[00:00:00] Intro

[00:01:00] John: Mateo, how are you?

[00:01:01] Mateo: Fantastic. John, how are you?

[00:01:04] John: I am great. Hey, we’re gonna just jump right into it. We got one hell of a podcast today, episode 108, with the one and only Rob Grabber, CEO of Vacasa. Thanks so much for joining us today, Rob.

[00:01:17] Rob: Hey, great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:20] John: We’re excited to have you. So we have on record that you are a fan of the podcast. We appreciate you joining us. We know we’re gonna talk current times. We know we’re gonna talk about your time at Vacasa, but I want to go back in the way back machine here and let’s talk about you graduating high school in ’91.

[00:01:37] Rob: Yeah.

[00:01:38] John: from Potomac High School in Maryland, which is outside of Baltimore and DC area. Were you a sports guy? Or were you one of those nerdy guys that, you know? I was both. I was in…

[00:01:51] Mateo: be? I was gonna say, why can’t you be both?

[00:01:53] John: Yeah, I was both, I was in the band, I was in Chorus, and I was also on the ski team. I played, so I did a little bit of both. So I was, I’m…

[00:02:01] Rob: I was nowhere near that. Cool. You don’t have to ask around very much. I don’t wanna date myself. I actually graduated high school in ’87, and I graduated college in ’91. And yeah, I wasn’t a great athlete as a kid. I grew up swimming, so swimming was really big. In the Maryland, in kind of the Maryland area. Honestly, my brother and sister were more talented than me, probably on just about every dimension. But I grew up swimming and I shifted over to play water polo in college. And I’ve played…

[00:02:32] John: That’s some core…

[00:02:34] Mateo: but stop. So first of all, I love how he’s just casually talking about…

[00:02:37] John: I dunno.

[00:02:38] Mateo: swimming and then yeah, I did water polo. Have you tried that, John? Have you tried to do anything in the pool like…

[00:02:44] John: Yeah, I could tread water, but I can’t throw a ball…

[00:02:46] Rob: I’m one of these people I had some friends that wanted to get me into doing triathlons and this kind of stuff, and I said, you know what? I would gladly do the swim three times if I didn’t have to do the run once. I still did some but they were but they were hard. But no, growing up, look, it was a great Maryland East coast was great. Great place to grow up. I’ve lived all over in my career since then. And being in travel we didn’t get to travel a lot, but I grew up with a love of it and being able to spend my career doing it has been a lot of fun.

[00:03:12] John: grew up in New England…

[00:03:14] Mateo: so…

[00:03:14] Rob: skiing, isn’t that more ice skating than skiing? How’s that…

[00:03:17] Mateo: Exactly.

[00:03:18] John: good call out. The beast of the East Killington. That was my, where I went to high school. Okay, so you graduated college ’91. You get into, you’re working at Electronic Data Systems, you’re doing some interesting things. You work for Deschutes Banks doing some security stuff. Like what, what made you transition to travel? How did you get into travel?

[00:03:40] Rob: It’s a great question. For me, I started my career at EDS Electronic Data Systems, which was Ross Perot’s old company. I have somewhere, I have a closet of blue suits and red ties and white shirts, the old IBM uniform. But I started and I look back now and this was an accident that I can look back on and find the thread through. But at the time I was nowhere near smart enough to plan this. But I kinda look back and I think there were two things that I learned in those first. Steps in my career that have shaped everything I’ve done since, including what brought me to travel. And those two things were how technology works so early on, building systems and writing software to get computers to solve problems for humans is the first thing that I did. And that the specifics have moved on dramatically since I wrote software. But the general approaches that I got to work with were all the precedent technologies and architectures and ways of working that we use today on the internet. But then the second thing is I was gonna go to graduate school. I deferred for a year and I spent a year working for one of their business unit leaders and that team and I, like I don’t wanna make too much of it. It was a marketing strategy, do the offsites, get the coffee kind of job. But I got to be a fly on the wall in the very early part of the 1990s and I got to see how. CEOs and CFOs eyes were lighting up as EDS started to describe where technology was going because EDS was all about outsourcing. We’re just gonna take your stuff and run it for you. But this team that, just had the chance to work with was starting to say what if you could compete differently? What if you could go to market differently? What if you could build product differently? And here’s how. And I left those meetings and honestly, I had no idea. What was going on. But I was pretty intrigued and I got bitten by the bug twice. So those two things have shaped what I did. I spent a little time in the finance world. And then I came back, to the tech world and I got linked up. One of my early clients when I was living in, on the west coast was the team that eventually went on to build Hotwire. They were a client of mine. My engineering team built the release 1.0 of Hotwire. I functioned for a little while as their CTO until they hired one. And I, helped lead an investment alongside the investment firm and the airlines in building that business. And that was a really great introduction to the travel industry, the technology behind it and eventually is what brought me to Expedia. I.

[00:06:13] John: Which you spent over 13 years at, right?

[00:06:16] Rob: It was 16 and it felt like 25, 30. No, it was a great, it was a really a terrific experience. My first experience at Expedia was working with our airline partners and, in the airlines, they’re in a very difficult part of the industry. They’ve got monopolies and duopolies above them, right?

OPEC and Airbus and Boeing. And so they just tend to be, they feel and act sometimes, like, they’re under a lot of pressure, which they are. And then we come along as a big partner of theirs. So I was part of the team working through those relationships and trying to find common ground and stuff to go forward with. And that was a great experience. And then I had the chance to come over and join the team at Agencia, building what became a really great corporate travel business in that part of the industry.

[00:07:04] John: You mentioned Expedia for those listening I’m not sure exactly when, but in a week or two, Tim Rosalio is joining us. I’m from Expedia on the podcast as well, so stay tuned.

[00:07:14] Mateo: No shameless plugs.

[00:07:15] John: Yeah.

[00:07:16] Mateo: But Rob, this brings you to a great point, right? You were in the corporate travel space before. So what took your path to Vacasa? How’d you get to Portland? We’ve heard all the great things about why you’re a great fit for the job, but I wanna know why this was a great fit from your perspective.

