August 11, 2026

#197 ​​​​From the UK to Texas: Mastering Remote Short-Term Rental Management with Joanna Woods

Joanna Woods didn’t set out to build a transatlantic hospitality brand; she just needed a home base in Grapevine, Texas, so her son could compete in wheelchair motocross (WCMX)—complete with skatepark backflips—which eventually led to her launching Pathfinder Vacations. What started as a personal necessity to support his international athletic competitions quickly evolved into a masterclass in remote short-term rental management. Operating properties from her home an hour north of Liverpool, Joanna figured out how to deliver a five-star guest experience despite a six-hour time difference and an ocean between her and her front doors.

When you’re trying to figure out how to scale your portfolio, distance often feels like a dealbreaker. We’re conditioned to think we need to be within driving distance of our properties to maintain control over the guest experience.

That’s the surface problem: assuming geography dictates quality. The underlying pattern is a hesitation to trust systems over your own physical presence. You end up functioning as the primary emergency contact, the backup cleaner, and the maintenance coordinator all rolled into one because you haven’t built an infrastructure that can operate independently.

Are you building a business that requires your physical presence to survive, or are you building systems that run flawlessly without you?

The practical next step is right in Joanna’s playbook. You build an elite local team, establish clear communication protocols, and let data drive your decisions.

Mastering Remote Short-Term Rental Management Across Time Zones

Handling guest communication when you’re asleep and your guests are checking in is a logistical nightmare if you don’t have a plan. Joanna tackled the six-hour time difference by creating a family shift pattern.

Because her son trains late at the skatepark, her husband covers the evening, her son takes the late-night shift when he gets home around 1:00 a.m., and Joanna wakes up at 3:00 a.m. for check-in emergencies if needed. That internal support structure, combined with a trusted boots-on-the-ground cleaning team and a local contact who handles trash bins and parcels, ensures her remote short-term rental management operations run smoothly without guests ever feeling the geographical distance.

She transitioned from simply seeing her property as a way to cover bills to operating a high-performing hospitality brand. She transformed an acre of land to include a game barn, an outdoor cinema, a pool table, and a cowboy pool. It wasn’t just about having a place to sleep; it was about designing a destination that commanded attention.

Why Co-Hosting Fits Remote Short-Term Rental Management Better Than Traditional Models

As Joanna looked to expand, she weighed her growth options carefully. Traditional property management comes with massive overhead. I know firsthand as a full-service property manager that I’m paying for repairs and supplies upfront for every property, racking up massive credit card bills before owners pay me back.

Joanna bypassed this completely. “If I had to start over again, I would absolutely move into co-hosting first because as a property manager, I didn’t realize early on how cash intensive the property management business is,” she shared.

Co-hosting allowed her to grow her transatlantic operations without the heavy financial pressure of securing loans—which was impossible anyway since she didn’t have a U.S. credit score. She secured her first co-hosting client within four days of posting an ad on the Airbnb dashboard, despite thinking no one would hire an overseas manager.

Hacking the Algorithm with Daily Data and AI

Remote operations require you to rely on data rather than physical drop-ins. Joanna actively analyzes daily search and pricing metrics in her Airbnb insights and PriceLabs to keep her business profitable. She optimizes her remote short-term rental management strategy by logging into her listings every single day to tweak photo orders, titles, or descriptions, spending just five to seven minutes on daily optimization.

When dealing with an owner who frequently blocked the calendar for personal stays—which actively tanks the algorithm—she optimized relentlessly and restricted the open calendar to three-month windows.

She also feeds all her property reviews into an AI chatbot to find the exact phrasing guests use. But she warns that AI requires massive oversight. Once, her AI-generated listing copy actually told guests to bypass Airbnb and book directly on her website—a mistake she caught just a couple of days later.

“It’s like talking to a small child,” Joanna warns regarding AI. “You have to be very clear and specific about instruction, like step-by-step instructions for what you want to do.”

If you’re ready to structure your own business to run on systems instead of your personal bandwidth, you can find the exact resources you need over at my website. Treat your calendar like a living, breathing asset, and remember Joanna’s advice: “Whether you tell yourself you can or you can’t, you’re right. So let’s tell ourselves we can.”

Click here now to listen to the full podcast.

