Short Stays, Big Dreams: A Travel & Vacation Rental Podcast
"Short Stays, Big Dreams: A Travel & Rental Podcast" dives into the world of short-term rental management, the stay industry, and travel, offering insights, expert interviews, and actionable tips to help you maximize your rental business and explore the latest travel trends.
Short Stays, Big Dreams: A Travel & Vacation Rental Podcast
Revolutionize Your Hospitality Experience: Mastering Storytelling and Strategic Growth with Brian Linton
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Brian Linton, the visionary force behind Finding Promise Land, as he shares his incredible journey from the glitzy world of fashion to the heartfelt hospitality industry. Brian started young, founding a jewelry and resort accessory brand in college, then built the sustainable apparel company, United by Blue. When the pandemic hit, he shifted gears to embrace his passion for real estate, transforming a rundown motel into the chic Rex Hotel. Listen closely as Brian unveils the motivations driving this fascinating evolution, the hurdles he faced, and the lessons learned along the way.
We then explore the art of storytelling as a tool for creating enduring brand loyalty, drawing parallels between seasonal rentals and today's bustling short-term rental market. With a focus on South Florida, we discuss strategies for fostering direct bookings outside of platforms like Airbnb, emphasizing the significance of a robust brand presence. Brian also recounts the thrilling yet challenging foray into media exposure, including a reality TV pilot attempt for Magnolia Network, and how shifting to YouTube allowed him to connect directly with audiences, teaching the value of owning your narrative.
The episode wraps up with a spotlight on influencer marketing and emerging trends in boutique hospitality. We unpack the dynamic role influencers play in real estate and how property owners can harness this power to boost their visibility. By sharing genuine engagement strategies, Brian shows how even a few impactful collaborations can lead to significant business growth. Finally, we discuss the promising future of boutique hotels and glamping resorts as alternatives to traditional Airbnb rentals, offering unique experiences that stand out in competitive markets like South Florida. Don't miss insights into franchising opportunities with Ferncrest, which offer a simplified path for those eager to dive into this expanding industry.
All right, welcome my beautiful people. Today I'm super excited. I have someone that I've been admiring from afar for some time now. His name is Brian Linton and he has a very interesting story. Just to give you a quick background on him if you're not aware of who he is, but he is the co-founder of Finding Promise Land, which is and we'll go into that in a little bit but he comes from an interesting background because he wasn't in the short-term rental industry most of his life. In fact, he started a $20 million clothing business, and I'll let him talk about that business, and then he transitioned into the hospitality industry. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to Brian. Brian, tell us who you are and what you're about.
Speaker 2:Thanks, fernando. I'm Brian Linton, so I'm the co-founder of our media property which is called Finding Promise Land, which is where we share all of our behind the scenes stories and learnings and failures of building a boutique hospitality business, which includes the Rex Hotel, which is our boutique hotel concept, sort of mountain boutique hotel, and then Ferncrest, which is our glam ground concept, and those are the two properties that we're focused on and telling the stories of how we're building those through Finding Promise Land, so through our Instagram and Facebook and YouTube, so social media, where we have about 700,000 collective followers that that follow along with with our work.
Speaker 1:Super impressive. So so, brian, tell us your journey. Like what, what you know? You starting the fashion industry?
Speaker 2:uh, correct, yeah, so while I was in college uh, more than 15 years ago now, almost 20 years ago, yeah, about 20 years ago I started a jewelry company, a resort accessory brand, importing things like shell necklaces and earrings and flip flops and hats, and I was selling while I was in college. I got into entrepreneurship and I started going up and down the East Coast of the United States selling this merchandise to the coastal boutiques all up and down the coast. So I would drive down to Key West as a 19 year old and then I'd work my way back up all the way to Maine and I would sell this merchandise along the way. And part of the reason for that was I've always been really into business and brand building, but also because I grew up overseas, in Southeast Asia, and when I came to the States I saw some pretty clear arbitrage opportunities between the markets and the merchandise that I would be buying in, say, like Thailand or the Philippines and all these other places, and then coming to the States and going to these areas along the coast where they would have boutiques selling the same merchandise for 10 times, 20 times the price. So I very basic business model at the time, but I started arbitraging that and selling jewelry and and whatnot to those stores, and that led me into then the fashion industry as a whole.
Speaker 2:After college started a brand called United by Blue and United by Blue, which was the next decade plus of my, of my career, growing a sustainable apparel company into a company that at one point had a hundred people, $20 million in sales and several stores in the in the States and, um, a really, you know, a really big and loyal following of of about a million people were selling about a million products a year. Um, before I transitioned out of that in in uh, in COVID, during COVID.
