“Think Like a Guest, Market Like a Boss” Strategic Seasonal Marketing for Short-Term Rentals with Jamey King

Summary and Highlights

🎤 Meet Jamey King — Senior Marketing Executive at eviivo

Jamey King is a Senior Marketing Executive at eviivo, where he brings deep expertise from years in the vacation rental and short-term accommodation industry. With a background that includes leadership roles at Sony Electronics, VRMA, PointCentral, and Safely, Jamey has shaped strategies in business development, partnerships, and marketing across the board. Now based in Indiana, he leads efforts to grow eviivo’s brand awareness and bridge its presence across European and U.S. markets.

🧠 What You Can Learn From Jamey

1. Mindset for Newcomers in STR 🌱
   • Start with One Big Idea: Jamey’s secret? Pick one key idea at an event, implement it for a year, and watch it transform your business 💡. It’s all about small, consistent changes that add up over time.
   • Network Like a Pro: Whether it’s at a formal conference or a casual meet-up, Jamey stresses the importance of networking and learning from others in the space. You never know when you’ll get the nugget of wisdom that’ll change the game for you.
2. The Power of Events & Networking 🌍
   • In-Person Interaction = Major Wins: Get out there! Conferences, meetups, or even casual drinks can lead to game-changing ideas that propel your business forward. Trust Jamey, it’s worth it!
   • Learning from Peers: Sharing experiences and solutions with others can spark that aha moment. You’ll be amazed at how much growth can come from a single conversation 🙌.
3. Building a Marketing Strategy Around Guest Journeys 💻✨
   • Know Your Guests’ Triggers: What’s drawing guests to your property? Is it an event? The changing seasons? Understanding why and when people book helps you create hyper-targeted marketing that drives conversions 📈.
   • Create Content that Speaks to Them: Jamey gives a great example of leaf-peeping in Indiana 🍁 it’s about crafting content around what really excites your guests and creating campaigns that capture those moments.
4. Dynamic Pricing & Revenue Management 💵💡
   • Master Seasonality: Being able to adapt to changes in demand is crucial. Understanding the timing of when your guests book allows you to adjust your prices and maximize revenue at every stage of the year 📅💰.
   • Tech Tools to the Rescue: Don’t leave money on the table! Use dynamic pricing tools like PriceLabs to ensure you’re staying competitive and getting the best rates 💸.
5. Leveraging Reviews & Social Media for Success 🌟📲
   • Engage with Your Guests: Responding to reviews and engaging with your guests isn’t just about good customer service it’s about creating a lasting impression 📝. This interaction is visible to future guests and can help boost your reputation in the market.
   • Be Active on Social Media: Keep the momentum going on social media! Jamey emphasizes the importance of consistent engagement and showing up where your guests are. Be present, be visible, and build your brand.
6. His Book Recommendation 📚✨
   • Jamey’s book of choice, Saturday Night Live: 40 Years, speaks to his career philosophy: bringing diverse talents together to create something magical 🎭. A powerful reminder that success often comes from collaboration, creativity, and having fun with the process.

🌐 Connect with Jamey King

📧 Email: jamey.king@eviivo.com
📱 Phone: 317-629-6100
🌐 Website: www.eviivo.com

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Transcript

Gil: Hey folks, welcome back to book solid, the podcast where we bring on top operators onto the show to break down the elements to keep you book solid. On today’s show, I have Jamey King from Avivo. In this show, we break down how he thinks about PMS is and how they serve their hosts, their customers. We also talk about some of the things that Avivo specifically is doing to really help operators maximize their returns specifically in . It’s not what you expect.

I was expecting to hear more things around AI and they’ve already been doing a few things, but they’re thinking about things more from the traditional product management point of view of really some of the needs for some of these smaller operators there. And lastly, we talk a little bit about the guest journey and really what does it mean to understand what the guest journey looks like and the impacts that it has on your marketing and some of the things you should be thinking about as you’re trying to go into direct. All right, so without further ado, let’s bring them in.

Gil: Hey Jamey, welcome to the show.

Jamey King: Hey, thanks for having me.

Gil: Yeah, it’s good to, good to, good to meet you. well, kind of to kick things off. Do you mind kind of giving folks that introduction on who you are?

Jamey King: Sure, happy too.  And number one, thank you for having me. Jamey King for everybody listening or watching. I’ve been in the industry for almost  years, hard to believe. I started out with Sony Electronics. And basically my story is I was in charge of all the Marriott’s and all the branded hotels and selling clock radio. So at one point I used to tell my friends whenever you go to a hotel and you see a Sony clock radio that probably came from a relationship I had at that property. So that was fun to get me into hospitality. then I transitioned and went over to the VRMA, which is the Vacation Rental Managers Association. They were looking for a business development manager. And luckily for me, they chose me. And really I started planting my roots, my seed into this industry.

