On April 13, 2020 we held a live webinar where we updated the Smoky Mountain market on the changes in travel and tourism since the COVID-19 outbreak. In this live webinar, we will give updates on the Smoky Mountain area including Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg and Sevierville. We’ll be talking about what the data looks like in the marketplace as well as things you can do to help your business grow in times like these. We will discuss when we think the market is expected to come back and what it will look like when it does. We will also cover many tips and strategies to get the most out of the recovery.
Here is a link to all the data and video replay. Click Here
You can also listen to the audio only on the Vacation Rentals Podcast. Click Here
Below is an automated transcript of the webinar. This was produced from AI so please forgive any spelling and word errors.
Justin Jones 0:18
Okay, we’re gonna get started here. Welcome everybody. Thanks for attending. This is the Smoky Mountain tourism webinar update to kind of help give some data points and some highlights on hotels, vacation rentals, attractions, the tourism market in general have some data that we pulled to talk about what happened, what’s happening and what we predict will happening in short so today we have Daniel Evans who’s director of growth at AI Meg internet marketing expert group. We have Shane Eubanks, who is director of strategy of SEO for AI Meg as well as genuine internet marketing your thing
Good. We’re getting genuine internet marketing. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. And then we have Micah Berg with vacation run University, a BB ru calm as well as the CEO and
founder of real joy vacations that manages just over 800 properties in Florida vacation rentals. So we’ll go ahead and get this started. So in the past three to four weeks here,
from here and kind of where have we been? So there’s, we’ll share a link with this at the end of the video with a follow up email.
Where you can get access to this data and digest it yourself to help your own business. But as we can see here, the market demand This is people looking, that’s by location, pitcher, porch cabins, gallery, cabins, pitcher, forts, hotels, burials included as well, as well as the attractions, the impact that they have taken March and April. And as I said, this will be in a link that allows us to share this with you. So I want to take a minute now that we kind of have a broad overview of the market and talk about kind of some of the government stuff. So I’ll start by to have mica give his feedback, but um, to from the local officials I’ve talked to, and we do manage some of the local governments marketing efforts for tourism
would be that we are following the governor’s direction so if he extends it to the 30th we will follow suit on a city and county level.
So right now we’re scheduled for the 14th which is tomorrow and I think today’s conference today Florida
Micah Berg 3:07
no order just extended this morning before 30th so I’m cuz Tennessee has been right behind Florida and all this.
Justin Jones 3:17
So
yeah, so I’m predicting the 30th I was also given some insights. Of course, this is just, you know, insights Don’t you know, take this to the bank but also that that that our governor likes to work in two week increments. So we will we will have this layered out over two weeks, meaning if he makes a decision today, it’ll be for two weeks and he won’t make a decision past two weeks, which I think is pretty smart.
So, uh, any of the other panelists on here have any feedback on like, when you think the gut you know, do you think we’ll go another two weeks another month? What do you think this warning were that Florida is not opening until the 30th
Micah Berg 4:00
Still at the federal level where April 30 cases are starting to flatline. So I feel pretty confident between Trump wanting to get people back to work and the economy started in those two indicators that the consensus in my opinion is let’s stick this out, like the damage is done, what’s two more weeks? Let’s stick this out till the 30th really get the cases under control understand who’s sick, and then likely, through May it’ll be a trickle down county by county will be open based on the number of cases either in the county, so Meaning, if New York City has a lot of cases, they’ll stay restricted from leaving New York and then counties that have low cases can receive. So basically all of the areas that have low caseload will be able to travel out and come back, but you have to avoid certain counties that are hotspots that that’s kind of my making phone calls, you know, with state representatives of Florida and just listening to what’s going on in the news.
It really feels like may will be open but only open the areas that are located so it’s which fortunately, actually does include Pigeon Forge Gatlinburg, many resort markets, because there haven’t been a lot of case loads out here. It’s not like widespread. So our travelers from those areas that are maybe more rural or in cities that weren’t heavily impacted will be able to start come back.
Our feeder markets, so that’s, that’s what I’m looking at.
Justin Jones 5:38
Excellent. So, um, also, if you have any questions, you can go ahead and comment. I’ll try to answer. There’s a section there for questions. We’ll put them in we have four or five coming in. Um,
yeah, and we’ll start sharing those out. So, let’s roll right on in. So let’s talk about closures. We’ve kind of had fun
closures with attractions. Then we had some hotels shut down, then we had some vacation all shut down. Then we had the National Park shut down and the National Park was extended, extended. So the marketing messages have really changed as far as closures go. We most all attractions have closed, if not all, quite a few hotels and vacation rentals, quite a few per the mayor’s recommendation. People followed with non solicitation, but many, many of them blocked their calendars until the 15th, which I think was smart because it doesn’t matter if you’re soliciting if they can’t book because we did have quite a few new yorkers and stuff coming into town which is great. We love those people, but maybe not right?
Shane Eubanks 7:21
as well. So I’m Shane or Daniel or Mike, could you have anything you’d like to add to that point of some of the closures and those kind of things? Yeah, as far as closures out of the Smoky Mountains that are gonna affect tourism in the Smoky Mountains, we’re looking at things like theme parks in Florida, for example, where universal just announced their closure all the way up until May 30. There’s a lot of speculation as to when Disney is going to open back up. So there’s rumors that they could be close through the through May 30. as well. Cruise Lines, for example, are closed they just had some government breakdown on them as far as up to 100
days more, I think middle of July, they’re looking at possibly extending their closures on cruise ships. There’s some guidelines I got to go through and some things that have to happen before the government feels Okay, opening cruise lines back up. But the reason we’re talking about cruise lines and theme parks, is because a lot of the people that either can’t go to these destinations or just feel timid about going to these destinations are going to start seeking a destination like the Smoky Mountains where it’s, you know, there probably aren’t as much restrictions. It’s not as tightly packed in crowds as theme parks would be. They’re not confined to the destination such as on a cruise ship, you can’t escape from it easily as if you went to a drive to destination like the Smoky Mountains where you could easily get out of it if you needed to. So there’s a lot of
things that we’re looking at as far as destinations that are closing outside of the Smokies that are gonna affect traveler mindset to increase people wanting to go to the smoky so that’s what we’re really keeping an eye on right now.
Justin Jones 9:00
Yeah, just real quick to um, I’m getting some messages we have quite a few people on here it’s working for most but for some people they say they can’t hear anything. There may be you won’t be able to hear me.
Micah, maybe you want to put in the chat to make sure that they have their audio and I think when you load it up and ask for that, so just make sure I’ll try to find an article we can post at least they can see the chat kind of thing.
So yeah.
Yep. chats on.
