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The Boostly Podcast
The PMS That Does It All: Eviivo on the Boostly Spotlight with James King
00:28:18
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that give hosts the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence. So you can go out there and get yourselves lots of direct bookings. Today we're joined by Jamie King. He's the senior Marketing manager for avivo in the US and Canada. He's had over 20 years experience in the STR space and now he works for one of the leading PMSs. And we're going to dive into how it can help you as a host and what is coming next for Avivo. I'm really excited about today's episode because it's a PMS that I've used and yeah, let's dive in. So welcome along. Jamie, thank you for joining us.
- [00:38]
B
Liam, always a pleasure. Thank you for including me and thinking of me and also having me on this podcast. So I'm excited to be a part of it.
- [00:46]
A
For those who haven't heard of Avivo before, what is Avivo and who is it that you help the most?
- [00:53]
B
Yeah, great question and very happy. So Avivo is an all in one property management platform. So ideally what we're looking to do is we're designed for, from those that are independent, host of accommodations for those that are enterprise vocational managers. And of course what I, what, what drew me to Avivo when I joined is the fact that it's not that we're just doing short term rentals, we're also doing boutique hotels, independent hotels, bed and breakfast. Our goal is to help you as the owner, operator, as a vacation manager is to save time and we need to try to help you simplify your operations. We want you to grow your bookings and of course we want to do it through having a very tight automation because that's the key in this process and then also helping you with your integrations to make your day to day operations much more efficient and of course much more robust when it comes to revenue generation.
- [01:47]
A
Nice. And I mean I'm based in the UK and I've known Avivo for many years, but I, I know some of our US listeners, which 50% of our audience is now based in the US. I know that they're more aware of Avivo across there and that's really been growing. I've been talking to Steve Cox, the UK director and he says it's really grown across there. So what's different about the market over there versus like the UK and Europe and what's driving kind of the people flocking to Avivo?
- [02:16]
B
I love it, I love that question because I love to Tell a story, right? One of the things I love about Avivo is, first of all, let's just look at our countries. Western Europe, you're thousands of years old, right? United states will be 250 years old next year. 250 years old. So. But we're incredibly diverse. You know, as I was in London recently, I was thinking, I wonder how big the scale is of United States States to Western Europe, the biggest west, the biggest country in Western Europe. The little history lesson for those listening, you don't know what we're going to get today, right? Is the country of France. That is that, that equates to the land mass of the state of Texas. So put that in perspective. So what's amazing for us is when I say we're diverse in the United States, we're new, we're, we're, we're, we have all this land, we have all these different people, we have all these different nationalities, which Europe has as well. But what we're doing is we're seeing an opportunity to have a full large vocational management company on one block and three blocks down the road, you have five to seven smaller property managers or host or people that are doing it on their own. And so it's a very, it's very unique because we're competing with, when it comes to short term accommodations in the United States, you're competing against bed and breakfast, you're competing against RVs and campgrounds, you're competing against those branded hotels. But what we're really focused on is driving that adoption. How do you keep those guests coming to you? How do you keep those guests saying, you know what? Even though I have Marriott Rewards, I want to stay with Liam and Jamie's Vacation Rentals in Myrtle beach in South Carolina. So what we're trying to do is to make it more scalability for you, give you more scalability, give you those automated tools. We want you to be able to work with those fewer tools so that you don't feel like it's a nuisance, you don't feel like it's a work overload of too many different tools. But we want to create a less manual working area. So we're doing that by diversifying. And that's what Avivo is. So for me, so cool being somebody who's been in this industry. A lot of times, when you work with certain PMS companies, they're really kind of focused in one vertical, one short term vertical. And Avivo kind of gives you that hybrid model of being able to work with, hey, I got Five cabins. I got an rv, and I also have a little tiny house that I have two rooms available. I need a software that can be able to handle that. You don't see a lot of that over in Western Europe, you know, but what you do see is a lot of that is I got all this land because the United States is so big. Going back to my little map model and then also saying, look, I can put these different types of accommodations. I can use one software, I can simplify, make it less manual. And here I am with a unique, obviously value opportunity, trying to get Europeans to come over and stay in American properties.