[00:07:34] Rob: I appreciate that. I’ve been looking at the travel industry from many different perspectives. I had the privilege of being on the leadership team of Expedia Group for the 10 years I was running the business at Agencia, I was also part of that senior team. I was on the team when we first looked at acquiring and then helping to grow the business at HomeAway, now Vrbo. Just I think around that time I made some personal investments in the space with the team at TurnKey and really became intrigued at this industry because if you think about the amount of transformation that’s been going on in the travel industry, the air and hotel categories, the car category and cruise category. Those really moved first in maturing and adopting technology in some really interesting ways. And then you started to see the vacation rental space, the alternative lodging space really begin to emerge and mature. And I was watching all of this from a distance, but with real curiosity and admiration. And, I was seeing people like JB and TJ, like Eric Brion, like many others across the industry, start to work in different ways, in innovative ways. I began to see the, the, the, some of the more traditional players evolve and do different things. And that was incredibly intriguing for me. When I left Expedia, it was in the teeth of the pandemic. And I looked at a number of different opportunities and I was actually looking at a lot of different roles that were outside the travel space. And then I got a call from somebody who was helping the team at Vacasa, look for someone to take the role. And I picked up the phone and he started to describe the business, and I thought to myself, please say Vacasa. Please. And he did. And I said, okay, I wanna, I want to have that conversation. And it was terrific. And I think that, you know, look,

[00:09:20] John: can I interject here real quick? Rob? Most people would not wanna have that conversation based on the time when this conversation was being had Matt Roberts was at the helm then, and things were not looking good and most would not. Take that call. So there’s an interesting person, an interesting psyche that, in your background is perfect for, it’s interesting because I don’t think it’s great, for many at the time, to me it’d be scary, and you have the pedigree and you have the, the traction and the history and the decades in the space to go ahead to help right this ship, right? It’s not all on you, but it’s, you’re leading the charge.

[00:09:59] Rob: it’s funny. I was a, an investment banker in Hong Kong during the Asian financial crisis when currency markets and equity markets and debt markets were all moving in a downward spiral. I took over Agencia during the financial crisis and, and I saw how those moments, not just in the economy, but for organizations, for teams, for individuals, can be enormous inflection points of focus and real opportunity. And I knew coming, out of what were two, record years in the vacation rental space, in the travel space with the recovery coming out of Covid I knew that there was gonna be some renormalization, there was gonna be some process of working through that. And I also knew that, that the team was gonna have to look at some things differently and so forth. But at the same time, I took a step back and I literally wrote down three words that are the three words that, you know, that we use to talk about our ultimate vision and mission, which I think is something that’s true for Vacasa, but also what we all do, and that’s bring vacations home. Because if you can spend your career doing that for an owner who wants to participate in the travel industry, for guests who want to have a different experience, have an experience with family and friends that they can’t have in the lobby of a hotel, I. You’ve spent your career doing something really terrific and beautiful. And I say that by the way, on a very personal level. My wife is a first generation immigrant hers, her first language is not English, and her families isn’t either. And when I first met them, we rented a house back home, and we showed up and we, started cooking dinner and figured it out and got to know each other. And it was beautiful. And when my father passed away several years ago the year after he died we all got back together as a family., my sister and her family, my brother and his family, my mom, and reconnected as a group. And we did it not in a hotel, but we did that at a home. And we spent a long weekend together just. Being together and if I can play a small role, we all get to play a small role in making those kinds of experiences happen. Those types of memories for families and friends. I think that’s a great thing to work on. And are there gonna be challenges? Yeah, of course there are, there’s better stuff on the other side of them.

[00:12:24] John: It’s still crazy to me, but I love it.

[00:12:26] Direct Commercial

[00:14:11] John: Hey, Rob, we have a few questions that were submitted to us via video ahead of time, that we’d like you to answer. So, so here’s the first one.

[00:14:19] Lauren Madewell: Hey Rob, my name is Lauren Madewell. I am with Antebellum’s Cabin Rentals over here in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, and we are a 29 year old family owned and operated business, and we love what we do. I wanna say that I think it’s really cool that you’re willing to come on here with the guys and answer our questions live like this. So this is what I’ve got for you. I’m sure that you’re well aware that Acosta catches a lot of flack in the vacation rental world at large. So my question is, Do you believe any of these criticisms have been warranted over the past couple of years, and if so, what specifically comes to mind? Or if you believe that the criticisms have largely not been warranted, I would really love to hear your thoughts on why. Okay. I appreciate it.

[00:15:03] Rob: that’s awesome. Lauren, thanks so much for the question. By the way. It’s always really cool to see people that have built businesses and have passion for the industry. As far as criticisms or flack I hadn’t noticed, has there been any but more seriously? I look, of course I’ve seen criticisms and I have some of my own. I’m, like Lauren is, I’m sure, very driven and always looking to improve. And from my perspective, I’ve tried to channel always in my life, in business, I’ve always tried to channel those things and into areas improve and what can we focus on? But that said, I think, I’ve been very open with the things I think Vacasa needs to improve on. And I look at a. Lot of the other criticisms that have been levied. And I say to myself, do I think they’re warranted? Look, most of the things that you hear about on social media and whatever are coming from one particular corner of the industry, or maybe two and that’s fine. I think that by and large those criticisms are not warranted. So I think, let me just give a couple of examples. Like one of the criticisms I’ve heard is Vacasa is not pulling its weight when it comes to advocacy in the industry. Now I take advocacy very seriously in my career in the travel industry, which is decades long, I’ve always been a big part of advocacy efforts. And I was at the same VRMA as everybody last year when Vacasa was actually receiving an award for being the number one sponsor of advocacy efforts in the industry. So on a criticism like that, is there always more that we can do as an industry, as individual companies, whatever, of course. But as Vacasa pulling its weight I don’t think that’s a fair criticism. I’ve also heard criticisms, for example, that we’re not local. And that really I take particular issue with that. We have more than 50 people right now on the ground in Maui, and . We’re still recovering bodies from the wreckage of the fires, and our people are on the ground helping our guests and helping our owners. We’ve heard criticisms, we don’t have people turning wrenches or whatever it is in these markets, and I just feel like that’s disrespectful to what we all do. And I think that it’s it’s something that I, I don’t feel is warranted as criticism between, between players in the industry, even among competitors. And I take that maybe a little bit Personally and directly because I see the feedback that comes from our owners who are renting their homes. There was an owner who, whose family had been in a terrible accident and they’d been about to start renting their home. Their wife was hospitalized, had a small chance of living, and our team stuck with that family and they’re incredibly grateful and we’re grateful to them to be a part of it. I get the same emails that I’m sure that you and Lauren gets when we’re working with guests. There was a little girl who left behind a, a doll, a favorite lovey in our team, went out of their way to get it back to them and they only found out later that this girl had been treated for cancer for years and this was her way of staying connected, when she’s in the hospital. And there’s no way our team could have known that. And we are all privileged to do this work. And I think that if there are criticisms where. We can be serving the industry better or serving our guests better, or serving our homeowners better. I’m the first one to get in line, but on these ideas that as a company we’re not engaged or we’re not local or whatever, I think people know better. Or if they don’t they’re trying to make a different point.