Speaker 1:Nice. So that leads me into the, into your current venture. So because there's, there's uh, I mean you made a pretty big shift, right, what caused that shift and why? The hospitality industry.
Speaker 2:So real estate has always been something that we were doing in the background as I was growing the apparel company. We had done single family, we had done duplexes, we had done we actually did. We bought our first, very first house that we bought, I want to say in 2015. We made it. We actually had an Airbnb way before anybody talked about Airbnb. I mean, this is like early, early stages of Airbnb. We lived above it, we had a, it was a duplex, so we lived there and then beneath us was a one bedroom apartment in Philadelphia, sort of in center city Philadelphia, and we Airbnb'd it and it was phenomenally successful because at the time there was only a handful of Airbnbs in the whole city of Philadelphia and so we were one of the first ones there. So we were printing cash through that Airbnb and we only transitioned out of doing Airbnb probably in 2018 because we were just so busy with everything else that we had going on in life. We had a couple kids at that point, we had our business the apparel company and so we honestly left the hospitality industry to focus on other things in life and, looking back, it was a little bit silly that we did that, but so I think it was always in the back of my head that we loved real estate, but we loved really the hospitality side of real estate more so than anything, and so when COVID struck and we were in Philadelphia and we were looking for an escape, like many people in these cities were a lot of people that we knew were buying cheap cabins in the woods and escaping and doing that thing, buying a cabin that they turned into an Airbnb we started looking a little bit differently and started looking at rundown motels. So in the summer of 2020, so right in the thick of sort of that COVID year we found what was going to become the Rex Hotel and went to go see it. We closed on it in October of 2020 and moved our family there, so we literally moved our. At the time we had two kids. Now we have three. We moved into one of the units at the old motel and we lived there for a year as we fixed it up and opened it up, and so that was the journey into hospitality.
Speaker 2:Honestly, at the time, that seemed like a stopgap COVID project didn't really have long-term intention with that. And what turned out, though? It's a small little property it's only 10 keys um sleeps about 28 people when it's when, when all of them are full. But it turned into a wildly successful business and a wildly successful brand. Um, and so we started actually with a five. So so, basically the numbers of that is the Rex hotel. This little, little motel in the mountains of the Poconos, generates $500,000 a year, $300,000 in profit. We bought it for 242,000.
Speaker 2:And at the time, previously, you know the salary that I was taking from my $20 million clothing company was $150,000. So I was, I felt like I was doing okay, but I and I had this company company, but it wasn't really. It was more of a career. I actually had, I had investors, so I had a salary and it was. It was definitely more of a job than even though it was entrepreneurial. It was feeling more like a job and less entrepreneurial, and I had a paycheck right. And so then, when I started the Rex Hotel and all of a sudden we're pulling in two $300,000 in profit net income for ourselves, it was like man, there's a better way to do this than selling t-shirts and selling clothing and barely getting by. Even though we have $20 million flowing through the bank account every year, we're not making much at all. It's a very not good, not profitable industry.
Speaker 1:So that was the margins are pretty small.
Speaker 2:Huh, very small margins, very risky. Um, it's, it's hard to be profitable, even at 20 million dollars in in the clothing industry. That's why the rate of failure is so high in that industry. It's just a, it's a cutthroat, difficult industry. You're, you're dealing with retailers that cancel their orders and then, you know, put you under. You know we had, we had a three million, four million dollar. We had, we had a 3 million, $4 million business with target. We had a couple million, two, $3 million with REI. Both of those at some points, you know, don't order and then it changes the business entirely. Like you have this, this key, the key key, uh, customer risk, where you just have so many eggs in all of these different baskets.
Speaker 2:Um, versus with the hospitality industry, obviously, like we're more diversified, like when we're, when we're renting rooms for two, three nights, we're not relying upon any one given customer. We have a, we have a much more stable business. And then same thing on the e commerce front, when we're transacting online and we're selling $100 of merchandise to somebody from the apparel company but it costs us $50 to even sell them because of meta ads, and, and then the shipping cost and then the returns that come in because of clothing. All of a sudden, you have a website that's generating $10 million but can't can't make money either versus a hospitality business. You know, you're, you're, you're transacting this experience and you're transacting higher ticket volume. So you're, you know, five $600 for a stay right Two nights, maybe a few hundred dollars ADR, so you actually have this really profitable transaction that is not getting returned. Yes, you might have customer service issues and you might have to like refund some amount sometime, but you don't have this like 18% return rate like you have with clothing.
