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Hey, everybody, back from Las Vegas.

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Yes, I survived.

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Find out just how I made it right after this.

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I’m Anthony.

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Welcome to No Vacancy Lives.

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That’s my friend, Glenn.

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You’re watching the number one show in hospitality.

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Hey, everybody.

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Welcome to the one and only No Vacancy Live.

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Of course, I’m Glenn Hausman.

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Anthony Melchiorri is out today on assignment out there consulting, making things happen.

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But fortunately, I get to be with you here today.

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So I want to thank everybody at the Nevada Hotel and Lodging Association for having me host their Shark Pool competition last week during their annual tech conference.

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And I’ll thank them on behalf of Anthony as well, because he was a judge on that one.

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What a fun event that was to see so many awesome new technologies or existing ones really being brought out into the hospitality industry, going under the gauntlet of the judges, which included a VP of operations for Cosmopolitan.

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It included Dr. Robert Rippey.

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That was Michelle Borgel.

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I just referenced Dr. Robert Rippey, who, you know, runs the Blackfire Innovation Studios for UNLV, where the event was held, Anthony and

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more what a fun time that was i also want to thank cynthia kaiser murphy make sure you check out that show she runs the palms casino resort in las vegas we talk about how they are going to continue their legacy of excellence moving forward but you know what

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one of the things that uh las vegas has is yeah they got you too and yes they got fish coming to the sphere in april but they weren’t really the ones to start incredible rentals right look at this right behind me i got margaritaville orlando and the cottages there a couple of years ago last august of 2021 i think it was august 8th if i recall it was a sunny day mid 70s we had on uh

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Nick Falcone.

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We’re going to get a good update with him.

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Talk a little bit about where they are with rental resorts, what the industry is all about, and how they are leveraging success as we move into 2024.

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Nick, welcome back to No Vacancy, man.

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How are you?

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I’m doing great, Glenn.

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Thanks so much for having me back on.

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All right, so last time when you were on, I think I don’t, you know, I didn’t even realize that you were handling rentals and stuff at the Margaritaville Cottages over here.

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I loved that experience with my family.

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And just last month, I was down at the reunion resort in Orlando where apparently you have more rentals.

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Goodness gracious, where aren’t you, Nick?

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How are things going?

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know things are things are great we’re uh we’re growing like crazy since we last spoke uh especially in orlando and reunion like you mentioned we um we actually have now in that area over 700 houses that we manage so it’s going very good 700 houses that is uh absolutely uh incredible so in case you don’t know uh rental resorts uh have over 84 agreements with resort brands

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11,000 rental properties, as well as a whole lot going on.

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So they could either help support your business or help launch your business over there.

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But before we get into all of that, Nick, what are people thinking about today?

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How are people traveling and how are they using rental resorts today to enjoy some leisure or maybe some business getaways?

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Yeah, we’re seeing, last time I was on, it was right around the pandemic or whatnot.

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Trends have changed a lot since then.

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Well, I think in August of 2021, we weren’t yet at revenge summer, travel revenge summer, but people were getting out and they were having meaningful experiences.

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And if I recall, a lot of people were staying in these cottages.

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Yeah, we saw that it was a great product during that time period.

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It kind of gave people that best of both worlds of staying safe and whatnot, but having that vacation experience.

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Since then, we’ve seen that trends have just gotten better for us.

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We’re seeing a lot of large families, multi-gen families take advantage of this, a lot of corporate.

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You mentioned corporate, and that’s grown significantly.

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When we first started this seven, eight years ago, people…

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When they thought about corporate retreats or any kind of corporate business, they didn’t really think staying in a home.

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And I think we’ve helped to really change the landscape of that where we do, you know, in a lot of resorts, 20, 30 percent of our business from corporate groups.

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So it’s going great.

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And we’re loving where the trends are going.

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A lot more people are starting to search out these homes in a resort setting.

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Right now, I don’t do this, and it’s not because I don’t want to.

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It’s because Anthony and I have an agreement never to stay anywhere near each other.

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Try to stay in different cities if we possibly can.

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But I’m seeing more and more companies saying, hey, we’re coming into this event.

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Instead of getting three, four, five rooms, let’s just get ourselves one of these Margaritaville cottages or something to the effect of that.

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Cook a really nice dinner, save the company a lot of money, have more plush kind of relaxed sort of experience and maybe have some meetings while we’re there.