- [05:12]
A
It's very cool. I haven't thought of how different it is, but you're absolutely right. I mean, we don't have, like, RV parks and motel type setups. Isn't as common across here in Europe as it is in the US And I speak to so many hosts who have come to Brucely, and they ask questions, and it really makes me understand that they do have a diverse portfolio, like you say, where they might have a duplex, where, you know, they need a parent child listing, you know, software that will allow them to do that, or they may need, like you say, those various different types of property. And it. I. I'm always quite shocked at how many hosts have a place up in the mountains and then also a place like, say, on Myrtle beach and then one in Midwest America. You know, it's so varied, the. The kind of different places. So it's very cool to hear that Avivo's taken that into a stride. And from a personal standpoint, I know how much Avivo. I've had firsthand experience of how much they reinvest in the product. And actually, they're constantly looking to push forward. They don't rest on their laurels, which is very cool. So one of the things which is most important, like we've said, is the varied, different units. But another thing which is really important for our listeners is direct bookings. That's what we're all about. So how does a PMS like Avivo help them to rely less on people like Airbnb, who's just raised their commission price yet again? How does EVO help them to get more direct bookings?
- [06:40]
B
Yeah, and it's very important because, you know, it's. We're kind of at a war right now. Right. You know, especially in this, in the United States. It's. It's every time you're using. Obviously, I'm not badmouthing OTAs, but it's always A little piece of that revenue pie is coming out, right? Every type of different tech you add to your tech stack. So direct bookings, you know, right now, as I keep seeing a resurgence in it, but direct booking should be effortless. It should be a very simple process. You want to have your integrated payment features, you want to be able to have a mobile friendly booking. We all know if you're, if you're, you're using direct bookings, you're probably focused on multi different levels of your company. And so you can't always wear the same hat every day. You can't go in and just be that owner, operator that's going to meet the guests when they come into the front desk if you choose happen to have them come in. Or maybe you direct, you know, direct to house bookings in that regard, but you want to be able to have, be able to manage your tools, you want to be able to manage your rates, you want to be able to manage your, your availability and you want to do it in real time. And that's the power of direct bookings, is being able to have those tools with, with, with a pms, with a provider that can give you those features that say, today I'm wearing maintenance, today I'm fixing unit number seven. It's got a bad refrigerator. Dang. I'm missing three reservations that have come in that I should have picked up the phone because I was bent over trying to carry a refrigerator out the back door of unit number seven. So what I love about when it comes to direct bookings, it's usually those owner operators or those hosts that really are saying, I need a solution so I can maximize my revenue. I can basically own the relationship and build that brand loyalty. Right, because that's what you are, you're a brand. And the idea is that if you're going to book direct, how do you keep those guests in your booking funnel? And, and when they're there, how do you get them to rebook? The biggest win when it comes to owner, operator and host is the ability for you to be able to say, hey, Liam stayed with me. He and his family had so many memories. He's already booked the same apartment, our same unit, a year in advance when he comes back. That's the win, right? That's what you want. And as Liam and his family are leaving, give me that review, right? That's imperative. You want to be able to have that positive experience so you yourself can market it and then you can be able to go out and say, okay, in three years I've grown, I've scaled, I've added. I basically been able to acquire new homes that are in my management program. Maybe I should start leveraging some OTAs when it makes more sense. Right. So I'm all about basically diversity just to diversifying your rental program. But when we're talking about, you know, direct bookings, make it as effortless as possible, make it as important to the guest journey, the guest booking aspect of it. And then when you're ready to tackle more of a distribution platform, bring the OTAs on that point.
- [09:36]
A
That's very cool. I love that you're talking our language. I mean, it is all about creating that brand, getting people to buy into your brand and then coming back ultimately and grabbing their direct contact details, which is super important. So with so many tools, and you touched on this within your answer just there, there's a lot of softwares taking kind of a piece of the pie. There's obviously PMS slash channel managers, there's dynamic pricing, messaging, apps. Where does Avivo fit into all this? And what does a host actually need? Do they need those other tools alongside it or is it standalone? Talk us through that.
- [10:12]
B
Yeah. So Avivo, it's great. Avivo is the company name. But what are really the proof in the pudding, use an American term there for those on both sides is it's Avivo is Avivo Suite. And Avivo Suite is designed or basically is manufactured to be the core hub of the brains behind your everyday usage. Right? So what it does, what Avivo Suite does, is it helps you manage your bookings, it helps you manage your channels, helps you manage your communications, reporting rate changes, rate manipulation, and it puts it all in one place. So it's basically all restrictions on the back end. So you as a host, you as a property manager has the ability to say, I don't need to go anywhere else. Now, let's just say, let's play devil's advocate. You're out, you're working and you're saying, you know, I have these amazing smart locks, I'm working with vendor X, vendor B, and I have these amazing, you know, prop tech in my house. What's important is you got to be able to have that integration in place. You got to be seamlessly be able to work with smart locks or accounting software, or maybe you're looking at pricing tools. So Avivo Suite gives you that ability and that flexibility to say you don't have. If you have a great relationship and you want to stay, it's just an integration. And Avivo Suite. And more, more likely than not, since we've been around for almost 20 years, has those integrations in place that allows for that seamless obviously relationship to stay. And then it all rests in the back end on your Vivo Suite dashboard and where you manage your day to day operations.
