As the vacation rental industry matures, growth has become the holy grail for many property management companies. But what happens when scaling too fast starts doing more harm than good?
In this episode, Ashley Ching, Founder & CEO of Inhaven, joins us to unpack her in-depth research on why many large property management companies fail and what separates the ones that last.
Drawing insights from over 100 executive interviews across the hotel, restaurant, and vacation rental sectors, Ashley reveals the five pillars of successful hospitality management and how losing sight of them leads to the downfall of even the biggest brands.
We cover:
- Why diseconomies of scale are real in hospitality and how to avoid them
- The five pillars that define sustainable hospitality businesses
- Why curated portfolios and empowered local teams matter more than size
- What Vacasa and Aimbridge’s struggles teach us about over-expansion
- How Inhaven is helping property managers raise the standard for quality and consistency
Ashley also shares how her background with Tiffany & Co. and The Home Depot shaped her approach to brand standards and guest experience, and how those same principles can guide operators in today’s competitive landscape.
Connect with Ashley:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-ching-7569a5240/
Website: https://inhaven.com/
Transcript
Alex Husner
Welcome to Alex & Annie: the real women of vacation rentals. I’m Alex, and I’m Annie, and we are joined today for the first time with Ashley Ching, who is the CEO and founder of Inhaven. Ashley, it’s so great to have you on.
Ashley Ching
Nice to be here. How
Annie Holcombe
is this the first time I feel like we talked to you like, I just feel like we should have had you on, like, 10 times by now, but
Alex Husner
we’ve done live interviews with you, yeah, never on the actual show,
Annie Holcombe
yeah, yeah. But I guess in that maybe before we really dive into what we’re going to talk about, why don’t you give us a little introduction about you and in Haven?
Ashley Ching
Yeah? So again, my name is Ashley Chang CEO and founder of en Haven. I started my career after consulting a Tiffany and Company, and I spent almost 13 years there. I went over to Asia, managed their Asia business from Merchandising perspective, and really learned about the importance of brand standards and creating a consistent customer experience, whether they were visiting our store in Beijing to Sydney, Australia, to Cincinnati. After I got back from Asia, I went in and ran their global merchandising operations and was responsible for all of the assortments and the product presentation in our stores globally. After Tiffany and Company, I left, and I joined the Home Depot and led merchandising for the company store, one of their private label brands, and that’s where I really got into sourcing home products, textiles. Traveled around the world, going to manufacturers in India and China, and there, for the first time, I noticed that each manufacturer, first of all, everything’s produced in the same places. So you go to these manufacturers, and you see things from the Home Depot, Costco, Pottery Barn Restoration Hardware. They’re all produced by the same people. Interesting, yeah. And what was really interesting was that they had their retail line. So the things that you and I buy for our own homes, and then in a separate area of the plant, they had all their hospitality grade supplies that they would produce so and they would be sold on different channels, right? They’re not sold through retail channels. They’re sold directly through hospitality distributors. And I learned at that time these products that are just so much more durable, they go through way more testing than the products that you and I buy for our own homes. And so it was sort of a mental note, an interesting mental note for me. Covid had hit during the time I was there, and so we’re stuck in our four walls. And so my family and I would travel, and we’d stay in vacation rentals, no longer hotels, and just the experience of staying in vacation rentals, you know, you’d find a perfect place on Airbnb or VRBO, but show up to, you know, really crappy mattresses, missing pots and pans, and it was a really frustrating experience as a guest. And so I thought to myself, Oh, why don’t I bring those products that are hospitality grade to the vacation rental space and really create a better guest experience? And so that’s really how inhaven was born. I actually went to the to the executives at the Home Depot and said, Hey, I’ve got this idea. They thought it was a great idea to get their products in these vacation rentals, especially their hospitality grade ones. But at the time, you know, covid had hit and we were our sales were going crazy gangbusters. So they just kept saying no next year. And so that’s, you know, I just said, You know what? This? I don’t think this is ever going to happen at $250 billion company. I’ll just go out and create it my own. And so in Haven was born in late 2022 and we help professional property managers set standards for their vacation rentals around the comfort of this day. So the Bed Bath and kitchen and cleaning we, you know, we focus on the areas that you can repeat across your portfolio of rentals. No one’s looking for a unique sleep experience. They just want a solid sleep experience. So we focus on setting those standards with our property managers, and then we’ve developed a bunch of inventory management tools that, you know, be able to maintain those standards through subscription services through notifications that they’re running low in stock, and they’re able now we’re connecting to various PMS platforms and breezeway to be able to push notifications back to the teams and back to their owners in terms of invoicing.