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So I love that you’re finding entry into that corporate world, kind of a segment I hadn’t even thought about existing prior.

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Yeah, no, it’s big.

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And I think the team building component, the fact that you can get everyone under one roof, share those kind of intimate moments, like you said, eating dinner together, whatever it might be, it’s something that a lot of groups are really starting to be attracted to, especially in areas that really attribute to that.

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So for example, we have this new property down in the Keys called Larger Resort, and it’s perfectly built for that type of retreat.

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It’s got a lot of privacy and corporate groups just absolutely love that type of product.

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Yeah, now, unfortunately, I don’t have the numbers at the top of my head here to be able to show off to everyone.

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But the fact is that we’ve been talking about on this show for the last couple of years how with remote work, and there’s still a lot of companies that are doing an awful lot of remote work, there’s a need to still get people together.

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And they’re getting people together either in like select service hotels that have a small meeting room or rooms.

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flying people to cool places like Key West to have that meeting that serves two purposes.

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Give people a little love and sunshine in their lives while helping create more productivity and getting the team together to have some of that crucial interaction right now.

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Big time.

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We’re seeing a lot of these companies, to your point, they prefer not to meet together in the offices when they do those in person.

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They’re looking to do it remote.

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I was just speaking with a tech company the other day where none of their employees work in the office, but the only time they get together, everyone actually is from different countries, different states, and they’ll get together on remote trips where they’ll do those retreats and hang out in one of our properties and get to spend that face-to-face time, which is still, I think, really important in today’s world.

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So it’s definitely something we’re seeing more prevalent.

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Yeah.

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So that is really super important for everybody out there to realize.

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It’s an important trend that’s only going to continue to grow.

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You’ve got to find a way to kind of get in on that specific market.

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But I’m curious, how are you thinking about the way that people on the leisure side of business are looking to stay now compared to how they may have been a few weeks ago?

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And again, understanding that

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All trends were already there.

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Just stuff sped up a lot quicker than we would have expected with if we didn’t have that 2020 situation.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I think, you know, kind of going back to then we saw 21, you know, obviously growing a lot, a lot of pent up demand.

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Twenty twenty two, especially the first half of the year was, I would say, record breaking, I think, for most people in the industry.

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We saw record breaking numbers across all of our properties in twenty two.

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23, we’ve seen a little bit of a slowdown, I would say.

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We’re seeing a lot more people look to travel internationally versus domestic.

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So definitely been a little bit of a trend that we’ve noticed.

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But when it comes to the homes, our occupancies, our RevPars or whatnot in the homes have actually increased this year.

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So despite the fact that hotel travel domestically, I think is a little bit slower, we’re seeing the demand for the homes just as great as ever.

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And specifically on the transient side,

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A lot more people, like I said earlier, that are searching out these homes in a resort setting where you don’t have to play travel agent, find all the things to do in the local ecosystem because you have that captive at the resort.

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And so that’s been a major trend that we’re noticing that people are kind of searching out that product versus us having to search out the people that would want to stay in something like that.

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Yeah, one of the things that I’ve noticed from the two examples that I gave is it’s really a full resort.

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It’s unlike just getting a house in a neighborhood or something like that, right?

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It’s right there in the name, rental resorts, not renting a bed in an apartment community or anything like that, right?

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100%.

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Yeah.

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So that’s really a critical difference about what you’re going on here.

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So how are operators, developers thinking about incorporating rental resorts or this sort of idea into resort developments now and going forward?

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Yeah, I think that up until now, developers have really not understood the rental side of the business and they’ll build these type of properties and then really turn it over to let’s call it an Airbnb type of platform where it becomes somewhat of a free for all.

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People can kind of do whatever they want.

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All the unit standards are different.

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The way they distribute the product is different.

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And there’s not really a centralized company for providing services, amenities like a resort.

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So fast forward to today, we’re starting to see that a lot more developers have seen the upside that short term rental brings.

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We’ve seen, just to throw out a statistic, we’ve seen that short term rental top line revenue outperforms that of built to rent long term rentals, year long rentals by two to 300%.

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So a lot of the developers have seen those stats.

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They’re starting to realize, wait a second, the short term product built to rent could provide tremendous upside.

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How do we position ourselves to be able to take advantage of that?