Uh, yeah. Yeah, the browser you have to enable it, if it’s your first time using this. So but also there’ll be a recording will send out as well. You can let them know that we’ll send out a recording when this is over.
So they can watch it. So let’s move into some more data points here. So revenue by industry, this is the impact we see happening on revenue by industry, March and April 2020, revenue, cab rails down at 8% in April, hotels down 82% and attractions down 99% and they broke so far. Now of course, if we open back up this data is current as of April 12. So the first of the 12 and then march of course, it’s completely updated. So once again, you’ll get a link to this page and you can kind of read where the data come from and those things so I’m Daniel, I’m gonna hand it to you over for conversion rate and pace and stuff like that. If you want to blow through some of your data there real quick that you’ve got it up and that’ll be held free to put that up on the screen there. So we’ve got a conversion rates drop this data is for March, April.
Daniel Evans 11:00
56% drop, hotel saw a 35% drop and attractions obviously with the 92% drop, attractions are going to see much higher drop due to people not actually being able to come to the market. So attractions really need to partner up and focus on listening to the lodging data in the market to be able to make decisions on when do I need to bring that marketing back up to be able to serve that pent up demand. And just so you all know this data is from encompassing Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg and Sevierville. So this is the entire market.
through each city,
hotel conversions are showing much less reached out to Justin after seeing that data come through. And he clarified that conversion rate was going to be a little lead a little bit of a less drop than vacation rentals, because hotels shut down a little bit earlier. So if you see that data, just understand that hotels kind of were early to the game before vacation rentals and that’s the reason for that conversion for conversion drop on the actual bookings online.
And this is all online. Online conversion.
Justin Jones 12:05
Absolutely, thanks. Um, so conversion is key in the beginning of this, we didn’t see such a dip in traffic. But we did see a dip in conversion before traffic because people were still wanting to come but they were like looking looking kind of thing. So and some of the data points, you’ll see that conversion was one of the first signals that we were going down. I think it’ll also be one of the first signals we see that we’re coming back up. Um, so we did a little survey on expected impact the next 30 days, this data was collected from people who visited and have returned at least once per year to the Smoky Mountains and how they feel about it. And that is that
in the next 30 days,
they felt like, you know, almost 30% 30 get much worse. A little over 30% thought somewhat worse, little over 30% said the same, and then there’s a small think somewhere
Better or much better? I tend to agree with that. I think that may 1 is when we kind of start seeing the beginning of the turnaround. I’d love to hear your all’s feedback as well on this when you think the turnaround will be I’m predicting the first of May, to the middle of May. What are your thoughts?
Daniel Evans 13:29
Okay, I didn’t do that. That was exactly in line for what I had to say. So depending on obviously the releases that happened with today’s update from the governor, I think we’ll have a big play on it. We see in the data, that the mandates are working, obviously, people are looking but they can’t book. So I believe that first the middle of May, we could start to see some opening.
Obviously, that could be staged depending on what they what they say you have on data, just like we look at data in our businesses here. They’re obviously looking at
data on potential spread potential follow up things of that nature. So I really truly believe with an optimistic mindset, that early to middle May, we could really start to see some changes that we all want.
Shane Eubanks 14:15
Yeah, and I’d also throw in there too, that we’re seeing some things that could affect may reservations and traffic that could be on the positive side, if things start sliding to the positive and things start opening up. There’s things happening that have happened before, like schools, you know, have been physically closed for the rest of the year in many states around our region. Just today, there’s a bunch starting to get notifications that actual school year, like the actual study that the kids are having to do is going to be it’s going to end sooner like my kids, for example, just found out yesterday that their school year is going to end two weeks early. So instead of finishing on May 22, they’re finishing on May 8. Now, some school systems are out for the entire year depending on if they go to private schools.
whatnot. So we’re starting to see a lot of schools closed down, that’s going to open up the ability to travel earlier in May that we haven’t seen before. Because typically people are still in school throughout most of May. So we’re looking at things like that, that if the government allows businesses to open back up, if people become more open to traveling, there’s a lot more of the pool of people that’s going to be able to travel because of the freedom of the schools and things that that they haven’t had before in May. So that’s some positive signs that we’re looking at right now.
Justin Jones 15:34
Excellent. We’re all on to the next one here. So we did an analysis on marketing shift, because obviously, there’s a massive paradigm shift and travel behavior. So marketing kind of needs to follow that we thought this was some interesting data. So in blue, you’ll see prior to the COVID-19, which is basically we we we put a target on the wall of the middle of March, march 18, to be exact of when this data was pulled to April 12. So kind of
where the where the where the general spending is going and where we see it going afterwards. Um, so once again, you’ll get a link to this and can dig in further, we won’t spend a lot of time on this. We thought this was interesting data of where people are spending money now and where they’ll spend it, then I would love to get some feedback from Shane, on your feedback of any type of shifts in marketing that needs to happen because of the the behavior shifts we’ll talk about later on in this webinar, but what what what some quick things that people can take notes on one or two things that you think will be some big shifts that people should be paying attention to? And speaking about tourism?
Shane Eubanks 16:45
Well, specifically smug about tourism. I mean, we’re definitely seeing a shift of more people online than ever. There’s a lot more people being socially active than ever. There’s been a block on Google reviews of businesses lately, about
Being able to respond to reviews and things. So social reviews and, and the social interaction on Facebook of people talking about things that are open or closed or the great things to do or whatever, that social interaction is important. So what we’re looking at, is to be more engaging with your posts. You really got to be not out of sight out of mind right now, because these people are stuck at home and the way the only way you’re going to access them is through internet and Facebook and social and one important thing we’re seeing is a shift. And maybe just I don’t know if you’ve seen this, or you guys have noticed, but a shift from PPC budgets tightening up from especially otas like booking.com and everybody else, those kind of dropped in just a little bit. So if there’s ever been a time to capitalize on direct bookings, now is the time more than ever for like hotels and things to add incentives that they didn’t that weren’t as valuable to people before. But now more than ever, whether it’s the flexibility of booking, that cancellations, the extra values that you
Add over the otas. These are becoming so much more important now because people are really evaluating their options. So take advantage of the drop in the PPC budget from otas.
Unknown Speaker 18:13
The anything you can do to improve your SEO, I won’t get into that. But any technical optimizations that you are aware of that you’ve been putting off something I want to add to that any business does that was going to be a little ahead of the curve once you hear me back up. So pay attention to the PPC, from the operators
Micah Berg 18:29
perspective, you know, like, clean taking advantage of these opportunities and pay
Unknown Speaker 18:37
traffic.