Annie Holcombe
Yeah, yeah. But how fun, how fun to be able to get like, I guess, to know that information, like, I add that what you just told me. And Alex, of like, like, all the things I buy, I’m like, wait a minute, like, am I buying it from two places and it’s exactly the same, same source?
Alex Husner
Yeah, yeah, well, but it also goes to show how important brand is, right? And so we were actually, we were just in Italy, and I was thinking about similar things that I was looking in these different high end stores and looking at different at different watches, and watches, I’m sure, are the exact same way too, right? That it’s like one watch is no different than another for the most part. I mean, they’re coming from the same manufacturers, but you pay for the super expensive one because you’re paying for brand and I think what you’ve kind of done with the linen program is kind of pushing vacation rentals, or assisting these companies that are investing in a higher level product to understand that, that it’s like, that’s why they’re not just an Airbnb to these guests, because it is a brand. There’s a reason that they stay with them, and there is a difference. And I think we as an industry have a lot more ability to control things like that. And you know, products do, like watches or, you know, these sheets like as across an industry, but it’s interesting to hear your history
Ashley Ching
there. It’s It’s fascinating. I mean, I started in Haven because I was a frustrated guest. Stayed in these homes, and I thought, we just need to improve the guest experience. But what the most interesting finding I’ve had since founding in Haven is the people that actually want this most are the property managers, because as you start to grow and expand, you can have different sheet assortments in all your homes, or different coffee makers, and you really need to set up a system where you’ve got the same products, especially when it doesn’t it’s not related to decor, right? People just still want to feel like a local they want to go to a place and not feel like a cookie cutter hotel, but they don’t want to compromise on their bathing seat, sleeping and eating. And that’s where we’ve really helped create standards. And it’s it’s benefited the property managers and their team probably
Alex Husner
the most. Yeah, yeah.
Annie Holcombe
So you’ve had, you have this incredible passion for trying to solve problems, and one of the things that we wanted to talk with you about was not necessarily solving a problem, but looking into the root of a problem. And it was why so many of these large property management groups on not only on the hotel side, but also on the vacation rental side, just keep failing. And so you did this exhaustive study, and so I think we wanted to take a little bit of time to really dive into it and understand why you did this, where you started, what you learned from it. I know I’ve been able to see the presentation before, and it’s, it’s, you did some pretty exhaustive research, and so would really like to hear about kind of the, you know, the genesis of this, and how it came to be, and what you learned from it. Yeah.
Ashley Ching
So late last year, vicasa announced its proposed sale to the Casa go Consortium, and at that point, a lot of the property managers we worked with immediately reached out and said, What’s going on here? Is our industry in trouble. And so at in Haven, we really started to follow this sale. And it was an incredible sale. There was, you know, two bidder, two main bidders, and so it kind of went back and forth, and what was actually going to happen here. But what was fascinating about the Vacasa moment. It’s just three weeks after vicasa announced its distress sale, the largest property manager on the hotel side. So the vicasa the hotel side, Ambridge, announced its out of court bankruptcy restructuring. And so these two concurrent events happening the largest property managers on both the hotel and the vacation rental side, you know, announcing their financial distress led us to really look into this and understand, you know, what’s happening here. And we went and tried to understand, you know what, what’s the journey of a casa and Ambridge, and they have, if you look in our case study, they have very similar corporate journeys of starting with, you know, just very moderate organic growth to a lot of acquisitions through private equity investments, and then eventually going into eventually just getting too big, and owners and guests starting to churn, and then going into financial distress. And we thought to ourselves, you know, is this just two coincidences that they just happen at the same time? But as we then look back another 25 years, you know, we saw this example of national property management, trying to scale and failing over and over again, whether it was resort quest on the vacation rental side or interstate on the hotel side. And so we really set out to understand, you know, why this happened? You know what does lead to successful property management? So we went out and we interviewed hundreds of executives across the vacation rental of Hotel and Restaurant industries, in Hospitality Management, in property management, and we interview people on the national side of things and the local side to just understand what makes for great hospitality management and where the failures occur. And what was interesting is, I think the media has said there’s three main reasons why these companies have failed. One, their CEO or Executive Team. Two, oh, it’s private equity. Or three, it’s these sort of exogenous events, like 911, we just, it just wasn’t enough. You know, there’s been 15 different executive teams that have tried for salt, for national property management. So can’t just be one person or one team, and it can’t be private equity, if we have examples where it doesn’t work in the public spaces as well. And then, you know, so many companies have been successful even throughout these, you know, terrible events like the financial crisis and covid. So we really, then tried to really peel back the onion of what, what does make for success. And so out of this case study, we were able to really uncover this five pillars of successful Hospitality Management was one of the one of the items that we uncovered. One of the insights was around economies of scale. So happy to kind of go through some of them and just
Alex Husner
chat with you and get your
Annie Holcombe
thoughts. Yeah, yeah. Listening. Go, go over to our YouTube channel, and Ashley’s going to share the presentation so we can walk
