[00:00:57] John: Good morning Mateo. How are you?

[00:01:00] Mateo: Fantastic. And I just want everyone to know we just had an hour long conversation because you won’t hit record prior to this getting

[00:01:07] John: Hey I, it’s not my fault. Not my fault. It’s okay. It’s all right. Episode 112. We’re going to dive right in. We have two great friends of the show here and we’re talking trust and this is an important topic. We bring it up a ton. We talk about it a lot and it’s for whatever reason, it’s not at the forefront of people’s minds and thought processes like it should be.

[00:01:32] John: So let’s just dive right in. Episode 112, No BS Podcast. We are here with Chris Montt and Neeli Khan of I-PRAC. Thanks so much for joining us.

[00:01:43] Neely: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:01:46] John: It’s some big news happened recently, congratulations Neely and we want to go ahead and talk about you being announced within the past month as the new managing director of I-PRAC.

[00:01:58] John: So congratulations, round of applause.

[00:02:01] Neely: thank you.

[00:02:02] John: And, normally so those that listen to the pod, you guys understand that we’re we dive into backstories, we dive into, why’s and, getting into the industry. And yes, that’s very important. Please listen to both of their prior podcasts and we encourage you to go ahead and listen to their backstories.

[00:02:19] Mateo: . I think we’re talking about something that’s more relevant and not as, openly discussed from our side of the court, right?

[00:02:28] Mateo: Is huge. We literally could have had an hour long conversation prior to even pressing record. And all of the topics of, yes, it’s becoming more and more of something that’s Not in the back of your mind, but a proactive solution in a proactive strategy in terms of like people’s businesses.

[00:02:47] Mateo: We are working in a different day and age, technology is giving us different advantage, but the reality is guests want to feel safe. People in won’t name names are having problems with their businesses because the guests aren’t feeling safe or they have not been able to build that rapport on that side and it’s affecting their bottom line.

[00:03:06] John: Good point.

[00:03:06] Mateo: with everything going on in the world, especially, If you want travel to continue, people got to feel safe. They got to know that they’re safe. They got to trust in the brand. They’re going want to know where their money’s going and make sure it gets there and don’t lose it.

[00:03:18] Mateo: So yeah let’s dig into this. It’s relevant and we got to talk about it.

[00:03:22] John: Let’s let actually let’s go back a little bit. Chris and Nealey have been working together for quite a while so you know, let’s talk about that relationship and how that started, you know I guess I’m gonna point to you Chris how you know, you guys have been working together for years now and talk about you know your relationship and why Neely in the role of managing director.

[00:03:46] John: That’s what I want to know. Not that I’m questioning why Neely

[00:03:50] Chris: yeah. No, it’s

[00:03:50] Mateo: great. You guys look

[00:03:51] Mateo: great.

[00:03:52] Chris: it’s a real good question. And it’s and a lot of thought went into it, that’s, this is where I, like recruiting and bringing the right people in isn’t always about, sometimes people look at certain positions and I’ve got quite a lot of experience of putting people in positions within my businesses.

[00:04:10] Chris: Not just I-PRAC, but other businesses I’ve been involved in. And it’s not always about somebody thinking that’s the right fit for a position, and, I’ve known Neely for six years now. I

[00:04:22] Neely: Yeah. Six years.

[00:04:24] Chris: here. And initially, Nealey was doing a lot of work for our accommodation brand in Cannes, which was basically to bring some kind of, again, professional content.

[00:04:35] Chris: That we could bring in. And they just brought so much kind of fresh ideas to like what content writing wasn’t even touching on, back then. So it was like, this is fantastic. We found a real good person within this space. And then we moved over into and I approached Neely and said, would you like to become like more involved in writing professional content and research?

[00:05:00] Chris: So it’s not just putting out content, it’s actually doing the research behind the content that’s important, quality over quantity type thing. And so Nelly started to get involved in, the I-PRAC brand. And she became very quickly the senior content writer for IPRAC.

[00:05:18] Chris: And you can see through the content that we put out, it’s not like weekly. But what we do put out is very well researched, on point in terms of, what people are talking about or what people need to be talking about. And I think that’s where we’ve always aligned, where it’s we don’t want to put out content around what everybody else is talking about.

[00:05:40] Chris: We want to put out content that is going to get people thought provoking to change their direction of their thinking, which is a little bit more like the thought leadership role, like trying to open new conversations. And that’s what we always tried to do with our content, and Neely just got that.

[00:05:59] Chris: Just from the off. And so as that kind of journey went on, you cannot work with me and any brand that I’m involved in without getting passionate about what you’re doing, because you really just got to learn more about the I-PRAC brand, what it stood for, the values, my values. And I think it probably at the start, we were, quite deep in conversation for a lot of articles.

[00:06:23] Chris: But as time went on, we were quite able to just pick a subject and then I would just be like, send me over for review before we publish it.

[00:06:32] John: That’s trust

[00:06:32] Chris: level that we got, yeah, and that’s the level that we got to, and that doesn’t happen overnight. And that’s, again, that comes down to trust, confidence, Neely removed all of the uncertainty that I required to have at the start.

