Top 5% Airbnb Strategy: How Premium Vacation Rentals Beat Saturation

Ryan Moyer (00:00)
Another big one is our direct bookings workflow. A lot of people, it’s become very popular in the industry to create a direct booking website so you’re not stuck paying the service fees on the platforms and whatnot. But the reality of that is most people are just building websites and a website on its own doesn’t really do much.

⁓ We’re selling very high ticket items, even a non top tier Airbnb, it’s still several thousand dollars for someone to book a place. That’s not like going online and buying a coffee mug or something, right? People aren’t gonna go to a website they’ve never heard of and just book it the first time they’re there. And that’s what most people are offering.

Michelle Tack (00:32)
Right.

Hey everyone, welcome to our Real Estate Pros podcast a power by Investor Fuel. We’ve got a great operator with us today named Ryan Moyer. Ryan, say hello.

Ryan Moyer (02:22)
Hello, everyone.

Michelle Tack (02:24)
Ryan is here to help us understand more about what he does and his business that can be beneficial to the group. But what I was really ⁓ interested in and what I spoke with ⁓ Ryan prior to starting our podcast today is the operational fluency that he has in terms of his business.

and really getting it down to a well oil machine and the strengths in the rental vacation ⁓ area. So I’m gonna turn it over to Ryan and Ryan, I’d love for you to describe what your main focus is these days, where you operate ⁓ and what you’re doing. So turn it over to you.

Ryan Moyer (03:16)
Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓ so I’m both a short-term rental, ⁓ real estate investor, and I also run a short-term rental property management company. So, you know, that’s, properties listed, you know, for as vacation rentals on Airbnb, VRBO, the like, ⁓ also our own website. ⁓ our, our main niche, like we operate in multiple markets across Florida and Utah. We’re capable of operating anywhere.

expanding, you know, our primary, the majority of our houses right now are in the Orlando-Kissimmee area near Disney. So our kind of our niche there is the kind of Disney-fied houses, right, where people go and the house is almost cooler than Disney World, right? Like at my personal property, we have like a three-quarter size X-wing and a TIE fighter that shoot lasers at each other that the kids can climb in and sleep in. ⁓ you know, arcades with, you know, real arcade games, not, you know, little tabletop ones. You know, one of the properties has a big

Michelle Tack (04:04)
Wow.

Ryan Moyer (04:14)
Transformers like you see in the real arcades and theaters and pools and spots. So really experiential Airbnbs where those are kind of what are still really running the market right now. know, short-term rentals in the middle have kind of gotten a little over competitive saturated, but stuff at the high end where the, you know, the guest is really getting a next level experience are still really kind of where we want to be right now.

Michelle Tack (04:32)
Mm-hmm.

You had mentioned to me, which I thought was really fascinating, sort of where you began, which was with a couple of Airbnbs that you did yourself, right? And learned from that process before COVID. And then, you know, and a lot of people, as you had mentioned, sort of, you know, got into the business and then, you know, reality set in after COVID, more competition. How were you able to keep your machine running smoothly in the business? What did you incorporate that

Ryan Moyer (04:50)
Yes.

Michelle Tack (05:12)
allowed you to do that and stay competitive.

Ryan Moyer (06:01)
Yeah, that’s a great question because it’s just like you said, right? ⁓ Things were going great. We had COVID. Then coming out of COVID, things were going even better because everyone was traveling. I think a lot of people got into the industry around that time. It was great. You put up whatever property you wanted, just put it on Airbnb and it would book itself for a lot of money. ⁓ As more and more people got in, as the market matured, as any asset class does, as short-term rentals matured, became less risky, more knowledge about them, more people entered, returns.

kind of shrunk, in the middle, just because the baseline of competition got higher, right? People were doing a better job of keeping good reviews, doing good listings, that kind of thing. And then also more properties available. ⁓ So our thing has always been, you want to operate in that top 5%, top 10%, that’s where the real money is to be made.

⁓ And that’s in each different facet of the business because that’s not just the property itself. It’s important that the property is unique ⁓ But there are a of places where people are still still leaving a lot of meat on the bone in terms of We do some some different things in terms of how we optimize our listings relative to a traditional listing ⁓ Revenue management is a big one. You know, a lot of people are either You just setting a price or they’re doing dynamic pricing either through Airbnb’s which is

a mistake because Airbnb, right, as a company only makes money when they get bookings. So they’re pricing for occupancy, not for revenue. Like an owner’s interest in revenue, Airbnb just wants occupancy, so they’re making money. ⁓ And then even when people use dynamic pricing, like real dynamic pricing, like price labs and stuff, they’re just kind of setting it generically, right? But we’re diving in with, you know, in-depth algorithms, looking at actual comp sets.

for pricing, pricing is a full-time job in itself and people don’t spend nearly the time and effort there that they should optimize it.

