Exploring BnBFinder's Benefits for Homeowners

Welcome to Keynotes, a podcast just for Casago homeowners. This is where we explore how to get the most out of your relationship with Casago, learn tips and tricks on how to make more income with your property, and learn a little bit about the short term rental industry along the way. I've been a vacation rental nerd since my 20s, and the team has finally let me have this podcast so I can share everything I've learned with you. I'm your host, Steve Schwab, and this is Keynotes.

Hey, welcome to keynotes, the podcast just for Casago

homeowners. Today I'm with Michelle Gillin and Tim Wilson, who are with BB Finder Casago has recently started to work closely with BB Finder as another channel coming on to make sure that we promote your property. And today we're gonna be talking about five reasons why b. B Finder is good for our homeowners. Guys, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Glad to have you guys here.

We're just going to jump right into it and talk about the mission of B& B Finder and how that helps our homeowners get more bookings and hopefully more, more income. Yeah. Our mission is to make vacations more affordable to everyone, everywhere. And what that means to us is bringing hospitality back to booking a vacation rental. And so with the.

Other OTAs, which I think are great to list your property on, by the way, the property manager doesn't have the opportunity to speak to the traveler right off the bat. And we allow the property manager to speak to the traveler immediately, thus sort of the return of hospitality. So yep, that's our mission. Great. So we're going to go over the five things that our homeowners should know about B& B Finder.

And so for number one, we said, There's no guest fees. That is correct. So when travelers are searching for a place to stay, they oftentimes will go to one of the other OTAs like an Airbnb or Verbo, they'll find a place to stay and there may or may not encounter some additional fees that might price them out of being able to book that property. The big part of our Business model is no traveler fees.

And so rather than encouraging travelers to find something somewhere with fees and then go search around a bunch of other places to find it elsewhere without fees, our listing site allows them to see the lowest advertised price, basically the same exact price that Casago, uh, websites would show and then book direct with that local Casago property manager. So no fees to travelers.

Yeah, you know that makes for more money for our homeowners because obviously those OTA fees have to be paid out and it just lowers the take rate for our homeowners. So not having to pay those on a per reservation basis helps our homeowners make a lot more money when they book through B& B Finder, right?

Absolutely, yes, and it goes both ways because not only is the property manager paying a fee, but if the traveler is also paying a fee that might Price that traveler out of being able to bıctte that extra night, or being able to book a special excursion or something else on their vacation. Yeah. Or maybe not choose your property. You had to choose a lower end property because they couldn't afford the property that they really wanted, which was, you know, one of our classical

properties. So number two, you guys said there is a lot more additional exposure by having B& B Finder as one of our channels. Yep. So Tim, feel free to chime in. The exposure piece for us is just the fact that the Casago logo, all of the social media, all of the contact information is displayed prominently on all of your listings.

And so not only are you able to list all of your properties for free, you also get to showcase your brand and all of the local fun social media links and everything else that you would advertise on your website. All right. So, that's what we mean by more exposure. In addition to the fact that you're listed on a listing site, you also get all that additional exposure in each listing.

You know, the other side of that additional exposure, when it comes to brand and being part of Casago, is, you know, we do a lot of email marketing. And the fact that they find us on B& B Finder, they see our logo, they end up booking directly with us through B& B Finder, and then having the opportunity to re market, to cross market, to get those guests who have already stayed with us coming back to our homeowner's properties is an advantage of using B& B Finder.

And I might add too, one thing to be clear about is that there's no closed loop communication channel here, where you are forced to communicate with your guests through our B& B Finder. Communication platform.

You are talking directly with your guests and we've all, you know, heard or seen the stories or even done it ourselves where through some of the other platforms, you know, you're spelling out your phone number to try to, you know, get in contact directly and, you know, jumping through all these hoops to try to get around the system. And what we do here is just facilitate all of that to make it super easy for everybody.

Yeah, you know, Tim, how do you be hospitable when you can't speak to the person you're being hospitable to? Right. We agree. Yeah.

So for number three, more control. Yeah. As far as control is concerned, uh, you have complete control. We are not telling you how to set your policies or your policies. All of your policies and pricing is what is reflected here on B& B Finder. We are also not placing your property in the sort order.

Uh, if this is what we mean by control here, uh, but we're not placing you, you are placing yourself in the sort order where you want to be and where you think you're going to get the most visibility and opportunity for bookings. When you need the visibility and the extra opportunity for bookings, um, and so I guess to be to expand on that just for a second, there's no annual contract here with folks that we're working with.

You can go up and go down in level as you need to and as your business commands. Yeah. You know, when I think of more control, I think of often about cancellation policies. And I've always looked at cancellation policies as a way to protect our homeowners, right?

