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🎧 *Transforming Vacation Rentals: From Basic to Extraordinary!* 🎧
In this episode, we dive into the world of short-term rentals with Mark Lumpkin, the Sales Director of STR Cribs. Mark shares his expertise on how to create resort-style properties that attract high-paying guests and deliver unforgettable experiences. Learn how to take your vacation rental from ordinary to extraordinary with thoughtful amenities and personalized touches. Plus, discover why the future of short-term rentals is all about “unreasonable hospitality.” Tune in for actionable tips that will elevate your rental game! 💡
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Welcome to this episode of Vacation Rental Resolutions. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Mark Lukekin, the sales director at STRCrips, an expert in Airbnb design and renovation. Mark has an impressive track record in the Vacation Rental Industry, and we're thrilled to have him share his invaluable insights and experience with us. Hey there, amazing viewers. If you enjoy our episodes, don't just hover around. Dive deeper. Hit that subscribe button like it's the key to a treasure chest of Vacation Rental Knowledge, and ring that bell like your summoning fund directly to your screen. Subscribe, ring, and let's keep your adventure rolling. Our chat today at Vacation Rental Resolutions is with Mark Lukekin. He is the sales director at STRCrips. They're an Airbnb design and renovation specialist. Mark, you have an amazing record in the Vacation Rental Marketplace, and I really appreciate you taking the time to come and share your expertise today. Yeah, thank you for having me on. I'm excited to chat with you and hopefully add some value to anybody that's listening Ah, super. Okay. Are you ready for this? You ready to jump into this? I'm ready to dive in. Ready to fire. Actually, before we start, I'm curious about your background. I'm really interested about everything you do, but I'm curious about your personal background. Share a little bit about yourself and how you got into the Vacation Rental niche. Yeah, it's interesting. I think that anything most of us just fall into whatever we're doing, and maybe it's divine intervention, but I would say that my background really started with the love of traveling, and I had spent some time in Europe and Southeast Asia and did a couple of cross-country road trips in the United States, which if you live in a small country, like Germany, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal because you can get across the country in just a few hours. But here, it's about 4,000 miles. And so we definitely love to travel just as a person. And I stayed in a lot of different accommodations. So stayed in hostels, stayed in couch surfing, Airbnb's, hotels, tents out in the middle of Switzerland. So we really had a wide variety of accommodations, and we realized what things we liked and what things we didn't like and saw people be super successful with Vacation Rental's or hotels because they were operating at a high level and really providing a great experience to their guests. And we also saw places do really poorly because they didn't focus on what I call unreasonable hospitality. And so that division between who was doing really well and who wasn't was drastic. And I realized that the world needed to know what we had learned from our travels. And so when we came back, we started in the Vacation Rental industry. The United States market for Vacation Rental's is a little bit different than maybe Europe or Canada around the time of COVID. What we saw was some pretty heavy walkdowns was that the house itself actually became a big part of the vacation. And so someone might have been traveling to Scottsdale, Arizona to go see grandma or plan a golf tournament or whatever it might be, spring training for baseball. That was the destination and the reason they were going, but they started to realize that the house that they were staying in, they're going to spend a lot of time there. And so people were gravitating towards properties that had a lot of amenities and maybe had a pool or a kid's game room or something that was fun and exciting about that home. And so we doubled down on that and at SCR cribs, that's what we do. We create resort style, highly amentatized vacation rentals that everyone wants to stay at. They've got really high booking rates and charge. And some instances doubled the market rate for that night because they have such a desirable property. Excellent. No, for those who don't know, STR means, well, short term rentals. Okay. Perfect. Because I wasn't actually asked that earlier today. And so it's interesting. Yeah, I'll dive into that just for a second. Okay. There is actually a little bit of a stigma in the vacation rental world where you get a lot of air, we all know Airbnb, at least in the US and I know in Europe as well, is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest platforms that people use to book their property. But it's not the only way that you can book a short term rental. And so Airbnb has become really like the Kleenex of the tissue industry. Everyone calls it tissue a Kleenex, right? Everyone calls a vacation rental an Airbnb, but it is not an Airbnb. It's a vacation rental. You just happen to use Airbnb. And so it's a stigma here in our industry that people say, oh, they'll call it an Airbnb. It's not an Airbnb. It's a short term rental. So that's where our STR cribs was born. And if you'd ever seen that early 2000s television show called MTV Cribs, where they go in and they make a home just absolutely incredible for a movie star or famous basketball player, we're playing on that television show and we created