel: There are a bunch of little things that are easy to try, like the naming convention, so that when anyone searches, they understand your brand or that property.

For the bigger picture, people understanding who you are as a company and being able to find you directly, a lot of it comes back to reviews. This isn’t an easy, quick fix. Having good reviews long term is a long game, but I love a long game. It means creating good experiences and also setting honest, real expectations throughout the whole cycle: making sure your listing is very accurate, and if something changes in the property, updating your photos and your listing. All the way through the experience, you’re taking care of the person while they’re in the house.

And even then, you’ll have issues. It’s travel, and all of our markets are fly to markets. People are probably going to be upset when they show up. So how are you going to plan for conflict resolution? I love the concept of the service recovery paradox. There will be issues. A toilet will overflow. A water heater will go out even though you’ve properly maintained it. How are you planning to recover from those situations?

If you deal with those issues in a great way, even though guests went through something uncomfortable, they end up feeling more connected to you and your team. That’s what gets you a great review, and I think that has a huge impact on direct bookings.

I’m not opposed to OTA bookings. It’s been happening for us for years. We do about 10 to 12% on Vrbo and about the same on Airbnb, and I don’t have a problem with that. But the way we convert a lot of the people who book through OTAs into direct clients is that they have an amazing experience, and that’s what makes them want to search for us.

There are little ways to incentivize people and show them how to find you directly. But your best tool ever is that they have an awesome experience and leave a good review. That does more than the card you leave in the property that says, “Next time, book with me direct and get a discount.” What really works is an awesome experience that makes them feel connected to you, like they’re friends with you. Then they’ll want to seek you out.

In travel, it always comes back to experience. Good reviews are worth their weight in gold. You can plan, write SOPs and processes, train your team, and build a good company culture, and that can literally result in amazing reviews. I’ve seen this over the years.

Gil: Was it you who posted on LinkedIn the other day about the ACE acronym?

Rachel: Yes.

Gil: Tell me about that, because I think it’s very relevant to what we just talked about.

Rachel: This comes back to connection. In the book I wrote, there are a bunch of models that break down different frameworks you can use to build connection, and a lot of it comes back to conflict resolution.

We’re always so focused on friction reduction, and I think that’s where we get sidetracked as an industry, as hospitality overall. Of course we should reduce friction. But if you can also focus yourself and your team on conflict resolution, not just escalation but the psychology around it, that’s powerful.

What it all boils down to is: assume conflict. There will be some. It’s people, often a family, staying in a property together. Then add travel and air travel. So how are you going to solve it? And what if the goal of solving the problem isn’t just the clogged toilet, but ending the conversation with a feeling of connection and belonging?

That might seem too hard for some people, but it’s honestly not. I’ve watched it in my own business. You really can, again and again, end all the issues that come up with a deeper connection to the people you’re dealing with, and that is exactly how you get good reviews. That is exactly how you have a brand that people like, and that is exactly how you get direct bookings.

You could start the whole thing with: when there’s conflict, we want to use it to build a deeper connection. That’s what my book is about. It sounds complex and like soft skills, but you can give yourself a few steps. We all know we’ll have issues and conflict with our guests, and probably our homeowners. So what if the goal isn’t just to solve it? The goal is actually deeper connection. When you train your team around that, that’s literally the path to your direct bookings. It sounds like a long distance, but it’s really not.

Gil: I think about this in our own business at CraftedStays. Sometimes a customer messages us because they’re trying to do something and don’t know how. We send help desk articles. At a certain point, it gets frustrating on their side: “I asked for help, I got something back, and I’m still confused.”

When we decide it’s better to get on a call and walk them through it, that means so much to the person on the other side. Yes, it costs us time, and yes, it takes away from supporting other customers in the queue. But if we want everybody to be happy, it also opens the door to ask whether there’s anything else we can help with. “We noticed you didn’t configure this. You didn’t ask, but since we’re walking through your site, your social profiles are still empty. Let’s guide you through that.” It becomes an opportunity to delight them, not just, “We covered your case. Goodbye.”

Rachel: It’s the issue behind the issue. You can use a lot of channels for this; you can even do it over text or email sometimes. Let’s say a guest calls because they can’t work the remote. You get into a conversation, and they say, “My grandson is usually here and shows me how to do this, but he couldn’t come this time because he had a school thing. I’m so bummed, because I barely get to see him.”

Then someone in that conversation says, “Oh, wow, tell me more about your grandson,” or asks how old he is. You make a mental note, and maybe you send a little gift she can bring back to her grandson as a memento from her trip.