Speaker 2:I guess my long-winded way of saying it dawned on me that I was not passionate nor happy with my career in the apparel industry and it was really weighing heavy on me and creating a lot of stress in my life. And not that hospitality is easy, nor is it stress-free, but it is a very great business when you get it right. And for me, getting it right was not doing Airbnb, but it was this transition to building my own brands and building my own loyal following that comes and follows me and does my, goes to my properties and like really it's a community of people that want to stay at what we build and that's been the really interesting, eye-opening part of this all and that's why we are essentially over 95% direct booking rate on all of our properties.
Speaker 1:Holy smokes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, listen, that's exactly why I wanted you on this podcast. That's exactly why I wanted you on this podcast Number one, because what you're doing is not the you know the Rex Hotel and the glamping aspect is not unique. I mean, I do it, greg Barrett does it. There's a lot of people to the success that you had and I want to confirm that, but most of us haven't had the skill that you had and the foresight that you had to create that following so that you can have that 95 plus percent direct booking, because that is key. Those of you that follow my channel and follow this podcast. I've been saying this for the last four years you need to focus on your branding and you need to focus on direct bookings.
Speaker 1:Brian, like you, I've been in the short-term rental game before even Airbnb existed. Back before there was a thing of Airbnb, we used to call it seasonal rentals. I'm from South Florida and this is where I started my business renting out our properties. I house hacked, just like you did, but we used to call it seasonal rentals. Then Airbnb came about. Now it's synonymous with the short-term rental industry, even though I hate calling it the Airbnb business, because I'm not part of Airbnb. I'm part of my brand, but let's touch on when you bought the property, you said that it was really like a side hustle or project, because we were in COVID, there's really not much to do, but you had the foresight to document this. So tell me about that. So how did you? You know what led to that and what caused you to believe, hey, let's document this. Was that just expand on that, because that was huge.
Speaker 2:So the funny thing is about our social media following and our success with social media is that the first year of opening the Rex so we opened that in 2021, we actually didn't have a social media following. A lot of our early success with the Rex was we actually did focus it more on just organic social media for the Rex itself, not the Linton, not Brian and Joanna Linton and we we had marketing experience. I think this was the key takeaway from the apparel industry is coming into hospitality. We came into it having built a $20 million brand like t-shirts are not unique either, Just like you know, a hotel is not unique. So, like we, we knew the principles of building a brand and we knew we knew how to basically get that word out there. But the initial phase was definitely and this is to give some people actually some insight and confidence that you don't have to come into these situations with large social media followings. You can actually still have a very, very strong business and direct booking rate with or without a personal following. And so with the Rex, that first year, we were successful with just more of the fundamentals of marketing and the fundamentals of digital marketing, online marketing, social media, with really the focus on just the property itself, not the backstory so much. Now. What we saw, though, was whenever we started to on the Rex, on stay the Rex Instagram's handle, when we started to in that process, when we did, every once in a while, share the personal snippets of our life, and when we were sharing the before and afters, like for for just the purpose of the business alone, we were like on on, on this, you know the property handle, we were showing a before picture and an after picture of the renovation, and we were sharing, maybe like some insight into how we did it. Those were the posts that were just going bonkers on a very small platform, on a, on a platform that had, you know, 10, 20,000 followers at the time. Now, that is when we started to think, wow, there's, there's definitely interest in the journey, not just the finished product, and so then, we actually bought.
Speaker 2:Then we were buying the campground. So down the road from the original hotel there's this campground. It wasn't for sale. I approached the owners. We struck up a deal to buy it.
Speaker 2:In that process of buying the campground, I actually reached out to a network, a TV network called Magnolia. It's owned by the Chip and Joanna Gangs folks and part of Discovery, and they bought a pilot of a reality show based upon our life in promised land and the idea of documenting how we're redeveloping these projects there. And so we had a production company, we had filming going on, we had it was a whole thing and that was my way of thinking. Okay, if we can have a network TV show that highlights all of this work here, that's gonna be the platform that we can attract a lot of guests and future opportunities to, and everything looked like that was happening. The show, the pilot, was beautiful, the story was immaculate.
Speaker 2:I think we were doing a good job, but just one day, like pretty far into the process, it got dropped. Pretty, pretty far into the process it got dropped. And that was not, that was actually early 2023, believe it or not, so it was pretty recently. And when that got dropped, I was like damn, like. I just put all of this mind thought and all this, all this, all this planning and all this strategy into this TV show that now somebody because the distribution, they control that decision right, Unlike social media and YouTube and things like that one person at a network controlled that decision about sharing the story, and I was like dang damn, like I have to now figure out how to do this, because I want to do something, and so that's when I started finding out.