[00:18:25] John: You’re so large. Overall, it’s the easy. Jab at you. Because they’re not boots on the ground because their operations, is in, the Pacific Northwest. So I think it’s easy to generalize and to go ahead and point those fingers as not invested without actually looking at the other things.

[00:18:46] Mateo: It’s not fair, Rob at the end of the day too, because they’re not comparing apples to apples. You don’t get the credit when I know personally I’m on the board of Amster and Atlanta, which you support our advocacy efforts to the nines. And you’re not even in that market you’re entering that market. This is a future market for you guys, but you are played a critical role in us being able to help in the advocacy space in Atlanta as well as, giving resources and people. So I think you’re not gonna be able to please everyone. And the reality is you’ve been the biggest target in the business for how long. And I think that’s part of those shots I think come at because heavy is the head that wears the crown. And you’re not gonna please everybody in the industry. Everyone can have their opinion on what’s happened, and I don’t think anybody’s perfect, but I think the significance of what you do and what you just said, be fair, tell the whole story. And understand that these, there’s people every day that work for this company that’s huge that, that see these things and it’s vastly important to the team members and the guests and other people who see, the things that people are putting out in that are of opinion may are some of these things. True. I’m sure nobody’s perfect within this space. Nobody expects Vacasa to have been perfect within this space. But the reality of it is it is the case study in…

Sure, here’s the text with the requested changes:

[00:20:17] Rob: I appreciate you saying that. And by the way, pro props for the Shakespeare quote, “The heaviest the head that wears the crown.” That’s you’re I’m out class guys. There’s, you knew that when you. When I, when you all dialed in. But I would say, look, we’re very engaged in, in, in industry issues.

We’re not gonna, we’re not gonna lecture anybody about what to do or what not to do or whatever. We’re all trying to do the same thing, which is take care of our owners and take care of our guests and try to build up an industry that, that frankly is evolving in front of our eyes.

And it’s a privilege to be a part of it. We recently were, we played a small role in a number of areas. We just had a great win in Austin. And through a case that we fought for years, since 2016, I think if not before. And I think that wasn’t a win for Vacasa, that was a win for the industry. And there are lots of people around the industry doing the exact same thing. And as far as these things being fair look, all I can say is if writing wrongs was my job, I’d have a cape and a big S on my chest and I could fly. I can’t do those things. I can’t do those things.

But look, we’re gonna stay focused on the things that we can control, and we think the things that are going to be best for our owners, for our guests, and for the industry for the long term.

[00:21:24] John: All right, so let’s go to the second question. Here’s Michael Golden.

[00:21:27] Michael Goldin: Hi Rob, this is Michael Golden, co-founder of Storied Collection and host of Good Morning Hospitality. My question is quite simple and direct. Would you build versus buy when it comes to technology? Assuming you’re starting from scratch today, moving forward, would you rather build your own tech and have it all in-house, or is there ample, well-run tech suppliers that you could just buy it and dedicate your tech resources elsewhere? Thanks.

[00:22:00] Rob: That’s a great question. Michael, thanks so much for that. I think it depends on where you want to go. Either way, you’re going to face some common challenges, but ultimately it depends on where you want to end up.

So what do I mean by that? First of all, I started my career in technology. I was writing software badly. And I’ve spent my whole career in the technology industry. And travel has been an industry that adopted technology early. Now, again, I’ve been in the travel industry for decades, but it’s because they’ve always been thinking about, and we can talk about the history of this if you’re really interested in geeking out, in thinking about how the customer experience can be enhanced by technology.

And in the work that I’ve done in the past, there are definitely technology components that you can buy and utilize quite easily and in a very compelling way. The power of individual components is just breathtaking. And you can see just in the past six months, we’re recording this in August of 2023. And you can see just in the past six months, the extraordinary growth and the scope and the power of the large language models, these particular approaches to using neural networks to drive artificial intelligence experiences and so forth. It’s been just extraordinary to see the explosion in that. But I think the challenge is always going to be between the simplicity of adopting a point solution or many point solutions and getting them to work together, which works really well to a point. And then as you start to scale that and as the velocity of your business, the scale of your business, the needs of your business start to grow, then what you end up with is seams that you have to navigate across.

And those seams at first are just reminders that you have different pieces, but they can become real. My metaphors are going to get mixed here, but they can become real speed bumps and roadblocks and chasms over time. And so what I think about in the businesses that I’ve been a part of is what is our journey and if we’re going to be building a great business that’s very focused but in a particular part of the market.

Then you can absolutely make a great decision when it comes to buy, but as you start to grow and scale and work across multiple types of markets and situations, you can end up with sort of a Frankenstein that you have to try to get to walk. Now, that’s not necessarily where you end up, but those are some of the things to think about when it comes to buy versus build. And it’s not, by the way, an all-or-nothing but I think it really is, do you want to have a facility? Do you want to have a fluency inside your company when it comes to using data and using technology and evolving these solutions? And if so, you really need to animate that in a way that you don’t if you’re just going to have some of these point solutions. If you try to take this approach and make it work over here, that’s where you get what I call that Frankenstein problem.