[00:06:47] Chris: As we move forward, so all of a sudden, it’s okay, you go out there. These are the subjects we’re going to discuss and want to put content out. Neely would go out there and do fantastic research and she would write it with the brand values at top of mind. For me, anybody who’s going to work in a senior role within a company needs to understand the brand because experience is one thing, right?

[00:07:09] Chris: And it’s good if you’ve got some experience, but it’s not everything. You can learn. You can learn if somebody’s working with you. You can learn things if you get mentored, you don’t need to come into a business and know everything, but what you do need to know is the brand values, the passion of the brand, the passion of the CEO of the brand, why it was founded, what’s the mission statement, what’s the direction of the brand and nearly had all that in abundance.

[00:07:36] Chris: So when it came to a point where I’m thinking it’s time for me, it was about a year ago, I knew I needed to start taking a step back as not to remove myself as the CEO, but to put somebody in between the senior management and me. So somebody who was just going to sit. Into that role

[00:07:56] John: Why was that necessary, Chris? Because certain instances, like I, I could see it being necessary in certain instances, I can see, like there wouldn’t be a need. And I understand you’re, you have multifaceted businesses, but I was curious why.

[00:08:09] Chris: yeah that’s pretty much what it was, because, I’m all about quality, and I think, and I’ve got… I’ve got my time split very wisely to, to fit with my values in terms of work, my own time, my family time, my hobbies, everything like that. So with the other businesses that I had prior to I-PRAC, I-PRAC was really something that I wanted to, it was more, it started as a gift to the industry, like it was something me saying, I’m not going to talk about this problem.

[00:08:40] Chris: I’ll just, I’m going to fix it and fix it for the industry because it needs to be fixed. It wasn’t about revenue at the start, it was about fixing a problem that the industry had. But as time went on, and obviously we needed to generate revenue, to pay the salaries, to do, as any business. But as, also during COVID, it was a bit of a down time for my other businesses, because they weren’t, real estate was down, our events company was down, but now all of that’s coming back up, and my time is really, and I don’t want to be like that kind of CEO who’s not given the brand the time and the nurturing that it deserves,

[00:09:19] John: sense. We did the same thing for, on a much smaller scale Matteo and I have stepped into larger, bigger roles. And we, we made the decision that we needed to not put this podcast out every week. We needed to put it out on a less frequent every other week, sometimes every other week.

[00:09:36] John: The product we’re putting out is still, if not higher quality than we were putting out previously while still maintaining focus on the other things that are important in our lives.

[00:09:45] Chris: Absolutely. And you’ve got to, and you’ve got to stay true to your values. You can’t let a business start to control you just because you don’t have the right leadership team in place. Because that’s this is one of the reasons why we always say, find a way to work on the business, not in it, and it’s being able to split that time to be able to say I was able to recognize quite quickly where the future was going with our real estate business.

[00:10:09] Chris: With the, with, we’re building, we’re renovate, we’re building a new, we’re renovating a large piece of land to build like 25 luxury like huts, like shack huts, but luxury. So that’s something that we’re building. And

[00:10:23] John: you looking for a PMS?

[00:10:25] Chris: probably, maybe and we’re also in the process of, which has been a dream of mine for a long time, is to renovate a hotel.

[00:10:32] Chris: And we’re doing that now, I know that my time is stretched and I need somebody there to guide it, to take it to the next level, to be able to support where we’re going and continue the mission. But I also wanted to find somebody who’s also got their own ideas and agenda and direction where it can go.

[00:10:54] Chris: Because I just think that, I think I’ve took it to where it can be with the level that I’m at with my other businesses. And I think it’s now time to bring somebody else in who can not just be that person who’s looking for direction, who’s going to start making serious business decisions to the value of the company.

[00:11:15] Chris: It was about a year ago I decided that I was going to find somebody, and then it just struck me that Neely was the right person. And slowly, certain contracts of Neely was going, finishing. And it just all aligned in the right way, and then it was just it was a no, no brainer in the end, and it was just like, let’s do this, and I’m just, I’m so happy because of, she knows the brand and that’s more important than anything.

[00:11:38] John: Love it. Love it. We’ve worked with her a lot, and

[00:11:41] Mateo: Yeah, we, yeah, she’s part of that. Yeah,

[00:11:44] John: I

[00:11:44] Mateo: we know everything that you’ve said is true, but so Nealey, but talk to us. Cause this is, anybody that knows you and surprised that, you would take this on. But this is a different aspect of hospitality, right? Like you, when people look at your background, they see, you’ve done writing, throughout hospitality for restaurants, hotels, short term rentals, but. This is a very different… It’s something you’ve always been doing, but doing it in a different way. It’s almost now you’re leading leadership right now. You’re assuming, you’re taking the charge here. And what made this be the opportunity to, to take on? Cause John and I know you work on lots of different things and work with amazing brands. And, this one seems to be core to you. Why this opportunity right now?

[00:12:27] Neely: Yeah. I think you’ve said it right there actually. You’ve answered the question by saying I-Prac is core to me, and I think that’s ultimately where it begins. I think, Chris was my first client in the short term rental industry, and without sounding too woo, that’s always been incredibly special to me.