Speaker 1:Let me, let me interrupt you for a second Now. Did you own the content, or is that was their content?
Speaker 2:It was their content and and so, yeah, so they, we had a, we had a contract with them. They funded, they funded the filming of that. I was able, I was able to get a, a waiver. It took a few months that I was sent a good amount of that content to be able to use because they had documented some really great stuff. And one of our YouTube videos, one of our early YouTube videos, I think it's titled. Basically it's the one that says you know, we bought a rundown 1960s campground. A lot of the footage in there, if you watch it, is from the pilot show. It's slightly edited from that, but basically you can see the quality actually, versus, like my organic YouTube videos, it's a more higher production value.
Speaker 2:That's the show and it was called Welcome to Promised Land, by the way, so the show name. We weren't able to use that in our own, so instead of Welcome to Promised Land, I changed it to Finding Promised Land and I started my own platform and I was like I decided that we were going to go after the social media channel and, um, and it was quick, man, like like we blew up, like it took a while, like the first, the first month we were able to get over 10,000 followers just telling our story, and then we quickly got to, you know, 30, 40, 50,000. By the time Ferncrest opened up by uh, june of 2023. So we started finding promised land in March. By June 2023, we were already over a hundred thousand. And now you know we're, we're, we're collectively across our platforms. Like I said, we're over 700,000, but the um, the thing that I realized with that process and this is what you were alluding to is man, when we, when we started to really click on on on social media, we weren't showing the finished product and we weren't, we weren't actually even like posting any more of the before and afters on the property platforms.
Speaker 2:The brand platforms are totally different than our, our, our, our behind the scenes one, but as our behind the scenes ones blew up, it just organically pushed out followers to our brands, to our properties. So those grew organically. They're not huge. Like Ferncrest has 40,000 followers, the Rex has maybe a similar amount, but ultimately, when I go and I walk these properties and I meet people, nine times out of 10, they're our followers. Nine times out of 10, people are walking up introducing themselves hey, I follow you, and so we have tourism. Actually, that goes to those properties because they follow the story and that allows us to A get a great direct booking rate, get a very loyal customer that comes back again and again and again, and also create brand value that goes and transcends the cashflow value, because these are businesses, these are not relying upon Airbnb, they're not relying upon third-party platforms. If and if and when we ever sell a property or a brand, they're worth more because of that as well.
Speaker 1:That's a hundred percent true guys. What he just said is true gold people solid 18 karatat gold information. What he just gave you I can't express that enough. I've been preaching this for a very long time now. So, for those of you that are looking to get into this game, focus on growing and starting your stuff, but you really need to document and hire. If you don't have the capacity or the knowledge to do it yourself, hire a company like ours in the marketing side so that we can get you started on the right foot.
Speaker 1:I can tell you I've been in this industry for over 20 something years and I wish that God, I would have done it like Brian did, it from day one. I just didn't know, didn't know, and back then, like Brian mentioned early on, it didn't matter what you put on any platform. It was going to sell and it was going to sell quickly. But since 2023 onward, every year and it's going to continue it's become harder and harder. So you truly need to separate yourself, and the only way you're going to do that is by your marketing strategies. So thank you for showing that, brian, before we move on from the marketing side aspect of it, because I really want to touch on or go a little deeper on the inception and the finding of Promise Land. But what else can you add to the viewers in terms of marketing? Like, if someone's starting out right now, what should they be doing right off the bat?
Speaker 2:So, if they're getting into real estate like this, I think that the very first and foremost thing that we've already talked about a little bit, but it is really thinking about what is the bigger brand and message and story that you're trying to communicate through these properties. Like you said, if you just listed stuff back in the day just like when I did Airbnb almost 10 years ago you didn't have to have anything. You just put it up and that was that. But I think that, whether or not you're on Airbnb or you're really focused on direct booking, you definitely need to think about what are the key messages and the key brand moments that you're trying to create when it comes to this, because that's going to be the cornerstone of the marketing for us, for instance, with Ferncrest, beyond our behind the scenes story because the behind the scenes story is like a massive chunk of the marketing but it doesn't really end there the property itself and the amenities and everything that we speak to. We really focus on the family friendly campground aspect of what that glamping experience is out how to, how to, how to how to highlight that in a way that is meaningful. And the best way to do that and this is this is. This is true. This has been true for the last few years and it's going to be probably even more true in 2025, as marketing gets more competitive is leveraging influencer stays, but leveraging them in the correct way and not just trying to like, have a scattershot approach to just like oh, you have, like, you know, 500,000 followers. So I'm going to give you a free stay because, to be honest, a lot of the, a lot of the things with social media are vanity metrics. Now it's less important how many followers somebody has. It's more important how many true followers and engagement you have. Like, the engagement and the ability for an influencer to really create content that has a higher chance of going viral is is really important because it happens to every, every creator like me. I can post something and I can get 30 000 views. If it doesn't go, that's like. That's like low for me. You know like you know tens of thousands, but if it goes really well, it can have millions and you want to have the greater chance of success. So you're working with influencers that are posting quality content. You might even be paying them, but the actual impact of an influencer can be phenomenal and it doesn't require you to tell your behind the scenes story. It doesn't require you to do anything other than make sure that you're focused on getting the right people.