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And that’s where our company comes in, where we work with developers around the world to help to structure the legal documents, the club structure, the operational brand standards and everything else, what amenities to put on the property and just how to wrap it all up so that they can be successful and know exactly the best practices on how to deliver one of these products.

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And obviously we could then manage it on the back end for them if they’d like.

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Right.

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So you made a great point right at the beginning of that statement.

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You were talking about the amount of income that could be made compared to renting it to a single family for the entire year.

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And I think that’s kind of responsible for the rush that we’ve seen in Airbnb over the last few years.

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I think they’ve more than tripled the number of listings they’ve had in that time.

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Again, don’t quote me, but I’m pretty sure that that number right there is accurate on that statement.

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So that’s got a lot of people rushing in.

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However, when you’re looking at that general platform, there’s high cleaning fees.

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There’s a lot of dissatisfaction with that.

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But one cool thing that you’re focused on is you’ve got all these rooms together.

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So you’re getting the…

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You’re getting the hotel-like pricing for housekeeping and all that.

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You don’t have to have one person come out to clean a room and drive 45 minutes, right?

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So you’re getting the economy scale of a hotel while creating more of that profitable, free-form environment of that rental business.

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Would that be accurate?

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It definitely is.

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We definitely see efficiencies of doing everything on a bulk basis instead of onesie, twosie homes.

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Having 100, 300, 500 homes in one community resort definitely provides those efficiencies of scale and allows us to bring our price points down for some of those ancillary costs that people see in a vacation rental.

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I think the other thing, going back to what you had mentioned, a lot of homeowners have joined these vacation rental platforms, like you said.

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I don’t know the exact number off the top of my head either, but I would agree it’s probably somewhere around triple in the last few years.

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But the big thing that we’ve noticed is that

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the actual distribution, so that’s homeowner based growing, but the distribution of people that are renting from those platforms have not grown at that same rate.

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So, you know, homeowners on the platform have actually seen a dilution of their returns.

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And I think that’s where rental also comes in to provide some really great solutions because our platform, the way we’ve set up our distribution network

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is one in which we are not just reliant on the vacation home rental sites.

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We do direct distribution through our websites, our call center, and then we work with hundreds of distribution partners that are also on the hotel side, not ones that typically would be able to work with vacation home, drastically expands our exposure on how we get the product out there and increases the returns for homeowners in a very big way.

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So if I’m a developer, maybe I want to do both.

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Maybe I don’t because I’m looking at that reunion resort again that has both timeshare slash vacation ownership, same thing, depending on your phraseology, or rentals like you’re talking about.

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From an investment point of view, what would be the difference?

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Why would one want to go one way?

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Or maybe if you have that giant resort, you can go both ways.

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How do you see that?

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Yeah, so I would say, you brought up timeshare or whatnot.

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This is very different than timeshare.

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Timeshare, you’re really buying a vacation, you’re buying points or whatnot that you could use every year.

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I’m talking about from an ownership developer sort of perspective.

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Oh, okay, yeah.

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From an ownership developer perspective, it’s definitely different as well.

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From the…

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what when you’re looking at timeshare um you know from that perspective really where you make a lot of the money is the developers owning the paper um you know the financing mechanisms or whatnot and then obviously in partnership with some of the big brands out there you can make some really good money on the upcharge on the sales price per square foot and we’re seeing that um you know in timeshare you’re seeing a pretty big lift in that that really helps with the feasibility of the product now

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On the vacation home side, we’re seeing that similar impact.

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So we are seeing a major lift in price per square foot.

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But there’s not necessarily the same dynamics of having to also be on the finance leverage side or whatnot to make a lot of your money.

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But I think that you’re getting a quicker IRR from the vacation rental side versus the tech side.

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So as somebody that’s not a finance guy, let me see if I got this right.

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Timeshare is a really good strategy to help get development done because you’re going to be getting actual dollars from people that’ll help offset the costs of construction for you.

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Whereas the other way of doing it, you’d have to find traditional financing and probably be on the hook for more of your own money in order to get that done.

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But

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then you have more flexibility potentially going forward in order to earn money.

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Is that correct, or did I screw that up?

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No, I think you hit on some of the points.

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But I think the main point, with both, you could do traditional financing.

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We’re seeing that both are very attractive in the finance markets, although right now financing is definitely more difficult.