Micah Berg 18:38
One thing we’re doing is not only trying to drive more traffic right now, because it’s cheap. I mean, I know people are scared to spend money, but this stuff’s really cheap right now. But we’re also working really hard to add value on our website. So we can capture emails, and then just to maybe you can post the tool, website visitor intelligence, but, you know, think about it when you get a booking from an octa
And they come to your unit, I always advocate that you need some form of capture within the unit to be able to remark it to them. Or right now, like, you know, post your phone number, maybe find a way to collect their email address and somebody over to introduce themselves, whatever you can do to talk to that guest while they’re in the unit. You’ve got that opportunity. Now on your website, you can ramp up your SEO and your pay per click activities, even your email campaigns, drive people to your website, you know, they’re not going to book so what do you do, you have to capture them in some format so you can stay top of mind and that’s really it, like, push your marketing through the roof, get those people on your website and then continue to re communicate to them because you want to be first top in mind when they come back to get a cabin. In this area. You don’t want to be last you don’t want to be behind the curve. And now, just like Shane was saying, You’re not it’s not highly competitive, the otas are pulled back there. They’re in a whole different scheme than us. This is when you can really go dominate and collect your own list.
And even if it’s, you know, a couple thousand people and you spend 1000 bucks or something over the next couple of years, that’s going to be gigantic. And I think there’s going to be a lot of reason to build your email lists and all those. So don’t just stop at SEO and getting people to your website, or pay per click and buying those leads, but then capture as many of them as you can send them links to your blog, send links to your specials, keep in touch with them, get them on your social, you know, put something on your website that says Follow us on Facebook, so they can stick around and want to see you and if you don’t have a retargeting campaign, I know they’re not the cheapest thing in the world. But you can follow these people around for the next 45 days, which I believe is just long enough to keep Top of Mind and pester them enough that we’ll get back into the booking window range for summer and you can capture them for a real booking and so that’s the retargeting. So those are just some ideas. And if you don’t do those, if you if your marketing people aren’t aware of those, I’m sure one of these lovely gentlemen can help you out.
Justin Jones 21:16
So yeah, I mean a gift here what Micah is talking about is, you know, shifting to more branding and just staying Top of Mind during this time. And three great levers to throw at that is organic search what is left, but there’s still some search going on. I mean, it’s down, you know 70 80%, but it’s still there. The numbers are still big at 20% and then organic social, and then also retargeting as he’s talking about, and then a possibility of retargeting by email, which is what this kind of does by people who visit your website, you know, their email address, and then you do a drip campaign to them. That’s some great avenues. So let’s move on to vacation rental demand. Absolutely. Let me get started here sheet that I’ve got pulled up and walk through it.
Daniel Evans 22:02
bouncing around. And you got to be able to improvise in times like these in all at all levels. Let’s see.
All right, sorry for the pause, just appreciate it. So let’s dive into vacations. First off, you know, I want to kind of walk through some of the data at the actual decimal level to give you guys to take note, if you don’t know how it affects your business, obviously, you know it affects it from revenues down, but what does that do you know, in the future amounts as well. So, kind of given you this to see how it compares to your business, if your vacation rental. So this is for March and April, this is people looking at so market demand online. And this data is is compiled across all cities. So March and April demand for Pigeon Forge Cabin Rentals in March was down 79% for April was down 66%. So march was the most impacted month for people not searching at that decline for vacation rentals. Gatlinburg cabins was
Down 68% in March, we saw it drop to 66% in April. So pretty much near flat. And then Sevierville cabin rentals, down 75% in March and down 68% in April.
So that is actual looking for people looking to book searching for relevant keywords through organic probably most likely, a lot of people have cut back on spending money PPC, but people are still looking. That’s a fact.
Next, we can cover vacation rental pace. This report goes out a little bit further. This is April through September. This is a better report to look at, I think because the one we just looked at was all declined. This one’s got some some lift, as you can see. On the screen Justin shared there.
We see that pays for vacation rentals is down 79% in April, of course that’s our first month of full and full impact. Obviously we were hitting the middle of March. With this so April’s gonna have Some of the heaviest weight from percentage down, may down 38% as we’re looking at, and that was as of Sunday night, last night, June down 17% but if you’ll look July, August, September, we are seeing people they believe that this is going to be behind just as well as we did we hope sooner. But people were booking so paces up July paces up August paces up September. So there is some some pent there is some pent, some pent up demand already being served. But keep an eye on this as soon as these our target market feeder markets have mandates that are pulled back, because it’s going to need to be captured pretty quickly with follow up and be in the first of the conversation to serve the people booking in those future mounts.
And I got one more here.
Yeah, I got one more. So next is when people were booking.
If you can pull that up. That’s the pre book revenue distributions. Since COVID,
this may help help people have in this. So this is a march to January.
Justin Jones 25:09
It is March
Daniel Evans 25:10
23. So April when people are actually making the bookings obviously, they’re not coming in April, but they’re booking in April. So April, you can see obviously, people are ready to move. So they’re making making those reservations. I’d like for Justin to talk about where Michael were Shane talking about the booking window and what they’ve seen change. But that’s, that’s a pretty good I mean, that’s not what it would have been post, or pre COVID, but 43% for April, May 17%. And as we go out, obviously, we’re getting further out. So we’ll see those numbers live. Make sure to stay updated with us. This is data that we’re going to update continuously. We’re not just going to update and then it’s changing every day. So as we can see people are looking for the future, even under their current stay at home mandates. Just imagine the attendant demand to follow
When these rules were lifted, is what I’m seeing in vacation rental. So that’s as of today.
Justin Jones 26:08
Yep. Perfect. So a little bit about, yeah, we could talk about this for just one second. One thing I would like to add. So this was based on since March 23. To date, if someone made a reservation, when are they coming? Now remember, you have to take into consideration this, we have a 79% decline in pace. So 43% of the money that was booked for what month is in this, but 43% still not a big number. And most of those reservations are at the end of April. So there is a decent amount of consumer that thinks that by the end of April, we’re going to be open back up. I think the National Park opens April 30. And then right now, we’re still set to open tomorrow, which I think after the governor’s press press conference today that will change but still not a lot of activity. And we’ll talk more about when do we predict this over time.
However, at the end of this, but we’re going to move on into hotels. So this is hotel demand.
And this is people looking not necessarily booking. So this is a intent driven search, not a revenue model. So as you can see here 89% down in March, and 85%, down in April. For Pigeon Forge hotels, Gatlinburg hotels seem to take the least hit on on search volume in April.
