VRS681 - When 120 Property Managers Became Software Builders

Heather Bayer (0:00)

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. Here we are. This is it. We've reached the end of the summer. We've passed Labor Day. As a property manager, this was always my favorite time of year. It was when I could not necessarily really sit back and relax, but I had more time on my hands and I was able to work on projects and things that had been left in abeyance from the start of the summer. This year, because I don't have a property management company anymore, I spent the summer building.

So not renovating a cottage sort of building, but building apps, a whole collection of them, which I'm going to be launching at ScaleFest in Barcelona. And I'll tell you a bit more about that later on. They're made for property managers who need to claw back some time for the things that matter more to them. And every single one of them came out of my own 20 years of managing properties. And they're the tools I always wished existed and never could find. I'm sure there are some of them that are out there as features in some of the bigger platforms.

But the ones I've created are for smaller property managers, ones who can't afford that per-property pricing for every platform that they would like to find a feature on. So these tools don't automate anything. They just lighten the load in a number of small ways, just add up to a better working life. Which brings me to today's guest.

Andrew Kitchell is the founder and CEO of Wheelhouse, the revenue management platform. Although it's a whole lot more than that, as you will find out when you listen to this interview. But this summer, Andrew ran a hackathon, and we're going to talk about, to start with, what a hackathon actually is. But he ran this hackathon where his customers, and there were some complete beginners amongst them, built apps of their own. So I brought him the question, I keep turning over myself. If I can do this with absolutely zero technical and coding background, then anybody could do this, but should they? So we get into what people built, where creating your own tool makes absolute sense, and where the next hackathon might go. Here's my conversation with Andrew Kitchell.

Andrew, I don't know if you recall, I remember meeting you very briefly in Barcelona for a scale conference a couple of years ago. Do you remember that?

Andrew Kitchell (3:45)

I might have been starstruck.

Heather Bayer (3:47)

No, don't do that.

Andrew Kitchell (3:48)

We've exchanged many notes over the years. I don't totally remember meeting you at a conference, but that's not unusual because I was the 100 person hang. Yeah.

Heather Bayer (3:58)

Did you go to Barcelona?

Andrew Kitchell (4:00)

I did.

Heather Bayer (4:00)

Yeah, it definitely was. Yeah. I remember you actually had a corner booth as you came through the door. Yes. From the right-hand side.

Andrew Kitchell (4:05)

I remember you and I do. Absolutely. We were there.

Was it a good meeting? Did we have fun?

Heather Bayer (4:10)

Yeah. We did. And I said there, I said, I really want to get you on the podcast.

That's what made me think about it. I think, oh my God, I think that's three years ago or four years ago.

Andrew Kitchell (4:20)

It sounds, it was, it was many years ago. I've wanted to be on the podcast for a long time. And isn't it funny, in some ways, I think one of the reasons for the conversation today is that both of us are quite excited, slash deep into this AI world. And it's a transition, right? So what a great time to finally hang.