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY POINTS:

Golden Nuggets:

• “Co-hosting is a wonderful way for folks who want to grow their portfolio and grow their experience and expand their team.”
• “If I had to start over again, I would absolutely move into co-hosting first because as a property manager, I didn’t realize early on how cash intensive the property management business is.”
• “Whether you tell yourself you can or you can’t, you’re right. So let’s tell ourselves we can.”
• “We can all benefit by hearing someone else’s story.”

Connect With Stacey:

Website : https://www.pathfindervacations.co/

Facebook : www.facebook.com/p/Pathfinder-Vacations-LLC-100095005793929/

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

 

Full Episode Transcript:

 

All right. Here we go. So today we are joined by Joanna Woods. And I’m so excited to have this discussion with you. But first, thank you for being here.

Thanks very much for having me.

You bet. Now for anyone listening, it’s pretty obvious that Joanna has a really cool accent. So Joanna, tell us where you are recording this podcast episode from.

So I’m British. I’m up in the northwest about an hour above Liverpool. So most people go, oh, the Beatles. There you go. But all my properties are in Texas. So, yeah.

Okay, well, I can’t wait to ask you about that. So first, talk to me a little bit about how you got started in the world of short-term rentals.

Okay, so we’ve had some long-term rentals in the UK for a few years. And we got into that because I used to, my job was as tenancy support. So we rehoused the homeless and taught life skills. And I kind of looked at that and thought most landlords aren’t providing kind of support services. So when we obviously then started to invest ourselves, I was like, no, we need to do a bit more than just the basic. So I guess I kind of came at hospitality from a different angle.

And then when our son got into sport in twenty twenty, he wrote a very random story. But he became a wheelchair user in twenty nineteen, saw some crazy American guy do a backflip on a nitro circus ramp and was like, I need to do this. And we just fell about laughing because at that moment he’d only just got his first wheelchair. We had no idea what we were doing. He couldn’t even self propel pretty very well at that point. But he spent all the Christmas break desperately trying to learn how to wheelie in the kitchen of an Airbnb, would you believe?

And so then he was like, he came back to us and said, you know, no, it’s an actual sport. It’s not just one crazy American dude. And, and I want to go to the skate park. Well, at that point we’d spent most of the, hardly been able to leave the house. So I think we’d have agreed to anything just to get out and start living again. So we reached out to our local skate park and they said, absolutely, you can do this, come.

So actually his first go was in the background of a BBC One documentary about another rider that happened to be already scheduled that January. And he loved it. We couldn’t get him out of the skate park. So that was obviously meant to be.

And then, of course, we all stopped because COVID. And I don’t know about you guys, but we were locked down until July from the march we were we were probably the first to go into lockdown um and so nothing could happen and then eventually they said schools could use skate parks so our local local skate park said come and work in the cafe area um and we’ll call it education so um that’s what we did for a little while

um and then they decided that the world championship should be online because no one could travel and that was the biggest breakthrough for us because all of a sudden we didn’t need to leave the country and he could put a video entry in without it costing us an arm and a leg flying halfway around the world and um so we did that he worked with a coach and they um the local skate park provided a filmer and we were there till three o’clock in the morning filming it and um got it on.

And despite only having been in the sport since the January and most of the year being completely useless, he skipped the beginner level, went straight into the intermediate category and came forth. And so that was our first taste of really what was to come. In twenty twenty one, there was no competition because we again couldn’t no one could decide whether people could travel until it was too late to organize the event.

So twenty twenty two. He competed in Switzerland and Germany. And that’s when they said, no, he needs to go pro. His skills were far too good now for intermediate. And so they put him in the men’s pro age. I think it was twelve, maybe thirteen, which kind of was a bit scary. But he got his first podium finish that weekend. And when we came over to California for the World Championships, he came fourth in the world.

Wow. So, yeah. So we’d already decided we spent most of what kept us going through lockdown was we were going to come to the States and he was going to do the world championship whenever that could be. And so we planned this whole thing. So we came for a month and traveled all around and ended up in Grapevine in Texas for Christmas after the world championships.