And we’ll kind of conclude at the end of this why I think that is at least I may be wrong, but why I think that is, and then 75% of 70% for severe will, will roll right on here. This is hotel revenue, March was down 61%. And April is approaching 82% down from a revenue standpoint, that’s a collection of all three cities and severe County. So
Daniel Evans 28:00
Let’s move on to some quick attraction stuff. Daniel, you want to attack last but not least, right? Very, very important part of our market. They’re at the mercy of obviously people come in. So, again, we’re going to stay on top of that for you guys to know. All right, when are people coming to book? So let’s get started alright so attractions sorry guys I’m scrolling make sure I give you the right report here. All right so let’s dig into the attraction. So March and April. Again, this is the data that we’re looking at people looking searching online. Pigeon Forge attractions were down 92% for March and then we’ve seen some good data obviously not the best but it did not take as much of an impact in April at 73%. Gatlinburg attractions were were down 81% for March and for April. So far down 77% and some beautiful attractions kind of the offset of the bunch here. march down 77% and April down 98%. So that’s a tough one to see.
For sure. Next coming down, we’ll look at March and April people looking. So this is the last segment that we’ll have here for attractions people looking and again, this is going to be one to look at drops here. percent. So we saw a 68% drop and people actually searching online and then April of course, are our biggest month with the full month being affected down 99%. So, attractions are going to greatly benefit from future data that we have and we’re going to get these numbers better so stay in touch and stay optimistic that the state will give us what we need here but also the states that are feeder market level will start to let us do business when it is safe for people to start coming to the market.
Justin Jones 29:49
So I’m going to jump into the feeder market real quick. So this is as of yesterday when our top 10 feeder markets will open back up Tennessee April 14, Kentucky still being determined. Alabama April 30, Mississippi April 12. Ohio the latest it may 1. And then Georgia April 30. And North County between not why we believe that is important obviously is because we may open tomorrow but but our feeder markets are not. So propensity of people traveling will not be as high. So it’ll be a slower rollout. So our feeder markets have to open up.
As we do, so give me just one second here. Sorry, it’s too slow to load here. So this is who our visitor is. And one thing we have to consider is this segment right here. This segment right here may delay their travel as well. So feeder markets have to open up in the 65 plus crowd may delay and because we do have a decent market share of that we have to suspect possibly that they will not travel so we have to put our marketing efforts a Down in this effort, I’m more than up in this effort because this is a great one. And if this continues through October, and I’d love to get Shane’s input on this because he’s got some good insights on, he’s been tracking kind of how the virus works and moves and stuff like that. But we think there may be around two and if so that would be in the fall. We also know that in the fall, our age skews up in the fall,
for vacation rentals and in particular, but also lots of things. So the older crowd 65 plus may travel less this October and November for the fall than they have in previous years because if there is around two they may be advised to not travel and be in groups. Now Vacation Rentals, not to be biased towards them at all because we love all lodging and all tourism, but they have a they have a way if we can stay open to be able to market and say, um, you know, come come to a cabin enjoy with your grandkids where there’s an indoor pool, a pool table, you never have to leave the cabin, those kind of things if we’re allowed to stay open.
So, Shane, I’d love to hear some insights on kind of that of what you’re saying maybe you have around two that we need to think about. We may get through this for the summer, or we’re looking at a smaller version of around two of this that may impact the fall.
Shane Eubanks 32:30
Yeah, I mean, that’s definitely what the outlook is looking towards. Because we’ve started seeing in the past month, people that had COVID-19 positive and recovered all of a sudden they started being tested positive again for it, you know, a month later even though they’re asymptomatic. So, how long people carry this for is unknown. Right now. They’re still being studies and how this will mutate there. It’s unknown because they’re still being studies but
Think the positive from what I’m hearing as every day we’re learning how to find it, how to treat it, how to protect from it, how to take safeguards for it, I think what we’re seeing is hopefully a way to mitigate the dangers of it which will allow us to go back to you know, a work I think there’s going to be a slow open of people’s lives meaning, you know, they’re gonna start locally going back out to eat their favorite restaurant in town, you know, that’s gonna be the first step for them, and then go in and do it go into movies or whatever, you know, these things they like to do in their free time, there’s going to be this slow gradual tip dipping their toes back in. And I think there’s gonna be a lot of extra precautions people were taking but but that leads into the marketing message that we need to take as attractions, lodging, everything else. You know, we really need to focus on the ways that we help these people mitigate these dangers, so that they can have a peaceful and relaxing vacation. Is that the hygiene and sanitization of your vacation rental. Is that the way your maids clean the rooms? Is it a touchless, check in checkout process process? Is that something they don’t even have to come into the office to check into? Can they go straight to the cabin, for example, can they go straight to their hotel room without going to the desk, these are, these are things that weren’t necessarily important. They were nice to have before. But they’re becoming more and more important, as people seek these sorts of things to avoid any potential impact or dangers or anything like that. So the more that we communicate, why our lodging or attraction is safe is is not going to pose as many dangers as I as an alternative lodging or attraction or something. These are the types of things that are becoming increasingly important. And so I don’t think we’re going to be completely every part of Elon with COVID-19 come fall, you know, next winter, whatever, are they but I think a lot of our ability to find it in our ability to mitigate the dangers of it is going to increase and that those are the things the positive. We’re looking
Unknown Speaker 35:00
that
Micah Berg 35:00
it’s really the death rate and how Excellent.
So go along with what Shane said, you know, heavily being invested in is some therapies and some treatments for this so that, you know, let’s say we never get a handle on this. The goal is just to drop the death rate to lower than the flu or lower than the cold. And then it just becomes a normal like, yeah, sure, you could get COVID it’s probably not going to hurt you. If it does, you go to the hospital Two days later, you’re fine. You know, you get an IV and some pills and some treatment and you’re okay. You know, similar to the flu or the cold, and that really solves it. I mean, I agree, nobody’s going to want to get sick and maybe we should all been washing our hands more often all that stuff. But, you know, the therapies really are the answer here. And I think those will come out pretty quickly. In addition, you know, to the marketing that you were talking about, about the procedures to get to your room and all those we may consider marketing access to the therapies like is it CVS where can go, is it that simple? Are there walking clinics and hospitals and so we may end up getting to that level of where in our units or in our marketing or in our welcome package, there’s information about how to get access to the therapies or or, you know, those sort of things were never before have we told people how to get to a hospital right. So that may become more normal as well.
Justin Jones 36:49
Excellent. So another thing we’ll talk about here at the end of this is the more blue the state the more revenue we get from that state and the Smoky Mountains and we’ll talk about how this may shift some and Shane’s got some pretty good insights on that we’ve been talking about and that’s just gender that really hasn’t changed really, we saw like a 1.8% shift from March 23 today which I don’t think that’s enough to even say that’s conclusive data. So um, let this load up here
Okay, so who will recover first we predict the travel will come back into in the following order drop to markets, leisure markets, vacation rentals, hotels, outdoor attractions, indoor attractions flat to national markets, group travel, business travel, international travel and lastly cruise ship travel. So the good thing about the Smoky Mountains is we are drive to we are leisure we’re full of vacation rolls and hotels and outdoor attractions as well as indoors so we’re one of the first to recover when that is. And here’s just kind of a diagram of the first to recover with Vacation Rentals leisure drive to second hotels.