Alex Husner
through it. Yeah, you definitely want to be able to see this. So,
Ashley Ching
so in terms of the five key pillars of successful property management, we have five main key insights, and the first one is around curated portfolios. You know, we heard over and over again, you have to minimize the number of bad apples, and every single property management group has their bottom 10% it’s when you get to 20% or 30% that these properties become just. Distractions to the overall organization and almost become toxic. We heard one CEO say, you know, you really need four out of five. Your four out of five properties need to be drive by and wave properties, meaning that they’re profitable. You know, they’re just kind of doing well. You don’t need to spend time with them. But it’s when it becomes two out of five or three out of five that it really becomes distracting to the organization, and it can lead to a lot of failures. So you know, we give examples where vicasa and Ambridge, they both did a lot of acquisitions through M and A. And so when you acquire all these properties without doing the due diligence on every single you know property, you’re going to take on a lot of bad apples. And so we see a lot of success through organic like just general organic growth, and M and A can be very costly to organizations if they’re not doing the due diligence on each of the properties they’re
Alex Husner
taking on, makes perfect sense. And honestly, even with companies that maybe haven’t grown through acquisition, I think that’s just a talking point that comes up often now, even if they’ve just taken on properties over the years, to get to that point they’re starting to realize, you know, I need, I need to, now that I have a good business here, I need to get rid of the ones that are holding me back
Ashley Ching
totally I mean, I just think of my days at Tiffany and Company. I traveled the world. I probably have gone to most luxury malls around the world. And we would go and we would scout out exactly the location that we wanted, whether it be at the entrance or a specific location next to, like the Louis Vuitton store or whatnot, we would pay a premium for that location. But if we didn’t get that specific location, because we done all of our financial analysis knowing it would be profitable on its own, we would walk, yeah? And so, you know, it’s just making sure that you’re doing the due diligence on the locations that you’re taking on to make sure that they’re profitable on
Annie Holcombe
their own, yeah? Like not compromising on what your brand integrity needs to be exactly. I have a question before you dive into this. So I meant to ask you this previous How did you get these interviews? I mean, because you’re, you know, I don’t know how many people you know in the industry, but I mean, it’s like, especially on the hotel side of it, was it something that you had a power broker that was able to get you in the doors? Or did you just continually ask and ask and ask until they finally, I guess you broke them.
Ashley Ching
You know, we have a lot of relationships. Our team does with, you know, various players in each of these different sectors. I’m showing on the picture right now, on the screen where, you know, we know, sort of the different companies we talked to across the hotel, restaurants and vacation rental space. So obviously, in the vacation rental space, that’s very easy. We have a lot of great relationships. Lot of great relationships with people here. But in the restaurant and hotel space, it’s really through our network. So we’re able to get in front of in front of these, these key executives. The next key insight we heard over and over again was making sure that your property management companies, the properties that you take on, have similar demand drivers. So one of the examples here is evolution hospitality. They manage about 15 different hotel locations in LA and San Diego, or LA and San Diego, and so they’ve got this urban, you know, kind of upscale consumer that they’re targeting. And they said to themselves, let’s go out and let’s acquire hotel in Palm Springs. Palm Springs is only two and a half hours away. And so they did, and they they took on this hotel. They managed a property. However, in July in Palm Springs, there’s massive sandstorms. And so to get consumer, you know, get guests to book a hotel in Palm Springs in July is very different than getting, you know, occupancy up in LA and San Diego. And so they had to go up and set an entire team up in Palm Springs to try to figure out, you know, this very different market. And so when we talked to, you know, other property managers, it was, you know, making sure that you’re kind of that you’re very specific about the demand drivers that you’re going after. Because once you introduce, you know, many different markets, whether it be you’re in ski and now you’re going to the mountains, or you work with, you know, primarily one bedroom condos, and now you’re taking on mansions. The expectations of the guests, and getting the guests to book those properties are very different, and it forces you to, you know, either you don’t deliver on their expectations, or you just have to, you know, really expand your team to make sure that you’re developing the right marketing messages and you’ve got the right staff in place to manage these properties. So that was really the key insight there is to kind of stick with similar demand drivers as you scale your organization. The third key insight, which was really interesting, which I think is the least written about, at least in you know hospitality journals, is to really be careful and limit the number of owners that you take on, and be very picky with the owners you take on. So an example here, that’s a bit of an extreme. We talked to the Pappus group, which is a Restaurant Group, and primarily they’ve got restaurants in Texas, in the Midwest, Papa see those? Papa does, if you’ve ever dined in those locations, they are owned and managed by one family all of the all of the locations. And so they had gotten word that 15 of their restaurants in the Dallas area had substandard bathrooms, bathroom cleanliness. And so the executive team traveled immediately. Down to Dallas and confirm that, yes, those locations weren’t living up to their standards. And so that next Monday, they decided to replace every single General Manager with the Assistant General Managers, sending a very clear message to the team that these standards matter, and if they aren’t upheld, you know, the man the general managers will be replaced, and that can really only be done so swiftly because they it was all owned and managed by the same group. Now, on the flip side, you know, you have Ambridge, which, at their peak, we’re managing over 350 different owners. And so if they wanted to make changes quickly as a company, and they couldn’t, right? They had to get all of those different owners on board with what they were doing. And so the message that we heard over and over again here is be careful with the owner you’re bringing on and just, you know, make sure you’re limiting the numbers, because if you want to be able to drive change, having 100 owners is a lot different than having, you know, 20 or so,