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We know that.

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We all know that.

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But both with timeshare and vacation rental, a lot of the traditional financing sources are available.

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I just think with timeshare, you’re getting –

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you’re selling more of the memberships or these smaller kind of time periods or whatnot.

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So it takes a lot more sales to get your return.

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Whereas in the vacation rental, we’re seeing a little bit faster velocity of getting dollars back to home team.

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So you’re getting a little bit faster return on your capital from the homes than you would versus a timeshare.

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And also because of the fact that timeshare, a lot of your returns in your model are based on selling the paper or the financing side or whatnot, providing the finance for these members.

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That also kind of takes it where it brings the returns out further.

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It takes longer to bring in the return on investment that a lot of these developers are looking for.

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So both are great.

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We see a lot of benefits in both.

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And I would say that both of them are definitely easier to finance right now than a traditional hotel.

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That is fascinating.

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Why is that?

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Is there some sort of factors with stability of the market that makes that happen?

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Yeah, I think right now the main factors that I’ve seen would be the fact that in vacation home or in the timeshare space or whatnot, you could break up your sales.

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So what I mean by that in a single family home community, you could sell each individual home as a one-off.

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If sales are slow or whatnot, you could just pause construction.

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It doesn’t really destroy anything from that perspective.

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A hotel, I can’t just stop at the 10th floor of the 20-story building.

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So there’s a lot more risk from a construction cost perspective in a hotel.

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Same thing with timeshare.

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The way we’ve developed timeshare is we’ll break it up into multiple buildings so that there’s a lot less construction risk.

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So I think from that perspective, you’re seeing…

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more risk associated with finance of a hotel.

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And then also with the hotel, you’re not really making a big amount of money until you go refinance or sell the hotel.

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Whereas in this, you’re getting that immediate IRR from selling the real estate and then you’re keeping the rental revenue stream on the backend.

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So you’re getting the best of both worlds.

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You have more bites at the apple.

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Wow, that’s really interesting.

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And thank you so much for explaining it so clearly.

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So obviously, this is a really smart move for you.

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Now, switching the equation to that guest side, right?

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How are they thinking about rentals versus that vacation ownership component?

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The reason why I ask is because I’m wondering if inflation and people starting to feel a little bit poorer don’t want to make that investment for the long term, but are like, hey, let’s get that multi-bedroom home for a week.

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I think we’re seeing a lot of people that will rent for a period of time and then become buyers.

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I think that when people experience the product, a lot of people start to ask, well, how do I learn more about the actual real estate investment side?

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We are seeing that that’s really helping with bringing more purchasers to the table.

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Being that what we do is more on the short-term rental side, I’m not necessarily seeing people make the decision between buying or

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renting with one of our homes, but we do have a built around long term rental division.

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And I will tell you that that’s extremely hot right now with interest rates the way they are and prices the way they are.

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It’s priced out a lot of people from owning a home and then supply across the United States has been down for quite some time for homeownership.

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So when you couple all those things together, it’s making homeownership unattainable for a significant amount of the population.

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And that’s where I think renting homes long-term is also a very fast-growing industry right now.

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Yeah, correct.

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And I won’t mention the names on air, but there are a lot of companies that are popping up now that are focused on

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shorter-term stays or longer-term stays that are as if a hotel, and you don’t have to get into all of the paperwork that you would normally have to get into in order to rent.

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Nick, this is super fascinating to me, but one thing I’m seeing is you’re really focused on all these great brands, and a new brand that you’re going to be working with is Hard Rock, right?

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Yes, we haven’t really announced it to the world yet, but we did sign a deal with Hard Rock a couple months ago.

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Really excited about it.

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We’ll be launching what will be called the Hard Rock Residences side of the brand.

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And Hard Rock’s an incredible brand.

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I mean, the IP is off the charts.

20:09.677 –> 20:17.424
What it stands for with entertainment, arts, culture, I think is something that a lot of people really love, especially from a real estate perspective.

20:18.184 –> 20:25.889
Taking that great brand and fusing it into for sale real estate that could then be rented as well is something that us and the brand were really, really excited about.

20:25.909 –> 20:33.954
Then we’re also going to be helping them with raising capital to put money into hotel expansion, resi expansion.

20:34.435 –> 20:38.237
They’re really bullish on taking their brand to the next level all over the world.