[00:12:46] Neely: But not just my first client in the industry, but Chris has very much been my first mentor in the industry. I-PRAC has been my way in, into the short term rental industry and Chris and I have developed such a genuine professional but also relationship of trust between us. So I think IPRAC mirrors all of Chris’s, those qualities about Chris which we’re so aligned on.

[00:13:13] Neely: So I think… From the very beginning, I started working with IPRAC five years ago. So from the very beginning, I just knew that I-PRAC was a brand that I wanted to stay connected with outside of all of the other projects that I work on. And even though I do work on other projects and I’ve always done that’s always been very important to me to have that versatility, to have that flexibility.

[00:13:34] Neely: As you guys know, like we’ve done with derailed, I think with. I-PRAC and Chris again, specifically, he has always understood that. And actually the other projects that I do work on within the industry, they only help, I feel, bring more value to what we do together at I-PRAC. I think it’s different, but it’s actually not that different at the same time, because while a lot of the other projects that I’ve worked on have been, most people would associate me as, with writing and say that I’m a content writer within the industry, but actually the writing is just a small part of what I do.

[00:14:10] Neely: The writing is a consequence of a desire to educate the industry. It’s a consequence of research, like Chris said himself, with the stuff that we do at I-PRAC. And all of those skills just align so well with what we’re trying to achieve with I-PRAC. I think the leadership part of it is super exciting because it comes with so much learning. It comes with so much we’re evolving every day. And I think that’s probably the most appealing part for me, is that it’s a real opportunity to learn.

[00:14:41] Neely: And even when we announced the news, I got lots of messages with people saying, Oh yeah, this is a great achievement. Congratulations, which it is. And I appreciate that so much, but for me, it is very much the beginning. I’m still very much at that stage of learning. So I’m more excited about the process and what we’re going to do.

[00:14:59] Neely: So yeah, it works very well in that respect.

[00:15:03] John: love that. Neely, tell us about, we’ve been talking about I-PRAC, we’ve been talking about YU. In your words for those that are listening that didn’t catch our previous episode with Chris. What is I-PRAC, and what exactly does I-PRAC bring to property managers and guests?

[00:15:22] Neely: That’s a great question. What is I-PRAC? Because we get, we actually get that question a lot. And I know Chris will agree with this too. So in a nutshell, in layman’s terms, I-PRAC is essentially a verification and membership platform, the only. Verification and membership platform within the short term rental industry.

[00:15:38] Neely: I-PRAC approval means that short term rental hosts and short term rental agencies can be fully verified as legitimate operators. So once they have I-PRAC approval, after going through the verification process, what they can then guarantee to their guests is 100%. Payment protection. And the latter part, which I think a lot of people, aren’t completely aware of, is 100 percent satisfaction when it comes to the actual experience, the guest experience, when it comes to staying at an IPRAC approved property.

[00:16:14] Neely: I think a lot of people still, and this is something that we’re working on, a lot of people still, when they think of I-PRAC, they think, Okay, so you get the logo and then, that’s it, you’re done. That is just a small part of what you receive once you get that verification, once you get that unique logo, which cannot be replicated.

[00:16:32] Neely: You can then leverage that as a monumental marketing tool, which actually comes before. PR, which comes before all of the other flashy marketing. It’s very much sits at the core of all of your marketing activity and your brand identity. And what a fantastic tool too. If you can say as a short term rental agency or as a property manager, that we can now guarantee as a result of I-PRAC approval, 100%.

[00:16:58] Neely: Peace of mind, because that is what we offer and 100 percent satisfaction. If at any point of your guest experience, you are unhappy or you feel that we could have done something better, you can get in touch with I-PRAC and we will review that and we will rectify it for you, as, as best as possible.

[00:17:18] Neely: And I know we’re biased, but there is no such. There’s no such solution in the industry that offers 100% protection, not with other hotels, not with OTAs. And I think if you are to leverage that correctly, using the right content and using the right words, then, it could it’s such a game changer.

[00:17:38] Neely: It really is Not to throw in like lots of buzzwords, but it genuinely is

[00:17:42] Mateo: Why is it taking so long for us to adopt this as, something that’s important? We know it’s important, why are you the only one in the game doing this right now, right?

[00:17:51] Mateo: Like why isn’t anyone else out there ensuring that their guests, actually guaranteeing that their guests have the experience. that they dream of when they click that button. Like it’s the assurance that they get when they click that button, right? When they have that stay. Why have we been so resistant to ensuring that process, or if not guaranteeing that process for the guests?

[00:18:14] Mateo: Especially if we’re always out here fighting over the same guests or we’re fighting over guests. What is the barrier for us? Like, why is this taking so long for us to adopt?

[00:18:24] Chris: It’s a really good

[00:18:25] Neely: it is. Yeah.

[00:18:26] Chris: It’s, my opinion, I could answer it in two ways, right? The first way I could answer it, and I haven’t got a clue. Because at the end of the day why wouldn’t anybody want to do it? So it’s it fathoms me to understand that why within that industry is looking at it thinking, okay, I need this.