And really growing and I love it because you what it was is that you had the ability to learn about you know, what about relationships right every single person that is in this industry is in it because there’s relationships relationships with their peers that are also property managers or the relationships with their guests right and keeping that that guest journey in place and looking to how do I continue to evolve over time and you know the exciting part about hospitality is you’re consistently seeing the advent of technology. And in my period of time in this industry, we’ve seen a lot of changes, but changes for the good when it comes to automation and really streamlining the day-to-day operations. I am now, fast forward  or years, I’m the Senior Marketing Manager for Avivo. We’re a London-based company. My territory is a very small North America.

So that doesn’t take up much time looking at Canada and of course, North United States. And I’m excited because Avivo is really a wonderful company that has a unique story that a of people don’t know. A lot of people don’t realize that Avivo has been around since . We actually, you know, we offer the ability to manage reservations. We can do online distribution, seamlessly connect to all the OTAs.

We can help you with your guest communications. We can do channel management, integrate your payment systems. And of course, we provide revenue management tools. So what does that mean to you, Gail, and to the listeners? Well, that’s about , different accommodations with over , bookings per month on the Avivo Suite platform.

Gil: That’s impressive. That’s impressive. It sounds like I was wondering where the Sony connection actually went back into short term or vacation rentals. And I didn’t pick it up until you just said it where you are at Sony under the consumer electronics division getting into hotels. And that’s kind of your entry point into this whole can of worms that you committed your last  years into.

Jamey King: Yeah, it’s amazing. I started out as a national trainer for Sony and then I got into sales and I had a mentor, what a great mentor, who said, you know, there’s an opportunity for you here with this little kind of redheaded stepchild division of Sony that nobody really manages, but you’re young, you’re flexible. Why don’t you come over here? And I said, well, you what does this mean? know, Jimmy, what does this mean? And he’s like, well, it’s just, you’re to work with Marriott. You’re going to work with Hyatt. You’re going to work with you know, the holiday ends at that time, Howard Johnson’s, and I’m like, that’s a pretty big client list you’re asking me to manage. But once you got into it and you’ve started seeing where the opportunities were and saying, wow, you you can make this lobby look a lot better if you took one of our Sony consumer TVs and turned it into a monitor. And actually you can put messaging on it. And that just blew their mind, right? So then you started thinking creatively outside the box. How do I take a Sony consumer product?

Gil: you

Jamey King: and turn it into a hospitality product. And that’s what I loved at that point. My career was helping them solve those problems and generate additional exposure points for these different hotel brands.

Gil: Yeah, didn’t even realize that there was that big jump there from not just selling not selling clocks, but transitioning to a much, much wider line of even I’m sure even beyond beyond TVs and displays.

Jamey King: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we started when the, when the electronic readers came out, we turned those into digital signage for the little bakeries or little cafes and, know, put a memory stick inside it and put some files on it and made it put in a slideshow mode. So it was really how creative could you be and turn this product that’s designed for at home and put it into a business use application.

Gil:  Yeah, were you on the account management sales side or were you on the product division side?

Jamey King: I was on the product side, yeah, exactly.

Gil: Nice. I come from a long history of product development, so I have a lot of empathy, especially in the hardware side of things as well too.

Jamey King: Yep, absolutely. You take one thing and you can turn it into something else and then sell it. Then everybody’s going to love you because you’re creating new revenue streams for the company that way.

Gil: Yeah, I find that actually, I think lately people getting engineering is on the software side of things. That’s the more lucrative one. But hardware engineering is actually much, much, much more difficult because the development cycles are much longer. The manufacturing is a lot longer. You can’t test and iterate as much as you can in software. And I didn’t realize this when I was in my IoT days, smart home days.

But developing hardware products is actually rather difficult. I imagine what it was like even in your earlier days, how hard that might have been too, when you’re trying new innovations too.

Jamey King: Well, in exactly one thing I did gloss over is I spent five years at Point Central. So we talk about IOT, I know exactly you’re referring to. And you’re looking at number one is, you know, property awareness. You’re looking at energy management. And then of course, you’re looking at, you know, ability for access management. And it’s just, you know, the evolution of technology just continues to baffle me in terms of how quickly we’re adapting. You know, it took us forever to get to the, you know, the telephone and now look at what we’re being able to do.

and just in the last five years. So, you when you talk about Internet of Things, I know exactly what you’re referring to, but it’s awesome because when you come to the short-term accommodations, you’re using something, right? You’re using either, you know, thermostats, you’re using locks, you’re using cameras, right? You’re using sensors now. It all ties together into, you know, that how do you protect that secondary home or your own if it’s purpose-built? How do you protect that and be able to monitor it?

Gil: Yeah, I mean, that’s interesting because in our industry, least in the short-term rental side of things, the more vacation market, IoT outside of your Ring cameras is almost non-existent. Like there’s not a lot of technology out there that leverages like digital signage. And I think some people are attempting it, but it hasn’t really picked up, picked up steam yet.

Jamey King: Yeah, it’s kind of a wild west, right? We’re seeing applications when it comes to multifamily, even in long-term rentals. And now what we’re seeing is there are vendors and contemporaries in our industry, but it’s a lot of how do you differentiate? How do know which one’s going to work best for you? Just like a PMS company, when it comes to a private management software company, we could kick a can, the next event we go to, we’re going to hit five to  different PMS companies.