- [11:43]
A
It's cool. And one thing again from being a user of Avivo and I don't know, I don't know if you're allowed to say this is marketing working for Avivo. Certainly what I always felt is because it was more originally a European type software and booking.com started or really is dominant in Europe, I always found that the connection between the two was very good. Whereas some of the other tech which started elsewhere has been catching up on that side of things. So it's something which I've spotted and just an observation I wanted to share.
- [12:21]
B
Yeah, and you're very right. I mean obviously one of the core feature sets is as your listeners grow or they make a decision to start dipping their toes into the world of OTAs and distribution and platforms, it can be clunky with some of the other companies out there. And as you alluded to, and you said it, because I'm just going to reinforce what you said, you know, that is one area that we do obviously pride ourselves in is a simple basically set it and forget it. Right. And that's something I think we'll maybe touch base later in this conversation. But you want to make minimal effort. You don't want to have a lot of resistance. If you want to turn on booking.com it should be a simple toggle where you basically turn it on. It's a two way sync of information. It's all being pushed out and the information comes in, it's pushed in. And it all resides in the Vivo Suite. You got to have those integrations in place. It's going to make your life a lot like heck it because what we're trying to avoid is those double bookings, right? Somebody calls Liam, you're the pro, you're the host, I call you, you book me down on a piece of paper and write it down. Then somebody else looks online, finds the same unit, books that there's no synchronization. Now you got both of us standing there mad saying which one gets the room? We don't want that to happen.
- [13:34]
A
No. 100%. 100%. So I want to pull from your experience of short term rentals in general that 20 years experience, what are some of the biggest kind of tech slip ups you see or missed chances from Hosts either from your experience with Avivo or from your experience in the SDR world.
- [13:53]
B
Yeah, there's really, you know, in my opinion, that's a great. I love this question. There's, there's really two big ones, I think, that resonate and we. I kind of just framed the first one where you're not synchronizing your inventory across all your different distribution channels. Right. If we're going to do book direct and you're purely doing book direct, this isn't a really big problem. But as people join the industry and then they talk to peers and the peers say, well, are you, are you using Airbnb? Are you using vrbo? Are you using Expedia? And there's like, okay, yeah, I should sign up and do that. Well, they sign up, but then they forget, is that integration in place? So what that happens is it's not a solid booking strategy. Right? You got to kind of educate yourself and ease yourself into those waters. The other part about it is you're not. You're underutilizing automation, right? So basically automation is designed for you, the host for you, the owner, operator for you, the product manager. Let's put auto messaging in place. Let's start. AI is everywhere, and AI is actually those who embrace it, love it. Those who are afraid of it are missing out. Right. And I'm not going to tell you, go either or. But I think you should slowly start incorporating. If you have auto messaging, you're asleep. You can't always answer the phone. You put some AI onto it. You get basically an unified, a unified inbox that can do simple answers. As you're asleep. When you wake up, you look at the transcripts and then you can reach out to that customer directly. Right? So a lot of people, a lot of different owner, operators, host or under us, underutilizing automation. That goes for invoicing, that goes for dynamic pricing. You know what we're trying to do with, with, with Avivo and Avivo Suite is we're trying to save you hours of each week right there. Everybody gets into this business, hey, you're really good at organization. You should manage my property in Florida. Okay, I'll do some QuickBooks. I can do this. Well, now everybody wants you to manage your property in Florida. QuickBooks isn't going to be robust enough to be able to handle that. So how do you start automating? How do you start taking some of these different tools and working with these different companies to help you be able to capture that so you don't miss out on those reservations are those simple inquiries on how you can become better and grow and scale.
- [16:09]
A
I get that 100% get that. And one of the things that I sometimes a bit guilty of on the show is I ask questions from my point of view. But I want to ask a question for somebody who's perhaps a little bit newer to hosting or is getting their first PMS and perhaps they've just signed up to Avivo or they've just got their first short term rental. What would you say should be the first thing they should nail down? Either from your experience at Vevo or your experience in str, you know, it's.