[00:18:44] Chris: I don’t need that. What’s the value? What’s the ROI? What, like you would do in any kind of investment into your business. But there was a real. Two years ago, and I’m not going off piece, but bear with me on this, right? Two years ago, I’m part of a mastermind group in Monaco, okay?

[00:19:03] Chris: And basically it’s 24, CEOs, managing directors, entrepreneurs, who basically all get together once every three months. And it’s, and we just support each other through business, ideas, mental health. Difficult times. We’re a real tight knit group that basically we’ve been in the same group for about seven years, okay?

[00:19:23] Chris: One of the members of that group owns a company. I won’t say the name because that’s not fair. But he owns a company that basically offers investors a data driven solution to understand market timing, okay? So if you want, if an investor said, listen, I’m thinking about investing 5 million in this new startup.

[00:19:47] Chris: They would go to this company and say, run the numbers, right? Now this isn’t the entrepreneur pitching. This is a company who’s running the data on the numbers of the market in certain things. So it’s quite intense. It’s very data driven, but he does it for the finance and. And real estate kind of markets mainly, but I asked him, I said, if I give you my brand, would you be able to run the numbers on it when you can?

[00:20:18] Chris: So it was more of a I wasn’t paying him, right? So it was like, when you can just, run the numbers on it. So I give him the whole pitch and everything like that. And he went off six months down the line. He came back to me and he said, you’re far too early to market. That’s what he said. And he didn’t know the short term rental industry. He’s got no clue. You say to him, Airbnb, you probably know what Airbnb is, but he doesn’t understand the short term rental market like us four do.

[00:20:50] Chris: You understand? So he just, his first word, Oh, you’re just far too early to market, Chris.

[00:20:55] Chris: That’s the problem. The idea is bang on and it will get legs, but you’re far too early for market. So what would happen is like a lot of startups, if this startup comes, so many people think, Oh, I really thought that would have had legs. It was a great idea and it fails. A lot of people don’t realize that timing is like everything in a startup or a business because you can come too late, too early, you’ve got to try and find that sweet spot.

[00:21:23] Chris: And if you don’t find the sweet spot, you’ve got to have the money to fund it until you do.

[00:21:28] John: right,

[00:21:29] Chris: Which is what I’ve done.

[00:21:30] Mateo: That’s a fact.

[00:21:31] John: Where is that sweet spot?

[00:21:33] Chris: Yeah. And it’s coming. Slowly, it’s

[00:21:35] John: right here.

[00:21:36] Chris: But we’re still nowhere, we’re still not even close to it. And I would say we’re still probably about three years away from that.

[00:21:44] John: Do you think we’re not close to it because there hasn’t been enough failure? Or public perception of failure, or marketing, showing you

[00:21:55] John: You share and we see that, the showing a group of travelers show up to a certain area that to stay at an Airbnb or Vrbo that’s not even real.

[00:22:06] John: And we see that. And then, occasionally, that will show up in the media, right? And they’ll be like, oh, so and so went here and, oh, bummer. But there really isn’t much made of it. Do we need more of that? Do we need Airbnb to truly fuck up? Do we need some really bad negative things to happen as far as the trust side of things for this to be brought in in a greater limelight?

[00:22:32] Chris: It’s a fair point, but I don’t, no, I don’t believe I don’t believe that. We all fuck up. Let’s just be honest. We’re not, nobody’s perfect. No industry’s perfect. Airbnb aren’t perfect, but at the end of the day, we’ve all got a lot of respect for Airbnb and rightly We should have a lot of respect for Airbnb.

[00:22:50] Chris: I’m not an,

[00:22:50] John: It’s the reason why we all have great jobs

[00:22:53] Chris: yeah, it’s driven an industry that was, that was on a certain level and it’s, X times Xed it, 10 Xed it, we have to respect Airbnb as a brand, right? But they have made mistakes, like we were talking, prior to going online, about the fact that they’ve probably, they didn’t fix the problems that, the trust and confidence and uncertainty problems quick enough.

[00:23:15] Chris: So now they’re, now they’re like a six, seven million listing platform with no way of like railing that in, so I’m not sure whether, because there’s enough media out there, I just believe that. A lot of people are Like, sometimes I’ll have a conversation with a property manager, right?

[00:23:36] Chris: And I’ll talk to them, because we’re not in the business of selling I-PRAC, right? We’re in the business of educating people around trust. And if they get that, and they understand that I-PRAC brings a value, then they will join, and then they will use it, and then they will, become ambassadors of the brand.

[00:23:53] Chris: That’s our aim. We’re not trying to sell it. Because if somebody says why should I? I could give them multiple reasons. But it’s your decision.

[00:24:03] John: And it turns out, it ends up being a differentiator, and I think that’s where it’s gonna, it’s gonna get more legs.

[00:24:11] Chris: Now we’re approaching people who are actually on different levels of revenue turnover.

[00:24:17] Chris: So their business is actually working. So they look at it and go why do I need it?

[00:24:23] Neely: I don’t need it. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:24:25] Chris: I need it? I’m already getting loads of bookings. I’m already, but we, the way that we come around is like stop thinking about the bookings that you get, right? Start thinking about the bookings that you’re not getting.