And I don’t know about you, but we’ve always on vacation or holidays, we call it. We always sit there and go, what if we didn’t have to, like, what if we could, you know, those kinds of questions. And we sat there and went, it’s just come forth in the world. We’re going to have to travel here more often, whether we like it or not. What if we buy a house? And we’ll just Airbnb it to pay the bills.

Okay. Um, and that summer we came back and spent five weeks in the height of the Texas summer, uh, house hunting, and it was hours in October.

Wow. Wow. What an insane story. Holy moly. So first of all, let me make sure I’m understanding because I think it’s fascinating that there’s a sport around this. What is the sport actually called?

Okay, it’s WCMX. So it’s the wheelchair version of BMX. So BMX stands for bike motocross. WCMX is wheelchair motocross. And so it takes elements of BMX, freestyle BMX, in the skate park and skateboarding. Obviously, a wheelchair isn’t quite either. So it takes elements of both. So he does backflips in the skate park in his wheelchair.

O-M-G. Okay. I have so many questions about that, but I know we’re not here to talk about WCMX. But wow, how cool is it that you have a kiddo that has taken what I would assume most to be challenging… a challenging predicament and turned it into something that is not only feeding him, but also introduce you to the world of short-term rentals.

Yeah. And then the next bit of the story. So we arrived in the end of November, having just had to have the septic tank completely rebuilt because it was done wrong by the previous owner. Spent two days in a house with no furniture. So we got off the plane and bought bookies, blankets and a coffee maker and pillows. Spent like two nights camping in this house and then went off to the World Championship.

with all a great big list of all of the things that we needed to order from Wayfair on the way back, because then we’d obviously have three weeks to get us ready to open. And we brought back the world champion.

Wow. That is so amazing. That is so amazing. So as you got your start in the world of short-term rentals, obviously your son has just been crowned world champion, which is so freaking cool. Talk to me about what made you fall in love with hospitality? What made you fall in love with the short-term rental space?

I think because we’ve stayed in quite a number of short-term rentals it’s much easier for us because of mobility needs and also dietary requirements and things like that we need a kitchen when we’re when we’re traveling and we’ve stayed in a lot of places that maybe didn’t quite come up to our standard and simple things that I kind of felt people were missing and so I think I came at it from a let’s create something that we would like to stay in completely underestimated the cost I mean like but like who doesn’t right right and so the first year we were kind of I won’t say basic because that’s not quite true, but not quite to the standard that I’d wanted to produce. And every time we got some cash coming in, we did a bit more. Reinvest, yeah.

Yeah. And then by the end of year one, we then reinvested back in to create the game barn because we’ve got an acre of land and a barn that wasn’t being used. So who doesn’t want an outdoor cinema in their barn? Yeah. table and all the rest of it um so we did that and then we did cowboy pool this last year so I think we’re pretty much there now yeah um but it’s just um yeah I really like the meeting new people I know they’re online but the number of people who will call for one reason or another they’re like are you in England

Well, yes, I am. Right now. Because they know they’ve rung an American number. That is awesome. Yeah. So I really enjoy that and kind of chatting along. And the fact that when people ring me at one a.m., I’m sat drinking my morning coffee because we’re six hours ahead.

Right. Right. How do you how do you work through logistics? Because I would also imagine that check in time. Is your ten or eleven p.m.? Yes. What time do you go to bed and how do you triage issues at check-in?

Well, we have an amazing team. It took us a while to find them. um their standards are impeccable and since we started working with the current cleaning team we’ve never had anything less than five stars um and they’re quite good that they will say this isn’t working or they’ll test things for me to make sure so it’s having those standards in place having a set checklist that they all work through

We also have someone local who will swing past there, pull the trash can out every day or every day, every week and back in again. And they will check if parcels have been delivered meanwhile and that kind of thing. But when it comes to the actual running of it, my son is often training when the skate park is closed. And so we’re up waiting for him to come home at one o’clock in the morning. So I tend to go to bed first. My husband will do the shift between times. Tom will then take on the shift on when he gets up. Sorry, when he gets home. And then if the guests still haven’t arrived, then they get me up at three a.m. as they go to bed.

right it’s not ideal not ideal okay but it works for your family right now it works for your family now we’ve started co-hosting um and hosting properties in texas um we’re kind of getting to the point where we’re like right well sooner or later we’re going to need to take on someone that can help us out with this but we’re going to have more cash flowing in to be able to pay for that so um Hopefully we’re getting to that stage now.

Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, and I think co-hosting is something that is a wonderful way for folks who want to grow their portfolio and grow their experience and expand their team. It’s a wonderful opportunity because you don’t have the financial constraints with needing to come up with another down payment, but it allows you to still benefit from the systems you already have set up, your existing processes.

And so I absolutely love co-hosting. I am a full service property manager. I am a licensed property manager in charge in the state of South Carolina. I’m a licensed real estate agent in the state of Ohio, but I do co-hosting throughout any part of the country. And candidly, I could really do it anywhere in the world because all we’re doing is taking our existing processes and you know, injecting them into a new house. That’s it. Yes. And then for the majority, obviously of revenue management and guest communications, it’s online. You can be anywhere. It’s all of that, having the team in place on the ground to help with that side of things.

absolutely and obviously because we’re not we don’t live in the states I can’t get a real estate license so I could never be a property manager but it so it allows me to to do that and also without because uh credit scores and things like that they’re not international right for our property outright okay credit we couldn’t get we’ve got no no credit score at all um So we couldn’t get credit cards, we couldn’t get loans, overdrafts, nothing.

Okay. And so that was a challenge, especially in year one and two. Sure. Because obviously we were wanting to re-spend and re-invest back into each property, or into our property, or into the business. And you have to wait until the money is there. Yeah. Now I quite like it that it’s a debt-free business. Right. Kind of gives you a little bit protection as well. For sure.

The other thing that, you know, if I had to start over again, I would absolutely move into co-hosting first because as a property manager, I didn’t realize early on how cash intensive the property management business is. Why is that the case? Well, I am… paying for all the repairs all the supplies up front for every property in my portfolio and then my owners pay me back essentially once a month so it is something early on i figured out very quickly, okay, I’m going to need a credit card in place to be able to front some of these costs. Because sometimes, depending on what I have to purchase for owners, now at My credit card bill is really big.

Okay. You’re getting lots of air miles. But on the flip side with co-hosting, my owners pay for supplies, my owners pay for repairs. And so the cash injection is so much smaller. And so again, if I had to start over, I would absolutely go the co-hosting route first.

Yeah, I think it’s been really handy. And I wanted to test that I could, I know I could do it for one property, but I wanted to test that my knowledge really, you doubt yourself, don’t you? It’s ridiculous. And you start thinking, well, I probably, you know, it might fall over at three. I might not manage it at four. But then when you’ve got five and they’re all cash flowing and you’re spotting the issues before they kind of happen, and being able to, we have a bit of a dance around the kitchen every time one of the KPIs goes up.

Go girl. And I really enjoy, I think, taking a property on that isn’t perhaps performing as well as you would like or hasn’t been managed brilliantly by someone else. I love those. I get a bit bored once I’ve finished optimizing and everything’s running smoothly. I’m like, now what do I do? What’s next?

So are you co-hosting properties in Texas as well? Yeah. Okay. okay and how did you get your first co-hosting clients well even that was a bit um backwards I kind of I’d always thought that I would just put the ad on Airbnb on the co-host um dashboard and um I can’t remember, I was out chatting with somebody on a Facebook post, like you do, in one of the groups. And they were like, you know, you could just go for it and see what happens. And I thought, yeah, why am I waiting till next year? Because my plan was to wait till next year. And I guess I’m slightly neurodivergent in the fact that I was like, no, but my plan says next year. And it wasn’t until someone pointed out, there’s nothing stopping you. No.

But I think in my own mind, I’d assumed that people would think that having a co-host that wasn’t even in the same country probably wouldn’t work. So I didn’t think anybody would really go for it. So I thought, no, let’s just dive in. I keep saying to myself, it’s one of my mantras lately, is just say yes. When something comes up, say yes. Just keep saying yes and let’s see where it takes you because you don’t know, do you? And so I put the ad on and within four days I had the first property talking to me.

I hadn’t realised, because I don’t think I’d checked, you can look at other people as well as if you’re looking for a co-host yourself. So I hadn’t realised I had the highest star rating out of all the co-hosts in the area. And the fact that I only got one property didn’t put them off because they thought, well, you’ve got more time to put into my property.

