Like many first-time vacation rental hosts, Deborah Labi didn’t have a path laid out before her to follow. She first rented out her home in Sydney, Australia, in 2006 as a vacation rental to earn money for traveling. That endeavor organically grew into a full-scale property management business, Ruby’s Holiday Residences, which she operated for 13 years.
During her time as a professional property manager, who largely worked in isolation in Sydney, she noticed things that were missing in the vacation rental industry. Filling those needs has helped her to carve out a path for herself that is becoming more interesting by the moment.
Step 1: Vacation rental guest referral program
One of those things was a mechanism for sharing business with other independent vacation rental operators.
She often found herself turning away guests because the residences she managed were full or weren’t quite the right fit.
“This is business I am turning away; these are potential bookings. There must be a way to help these guests,” Deborah said. “Better for guests to go to another independent manager than back on the OTAs.”
Her solution to this gap in service was Have You Got, a vacation rental guest referral platform for independent and local operators.
She conceived the idea in 2016 and closed Ruby’s Holiday Residences in 2019 to focus solely on growing this unique platform.
She said she needed to expose herself to other vacation rental professionals and hear other perspectives, to sell her idea and to shed light on her next steps to grow Have You Got.
“So I started finding and going to conferences which only existed in the U.S. and Europe at the time,” she said.
She had acquired over 400 properties on the platform when Covid hit, and she decided to park the platform due to the pandemic.
“In fact, the guest referral platform didn’t exist in the accommodation industry,” Deborah said. “There is still nothing quite like it.”
Step 2: Mystery vacation rental guests
But she had other ideas percolating in her mind from her experiences as a vacation rental guest and manager.
She had observed that managers didn’t use mystery guests, a mechanism employed by the hotel industry to ensure quality control and more positive consumer experiences.
In the short-term rental sphere, guest reviews are the report card of the vacation rental and sometimes the business, but these are not coming from experienced vacation rental professionals.
“The mystery guest idea actually came from being a guest so often and realizing that there is a problem with communication,” Deborah said. “Who points out maintenance issues? Design improvements? It’s not only hotels who have this. Restaurants and shops have them too.”
To fill that void, she founded The Guest Innspector, a “mystery guest” consulting service, in September 2019. The service provides vacation rental operators with a professional critique of their websites, and the vacation rental itself. Deborah then recommends ways to improve guest satisfaction and the business’s systems. The business has allowed her to offer her expertise to others while continuing her lifestyle abroad, largely in Nice, France, which she has made her second home.
Step 3: Vacation rental tech podcast
During consulting sessions, one of Deborah’s challenges was advising clients on what technology to use in their vacation rental businesses. The choices were ever-changing and overwhelming, and she needed a strategy for learning about them.
She also realized that she wasn’t alone in this struggle; There wasn’t a one-stop source to learn about new technology. So, she decided to change that with the The Techsplained podcast, founded in early 2022.
On the podcast, she interviews the founders of vacation rental tech companies to learn more about the menu of technology on the market. This information has helped her to advise her clients, but it also has become a resource library on tech for vacation rental operators.
The biggest step yet: The Green Path vacation rental sustainability podcast
Deborah’s path toward helping to meet unmet needs in the industry took on a greener hue in May 2022. She attended the Short Stay Summit in London that month and was intrigued when she joined Bob Garner, an environmental advocate in the vacation rental space, in a closed-door roundtable on environmental sustainability he was hosting.
Bob Garner: How to make sustainability part of your short-term rental brand
“The whole discussion was, we need to get people involved, and no one is getting involved,” Deborah recounted. “Basically, my 20 cents’ worth was, I think people aren’t doing anything about sustainability, because they don’t know where to start. They think it’s too hard.”
After the session, she kept thinking of ways she could help.
Her Techsplained podcast had been helpful in overcoming some of the challenges of knowing about and choosing from an overwhelming selection of vacation rental technology. Maybe a vacation rental sustainability podcast would have a similar effect, she thought.
“The thing is, I don’t know anything about sustainability. I told Bob, ‘You have to send people my way to interview because I don’t know anyone.’ So he started sending me some people,” she said.
“I whipped up the logo, the name, and the website. I got the RSS feed. I got it all together, and I started interviewing.”
She called the podcast The Green Path, and upon its debut later in 2022, it became the first podcast solely about environmentally sustainable vacation rentals – and still is.
“As the interest and engagement with sustainability continues to grow in the STR industry, it is fabulous to see the steps Deborah has taken with the Green Path podcast,” said Bob, who was the show’s first guest.
From the beginning, “I was very frank that I know nothing about sustainability,” Deborah said, “and listeners have said, ‘It’s great that you know nothing because you’re asking the questions that we would be asking.’ No question is a silly question.”
The competitive advantage of going green
Sustainability can still be a hard sell in the vacation rental industry, in part because going green can feel like too big of a leap. So, Deborah’s angle on sustainability focuses on taking smaller steps and gaining a competitive advantage with each.
“I was thinking, how do I sell this podcast?” Deborah said. “How do I get people to listen? And I decided to take out that whole environmental factor and just say, ‘Do you want to make more money?’ This is a niche that if you can do these little things that we’re going to share with you, you can actually tap into this niche and make money.”
Even though the initial motivation might be money, Deborah agrees with Bob’s philosophy that becoming a more sustainable business can actually become addictive in a good way.
“I love this analogy from Bob that going green is like eating a packet of chips. Once you start eating one chip, you want another one and another one and another one,” she said.
Recording from her home in Nice, she kicks off each episode with an introduction on how green practices will put your vacation rental business “ahead of the pack.”
Episodes average less than 30 minutes long and focus on immediate takeaways, those small but impactful steps forward someone could take that day or that week.
“She covers all aspects of sustainable vacation rentals from products and services to successful implementation of eco-friendly initiatives by hosts and property managers,” Bob said. “Wherever you are on your sustainability journey, there is always lots to take away from these punchy insightful discussions.”
To each guest, she poses the same question: “How did your green path journey start? How did you get involved in sustainability?”
Her guests have included an executive from a vacation rental management firm that rents land for bees, a “carbon auditor” who helps travelers become more aware of their environmental impact, and a housekeeping business that focuses on social responsibility.
Sustonica, which provides environmental certifications for vacation rentals, began sponsoring episodes because the content aligns with the company’s mission. The founder, Vanessa de Souza Lage, has been a repeat guest on the podcast.
Deborah recently participated in the podcaster takeover at the Rent Responsibly Summit: People, Places, and Planet on April 19, 2023, where she recorded a podcast episode called Tapping Into Thriving Traveler Demand for Sustainable Stays.
Download the STR 2023 Sustainability Report
Next steps toward sustainable vacation rentals
Her next project is a tie-in with the Green Path Podcast. It’s an educational program called the Green Step Program and went live on June 8.
The program has 13-plus steps that take property managers and owners on a step-by-step journey toward sustainability.
“They can only see one step at a time, thus focusing on one thing rather than getting overwhelmed,” Deborah said.
“Helping people is now my way to contribute to the industry in terms of the tech that’s always coming up, coming up with new business ideas, or helping managers to perfect the guest journey, or their tech, or whatever,” Deborah said.
“This industry is growing and growing, and I’m finding all these little things that are missing.”
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