Another big one is our direct bookings workflow. A lot of people, it’s become very popular in the industry to create a direct booking website so you’re not stuck paying the service fees on the platforms and whatnot. But the reality of that is most people are just building websites and a website on its own doesn’t really do much.

⁓ We’re selling very high ticket items, even a non top tier Airbnb, it’s still several thousand dollars for someone to book a place. That’s not like going online and buying a coffee mug or something, right? People aren’t gonna go to a website they’ve never heard of and just book it the first time they’re there. And that’s what most people are offering.

Michelle Tack (08:35)
Right.

Ryan Moyer (08:41)
So our whole thing is the actual marketing sequence, offering the guest something of value, the looker something of value.

⁓ And then getting them onto a marketing campaign where we can nurture them and grow trust with them by providing them value and getting them to eventually book. Same thing with on the back end, when a guest checks out, they enter a rebooking sequence where they’re getting marketing materials to try to keep us fresh in their head for the next time they book to come back, stay at the same house, another one of our houses, ⁓ refer friends, that kind of thing. ⁓ And we’ve grown our direct booking business.

Michelle Tack (09:10)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Moyer (09:19)
very quickly ⁓ with that more in-depth approach to it. And then just operationally maintaining super high review scores. We’ve really ironed that all out to make sure we’re operating at the top on quality.

Michelle Tack (09:34)
That’s awesome. mean, you you’re doing something very bespoke and takes a lot of effort. Can you talk, you know, there’s always, as we talked about before, ⁓ anybody that’s been in business that has been there for a while, not just dabbling in it has, even though it’s a dabble, has experienced a challenge, right, with a property or owner or with legalese or what have you, but was able to pivot quickly.

and to address it. Can you give an example of perhaps how you’ve done that recently to give the folks on the podcast an idea of how you did that?

Ryan Moyer (10:48)
Yeah, this industry, the short-term rental industry was made for challenges and pivoting quickly, right? This is a very fast moving business. Things come up that are unforeseeable at times. But I would say in a more broad sense, the operational side of things was my personal, you know, most difficult thing to grow, you know. It’s very different running a couple of Airbnbs that I own, a couple of short-term rentals that I own versus running, you know,

Michelle Tack (10:54)
Hahaha!

Ryan Moyer (11:17)
10, 15, 20, 25 for clients. The things that, the way of approaching that is completely different, right? We’ve had to completely streamline our systems to make sure, you know, we’re dotting every I, crossing every T. You know, when a guest checks out, you know, our cleaners know exactly what’s going on. They go in there, we have software they use where they have a checklist of all the things they need to check, all the photos they need to take. So if there are any issues, we’re notified of them immediately. And then also when they turn over a property,

⁓ having it inspected and in that software with photos so we know exactly what the property looks like and our owners love that too because they get those reports also you know so even if they’re only at their property once every year or two they’re getting reports on every turnover of this is this is what the property looks like ⁓ you know these blinds are getting a little old you know all that kind of stuff ⁓ so when I first started that was a learning process for me because

Michelle Tack (11:56)
Uh-huh.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Ryan Moyer (12:13)
My first couple that I brought on, it just came kind of organically. People asked me to do the same thing I was doing for myself, for them. And I kind of thought I would just handle it, kind of wing it. When there’s a problem, I call someone and they’re plumber and get it taken care of. And I quickly came to learn that was not acceptable for a client. They needed things much more diligent, documented. have all our SOPs and everything we follow now. So growing to be that kind of business owner.

Michelle Tack (12:25)
Yeah.

Ryan Moyer (12:41)
was definitely my biggest challenge. And I think that’s a common one probably. ⁓ Yeah, but I’m very happy with where we’ve gotten with that.

Michelle Tack (12:43)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you’ve done a great job. mean, I love that conversation we had about, you know, the fact that you’ve got, you know, obviously computers and like a Star Wars Airbnb and how, you know, one of the machines went out and that you had to like, you have a network of people that can now service it versus, you know, it’s easy to lose trust really quickly with a high end property, right? And if something isn’t working, so kudos to you.