It’s these little things. It starts with, “I can’t figure out the remote.” You help with the remote, and then you find a way to connect. It could be any small thing, and it’s usually the thing behind the thing. I swear, every time, that person ends up feeling like they’ve got a guy or a gal in Sun Valley or Jackson Hole. They now have a personal connection to you and therefore to the company. All day long, every single time, that’s how you get direct bookings. That’s how you build a brand anyone cares about, even if it’s just your customers. We try all these different things, but it really comes down to that about 95% of the time.

Gil: I agree with you so much. We have phenomenal property managers who use our platform to build their direct booking websites, and the ones driving the most direct bookings have two things in common. First, they have a dedicated marketing person who obsesses over the entire booking funnel, not just the website. Second, they have hospitality in their blood. They think about the guest experience. They’re not just thinking about how to get the five stars, but how to deliver an experience where guests would trust them to host again. That’s the real bar.

Five stars is just a metric. It’s different when a guest says, “This person really took care of me. Traveling with kids and packing all these things is so stressful, and this property manager thought of everything. When things came up, they understood me.” What if every trip were like that? Wouldn’t you want that as a traveler? I see it over and over: the operators who obsess over hospitality drive the most direct bookings. It’s not marketing in the funnel sense. Maybe it’s a different form of marketing. It’s brand building.

Rachel: It is.

Gil: It’s delivering an experience people want to remember and come back to. Then you build your book of business over time. You took 18 years, and you’ve learned a lot.

Rachel: That might be a little too long. I don’t know if everyone wants to go that long. That’s a lifetime.

Gil: But honestly, within three or four years, if you keep doing that and bring the best people into the mix, your product and your hospitality become something people love. Especially in your three markets, which are heavy vacation rental markets where people come back year after year, it’s really important to capture their intention, deliver on it, and keep them there.

Rachel: Yes. I can say all of this confidently because hindsight is 20/20, and it’s easier after you’ve done it a lot. That’s what happened with the book, too. We weren’t sitting down to make a plan. We were looking at what we had already done and asking, “What did we do?” That’s how we were able to name it. It’s easier when you’ve had so many years and made so many mistakes.

We all want to operationalize everything, and we need to. Success does depend on good SOPs and processes, and I learned that the hard way. That’s what allows us to keep going, and what makes me confident we can keep doing what we first did by accident. The processes are the foundation that supports everyone.

But when you boil it down, even if you want to make it more robotic, in hospitality, as in restaurants and hotels, I truly believe it’s about connection. You can operationalize connection a bit. You can explain to people how it works. But they need some of that hospitality gene to make it authentic and real. There has to be heart and soul behind it. People can tell when there isn’t.

Gil: It’s funny you mention restaurants again; I think it’s the second or third time we’ve brought them up. Restaurants know that if you’ve been somewhere three times, you’re a customer for life. At fine dining restaurants, they’ll often put a marker on your table to signal the staff: “This is their first time. Let’s take care of them so they come back.” Typically it’s a red napkin, and it tells everyone working there to lock that guest in, because if you get them to that third visit, they’ll come back time and time again. It applies so much to hospitality.

Rachel: Totally. We do that. We have a system in our property management software that flags whether it’s someone’s second stay, third stay, and so on. We have a gifting system: on the second stay, they get a gift with a handwritten note, and on the third, something more, and it goes up from there.

I took that from hotels I’ve stayed at and from conversations about restaurants. It’s so important to nurture your clients through the repeat process, because every time, it reinforces how much they love this. In my markets, it’s most often families traveling together, especially because of the price point and bigger houses. So it’s not just one person’s memory. It’s a family memory.

You can go really far with this. But it’s worth thinking through depending on where you manage or own homes, what type of clientele you have, and how you can serve that group better and better every time, while also encouraging and supporting repeat business.

Rapid Fire

Gil: I love that our conversation has been very tactical and also on the soft side. Rachel, we usually end the show with three questions. First: what’s a book that has really inspired you or your career?

Rachel: I have a company library. For my team, I keep two giant bookshelves stocked, plus we do Audible books. If anyone on my team reads one of those books and turns in a short report, they get $100. They can do as many or as few as they want. It’s been very successful, and we love it.

So I have a lot of favorites, but my obsession with books and wanting to share them started with Delivering Happiness. Do you know it?

Gil: I don’t.

Rachel: It was written by Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO, who died a few years ago, way too early. And he actually ended up being our client, which is crazy.

We started our business in 2008, and I had my first kid in 2012. It wasn’t until around 2017 that I started reading a lot again, after being in the thick of pregnancy, having kids, and breastfeeding. One of the very first books I got into as I returned to self development was Delivering Happiness, and it was so impactful because that was around the time we started thinking about company culture at all, many years into our business. I don’t recommend that. Think about company culture earlier.

Tony Hsieh built Zappos, and the book tells the story of its amazing company culture. It’s nonfiction, and it’s an awesome book. In it, he includes a list of books he recommended and paid his team to read, and that’s where I got the idea for our company library. I started with his list. It’s a great book about company culture and a passion for customer service. I recommend it to everyone.