We’re also seeing that, but it’s also the evolution of AI and we continue to grow and expand on our technology needs.

Gil: Yeah, I’m definitely going to hit on AI in a little bit, but maybe before that, there’s something that picked up on kind of your trajectory there. You started working in the early days in hospitality, working with really large hotel brands. And then you started being part of VRMA, which is much larger property managers at that point. And now at Avivo, you’re now working even with even more independent hosts there. So you actually have a pretty wide variety.

of experiences and different host styles there. I guess like my question is like, what do you see as like one of the biggest differences that you like, although all the rate groups are in hospitality, the motivations, what people care about are very, very different there. What have you seen as being like the biggest trends and differences between those different segments there? And I know that’s a pretty wide question, but I’m sure there’s a few that you pick up.

Jamey King: Yeah, it’s a great, it’s a, it’s a great wide question, but you know, so, you know, one of the things that drew me to coming over to Avivo and what was a challenge I wanted to accept. And you’re right. I’ve been doing hospitality for a long time and I, my path has taken me on some different courses in, in, hospitality and primarily short-term rentals that, know, I, if you have the boundary, you’re always looking to learn. Then you’re always going to be challenged. Right? So my, my thought is, you know, when I joined Avivo is, okay, it’s not just vacation rentals, right? That’s one silo or that’s one basically vertical. We’re also looking now at bed and breakfast. And then the owner operator, the mom and pa, the former chef that decided to buy an inn and put his spin or he or her spin on a customizable dish. Then we look at the traditional innkeeper that has, I got  rooms. It’s a historic building. It used to be an old.

Civil War General’s house. We turn it into this amazing in and then you have your independent and boutique in there maybe a bit or hotels a bit larger, but they’re not branded or not. You know, they’re trying to find their niche and you know, they have a cool old bar. have a cool, you know story that’s that’s it within it and you know for me it all comes down to the guest right that’s.

Every one of these, these different applications, everyone of these different accommodations, they’re looking to how do I bring guests in? How do I, once I have guests here, how do I keep them here? How do I get them to come back? Right. And it’s, it’s so then that’s when it gets fun. It gets, it’s a little hectic, but that’s when it comes down to how are you doing that? What tools are you incorporating on your day to day from the front end to the back end that allows you to maximize that occupancy? How do you continually put people in the beds?

so that they can enjoy this experience. And that’s to me is what’s exciting because every one of us and probably everybody that’s listening or watching, we all travel. You some of us do it for work. Some of us do it for pleasure. Some of us do it for, you know, kind of both. But where are you staying? What is your preference? I had a guy I worked with that would only stay in bed and breakfasts. And I said, why do we always stay in a bed and breakfast? He said, well, number one, they have the best pancakes in the morning. So that’s I start my day with a nice breakfast. And number two,

Look at this big deck we’re sitting on, deck, porch that we’re sitting on. And we’re just watching the world buy and we’re having a conversation. goes, that’s what I would rather have as opposed to a hotel. And there’s nothing wrong with this, but that’s not his preference. So there’s all these different nuances and niches. And as you learn the customers, I’m sorry, the guests, and you learn their stories. And that’s the greatest thing about being in marketing is you get to hear the stories and the stories, the stories tell basically a bigger story. And then you, and then.

Our job is to string it all together and tell that to the masses.

Gil: Yeah. I picked up a few things from what you just said there is like, at least I captured three kind of like fundamental things that all hosts, regardless of size, regardless of whether or not they’re a large enterprise hotel or a small operator, they think about really like the guest satisfaction, the guest experience. they really like, that’s the first and first, first and foremost thing that they care about because that’s what leads to people coming back. That leads to your reviews, your brand.

second was really around like really making sure that you maximize your occupancy and your revenues there. and you kind of touched upon it just, just so slightly, but really making sure that you operationalize your entire stay, because you want to make sure that you are automating the right things. You have consistency around things. You have good reporting and kind of good practices in place so that you can deliver that high quality experience, not just one time.

but consistently over and over and over again. I’m not sure if I captured that correctly in terms of like, those are the three things at least I picked up from what you just said there. Would you agree on that?

Jamey King: No, you’re you, I loveit. Number one, you kind of dice, because I threw a lot out there. you know, at the end of the day, you’re right. You’re looking at what is the power of the booking? And how does that booking coming in? Number two, how are you maximizing your revenue, you know, with your tech stack or how you just in general maximize your own? Number three, how are you navigating the landscape between booking direct and really booking and using OTAs? I think it’s very important to kind of have a mix and model.

And that fits with any type of vertical that’s using, any, if you’re putting in a room somewhere for rent, you’re going to have to be able to figure out navigate that landscape. And then you got to scale, right? You know, and so how are you going to scale? Are you going to scale and sacrifice the guest experience? Are you going to really bring that guest experience in? And is that going to take you from one to three properties to maybe six to  properties? You know,

What do you want? What is your ultimate goal as a property manager when it comes to scaling? And then of course what you want to do is look at other tools of your concierge. You want to look at automation and you want to simplify those processes as well. So I think you got the three and then I just kind of expand it on some more. So sorry about that.