[00:25:02] John: That’s a great answer, but to play devil’s advocate to that answer, as far as keeping it in-house, the resources that are necessary on your team and the bandwidth that is necessary for that team to get done, that’s where that can get challenging because, what are you, are we a technology company or are we a hospitality company?

We’ve established in a previous interview we’ve had with JB that you are a technology and logistics company that does hospitality very well. And ultimately it’s hospitality first. But with technology and logistics like driving force, the questions, to take it even further, is Oh my god, so much resources are getting used to build this or so much resources as in people and financial resources.

Because if we went with this, we paid them this, we potentially could get from point A to point B faster and leaner and quicker and maybe better. Who knows? That’s when I guess it comes into acquisitions, do we just acquire it and now they’re part of Vacasa or they’re part of whatever company so then we have more control over it.

[00:26:06] Rob: Yeah, there’s a lot there. I would say, first of all, I’ve been having these debates in about technology and travel for decades. And I actually, hey, I came to the conclusion a while ago. I think there’s a little bit of a false comparison here or a false dichotomy that is, I don’t think it’s a chicken and egg thing.

Are you a tech company first or a hospitality company? Are you a hospitality company first or a tech company first? You get on an airplane and American Airlines has aa.com on the Winglet. Could you run a hotel without technology? Could you run any business in the economy today without some understanding of or use of technology? So I get that there’s branding or a slogan element to this. And if you can say it’s this chicken or  this egg or whatever, but I actually think that every company has to use technology today. If you have a family or young kids or cousins or whatever running around you see the way in which technology expectations are built in. And I used to tell people when I was at Expedia and in the corporate travel space, the importance of using technology not for its own sake, but to solve problems and to make experiences better for customers. We used to tell customers that the problem at most companies is the time zone. People would say what do you mean? And I say, the time zone. So if you talk to people who actually work in those companies, they’d say, hey, look out here in the field. It’s 2023 and at headquarters, it’s 1978.

And that’s the time zone problem. So we are all using technology. The expectations of all of our guests and all of our owners are not being set by Vacasa and they’re not being set by any other player in our industry. They’re being set by Facebook and Google. Wait, what do you mean? I just start typing and I spell the name of the city wrong and it still geolocates it correctly within four milliseconds. Like, why wouldn’t it work like that? My wife and I, we’ve got two kids and my son used to run around, remember DVDs, for your younger listeners. We’ll have to put in a note explaining what that is. But he was throwing this DVD around the living room and I wanted him to stop. He was like four years old. And I said, hey don’t do that. And I’m trying to find a way to connect to him and he, I said, that’s the movie “Cars” because he loved the movie “Cars”.

And so he takes the DVD and he stops and he says, this is the movie “Cars”. I said, yeah. And he said, how do you play it? And then I thought no. That’s just the data you need to, and he’d grown up and all he knows is a touchscreen and everything available at his fingertips. The idea that the data and the experience would be separated, that’s crazy. How is that going to play out in our industry? I have no idea. But we have to figure it out collectively. And to do that, you can buy, you can build, but you have to be curious. You have to be fluent, you have to have some facility with these tools and with these opportunities. Otherwise, you’ll miss them. And you’ll be throwing DVDs around the living room.

[00:29:13] Mateo: Do you find that your technology partners that you are buying into this Frankenstein model, are they willing to help you? Because, we talk about a lot on this show, like the uniqueness of technology and how it’s going to have to almost be specific to a business model or a business set, like moving forward to be able to actually allow them to execute efficiently, right? Like you’re blessed to have properties in every market. So you gotta have ski markets, you have to beach markets, you have to have technology that sings and speaks all these different languages, right? And all the different needs of these markets and build the technology that allows it to function. From the guest perspective, internally and otherwise, how are you finding your relationships with the vendors that you do work with to keep a product that you need to sustain the business?

[00:30:05] Rob: Yeah, it’s a great question and I should be careful here. I don’t mean that the individual vendors are Frankenstein’s. It’s when you. If you, whether these systems, yeah, I know. I but if you knit together these systems in such a way, you have to put as much energy into how to make this all walk and work and sing, so that it delivers not just its own jilted steps, but a really great experience for the people who matter most, your people on the ground, your guests, and your owners. And I think that, There’s a lot of great solutions out there, and most of those solutions, they don’t think of themselves as operating in, in a stack.

Now, we could talk about long-term trends in the technology industry, what you actually see is more and more of the creation of these platforms, right? Google has a cloud solution and an AI solution and everything in between, right? The Google suite of the docs and sheets and so forth. Microsoft has the same thing. They have chatGPT, they have the Azure Cloud. They have all of the enterprise applications. Salesforce, in many ways, is building the same thing where they have the Salesforce solution, they have the marketing solution, they have their. I think that their Einstein product, Amazon is building the same thing. So these things are moving in these platforms. Will the same thing emerge at our level of the business? Who knows? But I think that the important thing is whichever path you go down, you have to remember to keep the customer experience at the absolute forefront of what you do. Because it’s not about just getting the system to work.

t’s about getting a great experience for your guests, your owners, and the people on the ground who are making that happen. If it doesn’t make that work easier, it doesn’t really matter.

[00:31:50] Pricelabs Commercial

[00:33:17] John: I’m gonna go to the next question here.

[00:33:20] Tom Goodwin: Hey Rob. My name is Tom Goodwin with Mountain Laurel Chalets in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I’m the owner of a small family-owned business, second generation. We’ve been doing it for 51 years. And I’m curious, what you feel is the value add or the contribution that a company like mine makes to the industry and what you feel is the distinct value add that The Casa adds to the vacation rental industry. There’s a, I believe in abundance mentality. I think there’s a lot of room to go around. There’s a lot of houses to be managed, and I’m curious about your response. Thanks.