Alex Husner
yeah, and I think companies that have owners that are more like investor type owners, where they’ve come on and they’ve got, you know, five or 10 properties within that company, you know, if you have a bunch of those that, of course, it’s going to simplify things, right? I mean, it’s less conversations that you need to be having with people. And if you have software that answers a lot of the questions for those owners too, you know, that’s a big part
Ashley Ching
of it. It’s interesting because we, we have the number in the vacate, sorry, in the hotel space, we, we haven’t seen a successful property management company in the hotel space really be able to manage more than 300 different owners. You know, you have Ambridge, but they had their out of court bankruptcy restructuring, and then the number two, Highgate, took on a very large distress Portfolio A couple of years ago, and going back to point number one of a curated portfolio, we know that they are probably in a bit of trouble. So we know that the number for hotels is around 300 what is that number for the vacation rental space? We don’t have that number. But, you know, just we’re really trying to understand how many, how many different owners you can manage at once. They’re owners of the properties. So in the hotel space, very similar to the vacation rental, the owners are separate than the managers, so they hire the property manager to manage that location.
Alex Husner
Got you but I think the argument could go both ways, on homeowners and also owners in your company, because when you’ve got a smaller decision tree there, just like the example you gave on the bathrooms, like, if you’ve got to take it up the chain to get approval from five different ownership groups that are part of a company. And I work with companies that are set up that way. You know, things can take a lot longer, totally
Ashley Ching
and I mean, I almost kind of want to skip the fourth pillar and go straight to the fifth pillar. Pillar is all about empowered local hospitality professionals feeling empowered to make decisions. We talked, we heard, you know, we talk a lot with about you in the hospitality industry, you you hire people with a hospitality gene, people that have a smile on their face after even getting yelled at by their owners or guests, they want to make for successful experiences, and they continue to show up every day with a smile on their face. And these types of people need to feel empowered, empowered to make decisions on their own. And so when companies like Ambridge would acquire these property management groups, and instead of doing what’s best for your owner, you know, they now are trying to do what’s best for Ambridge. And they would go to Ambridge and say, you know, we want to do do something different for our market. And Ambridge would say, well, that’s not really the Ambridge way. They would feel disempowered. And those types of people need to feel empowered, so they just leave and they go to other hospitality managements where they can deliver the experiences. And so what we found was there’s massive brain drain from some of these larger companies where you’re left with them the worst employees to manage those locations. So, you know, the feeling empowered to be able to make decisions, not having to wait, you know, many days. You know, really empowering your employees is critical to the success of your overall company. And then, you know, the last pillar was on local oriented operations, really making sure that you’re delivering your operations locally versus centralizing a lot of the various parts of your organization. So an example here is on Ambridge. They tried to centralize a lot of the finance functions and tax, and they just missed some of the local needs, like local jurisdictions tax needs on the tax side of things, or they tried to centralize reporting, you know, at the Ambridge way. But a lot of these hotel owners own multiple hotel properties, but not all of them are managed by Ambridge. So, so if they tried to roll up their financials, and they had to use this new Ambridge template that didn’t have all the information they need, it was very frustrating. So they couldn’t get, you know, a picture of their larger portfolio properties. And so that led to a lot of churn, you know, in the vacation rental side. I know we spoke to one of the executives that his company was bought out by a larger vacation rental company, and they did, you know, pre arrival check ins, and it was really important to their market that they did this. Was a differentiator, and this company said, no, no, we don’t do that here at this company, you know, so, and it led to a lot of frustration, because they needed, they needed to ensure that the guest experience was going to be great. And so that led to, you know, a lot of just angry owners and guests and team
Alex Husner
members. I think that’s kind of like the pipe dream in our industry that we hear people ask us about this all the time. Of Well, I think if I can just, if I get some properties in one location, and then I get some in another state, but I’m going to keep everything centralized that’ll go across all the properties. And in theory that works, and in some in some areas, I think it can be applied. But there are very few examples of how that has worked. Well in our industry to this point, to be honest, because I think they’re like, as you mentioned, there’s just still so many nuances, especially on the marketing side. I think you can centralize some marketing, but you also have to have somebody that’s local boots on the ground, that actually understands what’s going on there and the destination and about the properties. So some of these things, it’s more like, you know, it’s better to be like a hybrid of centralization on on different assets, yeah.