So the first property came online on the first of November. Okay. And then the second one came online in December. Then the third one came online in March. And then we’ve had a little bit of a change around. Two properties were part time Airbnb. So the owners were coming back to the property and staying there themselves quite regularly. One of the owners was working half the month in one state and half the month in Texas. And that was a challenge. I learned a lot from that because their algorithm absolutely spanks you when they come back it’s really bad um and then you build up and build up and build up and sort of you know once they’ve got and then they’re back again

right right right stop coming back no i’m kidding

So having to find my way around those kinds of barriers and things was challenging, particularly in winter. Oh, we launched that in December. Once Christmas was done, it all kind of stopped for a little while.

So may I ask you, I’m sorry to interrupt. What did you do to… deal with that situation where, okay, your owner is staying in the property. You’re having to block the calendar, let’s say for six months at a time. We both know that when you don’t have availability on dates that people are looking, you know, you find yourself lower and lower and lower and lower in search results, if even appearing at all. So how did you deal with that situation?

Well, we only kept the calendar open for three months at a time. And she blocked the dates that she knew absolutely were needed. We could open them again later. Opening dates is an issue. It’s the blocking of dates that seems to cause a bigger problem. um so that’s what we did um and i would every single morning without fail seven days a week go into the insights check where we’re up to on the last seven days never mind looking at the last month i needed like up to date seven day data um and obviously price labs gives data too so i’m watching the uh all of the comps I’m practically doing an optimization every single day I got it down to a fine art where I could do it in maybe five to seven minutes okay um and then going in and making changes to the order of the photos and the title and the description on a at least weekly basis um

And every time I did that, we’d seem to come up a little bit and come up a little bit and come up a little bit. And so we kind of realized the only time that didn’t work was while the stay was ongoing. If she was back for two weeks, that would, Oh, you were back down to the bottom again. Um, and it wasn’t until we got past, um, A little bit at three reviews, a little bit better at four, five really helped. Sure.

So then it was, they were obviously then showing us past the two week block rather than only to the last minute travellers. And then all we could do was use price and make sure that we were undercutting. So again, I was going into price labs and changing those prices to the actual comps that I was seeing on Airbnb every single day. So yeah.

You know, it’s really, really interesting to hear that you are making daily optimizations to your property. I was actually out at the Airbnb World Headquarters last fall, and I sat with their engineers. And, you know, I asked the specific question about is how often we’re updating our listing. Does that impact where we’re falling in the algorithms at all? And they told me, no, it doesn’t impact you. So what was interesting was based on that information, we used to, prior to that, we would optimize our listings every week. And so I thought, well, heck, if we’re wasting our time, let’s not do that anymore. And When, you know, after two months of not doing that on a weekly basis, I found myself scratching my head going, we are not getting nearly the amount of page views that we used to get when we were optimizing regularly. And so just on a whim, I thought, I’m just going to update these. And I literally swapped out the word spectacular for stunning. You know, I didn’t change… anything material if that makes sense and i think that day we had seventeen bookings you know it was mind-boggling to me so um i think i think the guy at airbnb led me astray

Yeah, I think you did. The only difficulty is that obviously there is a delay between the data in Insights is delayed by a few days to what’s actually happening in real life, I’m convinced. I think there’s about a three, maybe four day delay. So you are kind of working at… working on things that happened three or four days ago. But so long as the overall works in the right direction, then that doesn’t really matter.

And I also like to copy and paste all of the reviews for that particular property into one of the AI chatbots and then my list and description and say, what are we missing? Yes. Written in the language that they are using because that’s who I want to bring back.

Yes. I just did that exact same activity twice. actually earlier this week, because I have a few properties that have gaps for the summer that I wanted to fill in. And I, again, was scratching my head going, there’s nothing about this that gives me a reason why this shouldn’t be booked. So let’s explore this. In my listing description, I have my ideal guest avatar, what I believe they want to see, what I believe will, you know, will impact them from a trust perspective and bring value. But let’s look at my reviews because my five-star reviews are the perfect guests of who I want to bring back. So I utilized AI and did an analysis. And wouldn’t you know it, four out of the five listings I did this on, there was misalignment between what I was saying that I thought my ideal guest avatar would want to see versus what they were actually raving about. And it’s a quick adjustment once you uncover that. But I love that you’ve done that as well.

