Are you frustrated with trying to achieve higher occupancy rates with curated properties and direct bookings, but not getting the desired results?

Discover the secrets to success in this episode, where you will be able to uncover the nuances of crafting a distinguished vacation rental portfolio with the 100 Collection, comprehend the essence of personalising experiences and hospitality techniques, and learn how to forge strong bonds with guests through direct bookings and maintain loyalty.

‘Our whole intent is to help create trust for that guest and introduce them to all these great partners.’ – Rebecca Lombardo

Key takeaways:

• Delve into the nuances of crafting a distinguished vacation rental portfolio with the 100 Collection.
• Gauge the impact of curated guest experiences and tailored hospitality practices on vacation rental businesses.
• Realise the importance of top-quality photography in boosting vacation rental success rates.
• Discern the fine balance among branding, marketing, and meeting guest anticipations.
• Acquire techniques to solidify relationships and secure guest loyalty through direct bookings.

Travis Wilburn builds and runs companies in travel and hospitality. His working knowledge spans every level of his organisations, from operations to business development, to maintenance. Often referred to as “the mayor of C’ville”, Travis worked to restore a sense of community and togetherness by launching Charlottesville Insider, which functions as a visitors’ bureau and destination marketing organisation all in one. Connect with Travis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-wilburn-03057410 

Rebecca Lombardo parlayed her travel journalism experience with Huffington Post and WHERE Travel guides into a marketing and branding career where she worked with Fortune 100 companies like ebay, Kraft Heinz, Revlon, and Jackson Hewitt. She was an NBC affiliate who was one of the first "backpack journalists" reporting from Namibia, Ukraine, and Japan. She has also published a fiction novel. Connect with Rebecca on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccabredholt

100 Collection:

Website: https://theonehundredcollection.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theonehundredcollection

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theonehundredcollection 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/the-100-collection

Book your free 15 minute call with Jenn Boyles here: https://directbookingsuccess.com/call

If you are struggling with direct bookings right now whether that is moving away from using the online travel agents like Airbnb or just getting more bookings in right now, then I’m here to help. 

Show notes are available at: https://directbookingsuccess.com/podcast/

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/directbookingsuccess

Join the Marketing Hub Free Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/marketinghubforholidayrentals

Sign up to the Free Direct Booking Success Summit 2023: https://directbookingsuccesssummit.com/

Ep#44 - Unlocking the Secrets of the 100 Collection with Co-Founders Travis Wilburn & Rebecca Lombardo

00:00:53 - Travis Wilburn Hi, guys.

00:00:55 - Rebecca Lombardo Thank you. Thanks for having us.

00:00:58 - Jenn Boyles Great to see you. Let's start by introducing yourselves, if you don't mind telling us maybe a bit about you. Maybe we'll start with you, Rebecca.

00:01:08 - Jenn Boyles Thanks.

00:01:22 - Jenn Boyles Great. I'm glad to have you here. And Travis, if anybody doesn't know you, maybe you could tell us a bit about yourself.

00:02:02 - Travis Wilburn Right.

00:02:03 - Jenn Boyles No, it sounds good. You're on your way to total domination there. I think. So. The 100 collection. Okay. This is your idea, isn't it, Travis?

00:02:45 - Jenn Boyles That's great. And Rebecca, when you met Travis, how did you come into this hospitality world and meeting Travis and coming up with this idea, how did that all come about?

00:04:26 - Rebecca Lombardo So that is mostly entirely true, but the cherry on top that's true is the fact that when Rebecca did come down to interview, we kept on. It went quite well. And I think, as I've mentioned to you before, we were looking for over nine months, I say, by we me. But at the last minute, we went and had one more drink at a local bar on our downtown mall, which is like the equivalent to Ocean Properties. And a famous musician named Dave Matthews walked out and came over and said hi, along with his manager, and he was just casually talking to all of us. And, of course, we lived in a small town where everybody knows each other. And I'm not sure if I'm the one that closed the deal or if it was Dave Matthews sitting there just having a casual conversation that actually closed the deal, but I think she was intrigued at that point.

