VRS682 - What It Takes to Rebuild a Company on AI

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.

I've been in this industry for 30 years now, and for the last three of them, I've been watching it change. I remember walking the vendor hall when the booths were proudly announcing, we have AI as if it were the whole story. But nobody says that anymore. At least I hope we're not going to see that this year. We all understand now that every company will have AI features. We're not arguing that part at all. But what interests me is what's happening underneath. There's a growing group of what people are calling AI native companies, built from the ground up on AI. And then there is everyone else who kept the old traditional platform and bolted some AI onto the side of it. Given where this technology is heading, I think the future belongs to the first group. So last week, my guest today put out a video with a line in it that I guess I stopped, I rewound, I went back, I listened to it again. And what he said was that too many companies spend their energy protecting the business they already have, instead of building the business that's coming next. And I think that's really important. Brooke Pfautz has always been at the forefront of this industry. He's always done something different. He built a management company from nothing to 500 properties, founded Vintory to help others do the same, and then took his own business apart and rebuilt it around AI. And he's written books, some really great books that I have referenced many times on this podcast. But the result of this rebuilding is Vintory AI, which launched this month. And a few weeks before this launch, he connected with me and wondered whether we should do an episode on how managers could build these tools themselves. And now Vintory has built them. So I want to know what changed in that time when we discussed that and where we are now. And I wanted to ask the big question. If you can break down owner acquisition and build it back up, so you break down an entire company and you build it back with not replicating any of the code that you had, what else in a property management business could take this same treatment? Could we do it with hospitality itself?

Anyhow, this is Brooke's fifth time on the show. I think it's actually more, but we will discuss that. This is Brooke's, I think, sixth or seventh time on the show. I haven't gone back and figured that out yet, but I know it's quite a lot. So here's Brooke again.

So I'm super delighted to have back with me once again for the fifth time on the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, and that is Brooke Pfautz of Vintory.

Brooke Pfautz (4:22)

That's right. I like that. We kept the name Vintory, but we are definitely marketing the new product Vintory AI. But Heather, thanks for having me on. I expect Saturday Night Live, five-timers, Jack and then the mail. So I'll be keeping a look out for that. There are very few.

Heather Bayer (4:35)

There are very few. In fact, there's only one other, I think, that's made it to five-timers. David Engaddy? Oh, no, David. It was Andrew McConnell, because he joined me twice a year to do the new year, and then he started doing it in the middle of June as well. But yeah, so it would be Andrew McConnell and McAllando.

Brooke Pfautz (4:51)

I feel honored to be in the royalty of the Hall of Fame of Vacation Rentals.

Heather Bayer (4:56)

Given we're at episode 680 something, there's been a lot out there, but it's great to see you again. We chatted a bit at VR Nation. I think we had a podcast episode after VR Nation, didn't we? It wasn't that long though. But things are changing, things are changing so rapidly that I wanted to get you back on. I came across, you connected with me about what you're doing at the moment and said, is it a good time to come back on? I said, absolutely.