Yeah, and obviously from my point of view, because we’re all speaking English, but we all use very different words. And so sometimes I wonder, does it sound right? Because I’m writing how I would speak. Does that sound right to an American who doesn’t have any idea I’m British? I wouldn’t want it to come across, I don’t know, shouty or being funny with them or anything. And spelling. I’ve had to learn how to spell in American now because so many people were like what do you mean by this and I’m like it’s just one letter different it’s fine so yeah that made a huge difference yeah and I think now as well we’re rerunning that this week because of the new summer um changes on Airbnb because now AI has been a lot more um involved with comparing you to other properties um so I think making sure that you are talking to the correct person there’s no I don’t want guests to come and not be a good fit. So you almost got to write things in the right way so that you don’t get guests coming in that make complaints all the time because it’s not quite what they expected because they’re not your ideal guests. You’re kind of almost filtering people into the right buckets, if you will, from the beginning. That makes life a lot easier. So being able to use the reviews in an AI environment And I tell it, make it, make it so you can read it properly. Right. Make AI make this make more sense to AI than it wouldn’t maybe to a person. I think that balance.

Yeah. And I think also when it comes to AI, you know, it’s quite interesting sometimes when I’m utilizing it and I’ve prompted it in a certain way and I’ve given it all of my files and, you know, I’m assuming that it is going to spit out The correct information based on the input I’ve given it. And sometimes it does not do that at all. So if you are listening or watching and you’re like, oh, I’m just going to use AI and then copy and paste, it is very much an iterative process utilizing it. And also sometimes I will ask it, why would you say that? This property doesn’t have a hot tub. Why would you say it has a hot tub? Oh, well, you’re right. You know, you’re right. It doesn’t have a hot tub. Well, then why did you say it did? Everything.

I once made a mistake very early in my AI chatbot. I didn’t read it all the way to the bottom. It looked great. We’d only changed one time a little bit. So I’d read around that area. What I didn’t realize was that right at the bottom, it suggested finding my website and making a direct booking. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that could have been. I noticed two days after I posted that into Airbnb. Right. Wow. Luckily, nobody else noticed, hopefully. Yeah, certainly Airbnb didn’t appear to notice. Right. So we changed that quite quickly. But you do need to check absolutely everything and be prepared. It can’t read between the lines. You need to be specific. It’s like talking to a small child. They’ve no experience in the world. So you have to be very clear and specific about instruction, like step-by-step instructions for what you want to do.

For sure. I also love hearing you talk about KPIs, you know, key performance indicators are, you know, something that I have very near and dear to my heart. You know, in our Achievers Club, we’re measuring KPIs every week. In Seven Figure Circle, we’re measuring KPIs every week. Our accountability pods in our accelerator family, it is based on weekly measurement of KPIs. What KPIs matter the most to you and your business?

Revenue. Revenue. I mean, lots of people talk about occupancy percentages, but I kind of feel like that’s a bit of a vanity metric. Same with… My mind’s gone blank. ADR ADR is fine they give you little bits pieces to the puzzle when you’re looking back I like to look back and compare this month last year or you know that quarter last year perhaps and see where we’re going because I kind of find that as things progress and your ADR goes up perhaps or it changes and evolves over time you forget what you were doing a year ago yeah um and sometimes i’ll sit back and go oh, I thought we were doing really bad. I thought it had been a really difficult month. And I’m looking back and I’m thinking, we’ve done for fifty percent better than last year, which was worse part of really bad in that particular month. And so, you know, I think revenue is the key overall. But each little bit gives you.

Yeah. Yeah. The other things that are important to me, and I track a multitude of KPIs, but I’m also looking at my conversion metrics on Airbnb. It is so incredibly helpful. If you have not turned on professional hosting tools inside Airbnb, do it. If you are not paying attention to your insights on Airbnb, do it. you know, obviously it’s not a magic wand or an instant fix, but it can really give you great clues as to what you need to do to optimize for sure.

Yeah. especially when we’ve found in this year in our area that people are booking much later than they have previously. Being able to see that things have started, the pace is picking up, your conversions, more people are going from first page to look in. You can kind of get a feel for we’ve got that whole booking, that whole month, week, whatever. It’s coming, it’s brewing. Yeah.