00:05:28 - Rebecca Lombardo Oh, yeah, right.

00:05:43 - Travis Wilburn Sure. So the 100 Collection name is intended to connotate a limited edition. Right. Like, this is not something that is all over the place. This is curated, hand selected. That's the intention behind the 100 Collection. It does not literally mean 100 vacation rental managers or 100 properties. It is 100% satisfaction of your experience, 100% on your score. For being a great company. That is what the 100 actually means. It's perfection. So that's the connotation behind that. And then what it does is basically say, okay, we're going to go around and we're going to vet these vacation rental companies, their managers, and select few of these properties, and we're going to put them into the collection. So it's getting more and more challenging to find locally owned and operated vacation rental companies, especially in the US. Because of everything that's happened over the last few years. And we want to capture kind of a bucket list selection of experiences and put those together in this collection so that's hopefully what everybody understands after hearing about us and seeing our website.

00:07:15 - Travis Wilburn Yeah, and I'll let Travis explain that that's his gym.

00:09:22 - Jenn Boyles Yeah. See, it's almost like you're setting up an alliance with these other brands under almost an umbrella, isn't it, of the 100 collection. And in that collection, you've got these local people with their local properties, their local knowledge. Is that sort of how you've set it up?

00:10:33 - Jenn Boyles Yeah, that's great. And it's us only at the moment, is that correct?

00:10:55 - Jenn Boyles There you go. You've got a plan of attack to take over the world. That's great to hear. So I'm curious about the set up. So it's a collection, it's a club. Can people book through your website or is it like a portal through to the specific properties website?

00:11:22 - Travis Wilburn Yeah, the OTAs have trained everyone to get to their website and say, okay, I need a property on this date and get me there and then I'm going to book. And it's a very transactional experience. And then they spend hours and hours reading reviews and so it feels fast. It feels like, oh, I got there got this list of properties, all my criteria. And then you spend so much time reading reviews and then you kind of cross your fingers and hope you have a good experience, and then many times you don't. And so what we're doing is kind of flipping that on its head because what we know as insiders is that you're going to have a much better experience if you actually start with that brand and that person who runs that company, because even if something goes wrong, they're going to fix it. They're going to make it amazing like any other top tier brand. But instead of booking through an Ota to find a property and having no idea who you're staying with. We're flipping that to say, here's who you're staying with. That's our whole focus. And then once you're convinced like, yes, this is who I want to stay with, then we guide you off our website onto their website to book Direct Booking Success, say, and now pick property.

00:12:42 - Rebecca Lombardo Beginning exactly as what we are building every single day. Trust, for sure. There's a group that we just interviewed a couple of weeks ago down in Mexico. I had never heard of the city before in my life, and I traveled all throughout Mexico. And then we go to the site, we go look at the properties. I'm like, tell me more about the city. Tell me why you live there. What do you like about it? And then the properties are absolutely incredible. It made me want to go stay there. And so it's like the way that we're building this too, is by introducing people to new locations and that we trust can deliver those experiences when showcasing them. And so again, trying to cut out, trying to create a path of least resistance for the actual consumer. All built on trust, right?

00:13:42 - Rebecca Lombardo Because I still wear the vacation rental manager hat first and foremost every single day. I still have my vacation rental company. It's not for sale for any of your listeners. I plan on staying here. And I am tired of ABCDEF listing site calling me and trying to give me the list of properties to pay a transactional fee back up to them. There's a couple of sites that we work with now. I feel like there's a new site every single day that looked at the transactional revenue, I think consumer standpoint, if the consumer actually knew that they're paying anywhere between five points to 15 points more for the exact same experience on a listing site, I think the consumer is going to get more educated in the future on that. And by I think I know because that's what Rebecca and I's mission is make sure that that consumer knows that booking Direct Booking Success and what it actually means. So we will over my dead body will never be a transactional site. I think it's the funny part. It's like while looking for Rebecca, if I had a dollar for everybody who by all means had more brains than I, who said, hey, we got to make this transactional. You got to make this transactional. No, there's a different way to do it. We've figured that out, and we don't need to make it transactional. So we will always, as best as we possibly can, send these people Direct Booking Success into those websites because we think about the SEO value that we're creating as well by having all these phenomenal best in class platforms connected to us and us connected to them, and we're partners with them. We're not competing against. We're helping.