[00:33:52] Rob: That’s a great question, Tom. Thanks so much for that. Look, I’m one of these people. I’m never gonna lecture the industry or players in it who give what our teams give and we all, what we all give every day to it on the right or the wrong way to think about things. What I would say is I love being a part in an industry where we’re all racing toward the same things, right? We’re all racing to take great care of our guests and to take great care of our owners and the beautiful homes that they entrust to us. And so I think if we’re all focused on elevating the industry and building preference for just a great product at Vacasa, we talk about bringing vacations home. Which is literally what every owner is trying to do. They want to play some small or larger part in the travel industry and offering up the view that they’ve enjoyed or the home that they’ve enjoyed or some of the experiences that they have is a way for them to do that. It’s what guests are looking for, there are things that happen. We talk about this internally at the company. There are things that happen for family and friends around a dining room table or a kitchen sink, cleaning up after a meal that don’t happen in the lobby of a hotel. And I think that’s very powerful in terms of a player like Vacasa, Tom, and a business like yours in Tennessee? I think there’s a lot of commonality and I think there’s a lot for us both to contribute to the industry. If you look at the hotel space, there are boutique hotels, there are larger operators and brands. They’re all part of the industry and they’re all making it better. And we’re all lucky to get to do what it is that we do. And we’re lucky to be part of the industry with players like yours.

[00:35:28] John: Rob. Hey, the last one right here. Okay.

[00:35:30] Scott Fasano: Hey Rob, this is Scott Fasano, president of Travel Advantage Network and owner of Casago del Mar Beach Vacations. I appreciate the time that you’re taking to do this, and I know it’s not an easy task. I think it’s gonna be great for the industry to hear from you directly. I have a specific question about, uh, a homeowner letter that you put out in June. In that letter, you told the homeowners that Acosta’s NPS is not only one of the best in the vacation rental business, but also among the highest in the entire hospitality industry and ahead of some major hotel chains. I’m curious, uh, Where you found the information to compile that score and to compare yours yourself to others. I’m also curious what the score is. Um, you didn’t mention the score to the homeowner, so I’m curious what that is and also, um, and, and maybe most importantly, what’s the area that you’re measuring From our perspective on NPS, we measure the reservation experience. We measure the overall experience, and we measure each one of the units in our portfolio. If you could shed any light on that, I think it would be great. Thank you for the time.

[00:36:30] Rob: Scott. Thanks for that. Yeah, we do regularly communicate with our owners. We did send out a letter. I didn’t realize the distribution was quite that large, but that’s great. The thinking about NPS and satisfaction, and NPS, I’m sure everybody knows, is a metric that was created by a consulting firm, but it’s a really great metric. I think one of the challenges with the metric is it’s lagging, so I’ll come back to that in a second. We don’t actually disclose; we don’t publicly report on the figures. Sometimes being a public company means there are things that, my handcuffs on some of the things we disclose regularly and often, and that’s sometimes comfortable sometimes not. And at the same time, there are some metrics that we don’t disclose regularly. What I would say is, just do a Google search and look at the very best NPS businesses in the world. Look at the very best ones in travel and hospitality and look at the top half, top third, top 10% of those numbers. And, that’s what we look at. It’s funny, I spent the last 10 years of my career before I joined Vacasa in the corporate travel space. And in corporate travel, I was always jealous of people who got to work in leisure travel. You get to take people on vacation with their families to Florida. And in corporate travel, you’re taking people, for business, away from their families to Dusseldorf or whatever it is. And so the NPS and those different sides of the industry were just very different at times. But I think that. What we use NPS for and how we look at it. So first, you ticked off Scott, I think a better measure of kind of the things that we look at. We absolutely look at the guest experience from the moment we start to work with them until the end of their stay. And afterward, we look at, how was your check-in? How is the clean, how is the whole experience throughout? And I’m very proud of the work that our team does. There’s always room for us to improve. We are constantly zeroing in on that. When we talked before about criticism, we are always looking self-critically at where can we improve and how can we get better and so forth. I think the other thing about NPS is, as I mentioned before, it’s a lagging metric. And to really utilize metrics like this, it’s important to understand and to really push yourself into what drives that? Did you have a great experience? Okay, terrific, but how and why and where can I do better? All along that way and in my career, I’ve had the chance to really. Parse these kinds of topics in detail. It is always humbling. It’s always, on some level it can be a little discouraging in the moment you’re like, oh, wait, that was the key. I didn’t even think of that. So you gotta get back into it. But by and large, we’re, we’re we’re doing a good job. I think we’re doing a good job as an industry at Vacasa. It’s something we’re extremely focused on, and I think that we’ve talked, already a little bit about technology, a little bit about product, but there’s a huge amount in this industry that’s about process and about people. And when you get all of those things lined up, you can deliver really great experiences. And that’s part of the privilege of being in the travel industry and getting the chance to do what we do every day in vacation rentals.

[00:39:32] John: So what is Vacasa doing? First and foremost for those listening to the podcast today, you know that recently the Q2 earnings call happened. This podcast is not about that. We’ll go ahead and give a link. You can go ahead and download and look at the earnings call. It’s all there. This is not about that. This isn’t why we’re here. You can get all that information. It’s available online. With that said, what is Vacasa doing to strengthen the company’s position with everything that’s gone on and address its current challenges moving forward? What are some key things that you are doing as a company and addressing these challenges?

[00:40:10] Rob: Yeah, I think that I’ve shared four pretty straightforward priorities with our investors in the market and all of our fellow travelers in the vacation rental space. So we are an open book in the way that others don’t have to be. From my perspective, underneath that, there are three very straightforward things. Look, we need to be better at our execution on a day-to-day basis. We need to be more thoughtful about how it is that we’re able to generate growth organically versus just through, through acquisition, or not just through acquisition, but just have a different balance there. And then finally, I think there is an opportunity to accelerate and improve the cadence and the focus and impact of the product and technology investments that we’re making. So as that relates to our results, look, we were pleased with our results. I think nobody at Vacasa is satisfied with where we are today. I left Expedia after 16 years, not satisfied with everything we’d gotten done. I still had a list of 10 pages of things that I wanted to be able to do. But I think that, I’m pleased to see our progress in Q2. I’m pleased to see that, on some of the financial dimensions on our delivery dimensions, our guest NPS and some of the work that we’re doing, every day for owners and guests. I’m pleased to see that on the product and technology side. We are far from done. But we’re very focused. I think we’re on the right path and we’re gonna keep taking steps.