Ashley Ching
And then, you know, kind of To the Point on just scale and economies of scale. That was a really interesting finding. And sorry, I’m just going to flip Fast, fast forward a couple slides here. We found that through our interviews, is that in hospitality, as you scale, you experience diseconomies of scale versus economies of scale. And so let’s just take an example of ball. Corporation is the example we use in the case study. And ball is the largest manufacturer of aluminum cans in the US. And if you take labor as an example, when they set up a manufacturing line that manufacturing one manufacturing line can produce up to a billion cans a year, and it only takes 18 people to run that manufacturing line. So whether you’re producing 100,000 cans or billion cans, you only need 18 so the more volume you add to that manufacturing line, the unit economics improves, right? Because it doesn’t. You don’t need to hire more people. Yeah. Then on the service side, where we saw diseconomies of scale, we use an example in the case study called on Forney Independent School District. And this is one of the largest, or the fastest growing school districts in the country, and it’s based outside of Dallas. And so we show in the presentation that, you know, this school district grew from about 8500 students in 2013 to just under 19,000 in 2025 this year. Wow. And so they’ve grown a lot in their student population, but as they’ve grown in their student population, they’ve actually grown their staffing at a faster rate because you have to maintain the same student to teacher ratio, and then as you bring on more teachers, you need more administrators, and you need to invest in different programs like special education and after school programs and and so this the staff ratio actually grew at a higher rate than the student ratio. And we think about this a lot in service industries like hotels and restaurants. As you scale, you need more administrators, inspectors, you know, people to help manage that overall business. So we really don’t see economies of scale when it comes to labor. And then we looked at, you know, just, you know, economies of scale with when it’s comes to bulk purchasing, right? Well, in the example of ball manufacturing, 55% of their costs are just in materials. So as they go and they, you know, improve rates on aluminum, that can have a very significant impact to their bottom line. But if you take the hotel industry like Hilton, 55% of their costs are in labor. And so as they get bigger, people expect better wages, better benefits. You’re exposed to organized labor unions. And so actually the costs increase in terms of your biggest cost center then decrease. And so we really just overall see diseconomies of scale versus economies of scale in the service industries,
Annie Holcombe
makes sense? Stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Alex Husner
interesting to see. I mean, as you know, life evolves and AI becomes more a part of, you know, everything in business, like this study in a few years, I wonder how it would be impacted. What would your thoughts more than that.
Ashley Ching
So it’s funny, um, you know, we talk about another example, except my mom of young kids is, like, preschools, right? You still need people to provide service. People expect people in the hospitality industry, and so I think AI can help on, like, the back end. But, you know, from a preschool perspective, you would not be okay if you’re like, wait, but I’ve got this AI bot that’s in the classroom, right? Yeah. And I think that’s very similar, you know, I think with AI, we’ve done some research outside of this, outside of the study. You know, one of the industries has probably embraced technology the most is the airline industry. You’ve got, you know, all the apps and the kiosks and whatnot. Yeah, and what we’ve seen over the last 30 years with airfares is they’ve dropped significantly, down 35% and the number of complaints have risen significantly. And so I think it’s just, you know, I think AI definitely has its place on, like, the back end stuff, but how much you introduce it into that guest facing interaction? There’s some lessons learned with the airline industry. We see it in economy hotels just people won’t pay for as much when there’s people pay for people and service. You know? The other area we see it in is in hotels and a chain scale pricing, right? Economy hotels may have one person there to check you in, but when you walk into a Ritz Carlton or four seasons. I mean, there are just so many people in the lobby swarming the lobby, ready to press the elevator button for you. And so people pay. We think that’s probably the biggest differentiator between an economy hotel and a luxury hotel is the number of people in the in the lobby. That’s what people pay for. They pay for service. And so it’ll be interesting to see how AI can be incorporated in that in a way that doesn’t impact, you know, the ADRs and the guest experience, yeah, for sure. So there’s lots of different information in here, you know, we hit on, you know, a lot of different topics, but I think these were the two main that were have been the most interesting to to our audience, that what
Annie Holcombe
was your big takeaway from all this? Like, how? Like, if you had to write, you know, say, for, you know, Costa go as they venture down this path of taking Vacasa, like, what? What did you glean from this that you’d say was a recommendation that you could offer a company so they can succeed, or maybe pitfalls to avoid?