[00:24:38] John: Or the quality of bookings you’re getting.

[00:24:40] Chris: Or the quality of the bookings that you’re getting. But at the same time, it’s like you’re focusing on the wrong booking, the wrong, you’re focusing on the wrong trait. If you want to call it. Because you’re constantly, you’re validating yourself that you don’t need this because your business is already working. But at what level is it working? Because, can you improve the business?

[00:25:02] Neely: yeah.

[00:25:03] Chris: Are you looking to improve the business? And you want to improve the business. So there’s all these questions to ask and then you’ve got to look at it. I think education is the key to understanding. Now, Airbnb have done that for so many people.

[00:25:20] Chris: They’ve, so many people have rode on the back of the brand trust of Airbnb for years. And that’s their, and that’s their thing. And they’re looking at it thinking, don’t really need The hassle of direct bookings and invoicing and guest communication and, and all this kind of, then it becomes, then it starts to become like a real business. Like, when you’re on Airbnb, it’s I don’t know, it’s more of a side hustle, even if you’ve got 25, 30 properties, because the Airbnb system is the one controlling the business. It’s doing all the comms, it’s doing all of the invoicing, the receipts the guest communication, all you’re doing is servicing the guest.

[00:25:58] Chris: Let’s be honest, that’s not the hard part, right? If you’re good at hospitality, that’s not the hard part, right? That just comes natural, right? The hard part is the business side of it. Building a business, revenue, profitability, service retention, conversion, right? not doing that when they’re relying on Airbnb. Because Airbnb are the ones who are like, they’re the ones who are dynamic pricing will get me to the top. Certain things, certain hacks will get me to the top of the listing on the first page. Do the, but everybody knows these things are easy to do.

[00:26:31] Chris: And then you can farm it, you can even farm that job out to somebody else. We can get your listing on the top, on the first page and, take a few euros or dollars or whatever. So they’re not really running a business in my eyes, right? When you run a business of short term rentals, your job is to start using the OTAs, but slowly transition to a healthy balance of, a healthy balance of short term rental direct bookings, and a healthy balance of OTA bookings.

[00:27:02] Chris: That’s the name of the game. Most people are still, and have been for the last 2, 3, 4 years. on the same level of OTA reliance than they were three years ago. So they haven’t made any effort to convert. their OT Reliance to reduce their OT Reliance percentage

[00:27:22] John: But it just comes down to that same question always of, what happens if, Airbnb were to go away tomorrow, would you still have a business?

[00:27:29] Chris: I always ask that question. That’s a real good question to ask somebody and, trying to get an honest answer is never easy, but we all know the answer. Like you, you tell me honestly what your percentage of OT Reliance is, I’ll tell you whether you’ve got a business tomorrow. So I don’t need to look at your P& L. know what I mean? I can tell you now. You’ve got to be going intent, with intent, to reduce that OTA, OTA reliant. You’ve got to. It’s because that’s what the business is. That’s what you need. It’s about the control. Because at the end of the day, Tomorrow, I’ve heard stories of people just, all of a sudden, 20 of my listings have just been, like, stopped.

[00:28:12] Chris: They’re no longer they’re no longer on the platform. It’s what has happened? That’s like your, that’s like your direct booking website going down,

[00:28:19] Chris: Right.

[00:28:19] Chris: So what would you do? You’d call your, you’d call your tech guy, you’d say the website’s gone down, oh, you didn’t pay the monthly subscription, you put it back up, oh, there’s a tech problem.

[00:28:28] Chris: Within 20 minutes, it’s back to normal, or whatever, right? But, it’s the same type of problem, your business has gone down, but you don’t control that, so all of a sudden you’ve got 20 listings. That have, that have gone off, offline. How can you say that you have a business when somebody else is controlling whether you do or not?

[00:28:47] Chris: That’s the thing. We’ve got to educate people within the industry to understand that we’re not telling you that OTAs are the the devil. They’re not. They’re great for the industry. But you’ve got to get to a healthy balance. And you’ve got to be around 50, 55 percent to survive if that, to survive if something happens to the OTA, less is great, but more is risky, so the more education we can get.

[00:29:16] Chris: But if people think they have a business, they don’t see trust as they haven’t got any validation that it works. They don’t have any validation that , that trust converts inquiries into direct bookings. But it’s also building a trust strategy. It’s not like a tap. You don’t walk into the bathroom and turn it on. Say, oh, I’m going to have some direct bookings today. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got

[00:29:41] John: Or I’m going to have some trust today.

[00:29:43] Chris: Yeah, exactly. It’s yeah, you know what I mean? It just, that doesn’t work. You’ve got to, you’ve got to decide what kind of a business that you want to be behind and run and manage and grow and then make a real impact into how you’re going to get there and and wake up every day with real intent on how we’re going to get there.

[00:30:04] Chris: And I don’t think a lot of people know how to do that. I don’t think most people don’t have the mindset for that.

[00:30:13] Neely: It’s a very self serving philosophy to have actually, isn’t it? To think I don’t need to be verified because I know I’m legitimate. But obviously I think a lot of people forget that we are operating in hospitality and a lot of that is. Putting yourselves in the guest’s shoes.