And so I won’t put prices down. In certain circumstances, I know most people put their prices down at the last minute. If we’ve been brewing for a little while, as I call it, I put mine up in the last seven days. And that’s been quite interesting.

And have you seen the same level of bookings, last minute bookings?

It’s not an increase in occupancy, which is so random because they’re paying more. Right. Interesting. Maybe there’s perceived value in having a higher rate, right? And if you have the reviews to command it, why not?

yeah so i just keep looking sometimes i have a play around with give instead of giving the discount at the end i’ll give it three weeks out to see whether we can encourage a little bit more further out yeah but i don’t like people booking too far out i feel like if somebody’s booked nearly a year away i’ve left money on the table

interesting now are you’re using price labs as well correct

Yeah, I think Price Labs gives me a starting point. I’m using Feeling a lot more, I find, lately. I feel like that’s too high or too low, and then I’ll go and check what all of the comps are doing and so on and so forth. I haven’t had the confidence to go off Feeling alone, but…

Right. And I think it’s important to highlight your gut, your intuition is absolutely an asset to you. I would encourage anyone who’s listening or watching, if you are new to the game and new to managing revenue, Don’t go off a feeling, go off of data. Once you have that experience built in where you know your market, sometimes better than your competitors know your market, that’s when you still go off of the data, but you also layer in your intuition and your experience. And you really, really can unlock some… added value.

It’s a big difference as well between the experienced properties and the standard properties as I put them in buckets. The experienced properties generally have a higher ADR but don’t have as higher occupancy or they might it’s like having a property sleeps ten it’s booking at a different rate, different distance out from actual arrival compared to I don’t know a one bed for a couple. Right.

And so it’s kind of learning all of that first and then sitting back and going, I’m not going to follow that advice this time because I think this is how it’s going. But then keeping a real close eye on it to make sure that you’re right. For sure.

Sometimes you’ve got to test it. You’ve got to test it. This is all testing, learning, testing, learning. It is a constant test and learn. And same way with marketing our listings, with how we’re positioning our listings, test it, learn from it. What I think is also important to do, and Joanne, I’m curious if you do this, when you do make a change, noting the change that you’ve made and on what date so that you have the ability to say, okay, I increased the price and boy, oh boy, this helped me out or I increased the price and oh my goodness, you know, I went the wrong direction so that you can make a change back if you need to.

Yes, absolutely. I’d like to say that’s what I do. I don’t, I should because I’m the one sat there going, what did I do? What did I change it from? And it’s really annoying. So yes, that’s one of my areas to improve.

There you go. Well, I don’t remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday. So if I have to remember what I’ve changed, I’m, oh boy, good luck. Good luck. That’s so good. Joanna, I’m curious. What has surprised you most about becoming a host of a short-term rental or now a portfolio of short-term rentals?

Before… I was one of the really annoying people that just thinks you put it on Airbnb and leave it because you don’t know, do you? You’ve stayed in Airbnb, but you don’t know how it works. I think that was the biggest mindset shift in the first year was to sit back and go, i run a hotel this is a hospitality business we’re not just doing this to pay the bills because of as much as they were that’s not going to get us to the next level that’s not going to help it build um but i also think that maybe i was at a point in life um tom our youngest um he was he’s just turning about to turn And so we’ve got to that stage where he doesn’t need me, like a small child. And I’d kind of been like, oh, now what do I do? I’d worked from home and, you know, with various things, but nothing had really stuck. And I was more really making sure that Tom was there because of all of his appointments and medical appointments and so on and so forth. So I kind of got to that point where I was like, well, now what do I want? Who am I again? I’m not mom. Um, so I think that whole, that whole mindset shift was all part of the bigger thing, but actually, no, I want to do something for me now and I’m going to build this and I can absolutely do that. And I did

go girl, go girl. I love that. And for anyone listening, you know, or watching, that’s a great example of building confidence based on what you’re telling yourself whether you tell yourself you can or you can’t you’re right so let’s tell ourselves we can