Speaker 2:Case in point Ferncrest opened up and one of the first influencers that we had stay there. We didn't pay her. It was a free night stay, so $250 stay. You know it cost us the cleaning right, maybe 30 bucks. She posted and within a few days we had generated $50,000 in bookings from her post because it went viral on TikTok and it was a great post. Don't get me wrong, but it was a concerted effort on our our our end to make sure that we get the right people and we have a greater chance of success. That same post could have gone flat and it might've generated nothing but the.
Speaker 2:The reality is that, like influencer, stays are highly impactful and you, as the property owner, can be your own influencer, like me, like I am my own and I am my biggest influencer. So when I, when I, when I do stuff and I can like and I can drive millions of dollars of value to my properties. But that's not always enough, because my perspective and my angle is different. I'm not a Midwestern mom, right, I'm not a suburban, whatever. So you find those avatars in the influencer world that are creating content that might speak to other people like them and that's going to increase the marketing reach substantially and for the best bang for your buck, because it's so affordable comparative to what the cost of, say, ad campaigns or marketing campaigns. And it's not to say that you shouldn't have some paid focus as well, some paid digital focus, but I think the combination of all of these things is what makes a marketing plan really work at a high level.
Speaker 1:No, I 100% agree on that. Now I want you to dive a little deeper on the influencer perspective, because you set a key point there and I want people not to misunderstand that key point, and that is hiring or get or teaming up with the correct influencer. Can you dive deep and define what that is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think it's going back to like what is your brand and how? Like is this influencer just a pretty person that wants to travel around and get free stays and like, is that, is that going to even resonate with your core customer? So for me, our core customer, say at a Ferncrest is like young families. It's people that want to have a camping experience but not do the work they. We have a playground, we have ice cream, we have a camp store, we have no cars driving around. We have so we have a parking lot. So it's very family, it's a family focused ground.
Speaker 1:So you know we Hold on one second, brian. Brian, hold on one second. I don't. I didn't tell you this, but I had a pipe just burst and I've seen the plumber coming down. Let me just direct them.
Speaker 2:Give me two seconds, yeah no worries, all right, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you, holy smokes, I'm tired now.
Speaker 2:How does it? You're in Florida, right? So the pipe didn't burst because of cold, did it?
Speaker 1:No, I'm not in Florida right now. I mean, I'm based out of Florida, but I'm building a couple's resort in in my vineyard in georgia ah, so you're in georgia right now yeah, so I'm clearing the land and I have my foresting motor and I knew where the pipe was one lapse of judgment. I knew where the pipe was One lapse of judgment. Now, I could have fixed it myself, but I called a buddy of mine who was a plumber. Anyway, let me see where we were I also.
Speaker 2:I know I was late and I was late and I apologize, I might I? I sort of have a hard hardish. Stop at two. I gotta get on. I have a, I have a call, but we can probably run a few minutes over, but just just to give you a heads up.
Speaker 1:Okay, so all right. So we've got like 15 minutes.
Speaker 2:Let me see where we were.
Speaker 1:Influencer stuff right, oh yeah yeah, yeah, the right influencer, yes, so yeah, I mean I'm a big fan of influencers, but I see too many people make the mistake of just hiring any influencer and I think that's a big mistake because, like you mentioned, and I think that's a big mistake because, like you mentioned, especially today, it doesn't matter how many followers you have. What matters is how many loyal followers that are going to buy from you, right?