So when we're trying to make sure that in a holiday season or a high value time of year, that if somebody's going to book a year out, that we have a way to protect that homeowners so that suddenly at the very last minute, somebody doesn't cancel and we're stuck holding the bag with a homeowner with no income for the most important part of the year.

And we've really been pushed by other channels to continuously make easier and easier cancellation policies to fit their needs in order to push the guests through. But there's some exposure there for our homeowners and being able to set cancellation policies by season, by day, or, you know, whatever we choose is going to be the most valuable to that homeowner through B& B Finder is really strong attribute of your channel. Thank you. I think so too.

And to add to that, it's not a one size fits all sort of solution in terms of a cancellation policy. It depends on what market you're in, depends on a lot of factors. And we believe that our property managers are doing an incredible job managing your properties for you. And whatever cancellation policy they deem is the most effective in their market is what they should be able to practice no matter where their properties are listed. And so that's what we believe. Yeah. I agree with you.

And there are times for lenient cancellation policies, you know, and you're just trying to drive traffic or this high demand and a lot of turnover, but then there's also times for a really strict cancellation policy, like a large 12 bedroom house in the mountains for Christmas. Sure. You know, if you get a last minute cancellation on something like that, you're not going to get to rebook it.

Somebody may have held that whole for a whole year and suddenly you're just out and that homeowner is out and it's not fair. Right. Right. And so being able to. Sculpt your cancellation policies that match the market and the homeowner. It's important and it's nice to not be deemed for that, which brings us right into number

four. There's no algorithms on B& B finder. No, we respond to the asks of our travelers. So I guess if there was an algorithm, if you say, Hey, I want to stay in a. three bedroom house that is pet friendly. Well, then our algorithm is going to show you a three bedroom house that's pet friendly. But beyond that, it's not really going to sort properties in a way that, let's say, is optimized for us.

It's going to sort the properties in a way that is optimized for the properties that we're working with because they are determining the sort order on our site. And I would add in sort of advantaging the traveler. So, for example, if someone did buy a gold or silver or bronze listing in a market and the traveler filtered for a private pool and that gold listing doesn't have a private pool, obviously we're not going to show that property first because it doesn't fit the traveler criteria.

So, traveler criteria sort of always is important. Number one, because we want to serve up the property. That's the best fit for the traveler, but those are based off of filters. Those aren't based off of any sort of an algorithm. So yeah, you're absolutely right, Tim. It really is just based off of what the traveler searching and that's it.

That's that is fantastic. I really appreciate you guys coming on the show. Got one more question for you. What's your favorite thing about Casago? Oh my gosh. Well, you know that incredible video I saw it in a couple of different channels But I got to see it live at the last streamline conference and it just showcased all of the different franchisees you interviewed a bunch of folks talked about the before and after of Casago and everyone's so happy and And thrilled.

And it's such a tight community. That's probably my most favorite part. Well, and I think expanding on that too, it's just, I think everybody has such an amazing resource with each other, right? And which is what makes it such a great community. And so that's where I'm at too. I think you guys are all very well aligned with each other, but also very supportive of each other in ways that I don't know how anybody else could find that. Kind of support.

Cause I think you guys probably all have diverse backgrounds and you bring a lot of different sort of experience to the table and rely on each other for that. And I think that's such a neat thing that you guys have there. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Our community is such a wonderful community and the fact that. Every partner, you know, a franchise, we, we call each one of our franchises partners because they are, they have protected territories.

They all get to collaborate with each other without the fear of creating a competitor. And it just builds a great community of like minded people who care about our homeowners, who are owner centric, who believe in putting the homeowner first. And that's our fiduciary and sharing their knowledge of best practices. It helps grow. Great property managers through an environment that allows them to really flourish. And I'm with you a hundred percent on that guys.

If somebody wants to get ahold of y'all to talk about BNB finder, how do they find you? Well, there are several ways. We've got a join@bmbfinder.com email address that sends to our entire sales and support team. I'm michelle@bmbfinder.com. Tim, which is M-I-C-H-E-L-L e@bnmbfinder.com. And then Tim is the same. It's tim@bmbfinder.com. And I would just say anybody here is generally our first name at BNBfinder. com. So if there's anybody you need to get a hold of, that's how you'll do it.

That's fantastic. And homeowners, if you decide that you would like to get your property on BNB Finder, make sure to reach out to your local property manager, the owner of Casa Goloit in your market, and let them know that you'd love to be on this channel. Guys, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate y'all. Thanks for having us. This was awesome. Such a pleasure. Yes. Thanks guys.