VRS680 - What Autism Families Actually Look For In Your Listing

Heather Bayer (0:01)

When I sold CottageLink Rental Management in 2022, we were running at 85% direct bookings. That didn't happen by accident. We'd been at it for 20 years, booking direct long before Airbnb was even a concept. For most property managers though, direct booking remains one of the hardest things to build. Guests arrive through the OTAs, they stay, they leave, and you're left with almost nothing you can use to bring them back. That's the gap today's sponsor, StayFi, is designed to close. I'll be telling you more about them later in the episode.

This is the Vacation Rental Success podcast, keeping you up to date with news, views, information, and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer, and as ever, I'm super excited to be back with you once again.

A while back, I talked with Suzanne Young about how to get an accommodation ready for guests with autism. And this is really dear to my heart because I have a couple of family members that are on the autism spectrum. So it's always been of interest. And that episode stayed with me, but it only covered one side of it. What I really wanted to know was what the families themselves are looking for and what they wish they could find out before they book. Of course, now, with people using ChatGPT and Perplexity, etc., to go look for their accommodation, it's even more important that if you're offering autism-ready homes, that you make your site and your listings say the things that the people looking for them are looking for. Hope that makes sense. But anyway, my guest today is Eloisa Jones. She's the founder of Gathering Memories Travel. Eloisa spent more than 20 years traveling with loved ones in her family with autism before she trained as a travel designer. She now plans sensory-friendly trips for neurodivergent families. She holds four certifications in autism and accessible travel, and she says something I like very much. She's not looking for autism-proof vacations, she's looking for autism-ready ones. I met Eloisa in an AI mastermind we both belong to. So we also get into how she's using AI to build her business. And quite a lot on what needs to be on your website for your property to come up when a family asks ChatGPT for exactly the right place to stay. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Eloisa Jones.

I'm so pleased to have with me today Eloisa Jones. Eloisa, I met in Jacksonville, Florida about two months ago now. We went to a mastermind session for AI for Business. So Eloisa and I are both in the same mastermind group. And so we went there to talk about AI, but we ended up talking about so much else. So I am so pleased to have you here today, Eloisa. Thank you so much for saying that you would come along and do this.

Eloisa Jones (3:50)

Well, Heather, I just love what you do. It was such a pleasure meeting you. And I love that you empower vacation rental owners and managers and empower them with the systems and knowledge so they can succeed, right? In this industry, I think we can either make it or break it for some of the families that we serve.

Right? So I'm just so excited to chat with you about that.

Heather Bayer (4:12)

Well, there are a couple of reasons I wanted you to come along and join me. One of them was about AI, but the other was because your particular topic, and that's why you were at the Mastermind, was to talk about autism travel. And we had that discussion. It's really dear to my heart because autism is a part of my life. My daughter is high-functioning autistic. She got expelled from every school she went to, even kindergarten. She was expelled from kindergarten. And I'm not saying that with any form of pride, but she's in her 50s now. My husband and I were talking yesterday, and I said, why was she never diagnosed with autism? And I said, that was 45 years ago when she really began acting out, and there was no such thing as an autism spectrum then. It was just a bad child. So we went through all sorts of really, in retrospect, really bad psychological counseling and put her into the wrong schools. And anyway, she just didn't do well throughout her schooling. And it wasn't until she was in her early 40s that she actually got diagnosed with Asperger's, autism, ADHD and other things that have beset her throughout her life.