Gil: No, no, no, that’s all, that’s good. And I think what I’ve noticed more recently, maybe in the last like four or five years there, is that host even on the smaller side, when you have less than  doors in the past, you would mainly be on the OTAs and primarily managing your properties from that stack. And more recently, it’s almost become a norm to have a property management system in place.

If you know that you’re going to be scaling and it’s not just you renting out your spare bedroom or your ADU out back, most folks nowadays have a PMS in place. Do you see the same trend on your side? I think like for me, what I love about that is that you now have tools that were primarily only available to larger operators.

now being available to almost be commoditized for everybody else to have access to now.

Jamey King: Yeah, you’re exactly right. mean, we like to say, or like I say is for any type of short-term rental accommodation, you want to take this moniker of turn lookers into bookers, right? So they’re looking, so turn them into a booker. So how are you going to do that? Right? Number one, you’re going to, you know, it’s with your website, you know, number one is going to draw them. It’s going to give them the information they want, but you also need to have a powerful engine behind it. So hence the PMS conversation.

Then you want to be dynamic in your pricing, right? You want to maximize your occupancy. You want to obviously focus on your ADR, but then you want have the tools in place. So when it’s high season, you want to obviously maximize the earning potential. When we’re on a shorter season, if it’s a soft shoulder, you want to obviously be able to change the rates. And then of course, the dreaded slow season. Then we’re really trying to get occupies at that point. Then you want to make sure you have the right tools in place for your guest loyalty, right? If you have somebody that continues to come and visit,

What are you going to do to enhance them to make sure they come back next year? They’ve already come for three years. Let’s make sure they come back for year four, right? So you got to really embrace that and put together, know, are you doing messaging when the reservation’s booked? What’s going on when the guest is in house? And of course, what’s the step after the guest leaves? When they get back at home, you know, I live in Indiana, I just drove back. I’m still feeling great because I was on vacation for a week.

I would probably book again because I’m remembering this amazing week I had at, we’ll use your property in Gatlinburg. And I’m sitting there thinking, gosh, I wish I could go back so I can go back to that hockey, that soccer tournament next year, which I’ll be at. And of course, stay in a nicer place compared to maybe a really rinky dink room in that regard. So I agree. It’s very important to have those types of mindset when it comes to the tools you would have put in place so that you can maximize, you know,

your bookings, maximize your pricing, maximize your loyalty with your guests.

Gil: Yeah. You mentioned something interesting there about like the, website and the kind of the engine behind it, which is usually the, PMS there. And I believe that myself too, right now and craftist days, we don’t actually support and sorry for the listeners out there that don’t have a PMS. don’t support folks that don’t have a PMS in place because at least right now in our stage of, our product. It, there’s actually a lot of things that a PMS does take on.

that if we were to support a direct booking website without an engine in place, it would be very, very difficult. We rely on the PMSs to make sure that the availabilities and rates are synchronized between the different channels. So if someone books with you directly, right now we can’t block off calendars on Airbnb or VRBO or booking.com. So if you’re on multiple platforms, and there’s probably creative ways of using like iCal links and such to do so, but…

to do it really well, it’s rather difficult. then the second one is really around like pricing, making sure that your pricing is kind of ubiquitous, no matter kind of what channel you’re using there and making sure that you have good strategies in place. then there’s all the whole content management side of things of making sure that your property has all fresh pictures across all the different challenges you’re at. For us to be able to take that on, that would mean that we would be taking off resources from building the highest converting websites out there.

and putting that towards things that PMS is already do quite well. So like we get a lot of inquiries from folks that don’t have PMS is and we usually refer them to some of our technology partners, but that’s not something at least in the next year or two that we have any interest in, in really supporting there because there’s just such a lively industry of really big players in the PMS space that has done this quite well. And to do it quite well is actually really difficult.

I’ve seen in just seeing how our technology partners really invest into all the channel connections and everything that goes into it.

Jamey King: Yeah, and I’m glad you brought that up because what you’re really trying to is maximize the revenue with tech at that point. So, you know, it’s automation. That’s what I think for your listeners, that’s what you’re looking to do, is you’re trying to reduce your operational workload and automation can help you. You can also allows you to make rate adjustments. You you’re talking about when it comes to OTAs, you you want to be able to have seamless synchronization. So you make a change in your backend. You want to make sure that change goes out to all the OTAs that you’re obviously

integrated with. And if there’s a change in the OTA, you wanted to come back into, in this case, your PMS. If that doesn’t happen or they’re not communicating, then you’re getting what’s direct overbookings or double bookings. And that’s not what you want. That’s just going to create obviously a dissatisfaction on the guest experience. It’s amazing for us. You one of the things that we like to do is, you know, we talk about having the ability to have one click onboarding, right? So you say what OTA you want, you click one button, basically the toggle.