20:38.597 –> 20:40.298
We’re going to be helping them with that as well.

20:41.079 –> 20:42.299
Just great people to partner with.

20:42.380 –> 20:43.140
Really excited.

20:43.200 –> 20:44.401
Where is this first one going to be?

20:46.014 –> 20:50.458
We’re actually looking at a couple of deals right now, not a couple, a few, many.

20:51.139 –> 20:58.146
But I would say if I had to guess, the first one will probably either be in San Juan or in Miami.

20:59.167 –> 21:00.368
I think are furthest along right now.

21:00.748 –> 21:01.449
That’s fantastic.

21:01.469 –> 21:05.452
Well, I wish you a lot of luck getting that first one out.

21:05.512 –> 21:13.279
But what I do like about it is because like Margaritaville behind me, Hard Rock has such a strong and distinct brand.

21:13.299 –> 21:17.863
You’re starting from – you’re already starting from enemy territory.

21:17.903 –> 21:23.148
Like you got the kickoff return all the way down into the red zone or something like that, right?

21:23.508 –> 21:23.728
Yeah.

21:24.469 –> 21:30.978
Yeah, because you’ve already made the shortcut of getting everyone to understand what that product is like.

21:31.319 –> 21:36.806
And it’s such a great lifestyle product for a certain point of the population.

21:36.846 –> 21:41.072
I’m somewhere – I love both Margaritaville and Hard Rock, but –

21:41.932 –> 22:10.727
nick i said this the margaritaville people they’re not listening to me maybe you will you’ve got to do like a jam band community type of thing you know what i’m saying that’s going to be great because i need to like i need to retire amongst my people over there and i’m that’d be incredible i will relay the message to them yeah like even if they just took a portion of like the margarita thing the margaritaville thing and made a you know make it my hippie enclave over there that’d be great you’re already halfway there with the colors just have to throw on some tie-dye and we’ll be uh we’ll be good to go

22:11.207 –> 22:13.750
I’ll be calling you for some guidance on what we need to do.

22:14.811 –> 22:15.212
Thank you.

22:15.612 –> 22:16.613
I really appreciate that.

22:16.653 –> 22:21.799
So how are you thinking about working with developers?

22:22.159 –> 22:24.262
What’s that kind of a partnership like for you?

22:25.250 –> 22:25.390
Yeah.

22:25.430 –> 22:31.897
So, you know, we will come in, we’ll identify developers in key markets that we know we want to be in.

22:32.677 –> 22:38.984
Top developers will then go to them and kind of solicit what we do in the short term rental space.

22:39.004 –> 22:46.932
In a lot of cases, they have existing projects that we can come in and kind of pitch our brand offerings and why that would be beneficial to the overall project.

22:47.772 –> 22:51.295
Once we’ve gotten buy-in, we have a multitude of services we provide.

22:51.315 –> 22:57.739
So we’ll actually help developers with some of their real estate positioning, product mix, some architectural design work.

22:58.700 –> 23:01.361
Like I said earlier, legal structure and club structuring.

23:01.381 –> 23:06.004
A lot of the major factors that really help to position this product for success.

23:07.205 –> 23:11.188
So there’s many different ways we work with developers in that realm.

23:11.268 –> 23:13.649
Sometimes it’s more of a JV type partnership.

23:14.350 –> 23:16.952
Sometimes it’s more of a fee for service type relationship.

23:17.892 –> 23:19.993
But yeah, lots of different ways we work with them.

23:20.033 –> 23:29.677
And then in some select deals, not often, but we’ll also get involved with the sales of the real estate itself and help with that aspect also.

23:29.777 –> 23:34.899
So we’re pretty turnkey with what we can provide to developers to help get these projects off the ground and successful.

23:35.399 –> 23:39.142
So like we said about product mix, that I’m really curious about.

23:39.542 –> 23:41.244
How do you figure that out?

23:41.324 –> 23:45.026
Again, I’m going to use Margaritaville as an example because I had that experience.

23:45.427 –> 23:52.412
They have small cottages, larger cottages, and I think it’d sleep up to 12, that sort of a thing.

23:52.452 –> 23:57.196
I remember I think the one I stayed in had like four or five bedrooms, for example.

23:57.256 –> 23:57.356
So

23:57.936 –> 23:59.701
How do you know what’s right?