00:17:03 - Jenn Boyles Well, I know I lived in Brussels for a few years, and it has I can't tell you right now how many Michelin stars, but it's a point of pride for them. And when Travis was asking, when you've been to a Michelin Star restaurant, can you remember the name right away? I went, no, but I can remember sitting there. I can remember the service, and I remember it had a Michelin Star. So if I had to find it again, that would be the way to.

00:17:40 - Jenn Boyles Yeah, it's that personal recommendation, isn't it, with a seal of approval. So tell me what makes that property stand out? What is the criteria of that property? Because if, say, a property manager has 50 properties and only five or their best, what does that look like?

00:19:39 - Jenn Boyles Yeah. So not necessarily the most expensive properties to stay in, but the ones that provide best experience for the guest.

00:20:09 - Travis Wilburn Right.

00:20:19 - Travis Wilburn I'm joking. That service is actually the new luxury because you could be in a really nice place and if the service sucks, then that is not luxury.

00:20:38 - Travis Wilburn Yeah, definitely.

00:20:52 - Rebecca Lombardo So, behind the scenes there are a lot of great people that we are working with that have been a part of this industry for a long time. And so if somebody, for instance, goes to our website to join us as a vacation rental manager, the first thing we start doing is trying to audit them and figure out who they are and who knows what the thoughts are. How are they involved in their community, are they respected in their community? We try to do our homework and so thankfully, as for as large as this industry is it really is still very small. And so I don't think it is as complicated as it probably sounds. But we have a lot of great people that we are. A lot of people wearing some 100 Collection hats that help push people forward.

00:22:11 - Rebecca Lombardo Rebecca?

00:23:10 - Jenn Boyles Yeah. Rebecca's got a gold pineapple on her T shirt, and the pineapple is a symbol of hospitality, isn't it?

00:23:37 - Jenn Boyles I was going to say those are the people you're trying to find?

00:25:24 - Jenn Boyles And how are guests finding you? How are guests finding the 100 Collection?

00:26:20 - Jenn Boyles Yeah. So the words Network, Alliance Club, they all apply, don't they?

00:26:27 - Jenn Boyles Right now, not every property, not every manager can be a part of the 100 Collection. That's just the way it is. But I wondered if each of you have some tips or ideas of how people can put these practices into their own companies, of being the best of their destination.

00:28:44 - Jenn Boyles Okay, so safety and support. Now, Rebecca, what about you? Do you have any sort of advice for those who are wanting to go on the road to being the best of the best?

00:29:52 - Jenn Boyles Well, thanks for that. So the name of the podcast is Direct Booking Success Booking Success Success, and I'd love to hear what Direct Booking Success Booking Success Success means to you. Maybe start with Travis.

00:30:40 - Travis Wilburn Get to a point. Where you're really only using OTAs or other sites for lead acquisition, if at all, depending on your market. So primarily Direct Booking Success Booking Success Success because they remember your name, because you've maintained that relationship with them year round, regardless of how often they stay with you.

00:31:03 - Jenn Boyles Yes, definitely.

00:32:26 - Jenn Boyles Well, who knows, maybe after the 100 Collection, because you've done what you started with, you've got the properties, you've got the vineyard, you've got the tours, now the Hunted Collection, maybe the next thing is will be an Ota.

00:32:49 - Jenn Boyles To float the idea. No, thank you, Travis's Ota. No, not going to happen. Anyway, thank you both so much for coming on today. Where can Listers come and find out more about the 100 Collection?

00:33:32 - Travis Wilburn Great.

00:33:39 - Rebecca Lombardo Thank you so much for having us.