And then also because of that embedded relationship we have with the different, you know, most, there’s seven probably major OTAs out there. That is you automatically are onboarded and then you’re automatically starting the two-way synchronization. That’s the most important part when you’re looking at the strategy and of course working with the PMS as well. But, know, the, what you ideally where we want to be is you want to set it and forget it, right? You don’t want to set it and constantly be worried about it. So, you know, that’s, you know, when you’re looking at PMSs and

I know one, I actually work for one that allows you to have that synchronization in place and make some.

Gil: Yeah. You mentioned something pretty interesting where, guest loyalty and you’re trying to get people to come back over and over again. And really one way to really solidify that is making sure that your messaging is very consistent, both pre-stay post pre-stay during stay and post-stay as well too. I’m interested in hearing from you whether or not Avivo has, any guest messaging kind of built in there because I’ve seen a lot of O T sorry, a lot of PMS is.

What they’ll do well is on the pre-stay and during the stay and maybe like one or two messages posted. But in terms of like getting that person to come back a year later, I haven’t seen anyone do like long messaging campaigns there. And I’m interested in hearing like, does EVBuild have something like that built in-house or do they leverage connections with any of the email service providers to actually make that more, more available to?

to host.

Jamey King: Yeah, that’s a great question. Avivo does do it in-house. We have our own templates. There’s a great deal of variety and you can customize your own as well. But the idea is we want to streamline that guest communication. And so what we’re really looking to do is from when the confirmation is made to when the stay is taking place to what happens post, there’s communication tools that are a part of the process of working with Avivo and Avivo Suite. And a lot of that comes down to really is

Gil: Ahem.

Jamey King: Also, what is happening between that first comp for when that, when that reservation is confirmed is now we’re going to start rolling out what we call AI, right? AI is everywhere. Everybody’s talking about AI, AI automation, right? That’s, that’s the tagline of the world. Everybody, when we go to any event, anybody goes to an event this year, AI is going to be everywhere. So get ready for it. But what we’re looking to do is help with guest messaging, help with rate adjustments and also booking management. And a lot of comes down to creating guest satisfaction, right?

Gil: Mm-hmm.

Jamey King: through using the AI automation tool. So you have your templated, you know, obviously communications. You can also train your AI to say, this answer can, this question is continuously coming in. I know Gil, I know you work at, live in San Francisco. How far am I away from that famous fish market? can’t remember the name of it. That question probably comes up quite a great deal. And with AI, it’s going to remember, it’s going to learn, and it’s going to be able to answer those questions for you.

Gil: Yeah.

Jamey King: But also when you’re talking about your concierge, right? You want to your guest concierge. You want to be able to manage your bookings, right? So by being able to create time savings, it allows you to be able to do, manage those bookings and put more time to what you need to do to help grow your business. And that’s the important part with these tools and these templates are within basically the PMS. It also gives you that scalability so that you’re able to say, if I want to grow,

How am going to be able increase that without increasing the overhead so that I can actually get and add more units, add more rooms in that capacity?

Gil: Interesting. know a lot of folks right now, AI messaging is or AI guest messaging has been one of the things that a lot of the PMS is even a lot of independent platforms have started to really invest heavily into revenue management has been doing this for a few years now because I mean, AI is a great thing to do when you give a lot of context and when you do revenue management, you do have a lot of context, have of lot of historicals. So that use case makes a lot of sense.

I’m interested in hearing a bit more of the use cases around booking management and the time savings there. What are some of the use cases that you found really are accelerated or made easier via AI?

Jamey King: Yeah, well, so one of the big things when it comes to AI is just the fact that you’re able to put in basically the prompts of what your expectations are for the messaging, right? And what I love about what I’m seeing, especially when comes to smaller vocational managers, is that are you in position to go hire somebody to work overseas? Or are you in position where you’re going to be sitting at home

at eight o’clock at night and the phone rings and you have to answer it or you’re gonna miss that reservation. So what we’re seeing is a lot, a great deal of smaller property management that can’t afford to pay somebody  hours or have somebody on the phone  hours is turning into this AI automation concierge tool. That way they never miss an inquiry and they never miss a reservation because they have this feature set that comes with Avivo Suite and that.

Gil: Got it. So it’s really around the use case of someone. Maybe they’re thinking about staying at your property. They have a couple of questions before they’re ready to proceed forward. And really this AI agent is there to help you not necessarily need to do the back and forth with that guest, but with the intentions that were the goal of helping you fill those blocks whenever someone does have an inquiry coming in.

Jamey King: Right. And then what’s great is it provides a transcript so that when you go, when you actually get back to work the next morning, you can see the exchange and then you could actually follow up as a person, pick up the phone. Hey, Gail, I saw that you’re interacting with our agent last night. We’d love to get you in. Here’s what we have. Here’s our deals. We can do this. And it further completes that guest journey and also the communication tool.

Gil: Yeah. Can you speak to any areas where you’re really excited about where you and your team are investing energy into in ?