[00:41:29] Mateo: So I had a fun question for you. What surprised you? What’s one thing that surprised you or was unexpected when you walked in the company, day one?

[00:41:39] Rob: Yeah, I think one of the things that surprised me was the degree to which the team wasn’t working together as much as I would’ve thought. Some people have asked me, Rob, when are you gonna require everybody to come back to the office?..I was like, guys, this isn’t Wall Street. It’s not everybody has, but there are moments; there are times during the week and during the month and during the quarter that we have to line up and we have to be together. If. Sales is doing a great job, and revenue management is doing a great job, and operations is doing a great job. We are not doing a great job. We need to be working together as a team because we all know if, you know when it works best in your business, in our businesses, when you find homes that you can run well and you know the homes that you should go and find. And that dynamic of getting, even things that might seem as different as your growth motions and your operating motions together and aligned. Those are things that you just have to do. There are great people in the organization; they’re great leaders in the organization. The people in the field and on the ground are extraordinary. And I’ve had the chance to go and meet many of them and there are many more great markets to go and visit. But I think that one of the things I’ve really wanted to do is to get our teams to work together, to everybody understand how are you playing a role in bringing vacations home. If you’re creating a policy or a technology that is gonna make it harder for that housekeeper or that guest to be able to get what they need. Then you just gotta think twice, three times, four times about that and make it so it accomplishes whatever you’re trying to do. Is it security or whatever it is, it’s all important, but it has to serve that purpose. And I think that’s one thing that surprised me and something I think that we’re working on. And we’re showing some progress on.

 [00:43:33] John: With the amount of markets you’re in, that must be an insane logistics task. To even think about how to go ahead and get that done, bringing it all together with the technology makes it easy, but at the same time, getting actual insight and an overview of what’s going on in every single market. It must be a challenge.

 [00:43:51] Rob: So first of all, we have extraordinary people and really great robust processes. I think a lot of this is about bringing those things together and understanding them in a different way. And I think that it is a challenge, but I also think that we have an advantage in the market because we can see some of these dynamics in our data earlier than others in the marketplace. So for example, right after I joined, we started to see this change in the way customers were buying and also started to see what would probably be a different ADR pricing environment in 2023. Now we were pretty upfront about that in Q4 of last year. We took a lot of criticism about what we were saying in the market at that time. I think by and large, that’s, we’ve been borne out to be right on that point, but it doesn’t matter who’s right or who’s wrong. We immediately started to say, what does this mean for our owners? What does it mean for our guests? What does it mean about how we’re gonna think about revenue management? So, that’s one thing. But I think the second thing is that if you can use technology as a way to learn and understand what’s going on in your business and not just as complexity to be managed, if you could just say, look, I’m gonna take as given we can understand complexity, then you have lots of opportunities to learn.

Think about it this way, if you have one guest that stays in one home once a year, you have one opportunity to learn. We have some weekends where we’re hosting 31,000 guests. Now, if all that is a burden, you’re absolutely right. But if those are 31,000 opportunities to learn, hundreds of thousands of opportunities in a quarter, we can be so much better the next quarter and the quarter after that. And we just have to make that more and more of an opportunity. Otherwise, it is just a burden. But I think that’s the exciting thing about working in the travel industry in this time and in this age. And you have to be on that path. And if you’re not, you’re right. It can be heartbreaking 

[00:46:08] John: everything you’re doing is a case study. Everything with the insight and the data and the analytics that you have, everything you’re doing is a case study and everything you have the more transparent you are in internally looking at yourselves and what you’re doing, the better you’re gonna be able to go ahead and give positive output for your homeowners. What we notice when talking to property managers in the industry right now is the ones that have done the best and have been more transparent with their homeowners and set expectations, especially for this year in being different than the last two years. And in looking at the data and being, Hey, you know what we have some great forecasting tools and we’re looking into the future and in 2023 it’s not gonna be 2022, so we’re not gonna go ahead and expect this. And those that are transparent with their homeowners and set those expectations early are seeing way greater success and less churn with homeowners than others.

 [00:47:03] Rob: And I think that, look, we’re coming out of a pretty extraordinary period in the economic history of the country. We’ve had 10 years with basically no interest rates. We’ve had interest rates, but you get my point. And that has a bunch of dynamics that always happen in the market, right? The stock market does this, and home buying does that, and so on. But for everybody who might be feeling, and by the way, it’s a natural feeling to have that it’s all changed and it’s never gonna go back. First of all, these things are called cyclical for a reason, number one. Number two, our interest rates, wherever they are, people were saying, oh, can you have a technology industry with interest rates like this? Because our VCs gonna invest and you have all these things. It’s wait a minute. Look at where interest rates were when Microsoft was founded, when Google was founded, when Facebook was founded, and you can have innovation, you can have investment, you can have great outcomes. It’s just gonna be different. I think the one thing I’ve learned in my career is it’s always gonna be different. So you have to be ready, you have to be thinking, you have to be flexible, you have to be resilient. And you have to be focused on what’s important. And that’s always gonna be our guests, our owners, and the people who take care of them. 

[00:48:12] Mateo: I don’t think you can gloss over that. It’s a case study, like at that scale, who else is dealing with everything? That number of reservations with all of the logistical issues that go into that guest satisfaction. And it’s the complexity of it too, because it’s not just the guests. Like you have owners, you have team members, everyone has to come together to make this work. It’s the magic, right? John? We were just talking about where the magic happens. This is, and it’s at scale. ‘Cause people can do it well at five, right? You can have people that even do a hundred, 200. But we’re talking about how many people are playing at this level where they have 31,000 reservations that they have to deal with in a weekend. There’s not a lot 

[00:48:53] Rob: Yeah, there there’s not a lot. But at the same time, I also wanna say first of all, this is what we all do in this industry and it’s what makes it magical. And so we’re not unique in that there’s so many great companies that deliver great experiences, and we are all on that path together. Number one, for us, what we’re trying to do is to not just deliver hundreds of thousands of reservations in a quarter and tens of thousands in some weekends. But what we’re trying to do is make sure that. What did we learn from having done that? And what will we do tomorrow to be better? And how can we get that out to those teams, not as criticism, but as a way of saying, Hey, here’s something we learned in this market, and we’re gonna bring it in some of these other areas. That’s the privilege and that’s the magic. And individual operators do it. Local operators do it. We do it as a scale play. And I think that all of those things are part of what make the travel industry great. And probably make us all get out of bed every morning. 