- [16:40]
B
The guest journey, right? That's what you got to nail down. You got to think about how this guest journey plays out. From the time that they're online looking at your website to the point of where they decide to make that booking decision, to the point of the lead up, the ramp up time to when they arrive, when they're on site and of course then the whole post obviously checkout. It's a cycle, right? We talked a little bit about it earlier, but ideally what you want to do is keep them in that booking cycle. So the target, the gold, everybody I challenge that I talk to that are Vivo customers is what are you doing? What are you doing that allows you to make those guests become repeat guests. We all love the guests that come and come and go, but we want those guests to go back and say, boy, I was with Liam. We were Myrtle beach. What an amazing host, right? He every touch point of that process mattered to Liam. He made us feel special. We have an amazing, we have amazing memories of our time with him. I'm going to invite my friends, the Andersons. I'm going to tell them to book from Liam and we're going to go there for spring break next year, right? So paying paying attention to detail, to touch points, from basically the communications in the booking cycle process to the way that you work with the incoming guest on payments, depending on what your percentage, how much they had to put in, all that matters to a prospective guest, capitalize it, make it unique, provide a unique experience. Because if that booking journey and that guest journey is happy and everybody loves it and we get it, there are things that happen, are no control. Refrigerators break, cable goes out, right? Storms knock out power. I've been there, I travel a lot, I stay in vacation rentals all the time. But if you have a great host that's hands on and is there, it makes that experience less likely be unrememberable to become very rememberable.
- [18:37]
A
There's a quote which says that people forget what you said and what you did, but they, they remember how you made them feel. And I think that's so true. To add a quote to your point that it's just important for us as hosts to remember that each person you stay in is having their own unique experience and how they feel about that experience is actually the biggest factor in getting the five star review.
- [19:02]
B
Absolutely.
- [19:03]
A
One of the things which we always recommend doing is to either get a, you know, somebody to almost mystery shop your guest journey or go and stay, book your place, you know, like go and go on the journey and see what emails you get and when. And I've done this in the early days, especially on the OTAs, just to see if my automations are coming out at the right time. You can book your own place or, you know, get somebody to book it, but then get the emails forwarded to you. Either way, just to test it all out is super important. And I completely agree on Customer Journey is king. So you've got a lot of integrations that Vivo work with. Is there any particular combos that are working really well for Avivo users at the moment or any softwares that you'd. That you've seen that people are enjoying? And the reason I ask this, I know often AI is mentioned at this stage, but it can be anything at all. OTA integrations or even something within the Avivo suite itself.
- [20:04]
B
Yeah. And I apologize. The sun's coming right in my face, so I know the lighting might be a little off. It's not because I'm trying to like make my face glow like some album with Phil Collins, but we just thought.
- [20:13]
A
It was like you've got the divine, divine spirit, like from what you're saying.
- [20:19]
B
Yeah, so. So I apologize to the audience, but it's what I say, not what I look like. But at the end of the day, what the biggest dynamic pricing is absolutely. Is absolutely huge right now. And the reason that it is is that because, you know, you gotta have you got sister company, you got, you know, partners like Price Labs really edited. We're looking to be able to work together to help maximize revenues. That's what's important, right for you, what keeps you in business? How do you maximize every single dollar that comes in from a guest that is renting one of your properties, whatever that property may be. Right. So we want to make sure that when you are working with a company like Price Labs, that's usually dynamic pricing, you want to Be able to control those manual updates. You want to be able to make that simplified, right? We want you to make, make sure that if you're working and we're going to talk about this I think later but you want to be able to control that rate management, controlling rate manager so that hey, you know, this is a busy weekend. We got a big, we got a big concert in town. We want to make sure that we're looking at, you know, hey, how do we make sure we get more revenue for these? We, we people will pay this because they're looking at supply and demand. It's a very simple process. It's been around a long time. But what we're also looking to do for you is say look, you know, Avivo Suite's great Price Labs is great. They, they, they're, they're married together. We're going to maximize obviously the, the, our, our occupancy rate. We're going to look at our adr, we're going to look at our revpar and we're going to be able to say what is the best decision that we can make so we can have high occupancy and also make a little bit more money on this seasonality or periods of time frames when we have this high demand of occupancy, people come in and look for it. That also goes for payment. I mean that also goes for smart lock multi property reporting. It also is, you know, driving, you know, the goal is to drive bigger gains for the owner, operators at this point, 100%.
- [22:21]
A
Anything that makes it even easier to manage or drives revenue. I mean as a host my ears prick up. So it's, it's very good. And one thing that I've got to ask without giving, you know, the stuff away that you can't give away, what is new, what's coming along, what are you excited about?