the STR Cribs. Okay, so you don't focus specifically with Airbnb's. Other vacation rental properties could contact you? Yeah, absolutely. Anyone that's setting up a property to be a short term rental, whether it's a small bed and breakfast, a house, a boutique hotel, if you're going to rent it for a few nights and then have a new guest come in to rent for a few more nights, that's our definition of a short term rental. Perfect. And now I saw something a couple of weeks ago, and I'd like your opinion. It was a headline that said, Airbnb's are dead. What do you think? I'm generalizing that and I think they probably have been short term rentals, everything. Yeah. What do you think? That is a big reason why we're here. And I would absolutely agree that if you are thinking about a short term rental, as people did three, four, 10 years ago and trying to do what they used to do, which is just a location, a couple bedrooms, a couple bathrooms, an air mattress on the floor, and a hot plate in the kitchen, that business model, especially in the United States, is 100% dead. You cannot generate high returns because guests aren't willing to pay a premium for that property. But if you do what we do, which is where you create a really highly aminitized resort-style appeal, it's absolutely not dead. The industry is just changing. It's just changing from what used to work, the very basic setup and give them an air mattress on the floor. That just doesn't work anymore. Yes, our booking hotels for their cheaper accommodations. But when they're traveling with friends or family and they're looking at the house to be a cabin in the woods or house on the beach, they want that house to be really nice, give them an elevated experience. And that journey is definitely not dead, it's just beginning. So from what I'm getting, user experience is really important in your opinions. It's the most important thing. It's more important than anything else. Oh, that's awesome. Here at the vacation rental resolutions, we have a course and we focus on that a lot for aspiring, encouraged vacation rental workers. Okay, I own a property, but I'm looking to buy a property and I know nothing about the industry. I'm just thinking, it'd be nice to open my doors and maybe make a few bucks on the side. What do I need to consider before I make any calls or do anything? Yeah, I think that you need to consider a couple of things. One, you need to consider the regulations. And we've seen headline after headline of even Barcelona was the most recent one. In the next five years, they're going to shut down 10,000 short-term rentals. Well, I stayed in short-term rentals in Barcelona. And that's crazy to me. And so you want to look at regulations. I think that places that already have established regulations are a better investment for you to go into because you know what to expect. If you go into a market that is, quote, unquote, the Wild West, there's no regulations, everyone's doing whatever they want to do, sometime in the near future, there will be regulations. So I like to go into a market that already has regulations. I can read the rule book and as long as I abide by it, I know that city's short-term rental friendly, and they're most likely not going to drastically change their regulations, right? So that's one thing. The next thing is that the competition and the guest demographic. So how much competition do I have? What's the quality of competition? Are people doing a really good job? Or is this an under-serviced market that most of the homes just aren't great experiences? And I can come in with an elevated product and beat everybody out. So I'm looking at my competition, what there is, how much there is. And then I'm looking at the guest demographic. Who's coming and why are they coming? Am I in Nashville, Tennessee, that sees a lot of bachelor parties and young folks coming to experience live country music in a party town? Or am I in Aspen, Colorado, where it is more affluent people coming to the ski resort and couples and older couples? I really like to dive into who's coming, how many people are coming, what kind of money they're spending and then create a product for those people? So it might be a couples retreat that does better in a certain market and it might be a family-friendly property that does better in other markets. I really like to look at kind of those three factors. Then where do you gather this data? How do you find this? It's all inexpensively or readily available, at least in the US. And so you're going to use tools like AirDNA. You can get a relatively inexpensive subscription to that for maybe $10 a month or $15 a month. They're going to give you all of your competitive data. What are the comps? What are everybody doing in your market? Oftentimes, just a Google search will tell you how many tourists travel to this market every year. What's their demographic? There's a lot of great travel data online that's free. And then there's a lot of great resources on social media. And so I'll look through maybe those Facebook groups for vacation rental hosts and see what people are talking about, maybe propose a question, and you can also reach out to those local property managers. I'm interested in a house in Miami, Florida. I'm going to call three or four property managers and get their opinion, "Hey, if I open up another house, would you consider managing it for me?" If you did, how well will it do? What do you think? Give me some insight. So I'd like to gather some insight from locals as well. Transform your property into a lucrative vacation rental with our vacation ventures, turning property into profitable rentals course. The awesome news is that it has been revitalized and relaunched. Ideal for both newcomers and