Ashley Ching
Yeah, so there were two, you know, and we’ve been asked a lot like, Okay, well, what about these different models that we’re seeing out there? Like, you know, Casa goes model. And I think the, the biggest, the biggest takeaway that we have is any model can be successful if they, if they really consider the five key pillars of hospitality and really use those as guiding principles. You know, the failed companies really, they almost rejected these principles, and that’s why they failed. And then the other framework we bring up in the case study that I think is really important to consider is around your operations. Are you trying to achieve? There’s three main areas that companies try to achieve, whether it be service, scale or profitability. But we heard over and over again in our interviews that really, you can only get two out of three. You can’t be you can’t develop a service at in scale and be profitable. And so really aligning your business around two of those three principles is key. So for example, vicasa was really organized around service and scale right their property management and they’re trying to scale, but they were never profitable. We’ve got a company that we study in this case study called American homes for rent. They have about 60,000 single family homes that they rent out. They own them and manage them. They provide zero service, right? This is just, I mean, they’ll they’ll come in, maybe if your HVAC breaks, but they’ve been extremely profitable, and they’ve scaled to 60,000 homes. So, you know, we have examples in the case study of all three. You know, companies that have chosen two of the three, and sort of, who the success stories are of those of those
Alex Husner
areas. Yeah, I think another way of saying that same thing that my former mentor used to always say was, you could have quick, cheap or good pick two, right? Because it’s like good, but it’s not going to be cheap. You can have something quick, but it’s going to be cheap. So, yeah, it’s a really good point, yeah.
Ashley Ching
And I think about like, you know, we work with a lot of the local professional property managers, where they really excel at service and profitability, right? But they’re these local teams, like abode luxury rentals in Park City, or like Beverly Sorrell and bestness and Hilton Head, right? But that they’re not focusing on scale. They’re focusing more on service and profitability. So, you know, that’s where I think a lot of our in Haven customers are focused. You know, with property management, we found, and this is sort of another key insight, is, the more complex your business model is, the harder it is to scale. And so, you know, to scale, you have to have, really, you know, you need to be, have aligned demand drivers, and you need to be, you know, very aligned in your product and what, what guest experience you’re you’re delivering. And so the more differentiations that you have in these areas, the more complex your business model has, and complexity is, like the killer of scale. That’s a quick summary of what we what we uncovered.
Alex Husner
Yeah, I think when you look at our industry too, I mean, there’s three categories. It’s really important for vendors in our space to understand the difference between what the motive is of the property management company, because it’s like, if you’re a product that like, really, the main benefit is that you help companies scale. But like you just mentioned, Beverly in Hilton Head, if she’s not interested in that, she’s interested in the service and profitability, what you’re talking about, scale means nothing to them. So, you know, just just understanding your ICP, I think is really important. And I feel like we see. Up really not done well at a lot of the trade shows when you’re walking around, because it’s like, you need to ask companies and managers, what is their goal before you start going down a rabbit hole, and maybe your product offers something that speaks to all three of those. But you know, it’s really understanding the pain points and the goal of the property management company 100%
Annie Holcombe
Yeah, Discovery first. And yeah, discovery, yeah, no. I mean, it’s same from the channel side, no, as I say it’s same from the channel side, like, distribution, like, that’s one of the things that I always got frustrated about, is like, all channels are not good for everybody. All channel managers are not good for everybody. All PMS are not good for everybody. I mean, like, there’s, there’s everybody has a specific kind of niche, is the wrong way to say it, but they have a customer profile that works best for them. Can they service others Absolutely. But if you don’t understand what the customer’s core needs are, like, all you’re doing is just like throwing words like verbal vomit on them, you know, like they’re you’re not helping them. So they’re just not gonna, they’re not gonna buy from you. But so this is, I mean, like, this is the second time I would say it’s, like, so amazing that you did this. Are you gonna do like, a follow up in, again, you know, we can talk about Costa go, because that’s the one. That’s the Vacasa Costa go situation. Are you gonna do a follow up in like, 18 months to say, like, Okay, where are they at, and where is Ambridge at? You know, through their reorganization?