Jamey King: Yeah. Yeah. The one that I think right now that I’m, I am the most excited about. And again, I’ve been talking about product for quite some time is really the most simple thing that everybody has is right here. So we have a mobile app that gives you total flexibility, it gives you total control and you’re on the go. So a lot of the audience, from what I understand, they’re wearing lots and lots of hats and they can’t be just stuck.

in the main office. got to be out. They got to be working maintenance. They could be working cleaners. They got to be inspecting as well. So being able to have a mobile app on the go that actually lets you control your bookings, lets you guest communicate, lets you have your property operational efficiencies all right here and not just being a static display, but actually in real time. I love that. I would show that all day long. And when I do, people just can’t believe how they’re able to

really become a lot more efficient with capturing those reservations. They don’t miss the reservations when they have their phone on. Hinging on the backside of that is what we call a unified inbox for guest messaging. And what that really does is that consolidates all the communications that comes in from OTAs, from your direct bookings, and from your reviews all into one interface. So what that really does is, again, it allows you, it’s operational and becoming more efficient. It allows you to manage

all your timely requests, all your inquiries through one inbox. And that’s all for us. I mean, that’s a game changer. know, now you’re communicating out to your OTAs. Anything that you do, you know, basically in the backend when it comes to, if you will sweep is going to be communicated through all your different platforms. And that really, you know, alleviates my biggest, my biggest worry for anybody that’s in short-term accommodations. And that’s you. And that’s double bookings. You do not want double bookings.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting that one of the things that you’re most excited about, which is the mobile app is something almost so I would say basic is the right word there. But almost expected there. But if you look at the industry and not actually a lot of folks do have mobile apps. And I think that what I’m this is probably my product side coming out there is

When you listen and you understand and you study your customers really well, in this case, short-term rental operators host themselves and understand kind of what they’re doing day to day and what they’re in front of. You understand that like actually a lot of times now you’re not talking about professional hosts that spend most of their time in the main office with smaller hosts. They’re wearing many different hats. They’re out there in the field. They’re maybe checking on their cleans themselves.

Or they’re putting the welcome baskets together or they’re just out there living life.

Jamey King:

or they’re working their primary job, you know?

Gil: Exactly. yeah. And I think like some folks have actually converted their mobile website into something that is usable on mobile Safari, but I haven’t seen anyone really create a native app and really put a lot of energy in making sure that all the feature functionalities, all the use cases are covered for what you want to manage on mobile.

Jamey King: Absolutely. And that’s why it’s so exciting because there isn’t a lot out there. A lot of it’s very static. It doesn’t give you all the capabilities. If I wanted to go into my phone app and change a rate within three seconds, I could do that because that’s what’s amazing. if it’s, you know, it’s a, you’re in a small town and they have a big parade or festival and you got some openings in your properties, you could go in and say, I’m going to, you know, there’s a high demand, can increase those rates.

right away and not miss the parade, right? You don’t have to be back. And so that’s what I love about it. You can, and you can have all the features that you need to be able to communicate with that incoming inquiry just off your phone. And it’s, as, as you are sitting in your office and it’s a, it’s a game changer that really for, for us, it’s a wow, right? I always look for wow, you know, from my, you know, show me, show me your, show me your dashboard or show me,

What does it look like with your comms? And I’m like, that’s great. That’s pretty exciting. Show me something that actually makes me stop and say, I’m going to do a presentation about just simply mobile. Well, that’s what I’m talking about today.

Gil: Yeah, yeah. As I’m aware Avivo has traditionally been more of a one-stop shop type of type of PMS there. And I’ve seen PMS is kind of ranged in the spectrum of try to have everything kind of baked in house and a very tailored experience more kind of like the Apple experience where everything is very polished inside. And then you have others that take the other end of the spectrum where they do some things really, really well.

like channel management or maybe even guest messaging, but they rely on the marketplace to help bridge any gaps. Usually revenue management is probably the biggest ones that they usually do and leverage out there. And from my understanding Avivo traditionally has been more on kind of the one-stop shop side of things. Do you see that changing or do you kind of see that being kind of part of the heart of Avivo?

Jamey King: Yeah, the heart of Avivo really is Avivo Suite, right? It’s eight key components that allow a property manager or a host to be able to do everything that they need to do in a day-to-day operational and do it efficiently, right? From managing your payments to managing your properties to managing your promotions to if you wanted to build a website or have a website template that you can put on top of the booking engine to working with your distribution or your OTAs.

to your mobile, it’s all right there. And that’s what’s truly, you know, I don’t want to go down to the tagline of all for one, but it truly really is because there’s really everything you need to manage your day to day is with Avivo Suite. that’s the engine, right? That’s the little train that’s pushing this forward. And that’s what property manager and host need.

Gil: Yeah. Do you, do you guys also have a marketplace as well too? Or do you guys try to try to build most the stuff in house?