seasoned owners, this 10-module course offers 59 lessons designed to elevate your rental business, dive into expert insights with engaging videos, convenient mp3s, and comprehensive PDFs covering everything from location analysis to crisis management. Stand out in the vacation rental market by mastering key strategies and best practices. Whether you're starting out or aiming to enhance your property's appeal, join us to unlock the full potential of your investment. Click the link now to see how you'll benefit. Check this out on this game-changing opportunity to elevate your vacation rental business. Oh, excellent. Okay, so I'm thinking about opening the vacation rental. I heard that you're the person I should talk to. I give you a call, not really knowing what to expect. Walk me through the process. What are you going to tell me? What are you going to offer me? Sure. Our service is hyper-focused on setting up the property. So when you've identified a property and you're going to buy it, whether it's a one-bedroom, one-bath condo, or a 10-bedroom, 10-bath mansion on the beach, doesn't matter the size or the scope of the work, we're focused on taking it from where it is, whether that's empty or partially furnished, brand-new construction, or in need of heavy renovations, doesn't really matter what the asset looks like today. And what's the game plan to get it from where it is today to where it needs to be for that first guest to come in and unlock the door and have a great experience and a great stay. And so I'll walk you through that game plan for an individual property, and so usually that conversation is best had after someone identifies a property that they're interested in. We'll look at a few things. We'll look at how much work needs to be done, how expensive that work is going to be, what's necessary and unnecessary. You know, the kind of the famous term in real estate renovations is that the kitchen and the bathroom are the best investments in your property, right? You've heard that plenty. No, you're not sure. You've got to buy a home, invest and make the kitchen knife and invest in the bathrooms, everything else doesn't matter. It's quite the opposite in short-term rentals. People don't typically care about the bathrooms and the kitchen. As long as they're clean and functional, you're okay. They're actually looking at other things. So I heard some crazy statistics that folks spend 60% of their time in your vacation rental in their bed, sleeping. And so if you look at a 24-hour day, you might be out doing fun things for four, five or six hours a day. You're in the house for 10 hours a day, and you're sleeping for seven or eight of those. And so you spend a vast majority in the bedrooms, and so bedrooms and living room are actually the places we highly recommend you invest in. And so we'll walk you through where the money should be spent, what we can do to improve the property, what we can do to differentiate the property. Maybe you need a hot tub, because no one else has a hot tub. Maybe it is a pickleball court, if you've got a big backyard and it's an area that groups are going to be traveling to. So we'll really walk through that. We'll give you a timeline and a budget. Is this a four-week project? Is this a 12-week project? You need to know that because you've got to factor in your holding costs and cash flow and all those things. And yeah, we'll go from there. That's really what we walk through at the very beginning of a conversation with us. And if we're on the same page, we usually kick projects off and get them going quickly. You mentioned budget. I open up a property and let's say, "Okay, Miami, I'll use your example. I won't open up a property in Miami." What kind of budget should I have in the back of my mind? It doesn't have to be dead on, but ballpark, which should I be thinking? It's a good question. It is, it's hard to say because it very much depends on the asset and on the piece of property. Are you buying a brand new construction home? It's in great condition and just needs furniture to core and a hot tub? Or are you buying a home that's run down? It hasn't had a fresh coat of paint in 30 years. And it needs a complete facelift and carpets removed. But in general, I see folks, and remember, we don't typically do a lot of small properties. These are maybe three, four, five-bedroom homes, but we keep folks investing six figures into the properties. It ranges somewhere between 75 to about $150,000, and that's to really create a very unique experience and have a property that stands out above the rest. Do you feel it's important, me as an owner, to be hands-on working with you? Or should I let you do it and then hope to go out and then hope to. That's a great question. I always encourage owner participation. And I always like to tell people like, "Hey, have you stayed in your property? You should go stay in your home. You should be the first guest to check in and spend a week." And when you wake up in the morning and you need a hair dryer to blow your hair and you realize, "Oh crap, I don't have a hair blow dryer. Guess what? Your guests are going to feel the exact same thing and you better go get a couple hair dryers." And so I always encourage property owner participation all throughout the process. It's just going to give you a great experience for your guests with your hands-on. But your level of participation just depends on you as an individual. And that doctor who works in California and has a busy schedule is probably not going to participate as much in his cabin in Tennessee as maybe the retired folks who live five minutes down the road from the property that they're setting up. And so it really depends on the individual, but I always think you should have some