- [22:36]
B
Yeah, I think the big one for me and one of most products I'm actually working on a campaign right now is our, is our award winning Avivo mobile app. I absolutely everybody has an app, right? But some apps are almost static, right? It's oh, we got an app we can kind of show you. But what I love about it is it gives you everything that you need to run your day to day at a glance, right? You can check your available inventory. You can do instant notifications, whether that be from bookings that are coming in that show up in the app to managing payments to guest messaging, which is always important. You can have that in a real time notifications, a real time Dashboard and it goes links into our AI powered inbox, which I think is very cool to talk about, because what that does is it's pulling from your direct messages. So whether that's an email inquiry, whether that's a source like an ota, if you aren't dipping your foot in the OTA channel of distribution, anytime, anywhere, auto replies, auto reviews, booking, pre approval, all that can be handled through that unified inbox, through the Vivo mobile app, which is absolutely fantastic.
- [23:48]
A
It sounds really good. And I know again from past experience that Avivo only does things properly. You know, like they won't just do it to tick a box. If they've got an app, then it's being done properly. I know there are and we won't name any names, but there's softwares out there who will just tick a box just to tick the box. Whereas you want it to work, it can't just say that it does it. And that's the key thing, isn't it? So we've obviously covered quite a lot of ground on this bite size podcast. But what I'd love to leave the listeners with is if there was just one thing you wanted the listeners to know about Avivo, what would that be? And then can you share how people can come and sign up or find out more about.
- [24:32]
B
Yeah, and I love that. And it's a good way to kind of wrap up this conversation. When it comes to this industry, when it comes to short term, when it comes to vacation rentals, when it comes to owner, operators, host, there's so much out there and anybody that's out there that goes to different events, you may become overwhelmed and think, you know, wow, there's so many different vendors, there's so many different tech, there's so many different people tell me, I need this, I need this and I do this. And what I always advise every time I have I'm on a panel or I'm speaking is keep it simple, right? The simple is profound. The right tech, honestly, should make your life easier, not harder, right? You don't have to go all in with all tech. You can piecemeal that kind of together and find out where your deficiencies are and how you can meet those, those kind of little rough patches in your, your day to day operations focus on efficiency, automation and guest experience. Ideally, keep your guest experience top of the list because if your guests aren't having experience, they're not coming. If you're not coming, you don't have a business, you're not getting anybody into your houses. So Growth will naturally will follow if as long as you just kind of keep it simple. So I, I tell my teams the simplest profound keep it simple.
- [25:50]
A
I love that. I love that. And, and how can we find out more?
- [25:53]
B
Absolutely. So you can go to vivo.comev I I V O.com and we can connect there or on LinkedIn. We have our own Avivo LinkedIn page. I'm on LinkedIn as well. Or as what my big thing coming up here in the United States, we're getting ready for our industry event season. That means I'll be at probably nine events between now September and December. Look for Avivo. I'll be more likely to be there as well.
- [26:20]
A
Very cool. I'm sure people come and reach out and go and check out if you're driving and you're listening to this when it's safe to do so, there'll be a link in the show notes you can click on and that'll take you straight over there. Well, thank you so much Jamie for this to see us out with the very last thing we like to have a personal mantra or any kind of life lesson just to see us out. What would you say yours is?
- [26:43]
B
Yeah, mine is, you know, I kind of want to keep it simple. But there is one thing for all those listening and all those that do attend an industry event or go to, you know, maybe a meet and greet or any type of thing where you're talking to industry professionals, people that proclaim to have knowledge. I challenge all of you listening, find one takeaway, one, just one topic, implement it into your day to day operations and be dedicated to it for one, for one year. And ideally, if you really follow that, that, that one idea, hit me up in a year, reach out to me a year, tell me what that was and how that changed your business. If you go into that mindset and be, you know, because you always got to be curious, you got to be curious to be able to grow and if you can go on that and take that one topic, I don't need five, I don't need three. Just one. One good one. Put in your day to day, follow up with Liam or myself in a year, tell us what that was and how it changed and how it changed your business.
- [27:43]
A
Very cool. Thank you so much Jamie for today. It's been a real delight and thank you too for listening to this on the Boostly podcast, the place where we discuss direct booking software and anything hospitality. If you want to continue this conversation, you can check out the hospitality community on Facebook. You can just type that into groups and you can come and join us for free. We can talk more about this podcast or any other hospitality topic that you'd like to. It's a free community. Everybody's welcome. Thanks very much. We'll see you on the next one.