Speaker 2:And also like are they doing a good job with creating content that is resonating? I hate to say it, but are they educated and do they know what's working with the algorithm and are they? Are they able to create content that has a higher, higher likelihood to hit? Like if everybody, if you could, if every creator knew that every piece of their content would hit with the algorithm. That's just that's not the case. So like, even even you know, sometimes my hits are are I'm like, really that that worked, that that's just that's not the case. So like, even even you know, sometimes my hits are are I'm like, really that that worked, that that, that, that that's getting out to a million people. Like I didn't see that coming, whereas, like you post something really good and you're like, oh man, that's amazing. And then I get to 50, 50,000 people and some people hear these numbers and like, man, I would love to, 50,000 would be viral to some people. Right, so there is a level of like that's where our larger following comes into play, where we know even a failure is not quite a failure but, at the end of the day, like increasing those odds, those, like you know, the batting average of the hits is very clear.
Speaker 2:But there is a lot of gamification of social media out there that a lot of people have very large following numbers that don't matter at all. They post content that's not hitting a chord. They very well might have purchased followers. It happens all the time. There's a lot of influencers that have done that. I'd say that bigger brands and more sophisticated companies can see through that pretty quickly. Even non-sophisticated people can see through that really quickly. If you see a follower and you can see their comments and know that it's not engagement, it's not true engagement, it's bots and things like that. So I'd say that that's the very basic level is like just making sure that that level of engagement is high and the chances of a hit, a home run, is high as well. Then it's making sure that person is actually aligned with what you would actually see their followers and their people staying there.
Speaker 2:Again, if it's a model that just is shooting bikini shots and everything like that and like aspirational, maybe she gets a ton of likes, but like does that translate into stays, like? For me, an example would be young family mom with a couple of kids. She documents herself like at the playground, at the tent, cooking dinner over the campfire. She has all these mommy friends that are like, oh my God, where is that? You know, I want to stay. Like, that's the type of engagement, that's the type of influencer for us that we want and that's how you have to think.
Speaker 2:Okay, if you're a couple's resort, you know, are you getting the right type of couple there that has a really genuine following that is going to be interested in it? Now, not all of them are going to work. Like, there's plenty of influencers that show up and it's not because of their fault, it's just the nature of the content game, you know, but that's why you got to take enough hits on hits at bat. So, like, essentially, if you have, you know, 20 influencer stays and you're giving them all free stays and 90, or you know most of them don't work but say, 10% do and 10% have, like a viral post that goes really well, well, those viral posts alone can generate. I, I mean it's.
Speaker 2:I have a buddy in Utah. He has a. He has an experiential glamping place. He just had an influencer stay. He did pay that influencer a thousand dollars, um, but he had an influencer stay go to 27 million views, wow, and he booked hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue from that, hundreds of thousands from one stay. So that happens. So that is the type of thing that you're just trying to. You're trying to curate your influencers based upon the prototype and the person that you think should stay there, and then you're just then. There is a variable of luck. There's a variable of algorithmic luck that has to come into play, but if you don't take enough hits, you're not going to have that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to go up the bat, Otherwise you're never going to hit the ball. It's not going to happen.
Speaker 2:And you can do it with free stays, fernando. Like like free stays are fine, like I've done a lot of free stays, I'd say that I'm looking more and more recently, especially just even because my buddy's success who, like you know, at first it's like you pay somebody a thousand dollars, that seems like that is a lot of money and they're getting a free stay. But then you start to think about the economic return of that and you're like man it. You know, even if you had 10 people, that you paid 10,000, and again, it's the power law. It's just like investing in anything. It's like you know, when people, when venture capitalists, make investments into startups, it's like you don't expect all of them to succeed, but you know that one is going to succeed so disproportionately better than anything else you could do, that it makes it all worth it, and that's what the influencer game is. Is is right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. Now let's shift gears. We don't have a lot of time left, but I want to shift gears and specifically talk about glamping and the eco hotel industry and the wellness industry, even though you did, early on, a traditional short-term rental when you rented out that apartment downstairs or when you were living. But your current two projects and the projects that you're going to be going into the future are not that traditional stay. So talk about that. Why did you do that? Where do you see the future of that going, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think Airbnb and single family short-term rentals have a. They're not going away by any means, but they have a difficult path to navigate over the coming years, both with regulation and competition, and I think that the people that succeed will succeed really well. There's some operators out there that have an amazing portfolio of Airbnbs that you know. I know that, despite anything, competition wise, they're just. The competition is good because the best will the best do better and the worst die Right, and so, at the end of the day, I think that single family is just a space that I won't play in, just because it is such a busy playing field right now. But I think that the white space which will probably get crowded in the coming years, but I think the white space and opportunity for operators is in boutique hospitality. And boutique hospitality is really not single family, it's 10, 20, 30 unit key type of properties where it's boutique hotels, boutique motels, glamping resorts, landscape hotels, all of those types of things. Those are where you can really not only see more return because you just have more units to rent, like, for instance, if you have an Airbnb in the market of the poconos, so like where we have the rex hotel, if I had an airbnb, a cabin, I could buy a cabin for, you know, say, 300, 400, 000 and then, and then I could put on an airbnb and I could get two to three hundred dollars a night for it. But I could also buy a ael, maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit more effort. But then each of those small rooms, even though they're hotel rooms, they're getting the same ADR, the same average daily rate, as an entire cabin. And some people are like, well, that doesn't make any sense. Why would anybody pay $250, $300 for a 200 square foot hotel room when they can get a cabin? And here's the reason Not everybody wants to stay in a cabin, not everybody wants a big Airbnb. Not everybody wants. Not everybody has like a big family or friends and not everybody wants to worry about the variable that they have in their mind now and the reputation of Airbnb scenarios where they're cleaning the toilet and they're like responsible for doing the dishes and the sheets and everything like that.