level of participation. Oh, that's great advice. I swear by that. And yeah, I'm shocked at how often I've talked to owners, not only vacation rentals, but actual hotels who've never slept in their own properties. The bulk was my mind. All right. Now you suggested the budgets. You'd come in and you'd assess my property. You'd put together a budget. We all know in a perfect world that budget is going to be dead on and there are never going to be any other issues in a perfect world. That's not the case. There's always going to be something else that comes up. Do you recommend that I maybe add a buffer to the budget you recommend or would you do that? I don't think it would hurt to have a buffer. We try to typically give a range. And so we'll say, hey, maybe this is a 50 to 60 grand budget or whatever. We try to give a range at the beginning so that things are subject to change, right? There's always decisions to be made along the way. Hey, we thought we were going to do a queen bed in this room, but after we got measurements and actually seems like a king bed would be better and that there's a lot of little decisions you make that change your budget one way or another. And obviously, whenever you're doing renovations, there's the unknown. Hey, we went to replace these floors and the bathroom floors are rotted out. We've got to replace the subfloor and things like that definitely happened. So yeah, I would recommend giving yourself a little bit of a buffer. Do you have a percentage that you work with or yeah, I think that if you gave yourself a somewhere between 10 to 15% to maybe 10 to 20% buffer on any given project, you're probably going to be safe. We've done 500 setups and so we do a pretty good job on the front end of letting people know what it's actually going to take. Wow. Okay. Oh, that's impressive. Yeah. It's been a journey. Yeah. Okay. What is their weight? I could generate more income other than the heads and beds. Just the nightly rental. Is there any other options for vacation rental wars? Absolutely. There's dozens of options. The first one I can think of is pet friendly. If you can get a property that is fully fenced and you set up the home to be pet friendly, you're going to generate a higher AVR and you're going to have more bookings. I think a third of all travelers in the US are traveling with beds and most vacation rentals are not pet friendly. That's right. So that's one. The second one is a kid friendly property. Everything as simple as maybe a few thousand dollars invested into the property to give you a pack and play, a high chair, toys, reading material, a baby gate, some of those really basic things that aren't very expensive and you put together this little pack that's in a closet for and you take a very nice beautiful picture of it and you advertise this property as kid friendly. You're immediately going to attract a higher ADR and more guests because a lot of folks myself included are traveling with small kids and it is so nice to show up to a property that just has some of the most basic things like trying to feed a two year old that doesn't have a high chair is a pain in the ass. High chair costs $50 at Walmart. They're not expensive. They're completely made out of plastic. They're easy to wipe down. No one's going to ruin them. So there's very small things that you can do to really accommodate a wide range of guests. I've also started to see a trend with, I don't know the exact phrase and so forgive me if this is not politically correct, but handy cap sensible properties. I was going to talk about that. That's good. Okay. Yes. And I didn't personally think about this really until Christmas last year and my grandpa's got a prosthetic leg and my grandma asked, we were getting two big houses on one property and the first thing she asked is, hey, is this handicap accessible? And I thought, God, I didn't think about that. I don't know if it's handicapped accessible. Do you have the wider doors? Do you have the shower that doesn't have a step up, but has the bar? There's all kinds of small things you can do to accommodate people that maybe have some more needs on that front. And I've started to see properties branding themselves as available, accessible to people that have some more needs. And what else? I would say really at the end of the day, it's doing that data dive for who your guest is going to be and setting up a home that would best accommodate them. Do I have a property that is two minutes from this golf course and two minutes from that golf course? And I know that a lot of folks that are going to come to travel to my house are playing golf with those golf courses. Great. What can I do to enhance their experience? Can I do a little mini putt in the backyard? Could I do a golf simulator in the garage? Could I have a spot to park a golf cart? Could I have a golf cleaning station in the backyard golf club cleaning? There's all kinds of little creative things you could do to where when someone is going to take their vacation and they're looking through homes, you're listing jumps out the screen at them and says, wow, those people thought about my experience and this house is going to be the best for my stay. You're always going to win if you do that. Oh, that's excellent. Okay. Five hundred projects you've worked on. What are some of the most unique amenities you see? I don't think it's important. That's a good question. If you're trying to lose weight, is a personal trainer important? Sure. A personal trainer can be very important to your success, but the first step is just going to the gym, right? And so if you say, if you say, I'm trying to lose weight, but I'm not willing to go exercise because I got to find the best personal trainer that it's irrelevant. And