[00:49:52] John: To that, Rob, a lot of your growth has been built on acquisition. It’s the acquisition of some of these local operators and some of these mom and pops that have been doing this for years. So then going ahead and conveying that message you just said to those local operators, which is unique because they’ve had a set way of doing things. A lot of times you retain the employees. Sometimes you don’t. We have good friends that sold to you. And they asked that you would offer every one of their employees, and you offered every one of their employees a position to stay at the company. You’re bringing new insight from a global and a larger scale down to this local, I don’t say mentality, but just more of a regional focus. And it’s interesting how that message conveys from top down. And I know I’m talking in circles here, but we talked previously about, you don’t have boots on the ground, that’s not necessarily a local mentality. A lot of these companies that you’ve acquired, they’ve been in that same company for 20, 30 years. Just it didn’t have Vacasa on the front of it. It was something else. And a lot of the same people that are working there 20 years ago are still working there today, or half of them or whatnot. So there’s still a local, it’s just different management from the top. 

[00:51:11] Rob: Yeah. And I think that, when it comes to criticisms like we’re not local, we haven’t been local or whatever, those things are just manifestly false, and they are disrespectful to the literally thousands of people who work at Vacasa and in our industry, in roles just like this. I think everybody in the industry probably knows that and recognizes that at the same time. I think we used the acquisitions a lot more before, before I joined the team. I think they’ve been a way for companies to grow in this space. I really wanna make sure that we are great at understanding owners’ needs on a one-by-one basis. We’re putting a lot of focus on that. We’re putting a lot of attention into that and because I think it’s a great way to build a dialogue. At the same time, I think a lot of those acquisitions we’re just, as you said, there were probably some others that weren’t as smooth or weren’t as thoughtful as they could have been. But that’s also life. Remember that perfect year you had as a human being? I don’t remember that year yet. I’m looking forward to all the ones I remember. I was perfect. But it’s not how it goes. There are no mulligans. You just have to try to learn and improve and do it again better next time. 

[00:52:17] John: Can you expand on that newer approach to sales and the non-acquisition, but the more focus on the individual owners? Can you expand on how you’re going about that? 

[00:52:29] Rob: It’s not non-acquisition, it’s just a way of saying that I want the organic growth motions of the business, the way we understand markets, how that’s integrated with the insights from operations and revenue management and the rest of our teams. How we talk to owners and engage them in marketing and sales conversations. How we bring them onto the platform. How they can think about marketing and merchandising their home differently. Vacasa has the largest independent distribution channel in the industry today. And, we’re lucky to have it. We invest a lot to have it, but how can that help us do things differently for owners who may be joining us? So I think you’re just a better company in so many dimensions when you have that healthier organic growth motion built out and working well. And that’s a big focus for us this year.  

[00:53:16] Mateo: I like this question because I think, with you at the helm I equate. Your, the strategy and what I know with you with innovation and, I see, I don’t wanna say revitalization, but I think there’s a new energy coming out. And I think there’s exciting things, not just going on in the industry, but also going on at Vacasa. Can you talk to us about, that you feel is innovative and exciting that you and the team have coming up?  

[00:53:43] Rob: Yeah, I think for me, I’m pretty excited just in general, so I will maybe struggle to get it narrowed down in one or two areas, but I get excited about some things that are I call the game of inches and I grew up, it’s a long story, but I grew up an Oakland Raider fan. I can’t explain it. I can actually, I can explain it. My, my grandfather was a photographer for the Raiders back in the sixties. And so as a kid, I used to go out to the, and get these pictures of the old Raider players. But anyway, the point is they had this quarterback Kenny Stabler, and they used to just throw the long ball all the time. And I know that the football and sports analogies can get a little bit tired, but I like to focus on, rather than that kind of work, I just love the game of inches. Getting 1% better every day. It’s a great mindset when you focus on not a perfect plan in 30 days, but a good plan executed violently right now, because I get 30 iterations on that. So first, what excites me it’s that type of work. It’s that type of mindset and seeing the impact of it. I’m just incredibly grateful for the leaders and the teams at Vacasa who are embracing that. And you see it in the impact. I think there’s some other things that are pretty exciting. Some of the new innovation you’ve seen over the last six months in large language models, by the way, has been 20 years in the making. And we can talk about what those things are and aren’t. They are a lot more a simple echo chamber than they are like the Terminator. But even they’re still incredibly powerful and our team has leaned into this. We have a ton of experimentation going on. One of the things we shared recently with the market is we’ve ingested over 2.4 million images and used it to go in and enhance and cross tag and enhance just the overall listing content that we have available for our owners to make it more accessible for people who may have visual impairments or whatever. So there’s lots of this kind of stuff that we’re doing and able to light up and then bring to market at scale. And so between those two things, the game of inches and improving in the operations and the work we do every single day, and then some big things that we think set up some pretty interesting growth opportunities in the future. There’s just a lot going on. There’s a lot going on and it’s fun to try to keep up with it.  

[00:56:01] Mateo: I love the Game of Inches analogy. As John knows I played football and I’m also a 49 ERs fan. So I feel like the Raiders are that cousin that lives down the street, but moves a lot like. Huh. Sometimes you go to their house. Sometimes they go to your house. But no, I understand, that there’s a lot that happens in those inches and those inches are hard fought and earned and I think that is a great analogy.  