Ashley Ching
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s interesting. The chairman of Ambridge, Steve Joyce, is actually on our advisory board at in Haven, so we’re watching, we’re watching Real Time the changes, and he’s come in now after and to make all these changes. So we’re matching real time. And we’ve taken him through the study, and, you know, he talks about the five key pillars, and he’s like, this is exactly, you know, we’re looking at curation, and we’re looking at our number of owners. And he’s like, we’re using these as guiding principles. He didn’t, he didn’t. Those are the things and and I’ve had a conversation now with Steve Schwab, we’re doing an event together at Verma, and he agrees. I mean, a lot of the things that he’s doing at Vacasa through casago. I mean, he’s very much bringing, you know, the operations back to the local teams, bringing the decision making back, and how he’s very pro local wins. And so it’s very what they’re doing are very aligned with what we found in terms of what makes for successful property management business. So it’ll be super interesting to follow up on this in 18 months.
Annie Holcombe
Yeah, we’ll pencil you in for that, for sure.
Alex Husner
Yeah, I remember during the, you know, this past spring, when everything was going back and forth on Costa go and vicasa, and, you know, it was anybody’s guess what was going to happen there. But, I mean, you put out, like, whenever you had a post, it was like everybody was living and dying by to see when the next one would come out, because you had such great information on that. But, I mean, you’re obviously, you know, you’re brilliant to put all this together, but you spent a lot of time on it, right? I mean, like, there was
Ashley Ching
a lot of deep research. It’s, you know, there was hundreds of pages of financials to read through, but I think, you know, our customers were coming to us and asking, what is happening here, you know, what is the state of the vacation rental industry? And so it was a moment to say, Okay, here’s what’s going on. Kind of lead them through the process, but also, you know, give them the latest updates. And, you know, it was just, it deals like this don’t happen very often, right, right? We’re two competing bids, massive bids, and it was just, it was fascinating. It was so fun to follow and fascinating at the same time, and to be able to put out the information. And, you know, we were trying, we weren’t biased. We’re just literally presenting what was in these financial reports through either David Davidson keppner or through the cost of go Consortium. So it was a fascinating follow, and I’m really hopeful that the Casa go team can really turn this business around. Yeah.
Alex Husner
And so as your customers are coming to you and asking questions about this, I mean, where, where does inhaven stand? Like, what are you telling them? Of, like, takeaways based on the information?
Ashley Ching
Well, I think it’s just it, and that’s what really drove us to do this deep dive study. Is okay? So we’ve seen these failures sort of over and over again over the past 25 years. What does make for successful Hospitality Management? And so that’s where, that’s why we put out this case study, is through all these interviews that we did, we really feel confident that the five key pillars, the operating principles, that you choose, those are really great frameworks to deliver on successful Hospitality Management. One of the findings that we talk about briefly in this case study, that we’ll be spending a lot more time on, is that in every single hospitality management business, whether it be restaurants, hotels, airlines, rental cars, there is a quality framework or chain scale, right? So you know, and you mentally, you don’t think about, okay, am I booking an economy hotel versus laundry? But you have set your expectations on you don’t expect a Ritz Carlton experience at a Motel Six or I go in the restaurant industry. If you go and you show up at a McDonald’s, a fast food restaurant, right? You would, if you walk away in that restaurant to go to the bathroom, you’d be very surprised if the person behind the. The POS came over and folded your napkin while you were away, right? You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t be surprised. Of that type of experience at 11 Madison Park, you know, the fine dining and you don’t when you fly spirit air. You don’t expect the same sort of service that when you fly Delta. And so the these, this chain scale, does not exist. Exist in the hotel. In the vacation rental industry today, what booking on Airbnb or verbo is a complete roll of dice. You have no idea. You know, you can sort of see the pictures. You can see their super host status. But do you trust those reviews? And so it’s a complete roll of the dice. And there’s, there’s nothing that the consumer knows. Okay, this is what I’m paying for. This is what I should expect when I show up at these properties, unless you’ve been able to do research on the property management business, which most people don’t even know how to do that. And so what we’re doing is we are going to be delivering that the vacation rentals First Quality Framework, starting with our existing customers that have fully standardized within Haven, the Bed Bath and kitchen, but also are have these service level tiers as well. So we know, you know, Rachel and Rob at abode have about a one person, one staff member to every five property ratio. So their service is pretty high end, right? They’ve got very high end, I should say, you know, they’ve got concierge services. If you have an issue in your home, they’re probably there, but they’re probably there within two minutes, right? They’ve got the local team there to service you, versus, you know, a property management company that operates at more of like a one to 15 one, one staff to every 15 homes. And so we can pretty much chart what the service is going to look like. The service levels will look like in those homes, and then obviously the quality, because, you know, they’re using the inhabited standards. And so that is what we’re delivering starting this fall, is this First Quality Framework for the vacation rental industry, where guests can find these homes based on this, based on the quality framework.