so these very high dollar, if you see where I'm going here, these high dollar amenities, they are very important and they can drive ROI and they can differentiate your property. But if you don't have the most basic things like blackout curtains, a full length meter, some of the most basic hospitality things, extra pillows and blankets, things like that, your property's not clean, those extra amenities don't even matter because you haven't taken care of the basics first. And what I would say to the industry as a whole, anyone looking to invest in vacation rentals is get the basics done first. You don't have to go spend $200,000 to make your property better than everyone else's. Yes, it helps. Yes, if you want a top 1% listing, you need to do those things. But with the most basic strategic thinking and thoughtful amenities, like I said, blackout curtains, full length mirrors, things like that, you're going to get a top 10% property because no one else is thinking about those things. So start with the basics and then work your way up to the really high dollar amenities. I have a property, but I don't have a ton of money. Are there any ways you could share that could help increase my revenue on the short term and improve the guest experience before I make major investments? Yeah. I think to tie in to kind of what we talked about in the last two questions is just go stay at the property, live there for a week or two and amenatize it with the small things that you need that aren't costly. And so if you don't have hairdryers, you need hairdryers. If you don't have blackout curtains, blackout curtains, or maybe $30 or $40 a panel, invest a few hundred dollars and get blackout curtains. Just you can add a lot of small things to really improve your property and the pictures are going to be your absolute gold mine. And so I always recommend if you had your last $500, give your last $500 to a professional photographer to take professional photos. Oh, absolutely. iPhone photos are unacceptable. Stage it. Turn the television on. If you're at a beach, if you're at the beach, turn the television on with a nice photo of the beach that you're at in the background. Turn on all the lights. Make sure the beds are made. Have your dog sitting in the corner in a pile of jet, get professional photos. If that's your last $500, that's where you spend it. But couldn't it be as you were? Okay. This has been awesome. Is there anything that I might have missed asking you that listeners should know? No, I think you asked a lot of great questions. I know you asked about is Airbnb dead? I don't think so. I think there's a lot of opportunity in this industry. I just think it's changing. And just like everything, right? Everything's always adapting and changing. And the new adjustment and change is better guest experience, better properties. That's how you win. And if you're not thinking about that, I don't think this is the best industry for you to get into. You're in the hospitality industry. You worked in the hotels. You know how hard this is. I listened to your podcast where you're talking about you thought that it was going to be easy and you just check people in and make sure the beds are made. That is the mindset of a lot of vacation rental investors. Make sure they get checked in and make sure the beds are made. I can assure you that is not the recipe for success. This is hard. There is a reason that five hotel companies own 99% of the hotels on plant and earth because it's freaking hard and this is no different. So put your big boy pants on be prepared for two AM calls and just the most outlandish wildest things that you could ever imagine they're going to happen. And if you're not up for that challenge, then go invest in multifamily syndications because this is a lot of work and it's labor intensive and it takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Oh, Mark, this has been awesome. God, I really appreciate it. This is given everybody a lot to think about. So I'm glad like more information they reach out to you. Actually, how can they do that? I'm very active on LinkedIn. So you can follow me, add me, send me a connection request, and then I'm happy for you to share my email address with anybody. If you want to drop it in the show notes, yeah, so please reach out to me. It doesn't matter if you're, if you've got a property in Europe and we don't service that market or if you're just a first time investor asking some questions, I'm always happy to throw 15 minutes on the calendar and chat with anybody. No, no obligation. Just how can we help what value can we add to you and please reach out? This isn't great. Mark, thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it and we'll be talking again. Cool. Thanks, Gary. Yeah. I look forward to connecting again and love what you're doing. Keep up the good work. Thanks. This has been an incredible discussion with the wealth of information. Mark's expertise and advice will undoubtedly help many aspiring and current vocational owners. For those who want to learn more or get in touch with Mark, you can reach out to the strcribs website, strcribs.com. You can reach Mark on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/Mark-Lumkin-84B173142 or email him at mLumkin@strcribs.com. I would encourage you to check out Mark and strcribs. In the next episode, I will talk about Vacation Rental Tax deductions. And there wraps up another episode of Vacation Rental Resolutions. Make sure to subscribe and hit the bell and share with your friends. Remember, every successful host starts with a dream, just like yours. Stay inspired, keep learning, and make your Vacation Rental shine brighter than ever. Join us again next week for more gyms. Until then, happy hosting.