[00:56:25] Rob: to me, it’s one of these things where e excellence is a habit and you have to do it every day. , and it’s a great mindset to have because sometimes , in all of our personal lives or whatever, you can get a little sidetracked by, oh, I, I missed yesterday or I had a bad day. It’s Hey, you get to choose again tomorrow. You get to choose again tomorrow. You had a bad day. Just step right back on it. And I think that, especially in an industry that means we have to be great every day. That can be intimidating for some people. And by the way, I get that. But I also think there’s something really, there’s something beautiful about it. One of the people I had a privilege of working with at Expedia, he had spent a lot of time at an airline. And I think that, in the travel industry, it’s easy to come up with these really fancy slogans and oh, we know why you’re doing this. And these really sort of aspirational ideas. And in the work that he did with his teams in this role he was running one of their big airport operations. He said, flight’s on time with bags. That’s it. Flight’s on time with bags. And I’ll tell you what, that might sound like a cakewalk on the second weekend in September when there’s no business travelers and it’s sunny everywhere in the network. But I’ll tell you what, on a snowy Monday morning in February, flights on time with bags is heroic. And that kind of mindset is absolutely critical. It keeps us grounded. When I say bring vacations home, it’s that’s what we’re doing. That’s what we’re doing. And what are all of the pieces of that? How do you play a role in that? And if you don’t play a role in that, or you can’t find that, we gotta have a conversation. But that’s what we do. That’s what we do. And it just helps me focus on the things that are important.  

[00:58:14] John: You’re talking about game of inches, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna tweak this game of inches to a question that we had. Do you feel that the game of inches, that Vacasa has been playing since you’ve taken over at the helm, is rebuilding investor confidence in your company in Vacasa?  

[00:58:32] Rob: The short answer is I hope so. It’s not my first solve. My first solve is to do the right thing for our guests, our owners, and the people who take care of them. And I believe that if we run the business well, I. If we do a good job, there are gonna be lots of people who are gonna wanna work with us and work for us and, be  a part of the company’s journey on the investment side. And if we don’t do that, there won’t be. And so it’s pretty simple I’m focused on operating the business better. I’ve been very direct with Wall Street. I’ve been very direct with our board. I’ve been very indirect with our executive team, and I’ve been very direct with our team. And so I’m pretty transparent, all the way through. And I just say, Hey, this is what this means. This is how this fits. We do these things. We’re gonna be in good shape, so let’s focus on doing ’em every day. And I expect that builds, confidence. You gotta say what you’re gonna do and then do what you’re gonna say. We try to plan our work and then work our plan pretty hard. And I think that is showing up. It’s starting to show up. I think that where I wanted to show up first is certainly in our numbers, but I also want it to show up for our owners. We’ve been, shipping lots of enhancements to our homeowner portal and apps, so they have more visibility into what’s going on at their home. We’re trying to make these small things so they feel like they’re part of the industry and feel like we are delivering for them every single day. And so I think one of those constituents is obviously our investors. And I think if we do all of these things right, if we do most of these things right, it makes a big difference. It makes a big difference. And you’re starting to see that.  

[01:00:07] John: In Inches.  

[01:00:08] Mateo: Inches. I love that.  

[01:00:11] John: I know we’re getting close to time here and we appreciate , you joining us. What do you wanna leave our audience with? And I wanna put this out there, that the No BS podcast is the first podcast you decided to join, and we appreciate that. But what do you want our audience to take out of this conversation?  

[01:00:28] Rob: Boy, I I hope that folks in the audience would see in Vacasa a fellow traveler in the industry. And we are privileged to do this work every day. Whether you’re a software provider or or a homeowner or an operator , in the industry besides us. We are all lucky to get to do what we do. We have a limited number of days and weeks on the planet. To get the chance to work in the travel industry, to work in this part of the travel industry, it’s enormous privilege. And it’s hard. What we do is hard. It’s challenging on so many levels. You have technology on the one hand and you have to turn a clean on a back to back with a late checkout, on the outer banks on the other. And we get it. We all get it. We are all on that same path. And I think that the better we do as a company, the better we all do as competitors, the better we’re all gonna do as an industry in doing the great work that we have a privilege to work on every day.  

[01:01:26] John: Great answer. We’re gonna go ahead and leave here. What I wanna go ahead and do, there’s gonna be some great links, obviously a link to Vacasa, there’s gonna be links to the the earnings call. There’s also gonna be a couple options for you to go ahead and donate to help with the cause in Maui. I know when this finally goes live, we’ll be probably close to three weeks out from when the fire happened. It’s still not too late to donate Mateo and I donated. We encourage everyone to do so we’re gonna go ahead and leave a couple links in the comments to go ahead and help out. We’re appreciative to all that you and Vacasa   

[01:02:00] Mateo: Big   

[01:02:00] John: doing on the ground.  

[01:02:01] Mateo: out there.   

[01:02:02] Rob: Yeah. And by the way, just on that I’m really grateful that you’ll include those links. Obviously we’re very close to the situation. Our disaster response team has been, just tireless in this it wasn’t until Friday that we were able to locate the last of our people on the ground. We have over 50 people on the ground just on Maui. And it was, the communication challenges the communities just in grief and in suffering. I got an email this morning from a homeowner saying, Hey, I know you have a program to let us give our homes to first responders and others who have been displaced by these tragedies. I just wanna be at the front of the line. And, is there something more humbling than that? And so whatever we do as an industry, others in the industry have reached out and said, Hey, I’m donating to this organization, we’re donating to that organization. I said, Great. We’ve made a series of donations pretty substantial. We have other funds we’ve set aside for our local teams on the ground to be able to meet needs that we’ll never be able to see from a distance. And I think it’s so important that we come together in moments like this because we’ll tragically we’ll face them again but, And, we’ll always come through them. And so thanks for doing that. Really appreciate it.  

[01:03:12] Mateo: If there’s anything we can do to help on that end, yeah. Definitely let us know   

[01:03:16] John: Glad you’re able to go ahead and find that because last time I spoke to someone on your team, there was still one missing,   

[01:03:21] Rob: Yeah. On Fri Friday afternoon we were able to make contact with the last person. It’s just, there’s been, with the power outages and cell tower impacts and so forth, there’s been a tricky time.  

[01:03:31] John: Well, thank you Rob. Appreciate your time. This has been great and until next time.  

[01:03:36] Rob: Absolutely. Thank you very much.