Third is outdoor attractions, and then indoor fourth. And we only did these because that pertains mostly to the Smoky Mountain market. So once again, that’ll be provided in a link. So you all can digest this data however you wish on your own time, new opportunities. We believe that smoking about tourism is the reasons we just mentioned. Um, and this is kind of where I’d love to get some feedback from you guys as well. A larger theme park ship. We think that people who can’t or choose not to visit large theme parks like Disney World may be able to come here instead. So that’s an opportunity to target that international travel. Um, oh, actually, Shane, I think you had some insights on the Disney thing you want to add anything to that?
Shane Eubanks 38:44
Yeah, I mean, I mentioned earlier about universal being closed through May and Disney possibly also joining suit on that and I think a lot of people are going to be gun shy specifically with large theme park destinations like that because a they cost a lot of money when compared to vacation and saying the Smoky Mountains. So people are really value shopping destinations right now. But to those places are so packed with people and the touch process of everything you do there you’re touching something that somebody else touch. So there’s, there’s a lot of fear to get past for a lot of travelers when they think about those kinds of theme parks. So a place like the Smoky Mountains offers a destination where they can feel comfortable in the lodging that they’re at, and it provides a
it’s an all a cart kind of experience as far as what they want to do. They’re not confined to this roller coaster, this indoor ride this water ride this, you know, carousel, it’s a small world, whatever. They can go hiking, they can go fishing, they can go see a show, they can do all these things that they choose to do they do whatever they want to do. So for us to be able to market to this type of mindset for people that were choosing like Disney World are universal before they were going from a vacation package type of mindset where they’re lodging their meals.
In their entertainment was all included and their price, they didn’t really have to think about anything other than what they were going to do that day and what order when they go to destination like the Smokies, it’s really like I said all a cart. So they’re having to choose their lodging. They’re having to choose what attractions they’re having to choose which restaurants. So if you’re, say, a lodging provider, and you can either whether you put together a package that includes this stuff, or you put together like, you know, a one day itinerary or two day itinerary ideas for, you know, a family putting something together that is ideas for them to go do as a family that’s safe, that’s valuable. That’s it’s discounted, maybe for the short term. Anything you can do to make it easier for people to plan a peaceful, relaxing, value driven vacation coming to the Smokies that’s going to be a big win for people that are going from something like Disney or universal to an ala carte kind of destination like the Smokies
Justin Jones 40:55
excellent um so on on to the international thing shut down.
time international travel bans are going to be in effect for a while. We don’t really believe that we can get in front of those people as well and open up new markets. That’s why I’m here. I said we may want to watch our our demographics because they may have a shift if we can get in front of these people. Um, Micah, do you want to add anything on the international travel stuff? And I we’ve talked about that before.
Micah Berg 41:26
And how many people avoided local destinations during good economic times, or just their own travel preferences that now have very limited choices? I mean, when you think about the four things you do you go to, you either go to a destination like Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and you understand that you’ve on a cruise, you go to a theme park, or you go international and do the various things out there. Those are like the four big buckets of travel outside of business and those sort of things. Well, three of those buckets are closed for a long time. And that’s pretty exciting to me to think about, you know, international travel could be shut down for a year, two years, who really knows, even if it’s just through the end of this year, we’ll see a big bounce from that. Because people, you know, in slower economic, economic times in general, which we’re also technically in a bear market in a recession at this point.
People don’t go as far they don’t spend as long traveling, they don’t spend as much money. So they stopped going to Europe and Asia and Australia, those sort of things are the Bahamas even, and they drive and so we’re going to see that in addition to the restrictions. So while Yes, there is some risk across the tourism industry, truly, I think the Smokies are well primed. I mean, what’s the what’s the number? I’m not fully familiar, but there’s, like a gigantic like 66% of the United States population can drive here in less than eight hours or something. Yeah, I mean, something. Right. And so and it’s cheap, right. One of the things I advocate is if you really look at supply and demand
And the number of cabins and the number of people that now are going to drive here and can’t go anywhere else. And all of the natural resources of like, the parks, the views, the fresh air, the relaxation, the cabins are outfitted with fun stuff to do that will be attractions, outdoor stuff that you can still go do. People are going to come here. And so I’m telling people like, hey, look at all these things. And instead of being afraid, maybe we need to mark up our rates, right? Like, let’s pay attention to some of this good stuff. We just, you know, three quarters of travel just got shut down for Americans. So even if half of us stopped traveling, that’s still a big demand increase.
Shane Eubanks 43:39
Yeah, that’s a good point. And I want to add to that, I mean, you’re talking about the people that are being interested in coming here. I mean, you think about the destinations that have gotten kind of bad press coverage in the past month. That’s a lot of the beaches and whatnot. And so there’s going to be this hesitation from the tops of just because the media mindset that people have and there hasn’t been a whole lot better. The press coverage about the Smoky Mountains, you know that I mean, the mitigation, the response, everything has been, has been okay, you know, and the things being shut down and the locations that we have.
There’s fortunately not been a lot of bad press about the smoky. So we need to capitalize on that as well as we move into the transition of people traveling again.
Justin Jones 44:24
Absolutely.
So also the fact that we have outdoor travel experiences, people are gonna be looking for outdoor travel to, you know, continue somewhat of a degree of social distancing. And we have a lot of that between our zip lines are rafting and various other outdoor activities. Also the pent up demand, we live in a market that you know, the average person visits two to three times per year, a large majority of the market business two to three times per year. So it’s not like we’re in Hawaii, where the average person visits every five to eight years that’s a repeat. So we we we will have a propensity to have a larger amount of pent up demand and most markets we believe also cruise lines have blocked a lot of their cruise ships until November. So people will still want to travel they’ll get a refund I think and they’ll or something and they’ll get cancelled and there’ll be still looking for a way to get out. And Shane, what feedback do you have?
Shane Eubanks 45:20
I mean like I said earlier, they just put out their guidelines where there’s basically three steps that need to happen before they feel comfortable giving people access to cruise lines again and it’s it’s going out all the way until July 15 I think is when they’re really hammering down on cruise lines and cruise line industry is fighting back because they feel like they’ve been singled out by the government you know, as far as a travel entertainment kind of destination. Um, but for good reason. You know, I mean, there’s been a lot of issues with it. So I’m definitely people are getting gunshot when it comes to booking cruises and now they’re turning to look for different things they can do.