24:00.563 –> 24:04.572
And I guess you could tweak it on phase two after phase one.

24:04.612 –> 24:06.536
But what is that process like for you?

24:07.284 –> 24:13.667
Yeah, I’ll keep it very high level, but first things first, we have to study the market in depth.

24:13.687 –> 24:18.189
What are the holes in the market and what are some of the gaps that people are demanding?

24:19.189 –> 24:29.534
We do a lot of consumer studies on exactly not just what type of product they’re looking for, but what type of things people like to do that really helps to position the product itself.

24:30.674 –> 24:34.217
We do a lot of obviously cost analysis in those markets.

24:34.617 –> 24:38.760
We try to always infuse a little bit of a local flair as well from a design perspective.

24:39.961 –> 24:47.287
So specific to Margaritaville and there’s a whole bunch of other criteria we look at, but you look at what’s behind you at Margaritaville, we said, number one,

24:48.227 –> 24:52.210
The market was so young person friendly.

24:52.230 –> 24:55.333
It was all aimed towards kids, Disney, Universal.

24:55.353 –> 24:57.395
It’s all kids, right?

24:57.495 –> 24:58.395
Making the kids happy.

24:58.816 –> 25:09.384
We felt that Orlando was missing a component of appealing to wider demographics and having a little bit of something for the parents, for the adults, while also infusing, obviously, that family-friendly environment.

25:09.845 –> 25:11.986
So that was one of the things we really took into account.

25:12.046 –> 25:15.789
We said, this is going to be a place where a lot of people, especially multi-gen, are going to travel to.

25:15.890 –> 25:16.010
Mm-hmm.

25:16.690 –> 25:19.513
And that attributed to larger size homes.

25:19.793 –> 25:25.219
We also did a study of the market, realized that no one was developing homes bigger than a six bedroom for a vacation home.

25:25.760 –> 25:27.201
So we said, yeah, let’s go bigger.

25:27.942 –> 25:34.388
We felt that having some of those eight bedrooms or whatnot would really allow us to attract a completely different demand profile.

25:35.129 –> 25:50.438
Um, you know, and, and then finally, you know, when we start to look at how much of each unit type, uh, we’re looking again at a lot of demand factors and a lot of those same metrics or whatnot to say, okay, well let’s do, if we’re doing 450 cottages, how many should be eight bedrooms versus three bedrooms?

25:50.458 –> 25:56.261
Um, you know, and so we, we do very, very robust analysis and come up with, uh, what we think is best.

25:56.761 –> 26:03.585
Obviously, um, those could change from face to face, you know, cause sometimes those trends change, but we’re pretty detailed in our analysis.

26:04.525 –> 26:05.686
That’s pretty amazing.

26:05.766 –> 26:16.450
I love wonking out on this sort of stuff because you really are getting in there and you’re figuring out all the nuances and stuff like that in order to be able to extract as much value as possible.

26:16.530 –> 26:18.871
So super cool.

26:19.211 –> 26:21.112
You’re also focused on restaurants and stuff.

26:21.132 –> 26:24.673
You’ve got BurgerFi and Anthony’s Coal Fire Pizza going on.

26:24.713 –> 26:26.114
What’s going on in that side of the market?

26:26.134 –> 26:28.235
Does America still want those burgers?

26:28.275 –> 26:31.156
Are we still as cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs over them?

26:32.011 –> 26:34.992
Yeah, the burgers are still going really strong.

26:35.273 –> 26:39.715
We’re seeing a great position with everything that’s happening in the BurgerFi world.

26:40.415 –> 26:49.460
And then as of last year, we actually, BurgerFi was, excuse me, the company that brought BurgerFi public actually also purchased and brought Anthony’s Coal Fire Pizza public.

26:50.000 –> 26:55.743
And so now that they were owned by the same company, we were provided the opportunity to become the founding franchisees for Anthony’s.

26:56.323 –> 27:04.265
They have 63 franchise locations, but we’ll be the first people to ever franchise and open up a non-franchisor-owned location.

27:05.466 –> 27:10.207
Not only that, but we’re going to be the first people in the world doing a combined BurgerFi, Anthony’s, Coal Fire pizza.

27:10.227 –> 27:16.469
So you can go in, you can get fries and pizza at the same time or whatever it might be and kind of cross-order.