[00:30:27] Neely: So why wouldn’t you want to eliminate uncertainty if you know that you can? Why wouldn’t you want your guests to be able to feel that they can 100 percent trust you just because you know that you are 100 percent legitimate does not mean that the guest feels that when they make that booking with you, so I think.

[00:30:46] Neely: Just adding on to what Chris has said, a large part of, I-PRAC approval is actually adding to that experience of hospitality because it makes that whole guest experience from the minute they book to the minute they, they’ve had their final night stay with you, just so much more hospitable.

[00:31:01] Neely: And I think, like Chris said it’s very much a mindset thing and encouraging people to think in that way, to do it not just for yourself, but do it for your guests

[00:31:10] Chris: They don’t have the, they don’t have that mindset. The day somebody pays is when they become your guest. Because they’ve paid for a service. Now, that, the service doesn’t start when they check in. The service starts when you start communicating with them with their receipts for their first payment.

[00:31:27] John: All their pre stay communication

[00:31:29] Chris: Absolutely, because you start building trust at that minute, as soon as that first communication starts going on, and you can lose that trust anywhere between the original booking and the arrival date. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of scope there to lose that booking.

[00:31:43] Chris: People don’t talk about how many bookings they get cancelled, do they? This is the, they don’t talk about that. They say, oh, 25 bookings this month. Okay, great, but they’re for like six months time, yeah? That’s not a booking yet. That’s just you’ve just blocked your calendar for, without any money, because Airbnb have got that.

[00:32:00] Mateo: right.

[00:32:01] Chris: You’re calling that a booking, but the cancellation policy with Airbnb can allow them to cancel that booking anywhere up to a week prior to their arrival. And you don’t get a dollar, or a euro, or a pound, whatever currency you’re in. That should sell, that should that should be alarm bells all day long, for me.

[00:32:21] Chris: That wouldn’t wash with me. If somebody said that to me as a business, I’d be like, that’s risky, man. Because you want me to block this beautiful villa for two weeks in August without any money? Is that what you’re telling me? It’s yeah, because it’s through Airbnb. I’d be like, no way, man.

[00:32:36] Chris: Find a direct booking client and we’ll take the deposit and we’ll have a, and we’ll have a structured contract that if they cancel between this date… We’ve got time to rebook it and at a discounted rate because they lose their deposit. That’s how it works when you’re in the direct booking business. But when you’re working with Airbnb, it’s okay, we’ve got a booking worth 16, 000.

[00:32:58] Chris: Might look like that on your Airbnb calendar, but until you’ve checked that guest in and got the money, it’s not really booking, is it? So I think educating the industry. is what’s required, but we can’t do it like, like 20 of us can’t do it.

[00:33:17] John: No.

[00:33:17] Chris: You know what I mean? A hundred of us can’t do it. Probably a thousand would be close to the amount of people. So when we’re trying to organize like next September, which is like the Trust Awareness Week, is when we’re trying to bring all of the industry leaders together to try to understand the importance of trust. And I would like to say, listen, if you give me like a thousand quality property managers all over the world are all on board and we said, okay, we’ll certify you with I-PRAC for free.

[00:33:50] Chris: You still got to go through the verification process because that’s part of it, but we’ll give you it for free as long as you start promoting the fact that trust is important. They still won’t do it.

[00:34:01] John: I think, yeah. And I think that’s why this is important, right? You’ve been doing this for, three years or however many years you’ve been doing it and , it’s still not , where it needs to be. And this is again, putting it in motion to make it happen.

[00:34:13] John: I love the idea you guys are doing this thing in September. Teo is about to jump in here.

[00:34:17] Mateo: What I was gonna say is that’s the way that you measure change, right? You have people that have built whatever entity business or not right, through the use of Airbnb, right? They don’t know how. The whole importance of this is. They haven’t built a strategy to work around what they’re not able to do, right?

[00:34:37] Mateo: When you were talking about this, one of the things that rang in my head was, they think it’s someone else’s responsibility. And they think that their responsibility is the limited the physical safety, right? The physical press, which some of them don’t even get right.

[00:34:50] Mateo: There goes, there’s so much that goes into each phase of that. What makes this interesting and what I think is special about this is that it is actually more than education, it’s almost empowerment because the knowledge is one thing, but the ability to, show what happens when you actually impart that, and, cause you’re asking for action, you’ve been educating people for years.

[00:35:12] Mateo: But what’s going to cause people to actually act within the space, right? And that’s empowerment, right? Cause property managers love to be able to do what they need to do for the guests.

[00:35:22] Chris: And this is what Neely’s brought to the table when Neely came to me and she said, the first thing that I want to do is leverage the members we already have,

[00:35:32] Mateo: Yep.

[00:35:32] John: Yep.

[00:35:33] Neely: Yeah.

[00:35:33] Chris: And it’s it’s it’s yeah, that’s a great idea, right? Because what we’re going to do is we’re going to go to members who are already using the tools to their advantage.

[00:35:43] Chris: Now, not all of our members use their tools to their advantage. Shame on them.