With a couple you know, whether it’s a couple or a family, family reunions, wedding anniversaries, these types of things are popular for cruises. So these are target markets that we need to be aware of and catering to when we start opening our stuff back up. So, really think about these people that were going on cruises, were looking for something that was maybe exotic locations. I know. Smokies and the Caribbean are two very different things. But people are looking for when they go on a cruise relaxation and peace of mind pretty much. And so if we can cater to that mindset when we’re marketing, whether it’s through our social posts or a website or whatever, the Smokies offering that piece that escaped from being jailed up in their house and providing a great destination for their group, their wedding, their anniversary, anything that you know, they would have been going on cruises for so there’s definitely a crossover with what we need to look for when we look at catering to cruise line types of mindsets and shifting that to the Smokies. So just
Keep that in mind with whatever your lodging or attraction provides that can correlate with what that offered, really be hammering on that.
Justin Jones 47:09
Yeah, and for also, marketing is going to get, I think, a little bit more complicated because if you’re going to go after these one, I think your marketing message has to shift to some degree to adapt to the travel behavior, shift, and just paradigm of the way people think and what they’re looking for.
But also, if you’re going to go after these markets, the messaging to someone that was going to go to Disney, but now they may come here, totally different than our normal. Also totally different for international travel for, for cruise lines. I love the international travel opportunity. We’re going to definitely throw some money at it to see if it works. I’m not saying any of these works. These are just opportunities to try and see what the marketing message is totally what I like with international travel is there used to spending more money there used to staying longer, you know, our average stays, you know, just over three nights here on average.
So these people, you know, typically spend two or three days getting there and back. So I think there’s a way to get a longer length of stay in that. Lastly, smaller hotels and vacation rentals. It’s a little bit you know, when you’re staying at, like a hotel in Vegas has 5000 rooms, those are going to be slower to cover than the smaller ones. So here are average hotels, you know, 150 rooms or less, and our vacation rolls, which allows us for the next 12 to 18 months, while some level of social distancing is being practice, were more probable to get that business because there’s only 100 or so people or in a cabin, there’s a couple people so you can stay a little safer and still social distance to some degree, even in a cabin or a hotel. And so the six core.
Micah Berg 48:48
Sorry, just just about the smaller size hotels, and in general, this Smoky Mountains are not overbuilt, you know, I mean, there’s plenty of demand that fits the supply. So Sometimes you have less supply than you need in many times and people can repeat So, you know, I worry about places like Vegas, New York, LA some of these places that overbuilt anticipating the rise of tourism getting hurt. I really don’t see the Smokies having an oversupply issue, especially in a hotel. Every time I come down it’s hard to get in a hotel no matter what time of year it is. So you know, you guys are doing pretty good on that. And you’re right, this the small stuff will bounce back quick, especially here with the increased demand.
Justin Jones 49:35
For sure. So let’s move into some
six shifts, we believe it’ll happen and travel behavior, one flexible cancellations and refunds, people are going to look it back closer than ever, without certainty whether or not there will be another round. So they’ll want to know your cancellation policies and the more flexible the better. And also, what’s your stance on refunds, and if you’re going to keep them
Same policy, that’s great. You may want to look at ways to tidy up and strengthen your policies to make sure that if there are chargebacks, you can win. Second would be guests want to know you will keep them safe. So that’s not something people typically ask prior to that, but they will want to know how you screen your employees clean your facility and take all measures to protect them from a health perspective. They will also number three want to know about your extra cleaning measures? What are you doing different now? If anything, were your cleaning measures good enough before? If not, did you change them? The fourth one would be reviews. reviews have always been an important part of the booking process. In fact over 71% of travelers use reviews to help make a travel decision. So we believe that people are gonna be looking at reviews now more than ever because we’ve seen so much in the media about they didn’t let me cancel they didn’t let me reschedule which a lot of that was not true. They just wanted their money back for a stay in january 2020. And they were looking for anything they could say to get it back not not in all cases, but in many, they were coming in December, you know 2020 and they wanted to cancel the reservation, didn’t buy the insurance didn’t buy deposit protection and just wanted to refund. But people are going to check that. Also the review algorithms are going to be a little bit different through this because I’ve had a decline in reviews. So the algorithms if there is really machine learning will adjust somewhat maybe your rankings on your otas rankings on Airbnb for sure. Because there’s so review heavy and rankings on and Shane’s got a lot of inputs to about there there. There’s a pretty massive shift in the Google algorithm through all this as well.
Social Proof will be huge people trust people if you have good reviews, show them and give social proof on your websites. And let let let your customer tell the story. And then group travel will be a shift in particularly in this market business traveler. There’ll be a shift to but we don’t have a lot of business travel. So we didn’t hit that for this market. But group travel for sports business and motorcoach will be slower to return than normal just because once again, that’s a group experience. Do you guys have anything you want to add to six or more of the shifts and travel behavior
Micah Berg 52:17
is how do you think large cabins will be affected in the Smokies?
Justin Jones 52:26
Um, it’s not business related so less than some business destinations like Atlanta in those places. But, uh, you know, the, the family reunions will recover First, the church events may be a little bit slow. So I would definitely focus on family reunions, and those kind of things more heavily than normal. I’m not forgetting church groups, but knowing that they may be a little slower to bring 50 6080 people to a cabin and and also the typical skew a little older as well. So you got kind of a double edge there. One there group and to the age trends a little higher. Yeah.
Micah Berg 53:08
And you know, an idea that I that I use in and it’s beach market so I’m not sure if it’ll work you can help me out but we lower or advertise very clearly to when we’re slower that you can get this very nice, very large condo for the same price as say a two bedroom and you don’t have to sleep, you know 30 people or whatever that might be an idea to if the recovery is really slow in some of these larger cabins instead of marketing it you know, still market for how many it sleeps, but maybe be very particular about your headlines and your ads, your description that, you know, we’ve lowered prices to compete with XYZ level. You know, sleeps 12 sleeps 15 whatever cabins to generate business and actually make it a safer option. So instead of having 20 people in a sleeps 20 Kevin 20 people in asleep 50 cabin. And now you’ve got your own room, your own space, a bigger kitchen like, you know, real close circle, distancing within the same gigantic condo, or house cabin and it might cost you a little money. But it’s better than zero. You know? I mean, if you used to book for $2,000 a night I’d sure take $1,000 a night for zero. So
Shane Eubanks 54:24
yeah, I’ll also throw in there with that with the kind of value shopping is, when you look back at the recession of 2008 little company called Airbnb was born. We saw a shift with a consumer mindset look into more frugal top of mindset after the recession, they were really tight with their money. And we don’t know how people are exactly going to be right now because there’s no case study for this exact type of situation we’re in right now. So we look at human behavior and kind of the past kind of examples of that. And so when we saw that shift to more of a frugal mindset of 2008 we may see parallels with that coming out of this without more frugal mindset. So what you’re saying Micah about offering these bigger luxury nicer cabins for a little bit discounted rate just to get them booked and offer something that is going to give the customer an incredible experience through this and that they’re going to give the great reviews and the investment, I would think of it as more of an investment in that person and the reviews they’re going to give rather than typically are you’re saying a loss from $2,000 to $1,000. So that might be worth the investment to get those good reviews not good kind of Mojo in the social posts they’re going to make about the cabin taking the pictures in it minds being blown and whatever because they’re going to be more appreciative of it then a group of 50 people who stayed in the cabin, you know, it’s like this group of 20 is gonna be like holy cow and talking about and posting about a lot more than the bigger group would.