27:16.549 –> 27:22.871
So we’re actually opening that in about three weeks on the 18th of December here in Sunset Walk in Kissimmee.

27:22.891 –> 27:24.191
So we’re really excited about that.

27:24.531 –> 27:25.392
Oh, congratulations.

27:25.432 –> 27:26.933
That’s really awesome.

27:26.973 –> 27:31.235
I’m going to burger-fy my pizza next time I come over to you guys.

27:31.636 –> 27:32.196
That’s for sure.

27:32.556 –> 27:34.577
What else do we need to know?

27:34.617 –> 27:37.019
What did I miss about your story today?

27:38.388 –> 27:40.509
I think we hit on a lot of the big points.

27:40.629 –> 27:44.311
One that we’re really excited about is the further rollout of our loyalty program.

27:44.451 –> 27:44.811
Oh, yeah.

27:44.851 –> 27:45.692
Spire Loyalty.

27:45.752 –> 27:47.553
First multi-industry?

27:48.053 –> 27:48.333
Yeah.

27:48.693 –> 27:50.474
First multi-industry loyalty.

27:50.534 –> 27:53.375
One of the big trends of what we do is we like to stay unique and different.

27:54.436 –> 27:58.998
With our loyalty program, it’s not one where you could just get points and use points in the travel stays.

27:59.578 –> 28:04.501
We have it built where you could use your points on a down payment on a home or on rent to an apartment or

28:05.121 –> 28:07.203
your local dining or experience shopping.

28:07.223 –> 28:11.306
Um, so we, we actually are, we’ve rolled out the travel portion.

28:11.506 –> 28:20.413
We’re now in the test run of rolling out more of the retail portion and we’re working with, um, wholesale partners around the world to be able to expand our redemption opportunities all over the place.

28:20.473 –> 28:22.675
So that’s something we’re really excited about.

28:22.955 –> 28:23.396
And, um,

28:24.136 –> 28:35.246
I think other than that, just continuing to let people know that this product exists with rental and having a home and the best of both worlds, that spacious home with amenity services.

28:35.346 –> 28:44.234
So just continuing to get the word out there on that and letting everyone know that there’s that kind of better version of the vacation home product that’s been out there for the last decade.

28:44.714 –> 28:53.737
So, you know, Orlando obviously is the king of this kind of market born out of the timeshare and the theme parks and all of that kind of stuff.

28:54.538 –> 28:56.859
Vegas has always been number two for timeshare.

28:56.899 –> 29:00.720
I suppose there’s a lot of rental properties out there now as well.

29:01.260 –> 29:05.582
What other markets are you thinking about that you are getting excited about today?

29:07.267 –> 29:13.433
Yeah, I would say for us, some of the – I’ll just name a few because there’s a lot of markets that we’re really excited about.

29:13.493 –> 29:18.998
But domestically, I’m a little bit more motivated for our domestic expansion right now.

29:19.038 –> 29:22.382
And I would say that the Carolinas is extremely hot.

29:23.643 –> 29:25.224
So much demand right now in the Carolinas.

29:25.305 –> 29:25.965
It’s off the charts.

29:26.065 –> 29:30.590
Asheville is out of control right now with people moving there, which is a shame because I was thinking of moving there.

29:30.610 –> 29:31.691
Now I’m going to be screwed, but –

29:32.211 –> 29:34.292
Yeah, Asheville is crazy.

29:34.572 –> 29:37.293
Charlotte, I mean, the whole market’s really just blown up right now.

29:37.313 –> 29:38.934
So that’s a really big one on our radar.

29:39.534 –> 29:42.155
Florida continues to be a really hot market.

29:42.195 –> 29:45.296
So we’re going to continue to look to expand all across the state of Florida.

29:45.876 –> 29:49.198
We have big expansion plans in Miami, which we’re really pumped up about.

29:50.278 –> 29:53.959
Texas is another one that’s really growing extremely fast that we’re excited about.

29:54.400 –> 29:54.620
Yep.

29:54.820 –> 29:55.140
And then-

29:55.720 –> 29:59.522
Is that like in I know that what is it?

29:59.562 –> 30:05.246
They got that Peppa Pig World opening and then Universal’s opening a theme park as well.

30:05.366 –> 30:06.686
So a lot happening there.