[00:35:47] John: You see it with everything. You see it with software, you see it.

[00:35:50] Chris: exactly. It’s get the tools, use the tools, and see the growth. Over time, because this is like we said, you don’t have trust today. That’s not happening, right? You make an, you make a decision to start on a trust strategy and you start to build that trust over a period of time and you will build it over time if you’re doing the, if you’ve got the right strategy in place.

[00:36:13] Chris: So that’s what we need to start. We need to show people that Revenue in 2022 was here on X amount of bookings, OTA to Direct or whatever. And then through an 18 month trust strategy,

[00:36:34] John: Yeah.

[00:36:35] Chris: the revenue turned to here. You had more control over your business because of the fact that this OTA reliance had gone down.

[00:36:44] Chris: And this, and the direct booking had gone up. So your business, although it was more revenue, it was much more healthier on a P& L.

[00:36:52] John: And it’s a case study, right? This is where you have to

[00:36:54] John: speak You’re gonna get case studies that are gonna show, the ROIs to what are important to them. But the other side of it is the r the ROIs that for whatever reason, profitability and it makes sense, you need to have a profitable business, right?

[00:37:07] John: That’s ultimately what’s gonna drive your business and continue to allow you to keep operating. But it, showing that the dollar signs are aligning and the pounds or whatever are aligning. And then also. And subsequently, oh, trust is here and direct bookings are here, so all these different things are raised up and then you get, you get your six or seven amazing case studies, hopefully more, that you could showcase these are what these, and these are their testimonials, and they’re willing to go ahead and speak on our behalf.

[00:37:39] John: And then we come into September of next year and whatever your plans are. It’s a great transition actually. Nealey, what exactly are your plans to take IPRAC to the next level? Dive into this. This upcoming, I guess it’s now 11 months, 10 and a half months away.

[00:37:58] John: Talk about, leading up to this, month of trust of next September in 2024. , what are you bringing to the table?

[00:38:06] Neely: Yeah. So the next September we’ll be launching the first short-term rental Fraud Awareness week, which will be super exciting and that’ll be a week dedicated to, again, educating the industry, not just about the very prevalent threat of short-term rental fraud within the industry, because I think people are quite aware of that now about how that actually impacts the industry.

[00:38:27] Neely: More importantly, what we can do about it to. Stamp it out and to again, build trust and garner more direct bookings as a result of that. So that’s one of the things we’re going to be doing next year. And that’ll be a full week of, speakers and webinars and podcasts and lots of great content.

[00:38:45] Neely: I think that’s something that Chris and I definitely aligned on and we can guarantee moving forward, not just in September, but from. From here on in is a lot of great content, and this is probably the part that I’m most excited about because of my own experience and my own background. So in terms of moving forward, yes, we are going to really communicate with our existing members.

[00:39:07] Neely: We’re really excited about building a community. more of a community, fostering more of a community with existing and new I-PRAC members. And I think that’s probably one of the most important parts of the changes that we’re going to be making. A lot of it will be about, yes, you are I-PRAC approved, but how can we help you leverage that?

[00:39:29] Neely: How can we help you? And not even just as top level advice, but how can we actually create and give you the resources as valued I-PRAC members to help you? Make the most of your direct bookings website, not just a pretty website with, a couple of nice photos and nice reviews. Because I think a lot of people mistake that as well.

[00:39:50] Neely: That’s trust. We’ve got photos, we’ve got reviews. It’s not because you can fake all of that stuff. What can we do to help you actually get those trust signals on your website? What can we do I-PRAC?

[00:40:03] Neely: approval. What can we do to help you, feed off the content that we share? Because we actually create a lot of great, we created an amazing short film a couple of months ago, which we spent a lot of money on, a lot of time and effort went into it.

[00:40:16] John: It was great,

[00:40:18] Neely: We’re so proud of it. It’s definitely one of my favorite things that I think we’ve worked on. And again, these are all things that we’re not just creating for the sake of creating them. We don’t create anything for just the sake of putting it out there. We don’t make noise for the sake of creating noise in an industry, which already has so much noise anyway.

[00:40:34] Neely: Everything we’re creating is for the benefit of our members. So for example, video, it’s there for. our, members to use and to help them communicate that message with their audience. So we’re definitely going to be doing a lot more of that, a lot more of teaching people how to leverage I-PRAC approval.

[00:40:52] Neely: We want to consult them on how to use their I-PRAC approval and verification. And I think in terms of what we’ll be doing, that for me is probably the most prevalent thing, which I know Chris is very much aligned onto. And, just great content, we don’t really…

[00:41:08] Neely: We see a lot of it, with all due respect, I don’t think we do in the industry. We always go out and do our own research. We don’t rely too much on third party resources. And I think this is the kind of thing that we really want to bring to the front

[00:41:20] Chris: I think as well, yeah, and I think one of the, one of my biggest faults of being in the industry for 23 years and building like my own short term rental business, I assume people have an idea of what I know.

[00:41:36] Chris: And that’s not always the case, like you don’t, you can’t be in this industry for 23 years and build like a short term rental, like 100 percent direct booking and work with the brands that we do and the properties that we rent and everything without all of the overcoming the challenges and the, understanding the failures and the positives and the negatives and the whole, the negative.