yeah absolutely it’s all about mindset and even when you think oh shut up that’s ridiculous do it anyway do it anyway because you just don’t know I think um I think in life I’ve kind of looking back now I’ve got to almost uh looking back I’m seeing it was almost like life has been guided I’m not particularly religious but something’s certainly been pushing me in the right direction and even on the not good things in life that’s happened over the years even though it felt like the worst point at time that anything could happen do you know what I mean um looking back every single time it taught me something that I needed for the next step even though I would never have believed it at the time um that just has right the way through even when I met my husband he wrote my number down wrong and it worked he guessed the correct number wow see it’s just there’s little things like that all the way through um so yeah just do it just do it when I saw your ad um you know asking people did they want to come on and I was I’m very much in my just say yes to everything right now then I sat back and went I don’t look like

we do it to ourselves we do it to ourselves yeah we sure do I don’t look like those people or whatever Girl, you absolutely fit. It doesn’t matter what color you are, what race you are, what part of the world you’re in. I believe we can all benefit by hearing someone else’s story, right? So I appreciate your willingness to come on and share your story.

Yeah. And I’ve even changed my picture back to instead of the logo.

There you go. You go girl. All right. I want to move to the lightning round. Okay. I’m going to ask you a few questions and just ask you to answer with the very first thing that comes to mind. First question. Where is your favorite place to vacation?

over the years it’s been a little tiny island called Jersey which was the namesake for New Jersey they gave them a statue and it’s nine miles by three and it’s just off the coast of France and it’s very lovely I’m trying to think Other than there, we’ve been to so many places. I think there has to be my favorite. It feels like home. You know, we just get off the plane and go, I’ve arrived. But then I feel like that when I get off the plane in Austin too.

Well, there you go. Yeah. I love that. Okay. What’s one place you’ve never been that you want to visit?

Oh, again, I have a massive list. Australia, for sure. We keep saying that they’re trying to get the sport in the Olympics and the next chance might be Brisbane, and if that’s the case, I’ve told them I’m getting on the plane with them because that would then do that one. Hawaii, who doesn’t want to do a bit of Hawaii fiver? It’s all these places.

There you go. Hawaii’s pretty amazing. Yeah, it’s in the film. It’s on the telly.

Okay. Next question. What’s one thing you know now that you wished you knew when you were starting out in the world of short-term rentals?

Okay. budget better I spent almost a year before we bought the house I was listening to you and I was listening to about three or four other podcasts I think I’ve listened to all of them from episode number one wow um yeah just because it was the free way to get as much information I was was absolutely possible um but I even did things that I knew weren’t I shouldn’t be doing um everyone said you’ll spend more did I listen no no you’ve just got to find your own way through I think partly um I think the more you have to struggle with something the more you will look outside the box and find a way a creative way round um to fix whatever it is um and that’s that’s been quite handy actually with um with guests you know when they’ve phoned up and said the remote control stopped working or I don’t know, some random other thing. We’ve got to think outside the box because I can’t fly eleven hours to bring somebody a battery.

Right, right.

Or, you know, so I think that’s been the most useful.

Interesting. Love that. Okay. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Hmm. I can’t think. My brain’s gone blank. Anything that your mom told you, anything your grandma told you, anything you learned growing up?

I think looking back at like kind of my childhood, it was very much the British stiff upper lip. And that does not work, let me tell you, in the States. Yeah. there you go I think I’ve gained more um because of the networking that I’ve done in the states because I’ve kind of like loosened up and just thought go for it whereas in the UK it’s a very different cultural background sure so yeah just do it I think probably like off

There you go. Thank you, Nike. There you go. Last question. What’s one thing and or person that you’re grateful for today?

Um, my kids, I think, um, I always thought as a parent that you were the ones supposed to be teaching them the other way around. I’ve learned such a lot from children. Um, yeah, I think that’s something. And I think, I think they’ve taught me to, you never stop learning. Just keep, keep going. The minute you think you know it all, you’ve given up.

Yeah. Yeah. Amen. Lifelong learner. I think that’s the key. Love that. Joanna, if folks want to learn more about you or maybe looking for a co-host in Texas, where is the best place for them to find you online?

Our website is pathfindervacations.co or we’re on Facebook and Instagram. I think the Pathfinder Vacations LLC.

Love it. Yay, Joanna. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. It’s been good. Yeah. Yay.

 

 

 

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