Gil: I’ve heard the Zappos story. I’d forgotten about the book, but as you describe it, it brings back a lot of memories. Back in graduate school, the Zappos story was everywhere.

Rachel: You’re younger than me. I graduated college in 2000, and my 30th high school reunion was just last weekend. But yes, the Zappos story is amazing. Tony Hsieh ended up coming to Park City and buying around 13 properties, and we managed them for him. To this day, I still manage those properties for his estate. It’s a crazy kismet scenario: he had a huge impact on our business, then he ended up in Park City, and we got to work with him. It was amazing and also sad, because he passed away way too soon. The book is an easy read, and if you listen on Audible, it’s in his voice, which is pretty cool.

Gil: I always love it when authors read their own books. There’s one I’m thinking of. Greenlights? Who wrote that?

Rachel: Matthew McConaughey.

Gil: Yes. It’s a trip to have him read the entire book, because it’s the story of his life. He has a really good, deep, mellow voice.

Rachel: It’s like honey. It’s warm.

Gil: It’s soothing. Second question: what’s one piece of mindset advice you’d give someone starting something completely new?

Rachel: I’ve been on this one for a while: assume good intentions. I talk to people about this a lot, and I tell it to myself a lot. It’s very important as a leader and in business, especially in hospitality, where things get stressful and difficult.

These days, the world is divisive, and this country is divisive. Something we could all do better, every day, is assume good intentions. I tell my team, when things are going on, “Hold on. Let’s assume good intentions.” We don’t have to assume other people are out to get us or trying to harm us. Let’s do everyone a favor, assume good intentions, and then think about how we’d move forward from there. It’s not always easy. It gets a little easier as I get older. But that’s mine.

Gil: Last question. For anyone looking to get started with direct bookings or amplify them, what’s one tactical takeaway they can put into practice this afternoon?

Rachel: Here’s what you do. Get mugs, really cute mugs, not boring, tacky, cheap ones, with your logo and maybe a tagline. Maybe get some throw blankets. I love minky blankets or Saranoni, which are expensive, fluffy throw blankets. They’re also great for gifting as you build your business. But get them for the houses, and put your logo on them. You can even have your logo embroidered tone on tone so it’s not garish. Or get really nice wood cutting boards with your logo etched in.

Any items you can place around the house as staging in your photos that carry your logo work. The best approach is often tone on tone, etched into wood or embroidered, because it’s still visible in the photos without being too loud.

What it does is show people browsing your listings the name of your company, so they can Google it. Most consumers get the game now, and they will. You’re putting your brand name in all your photos in a subtle, complementary way that still implies luxury and beautiful service. It’s a good way to work within the algorithms without having your name plastered everywhere, and I think it helps customers find you, get to your site, and book direct, if that’s your goal.

Gil: I hear a lot of people say you can include the name of your property in your descriptions: “Welcome to XYZ,” then describe the property, and at the end of the paragraph, “hosted by” your property management company.

Rachel: Definitely do that. We don’t even say it outright. We just name them “Abode at” something, “Abode on Norfolk,” or “Bella Vista Abode.” Always Abode, which is our company name, so it’s always there. People start to notice and think, “Abode?” Then they Google it, and there’s the listing, because we name it the same on our website, and it all ties in with SEO. So naming convention is very important too.

Closing

Gil: Well done. Rachel, it’s been a huge pleasure having you on the show and getting to know your story and how you built this company over the last 18 plus years, including what you’re starting to experiment with.

Rachel: I’m experimenting with SOPs.

Gil: Not the SOP stuff, the lore stuff, your storytelling. I’m super excited to hear how it goes and what people say about it. I’m definitely inviting you back a year from now. Thank you for sharing all of this. For folks who want to get in touch or follow along, what’s the best way to reach you?

Rachel: I’m all over LinkedIn these days. I’m Rachel Alday. Plain old Rachel, R A C H E L, nothing fancy, and Alday with one L. LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to reach out.

Gil: And you have a book coming out, or is it out already?

Rachel: It’s coming out November 10th, and it’s available for presale right now. It’s called Please Do Disturb, so definitely check it out.

Gil: Are you going to have a few copies at VRMA you can sign for us?

Rachel: I think the Breezeway booth will have a few hundred available, which is early since the release is November 10th and VRMA is in early October. I was able to get early copies, and they’ll be signed. There may be a couple of other vendors with copies as well.

Gil: I’ll make sure to bother Justin to hold a copy for me.

Rachel: Oh, yes. He’ll know. Him and Corinne, for sure.

Gil: Awesome. Rachel, again, it’s been a huge pleasure. I can’t wait to see you in a couple of weeks.

Rachel: Same. Thank you.

Gil: Bye.