Justin Jones 55:47
Got it. Excellent feedback. So we’re gonna move into indicators the market is coming back. I’m now pulled some data. Now this next one is not specific. This next thing I’m about to say is not specific to the Smoky Mountains, but it’s kind of a global travel statement, previous epidemics or recessionary events have depressed travel demand for four to seven months on average, that data comes from Amadeus. And, you know, they do kind of the channel distribution. And so it’s it’s a global look. So and this will be in the link we send out as well. So four to seven months on on a on a more. I think that’s a national level four to seven months on a national level. I think the global is longer than that, when you’re talking about international travel, but let’s get specific now to the Smoky Mountains. So first, we have to get the stay at home orders lifted in the top 10 feeder markets. The next thing that will be an indicator is search volume. People have to look before they book and we’ll see an increase in people searching and we can see that so then we don’t do anything yet because we could have lookers and that Booker’s kind of how phase five happened with us In the Smoky Mountains, we saw a smaller decline in search, but a greater decline in conversion. So the declining conversion outpaced the decline in demand. So the next thing we want to look because that’s just the first indicator, we’re like, oh, this thing might be heating up a little bit. Do we have revenue from our otas and our channels. If you had no real shift in search, Google organic search, I think one of the great places to look if you don’t have access to all this data, you don’t use otas, like vrb Oh, Airbnb booking comm or any of those is to watch organic search, it should come up and conversion start taking up as well, if you’re using Google Analytics and have Google e commerce integrated. So that’s kind of the first one we’ll see people looking you’ll see people booking and there’s some opportunities to see where they’re booking from. And then we start reinvesting into our own marketing. And this, this webpage messenger link two goes into greater detail that you can read at your own leisure, and kind of dig into how that works. I would want I would definitely want
Micah Berg 58:01
your booking window. We could be some false positives involved. If you just look at the indicators you talked about, for instance, we had a $50,000 day. This weekend typically were 150,000. So you know, a thirds pretty good I was excited but it was all for September October time frame are fall and so I’m not going to go get super excited about this as a recovery indicator until they’re booking 30 days or less out and get really I will get if I had a $50,000 day this weekend, even at a third of volume and it was all booking in late May early June, I’d go ham I would spend as much money as I could marketing, but it was for late fall. So I think people are just confident this is over at some point they’re reserving their spot rates are still you know, normal to low way out that far. Just because we’re uncertain. And so just watch your booking windows to like know your booking windows if you start getting last minute stuff. Last minute being less than 30 days in my opinion. That’s when you need to really ramp up I mean that that’s a lot of confidence.
Justin Jones 59:12
Yeah, so we’ve got cover that as well dirt bugs in your website booking windows and also watch your paste reports as well from your business and market as well. In the Smoky Mountains, we do not monitor hotels, their star reports and stuff like that for that. I don’t know if attractions anything like that. I’m not aware of anything but we do monitor Vacation Rentals three times a week. And that is an opportunity there. So in conclusion, first you guys have anything else you think we should add that some value to help anything?
Unknown Speaker 59:43
Yeah, when we’re talking about pay per click, um, some things that I’m seeing as far as like user behavior, people looking to book they’re looking at destinations that are fairly close to them. You know, we talked about a drive to destination I think that radius is tightened for the time being. And so when if you haven’t had a PPC strategy before, and you just kind of bid on keywords and pick some states and let it roll, I think now is a really important time to really hone in like maybe not just all of Georgia you’re bidding on but maybe just north Georgia and not just all in North Carolina, but you know, West Carolina, and really tighten that radius and really focus on the better converting cities that that you know, were were performing before and really keeping an eye on that because I’m really starting to see people pick destinations that aren’t as far away for the for the short term, you know, they want to go somewhere, but they don’t want to go somewhere too far. So right now’s a really good time to hone in that pay per click strategy that you’ve either neglected or just haven’t optimized as fully as you could have.
Justin Jones 1:00:45
And we can’t stress this enough. So much of what we do from a bidding, you know, Google pay per click, and or to AdWords, Facebook ads Google organic search, the Facebook algorithm for organic The Facebook algorithm the way otas work, the way TripAdvisor ranks all those things, those algorithms, machine learning, and that machine learning was just handed a ton of anomalies that never happened. And now data has to shift. So with that said, definitely, you want to not turn things back on and go, Okay, let’s turn that back on just like it was and go forward. You’ve got to turn it back on, and then watch the data and shift quickly, because the algorithms are not going to be caught up, because they’ve just been thrown all this data of anomalies in the past two to three weeks, and we’re possibly taking four to five weeks, that it’s gonna have to crunch on that data again. So you want to turn things back on and watch exactly what Shane said, of, you know, maybe George maybe, you know, Georgia used to be huge for us and we used to target that but Now it’s not now we need to target this bad example. but you get the point. But definitely do not turn it back on and just go, Okay, we’re back in business, turn everything back on, you got to watch it. And we talked a little bit about that in here. But that is a very, very, very good point, Shane, anybody else?