Jamey King: It’s primarily in-house, but what’s great about it is we do have a partnership team and we have a very strong relationship with our partners that if you wanted and you had a special need when it comes to processing, you know, because we can do payments as well, but if you had, you you’re using somebody’s, we have those integrations in place. said that one of things that, you know, from my past, my history where I was primarily doing partnerships and I was in charge of building integrations and set up endpoints and

pushing and pulling information from point to point. Avivo has a very strong extranet relationship with different vendors and partners. And I would dare to challenge you to say, anybody that comes in and says, do you have an integration with this person or that person? I bet you very confidently we do, unless it’s somebody who’s just brand new to startup and you’re gonna call me out on it. Well, they haven’t been out long enough, so I can’t validate that.

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe switching gears just a little bit on the direct booking side of things. We’ve been seeing this big wave of folks that really, even on the smaller side, they may have only a couple properties, but they’re now starting to get into direct bookings very early on in their hosting career or the property management career. Why do think that that’s happening now?

Jamey King: I think direct bookings really is kind of the natural first step. mean, people have an idea and say, I want to manage a property. I want to be a host. And I got friends that want to rent my house or I got family that want to rent my house. So I’m just going to basically tell them to go to the WIS website and I’m going to start there. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking at basically how you’re going to navigate that landscape of direct versus OTA. I think it’s good to have a balanced strategy.

Gil: Hmm.

Jamey King: honestly, but you know, really when you’re you’re starting out with with booking direct, you’re really you’re you’re you’re putting the power in your business strategy. You know, you got to have you got to have a place where it’s going to capture those reservations and it’s going to capture those like a calendar. Right. You got to have a calendar. And then you need to have, you know, on top of that website. And then you got to look at, know, how you’re going to be able to maximize your revenue with what strategies you have. Then you want to obviously look at.

Year one, did primarily everything was word of mouth. It was direct. So when I say direct, it’s it’s either somebody calling me and I’m putting the booking in manually or it’s somebody going to a website. And, you know, the idea is I’m saving myself money. Those greedy OTAs aren’t taking a percentage of everyone. My bookings. Well, it’s kind of a double edged sword. If you want to scale and you want to get the word out among your basically, you know, depending on where you are and what your drive rate, drive time radius is and what you’re attracting.

How do you do that? Well, you have to use distribution. You have to put your properties out there.

Gil: Yeah, so what I’m hearing there is like a lot of hosts, it’s actually good to be on the OTAs in the very beginning that starts to build your velocity. starts to build your, if you’re doing email campaigns, it starts to build your base of customers that you can target. But over the years, what you’re trying to do is start to have a bit more ownership on your bookings and be able to go direct and grow that over time. So as you…

as you grow year two, year three, that’s where you have significant volume of past guests that are likely to more book with you directly the next time.

Jamey King: Right. The goal is to continue with sustained growth. Right. You want to continue to grow. Right. And if you can sustain growth, then you know you have a healthy obviously business. And then you can also look to scale and see what the next steps are if you want to move a new destination or if you want to add more properties to your program. I mean, that’s what’s important.

Gil: Yeah. I usually, Jamey, I usually end with three questions. First question, what’s a, give me a book recommendation. What’s one book that has inspired you or that you tend to refer to others?

Jamey King: Wow, boy, you should have prepped me for this. would have had it. That’s a good one. my goodness. I read a lot of fiction. Gosh, I mean, I’m just looking at my books in my mirror behind me in my reflection.

Gil: Alright. I can come at you.

Jamey King: Yeah, let me think of it because I mean, oh boy. Yeah, let’s go to question two and I’ll come back to question one.

Gil: Okay, okay. What’s a… So we have a lot of folks that get into short-term rentals and they’re doing something for the first time. And this is one of my favorite questions. What’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?

Jamey King: Yeah, that’s a great question. So that one I’m prepared for, because that one is a good one. When I go to events and I speak and I talk to people that are looking to start out in this industry and they’re looking to start out, a lot of people are trying to do it on their own. They’re trying to figure it out or they’re researching a little bit and they’re seeing that there’s different models out there of how to do the day to day operations.

What I would recommend and what I think is very valuable is to align, go to an event, right? Go to some conference, go to some regional event, go to a meet and greet or a wine and dine or a beer and ideas. There’s so many different variations of it. And when you’re at that event, find one key idea, one idea, and have that one idea and then implement it and do it for a year. And if that one idea,

the way that I believe it can happen is that you’re usually going to find that one idea that you took from that event or from that networking or from that session and implemented and stayed loyal to it. More than likely, you’re going to see that it’s going to provide you not only did it pay for your attendance, but it’s also put growth into your company. And it’s also made you operationally more efficient. And it’s also made you to go back to get your two idea number two.

Gil: Yeah, that’s really good. Yeah, I found that maybe even on the flip side of like, even the networking side of things, like you just being surrounded in those types of events is super beneficial, no matter if you’re just starting off or you’re scaling up there, because you’re surrounded by so many people. And it’s very like, I come out of every conference, like, man, I some of the greatest people in history. I love what they’re doing. It makes you think like, why couldn’t I do that? Or why can’t I go?

to that next x. So I definitely recommend those types of events, whether or not they’re conferences or meetups, whatever it is, it’s always very invigorating.