Speaker 2:We offer a hotel experience in a smaller, intimate setting and people are willing to pay for that. So a 10 key a 10 key like boutique hotel, like the Rex, you know, on a on a summer weekend can generate four or $5,000 a night and and essentially for the same investment as as an Airbnb. So the return profile is better with boutique hotels, but the effort is also higher. Like, you do have to manage it as a business, but as long as you can wrap your head around this idea that you're actually running a business and not just a passive like a passive Airbnb listing the, the, the return can be so much greater. So that's where I think things are going for operators. The best operators are going to become hotel owners, resort operators. It's going to give traditional Hyatts, marriotts, hiltons a run for their money.
Speaker 2:I think we're going to start to chip away at the institutional larger hotels as people start to look for that space between the Airbnbs and the bigger resorts. There's this. There's this zone that a lot of people are seeing and it's not different than what existed 50, 60 years ago. All of these smaller mom and pop operators. They just struggled until this renaissance has happened, where not only is this Renaissance of design and aesthetic and wellness and all of these things, but also technology. The technology that's now available that allows us to manage these smaller properties means that I don't have to be a slave to my property. I don't have to live there. I live far away and that didn't exist before because smaller properties had to have owner operators. Right, they had to be there. I'm an operator, but I don't live there because of technology.
Speaker 1:I 100% agree, and I wish we had more time to dive into that, because that's a subject that I'm very interested in, one that I preach a lot. And I agree with you. I did the same thing. So about almost two years ago we shifted. So I have a pretty decent portfolio of short-term rentals all residential homes but about two years ago we shifted into large. When I say larger, I don't mean large, complex, but for us the sweet spot is an apartment building that has about 10 units and we convert all 10 into short-term rentals, in essence, convert it into a small hotel. We did the same thing, not only in the US, but where we started experimenting with that was in Colombia. So that's where I got into the glamping industry as well. We started with the Geodome, we did an Echo Hotel in Colombia.
Speaker 1:But, going back to what you were discussing, like you, I firmly agree that the residential side, the traditional Airbnb that everyone thinks about, it's not going to go away. But as an investor, I think that's not where your highest ROI is going to be, just because of the competition, because, for example, south Florida has gotten crazy. I'll give you a quick rundown. Florida has gotten crazy. I'll give you a quick rundown. We just closed on a property that we paid $485,000 for that property and the reason we bought it not because we thought it was going to be a great Airbnb, no, we bought it was because of the equity value play on that property, because we were getting it for a lot less than what it's worth Now. Had I not gotten that equity play, I'm not spending that money there. That's why I'm in Georgia, because for $400,000, I can buy a plot of land, develop that land and my ROI is much greater than it would be in South Florida. And just the same thing goes into other areas like major cities.
Speaker 1:Regulations is cutting into the profits, but, like you said, it's not going away. Those operators that are operating at a high standard will do well and will be around forever. It's going to weed out what I call the wannabes right. It'll weed them out and we're already starting to see in terms of actual numbers coming down. So in South Florida alone we saw between Q4 of 2024 and going into Q1 of 2025, we've seen available listings drop so far by 18%, which is a lot. But for me it's good because majority of my portfolio is in South Florida, so I can get a better market right there. So let's close with the following two questions, and let me just jump ahead of you real quick so I can get you out of here Now, in 2025, you know, put on your swami hat and tell me what do you predict 2025 is going to bring for the hospitality industry.