[00:41:56] Chris: The whole journey to where you get to, and we’re still learning now, after 23 years. So it’s not like an end, it’s not like an end destination, but you, it’s like anything, isn’t it? It’s like practice makes progress, so if you keep doing something long enough, you’re going to get good at it. You know what I mean? That’s just like the laws of like science, whatever you want to call it, you’re just going to get good at it. And, When I speak to property managers and you see the have these conversations, some of the conversations that you’re having, there’s certain things that they just don’t know.

[00:42:30] Chris: If you you could turn around and understand say how do you what metrics do you study, for example? And they go, what do you mean, metrics? And they’re like your metrics what metrics do you find valuable to the business? And they’re just don’t, haven’t got a clue what that, like, where that coming from and that’s not a, that’s not a fault.

[00:42:50] Chris: That’s you don’t know what you don’t know, right?

[00:42:53] John: I find myself, saying acronyms and stuff that I assumed everyone should know. We’re talking about RevPAR and we’re talking about different things. And people are like.

[00:43:01] John: And they look at you with those like deer and headlights and then making assumptions, which we all know what that,

[00:43:06] Chris: Absolutely. So when I start to thinking, how can you not understand that trust is such, is the pillar of building your business to Like getting control of your business in terms of like direct bookings and building a business that you’re proud of and a brand that’s trusted and everything.

[00:43:24] Chris: You don’t know. Our job has to be and once again, Neely’s, , got the intelligence to say, Chris, I need enough time with you to get all of that, like that knowledge that you don’t think is relevant. out into real into real driven content.

[00:43:45] Neely: Which we’re starting to do now, right? Which you’ve

[00:43:47] Chris: yeah, you know what I

[00:43:48] Neely: never shared that,

[00:43:49] Chris: Exactly. So my job is to give Neely the support to think, what about this? Let’s run let’s… Like where are people in their journey of building their short term rental business? Are they at one property, two property? They might even just be starting to talk to a website developer to build their own website.

[00:44:05] Chris: They might not even have chosen a name for their business. Again, what name are you going to choose? That’s important to know now than thinking that you’re going to have to rebrand in four years time because you’ve picked the wrong name. All of these little things are like people who are on different levels of the journey.

[00:44:21] Chris: It’s what Neely’s trying to do is go back to basics and let’s get some content, like educational content driven, content put out there that people can relate to in terms of this is where I am in my journey, this is really helpful.

[00:44:38] Chris: I think that’s where, Neely’s got an idea to bring in some consultants to the business in the future, which we’re going to build like a sub brand called Trustology.

[00:44:48] John: Ooh, I love that.

[00:44:49] Chris: Yeah. And basically that’s going to be where we can help businesses to say, we’re going to come into your business and we’re going to look at your business from a bird’s eye view, and then give you a report. And actionable tactics that you can start implementing now, and then we’ll review it in six months.

[00:45:08] Neely: And that’ll be like a blueprint, like a real, again, very

[00:45:12] John: Knock the low hanging fruit out first, do these few things, then we’ll bring your trust level to here. And then do you want to go ahead and knock it out of the park? Then we’re, I don’t know cricket terminology

[00:45:22] Chris: absolutely. So you’ve got to, so going back to basics is going to be a real important factor for what we’re doing. Because we can’t expect everybody starting here. We have to assume that everybody’s on a different level of their journey and everybody needs different support.

[00:45:38] Chris: We’re gonna, we’re gonna run that as well. So that’s gonna be really exciting because I think that’s what the industry needs. So that we can stop assuming people know what we know. Like leaders within this industry who are speaking at events, they’re speaking a language that most people in the audience haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about, right?

[00:45:58] Chris: Yep.

[00:45:59] John: excited to partner with you and to help to get this message out. The importance of trust and we’ll put our no BS spin on it, like always. We’re stoked to see , how far you’ve come already. Love the appointment of Neely.

[00:46:12] John: I think this is a perfect fit for I-PRAC and we’re really excited to see, what this next year brings for y’all.

[00:46:20] Chris: And I’ll, and the next time we’re on the podcast, my golf handicap will have gone from 12 to 6.

[00:46:27] John: There you go. There’s more positive things. We’re

[00:46:29] Mateo: I love the goal. I love the goals. I love the goals.

[00:46:32] Neely: right there. I love it.

[00:46:35] Chris: That’s my goal.

[00:46:36] John: That’s good. If those that are listening want to learn more is it just, obviously we’ll go to I-PRAC. com. Am I saying it correctly?

[00:46:43] Neely: I-PRAC

[00:46:45] John: i PRAC. com. And yeah, learn more

[00:46:48] Mateo: We’ll put a link to the commercial that you that you did down there. So everyone can

[00:46:53] John: awesome.

[00:46:53] Chris: matters.

[00:46:55] John: Trust matters. It does matter. Thanks so much for joining us, guys. Appreciate

[00:46:58] Neely: Thank you for your time. Thank

[00:47:00] Mateo: one.

[00:47:00] Chris: Appreciate it.

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