Daniel Evans 1:02:14
I would just like to add, I mean, we’ve got a lot of people on here, we’ve got a lot of people that are going to be, you know, changing this later after it’s live. If any of this information brings ideas to your mind, but you’re not exactly sure on what action steps to take with it. Reach out to one of us, we are here to help, we want to help you. And it may just be getting to the second, third, fourth step of this to make decisions inside your business with the marketing that you’re doing. Just like Justin said, just turning it on may work but it may not it’s highly likely not to work. So actually making decisions on what to do and where to start to get that highest return on adspend or return on spend whatever it is may take some further conversations about your business and what sir You may be using internally. I know a lot of people don’t ask for contact information on a website. So if someone lands on your site, you’re not actually asking them for an email or a phone number even start that conversation. Micah spoke on that earlier about, you know, be the first to start that conversation. Because the follow up process is going to be a little different with this, we’re gonna have to win people over, that’s going to be big for the initial stay. And that’s going to be for the repeat stay. So our markets been huge for retention for years, but I think there’s going to be some new strategies and marketing distribution that needs to take place to get them to come back for that repeat stay. But again, we’re covering a lot it’s all great information. But if you have a question, do not hesitate to reach out because we want to help we want to answer your question and just an idea, that would be anything
Micah Berg 1:03:49
yet occupy we may want to hear this as an offer and make sure it goes out with the recording thing. As we’ve talked before, your iomega is paying for the next several months of vacation rental universities masters monthly plan which has access to everything we’ve ever taught to include all the templates and forms, checklists, all that kind of stuff. So there’s a place in your business where you feel deficient and you some staff that’s sitting around or sitting at home, you yourself as well maybe get them all to sign up for the Masters monthly at the vru. com slash pricing masters monthly Use coupon code COVID one nine co v ID one nine and that that’s a coupon code where I mag pays for it so it’s free to you get in there, we’ve taught on everything that relates to vacation rentals, and even selling to new owners, managing owner expectations employments a lot of that kind of stuff. So check it out. It’s free, can’t hurt if you’re if you have time to do it. Now’s the time and so I encourage you to do that and I posted that info in the chat in case you need to grab it, you know, grab the link and stuff there. And then Justin can send it out as well.
Justin Jones 1:05:14
Yeah, while we wrap up this conclusion, if you have any questions, we’ll do q&a. Now. As soon as I wrap this up at the end here, if you have any specific questions, post them in the questions and we’ll address those. So feel free to ask questions down there. So sorry about tourism. In conclusion, we believe this breakout market will be one of the first to rebound. We do think the impact on tourism recovery will be in phases it won’t be like just light switch on and off it will come in phases as it started in phases, each phase with the first one beginning March 18. A will take four to six days. Once we do some once we do see some of the start to turn in our favor like most things from a physics perspective, we believe a follow the same timeline. So basically I’m thinking, hopefully a full recovery by July 1. It would be ideal and I think the data at this point once the data changes daily leans in towards that. The good news is we do have those indicators we talked about earlier to make better predictions. So the one thing to consider are the opportunities to be prepared for pent up demand and preserve your cash flow. Since we may see more rounds of this, I would be cautious and watch for Fall season and revenue closely because we may see a slight mid range return of this pandemic in the fall. In the link that you’re going to get you can put in your phone number there and any updates that we push out, we will push out to you. Also our blog has a ton of information. There’s I think over 18 articles of how to handle the vacation rental market deer in this as well as tourism. Ah, just tourism related stuff in general. There’s over 18 articles that can help walk through some stuff from I know, we saw some questions about the payroll protection program, we covered that. There’s some questions about managing rates before, during and after this pandemic, we’ve got that, how to lay people off how to bring people back, how to get loans, if you need some cash, how to manage your cash flow, there’s about anything that you can think of. We’ve we’ve written an article about if you’re not a reader, that’s fine. There’s also video and audio of all of these as well, where you can watch this. And some Excel sheets, just anything we can do to help our friends in the tourism market we want to do during this time. So are there any questions that we want? And there has been some technical difficulty look like for about 20 to 30% of the audience, based on the data that I can see. Ah, I apologize for that. We don’t know. I know that A lot of these webinar platforms like zoom, and those are being beat up pretty hard with usage. So there’s some latency. Some bats apologize for that. But hopefully the recording as well, we heard many
Micah Berg 1:08:11
attractions or changes,
Justin Jones 1:08:13
Michael was right questions, attractions changes,
Micah Berg 1:08:17
a drive, vacationing with social distancing in mind.
Justin Jones 1:08:34
I know some of our attractions, like the zip lines, reduce the amount of people per trip and the rafting companies did the same thing where they’re promoting that we used to take and this is all made up because I don’t remember the number I just said they reduced. We used to take 15 and now we’re taking eight to help with that. And those are the things in the messaging that we talked about that has to be on the websites because people will want to know, how are you protecting me? How are you? How are you doing? keeping me safe those kind of things so and Robert just said Windows Defender was blocking webinar ninja finally was able to make it work so hopefully when we send this video out we actually posted on YouTube and then there’s no like you got to have a plug in and stuff not being blocked and all that so but like I said, it looks like about 20 to 30% had some sort of issue and the others didn’t so I apologize for that but Wilson do any any
Micah Berg 1:09:33
address or you sign up so just in for not only hosting this event, but also for offering to do pay for that along with the podcast and all this other stuff you guys are doing. You know, keep it up, man.
Justin Jones 1:10:02
Excellent Shang Yang,
Unknown Speaker 1:10:04
I mean, I would just really, really emphasize that more than possibly ever in our generation marketing is more important than ever. It’s really important right now to focus on two things. And that’s capturing attention and building trust. So if you can do those two things, you’re going to be ahead of the game. If you if you just sit by the sidelines and wait for things to open up and think that thing’s gonna go back to normal. It’s not gonna turn out well for you. So you have to look at marketing, and you have to look at capturing attention, engaging those people and building trust. So really focus on those things, and you will be ahead of everybody else that doesn’t do those things.
Justin Jones 1:10:41
Yeah, and if you turn your campaigns back on the way they were, ah, you may have a dip in conversion, which would impact your, you know, return on adspend riches, the, you know, cost per acquisition and return on adspend are the two biggest metrics to be watching so watch those closely. For sure. So we all the way in our in these blogs and stuff. We don’t just cover marketing we cover general business cash hiring, firing all those kinds of things as well. So yeah and Darryl Payne mica answered that but Richard tractions filter everything from small to big. So it’s going to be smaller markets that have a shorter distance to travel literally it’s going to go small debate. From the distance they travel to the attractions, they visit the smaller hotels or recover for the bigger ones, the smaller vacation rolls, we’re recovering for the bigger one. So it’s really small and large, the one to many kind of ratio there that that this will follow for sure, I believe at least. So I want to say thank you to Shane for adding so much value in this. Thank you for being on this Micah. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you and thanks to all the attendees for attending. And once again, everyone will get a link to This data that you’re seeing here, and remember to sign up for updates, as we find updates, we will be doing another one of these when the market starts to recover, and at that point will update will have updated data, as well as the ability to show you kind of what we really predict you should be doing as opposed to this like kind of 30,000 foot view, we’ll be able to fly a little bit lower as we get closer to that window. Let everybody know that we do perceive the market is back bait based by data and also give you some updates on how to shift things in your business with marketing as well as just infrastructure. Because there’s going to be some other obstacles to face other than marketing. This is one of the bigger shifts we’ve seen this is bigger than the 911 impact on travel. This is bigger than SARS because it wasn’t global. So really paying attention in your business in general, not just marketing is very, very critical and we want to help serve you with that. So that’s all we have and Thanks, everybody. Thank you.
