Direct vs. OTA Is the Wrong Argument, And These Numbers Prove It Nobody told me direct booking was supposed to be hard. I didn’t know it was a whole debate with sides and conference panels. I was employee number four at a resort that barely existed yet, and every booking we had belonged to Airbnb. […]
AI Search Didn’t Change the Rules, It Just Raised the Stakes on the Boring Stuff A family planning a trip to the Smokies used to open Google and type “cabin rentals Gatlinburg hot tub.” Now they open ChatGPT and ask, “where should six of us stay near the Smokies with a hot tub and good […]
Five Parts, One Loop: What a Vacation Rental Marketing System Actually Looks Like I can usually find the broken part within an hour of walking in. Not because I’m clever, but because it’s almost always the same break that I’ve seen every time I’ve audited marketing operations for short term rentals. The operator sits me […]
Why Your Creator Marketing Keeps Breaking Down And How to Fix the Part Nobody Talks About I talk to vacation rental operators every week, and almost every one who has tried creator marketing tells me some version of the same story. They found a creator. The creator had a good following, the right aesthetic, an […]
Creator Marketing for Vacation Rentals: Why Campaigns Fail and Programs Compound On creator marketing, borrowed trust, and why brand safety is asking the wrong question. Sarah Stahl spoke at The Uprising on micro-creators and the future of trust-based marketing as a result working with 500+ creators in travel, hospitality & local lifestyle. From what I’ve […]
How to Calculate Marketing ROI for Your Vacation Rental Property Most vacation rental operators know their occupancy rate. Most know their average nightly rate. Very few can tell you whether the marketing spend behind those numbers is actually paying off — or where it’s quietly leaking. And not knowing how to calculate marketing ROI for […]