Jamey King: Well, and the great thing is, even like this conversation today, maybe there’s one idea somebody listening to will take out of it and they’ll apply it, right? So the great thing with technology is everybody, if you’re on LinkedIn, you find all types of different ways of people that are offering education. And education is the way we’re going to grow. mean, you got to educate yourself to become, say, what points are valid to me in my day to day and how can I apply it and make it benefit?

Gil: Let’s go. Yeah, I think that’s a good transition to the last question. For those that are looking to either get started or amplify their direct bookings, what’s one piece of tactical advice that you would give them?

Jamey King: Yeah, I would really look right now on how your bookings are coming in. Right. Look at where your bookings are coming from. Look at obviously maybe the timing, you know, figure out what your seasonality is, understand what your shoulder season is, and then look at way how you’re going to market to try to bring those those reservations in. I think it’s very imperative that people understand the seasonality of bookings and then understand if there’s events and there’s areas that you can operationally

You can increase your rates because of dynamic pricing, right? You want to be able to capture every single dollar possible. Um, so be aware of what’s going on in your community. Uh, I think a lot of people get into this and they’re like, Oh, I got this thing. I’m like, my rates the same. And you’re like, well, the guy down the street just went up $ per night and people are paying it because it’s the, it’s the only place in town. Um, educate yourself, educate yourself on, on, you know, when high season is and when low season is educate yourself on your shoulder seasons.

And then also, you know, really zero in on what events move the needle where you can maximize your revenue.

Gil: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. even just beyond like the revenue management, making sure that you’re pricing yourself to give you that kind of like that maximum revenue at the end of the year, but also using those as almost trigger points in your marketing there. What I heard from you is that you want to analyze what the guest’s journey is like. Why are they coming to you for that specific season? What’s triggering them?

to even do the search in the first place. when I think about this, think about maybe it’s because we’re working on this intently right now. We’re working on our marketing hub within Craftist Days. And so one of the things that we’re gonna be launching soon is gonna be the ability to create your own blogs and drive organic traffic in there. And I think about what you just said about really understanding the guest journey and bringing that trigger back into how you produce content.

and making sure that you’re producing content that will attract people to your website when they’re thinking about certain things. So you may want to create a blog or a landing page on a specific event or how to enjoy the Great Smoky Mountains during fall foliage. There’s that trigger there that people are like, there’s reasons why we have those spikes in there is because people may be on spring break, maybe they’re coming out of summer and or they’re going into summer and they’re looking for an escape. There’s these trigger points in there.

Jamey King:

Absolutely.

Gil:

And think if you really analyze what those trigger points are, what the purpose of those visits are, you can really generate some really meaningful content that is just more than all the attractions and all the events that might be coming in.

Jamey King: No, you’re exactly right. I live in Indiana. Leaf season is a real thing, guys. People go and stay in your properties because they want to see leaves change. Gil: is exactly right. you know, with having properties down in Gatlinburg area, we Midwestern people loved it for some reason to go look at leaves. Now we see a lot of traffic, but we’re looking at leaves the whole time in ladybugs. So know it. Have a marketing plan and interact on your social media.

Please acknowledge any type of reviews, follow up, tell them thank you. That goes a long way because guess what? If you’re responding to a review, everybody’s going through and reading your responses. Jamey King was such a great host. He did this, this, and this. People want to align with people they like or perceived that they like. So make sure you’re addressing those reviews and you’re actually acknowledging.

Gil: Yeah. Awesome. Jamey, it’s been a pleasure to have you on the show and learn more about Avivo as well too. Where can people kind of find out more about you and Avivo?

Jamey King: Yeah, so, and by the way, my book is Saturday Night Live,  years. I just finished that my last trip. And why I like that book so much is because it reminds me of my career where you take different people from all different walks of life. You put them together and magic happens, right? That’s the way I kind of look at my careers where I’ve been able to meet so many different people. I’ve been able to get into this industry. I’ve been able to kind of wear different hats.

But at the end of the day, I’m putting on the best performance for everybody to enjoy. so hopefully today you guys got a really good performance with myself and Gil: on this podcast.

Gil: I love that. I love that.

Jamey King: Now, too. So for me, I’m absolutely happy to entertain anybody’s questions or concerns or just, you know, have any questions. But Jamey King at Avivo.com. That’s jamuy.king at eviivo.com. And then we also, of course, our website is www.avivo.com.

Gil: Awesome. Awesome. I’ll make sure to include those into our show notes because I know we’re all lazy typers now. So it’s much easier to click than to type out nowadays. But Jamey, was a pleasure to have you on here. I can’t wait to get to meet you face to face and talk shop and in another month at VR Nation.

Jamey King: Yeah. Yeah, I can’t wait. It’ll be fun to be in Austin with you.

Gil: Awesome man, talk to you later. Bye.

Jamey King: Thanks, y’all. Bye.