30:06.706 –> 30:12.710
Not only that, but Dallas-Fort Worth is going to be something like the largest metro area within the next few years, I believe.

30:13.083 –> 30:20.087
Yeah, Dallas and Houston and some of those other cities or whatnot in Texas are just off the charts, seeing a lot of growth there.

30:21.248 –> 30:23.309
You mentioned theme parks, that’s a really interesting one.

30:23.369 –> 30:27.772
The trend of new theme park development is crazy right now.

30:27.812 –> 30:30.173
I mean, we’re talking to, I wanna say,

30:31.434 –> 30:36.316
three different, four different groups that are building Magic Kingdom like theme parks around the country.

30:36.816 –> 30:43.078
One of which I’m really excited about and just outside of Nashville called Storyville that we’re partnered with.

30:44.199 –> 30:50.781
So that’s another big, big trend that we’re seeing is this new theme park development and coupling what we do with the theme parks.

30:51.328 –> 30:53.929
Yeah, I think there’s going to be a lot more of that.

30:54.869 –> 31:00.051
Kind of like what you saw with the casino resort explosion, right?

31:00.531 –> 31:05.373
Everybody loved Las Vegas, but then it starts to proliferate around the country and all of that.

31:05.393 –> 31:09.674
And I think it’s going to roll out because people don’t necessarily want to get on the plane all the time.

31:10.054 –> 31:10.715
to go to Florida.

31:10.755 –> 31:13.497
They want to have a higher quality product near them.

31:14.077 –> 31:24.585
Plus, with Cedar Fair emerging with Six Flags, that I think is going to open up a lot of value and kind of change that tier of product as well.

31:25.606 –> 31:39.599
Interesting that you got your eyes on that because as these places expand and as tourism grows in those neighborhoods, people are going to need places to rent that are of a high caliber that they could be with their family in, I don’t know, up to 12 bedrooms or more.

31:39.799 –> 31:40.780
Right, Nicholas?

31:42.202 –> 31:44.404
Give us a good plug on how to reach you, sir.

31:45.518 –> 31:48.722
You can reach me on LinkedIn, Nicholas Falcone.

31:49.023 –> 31:50.024
It’s probably the best place.

31:50.184 –> 31:52.727
And our website’s RentalResorts.com.

31:52.828 –> 31:55.191
Rental spelled R-E-N-T-Y-L.

31:55.871 –> 31:58.194
Resorts.com, I think would be the two best places.

31:58.355 –> 32:03.601
And I’d love to speak to developers, hoteliers, and talk about how we could help with the expansion.

32:04.082 –> 32:04.262
Yep.

32:04.463 –> 32:04.763
Awesome.

32:04.883 –> 32:05.924
Well, Nick, thanks so much.

32:05.964 –> 32:06.505
Do me a favor.

32:06.565 –> 32:08.788
Hang out backstage so I can give you a real goodbye.

32:08.868 –> 32:10.149
But bye for now.

32:10.270 –> 32:12.973
And I want to thank all of you folks out there for watching.

32:12.993 –> 32:15.696
We’ll be back tomorrow with another live show.

32:15.836 –> 32:16.597
Anthony will be on.

32:16.617 –> 32:20.102
We got Stowe’s Shoemaker from UNLV.

32:20.122 –> 32:21.143
I think he recently retired.

32:21.983 –> 32:29.104
And then the day after that, we’ve got the chief information officer with Citizen M Hotels.

32:29.304 –> 32:33.765
And Stowe’s got a new book, Hospitality Healthcare, Just What the Patient Ordered.

32:34.085 –> 32:36.526
While you’re waiting for that, why not download our shows?

32:36.586 –> 32:40.086
Go wherever you get your podcasts and just type in No Vacancy Podcast.

32:40.106 –> 32:40.767
You’ll find us.

32:41.047 –> 32:42.867
And if you’re listening to us, why not watch us?

32:43.227 –> 32:46.888
Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and all shows are housed at NoVacancyNews.com.

32:46.908 –> 32:48.128
I want to thank everyone for being here.

32:48.148 –> 32:48.528
And remember…

32:49.008 –> 32:50.552
You’ve got one life, so blaze on.

32:50.593 –> 32:52.277
And as Anthony would say, be kind to yourself.

32:52.297 –> 32:52.939
See you tomorrow.

32:53.340 –> 32:54.183
Bye, everyone.