So what’s your next real goal that you see in the future for you?

Ryan Moyer (13:24)
I want to, my goal is to keep growing in both aspects, both my own personal portfolio of short-term rentals and also the management company. I’ve dabbled with the idea of acquisition on similarly sized management companies to bring in additional properties all at once. Because one thing I learned when I went through that operational learning process is I don’t want to be chasing my tail.

I’ve made sure to hire and train and build those processes with the idea that we can absorb additional properties without, you know, we’re pre-scaling essentially, right? We’re ready for the growth instead of getting those on, being overwhelmed and having to chase it. ⁓ So that’s what I’ve told with on that front. I would like to help people more. I’ve done this for clients where we manage their property.

Michelle Tack (14:00)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ryan Moyer (14:14)
and they want to buy another and then I’ve helped them through the whole process of how do I find a property or will you do it for me? How do I, you know, renovate a property, you know, or will you do it for me? From start to finish more acquisition, upgrades and management and operations. So I’d like to scale more onto that part of things too. And I’ve done it, you know, a few times with existing clients. ⁓ Cause there are a lot of people who want to get into short-term rentals. They just don’t know what they don’t know, right? They, they,

Michelle Tack (14:16)
Yep, that’s awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Moyer (14:44)
Yeah, they come in in the middle and then they’re surprised that the returns aren’t what they were expecting for what is a nice house. ⁓ But it’s just a very specific buy box right now that is really successful.

Michelle Tack (14:55)
Yeah, absolutely.

One last theme that I’d like to just ⁓ touch on before we close today is the art and the importance of a network, building a network of people, regardless of who they are, to assist in you reaching your goals. Can you talk a little bit about that? How you got about that? ⁓ I think folks will be interested in hearing about that.

Ryan Moyer (16:04)
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s crucial in this industry. I mean, it’s real estate, right? So I think with most real estate, networking is super duper important. ⁓ It’s very, one thing I love about this industry is everybody’s very friendly and open and there’s not a lot of gatekeeping and stuff, right? I’m the same way, you know, people ask me, I’ll open the books, right? Like I’ll talk to people about anything. I’m happy to jump on calls and just help people. Cause people did that for me when I was getting started too, I’m my first.

Michelle Tack (16:25)
Right?

Ryan Moyer (16:31)
And so it’s kind of a pay it forward type thing. And there are organizations like VRMA that are, you know, as a network of vacation rental managers, I honestly have had amazing success with just Facebook groups. They’re, I started my own. Maybe I’ll pitch that at the end. ⁓ But yeah, just, ⁓ you know, so many operators of individual properties, management companies, all that kind of stuff, bouncing ideas off each other. ⁓

Michelle Tack (16:48)
⁓ awesome, that’s great.

Ryan Moyer (16:59)
ironing out processes, marketing techniques, all those kind of things. So if I can’t throw it out there, mine is just called Beating Airbnb Saturation. And the concept of that group is a lot of people are, I’ve seen returns come down since 2021, 2022. And we did too for 23 and 24. And really, even though the market hasn’t really corrected, like our returns have in a lot of ways corrected. So.

It’s kind of those things I talked about earlier that we’re doing that are working where I just kind of share them and other people share their successes too. And that’s been really helpful for people seeing what kind of changes in a listing can make a difference that are easy to do or what kind of approaches to revenue management, what amenities offer the best returns, ⁓ those kind of things.

Michelle Tack (17:49)
That’s awesome. Well, you’ve been very helpful today. You clearly understand your business very well, and it’s great to see, and congratulations on that. For those that are listening, could you provide your contact information before we wrap?

Ryan Moyer (18:10)
Um, yeah, the best ways to get a hold of me are probably, um, email Ryan at cosmic vacations.com. Cosmic vacations is my management company. Um, I am on Instagram. Real Ryan Moyer is my Instagram. Um, I’m happy to provide phone numbers, uh, three, eight, five, 600, seven, zero, two, zero. Um, and then even Facebook and LinkedIn Ryan, Ryan Moyer is.

me.

Michelle Tack (18:41)
Thank you, Ryan.

We really appreciate it. For those that are listening on the podcast today, we encourage you to subscribe if you haven’t yet to continue to get this great education as well as opportunities for investing potentially with other operators. ⁓ Thanks so much, Ryan.