Speaker 2:I think last year not many the data is still not fully out there but I think 2024 was not a great year for the hospitality industry. I don't think it was bad, but I think it was. It was a little bit on the fritz, like. We saw some softness that, you know, I wasn't expecting going in in 2024. And I think there was the political like condition of like being an election year. A lot of people are just fixated on that and so I think domestic travel in the United States suffered in 2024.
Speaker 2:And I I think that we're going to shake free from that cloud in 2025. And we're going to see a really strong, strong hospitality market in 2025. I think that there's going to be a lot of people that you know start to experiment more and more with health and wellness and outdoor life and things like that. I think I have a hotel I don't know if you know this I have a hotel in philadelphia as well. I have an urban hotel and I don't think the future is is is is really as good in urban environments as it is in outdoors. I think the outdoor hospitality market is gonna is gonna have its sort of banner year in 2025. There's a lot of projects that are in development. I I think that the attention to things like landscape resorts, clamping resorts, things like that are going to get really big, and I think that what you'll see towards the end of 2025 is you'll start to see some of the major players try to get into it as well.
Speaker 1:Marriott just acquired I was just going to mention that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was called Getaway, now it's called Postcard. I think that's the first domino to fall. I think that there will be consolidation that starts towards the end of 2025. Whether or not that be mid-sized players buying each other up or the Hiltons, Marriotts, the Hyatts, the IHG coming into space, I think it's going to be. This is still a smaller operator type of business right now, but I think you're going to see the smaller operators start to see some tremendous success and maybe see some interesting partnerships and collaborations happening towards the end of the year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and guys, him and I have not talked about this subject. This is the first time we're actually talking about it. Because it's funny, because I just did my so every Sunday I do STR News and Digest podcast and I mentioned how 2024 wasn't that great for the travel industry and I really predict, and for the same reason you just mentioned and we saw it in the numbers. So just to give you a recap for those that didn't watch my Sunday's podcast, q4, specifically November, december in the travel industry was the highest number of travelers that the US saw in decades, decades, but I think it was. What he just said was because prior to that, it was an election year. So much going on. The moment the election was over, the floodgates opened. It was so crazy in terms of domestic travel that I'm sure you heard the news Our American airline system just crashed. You had delays after delays in air travel, and don't even talk about vehicle travel I talked about.
Speaker 1:My home base is in Fort Lauderdale, but because of my project in Georgia, I've been driving back and forth. A drive that normally would have taken me six hours was taking me between nine and ten hours because of that, many people were on the road during the holidays. So I firmly believe and agree with you that in 2025, the glamping industry, but specifically the wellness industry. This is why my property here in Georgia, it's a couples retreat, but it's really meant for couples that are looking into the wellness space, because we have horseback riding, we have mountain bike trails, we have archery, we're going to have yoga classes, all sorts of outdoor activities for those that want to escape the city and bond with nature but also be active at the same time. Because we're going to have all those activities. The last thing I'm going to ask you is someone, first of all second to the last thing someone is looking to get into this specific market. What advice would you give them?
Speaker 2:Advice to get in this market, I would say that you know, don't try to follow the crowd. Really make sure that you're finding an opportunity in a white space that, like we're talking about wellness, we're talking about glamping, we're talking about these markets. I would say that there's opportunity everywhere. In hospitality, there's people creating crazy concepts and like, the more niche you can be and the more interesting you can and and and differentiated you can be, the better. So if you're, if you're trying to make the biggest bang for your buck, it's, it's actually not to do what everybody else is doing. It's to do something super unique for a smaller group of people and, um, that's a great way. Maybe the, the, the, the actual return on that might be smaller, but if you're trying to get in and you're trying to, you're trying to really, really make a name for yourself. You gotta be, you gotta niche down and figure out what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Let's close with this. What like, if someone's interested in either parting up with you or learning more about you, how do they go about doing that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean there's a lot of different ways. The best way is to check us out on social media. Finding Promise Land is the handle. You can also look at findingpromiselandcom for all the different things that we do as a company. One of the big things that we're doing with Ferncrest is we have a franchise system for that, so we're helping people set up their own Ferncrest is we're we're. We have a franchise system for that, so we're helping people set up their own Ferncrest properties. They don't have to build their own brand, they don't have to do their own marketing. We have many, many Ferncrest that are going to be opening up across the country in the coming 12 months. I just got back from a visit with one. Yesterday we opened one in Oklahoma. So if you're interested in getting this space but don't want to build it on your own, franchising is is a potential option as well.
Speaker 1:Awesome. All right, my beautiful people, you guys. I'm going to have all his information in the description below. If you guys have any questions, uh, either DM us, email us, subscribe to the channel If you haven't subscribed. I love you guys, and I'll see you on the next one.