Alex Husner
Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, since you’re so into the data and doing case studies and things, have you done any case studies on your clients, of people who have started using inhaven, what’s that done to the brand, the brand experience, to their bookings, to revenue. I mean, any anything on that side?
Ashley Ching
Yeah, I was just talking to a large client in the mountain towns of Colorado yesterday, and she was saying, we’re going to do a case study with them. You know, three years ago, they didn’t have in Haven, and the reviews have consistently gotten better because now they’ve got their standards in place. And so, you know, people are consistently commenting that they loved at the kitchen, the dining experience. They love the beds, the pillows, etc, and so we see it in reviews. They’re able to charge more per night because of the standards and the overall look of these of these places. But at the same time, they’re seeing significant cost savings, because when you go and you standardize and you’re not you’re able to get much better bulk purchasing. So they’re saving anywhere between 20 and 75% on their purchases. So, you know, we just see it from a we see the better reviews. The staff are all lying on what they need to purchase. It’s very clear when something breaks or gets damaged, this is what we were punish it with, and then the cost savings are just huge.
Annie Holcombe
Very cool. So this leads up to, we’re all going to be heading to vrma, and you mentioned that you’re doing a session with Steve Schwab. Are you? You’re always doing a lot of things at all these conferences. Are you presenting other things that people should look out for? And yes, beyond that, you know what’s what’s kind of on the roadmap for inhaven going into next year?
Ashley Ching
Sure. So Verma is exciting for us. We’ve got a couple of different events happening. One is the hub session with Steve that we’ll be doing on just the vicasa turnaround, and the lessons learned. We’re going to go through the hospitality framework with him. The second is, I’ll be taking the main stage on day two with Tim Ross Leo from VRBO Steven from Marriott homes and villas, and Richie from price labs, and Jennifer mucho from arrive. Now we’ll be talking about future proofing the industry. And so we’ve got a lot of great topics to talk about, including AI and, you know, in terms of pricing and just trends that they’re seeing on their side, that’ll be an interesting conversation. And then I’m also going to be doing a session with Valerie Genghis and Julie George from movie mountains, on just the importance of brand standards and how you get started.
Alex Husner
You got a busy schedule next week.
Ashley Ching
So that’s so Burma is exciting. And then after that, you know, we’re really we were at Verma. We’re unveiling this, this quality framework and a distribution site where people can now find these properties, and throughout the remaining of the year, we’ll be announcing some pretty exciting partnerships with various lodging and credit card companies. So a lot to share there. Wow, as we get the distribution out, because we want you know these these property managers that we work with that, take the time and really set their standards. Now we want to help guests find these locations. And so, you know, getting, getting their locations in front of more eyeballs will be important. So, so that’s sort of the next step in the inhaven journey.
Alex Husner
Yeah, I love it. I love it. It’s been fun to watch so far and just see, you know, I’ve been. So many of your customers were at these shows, and Valerie being one of them that they just rave about working with you guys.
Ashley Ching
So that team is so awesome. I mean, we’re just lucky. We’re in the hospitality industry, and everyone is just so incredible that we’ve met and been able to work with. It’s just a joy. And our team loves all of all of the different property management companies that
Alex Husner
we work with. Yeah, awesome. Well, this is going to come out on a week before vrma. So if anybody wants to get in touch with you or maybe set a meeting for the conference, what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you or your team?
Ashley Ching
Yeah, so they can reach out directly to me at ashley@inhaven.com, or on LinkedIn, and happy to set up a meeting. Would love to meet anyone that wants to talk procurement or standards, or just this case study at Verma.
Annie Holcombe
Well, Alex and I will be live at the RMA, so definitely love to catch up with you, kind of maybe the last led the last afternoon on Tuesday, get kind of your, you know, recap of how things were, and talk about some of these exciting new announcements that you’re going to be
Ashley Ching
making. Great I would love
Alex Husner
that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m glad you mentioned that. Annie just wanted to also mention, for anybody, if you’re at vrma, we’re going to be in the vendor Hall. I believe it’s over when you walk in. I don’t know the booth number, but it’s over to the right hand side. But we’ll be set up with the podcast. And I know vrama is a rival podcast will be set up as well, and Amber hurdle is going to be kicking that off, so be sure to stop by. Got a quick interview. Say hi. We’d love to see everybody. But in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com and until next time, thanks, everybody.
Booking with a larger vacation rental manager (especially one operating in multiple cities or countries) gives a more standardized service, but it’s likely that more communications and services are automated which can be disappointing for those who prefer a more human touch.
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